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[Obi Wan Bonogi]

A friend of mine told me that the closed beta is going very well.  Browsing around Twitch.tv I see it has big viewership, Kripparian grabbing 10k+ viewers while playing the game. 

Has anyone explored the rules and mechanics of this game yet?  I will probably take the time to learn the basics some time later this week out of curiosity, even though I've heard the beta is difficult to get in.

[Kirian]

I've not really been interested in joining the beta... partly because I was in the Kickstarter for one of its direct competitors (Hex).  Everything I've heard about the two suggests that HS is more casual, but therefore doesn't have the complexity of mechanics.

[HiveMindEmulator]

I'm playing the beta. I was never a serious TCG player, so I can't tell you if it's too much for noobs or not. Seems interesting enough to me. It's not dumbed down to the point of Yugi-oh or something.

The problem is only the rate at which you get new cards I think. Booster packs, which contain only 5 cards, cost 100 in game gold, and you get gold at a rate of 5 per 5 per games + 40 per daily "quest", which is something like "win 3 games" or "kill 40 minions" or "do 100 damage to heroes" or something like that. 5-card packs seems small, but I guess it's okay since there's no mana cards. Mana is just accumulated at a rate of 1 per turn for the first 10 turns, then stays at 10 forever (unless you use some card abilities to change that), so the cards are all actual cards that do stuff.

Oh, you can also spend 150 gold entering the "arena" where you build and play a deck from random cards, and win "prizes" including possibly packs, gold, and "dust" which is supposedly used for crafting, but I haven't figured that out yet. I don't know the payout scale for the arena, but it's probably better than 1 pack per 100 gold if you're reasonably aware of what you're doing. So far I've only tried once, went 4-3, gold 1 pack  and maybe 40 gold and 100 dust.

[popsofctown]

It's a business, not a charity.  You're supposed to want to shell out for more cards.

I got a beta key today, installing right now actually.  Let's say, I know a guy.  Toying with the idea of setting up a stream this weekend, so maybe you could watch a Dominion-er playing it. 

While I am fortunate to have gotten a key, I definitely don't like the way keys get distributed.  They don't really give them out at random to people who register for the HS beta on battle.net, or even give them to their most loyal customers.  And I don't know how they get it, but streamers apparently have these extra keys they can offer for lottery giveaways, like, it's almost as if just to *#@$ with people hoping to get one.

[HiveMindEmulator]

After playing it a lot (at the expensive of Dominion), I'm actually pretty happy with how Hearthstone is, including the flow of gold. They have set up an interesting dynamic between gold, dust, packs, play mode, and arena. You play play mode to complete quests and get gold. You spend the gold to play arena, which gets you packs, dust, and more gold. You use the packs and dust to improve the decks you use to play in play mode so you can still have fun while trying to earn more gold for arenas. It's just the initial ramp that's a little tough, since you have no cards to make enough fun decks for play mode and no gold to play arena. But if you either seed yourself $10-$20 or grind a few quests with decks made of mostly basic cards, you can easily get to the point where you're having fun all the time.

[popsofctown]

Played my first two hours today.  What's not to like about the starting kit?  I built a mage deck out of the starting cards, got that 2/8 dude that gains 3 attack whenever he takes damage, so I could shoot my own 1 damage fireballs at him for hilariousness.  How is that NOT fun?!

[HiveMindEmulator]

Well the problem is that you have to play a lot of games with the same cards, so you don't have that much deck variety. It's like base set Dominion is fun for a while, then you kind of want the expansions.

[popsofctown]

Well the problem is that you have to play a lot of games with the same cards, so you don't have that much deck variety. It's like base set Dominion is fun for a while, then you kind of want the expansions.

There's 9 classes though, that's 9 decks at least.  If you don't want to play some of those 9 because they are weak, that's a beta balance issue, not a structural issue.  It's like, when League of Legends first came out, it was super imbalanced, so the free ten champs for the weak might be Jax, Malphite, Viegar, Alistar, Soraka, Janna, Annie, Fiddlesticks, Anivia, Ashe.  So if you didn't own some other champs from grinding it would be kind of stale once you rather quickly figured out which of those were decent.
Nowadays, newbies have 10 random champs to choose from, and sometimes one of them is urgot so there's only really 9, but usually none of them is urgot so they are good to go (Urgot is the name of one of few Scouts in league, not lingo.).  So league is balanced enough now that it is offering ~100% more variety with the same initial configuration.  For both Hearthstone and League it is the smart way to go here, if League just upped it to 20 champs to band-aid their issue, they would have had to throttle back to 10 champs later once the game was balanced in order to provide any incentive at all for casual players to drop cash on the game, and throttling back produces outcry and players quitting during the adjustment shock. 

I spent way too much text pre-empting an argument you might not even make, but oh well.  Procrastinating homework can cause that.  I have played like 10 f2p iTCGs at this point, so I feel like I am more and more able to see the patterns in success and failure. 

[popsofctown]

After playing it a lot (at the expensive of Dominion), I'm actually pretty happy with how Hearthstone is, including the flow of gold. They have set up an interesting dynamic between gold, dust, packs, play mode, and arena. You play play mode to complete quests and get gold. You spend the gold to play arena, which gets you packs, dust, and more gold. You use the packs and dust to improve the decks you use to play in play mode so you can still have fun while trying to earn more gold for arenas. It's just the initial ramp that's a little tough, since you have no cards to make enough fun decks for play mode and no gold to play arena. But if you either seed yourself $10-$20 or grind a few quests with decks made of mostly basic cards, you can easily get to the point where you're having fun all the time.

So far I've seemed to have discovered the comical third option, that is, so far I've been going roughly infinite in arenas.  (I think I might be losing a slight amount of gold on average, but it is more than offset by Quest Rewards that just trigger during the arena)

Maybe it's beginner's luck

[popsofctown]

HME what's your Hearthstone username?

[popsofctown]

Has no one gotten in from the new beta waves?  They're sending out waves of invites every day to people who opted in on their battle.net accounts. 

[Kirian]

Has no one gotten in from the new beta waves?  They're sending out waves of invites every day to people who opted in on their battle.net accounts. 

Not me.  I'll assume it's because I cancelled my WOW account a while ago.

[Jerk of All trades]

Been in the Beta for quite a while now, it's fun, but there are a few problems:

1) The game is totally pay-to-win. There are 3/2 (cost 2) cards with no special text and cards with identical base stats but potentially VERY powerful abilities. (Knife juggler I'm looking at you).  The game claims to have match-making based on player level, but numerous times I've used my mostly-base cards deck and been slaughtered by custom decks with units that are strictly superior to my own.

2) If you decide to "earn" cards/gold by playing and questing, almost all of the quests require winning against other players. And you only get gold for wins. So before the last wipe I was totally frustrated.  I had crappy cards, and couldn't complete any quests or get any gold/wins because I lost probably 4/5 games I played.  After the wipe, things have been better, fewer decks with all rare cards.

3) The game is EXTREMELY luck based.  There are some cards that can be useless or totally game breaking depending on a random roll of the die. Instantly gain control of a random minion, or play a random minion from your opponents deck.  And, largely the game is all about getting the right counter-card at the right time. And quite a few games come down to luck, with just a little skill. There are 3 card combos that can do 20 damage before your opponent can even react.

[Titandrake]

Just got a beta key. I'm DLing the game, I'm looking for something to replace Dominion because that's starting to get a bit boring and this seems like it might be worth it.

[popsofctown]

I enjoy it

[popsofctown]

I have to admit the payment model doesn't feel as fun as LoL

[HiveMindEmulator]

After playing a lot and talking to other people, I think the problem with the progression is that it's really rough on you when you're just starting if you're not generally good at card games like this. If you're losing, it's hard to get gold at all to get more cards, and even if you have a low MMR, there are people who are really bad but paid a lot of money and can still beat you with better cards, so that can be frustrating.

There should probably be a way to gain gold without having to beat other people, or a way to stratify matchmaking based on total dust value of your deck, because losing against someone better than you with similar cards doesn't feel as bad as losing to someone bad with amazing cards.

However, once you get past the beginning stages, it's a lot of fun. I basically just play arena, where you can get a chance to play with all kinds of different cards without having to actually acquire them.

[popsofctown]

After playing a lot and talking to other people, I think the problem with the progression is that it's really rough on you when you're just starting if you're not generally good at card games like this. If you're losing, it's hard to get gold at all to get more cards, and even if you have a low MMR, there are people who are really bad but paid a lot of money and can still beat you with better cards, so that can be frustrating.

There should probably be a way to gain gold without having to beat other people, or a way to stratify matchmaking based on total dust value of your deck, because losing against someone better than you with similar cards doesn't feel as bad as losing to someone bad with amazing cards.

However, once you get past the beginning stages, it's a lot of fun. I basically just play arena, where you can get a chance to play with all kinds of different cards without having to actually acquire them.

You can grind for a week and have a top tier UTH deck if you want, though.  So like, why not just do that if you're losing to legendaries? 26 commons and 4 rares. 

Having more cards allows you more choices of which kind of deck to play, but it only provides you more power until you reach the scant amount of collecting required for UTH. 

I mostly play UTH now when I'm not goofing off because I don't have to feel like I lost a game because I'm missing a rare I need.

[Kirian]

So I got a beta key, apparently in a large wave of beta keys.  And the game is unplayable for a lot of people.

Which is amusing, because right now Blizzard's beta testing looks about as good as Goko's launch.

[popsofctown]

So I got a beta key, apparently in a large wave of beta keys.  And the game is unplayable for a lot of people.

Which is amusing, because right now Blizzard's beta testing looks about as good as Goko's launch.

There's a big difference between the standard of quality between a launch and a beta.  The product is not declared launched yet.

[Kirian]

So I got a beta key, apparently in a large wave of beta keys.  And the game is unplayable for a lot of people.

Which is amusing, because right now Blizzard's beta testing looks about as good as Goko's launch.

There's a big difference between the standard of quality between a launch and a beta.  The product is not declared launched yet.

Yes, I know.  What I said was less than flattering to Goko.

[HiveMindEmulator]

So I got a beta key, apparently in a large wave of beta keys.  And the game is unplayable for a lot of people.

Which is amusing, because right now Blizzard's beta testing looks about as good as Goko's launch.

If by "about as good", you mean so much better it's not even close, then I agree. The interface can be confusing, and there's some crashing, but it's at least not painful to play.

[Watno]

I have to admit the payment model doesn't feel as fun as LoL

It sure doesn't sound as fun as the one of Dota 2

[Kirian]

So I got a beta key, apparently in a large wave of beta keys.  And the game is unplayable for a lot of people.

Which is amusing, because right now Blizzard's beta testing looks about as good as Goko's launch.

If by "about as good", you mean so much better it's not even close, then I agree. The interface can be confusing, and there's some crashing, but it's at least not painful to play.

...

My play experience has so far involved having to go on Blizzard's forums to find out how to get the download to run (which required deleting files on my HD), then getting it installed and being unable to do anything--the "Click to Start" screen does nothing.

So, no, I'd say that so far my experience has actually been worse than Goko's launch.  But it's somewhat forgivable because it's beta.

Again, this wasn't a knock on Blizzard... I mean, I spent eight years playing WOW and it was a fine experience.

[Jdaki]

I am completely addicted to this now. I had the Click to do nothing problem to begin with but not last couple of days. It is still clearly not Blizzard polished yet but the basics and the game mechanics seem in place.

[Kirian]

So, like Jdaki, I finally got things working.  After a dozen or so games against the AI, my thoughts, coming from a very casual Magic player.

Mana system:  OK, we've stripped it down to the barest possible system.  OK, I can deal with that, it's bland but serviceable.

Blocking:  Wow do I hate this.  The attacker has all the advantages: s/he can choose the defending minion (except for Taunt), and the defender has no interrupts/reactions that can change things mid-fight.  Now I'm sure this was done to make things simpler and presumably faster, but it feels unbalanced, and makes the game less interesting.

Cards:  The cards are so very, very... bland.  I mean, a few of them do somewhat interesting things, but really... it feels bland.

Because of the combination of mana system and blocking, it seems like a deck should focus on tiny taunt cards and big attackers or big spells, then go after the opposing hero unless there's an easily killable big attacker opposing.

But granted, this is after just a dozen games.

[Kirian]

They did an excellent job with the flavor text though.  Especially for those of us with eight years if lore knowledge.

[nkirbit]

I've been watching this a lot, and it looks like a lot of fun.  I love the fact that you can pick up and put down the arena rather than being forced to sit down and do it all at once, and the game looks easy to get into.  And I love the warcraft flavor!

I play a lot of magic, and it doesn't look like it has the complexity of magic.  I do like the fact that it still maintains the natural build-up by adding more mana each turn (which is the reason I dislike a game like Netrunner.. I don't feel like it really builds to anything) without the possibility of mana-screw.  And asynchronous play is something I'm a fan of (Solforge, which I like a lot, has the same thing).

Unfortunately, no luck with the RNG of the beta key giveaway yet.

[nkirbit]

Blocking:  Wow do I hate this.  The attacker has all the advantages: s/he can choose the defending minion (except for Taunt), and the defender has no interrupts/reactions that can change things mid-fight.  Now I'm sure this was done to make things simpler and presumably faster, but it feels unbalanced, and makes the game less interesting.

Yeah, it definitely speed things up (I would guess).  In a game like Magic, when you can't attack favorably, you just do nothing.  It often leads to stalemates where players just pass each turn until someone draws a spell that breaks the gamestate open, or ignores the gamestate, or something like that.

In hearthstone, it seems like when this happens, players still throw units at the heroes.  It encourages combat because the way to make sure you don't die is to actively kill opposing creatures, rather than simply deciding to never attack like you would in Magic.  Certainly a different pace.

[popsofctown]

I play a lot of magic, and it doesn't look like it has the complexity of magic. 

I've heard this a lot.  I've yet to hear it from someone who played Magic extensively during Alpha, when the game only had one set so far, and that set was even made smaller, in terms of overall complexity, by its desire to get some core staples printed up from the getgo, like Lightning Bolt and Grizzly Bears. 

Granted, I am not one of those people, but I have heard stories from some of those people, and decks were not that complex back then.  The apples and oranges comparison between the most recent magic sets and a game with a couple hundred cards that is still trying to decide whether its lightning bolt should cost one mana or two is irritating. 

[popsofctown]

So, I probably don't have to explain to anyone that Hearthstone is very different from Dominion.  I have found one similarity pertaining to arena mode though; there's a certain value in identifying card combos that come up.  Sometimes you get offered a solid or average card, then you get offered that card again, and again, and again, to the point where you have so many copies you can bet your lifesavings on drawing it every hand. 

Here's the ones I've tested so far and had success with:

Bloodsail Raider + Flame Axe
These are both solid cards in their own right, so it might seem like "yeah pops you draft some good cards you get a good deck".  But I mean I once got so many of each of these that I abandoned the concept of a mana curve, drafted no cards that costed more than four mana, picked these two cards over anything at all offered alongside them, and just went crazy.  It was a 9-1 draft.  Probably more important to see multiple Flame Axes before you go for this, multiple Bloodsail Raiders could leave you hanging if you don't get those Axe offers.

Mana Wyrm + Mana Wyrm + Arcane Intellect
Mana Wyrm stacks with itself in a crazy way.  One draft I got six copies, and then picked lots of enablers.  Arcane Intellect is the best, because it counts as a spell, finds other cheap things that count as a spell, and gives you things to do with your mana so that you don't get empty hand syndrome from playing 6 one mana creatures

Raging Worgen + Inner Rage/Cruel Taskmaster + Warsong Commander

I had most of my experiences with this back before Battle Rage was nerfed, but I think I did this at least once while Battle Rage was weak.  Still I put it last because I can vouch for it the least.  Humorously, going to the effort of crossing the Ts and dotting the Is to put this big combo together lets you use 8 mana to do something mages do just by stacking their best common: deal 12 unexpected damage.  You don't expect it as much from a Warrior though, so that's why it's good.
Charge is kind of an iffy card since the loss of Battle Rage so I don't think you'd want to incorporate that unless you had double Auctioneer or something.

