Hearthstone

[DakaSha]

Gambit decks are fine in a TCG. What some people dont seem to realize is that you measure success over time in these games. If your gambit deck wins you 60% of games (due to good play and good odds of the deck) then you have a good deck.
You dont win 100% of games no matter what.

 

[Brother None]

Yeah, exactly. I'm not saying it doesn't work, Damned, I get how you're building it, just saying it's a style that can burn you if your draw fucks you even a little bit. But plenty of decks are built that way, particularly rushdown decks with Warriors, and yet if you build them well you're likely to win over 50% of the time. That works well in constructed mode, though it's a bit tricky in Arena.

But it's a cool variant. I like gambling decks like Warlock-murloc or warrior all-rush, it's just fun to play even if you only win 50% of the time. I'll try some stuff out next time I play (been playing only WL2 past few days, no time for anything else).

 

[Gragt]

Looks like I'm finally in. For real this time.

 

[1451]

Paladin's secret Redemption (the one that returns a minion to life with one health) seemed useless to me. I was wrong of course. Combined with cards that have death rattle it becomes very good.
A paladin's Cairne taught me this lesson today in arena.

 

[Gragt]

My first victory!

 

[Zed]

my first ever 0-3

warlock, only being able to draft 3 2-mana card

random game is random

 

[Damned Registrations]

Yeah I skunked out the other day myself. Warrior deck. 5 weapons in it, and 3 Upgrades!. Can't fail right? Wrong. In all 3 games (which each lasted over 8 turns) the first weapon I was able to play was the single Gorehowl. Which is an awesome fucking weapon, especially with a fistful of upgrades. But not after you've been getting the shit beaten out of you for 6 turns because the other 4, cheaper weapons in the deck didn't show up despite already drawing half the fucking deck. Such is life in a CCG.

 

[Zeriel]

Anyone else finding constructed way more entertaining than arena? Kind of the reverse of what I was expecting, going into this game.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I suspect I'll enjot constructed eventually, but right now it's just a waste of time. I win games against morons until I run into morons withlegendaries, and then lose because it doesn't matter how ell you play when your opponent drops a fucking deathwing or something on the board and all you have are commons and rares.

 

[Zeriel]

I've had a few random legendary losses, but most of the time it isn't a problem--they seem to really decide "I am in a bad position, and might be able to claw my way back" games, though. When you aren't in control, things like Ysera and Ragnaros definitely put a nail in the coffin. When you are in control, not a big deal.

The mid-tier high-value ones are quite good, though. Like Cairne or Sylvanas. You see them more commonly in competitive decks. But it's still a really close call. Not sure I'd want to sub out an Argent Commander, for example, to get either.

 

[Damned Registrations]

The thing is, if you've traded your hand or your life total or your board position so you can be in control in some other aspect and win in 1-2 more turns, a single legendary can fuck you utterly. It doesn't even have to be a good one. Alexstraza is pretty shit overall, but when it shows up for a guy sitting at 2 life vs a hunter who's already spent all his hard removal getting ahead in the first place, it's basically a free win. And if it's a good card, like Ragnaros or Ysera, all they have to do is stall until they draw it, which is really fucking easy in a game where you often go through 2/3rds of your deck in 10 turns. Sure, you might win anyways if they happen to have the wrong legendary for the situation (I beat some poor bastard in arena who drew a ragnaros vs my summon spam deck, all it got a chance to do was ping a 1/1 murloc or something) but by and large, these cards give you a huge swing in your favour that you just can't overcome when the majority of your cards are shitty commons you don't want to use anyways. Cairne looks a lot better when instead of subbing out an argent commander you're subbing out a fucking chillwind yeti.

And I bet at some point down the road we'll see decks with 5-10+ legendaries in them, as the card pool expands. Going to be a bitch for new players to enter the competitive level. Even now, I can imagine shoving both cairne and sylvanas, along with thalnos bloodmage in a paladin deck with redemption to get more out of their deathrattles.Throw in leeroy while you're at it, he works well with revival since he has high attack, low health, and charge. And those are just the low cost slots.

 

[Brotherman Bill]

I think I've played druid more than any other arena hero, and while I realize he's not the strongest he's not nearly as weak as you make him out to be. I'd rank him higher than rogue, warrior and hunter at the very least. He has good easy to come by removal both cheap and expensive, as well as a decent amount of ways into card advantage. Also beefy dudes.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Going to be a bitch for new players to enter the competitive level.

Isn't this the case for all CCGs, digital or otherwise, though? The longer they go on, the harder it is for new players to do anything, because the playing field, or the rules of the game, as they are, aren't equal. The feeling of winning vs morons, then losing vs morons with good cards is prevalent in just about every CCG I've played. A decent match is pretty rare. And as cards and information about them solidify, decks amalgamate and become uniform, and you rarely get any room for creativity.

