Hearthstone

[Damned Registrations]

Most of the legendaries seem pretty good.

Just had my first arena. Managed 7 wins. I think I could have gotten 9 but I performed a collosal fuckup in one of my early games: I thought you could use the rogue power to buff a weapon +1 for a turn, but apparently it just replaces it with the shit dagger. Dunno if it only works on the hero power dagger or just got patched out. Spent 7 mana and a nice card to do nothing, definitely cost me the game.

I didn't realize just how badly they fuck you over for cards. You get nothing between levels 10 and 15. And 15 doesn't even give you a new card, just a shiny version of an old one. Probably gonna switch to playing rogue or priest or something until I have more cards, Warlock constructed is utter shit without decent cards.

Assuming I don't just go infinite on arenas, which is what I want to do anyways, more or less. 7 wins netted me 175 gold and some shitty cards. Can't really complain about that, considering 10 normal games would have gotten me... 20 gold.

 

[J1M]

The rogue power was changed in the patch a couple of weeks ago.

There is no UI for the achievement system in the game, so you may want to look up a list of things you can do for bonus gold, such as beating all of the expert AI or leveling each class to 10.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Regarding the actual game itself, it's hard to say, since I have such a shallow pool of cards. It's definitely not the most complex CCG around. But as I mentioned to felipepe after our game, when MTG first came out it was pretty fucking shitty compared to this. The creatures can have abilities that activate as they are played, as they die, at the begining or end of each round, during combat, when they take damage, while they are damage, or just passively all the time. That's a pretty decent variety of effects. The simplicity stems from the fact that there are only 3 card types; spells, creatures and weapons/secrets. There's no graveyard so spells never interact with eachother (though some creatures do something when a spell is played.) Weapons and secrets (traps) tend to not interact with most cards directly, though there are some. So the vast majority of gameplay revolves around trading damage around in combat between creatures, which can be pretty straightforward depending on the kinds of cards you're using.

All that aside however, the game is a 1v1 format with rankings and prizes, and is ultimately very fair and not that random. Just because the game is simple doesn't mean the skill cap is low; there's a lot of judgement calls to be made about what/why your opponent is doing things, the math aspect of keeping in mind what cards are left in your deck (or your enemy's deck if you're in constructed and know they can't have more than 2 of a given card), and obviously the deck building aspect. I'd argue it's even less random than something like MTG, which has much shorter games with bullshit turn 5-6 wins and shit quite often, or games thrown one way or another just by mana screw. Because it's a fair 1v1 contest (without an entrance fee of like 5 bucks a fucking game like MTG drafts), I'm enjoying it immensely.

 

[J1M]

So how is the game, is it good actualy?

I like it. The game works best if you play it while also watching a tv show or something.

 

[J1M]

Regarding the actual game itself, it's hard to say, since I have such a shallow pool of cards. It's definitely not the most complex CCG around. But as I mentioned to felipepe after our game, when MTG first came out it was pretty fucking shitty compared to this. The creatures can have abilities that activate as they are played, as they die, at the begining or end of each round, during combat, when they take damage, while they are damage, or just passively all the time. That's a pretty decent variety of effects. The simplicity stems from the fact that there are only 3 card types; spells, creatures and weapons/secrets. There's no graveyard so spells never interact with eachother (though some creatures do something when a spell is played.) Weapons and secrets (traps) tend to not interact with most cards directly, though there are some. So the vast majority of gameplay revolves around trading damage around in combat between creatures, which can be pretty straightforward depending on the kinds of cards you're using.

All that aside however, the game is a 1v1 format with rankings and prizes, and is ultimately very fair and not that random. Just because the game is simple doesn't mean the skill cap is low; there's a lot of judgement calls to be made about what/why your opponent is doing things, the math aspect of keeping in mind what cards are left in your deck (or your enemy's deck if you're in constructed and know they can't have more than 2 of a given card), and obviously the deck building aspect. I'd argue it's even less random than something like MTG, which has much shorter games with bullshit turn 5-6 wins and shit quite often, or games thrown one way or another just by mana screw. Because it's a fair 1v1 contest (without an entrance fee of like 5 bucks a fucking game like MTG drafts), I'm enjoying it immensely.