None of these combo I've found so far can actually incorporate a card that is really bad and make it good.  Those are harder and riskier to find because you don't have much experience with those cards, and the transition is more tricky and dangerous.  I think it's an interesting potential area, though.  Like, quadruple Soul of the Forest and Wisp or something?  I would only feel confident telling you that doesn't work after having a chance to try it myself.

[nkirbit]

I play a lot of magic, and it doesn't look like it has the complexity of magic. 

I've heard this a lot.  I've yet to hear it from someone who played Magic extensively during Alpha, when the game only had one set so far, and that set was even made smaller, in terms of overall complexity, by its desire to get some core staples printed up from the getgo, like Lightning Bolt and Grizzly Bears. 

Granted, I am not one of those people, but I have heard stories from some of those people, and decks were not that complex back then.  The apples and oranges comparison between the most recent magic sets and a game with a couple hundred cards that is still trying to decide whether its lightning bolt should cost one mana or two is irritating.

I guess the main difference between the two games is the asynchronous nature of Hearthstone, whereas in Magic every single action can be responded to.  I don't think there's any way at all to have this difference without losing at least some complexity.  Not that this is necessarily a bad thing for Hearthstone.. there is still plenty of room for complexity!  And note that more complexity is not necessarily a good thing.

Interestingly enough, the one thing that bugs me about Hearthstone the most is the secrets.  I don't know exactly what it is about them, but they just really don't sit well with me.

Comparing Hearthstone to Magic's first set just isn't a fair comparison, I don't think.  That was 20 years ago, and so much has changed since then.  Hearthstone absolutely blows Alpha out of the water in terms of execution, rules clarity, and really any comparison you would like to make, as it well should.  If a game came out with a set like Alpha today, the game wouldn't survive because the standards are so much higher.

You are right in that comparing Hearthstone to a game that's been around for 20 years isn't entirely fair to it, but I don't think comparing it to an expansion that came out 20 years ago is a fair comparison either.

The fact is that it looks like a very good game, and one I look forward to playing.

[popsofctown]

The comparison people tend to be making is "Theros + M14 + Ravnica block vs. fledgling beta test", which is not a fair comparison in terms of complexity.

Instants offer more complexity than not having instants does.  But that is just one kind of design space that is blocked off.  Hearthstone could explore its design space more fully than Magic does with its design space, and vice versa, depending on card design.  It's not even intuitively obvious or provable that Magic has more overall design space just because it has that thing that Hearthstone can't have, Hearthstone has lots of things Magic can't have, like Sense Demons. 

Magic is still a turn-based game, you just take turns with priority, and game of Magic has thousands of priority passes, while a game of Hearthstone will have about twenty.  When shuffling decks is a significant portion of setup, priority passes make sense as the amount of pondering required by the players is helping them enjoy more choices-per-shuffle.  In Hearthstone the computer shuffles, and telling the computer "no, i don't want to Giant Growth his guy right before it attacks" adds more slog than benefit, so it makes sense to find complexity elsewhere.

All that said, I wish Hearthstone would do a little bit more with the space they have.  For instance, Knife Juggler could say, "Battlecry: Choose a target. Whenever you summon a minion, deal 1 damage to that target".  Would still work fine.  I'd also like it if secrets had modes (like Druid cards), giving you more control over the events of your opponent's turn.  Some things along those lines.

[nkirbit]

You're absolutely right on the Sense Demon thing.. there are so many things that Hearthstone can do that magic can't because Magic is a physical game.  Magic would have a difficult time handling something as simple as the Priest's hero ability. 

Hearthstone still has plenty of time to work with the space they have.  For example, Hearthstone has a ton of potential design space that involves card transformation that magic just doesn't have access to because those things are too hard to Magic to track.  I assume that they will delve into this space given enough time.

Heck, Magic can't even do hitpoints.. as used to it as I am, I do think toughness is so much less desirable than hitpoints in a digital game.. it's just better for magic because it's less information to track.

[Kirian]

You're absolutely right on the Sense Demon thing.. there are so many things that Hearthstone can do that magic can't because Magic is a physical game.  Magic would have a difficult time handling something as simple as the Priest's hero ability. 

Hearthstone still has plenty of time to work with the space they have.  For example, Hearthstone has a ton of potential design space that involves card transformation that magic just doesn't have access to because those things are too hard to Magic to track.  I assume that they will delve into this space given enough time.

Heck, Magic can't even do hitpoints.. as used to it as I am, I do think toughness is so much less desirable than hitpoints in a digital game.. it's just better for magic because it's less information to track.

The thing is, a lot of that design space (card transformation and the like) is covered by Hex.  Since those are going to be the two big digital competitors, it feels like Blizzard is positioning HS to be the "simpler" game, which, I mean, isn't necessarily a bad strategy when it comes to things like market share.  When it comes to attracting strategic players, perhaps not so much.

And as far as fair comparisons go, I think it's perfectly fair to compare current HS and Hex to current MTG.  The only real difference in terms of ability to create game complexity is the number of different cards available.

[Jdaki]

Well here are my first impressions after maybe 50 or so games (I dunno maybe more, it's pretty moreish)
I have no previous ccg experience at all, so I'm pretty rubbish, I don't really understand the strategies or deck building, I can obviously work the numbers of given encounters to see what is preferential for me in a rough kind of form. There isn't really any scope for teaching this stuff in the game at this stage. Anyone got any good links?
I enjoy the game mostly, though often it does feel completely luck driven, which for me is a bad thing, though I'm willing to accept that this may not be true and it's that I picked rubbish cards.
Card draw seems really important, but of the few cards I've seen so far, I don't see how one can easily force good draw to play the combos that are interesting to work out.
The polish is generally there and with a couple years of WoW and having played Warcraft I enjoy the lore and little touches.
The money aspect seems pretty well pitched at this stage, at least I'm not sure how else they might do it. Perhaps it would be cool if they were really ambitious and made a gold - card auction house. I guess the crafting thing maybe cancels that out.
Overall, I can see this being massively successful. Blizzard are good at making games as crack. But I'm not totally convinced of true longevity right now.

[Kirian]

So apparently the draft format just isn't for me.

After 4 times in the Arena, I've won a total of 2 Arena matches.  Drafted 2 nice legendaries... never drew either in seven matches.  Any thoughts?

I will say, the cards that aren't basic cards are certainly more interesting than the base cards.

[Grujah]

I play a lot of HS these days. (Well, am on a break till Wednesday, but whatever). I am playing Constructed mainly at this point but I had a long streak of arena only.

Overall opinion is that it is quite simplified and fast, it cannot compare at all with MTG or the likes, but, damn, it is TOO MUCH FUN.


@Kirian - It's not really a "draft" format, but whatevers I am not the best arena player ever (when I was focusing on it, my average was 6-3, but am much worse lately), but I can give some pointers. I used these when starting: http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/forum/topic/9742094161 and https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AvFHvRgCHF4RdG16dlFNdUI1UXhhWk0yS1lITW82cnc#gid=1

So, Arena is quite easy. Legendaries help (esp when a guy dropped me 3 Tirions) but generally do not matter that much (I mean, of course they are powerful but it does't matter a lot if you get them or not, generally when you analyse limited formats, commons/uncommons are the things that matter the most, as you see the most of them).

There are few things you need to know when actually picking cards. Narrow cards always suck (Sacrifical Pact, Murlock Tribals). Cards that give no board advantage generally suck (Charge, Holy Light, Eye for an Eye, Mind Blast), 1HP guys always suck (Magma Raider, Dust Devil). What you actually want:
0. Class Specific - each class has a few very strong cards that you always want. Wont list them all, most are just the top cards in respective classes in the links that I gave.

a. Bombs - big, meaty, hard hitting creatures that need to be dealt with or they win the game very fast. They have a huge board presence, are a huge threat and usually trade 2 for 1 or better. Most Legendaries, Venture Co., Stormwind, Boulderfist, Sunwalker.

b. Removal -Any card that kills a creature.  Includes Weapons, and weapons are almost always best picks, in general. Class specific.

c. Effective creatures - They need to have relevant abilities and good stats, or just supreme stats. Disruption (Spellbreaker, Ooze that kills weapons), Sudden stat boost (Shattered Sun Cleric, Dark Iron Dwarf), hard to remove taunt guys (Senjin Shieldmaster, Sunwalker, Defender of Argus in a sense), "two for one" guys (Argent Commander, Stampeding Kodo,  Azure Drake), guys with great stats (Yeti), Value Creatures (Cult Master, Brewmasters).

d. Guys with good abilities but not necesarily good stats (Owl), vanillas with OK stats (3/2 for 2 Dino).

e. Least of 3 evils - when you get 3 sucky cards, one that sucks the least


Second thing to pay attention to is the curve. You want to curve out at 6 and 7, and you want your curve to top (have most cards at) 4. Sometimes 3 or 5, if you are playing a slower/faster deck.

---

As for actual play, few things are to be considered:

a. Maintain board advantage - most important thing. Whenever you can remove their creatures, if you make the trades they are profitable for you, if they make them, it is profitable for them. Any "weak" creature left can be Boosted with a Cleric or Dwarf and kill your much better guy. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule, but generally if you can, remove their creatures.

b. Maintain card advantage - trade 2 for 1. Save your removal for prime targets when possible, try to get at least 2-3 guys with your board wipe. Use your cards efficiently, if you have similar board position and he has more cards, he is generally in much better shape.

c.  Know your opponent - VERY, very important. You need to know strengths of your opponent and play around them. For example, on 5 mana, Priest can cast Holy Nova. Never put two guys with 2 hp on turn 4, you are just giving him cards/board advantage. Similary, do not play out your big threat against Priest to get Mind Controlled - play them if you can remove them or after he used his Mind Control.
Can't list them all, in a rush, but they are mostly "X damage to everything" spells and some few others.

--


As for constructed, I started enjoying it A LOT.

I have a few decks, 3 are mostly complete:
Hunter's Unleash the Hounds - Its a Combo-Control thing, you control the board for 6-9 turns, than, you drop a lot of 1 mana beasts, cast Unleash the hounds and win in 1 swing.
Suicide Warlock - basically, lot of aggressively costed creatures with drawbacks that you basically try to ignore.
Hunter's Zoo - basically, play beasts and attack each turn.

And two that I needs a bit more cards for, but they are still nice:
A Mage and a Priest Control.

Also, I oppened Tirion Fordring recently, so am going to be making a Paladin.


Totally hooked on Hearthstone 

[Dsell]

If I was curious about this, what would I need to do to try to get involved?

[Kirian]

If I was curious about this, what would I need to do to try to get involved?

Well, first you need a Battle.net account.  You can do that at us.battle.net... or if you already have one, you can just go there.  Somewhere in the account management you'll find a beta opt-in form.  Then... wait until you get a beta invite.

[Dsell]

If I was curious about this, what would I need to do to try to get involved?

Well, first you need a Battle.net account.  You can do that at us.battle.net... or if you already have one, you can just go there.  Somewhere in the account management you'll find a beta opt-in form.  Then... wait until you get a beta invite.

Terrific! Done!

Edit: how long do you expect it might take to get the invite?

[Kirian]

If I was curious about this, what would I need to do to try to get involved?

Well, first you need a Battle.net account.  You can do that at us.battle.net... or if you already have one, you can just go there.  Somewhere in the account management you'll find a beta opt-in form.  Then... wait until you get a beta invite.

Terrific! Done!

Edit: how long do you expect it might take to get the invite?

Not sure.  It was a couple of weeks for me, but Blizzard has made a ton of money off me over the years, and I suspect customer loyalty might bump the queue, but I have no way of knowing that for sure.

[WanderingWinder]

Got mine yesterday (after a couple months). Also, open beta starts next month.

Seems pretty enjoyable - I'm on under "Dominionater" (sadly WanderingWinder is too long...)

Doing reasonably well - so far constructed is.... like quite easy, arena I'm doing middlingly.

I also have very little idea as to what other cards are out there, so far at least.

[Dsell]

Man, I wish I had done this earlier!

[Kirian]

Got mine yesterday (after a couple months). Also, open beta starts next month.

Seems pretty enjoyable - I'm on under "Dominionater" (sadly WanderingWinder is too long...)

Doing reasonably well - so far constructed is.... like quite easy, arena I'm doing middlingly.

I also have very little idea as to what other cards are out there, so far at least.

All the available cards are listed in the Crafting list.

[HiveMindEmulator]

So apparently the draft format just isn't for me.

After 4 times in the Arena, I've won a total of 2 Arena matches.  Drafted 2 nice legendaries... never drew either in seven matches.  Any thoughts?

I will say, the cards that aren't basic cards are certainly more interesting than the base cards.

I think one of the big problems that you can have with arena when you start out is falling in love with "shiny" cards and cute tactics, especially if you're seeing these cards for the first time. You can actually win a lot of arena without doing anything cute by just picking high quality minions, with a focus on card advantage, and then playing safely to maintain board control. I have a few quibbles with the list Grujah posted, but you should do pretty solidly mostly just following that.

[Dsell]

I don't plan on paying for anything at this point. I know that you can get cards through grinding, can that grinding be done against bots? People you know? I'm trying to get a few other friends to sign up for the beta as well.

[WanderingWinder]

Got mine yesterday (after a couple months). Also, open beta starts next month.

Seems pretty enjoyable - I'm on under "Dominionater" (sadly WanderingWinder is too long...)

Doing reasonably well - so far constructed is.... like quite easy, arena I'm doing middlingly.

I also have very little idea as to what other cards are out there, so far at least.

All the available cards are listed in the Crafting list.

I'm well aware that I *could* know them, but I am not going to spend the time to just go memorize. I'll figure it out organically, eventually.

[blueblimp]

Man, I wish I had done this earlier!

Same here. I opted in at least a couple weeks ago (after online Dominion started feeling a bit same-ish) and haven't heard anything yet.

I tend to enjoy games most when I figure out as much as I can without spoilers, so I'm avoiding reading anything substantial about the game. (Don't know if I'll even like it.) Gonna be hard to continue with that policy when actually playing though given that the people I'm playing against will know a lot more about the game already.

[Jdaki]

So apparently the draft format just isn't for me.

After 4 times in the Arena, I've won a total of 2 Arena matches.  Drafted 2 nice legendaries... never drew either in seven matches.  Any thoughts?

I will say, the cards that aren't basic cards are certainly more interesting than the base cards.

I'm glad I'm not the only one doing terrible, though I'm doing terrible in all the modes. I read over Grujah's links and post and drafted a much better deck, but still only won two games. Not knowing what exactly is in my opponent's hand is obviously a major detriment. Too often though, it does feel like "how the heck did he just happen to have that card what he needed, surely it's a fluke".
The slow trickle of gold doesn't really seem to reward you to just play in long sessions though as the quests don't update bar one a day, this does not encourage me to keep playing beyond a few games a day until I've grinded enough to get the 150 to have another try at arena...

[Grujah]

@HME Yeah, cute stuff rarely work. Brewmasters and that Warrior's guy that does +2/+0 and 1 damage sometimes do work. Still, only few in a deck. I have few quibbles with my list, too, so, yeah .

@WW Thing is you really need to know what to play around, so knowing them all helps a lot (also, you don't have to alt-tab everytime opponent plays a secret ).


Also, if anybody wants a help, like a skype session while drafting or whatever, I'd be up for it. PMs. I do not promise success, however.

[popsofctown]

Seems pretty enjoyable - I'm on under "Dominionater" (sadly WanderingWinder is too long...)