Hearthstone has the added disincentive of being generally uninteresting, to me, on a tactical level. I played a few days of the beta and got utterly bored.

 

[Gragt]

muh deck

 

[J1M]

The thing is, if you've traded your hand or your life total or your board position so you can be in control in some other aspect and win in 1-2 more turns, a single legendary can fuck you utterly. It doesn't even have to be a good one. Alexstraza is pretty shit overall, but when it shows up for a guy sitting at 2 life vs a hunter who's already spent all his hard removal getting ahead in the first place, it's basically a free win. And if it's a good card, like Ragnaros or Ysera, all they have to do is stall until they draw it, which is really fucking easy in a game where you often go through 2/3rds of your deck in 10 turns. Sure, you might win anyways if they happen to have the wrong legendary for the situation (I beat some poor bastard in arena who drew a ragnaros vs my summon spam deck, all it got a chance to do was ping a 1/1 murloc or something) but by and large, these cards give you a huge swing in your favour that you just can't overcome when the majority of your cards are shitty commons you don't want to use anyways. Cairne looks a lot better when instead of subbing out an argent commander you're subbing out a fucking chillwind yeti.

And I bet at some point down the road we'll see decks with 5-10+ legendaries in them, as the card pool expands. Going to be a bitch for new players to enter the competitive level. Even now, I can imagine shoving both cairne and sylvanas, along with thalnos bloodmage in a paladin deck with redemption to get more out of their deathrattles.Throw in leeroy while you're at it, he works well with revival since he has high attack, low health, and charge. And those are just the low cost slots.

I agree that legendaries cost too much dust right now. 800 instead of 1600 would make more sense. I can see why it is so high though, they decided to double it since you will only be able to buy one.

 

[Zed]

hmmm. I assembled a really nice druid deck for my daily quests (though, still druid). should replace gnomish engineer with azure drakes though.
anyone playing on EU wanna fite?

 

[Disgruntled]

Registered months ago and didnt get a beta key. Fucking Blizzard.
How long will it take to grind up a decent deck? and how expensive is it to build one with cash?

 

[Brotherman Bill]

I drafted the worlds worst paladin deck. Got no good cards except azure drake, 1x truesilver and 1x knife juggler and 1x molten giant. Other than that, every single card was crap. No consecrate or hammer or yeti or nuthin. Lost to some seriously shit players with it. Now I'm at 0 gold, no more arena for me until what, tuesday? Unless I want to play constructed which is slow and shit. of hearthstone.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I've been playing my mediocre shaman deck in arena for the last 3 days. No spirit wolves, no bloodlusts, no mana tide totems... not terribly impressed. I've mostly been winning by bullshit gambits where I drop windfury and 2 earthen hammers on a minion and swing for 20 in a single turn. But I've been doing decently well. The annoying thing is that the quests I had when I started were mostly irrelevant (play as classes I couldn't draft) and once I got them out of the way, I got a couple shaman victory quests. But now I'm sitting on 2 quests I can't do with this fucking deck again, and I'd like to be progressing at least one quest while I play in arena. I wish there were more quests available for people who feel like playing more than 30 minutes each day. Blizzard caters way too hard to the 'I'm too important to spend time playing games' crowd.

 

[Brother None]

Anyone else finding constructed way more entertaining than arena? Kind of the reverse of what I was expecting, going into this game.

I was kinda surprised to find I was enjoying constructed too. But it's less high-pressure and engaging, losses just don't matter, and decks are too predictable. Hell, I've conceded a game before turn one once seeing I was facing a priest and really didn't feel like facing another bullshit deck, haha. Arena is definitely more engaging, less predictable and more nailbiting.
My Shadowpriest deck is up to 3 star diamond but I think that made it/me reach its limits, I'm not winning a lot of games there. Too many people with counters to the random priest nonsense.

Had a few good arena runs, including a 6-3 with a priest, but arena is a strange beast; I drafted a mage deck I really liked, all the powerful mage cards you could want, pyroblast, flamestrike, fireball, some arcane nonsense, mana wyrm in place, everything. Even got that mana wyrm coin mirror entity play in one game (a 3/3 and two 0/2s with taunt on turn 1? lulz), but it just went nowhere, kept getting my ass handed to me and went 1-3. I was probably just doing it wrong.

Then a hunter deck with a draft that kept me sweating for how awful it went. I drew some awful beasts early but took em anyway expecting later synergy, think Oasis Snapjaw, Bloodfen Raptor, River Crokolisk, even a Stonetusk Boar I think. Then the draft had me sweating with no synergy cards at all, until in the last 10 I drew the necessary timber wolf, scavenging hyena, starving buzzard and a pair of beastmasters. Didn't do great on removal either; one deadly shot, one multishot, one arcane shot, couple of hunter's marks. And guess what? That deck got me to 7-3, with the final match being a down-the-wire one, where I had a giant out, he had 8 health left, and only just managed to finish me off. Funny how that goes. I think I play hunter better than mage tho, hunter and priest I feel most comfortable with so far, then mage and druid. Gotta learn decks before you can play em well!