This is a good point. Much of the MTG complexity came from introducing 2-3 new mechanics each edition and keeping some of the mechanics that people liked in the next edition.

I expect that Blizzard will add new mechanics with new characters and we will see a few neutral cards added with each of those mechanics. Over time, things like trample, flanking, forced discard, draw pile manipulation, etc. are likely to show up.

 

[Zed]

I'm glad there are no terrain cards and shit. It's mortal kombat, not mortal landskaping.

It's fast-paced and fun.

They just have to remove mindcontrol, rebalance direct damage nukes and perhaps make some cards better, and this will be a solid foundation to add more cards and heroes on top of.

 

[J1M]

Yes, mind control and Ysera need some adjustments.

I'd like to see Ysera's health lowered and some of her dream cards changed. The double card draw is extremely powerful. The cards don't need to be better than anything you can add to a deck.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Mind control def needs to cost more or have limits on what it can grab.

Ysera... I dunno. It's a good card, but considering you can only have 1 in the deck, it kinda should be. And it's not going to swing the game instantly the way a Ragnaros or Deathwing will, so if you drop it and it gets polymorphed/cloned/killed/whatever right away, you're fucked. That's a pretty major risk that warrants a big payoff imo.

 

[J1M]

Mind control def needs to cost more or have limits on what it can grab.

Ysera... I dunno. It's a good card, but considering you can only have 1 in the deck, it kinda should be. And it's not going to swing the game instantly the way a Ragnaros or Deathwing will, so if you drop it and it gets polymorphed/cloned/killed/whatever right away, you're fucked. That's a pretty major risk that warrants a big payoff imo.

This is not accurate. Ysera is worth playing for a single dream card which you get at the end of your turn. If using it forces your opponent to use a hex/polymorph you still come out ahead.

You trade Ysera for a kill card, and have a very strong dream card to show for it. If she is on the board long enough to draw 2+ dream cards, the game is basically over.

 

[Damned Registrations]

But the dream card might be utterly useless to you (like Ysera Awakens about half the time Ysera isn't on the board), and your opponent can do other shit besides deal with Ysera (especially if the method used is something as simple as a silence), while dropping Ysera used your entire mana pool. Tempo is valuable, and is part of Ysera's cost. Dropping Ragnaros doesn't cost you any tempo; there's no additional mana cost the next turn and you get the benefit of the card before the opponent can even react.

 

[Zed]

Ysera is strong but at least it's a legendary. Mindcontrol is not. Not that quality of card really matters though...

I've realized I undervalue taunt in arena. I got a nice deck that should have gone at least 6-3 but I only managed 4-3 because of all the fucking popshotting past my minions.

 

[Damned Registrations]

My esteemed opinion after a couple dozen games in arena is that mages are FUCKING BULLSHIT. Polymorphfireballflamestrikeblizzardfrostbolt. Every fucking card takes out at least 1 major threat, often the entire fucking board. I think almost all my losses were to mages. There's just nothing you can do, they have an answer for fucking everything. And it's all stupidly underpriced. How the fuck is polymorph 4 mana? It's basically a superior version of fucking assassinate!

 

[J1M]

My esteemed opinion after a couple dozen games in arena is that mages are FUCKING BULLSHIT. Polymorphfireballflamestrikeblizzardfrostbolt. Every fucking card takes out at least 1 major threat, often the entire fucking board. I think almost all my losses were to mages. There's just nothing you can do, they have an answer for fucking everything. And it's all stupidly underpriced. How the fuck is polymorph 4 mana? It's basically a superior version of fucking assassinate!