Just so you know, this isn't enough information for anyone to buddy you.  You have to use the ID, which has a # sign and some digits to add people.  And sadly and frustratingly they didn't make usernames unique, so even if one of us bumps into you randomly we won't know for sure it is you.
EDIT: Mine's KirbyHero#1343

[popsofctown]

I would say just learn secrets organically.  If you learn them organically you'll remember them with a proportion that matches their popularity, which is a good thing.  Having Repentance in your mental checklist is clutter because no one uses Repentance

[Grujah]

Ok, add me guys, I am
grujah(et)gmail(dot)com
or
2516

[WanderingWinder]

Seems pretty enjoyable - I'm on under "Dominionater" (sadly WanderingWinder is too long...)

Just so you know, this isn't enough information for anyone to buddy you.  You have to use the ID, which has a # sign and some digits to add people.  And sadly and frustratingly they didn't make usernames unique, so even if one of us bumps into you randomly we won't know for sure it is you.
EDIT: Mine's KirbyHero#1343

I understand that. I'm not really looking for you guys to buddy me.

Learning what to play around: yeah, I'd look it all up if I really cared about winning. But right now, it's just not worth the bore, because I don't care *that* much about winning. So a vague idea is fine.

[Grujah]

Have to brag somewhere, 9-x arena record has been eluding me for some time now, but got on a roll yesterday/today, played/drafted to be best of my ability, and finaly got 9-2, two times in a row! It was Rogue and Paladin, both heavy on twodrops. Hopefully streak doesn't end here.

[popsofctown]

Have to brag somewhere, 9-x arena record has been eluding me for some time now, but got on a roll yesterday/today, played/drafted to be best of my ability, and finaly got 9-2, two times in a row! It was Rogue and Paladin, both heavy on twodrops. Hopefully streak doesn't end here.

Congrats.

Don't play much arena Rogue, but when I do I get Empty Hand Syndrome, so I'm surprised 2-drop.dec worked out for you.

[Grujah]

I love Rogue in Arena. 3/4 weapon helped a ton at keeping my guys alive and not overcommiting. Biggest problem was that 2 Defias Leaders and 3 Mad Bombers do NOT work well together  . I had reasonable late-game but both decks were just mainly cost aggresive decks.
Pally especially didn't have problem with empty hands, I had 2 Hammer of Wraths, 1 Azure Drake and 2! Argent Commanders (instane) which are auto 2-for-1s and keep your hand full.

That + I always give extra attention to playing around sweeps. I hate nothing more than to be blown out by them, so I don't let it happen often.

[Dsell]

This thing needs to go in open beta already! I have at least 2 friends, maybe 4, who are gonna play it with me. It's probably good that it hasn't started yet since finals are next week, but I still can't wait!

[nkirbit]

Is there a date yet for open beta?  I remember reading that it was going to be a december a while ago, but just googled it and didn't find an exact date at all.

[Grujah]

Is there a date yet for open beta?  I remember reading that it was going to be a december a while ago, but just googled it and didn't find an exact date at all.

Pretty sure they didn't specify a date.

And it's Blizzard, when they say December they often actually mean June, two year from now. 

[popsofctown]

I love Rogue in Arena. 3/4 weapon helped a ton at keeping my guys alive and not overcommiting. Biggest problem was that 2 Defias Leaders and 3 Mad Bombers do NOT work well together  . I had reasonable late-game but both decks were just mainly cost aggresive decks.
Pally especially didn't have problem with empty hands, I had 2 Hammer of Wraths, 1 Azure Drake and 2! Argent Commanders (instane) which are auto 2-for-1s and keep your hand full.

That + I always give extra attention to playing around sweeps. I hate nothing more than to be blown out by them, so I don't let it happen often.

Yeah, Pally usually doesn't get empty hand syndrome, they have lots of tools. 

[blueblimp]

Got my beta key on Tuesday so I've played some games. I didn't know much going in. My first observation is that it's very, very similar to MTG. (To be fair, the only Magic I've played is Duels of the Planewalkers 2013 on the iPad.) I think it's fair to call it a streamlined Magic clone. The overall vibe of the UI also feels similar to DotP, with the swishy, evocative animations.

So, nothing too fresh that I see, and this strategy of refinement has worked for Blizzard before (since WoW is arguably a streamlined EverQuest clone). Being free-to-play is nice, because one reason I didn't get into Magic is not wanting to pay so much, although I'd still prefer something like subscription fee or one-time payment over free-to-play, because FTP incentivizes the devs to make progression unpleasantly slow (so that you feel tempted to pay money). Having access to full deck-building capabilities at no cost is very nice, since DotP has only limited deck-building capability despite costing money. Hearthstone is definitely positioning itself to disrupt computer versions of MTG.

The game itself I have mixed feelings about. The play flow is very well done, because you never need to wait for your opponent during your turn, and individual turns are usually quick too. That avoids the sometimes ponderous feel of DotP (and I assume other computerized Magic too). The individual turns often have interesting tactics in them. The deck-building interface is a little clunky, but usable.

On the other hand, there's a lot of randomness. For example, I've had a game where I just happen to draw Fireball when I needed it to kill my opponent that turn, and otherwise I likely would have lost. It sucks for close games to be decided by fluke luck in the end. The card design doesn't help here either, given that there are cards with explicit randomness built in. For example, there's one card that takes control of a random enemy minion. That's enormously swingy: taking their best minion can be game-winning, and taking their worst minion can be almost useless.

There are some CCG-isms that I wish they had rethought somehow but I can't blame them for. For example, having a maximum of 2 cards per type in a deck feels inelegant in a post-Dominion world, but I don't have any better idea about how to do it. Also, limiting certain cards to certain classes just feels like a limitation on deck creativity to me.

Overall, it's fun enough that I'll continue to play for now, although I expect it'll get dull given how slowly new cards are acquired to build new decks with.

[popsofctown]

HME and I seem to disagree on the design of cards like Mind Control Tech.  I think it's kind of unfun, HME says the game already has luck from draws so who cares.   
(I assume you are talking about that and not the legendary one, Sylvanas Windrunner.  She tends to not actually be very random because it's a deathrattle).

[Grujah]

Meh, I don't agree on so many points.
I don't see how it is "very, very similar" to Magic.  I'm talking paper/MTGO Magic here, gameplay and metagame is so, so much more complex that I don't really see the compassion. I didn't really play DotP, only watched some of it on youtube, and while it is basically "a tool to learn the rules of magic" its still more complex than HS.

HS is very simple, and it turns out that that isn't such a bad thing after all.

It being more streamlined, I agree there.

I also agree that it has quite more "random" spells than usual. Thing is you play around it to maximize that "random" will actually be in your benefit. For example, the minion that you mentioned, you try not to play it when it can either "win or die" but when he has 4 equally strong minions. Yes, sometimes you win or lose on the "fluke luck", and that can be not-fun sometimes. Your luck averages out in the end and it's how well you played around your luck that gives you most wins.
As for drawing your only out (Fireball), well, that's the nature of TCGs/CCGs. Again, you play around it. You know what your chances of drawing a fireball are. So does your opponent. You always play it so that you have as many outs as possible that you can draw. You always play so that you give your opponent as few outs as possible. Sometimes, your only out is a Fireball. Yes, sometimes you topdeck it, but most of the times you don't. Yes, it sucks for your opponent who probably played good and left you with only one out to lose, but well, that's what you get when you sign up for a card game. The former argument of "it averages out" still stands.

Other thing is that topdecking an only out is so fun. I mean, some of the most iconic moments of Pro Magic are exactly those - winning against all odds.

As for deckbuilding - I think you are way overestimation Dominon's influence on CCG world (which is non-existent). And honestly, you cannot compare dominion's "up to 10 of any card" with CCGs. In Dom, you actually need to work hard to both acquire the cards and make the deck consistently draw it. Acquiring cards is 0 work in CCGs (gamewise) and if you can put as many in as you want, drawing them consistently is a breeze. It would be like you had a premade deck in Dom (which would suck). Moreover, limits are need to actually some archetypes/decks (combo for example) viable but not overpowering.

Also, limiting cards to classes actually makes for more creativity, imo. Firstly, they need classes to catch that WC feel. And the only way to differentiate between them is to make some cards available only to certain classes. It's "creativity under restrictions", and it's been in CCGs from the very start. Hell, that's what dominion is all about! Isn't dominion more fun exactly because you don't have everything available in every game? That's the feel that they want to get too.

[Grujah]

HME and I seem to disagree on the design of cards like Mind Control Tech.  I think it's kind of unfun, HME says the game already has luck from draws so who cares.   
(I assume you are talking about that and not the legendary one, Sylvanas Windrunner.  She tends to not actually be very random because it's a deathrattle).

I think it is quite bad as it is very situational and even when the situation in which it is good arrives, it's only average in performance.

As for design itself, I agree on HME. You play around the randomness anyway.

Edit: BTW, i have never ever see it swing the game.

[blueblimp]

Fair points.

Regarding how similar HS is to MTG, I don't mean that in a bad way. There's value in a good streamlined clone, especially one that plays in a different medium.

These are some of the similarities that I saw between the games:

• Before even considering mechanics, the theme is similar: a generic and flexible fantasy setting.
• The primary goal of the game is the same: reduce the opposing player to 0 life. One of the secondary goals of Magic, reducing the other player's deck to zero cards, is in HS mirrored by taking life penalties once your deck is exhausted.
• You play minions (creatures) into a single play area that has mostly no positional element (okay, this is not 100% true in HS--not sure about Magic).
• You can cast spells (sorceries) too.
• When you play any type of card, you may be interrupted. Although secrets and instants are different in many ways, secrets are clearly an asynchronous-play-friendly version of instants.
• You pay for cards using mana, which uses a non-saveable pool that regenerates each turn and whose maximum typically grows by 1 per turn. HS cuts out a ton of complexity by giving you an extra mana crystal each turn (rather than requiring playing lands) and making all mana colourless, but the feel of it is extremely similar.
• In each game, you draw one card at the start of each turn. Granted, this card does more in HS because you don't have any lands in your deck.
• Minions (creatures) have attack strength and health as the two basic combat statistics and moreover the minion-on-minion combat is kinda similar between the two games. Sure, the combat system overall is very different because of how targeting works, but some change there is forced by wanting the gameplay to be asynchronous-friendly. The combat between individual minions still has a similar feel.
• ..etc?

There are a lot of differences too, but I found when learning Hearthstone that I instantly recognized "oh, this works basically how it works in Magic" whereas when I learned Magic, most of the mechanics were unfamiliar.

[Grujah]

Yeah, I guess you have a point, esp with DotP, which is much more creature combat oriented. And I do get that this "works better" as an online game than MTG as it is way more streamlined for online play (no priority passing etc).

HS is a simpler version of that and borrows quite a few mechanics, I agree. Thing is that my judgement is clouded as I play a lot of competitive Magic which is quite a different beast than competitive HS (which I follow to an extent).


And positioning of cards has no effect in Magic, as you can, in real life, rearrange them in any way (well, except Chaos Orb and Falling Star, but that is not legal in any format and from the VERY begging of Magic when Wizards had no idea what this game will actually look like).


Sorry for aweful grammar, no autocorrect on this computer.

[blueblimp]

I see, I'm coming at it as a noob to both games, so maybe it's only at that level that they feel similar. What is it that makes the competitive levels feel so different?

[HiveMindEmulator]

HME and I seem to disagree on the design of cards like Mind Control Tech.  I think it's kind of unfun, HME says the game already has luck from draws so who cares.   
(I assume you are talking about that and not the legendary one, Sylvanas Windrunner.  She tends to not actually be very random because it's a deathrattle).

I think it is quite bad as it is very situational and even when the situation in which it is good arrives, it's only average in performance.

As for design itself, I agree on HME. You play around the randomness anyway.

Edit: BTW, i have never ever see it swing the game.

When the good situation hits, it's definitely above average. It's 3-for-1. The problem is that it doesn't occur all that often. But then again, it still trades evenly with most other 3-drops, so it's not terrible. Not worth using in constructed unless you know your opponent is massing minions (in which case you just avoid trading, in order to set it up), but not the worst rare you could get in arena.

[popsofctown]

MC tech is bad in arena because the goal in arena is not to go 4-3, it's to go 9-3.  So optimal strategy is skewed towards punishing your opponent's weaker deck with consistent tactics rather using random events where you have a slight edge. 


High variance cards are powerful when you are behind, either in board position or player skill.  I'm always quick to YOLO bomber if I'm losing badly on board position.  Unfortunately there's a large group of weak arena players who (correctly, for that person) value Mind Control Tech much higher than a highly skilled drafter would because the variance brings them closer to a 50/50 winrate against more skilled players.  Combined with some lucky drafting offers that is an excellent strategy for going 9-2 occasionally. 

I do think that it's important that lower skilled and newbie players have an enjoyable experience and a nonzero winrate, but I don't think this is a healthy dynamic.  It flips the other way too, really, it kind of sucks that good players get skewed against Demolisher in favor of Injured Blademaster even if there's conceal or some other synergy going on. 

I think it'd be nice to rework cards like MC tech, and then to compensate, split Arena into multiple leagues.  Players who 9 consistently enough in the newbie league get promoted to an upper league with higher rewards that motivate them to stay there and face tougher competition.  Players who don't 9 consistently, or who get a burst of 9's then fall back off, play in a lower league, one that has a poorer risk/reward ratio on entry fee versus prizes.  If things are tweaked right, weaker players will get more wins in that league than they do in the current system, so the amount of prizes they earn could decrease very slightly or even increase.  Both leagues would have more exciting nailbiter matches and fewer blowouts, and less incentive to abnormally dodge or abnormally favor variance.

[blueblimp]

Hm, I assumed that Arena uses match-making based on skill, already. Is that not true?

[popsofctown]

Hm, I assumed that Arena uses match-making based on skill, already. Is that not true?

I'm glad you asked, it's often a point of confusion.  You are matched with an opponent with the same number of wins and losses as you.  If activity is really low, in a pinch, slightly different wins and losses.  Your past performance in arena and play mode has no effect on your matchmaking.  This is why it's possible for the streamers who get 7+ wins so consistently they profit.  If they were paired based on past performance, everyone but the best player on the server would average 3-3.  The best player would probably average like, 4-3.  There would be little to no incentive to get better.

It's cool to have a mode where actually improving gets you tangible rewards, but the current system makes a lot of players, especially ones unfamiliar with MTG, lose with demoralizing consistency.  I have a friend who took three weeks of questing and even spending real money before he got his first 9.  I got my first 9 the second time I played arena.  He gets smashed so much it's not fun for him, I occasionally am up against people around his skill level that are playing turn 1 coin, wisp, argent squire, secretkeeper as priest where it's just a boring chore to play out the game.  There needs to be a happy medium.

The next patch is not as radical as my proposition but it should bring a welcome improvement: the max number of wins increases to 12.  This means good players like HME will spend a greater proportion of their time paired against players with 8+ wins, the ones that present a good challenge.  There's a trickle down effect that players who go infinite will be spending nontrivial amounts of time in the 8-12 win range, and thus will not be starting anew in the 1-3 win range and steamrolling novice players and degrading their fun.  It will also shift the meta back to a more healthy attitude regarding variance.  MC tech will become a better card for skilled players, the risk that it whiffs in the 1-7 win range is still present, but there's a doubly large range of games with peers where it's variance is worth the strategic role it plays in your deck.  (Ideally you get it to synergize with freezing or shieldbearer or something.)

[popsofctown]

They announced more of the balance patch contents.  Well deserved nerfs to SSC, Flame Imp, and Argent Commander.  Unleash the Hounds removed from the game.

I'm surprised they made SSC a 3/2, instead of a 2/3.  2/3 would be more powerful, and SSC is an interesting card and a cute one so I thought they'd keep it as strong as possible.  That said, I think it's for the best.  In the same breath as I say SSC is interesting, I think cards that require another minion to already to be in play tend to restrict deck design.  And play choices too, do you play Raging Worgen or SSC first? Well that's not a hard one.