I really adore hunter's mark tho, especially now it got buffed to a permanent effect. It is just delicious when your opponent stacks up card for an early mountain giant play, and I just hunter's mark it and trade it for a 1/1 boar. Owtch.

Also I'm probably a total noob, but I *love* the crazed alchemist. He's in all of my constructed decks. The plays available with him are just so varied and so much fun when you can pull them off. Even playing it on turn 2 to kill a warlock's totem is ok for a momentum standpoint, but using it to take out a shieldbearer or Doomsayer or -better yet - a summoning portal? That's just delicious. I've also had some great plays swapping the health on a friendly minion like an oasis snapjaw and then trading him for a huge opponent. Or hell, hunter's mark a giant, make him 8-1, and if you lack any removal options and have board control, alchemist him to turn him into a useless 1-8. It's a fun card, and admittedly it's not always great, but even if there's no play, it's still a 2/2 for 2, which is not great but it won't cripple you with its awfulness either.

 

[J1M]

Registered months ago and didnt get a beta key. Fucking Blizzard.
How long will it take to grind up a decent deck? and how expensive is it to build one with cash?

These data points are taken from my collection. I complete the daily quests and use the gold to play in arena. I also spent the first 800 dust I earned to flush out a warrior deck with an epic and some rares.

 

[J1M]

I've been playing my mediocre shaman deck in arena for the last 3 days. No spirit wolves, no bloodlusts, no mana tide totems... not terribly impressed. I've mostly been winning by bullshit gambits where I drop windfury and 2 earthen hammers on a minion and swing for 20 in a single turn. But I've been doing decently well. The annoying thing is that the quests I had when I started were mostly irrelevant (play as classes I couldn't draft) and once I got them out of the way, I got a couple shaman victory quests. But now I'm sitting on 2 quests I can't do with this fucking deck again, and I'd like to be progressing at least one quest while I play in arena. I wish there were more quests available for people who feel like playing more than 30 minutes each day. Blizzard caters way too hard to the 'I'm too important to spend time playing games' crowd.

I've heard you get 100 gold for 1000 wins.

 

[Zeriel]

It's actually 300 gold.

 

[Zeriel]

Anyone else finding constructed way more entertaining than arena? Kind of the reverse of what I was expecting, going into this game.

I was kinda surprised to find I was enjoying constructed too. But it's less high-pressure and engaging, losses just don't matter, and decks are too predictable. Hell, I've conceded a game before turn one once seeing I was facing a priest and really didn't feel like facing another bullshit deck, haha. Arena is definitely more engaging, less predictable and more nailbiting.
My Shadowpriest deck is up to 3 star diamond but I think that made it/me reach its limits, I'm not winning a lot of games there. Too many people with counters to the random priest nonsense.

Had a few good arena runs, including a 6-3 with a priest, but arena is a strange beast; I drafted a mage deck I really liked, all the powerful mage cards you could want, pyroblast, flamestrike, fireball, some arcane nonsense, mana wyrm in place, everything. Even got that mana wyrm coin mirror entity play in one game (a 3/3 and two 0/2s with taunt on turn 1? lulz), but it just went nowhere, kept getting my ass handed to me and went 1-3. I was probably just doing it wrong.

Then a hunter deck with a draft that kept me sweating for how awful it went. I drew some awful beasts early but took em anyway expecting later synergy, think Oasis Snapjaw, Bloodfen Raptor, River Crokolisk, even a Stonetusk Boar I think. Then the draft had me sweating with no synergy cards at all, until in the last 10 I drew the necessary timber wolf, scavenging hyena, starving buzzard and a pair of beastmasters. Didn't do great on removal either; one deadly shot, one multishot, one arcane shot, couple of hunter's marks. And guess what? That deck got me to 7-3, with the final match being a down-the-wire one, where I had a giant out, he had 8 health left, and only just managed to finish me off. Funny how that goes. I think I play hunter better than mage tho, hunter and priest I feel most comfortable with so far, then mage and druid. Gotta learn decks before you can play em well!

It's shit like this that really confuses me. I win most of my constructed games at Masters 3, but my best arena run was 6-3, and the majority of my runs are more like 4-3 or 5-3. And it's not like my constructed deck is hella rigged or anything--it has no legendaries, no gimmicks, it's just straightforward.

I suppose it's possible (make that almost certain) that I suck at arena because I am not as good at every class, and random class picks mean you get classes you are not great at more often than not if you don't play every class.

 

[Brother None]

There really is some randomness, but yeah, knowing each deck through and through really matters. The mindset against opponents is a little different, you could be playing a Priest without a single Power Word which never happens in constructed, but yeah.