If you are surprised that this week’s Hearthstone (Free) Tavern Brawl is available early in NA, it’s not a drill or a mistake; Blizzard has decided to change the Tavern Brawl times to help with the recent Brawl issues. Now, the Americas Brawls will start Wednesday 9:00 AM PST to give Blizzard time to monitor any issues that might pop up, increase their response time, and minimize service impact to all the players. So, from now on if you are in the Americas, you get to play the Brawl for a few more hours a week. Brawl time changes aside, today we have a new Brawl to play, and it’s a very fun and festive one. The Gift Exchange Brawl, a special Winter Veil Brawl, is probably one of the most entertaining I’ve played so far. It’s also season-appropriate as it’s all about giving and receiving presents.

In this Brawl you build your own deck, and then you try to get to the various crates that will drop on both sides of the field (they drop whenever there’s no crate on that side of the board). Those crates contain stolen gifts, cards that allow you to Discover presents. Those presents are usually very expensive and powerful cards that you can then play at a discount. As you can imagine, it’s RNG but good RNG since you get to decide which cards will end up in your hand. You can even break your own side’s crate if you want to discover a card of your own class.

So, build a deck with spells that can remove a 0/4 minion off the board to get to those presents easily and be prepared to get a lot of mid-range and late-game Legendaries for cheap. This is a really fun Brawl and perfectly appropriate for this season of gift-giving. And when you win your first Brawl, you don’t get a pack this time; instead, you get a really nice-looking Winter Veil Wreath Card Back. So, go give some presents to your opponents.