Flame Imp was really strong, and Warlock hero power is really strong.  Warlock shouldn't really get to have such nice things.

Argent Commander got a much lighter sentence than SSC, and that makes sense since Shaman would have a monopoly on six drops otherwise, and I think no one noticing and complaining about how insane Fire Elemental is is some sort of inexplicable design goal that Blizz has.  4/2 is probably a sufficient nerf. 

The forums are freaking out now about mage not getting any nerfs.  I'm not sure to what extent I should agree.  I'm leaning towards agreeing.  Blood imp'ed SSC is moving into frostbolt range and Mana Wyrm is a retarded one drop that needs no help from a 3 drop.  And Mage was already pretty good.

[nkirbit]

I just got my beta key, and man, is it fun!

[Grujah]

People are freaking out cause mage indeed is quite strong, and in this weekend's Managrind it took first 4 places in both EU and NA tourneys.

Argent Commander was soooo good. Like, every deck had to play it. 4/2 is a nerf, not a big one, though. He's still 2-for-one, except you can sac 2/1 into him now. Still very strong, priest still cant shadowword him.

Similar goes for IMP, he was quite good, he is still good but 3 damage does hurt more, so it's a good thing. People will still have to make loads of adjusment with Warlock Aggro in mind, and he'll just have to play a bit more safetly.

SSC nerf makes me sad, that is my fav card in the game.

Unleash the hound wasn't THAT good, but I guess people complained enough and comming out from no creatures on board to 30 damage in 1 turn really pissed people off and turned new people away from the game so it had to be done. I expected a nerf, like, they get +1/+0 if they have charge, charge if they don't. New one is interesting but needs testing. Synergizes awesomly with lots of hunter cards (Hyena, Buzzard).

Mindcontrol nerf underseved imo. It only dominates Arena, it just needs to show up less in Arena.

[HiveMindEmulator]

People are freaking out cause mage indeed is quite strong, and in this weekend's Managrind it took first 4 places in both EU and NA tourneys.

I think the big thing is that this week, someone figured out that if you add giants to the freeze mage, you no longer get beat by healing, so between the freeze deck and a regular Mage aggro deck, you can cover all your bases. The Managrind format allows you to sideboard a whole deck, which really gives this style of having 2 decks with one character powerful. But nonetheless, Mage is still really strong. And now everyone is running this freeze + giants deck on ladder which is really annoying to play against, particularly because it drags the game out with turns in which you can't do anything.

Argent Commander was soooo good. Like, every deck had to play it. 4/2 is a nerf, not a big one, though. He's still 2-for-one, except you can sac 2/1 into him now. Still very strong, priest still cant shadowword him.

Still probably a must-have in almost any deck. A little harder to play though, since you have to make sure the little guys are all dead or you lose the body. This and the Cleric nerf make Harvest Golem even stronger that it already was.

Similar goes for IMP, he was quite good, he is still good but 3 damage does hurt more, so it's a good thing. People will still have to make loads of adjusmtent with Warlock Aggro in mind, and he'll just have to play a bit more safetly.

I was hoping to see some sort of change like this. The way penalties are done for the Warlock demons is really weird. Flame Imp, Succubus, Fel Guard, and Pit Lord are all undercosted by 1 mana and have a penalty to offset this, but for some reason, the bigger ones have a bigger penalty. 1 mana is a bigger deal for a 1-drop than a 5-drop, so having a 2 health penalty vs a 5 health penalty doesn't really make sense. If anything, Flame Imp needs a bigger penalty than Pit Lord.

SSC nerf makes me sad, that is my fav card in the game.

This didn't seem as broken strong as Argent Commander, but it was still in practically every deck, so I guess they figured they should give some other stuff a chance. The nerf is about as innocuous as you could get, since in a vacuum it still trades evenly with most other 3s (only exceptions are Scarlet Crusader and now Harvest Golem and Razorfen Hunter), but it does help AoE deal with these aggro decks better.

Unleash the hound wasn't THAT good, but I guess people complained enough and comming out from no creatures on board to 30 damage in 1 turn really pissed people off and turned new people away from the game so it had to be done. I expected a nerf, like, they get +1/+0 if they have charge, charge if they don't. New one is interesting but needs testing. Synergizes awesomly with lots of hunter cards (Hyena, Buzzard).

Mindcontrol nerf underseved imo. It only dominates Arena, it just needs to show up less in Arena.

UTH and Mind Control were that good in the way they affected deck building. I think more than aggro decks, these decks made it really hard to play slow control decks. Because if you were too slow, there would at some point be a chance to get killed by UTH, or when you finally got out your Rag/Ysera, they would get MC'd. They just generally made you not want to have big minions in your deck, because the risk/reward wasn't in the right place. But with these nerfs, I think it's easier to build a deck based on swatting away aggression for the first few turns and then playing big guys bigger than 6-drops. Mind Control only seemed powerful in Arena because it's harder to build a strong deck without big guys in Arena.

The problem, of course, is that with the OTK Hunter out of the picture, there's one less thing that beats freeze mage, which means more people are going to be playing it...

[popsofctown]

I thought Ice block wrecked all OTKs

[HiveMindEmulator]

I thought Ice block wrecked all OTKs

Not with Flare.

[popsofctown]

They still have flare.. but I guess the class might not have any viability at all, now, so it doesn't matter.

I agree Mind Control needed to be nerfed so that playing big guys can make at least a little sense, but I hate that the way they nerfed it means the nerf has the least impact on control mirrors and the most impact at priest v aggro, which priest was already having a hard time with.  Mind control's impact against Ancient of War through Deathwing didn't change nearly as much as its impact on Argent Commander, which was a healthy steal that gave Priest a fighting chance against aggro (sort of)

[HiveMindEmulator]

I guess I have to try to build some sort of Hunter deck with King Krush and Tundra Rhino...

[popsofctown]

Tundra Rhino tends to underwhelm me.  I think just a midrange goodstuff deck could work.  Buzzard, Companion, Ironfur, Dragonhawk, Houndmaster, Savannah Highmane.  King Krush works fine as a jank pyroblast finisher. 

I stubbornly still think Dragonhawk is an underrated card.  It's bad against the removal classes, for sure, but you can cantrip it on a Buzzard instead of trying to do anything with it, and you can also use it just before a board clear to make sure you force the board clear.  Like, say it's about to be a druid's turn 4 and you have nothing but a Leokk in play.  You can drop Young Dragonhawk+hero power to force the druid to Swipe rather than Bite, helping you deplete the Druid's AoEs.  If he bites anyway, Houndmaster, Timber Wolf, Dire wolf, and that epic beast lunge all deal a harsh punishment for ignoring the threat.  That's something most one drops can't do, if someone drops baby boar or leper gnome it's like, whatever, 2 damage, I'll let you die from splash when I AoE later.

[popsofctown]

Also.  Tinkmaster Overspark hitting Novice Engineer needs to become a thing.  Why is it not a thing?

And speaking of legendaries, some assumed balance changes from the next patch is that Alexstraza will stop stripping armor and Nat Pagle will start working correctly, which might be enough to make Nat Pagle a thing.  I doubt the Alexstraza change will make much difference. 

[popsofctown]

The patch notes don't say anything about nat pagle getting fixed

[HiveMindEmulator]

The patch is very disappointing in terms of bug fixes. I don't think they fixed anything other than Alextrasza. Minions still shift around. Panda'd cards still hover over the board. And they even added a new bug where things that give +1 health (Cleric, Blood Imp, Champ) heal 1 life in addition to the 1 they add to max.

[Jorbles]

I played a little bit. I liked it, but since I mostly just like drafting I unfortunately just want to play expensive mode/Arena. That's what I think the game should be all the time. The other collecting/building bits are fun, but only drafting seems to really scratch my card gaming itch.

[nkirbit]

Has anyone been having bug issues since the patch?  I just downloaded it, played one game, and it was completely buggy.  Multiple cards in my hand were unselectable, my opponents creatures were stacking in odd ways, images of cards were left on the screen, etc. 

http://imgur.com/r0QVR0S,nSt3gvk#1 is one screenshot I got from the game.  Really would've liked to be able to cast Tirion that game.. making a 1/1 as your only action turn 8 with Tirion in hand seemed less than ideal

[popsofctown]

Some new bugs are getting reported on the forums.  It would seem they created more bugs than they fixed.

[Grujah]

UTH and Mind Control were that good in the way they affected deck building. I think more than aggro decks, these decks made it really hard to play slow control decks. Because if you were too slow, there would at some point be a chance to get killed by UTH, or when you finally got out your Rag/Ysera, they would get MC'd. They just generally made you not want to have big minions in your deck, because the risk/reward wasn't in the right place. But with these nerfs, I think it's easier to build a deck based on swatting away aggression for the first few turns and then playing big guys bigger than 6-drops. Mind Control only seemed powerful in Arena because it's harder to build a strong deck without big guys in Arena.

The problem, of course, is that with the OTK Hunter out of the picture, there's one less thing that beats freeze mage, which means more people are going to be playing it...

You are right here, MC forced played Yeti and Drarves as your beaters even in control, as you'd have to be 100% sure that he used both power world deaths AND MCs before putting down a Rag or similar. Which was very annoying. Still how does this changes things exactly? They can still steal Ysera/Rag, but Priests are less likely to run 2xMCs, cuz they suck against anything other than control?

[Kirian]

So my third loss in Arena...

Opponent Priest plays Lightspawn.  Then two (!) Shields.  That minion is crazy; all he had to do was keep it healed and I never stood a chance!

[Grujah]

I was playing Arena, going 0-0, when this happened:


Lolz.

[nkirbit]

This might be a silly question, but how do I get new quests?  I click on the quest (!) icon on the main page, and there's nothing there.  It just says, "You have no quests, come back tomorrow."  Got that both yesterday and today.

[Jorbles]

This might be a silly question, but how do I get new quests?  I click on the quest (!) icon on the main page, and there's nothing there.  It just says, "You have no quests, come back tomorrow."  Got that both yesterday and today.

I thought they just refreshed over time, 1 assigned a day. Were you playing yesterday after midnight? That might be why you didn't seem to get a new one after you finished your quests.

[Kirian]

Yes, sometimes you topdeck it, but most of the times you don't.

OK, I've now seen this term in several places.  Top-deck obviously can't mean the same thing in CCGs that it does in Dominion, right?  I can't think of CCG cards that put cards from your hand onto your deck.

What does top-deck mean in a CCG context?

[Grujah]

Topdecking means drawing just what you need from the top of the library. It is often used as a derogatory term.
Topdeck mode is when you have no hand and play just the cards that you draw that turn.

[HiveMindEmulator]

This might be a silly question, but how do I get new quests?  I click on the quest (!) icon on the main page, and there's nothing there.  It just says, "You have no quests, come back tomorrow."  Got that both yesterday and today.

They show up every 24 hours, but not necessarily at midnight. It's around 5pm PST for me. I'm not sure if it's the same for everyone or has something to do with when you first installed or launched the game or something.

[Grujah]

~3AM-3:30AM CET for me.

[popsofctown]

Yes, sometimes you topdeck it, but most of the times you don't.

OK, I've now seen this term in several places.  Top-deck obviously can't mean the same thing in CCGs that it does in Dominion, right?  I can't think of CCG cards that put cards from your hand onto your deck.

What does top-deck mean in a CCG context?

Grujah clarified.  Topdecking is a huge source of illusory superiority issues with players (didn't we have a fancy term for that around here? I can't remember it), because lots of control decks are designed to get stuck in topdeck mode and then have great topdecks, while others are supposed to rarely get caught in that state and have very few helpful topdecks.

There actually are a LOT of CCG cards that put cards from your hand onto your deck.  Donald X actually referred to a CCG card in his notes when he was writing ideas for cards like courtyard, he called it ebbing, after Time Ebb.  http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=time+ebb

That one doesn't go from your hand, but Brainstorm and JTMS do, and both of those have been incredibly popular in competitive play.
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=292751
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=373316

[Kirian]

That one doesn't go from your hand, but Brainstorm and JTMS do, and both of those have been incredibly popular in competitive play.
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=292751
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=373316

OK, I'd heard of that last guy, who is apparently highly powerful... but does he not act like a regular Magic card?  What's up with the +2/+1/-12 thing?

(Obviously, I'm not even vaguely a competitive player.)

[nkirbit]

That one doesn't go from your hand, but Brainstorm and JTMS do, and both of those have been incredibly popular in competitive play.
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=292751
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=373316

OK, I'd heard of that last guy, who is apparently highly powerful... but does he not act like a regular Magic card?  What's up with the +2/+1/-12 thing?

(Obviously, I'm not even vaguely a competitive player.)

It's a planes walker. They're a recent card type (well, recent being in the past 6? Years or so).  Basically, they come into play with the nber of counters in the bottom right, and you get to use one of their abilities each turn. The +2, -12 etc are the costs in counters of the ability. They can also be attacked or damaged by spells such as lightning bolt (1 damage = remove 1 counter). If they get to 0 counters, they die.

Very, very powerful cards. All but a very few have been constructed playable. Once they are in play, they're a "free spell" each turn they live, which is a tremendous advantage over time.

[Kirian]

That one doesn't go from your hand, but Brainstorm and JTMS do, and both of those have been incredibly popular in competitive play.
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=292751
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=373316

OK, I'd heard of that last guy, who is apparently highly powerful... but does he not act like a regular Magic card?  What's up with the +2/+1/-12 thing?

(Obviously, I'm not even vaguely a competitive player.)

It's a planes walker. They're a recent card type (well, recent being in the past 6? Years or so).  Basically, they come into play with the nber of counters in the bottom right, and you get to use one of their abilities each turn. The +2, -12 etc are the costs in counters of the ability. They can also be attacked or damaged by spells such as lightning bolt (1 damage = remove 1 counter). If they get to 0 counters, they die.

Very, very powerful cards. All but a very few have been constructed playable. Once they are in play, they're a "free spell" each turn they live, which is a tremendous advantage over time.

So this guys gains charges by being an anti-Pearl Diver, or can be a slightly worse Courtyard each turn, and can completely destroy an opponent's deck after six turns by just removing it from the game???

Holy shit, no wonder people think this is too powerful.

[Grujah]

Oh, JTMS. Even when it is explained to you and you understand why he is so powerful, it fades in comparison of seeing him in action. He impacts the board so much, does everything a blue deck wants and does it good. He deals with creatures, he digs for solutions, he gives less solutions to opponent by screwing his draws, and +12 ability is the least relevant one.

Do note that draw 3 discard 2 on Brainstorm and JTMS is way more powerful that it initially seems (i.e. Ghost Ship yourself/Courtyard).  Basically what you do is you return 2 that you do not need (land or unrelated spell), and than you play a card that searches and shuffles your deck (usually a land that searches for other lands, like Misty Rainforest) and brings new cards to the top. It allows you to dig very deep in your deck for a solution, esp in combination with similar cards.

Edit: Solutions = outs, answers, whatever.

[nkirbit]

Squadron hawk for three, brainstorm, squadron hawk for two, etc.  nightmares

Jace is just an unreal card. Apparently his +2 was supposed to be target player mills 1, but they didn't want to put milling on him so at the last minute changed it to fate sealing and didn't really test it. Ridiculous. He'd be very good with any 3 of those abilities

[popsofctown]

HME made top 100 in ranked play in HS this week

[nkirbit]

Woohoo HME!  What deck(s) are you playing?

[popsofctown]

He queues up in ranked with mage aggro. I don't think he switches to anything else. 

Mage aggro is pretty much the deck to beat right now.

[HiveMindEmulator]

Woohoo HME!  What deck(s) are you playing?