Mages are bullshit, but assassinate is better. The way polymorph works makes it end up costing 6 mana for the removal. Another thing I would say is that if you play as a mage, you will find that they are quite weak in the ramping up to deal damage department.

I would suggest that you add some faerie dragons to your deck to deal with mage/warlock early game.

 

[Excidium]

Damn Hunter is badass. Also I sent friend invites to most people I could see on this thread, if you didn't get one add me: Excidium#1664

 

[Damned Registrations]

I seriously think polymorph is better than assassinate. A 1/1 with no abilities isn't something you need to ping. You can kill it off with a creature, or just leave it until some AoE cleans it up or he kills it off for you as part of a trade.

OTOH, if you assassinate something it will trigger Redemption from a paladin deck, death rattle effects, effects from a creature dying (like flesh eater ghoul)... you bypass ALL that shit with polymorph, and it's actually cheaper. Hex is even cheaper, but it at least gives the stupid thing taunt and shamans aren't rolling in other awesome removal.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Apparently mages are so OP that after going 9-2 in arena, they give you double gold rares in rewards as well.

Of course, one of the two losses was to another mage. The other was to an insanely lucky priest. Couldn't have played more perfect cards if he had the whole set in his hand and could see my screen. At one point, I had a Looter (deathrattle: draw a card 2/1) on the board with a spellbinder trap (redirects spells targetted at minions to a newly summoned 1/3). What does this fucker play? Some creature with a comes into play effect of "Gain control of target creature with power 2 or less". So he effectively had a 4 card value swing in his favour off of a fucking 5 mana creature. WTF. He was playing shit like that all game long. Everything had the perfect cost, effect, timing, everything to counter exactly what I had done and had in my hand. I silence a Lightbringer, he plays a brewmaster. I drop Onyxia, he drops power word death and holy nova. Oh, and at one point, he dropped a power word death on my spellbinder, and it killed the summoned minion that it shouldn't have been able to target. Motherfucker.

One thing I'd like to see changed really badly is the drafting for arena. The number of uncpmmon/rare/legendary cards you get seems random, which is pretty bullshit considering how overpowered most rare and legendary cards are compared to the commons. Obviously luck plays a factor no matter what (hate seeing fucking pirates and murlocs) but making every draft include XYZ number of uncommons/rares/legendaries would even the tables a bit and provide some strategy during games since you'd know your opponent only has 2 more rares left or whatever, letting you rule out the possibility of being flamestriked for the 5th time. Well except flamestrike is a common so you're fucked there.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

blizurd key pls im dying

 

[DakaSha]

blizurd key pls im dying

Stop stealing my Schtick

 

[Brotherman Bill]

Weird thing is that I'm in the South America servers... guess they bundled all the Americas together, but you can't do shit with EU bros.

Awww jeez, are you serious?

That's so tarded. And this is a card game too, so it's not like latency is a problem.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Pretty sure it's just so they can test servers better. I can't imagine they'd have it remain this way after release.

Though, you'd think they'd want to test for bugs and such in cross region games before release too, so dunno.

 

[Excidium]

If you get disconnected on arena, does it count as a loss?

 

[Metro]

Can't imagine it any other way (aside from maybe a one or two drop/disconnect cushion) -- would be easily exploitable.

 

[DakaSha]

add me: dakasha

 

[J1M]

About halfway through drafting this I knew I would get 9 wins with it. They actually offered me a 5th Truesilver champion, but I turned it down.

In case anyone is curious, the 9 wins reward was:
-2 packs
-45 dust
-170 gold

From my experiences you are guaranteed a gold rare+ or a 2nd pack of cards at nine wins now. Probably a move to prevent some people from being able to stockpile a huge amount of gold.

 

[Fart Master]

Cool but how do I get a key. I have 3 battle.net accounts opted in for it. One EU SC2/WC3/BW One US SC2 and my main account I used to play WoW on.