Thanks! I mostly play mage aggro. But also sometimes freeze mage or control priest. I find the priest the most fun. Also sometimes paladin or druid to counter freeze mage when I get frustrated by it. But invariably when I play one of those decks I don't face a freeze mage.

I do think aggro mage is the best deck out there right now. It matches up evenly with other aggro decks, but it's the only one that can also deal with freeze mage.

I still have some hope that there's a good way to make a paladin or druid that beats freeze mage and can also handle aggro. Pops plays a druid deck that seems to do pretty well.

[popsofctown]

I got paired up against HME in ranked, so I'm at least in spitting distance of him despite the handicap of playing druid (I don't own any pyroblasts, and I don't want to craft them.  If I had even one pyroblast I probably would have caved by now.)

[popsofctown]

Tirion is so necessary to play Paladin seriously it's ridiculous.  I played two different control paladins, both of them facelessed their own Tirion.  When you think how Tirion is nearly the only friendly faceless target in decks like that and it's still a good choice for them to run faceless to me that's a sign it's a nutty legendary.

[Grujah]

THing is, I've oppened 2 pyroblasts so I can play mage aggro easily, I have also oppened 1 Tyrion and all that I need for a real competetive Paladin is 2nd Swird that gives +!/+1 to your guys.

[popsofctown]

THing is, I've oppened 2 pyroblasts so I can play mage aggro easily, I have also oppened 1 Tyrion and all that I need for a real competetive Paladin is 2nd Swird that gives +!/+1 to your guys.

At my MMR I haven't seen Sword of Justice played in forever.  It's always control paladin.  I think even if you go aggro or midrange you can probably pass on Sword of Justice.  It's not good against Frost Nova+Doomsayer, amongst other weaknesses.

[Titandrake]

I got my key around 3 or 4 weeks ago, you can add me as Titandrake#1456.

I'm trying to concentrate more on getting good at arena. I'm consistently hitting 4-3, in that I seem to always lose at 4-3. Seriously. One run, I go 4-0, get 2 DCs, then lose. Next run, I do the absolute worst draft ever, and still hit 4-3. Third run, I go 4-2, then DC. I've gotten 9 wins and 7wins+ a few times, so I know I can do it, just need to clean up my drafting.

I haven't been playing as much recently because I got the arena bug, so I've mostly been messing around in play mode with my budget Warlock aggro deck. I'm missing Demonfires, but I have most of the good neutrals and 2 Flame Imps, so it's still decent.

[Lekkit]

Got an invite yesterday. I have mainly been doing Arena. I think it's pretty fun.

[popsofctown]

If anyone wants tips for arena they can bug me in game.  I have 500 gold right now and can't get rid of it because I keep profiting when I play arena.  So I like to think I'm decent at it.

[Dsell]

Everyone who opted in to the beta before a certain date was supposed to get their key about a week ago. I signed up for an update on Nov 26th and still haven't gotten it. There was no record of me having opted in on my account, which I know is wrong. I opened a ticket about it yesterday morning but haven't heard anything yet. It's frustrating because I'm really eager to play!!

[Lekkit]

It's probably the largest time sink I've experienced in a while.

[popsofctown]

Everyone who opted in to the beta before a certain date was supposed to get their key about a week ago. I signed up for an update on Nov 26th and still haven't gotten it. There was no record of me having opted in on my account, which I know is wrong. I opened a ticket about it yesterday morning but haven't heard anything yet. It's frustrating because I'm really eager to play!!

The blues have admitted that the closed beta opt in process has been a learning experience on there part, and lots of things were done wrong.

[Twistedarcher]

This game looks really really fun after watching nkirbit play it.

[nkirbit]

So what classes do you all prefer to play for arena?  For me, it's Shaman, not even close.  All the removal's insane, and Fire Elemental is just bonkers.

[popsofctown]

So what classes do you all prefer to play for arena?  For me, it's Shaman, not even close.  All the removal's insane, and Fire Elemental is just bonkers.

If you're trying to maximize earnings, Paladin, Mage, and Warrior are the top three classes, and there's a big gap before any of the classes inferior to the big 3. 
Fire elemental is nuts, but relying on Rare board clear is really crippling for shaman.  You quite often get no lightning storms, and that can easily leave you with an unwinnable game before Victory Elemental can come down.  When you get the lightning storms, shaman is pretty powerful, I got a twelve win run one out of the three times I tried shaman after they added 12 win runs and the Mind Control nerf. 

Paladin, Mage, and Warrior are probably close enough that whichever of the three you have a knack for would be a good place to start practicing.  I think Paladin has the best 12 win potential because Truesilver is more stackable than Fiery War Axe.  And I would say Mage is probably the hardest one to get stuck with a really unwinnable draft: as Warrior sometimes you get offered very few weapons and you can't generate card/board advantage, so you get empty hand syndrome.  Mage always has card/board advantage available, even in a 30 Wisp deck. 

I would seriousface recommend against allocating lots of arena practice to a class that's not in the Big 3.  Doing better with the other classes is probably a symptom of higher variance making 7 win runs easier with a beginner skillset, or just sample size or an overall general approach that works for that class.  Before the mind control nerf there would be swarms of Priests in the 1-3 win range that only knew how to win if they were able to draft mind controls, and they would never make it to the 7-9 win range, which is mostly populated with big 3 classes.  I suspect they stunted their own growth that way.

The funnest way to play arena might be in the other six, but building up a card collection can be so critical for enjoying Play Mode.  Save the bottom six for after you've mastered the top 3 so well that you have 1000 gold and most cards unlocked.


I have most of the cards, but there are still some I want.. kinda.  I have most of what I need.  When I'm in the mood to get some cards, I play the big 3, preferring Pally the most out of the big 3, that's my favorite.  When I have so much gold I want to lose some I like to play Warlock.

[Lekkit]

So what classes do you all prefer to play for arena?  For me, it's Shaman, not even close.  All the removal's insane, and Fire Elemental is just bonkers.

Out of all the classes I enjoy Rogue the most. I'm mostly picking Paladin, Druid or Mage, since those are the ones I tend to do best with, and I want the gold to be able to play more without paying. I have yet to make it to 12 wins with any class, and I've yet to pick Hunter. My record is 9 wins with a stupid Warlock deck with no cards costing more than 4. When I left home I paused at 3-0 with a similar deck.

I haven't had much sucess with Warrior yet. I think I've picked him one time, but drafted really poorly and ended up with a lucky 4-3.

I'm happy if I make it to 6 wins. But 7+ is what I'm really gunning for. And one day I hope I'll get to the 12 wins.

[popsofctown]

Warrior is probably the most difficult of the big three to play right, overall.  The Warrior hero power does not impact board control or card count, unlike every power besides Hunter.  That makes a responsible curve much more important.  It's much more important to make sure you have turn 2 plays and turn 3 plays because hero power can't fill in if you have a bad hand.  Sometimes mage snatches up some fun Fireballs and Water Elementals and ends up with a wonky curve, but they can fire blast a Raptor on turn 2 and turn 3 and get good value that way.  Warrior can't do that.

Warrior also will be weaker in topdeck mode, because hero powers get activated every turn then, and the Warrior won't be impacting board that way, other classes will.  So to stay out of topdeck mode, you have to make sure to get high cost cards too (or sources of draw)

It's still a good class because Flame Axe is the best card in Hearthstone, and common.  Arcanite Reaper is a very solid card that always two for one's.  gotta go
;

[Lekkit]

I always try to get good 2/3 drops. It's my second highest priority. Weapons are higher. Most of the times I lose, it's because I forget to not play into AoE, running into an early weapon or not having enough late game stuff. I'm trying to get better at AoE dodging and late game drafting since it's the things that I think are currently holding me back the most.

[popsofctown]

It can be equally important to occasionally not play around AoE, just because you can't afford to.  Sometimes you have to play to your outs, and say, "If he has another Flamestrike, the game is over whether or not I dump these two Amanis and Defender of Argus, so I might as well do it."  You can also figure out patterns that give away that your opponent has a board clear in hand, or that he doesn't.  Poking things down to 4 health is a dead giveaway, but there's more subtle signs that someone wants you to dump your hand so they can wipe, like not attacking with Jungle Panther.

Weapons are a great way to spend mana to enhance your board position without overextending into board clear. 


Getting good 2-3 drops probably shouldn't be that high on your priority list.  It's important to have 2-3 drops, it's not really important that they be good.  The "standard deviation", if that's the right term, is much higher for the higher mana costs than the lower ones.  Six mana has literally only one good neutral basic, Ogre.  The others range from really bad to painful.  If you pass up a chance to take an Ogre, you're going to be stuck with Windfury Harpy instead and that's a huge quality drop. (Actually it's such a quality drop that you should probably skip the Harpy).  If you pass up a chance to take Amani Beserker, you might have to take River Crocolisk instead, and that's really not that bad.  Sometimes you just snatch up your 2-3 drops in the least 8 picks because you were getting your powerful class cards earlier, and that's fine. 

[Lekkit]

The reason behind my drafting lies in me not wanting to get bad draws early, because that's when I think the advantage/disadvantage is at it's largest. If your opponent coins out a 3/2 and you've got nothing for your own turn 2, you'll be fighting an uphill battle. Big time. Later on, you can 2 for 1 and still have a chance. What you can't do is 2 for 1 or 3 for 1 multiple times.

Don't get me wrong, I'll most likely pick a Boulderfist Ogre or a Stormwind Champion over most 2-3's, but getting a reasonable amount of 2-3's is my main goal after weapons. Actually after weapons or other easy 1 for 2+'s.

Basically I prefer a consistantly strong early game over a long term game plan. I'm guessing it might not be the best way to do arena, since I have yet to get past 9 wins, but I usually land around 6 or 7.

[popsofctown]

Oh yes, it's good to get lots of 2-3 drops.  Just don't worry too much which ones they are.

[HiveMindEmulator]

I find 3-drops to be pretty inconsequential if they're not Harvest Golem or Scarlet Crusader or Cleric (or one of the Warrior-only ones). For the most part, a Raptor trades 1-for-1 with most 3s, so if you get late in your draft and have no 3s, it's pretty easy to fill it in, since a lot of 2s are just as good as 3s in a most situations.

[ftl]

Heh, with all this hearthstone buzz, and since I don't really even play dominion anymore, I finally signed up for the beta. Hope I get an invite soon.

I'm not planning to be any good at it, I don't really want to get deep into the strategy like I did with dominion, I hope their matchmaking is good enough to match me up against other people who don't know what they're doing and don't have any fancy cards or whatever.

[popsofctown]

Three drops are slightly more important in a deck that's running low on two drops, though.  Coin lets you cheat and skip 2 drops if you're player 2, and you only have to "burn" one mana.

[HiveMindEmulator]

^Right. But the point is that 2-drops can play the role of 3 drops much more so than any other value n can play n+1, so you really don't need to press for 3s, particularly early in the draft.

[popsofctown]

I still play this game a bunch, what about you other guys?

I am really trying pretty hard to get a full collection.  It takes some grinding but it's achievable even as a f2p.  I hate playing a game where I can't use any option I want, whenever I want, so I'm working on changing that

[Kirian]

I found myself with suddenly less time, and HS just kinda fell to the wayside, especially since I have another CCG currently in Alpha that I kickstarted.

[popsofctown]

Aww, if you're going to be building something yourself.. not even LCG?

[Kirian]

Aww, if you're going to be building something yourself.. not even LCG?

No, no, I just backed it on KS.  Not my creation.

[Lekkit]

I'm playing. Mostly arena, but every now and then I try my luck with a Rogue constructed deck. I have tried some Priest controlly stuff and a Freeze Mage, but I think Rogue is the most fun to play.

[Twistedarcher]

Got my key last night!

[Dsell]

Got my key last night!

Same here! Been extremely busy though so I don't know when I'll have a chance to play. Also, they told me that I may have "missed the original email." No. There was no email. They also told me that I was never signed up for the beta. Wrong. Clearly, since they've flagged my account for access now. Anyway, I would have loved to play a bunch when I actually had time.

[nkirbit]

I'm still doing a couple of arenas a day.. not playing too much constructed.

For some reason, I'm very adverse to crafting legendaries because I know how bad it will feel if I later opened that legendary.. even though I have about 5k dust to work with at this point, so I'm not far off from getting whatever deck I want.

[ftl]

I'm in now too! Won my first ranked game.Still haven't played anything except mage.

Also got that bs about "missing the email" which never happened.

I'll probably buy one pack so I get in on the special golden legendary thing.

[nkirbit]

I'm in now too! Won my first ranked game.Still haven't played anything except mage.

Also got that bs about "missing the email" which never happened.

I'll probably buy one pack so I get in on the special golden legendary thing.

Don't buy a pack!  Buy an arena run!

You'll probably run out of gold at some point early doing arena because it takes a little bit of time to figure out exactly what's going on... buy an arena at this point!  Gets you the legend as well.

[Jorbles]

Yeah, this is definitely a better way to get the gold legendary card for spending money. (you get a pack per arena run anyways)

[heron]

Apparently I have access now. I would never have known if it weren't for this thread...

[popsofctown]

Apparently I have access now. I would never have known if it weren't for this thread...

I'm sorry for our responsibility in your potential loss of many hours

[HiveMindEmulator]

I'm still doing a couple of arenas a day.. not playing too much constructed.

For some reason, I'm very adverse to crafting legendaries because I know how bad it will feel if I later opened that legendary.. even though I have about 5k dust to work with at this point, so I'm not far off from getting whatever deck I want.

I was the same way. Banked up over 5k dust before finally deciding to start getting legendaries. But then the dust starts going fast... Much faster than you could pop legendaries from packs

[Twistedarcher]

Played a lot of arena last night. I'm not very good at this yet.

[popsofctown]

I used to be really good at arena, but now I suck.  The arena playerbase is evolving over time, probably.

[nkirbit]

I used to be really good at arena, but now I suck.  The arena playerbase is evolving over time, probably.

Same to me.  I used to routinely get 10+ wins.. now I'm happy with 7.

[nkirbit]

I did go 12-0 for the first time the other day, though!  Paladin's quite good when you get truesilvers and consecrates!

[popsofctown]

Truesilver stacking is the reason i think Paladin is the best class for 12 win runs.  When I was on game 11 of my twelve win Warlock run, I fought this Pally that broke all sorts of deckbuilding fundamentals, but he had 3 Truesilvers amongst the cards I saw, so that's how he got there.

[Ozle]

Is this still in closed beta?

[nkirbit]

Yeah

[Ozle]

Darn, that would be why I couldn't find a download link

[Twistedarcher]

Darn, that would be why I couldn't find a download link

If you sign up now, hopefully it won't take too long. It took me maybe two weeks from signing up for the beta to getting my key.

[Ozle]

Yeah, I cant even find the sign up link!

[nkirbit]

http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/

Create an account in the upper right corner.

Once you create it, log in and somewhere should be an option for "Beta opt-in" or somethinig like that.  Select Hearthstone and you're good to go!

[Ozle]

http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/

Create an account in the upper right corner.

Once you create it, log in and somewhere should be an option for "Beta opt-in" or somethinig like that.  Select Hearthstone and you're good to go!

Yeah, im logged into battle net, that part wasn't the problem.

Cannot find the opt in part..

Not in the general links, FAQ or even on the forums.

[Gveoniz]

Try checking you account page?
https://battle.net/account/management/

[Ozle]

Try checking you account page?
https://battle.net/account/management/

Yep, and went to Beta Profile Settings

[nkirbit]

Try checking you account page?
https://battle.net/account/management/

Yep, and went to Beta Profile Settings

Hm.  I just logged on, and you're right, it's not there.  Perhaps its because they're done giving away beta keys in preparation for the open beta to start.

I would imagine that it's not going to be too much longer.  They recently patched a few cards and said they were very close to being happy with the balance of the game, and to not expect many more changes before open.. so hopefully it should be open soon.

[Ozle]

Ok cheers, as long as its not me being stupid!

[Jimmmmm]

I just got access!

[blueblimp]

I'm playing a lot of Arena. It's super fun for the tactics in the games. Because you get forced into card variety through the drafting mechanism, there's lots of crazy stuff that can happen in the games. The Arena pseudo-draft itself is strategically uninteresting, because it's mostly a simple process of choosing the best arena card of the three you're presented, until you get to the last few cards, and even then you often don't have a real choice. It's annoying how much your deck quality is determined by random chance, but the tactics are fun enough to make up for that, and it's satisfying when you can get good value out of a weak card.

I don't understand how to have fun with constructed at all.

[popsofctown]

I'm playing a lot of Arena. It's super fun for the tactics in the games. Because you get forced into card variety through the drafting mechanism, there's lots of crazy stuff that can happen in the games. The Arena pseudo-draft itself is strategically uninteresting, because it's mostly a simple process of choosing the best arena card of the three you're presented, until you get to the last few cards, and even then you often don't have a real choice. It's annoying how much your deck quality is determined by random chance, but the tactics are fun enough to make up for that, and it's satisfying when you can get good value out of a weak card.

I don't understand how to have fun with constructed at all.

Step one, get all the cards.  I'm half serious, half candid.

[Twistedarcher]

Btw, if anyone wants to add me and play games, I'm happy to play! (Although keep in mind I'm new and have very few cards, so please don't play super-awesome decks I have no chance of beating.) My account is Bkirbit.

[Titandrake]

New Unleash the Hounds feels so stupid. I'm only rank 14 in constructed, but I literally tossed a deck together in ~3 minutes and it hasn't lost a game yet. Buzzard+UtH means you don't run out of steam, Timber Wolf+UtH gives lots of damage out of nowhere, and Kill Commands give reach. It doesn't even use any rares and it feels way too strong.

Also, for some reason, I can only play Paladin in arena. I feel like Mage, Shaman, and Warrior should be really good, but I'm nowhere near as consistent with them, often getting <= 4 wins. With Paladin, I usually get at least 5 wins. My guess is that Paladin has a lot of good 4 costs, which I'm starting to see as the key cost point when building an arena deck. You want 2 and 3 costs for early game, but 4 costs change the board so much more.

[popsofctown]

New Unleash the Hounds feels so stupid. I'm only rank 14 in constructed, but I literally tossed a deck together in ~3 minutes and it hasn't lost a game yet. Buzzard+UtH means you don't run out of steam, Timber Wolf+UtH gives lots of damage out of nowhere, and Kill Commands give reach. It doesn't even use any rares and it feels way too strong.

Also, for some reason, I can only play Paladin in arena. I feel like Mage, Shaman, and Warrior should be really good, but I'm nowhere near as consistent with them, often getting <= 4 wins. With Paladin, I usually get at least 5 wins. My guess is that Paladin has a lot of good 4 costs, which I'm starting to see as the key cost point when building an arena deck. You want 2 and 3 costs for early game, but 4 costs change the board so much more.

It looks rather stupid.  It compares to arcane explosion, except Timber Wolf becomes Spellpower +1 and Buzzard becomes Spellpower + 2.

[popsofctown]

Btw, if anyone wants to add me and play games, I'm happy to play! (Although keep in mind I'm new and have very few cards, so please don't play super-awesome decks I have no chance of beating.) My account is Bkirbit.

Your account name is useless without the # suffix

[nkirbit]

Open Beta has begun!

http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/

[Jimmmmm]

Open Beta has begun!

http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/

Cool, so I was part of an exclusive closed beta for 2 days.

[heron]

Open Beta has begun!

http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/

Cool, so I was part of an exclusive closed beta for 2 days.

I was hoping for a little more time too so that when a rush the rush of new players appears I would be able to beat them all in arena.
Oh well, I have a few days advantage at least.

[popsofctown]

Open Beta has begun!

http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/

Cool, so I was part of an exclusive closed beta for 2 days.

I was hoping for a little more time too so that when a rush the rush of new players appears I would be able to beat them all in arena.
Oh well, I have a few days advantage at least.

If you whisper me in game you can get 120 days advantage.  Shhhh..
Edit: somewhat in the form of advice, not account sharing or something

[sitnaltax]

I've been playing Hearthstone for a couple of months, and Arena Mode is amazing: I feel the same way playing it as I did on Isotropic. The games are quick, tense, and dynamic; there's a very long but relatively gentle learning curve; there's a lot of luck but managing it is an important skill you need to develop. I can't promise that everyone will feel the same way, but now that the beta's open I would highly recommend anyone try it out.

I'm less enthusiastic about Constructed, but that's mostly because I don't have the energy to think about deckbuilding. Yeah, the people who have sunk hundreds of dollars and hours into the game will have the best decks, but you're not going to be matched against those players, any more than Iso would have automatched a Dominion novice with Stef. The player base is big enough, and the matchmaking good enough, that you're going to end up winning about half your games no unless you're a raw novice or near the very top.

[Ozle]

You can get cards without money though right?
It will just take a lot longer?

[Jorbles]

You can get cards without money though right?
It will just take a lot longer?

Correct, you can buy cards with in game gold you earn.

It's 100 gold a pack, or 150 gold for an arena run which guarantees a pack (and possibly other rewards which usually include gold). You can earn gold in game by questing or winning matches online. Quests are 40-60 gold usually each, but there's apparently some for 100 that spawn occasionally too. Winning matches nets you 10 gold for every 3 wins, which is pretty piddling, but it adds up over time.

You can also craft cards you're having trouble finding with cards you have though it's not a great rate of return. (something like 4 cards of equal rarity for 1 usually) Though there's a couple workarounds. I just discovered you can get cards 1-for-1 if they've just been changed. So it's worth noting which cards have been tweaked when you log in so you can get rid of ones you dislike for ones you like of equal rarity.

[Ozle]

Ta, downloading now.

[Jimmmmm]

I don't know if this happens often or not, but I just got a minion to 20/20.

[Jimmmmm]

I also just discovered the hand limit of 10, and burned about 8 cards doing it.

[popsofctown]

I don't know if this happens often or not, but I just got a minion to 20/20.

It happens a lot at lower MMRs with bad players fighting eachother.  At higher levels of play it's not very common because those decks are inconsistent and the combo can be interrupted by removal

[Kirian]

I don't know if this happens often or not, but I just got a minion to 20/20.

It happens a lot at lower MMRs with bad players fighting eachother.  At higher levels of play it's not very common because those decks are inconsistent and the combo can be interrupted by removal

What is MMR?

[Jorbles]

I don't know if this happens often or not, but I just got a minion to 20/20.

It happens a lot at lower MMRs with bad players fighting eachother.  At higher levels of play it's not very common because those decks are inconsistent and the combo can be interrupted by removal

What is MMR?

Blizzard's secret formula for determining how good you are. High MMRs get matched together, low MMRs get matched together, but no one knows what their MMR is. (well presumably Blizzard staff members know their own, but the general public doesn't know). In dominion lingo, it's basically your level, but in hearthstone your level is secret.

[Twistedarcher]

Btw, if anyone wants to add me and play games, I'm happy to play! (Although keep in mind I'm new and have very few cards, so please don't play super-awesome decks I have no chance of beating.) My account is Bkirbit.

Your account name is useless without the # suffix

Bkirbit #1439!

[Ozle]

Grrrr, open beta is US only.

[Jdaki]

I don't know if this happens often or not, but I just got a minion to 20/20.

Then you get silenced/poly/hex/assassinate lol

[Destierro]

Grrrr, open beta is US only.

Then make a US account? This is the internet, be resourceful!

[Jorbles]

Not sure if this helps, but I think it's North America only because I'm in Canada and didn't have to do anything special to get the account.

[Ozle]

Not sure if this helps, but I think it's North America only because I'm in Canada and didn't have to do anything special to get the account.

Your Canadian, thats special enough my young friend

[Jorbles]

Tuvalu seems like it would be the specialest... most special.

[Jdaki]

EU is open today anyhow

[Ozle]

EU is open today anyhow

Yay!  You are now named Good News Bear!

(next time though, let me know before im just about to go to bed will ya!)

[heron]

It seems you can play arena for free every other day even if you're bad at it like me
I played a fun game today, my basic/common mage against a warlock with several epics and legendaries.

I didn't have the best opening hand, and I couldn't play a minion turn 3. Meanwhile, he was alarm-o-bot-ing into a molten giant.
I polymorphed, but then I still had no minions. Next turn he alarm-o-bots Ysera. I play my yeti or something. Somehow I stay relative alive and on turn 7 or 8 I flamestrike all of his minions and am in a winning position...but then he plays something that fills his board with 1/1s. I survive that and deal with a 7/6 minion, and I once again have control of the board.

Unfortunately, he still has another molten giant and a ragnaros, so I go down after a few more turns, but it was really exciting to try to hold on to the game when the cards were stacked against me. It was actually quite close until he summoned ragnaros. He was about to run out of cards so I think I would have one ewon won.

[Titandrake]

Personally, I rely on getting 60 gold quests for infinite arena. Hopefully, that's going to change as I get better, constructed isn't as fun.

As someone who has a reasonable amount of cards, you can make pretty good aggro decks with only commons and the occasional rare. The idea is that you kill them before they drop Ragnaros, or Sylvanas, or Tirion (who is completely bullshit btw, arghhh that card is annoying.)

Unfortunately, making a budget control deck is pretty hard without legendaries. Maybe you still do okay against aggro, but you lose to other control decks because they have better cards than you every step of the way.

[heron]

Do you get more 60 gold quests after playing longer or something? I've gotten all 40 gold quests for my first week.

[Titandrake]

I'm pretty sure it's all luck, although I got a 100 gold quest for the first time recently.

[popsofctown]

Do you get more 60 gold quests after playing longer or something? I've gotten all 40 gold quests for my first week.

Before this patch there was a way to decline quests for other quests.  Temporarily it is bugged so they removed it.  When it comes back using this lets you mainly do 60s

[Ozle]

I got to level 10 in a couple of hours with the mage last night. (Think I only lost one game on the way, people dont really have a clue do they?)

Can't do arena yet until I have played all the different classes, which is a bit annoying as most of them seem to be Hunters! (Grrr, WOW Hunters!)

[nkirbit]

I got to level 10 in a couple of hours with the mage last night. (Think I only lost one game on the way, people dont really have a clue do they?)

Can't do arena yet until I have played all the different classes, which is a bit annoying as most of them seem to be Hunters! (Grrr, WOW Hunters!)

You can also unlock classes through practice mode, and choose the classes you play that way.

[Jorbles]

I got to level 10 in a couple of hours with the mage last night. (Think I only lost one game on the way, people dont really have a clue do they?)

Can't do arena yet until I have played all the different classes, which is a bit annoying as most of them seem to be Hunters! (Grrr, WOW Hunters!)

You can also unlock classes through practice mode, and choose the classes you play that way.

There's some bonus gold you can get for beating all of the practice decks too (100 for the basic ones and 100 more for the expert ones) if that interests you.

[Twistedarcher]

I just played the weirdest arena game ever, where my opponent lost from the -7 health fatigue on turn 7.

He had 3 Northshire Clerics in play. At first, I was sure I was going to lose as he was drawing 3 cards a turn at least. However, I was playing Shaman, and with my health regeneration totem, I was forcing him to draw 9 cards a turn at the end of each of my turns by just throwing my minions into his Clerics and making sure nothing died. He wasn't able to either kill his clerics or my totem, and was helpless as all his cards got drawn away.

I would have never expected something like that to happen in an arena game, and was shocked that it happened so quickly.

[Kirian]

I just played the weirdest arena game ever, where my opponent lost from the -7 health fatigue on turn 7.

He had 3 Northshire Clerics in play. At first, I was sure I was going to lose as he was drawing 3 cards a turn at least. However, I was playing Shaman, and with my health regeneration totem, I was forcing him to draw 9 cards a turn at the end of each of my turns by just throwing my minions into his Clerics and making sure nothing died. He wasn't able to either kill his clerics or my totem, and was helpless as all his cards got drawn away.

I would have never expected something like that to happen in an arena game, and was shocked that it happened so quickly.

Heh, that's brilliant.  Even worse, most of the cards would have gotten trashed due to hand limits.

[Jorbles]

I guess his holy nova (if he had one) was forced out somehow because that would trash this strat pretty fast. Not that you get those good team wipe cards in arena drafts all the time. I'm playing a mage arena draft right now where I saw no flamestrikes, blizzards or cones of cold during the draft. I'm not expecting to go super far, but I'm 1-for-1 currently.

Still a really cool turn of events and definitely worth talking about.

[Twistedarcher]

Yeah, he was trashing cards very very quickly (he had 8 when I started doing this), and I guess never had a holy nova in hand. His deck honestly wasn't that great, but it was still cool to see it happen.

[popsofctown]

I got to level 10 in a couple of hours with the mage last night. (Think I only lost one game on the way, people dont really have a clue do they?)

Can't do arena yet until I have played all the different classes, which is a bit annoying as most of them seem to be Hunters! (Grrr, WOW Hunters!)

You can also unlock classes through practice mode, and choose the classes you play that way.

You can also unlock classes and basic cards by challenging a player on your friends list.  This means you can get to level 10 on all classes by fighting an opponent who intentionally loses out of benevolence.  This works for unlocking basic cards but can't be exploited for anything else of value in the game.  (Concessions count, too)

[Ozle]

Cheers, ill play the practice decks tomorrow then, seems a bit of a cheap way though (Although not as much as friend quitting! )

[heron]

I didn't know I would get gold for beating all of the expert practice heros.
So far, they are easier than the basic ones. The AI still needs some work, like having your scavenging hyena attack after you kill your 1/1 hound so that you can actually kill my minion. Or, you know, not playing unleash the hounds when I have 1 minion on the board.

I guess this game is even harder to make an AI for than dominion though since there so many cards, but they could limit the bots to playing just a few decks to make it more of a challenge.

[popsofctown]

I didn't know I would get gold for beating all of the expert practice heros.
So far, they are easier than the basic ones. The AI still needs some work, like having your scavenging hyena attack after you kill your 1/1 hound so that you can actually kill my minion. Or, you know, not playing unleash the hounds when I have 1 minion on the board.

I guess this game is even harder to make an AI for than dominion though since there so many cards, but they could limit the bots to playing just a few decks to make it more of a challenge.

There's an infinite supply of people in the queue to practice against, bots aren't really necessary.  There's a couple there as a formality for your very first one or two games.

Much later they plan to do an Adventure mode which I expect will be more challenging.

[blueblimp]

AI for this should be easier than Dominion. In Dominion, the hardest part of doing AI is picking a reasonable strategy for the kingdom. In Hearthstone, little strategy is required since you already have a deck built. Concepts like card advantage are quantifiable enough that writing a usable evaluation function shouldn't be too bad. It's simpler than writing a Magic AI because your turn's progress is far more predictable, making calculating tactics more feasible.

Seems like a fun game AI project actually.

[heron]

I didn't know I would get gold for beating all of the expert practice heros.
So far, they are easier than the basic ones. The AI still needs some work, like having your scavenging hyena attack after you kill your 1/1 hound so that you can actually kill my minion. Or, you know, not playing unleash the hounds when I have 1 minion on the board.

I guess this game is even harder to make an AI for than dominion though since there so many cards, but they could limit the bots to playing just a few decks to make it more of a challenge.

There's an infinite supply of people in the queue to practice against, bots aren't really necessary.  There's a couple there as a formality for your very first one or two games.

Much later they plan to do an Adventure mode which I expect will be more challenging.

Yeah, but if you buy zaps you can swap out cards in your opponent's deck with wisps.

[Drab Emordnilap]

So for some reason when I go to download Hearthstone, it just goes to a page on Battle.net saying "An error has occured".

EDIT: This also happens anywhere I try to do things with my battle.net account apparently.

EDIT the second: Logged in with a different account and it works. Apparently just my main account is fail.

[popsofctown]

AI for this should be easier than Dominion. In Dominion, the hardest part of doing AI is picking a reasonable strategy for the kingdom. In Hearthstone, little strategy is required since you already have a deck built. Concepts like card advantage are quantifiable enough that writing a usable evaluation function shouldn't be too bad. It's simpler than writing a Magic AI because your turn's progress is far more predictable, making calculating tactics more feasible.

Seems like a fun game AI project actually.

Magic is not that hard either to be honest.  Duels of the Planeswalkers sure sells just fine.  But the turn structure helps for Hearthstone for sure.

If anyone wants to help me build a bot that can go infinite at arena, farm all the cards, and then sell the account for cash, we can go 50/50 on it

[Titandrake]

If an enemy mage has Mirror Entity active, and has 7 minions out, then playing a minion won't trigger the secret. I just played an Argent Protector, didn't proc the secret so I guessed a different one, killed a minion, then dropped an Abomination that got copied. Maaaan. In my defense, Mages don't usually have 7 creatures out.

[popsofctown]

If an enemy mage has Mirror Entity active, and has 7 minions out, then playing a minion won't trigger the secret. I just played an Argent Protector, didn't proc the secret so I guessed a different one, killed a minion, then dropped an Abomination that got copied. Maaaan. In my defense, Mages don't usually have 7 creatures out.

That's one of the things they need to document/define better.  It'd be nice if each card had footnotes.  There's apparently an unwritten rule that if a secret wouldn't do anything, it just doesn't trigger.  Cept the time they violated that rule so that my Vaporize "killed" my 6/0 creature that was attacking myself, because of Misdirection+Explosive Trap.

Misdirection also won't trigger if there is no other legal target to attack.  A character cannot attack itself, that's another unwritten rule, one that's no more intuitive than characters being able to attack friendlies, but only due to card effects.

I'm still not sure how Freezing Trap/Explosive Trap ordering works.

Redemption is a pretty sweet piece of inconsistency because it will debuff minions that were 1/1 to begin with.  It will actually leave a visual debuff on the 1/1, even though using Crazed Alchemist on a 1/1 will cause no visual debuff/buff even on mouseover.

[Titandrake]

If an enemy mage has Mirror Entity active, and has 7 minions out, then playing a minion won't trigger the secret. I just played an Argent Protector, didn't proc the secret so I guessed a different one, killed a minion, then dropped an Abomination that got copied. Maaaan. In my defense, Mages don't usually have 7 creatures out.

That's one of the things they need to document/define better.  It'd be nice if each card had footnotes.  There's apparently an unwritten rule that if a secret wouldn't do anything, it just doesn't trigger.  Cept the time they violated that rule so that my Vaporize "killed" my 6/0 creature that was attacking myself, because of Misdirection+Explosive Trap.

Misdirection also won't trigger if there is no other legal target to attack.  A character cannot attack itself, that's another unwritten rule, one that's no more intuitive than characters being able to attack friendlies, but only due to card effects.

I'm still not sure how Freezing Trap/Explosive Trap ordering works.

Redemption is a pretty sweet piece of inconsistency because it will debuff minions that were 1/1 to begin with.  It will actually leave a visual debuff on the 1/1, even though using Crazed Alchemist on a 1/1 will cause no visual debuff/buff even on mouseover.

I believe secrets are triggered in the order that they are played, and no state based effects are triggered until all secrets are done. That's the only way it makes sense for a 6/0 to trigger Vaporize.

Freeze Trap + Exploding Trap should trigger both, dealing 2 damage to everything and bouncing the minion. Even if the minion has 2 or fewer health, it should be returned to your hand before the game checks for 0 health.

[popsofctown]

eh.. you still won't placate me about repentance.

[Twistedarcher]

Argh, it's immensely frustrating to lose because a rule doesn't work the way I think it will.

He had an ironbark protector (or whatever it is, the 8/8 druid taunter) out. He traded it down to a 8/2, then played a crazed alchemist, turning it into a 2/8. I then silenced it, thinking I'd be dealing with a 8/2 that I could easily kill, but nope, it's back to a 8/8! Why does silence work this way? The damage wasn't an "card text, enchantment, or ability", it's hit points that are gone, so why does it heal back up?

[blueblimp]

Argh, it's immensely frustrating to lose because a rule doesn't work the way I think it will.

He had an ironbark protector (or whatever it is, the 8/8 druid taunter) out. He traded it down to a 8/2, then played a crazed alchemist, turning it into a 2/8. I then silenced it, thinking I'd be dealing with a 8/2 that I could easily kill, but nope, it's back to a 8/8! Why does silence work this way? The damage wasn't an "card text, enchantment, or ability", it's hit points that are gone, so why does it heal back up?

I agree in general (that it's annoying that there isn't a rulebook to consult for edge cases), but in Hearthstone, unlike Magic, you want to be thinking about current health and not about damage taken. Health buffs increase current health, but health debuffs don't decrease current health (and so damage taken is reduced). When you silenced the tree, the max health stayed at 8, so the current health wasn't pushed down. This isn't completely precise, to be fair.

[popsofctown]

Crazed alchemist sets both current health and maximum health to the value of the minion's attack.  The text is ambiguous about that, but that's what it does.  The 2/8 Ironbark was an undamaged Ironbark, his current health and maximum health were the same.

The difference between health and max health is ambiguous and often uses the same words and confusing, and I hate it a little bit.

[Dsell]

I've been super busy lately but I'm sick today so I think I'm gonna finally see what this is all about.

[blueblimp]

Just had a "dear my opponent, I am sorry" moment in Arena. I'm playing Mage vs his Warlock.

Me: Mana Wyrm
Him: Blood Imp, Coin, Flame Imp
Me: top-decked Frostbolt to kill Flame Imp
Him: Life Tap
Me: Raging Worgen
Him: Life Tap
Me: Defender of Argus
Him: Ancient Mage
Me: Fireblast Worgen, win

About as fast as I've seen it in arena. Very lucky draws.

[Kirian]

No idea if this has been patched, but Husky is always so much fun.

[Jimmmmm]

Anyone else struggling to get a win now that all the good players are back in the 20s?

[Twistedarcher]

Anyone else struggling to get a win now that all the good players are back in the 20s?

I am holding steady around 14 with only one legendary in my deck. Just can't beat people who have 3+ in theirs.

[Jorbles]

Anyone else struggling to get a win now that all the good players are back in the 20s?

I am holding steady around 14 with only one legendary in my deck. Just can't beat people who have 3+ in theirs.

I haven't played much ranked constructed and I've got to say I find it weird playing rank 25 people who have decks made of legendaries, epics and rares. Arena seems so much fairer.

[popsofctown]

Anyone else struggling to get a win now that all the good players are back in the 20s?

I am holding steady around 14 with only one legendary in my deck. Just can't beat people who have 3+ in theirs.

I haven't played much ranked constructed and I've got to say I find it weird playing rank 25 people who have decks made of legendaries, epics and rares. Arena seems so much fairer.

The season just started and Blizzard has no data on first time ranked players.  Cut them a break.

[Twistedarcher]

Anyone else struggling to get a win now that all the good players are back in the 20s?

I am holding steady around 14 with only one legendary in my deck. Just can't beat people who have 3+ in theirs.

Totally didn't realize the ladder had reset when I posted this, oops...

[blueblimp]

After playing some more, I've come to like some things that bothered me at first.

Most of the RNG cards are fine. There are enough interesting tactics involved in setting up good situations to play them that some of them are pretty fun, such as Mad Bomber, Knife Juggler, and MC Tech. Usually it's clear whether you got lucky or unlucky, so you just need to adopt a mindset where you're trying to make good plays each turn and not worry too much about the game result.

Class-specific cards are critical for arena variety. For one class, most arena runs plays pretty similarly overall. Having nine classes at least means there are nine different ways to experience arena. It's also nice that you have some idea about what your opponent might play so that you can plan more easily.

My wishes for how the game will develop:

I'd like to see some of the stronger cards become more interesting. Cards with interesting battlecries are fun, like Shattered Sun Cleric and Dark Iron Dwarf. But strong vanilla cards like Chillwind Yeti and Boulderfist Ogre are pretty boring.

I'd also like to see a play mode somewhere in between Constructed and Arena. I'd want it to have more flexibility in deck-building than Arena has, while retaining the randomness in card availability and being non-pay-to-win. For example, it'd be interesting to have a mode where you're given a dust limit and a random pool of cards and need to make a deck out of that.

[popsofctown]

Yeti and Boulderfist Ogre are dominant forces in Arena, but rarely, if ever, appear in highly ranked play mode decks.  So their boringness is not a big issue. 

Dark Iron Dwarf and Shattered Sun Cleric were amongst the strongest cards in the game before they were nerfed.  It was really difficult to build an aggro or midrange deck without SSC. 
Dark Iron Dwarf might have been ok if they left it alone, maybe.  But it was crowding out more interesting cards like Water Elemental and Windspeaker because it was a neutral 4 drop everyone always had access too so it was a bit of a variety concern.

If you like your creatures flavorful I'd suggest the shaman class.

[blueblimp]

Yeti and Boulderfist Ogre are dominant forces in Arena, but rarely, if ever, appear in highly ranked play mode decks.  So their boringness is not a big issue.

It's an issue for arena, which is what I had in mind in my post. Sorry for not specifying. Constructed doesn't seem like an interesting competitive format except for the most hardcore players, for a number of reasons.

Dark Iron Dwarf and Shattered Sun Cleric were amongst the strongest cards in the game before they were nerfed.  It was really difficult to build an aggro or midrange deck without SSC. 
Dark Iron Dwarf might have been ok if they left it alone, maybe.  But it was crowding out more interesting cards like Water Elemental and Windspeaker because it was a neutral 4 drop everyone always had access too so it was a bit of a variety concern.

I don't object to the nerfs at all. Dwarf is arguably more interesting after the nerf, because you're forced to extract value from the buff that turn.

[nkirbit]

So apparently if you Mind Control Tech a knife juggler, your mind control tech gets a shot from the Knife Juggler.  Weird!

I had four minions out, my opponent cast mind control tech to steal my knife juggler and killed a 3/1 with the shot.  Not a bad turnaround.

[blueblimp]

Somehow I knew about the MC Tech / Knife Juggler interaction before, but here's something I don't know: if the MC Tech ability counts as summoning a minion, will it also trigger Sword of Justice, buffing the stolen minion?

Here are links to the card texts, which I don't necessarily trust:
Sword of Justice
Mind Control Tech
Knife Juggler

Related note: Mirror Entity triggers on "when your enemy plays a minion", not "summons", and that's why it doesn't trigger from Paladin's Reinforce hero power, which does trigger Sword of Justice.

[popsofctown]

The reason the MC tech thing works is because of the way triggers are handled. 

The steps to playing a card, as they seem to be programmed, are:

1. If the card is a minion, summon it.
2. Execute Battle cry or execute spell's written effects.
3. If effects caused damage, handle on-damage triggers. (Frothing beserker only handles one of the on-damage triggers, which is a quirky bug that doesn't fit this paradigm but does not have an impact on gameplay, probably not intended behavior but low on the priority list.
4. If something died so far, handle deathrattles and on-death triggers, then go back to 3 as necessary.
5. Now, and really not until now tell all minions and weapons on the battlefield that card X was played, and that minion X was summoned (if applicable).  Each of those minions may trigger upon being told and trigger on behalf of their current controller.


So that's why the MC tech Knife Juggler thing works.  Lightning bolt triggers always wait until after battlecries. 

Blueblimp, Knife Juggler is throwing a knife to celebrate that Mind Control Tech was summoned, not to celebrate his own shifting of controllers.  At the time of the summoning he belonged to someone else, but by the time he actually finds out about the summoning he is already on the MC tech's team.  Stealing a minion does not "summon it".  (Nor does polymorphing a minion, except when starving buzzard is watching, because Starving Buzzard is bugged like that.)



A very similar interaction is that if you use Shadow Madness on a Wild Pyromancer, the Wild Pyromancer triggers and damages everything.   That won't work for Mana Addict because the wording is different.

[blueblimp]

Whoops! Thanks for setting me straight.

[Titandrake]

A very similar interaction is that if you use Shadow Madness on a Wild Pyromancer, the Wild Pyromancer triggers and damages everything.   That won't work for Mana Addict because the wording is different.

Oh jeez, don't remind me. I was 7-2 in arena, and had a 2/1 Argent Protector, 3/1 Pyromancer, 4/1 Darkscale Healer, and 3/3 Ironfur Grizzly against an empty board and 2 cards in hand. Pretty nice board position, I was fairly certain he didn't have Holy Nova.

Drops Northshire Cleric. Heals Pyromancer to draw a card. Shadow Madness on Pyromancer, which triggers Pyro, killing everything but Grizzly, then runs the Pyro into the Grizzly. Completely killed my momentum. 2 turns later he dropped Ragnaros, and I was never able to deal with it.

Also, if you're interested in getting a little more fun out of arena, you can try building deliberately aggro decks. I got the idea from http://ihearthu.com/welcome-to-the-arena-a-different-perspective/, decided to try it out with Warlock. Proceed to get the most ridiculously aggressive deck. 2 Soulfires, 1 Power Overwhelming, 1 Arcane Golem, 1 Doomguard, 1 Hellfire for fast damage. Six one drops (none of them Flame Imp unfortunately), 2 Shattered Sun Clerics, a Dark Iron Dwarf, a Defender of Argus, and 2 Dire Wolf Alphas (which are actually really good when you almost always have a 1 drop out.)

So far it's 5-0 and I've won before turn 7 three times.

I think making a strategy like this has a lot more variance in the draft phase, because your curve shifts down a lot and you don't have as many neutral 1 drops to choose from to make the deck work. Plus, it feels Warlock specific, as they're the only class that can build back quickly after board clear.

[Jdaki]

Grrr mumble mumble Mirror Entity not triggering off Power of the Wild... then I slam down Ironbark protector

I have had disastrous attempts at the all out aggro decks, both rogue attempts 0-3, just too used to playing control style I think.

[KingZog3]

Grrr mumble mumble Mirror Entity not triggering off Power of the Wild... then I slam down Ironbark protector

I have had disastrous attempts at the all out aggro decks, both rogue attempts 0-3, just too used to playing control style I think.

I had a tough time too. I prefer Priest with lots of Taunt and lots of healing minions. Tried Warrior aggro deck but couldn't pull it off.

[popsofctown]

I don't think Warrior is a great aggro class.  Midrange maybe but not aggro.  In arena, that is.  Besides the one time I got enough Flame axes and Bloodsail Raiders to repeatedly win turn 6, aggro Warrior has proven pretty inconsistent for me.  Lack of direct damage at common might be a large part of it.

Rogue and Warlock are the best arena aggro classes imo.  Eviscerate is pretty solid direct damage, and Assassin's dagger + possible poison is better at hitting players; Arcanite specializes at hitting yetis.

[KingZog3]

I don't think Warrior is a great aggro class.  Midrange maybe but not aggro.  In arena, that is.  Besides the one time I got enough Flame axes and Bloodsail Raiders to repeatedly win turn 6, aggro Warrior has proven pretty inconsistent for me.  Lack of direct damage at common might be a large part of it.

Rogue and Warlock are the best arena aggro classes imo.  Eviscerate is pretty solid direct damage, and Assassin's dagger + possible poison is better at hitting players, Arcanite specializes at hitting yetis.

A warrior killed me in like 5 turns. Granted it must have been perfect luck, but he got a minion to like 16 attack and I had no way to kill it (no card in my hand, but I did in my deck). I haven't really played Warlock much, just a few times for quests, but yeah, Rogue is good to play aggressive. Lots of nice draw cards and cheap damage cards. Backstab really helps.

[popsofctown]

I don't think Warrior is a great aggro class.  Midrange maybe but not aggro.  In arena, that is.  Besides the one time I got enough Flame axes and Bloodsail Raiders to repeatedly win turn 6, aggro Warrior has proven pretty inconsistent for me.  Lack of direct damage at common might be a large part of it.

Rogue and Warlock are the best arena aggro classes imo.  Eviscerate is pretty solid direct damage, and Assassin's dagger + possible poison is better at hitting players, Arcanite specializes at hitting yetis.

A warrior killed me in like 5 turns. Granted it must have been perfect luck, but he got a minion to like 16 attack and I had no way to kill it (no card in my hand, but I did in my deck). I haven't really played Warlock much, just a few times for quests, but yeah, Rogue is good to play aggressive. Lots of nice draw cards and cheap damage cards. Backstab really helps.

You don't want to draft the 16 damage deck.  I guarantee you that guy didn't get 9 wins that way.  Decks like that will coin flip on whether your opponent has the proper answer, and if they do have the answer, it's pretty much curtains.  That doesn't mean he played incorrectly: he may have happened to draw only the eggsinabasket parts of a more balanced deck and decided he probably wouldn't win a game of normal length, so he took the risk.  But that's not a solid arena strategy.

When you build a good aggro deck, you use multiple creatures as your threats so that Polymorph doesn't 4 for 1 you. And you mix that in with resilient creatures like Scarlet Crusader, Harvest Golem, and yeti so that mass removal doesn't 4 for 1 you.  Then there's nothing that 4 for 1's you, you get two for one'd a couple times by forked bolt or something because you have no way around that but you overall win with your early board control and direct damage finish.

[popsofctown]

I would disagree that Rogue has "lots of nice draw cards", by the way.  Sprint is markedly inferior to Arcane Intellect, though serviceable.  Shiv is pretty mediocre in arena because spell damage +1 won't be there for you consistently.  Shiv lets you Fireblast (mage hero power) once, at the drawback of not getting to see the card underneath it until you Fireblast once.

Fan of Knives is a pretty solid draw card, the payoff is much better for going out of your way to squeeze a kobold underneath it, and it's great even if you can't manage to do that.  But 1 quality card /3 drawers is not "lots of nice draw cards".  Part of your mindset when you draft rogue is figuring out how you will avoid empty hand syndrome without resorting/relying on Sprint and Shiv because you'll want to pass on those for Yetis etc.  You accomplish this with ogres, cult masters, and assassin's blades.

[KingZog3]

I would disagree that Rogue has "lots of nice draw cards", by the way.  Sprint is markedly inferior to Arcane Intellect, though serviceable.  Shiv is pretty mediocre in arena because spell damage +1 won't be there for you consistently.  Shiv lets you Fireblast (mage hero power) once, at the drawback of not getting to see the card underneath it until you Fireblast once.

Fan of Knives is a pretty solid draw card, the payoff is much better for going out of your way to squeeze a kobold underneath it, and it's great even if you can't manage to do that.  But 1 quality card /3 drawers is not "lots of nice draw cards".  Part of your mindset when you draft rogue is figuring out how you will avoid empty hand syndrome without resorting/relying on Sprint and Shiv because you'll want to pass on those for Yetis etc.  You accomplish this with ogres, cult masters, and assassin's blades.

I'll take your word on this. I've only been playing for a two weeks or so. Plus my deck strategy usually involves Priest and making the game last a long time and delivering blows at the end with strong cards.

[popsofctown]

I just thoughtstole Tirion/Redemption.  Doesn't get much better than that..

[Jorbles]

I finally beat 7 wins in arena (9-3) with a hunter deck. The key to it I think was probably Deathwing, which I think is probably one of the strongest individual arena cards. That card wins games.

My draft wasn't bad otherwise, I had the usual strong arena cards (Harvest Golem, Chillwind Yeti, Sun Cleric, some taunts, etc) plus some good Hunter cards (Explosive Trap, Explosive Shot, Release the Hounds combined with Buzzard and Hyena, plus a few random beasts). I don't think I had a bad draft, but I won at least 3 games because I was able to turn things around with Deathwing that I probably otherwise would have lost. It is so good at turning games around, and since people might not have a lot of card removal it's tough for opponents to plan for it. They might only have one or two proper answers to it (Assassinate, Big Game Hunter, Polymorph, Hex, and so on) so you can play aggressively to try and draw them out and then drop it once they've used some of their creature removal on something like a Boulderfist Ogre.

[popsofctown]

My first hunter seven was hard too.  Hunter's pretty bad.

[Jorbles]

This was not notable because it was my first 7 with hunter, it was my first 7 in arena ever! (well 9, but getting to 7 was my goal at the time (I'd previously only gone 5)).

[KingZog3]

My first hunter seven was hard too.  Hunter's pretty bad.

Bad in general, or just in the arena? I find Hunter to be pretty good for regular games, but not in the arena because you need beast cards and specific Hunter cards to make the deck work.

[Jorbles]

My first hunter seven was hard too.  Hunter's pretty bad.

Bad in general, or just in the arena? I find Hunter to be pretty good for regular games, but not in the arena because you need beast cards and specific Hunter cards to make the deck work.

I think just in Arena. I wouldn't say hunter is terrible in constructed (though it's probably not the strongest).

[KingZog3]

My first hunter seven was hard too.  Hunter's pretty bad.

Bad in general, or just in the arena? I find Hunter to be pretty good for regular games, but not in the arena because you need beast cards and specific Hunter cards to make the deck work.

I think just in Arena. I wouldn't say hunter is terrible in constructed (though it's probably not the strongest).

No not the strongest, I think it's pretty clear Mage is. But Hunter can play pretty aggressive, especially since he has lots of useful and inexpensive cards.

[Titandrake]

I think I'm finally starting to get better at arena. I'm not quite infinite in arena, but when you add in quest gold and the amount I play each day, it works out to infinite. Learning that I could cancel 40 gold quests to get better ones helped a lot in that.

[popsofctown]

Hunter is really bad in arena.  It might have the same 12 win potential as anything else, but it is very hard to get solid consistent performances when the thing spits beasts at you half the time and other times it doesn't.

Mage is not "clearly best" in constructed, it's part of a largely healthy meta in which it is not even the star, up at the top. At commons.dec MMR it's probably no better than aggrolock either.

If you were mixing up constructed and arena, you may well be right.

[nkirbit]

Yeah, I very much dislike hunter in arena.  The ability is just so bad, easily the worst one.  There are a few noteworthy cards (Unleash, the removal's fine to good) but nothing enough to make up for the fact that you have an ability that doesn't actually do anything.

[Lekkit]

I've recently started dabbling in constructed. I'm currently fiddling around with a Hunter deck that works pretty well for me at my level. It took me from level 11 to 8 yesterday. I'm currently thinking Druid, Paladin or Warrior is the strongest classes in constructed overall. Control is so strong in this game.

[popsofctown]

Yeah, I very much dislike hunter in arena.  The ability is just so bad, easily the worst one.  There are a few noteworthy cards (Unleash, the removal's fine to good) but nothing enough to make up for the fact that you have an ability that doesn't actually do anything.

It's probably the second worst one.  If enough MTG principles carry over well enough, and I feel that they do, hero targetted damage and hero targetted healing are both bad, but hero targetted healing is worse.  The reason for that is while both of them ignore board position, one of them moves the game towards its ending, giving board position fewer swings to have a negative impact.  The other goes the other direction.  This gets kind of obfuscated by Warrior having these really strong weapons that make him take damage.

Warrior and Hunter are like this huge gap behind everything else, because everything else can have board impact (warlock power pretty easily converts to board impact since two activations=4 damage)

[HiveMindEmulator]

I haven't posted here in a while, so I thought I'd comment on the last page of stuff.

Re: vanilla cards in constructed

Yeti in constucted is a thing. Ogre is not, because it has to compete with rare-legendary 6 drops like Cairne, Sylvanas, The Black Knight, Argent Commander, and Sunwalker. But there's no 4's with such big blowout abilities. A lot of decks don't run Yeti because they're too aggro for it, but if you're going to run 4 drop minions, they're going to be Twilight Drake, Violet Teacher, Sen'jin, Yeti, or something class-specific (Water Elemental, Arathi, Kor'kron, Keeper). Yeti can easily make the cut in midrange decks running 3+ 4 drop minions. For a while they were super-popular for Druid, since Innervate+Yeti on turn 1 is sick, but now it seems like more people are either going for Violet Teacher or Ancient Watcher (Yeti in disguise).

Re: warrior aggro in arena

I think not everyone agrees on what the term "aggro" means. Basically all decks vie for board control for a while and then at some point switch to going for the face. Some decks like the all-out aggro Hunter in constructed, the turning point is the coin toss, and for other decks it's after you run out of cards, but usually it's somewhere in-between. Warrior can have it be kind of early because (1) Fiery War Axe and Arathi Weaponsmith can get you a really strong board position early, and (2) Korkron Elite, Reaper, and Heroic are good at going for the face. Mostly I'd say you start picking a little more aggro-minded if you get multiple Reapers and Kor'kron early, since Fiery War Axe and Arathi are good for a more mid-range or control style as well.

Rogue you can start draft aggro from the jump, and is probably the best aggro class. But Warrior, Druid, Mage, and Paladin can also turn into pretty good aggro decks if your draft goes that way. (Hunter you always draft aggro too, but preferably, you just don't pick Hunter.)

Re: Mage being the best class

Mage is probably the best class in arena (Paladin is close). Mage is probably the worst class in constructed (Priest is close). How does this happen? Two reasons:
(1) Weak higher rarity cards. Seriously, there really aren't any good higher rarity Mage cards since Blizzard and Pyroblast got nerfed.
(2) Poor anti-aggro. Aggro is much faster in constructed than in arena because you can really finely tune your aggro deck. Mage doesn't have any useable AoE until turn 6. And mage doesn't have any source of heal besides Ice Barrier, which is not particularly inspiring, since it lacks the versatility to do anything other than heal your hero.

Re: Hunter hero power

It's the worst one, imo. Warrior is similar, but offers a little more versatility. It's usfeul in 2 situations: (1) when you're racing life, and (2) when you're trying to prolong the game. Hunter can only do (1). It's close though, because Hunter can use the hero power to force the game into (1).

[blueblimp]

Was it this forum's Titandrake I just played Druid vs Druid in arena? (I don't usually look at names in arena, so I'm surprised I even noticed.)

[popsofctown]

HME says that too, but I'm not sure it's true.  I think you at least glance at it unconsciously at some point, your subconscious handling it and deciding to throw it away.

I feel like if my full english name was up there for twenty minutes, I would notice.

[popsofctown]

don't play another game if you haven't yet

[popsofctown]

There's an 'add last opponent" as friend button that you could use to verify the mystery Titandrake's identity.

[Watno]

I just started playing this, and it's quite fun.

But does it seriously have no reconnect function? That's even worse than what Goko does when you lose connection for a moment...
Also, is there a way to play untargeted cards by just clicking them instead of dragging them to the play area?

[KingZog3]

I just started playing this, and it's quite fun.

But does it seriously have no reconnect function? That's even worse than what Goko does when you lose connection for a moment...
Also, is there a way to play untargeted cards by just clicking them instead of dragging them to the play area?

Yeah the connection thing is really bad. It even closes the entire game. And I think everything is drag. Maybe there's an option to change that?

[Watno]

Also, showing the opponent where you're thinking about targeting something seems really stupid.

[KingZog3]

Also, showing the opponent where you're thinking about targeting something seems really stupid.

You can also see what cards he's looking at. It highlights anything they are scrolling over.

[HiveMindEmulator]

Also, showing the opponent where you're thinking about targeting something seems really stupid.

It doesn't show what you're thinking about, only where you're actually pointing with your mouse cursor. This makes it a little more like a real life card game. You have to think without actually pointing at stuff in order to not give away information.

[Jorbles]

Also, showing the opponent where you're thinking about targeting something seems really stupid.

You can also see what cards he's looking at. It highlights anything they are scrolling over.

I like that feature. It makes it a bit more like playing IRL where you can see when people have a card they are thinking about a lot.

[nkirbit]

Also, showing the opponent where you're thinking about targeting something seems really stupid.

You can also see what cards he's looking at. It highlights anything they are scrolling over.

I like that feature. It makes it a bit more like playing IRL where you can see when people have a card they are thinking about a lot.

I dislike it because it's an asynchronous game.  To me, I should be able to play an asynchronous game exclusively during my turn without losing information... having to pay attention when it's not my turn in an asynchronous game isn't appealing to me, but I do it because it's better than losing some potentially useful information.

[Titandrake]

Was it this forum's Titandrake I just played Druid vs Druid in arena? (I don't usually look at names in arena, so I'm surprised I even noticed.)

Yeah, that was me. Hopefully my deck does well, it has ridiculous amounts of removal. The problem is that I'm lacking in the creature department, I feel like I have too much utility and not enough beats.

[HiveMindEmulator]

Also, showing the opponent where you're thinking about targeting something seems really stupid.

You can also see what cards he's looking at. It highlights anything they are scrolling over.

I like that feature. It makes it a bit more like playing IRL where you can see when people have a card they are thinking about a lot.

I dislike it because it's an asynchronous game.  To me, I should be able to play an asynchronous game exclusively during my turn without losing information... having to pay attention when it's not my turn in an asynchronous game isn't appealing to me, but I do it because it's better than losing some potentially useful information.

It's true that you can do better by watching your opponent's turn. You can also do better by opening a notepad file or spreadsheet to count the status of your and your opponents deck and discard pile when playing Dominion online, but you don't usually do it, because it's not worth the effort most of the time.

Your opponent can also mislead you by pretending to have some card that he doesn't. Sometimes while I'm thinking, I leave a damage spell targeted at one of my own minions (not when I'm on a laptop with a touchpad because I might accidentally click).

[popsofctown]

I like the pointing stuff because it makes games go faster.  When a druid points at your 4/4 and ponders for several seconds, you can go ahead and start planning out how that will impact your next turn, like after someone stares at a piece in chess.

It would be really nice if you could see your next draw for turn, too, that would be even better.  By the time you're allowed to make decisions you will have seen that card already so there's little reason not to show it.


If time controls that vary to match the number of available decisions gets implemented (which I hope is something that happens), then Hearthstone can start going a whole lot faster and there will be less desire to play it in an asynchronous manner.  Ideally the time controls should be tweaked such that you want to use all the time in your opponent's turn for thinking, like in chess or blitz chess.  Right now the time control is the same whether you have two auctioneers out, three other minions, and 14 cards to work with, or whether you have 1 mana and a fistful of three drops.  It's a tad silly.

[Watno]

I'd guess it rather makes the game slower, because players will try to think without moving their mouse to help visualizing.

There really needs to be a different time limit system. Someone just tried to slow-roll me, waiting out the timer close to the end in 4 of 8 turns without doing anything. Is there some way to report people for such a thing?

It's really funny to see how Blizzard makes many of the same mistakes Goko does.

[KingZog3]

I'd guess it rather makes the game slower, because players will try to think without moving their mouse to help visualizing.

There really needs to be a different time limit system. Someone just tried to slow-roll me, waiting out the timer close to the end in 4 of 8 turns without doing anything. Is there some way to report people for such a thing?

It's really funny to see how Blizzard makes many of the same mistakes Goko does.

The time thing is actually good. If they time-out on a turn, their next turn is immediately put on a timer. Otherwise it's hard to find out who's slow-rolling. The game can't tell who's slow-rolling and who's actually thinking.

[Drab Emordnilap]

I'm doing really well in Arena, which is good because it's like hey, free packs! But it's bad, because I don't want to buy packs with gold because what if I go on a losing streak, and then don't have gold to play more arena because I spent it all on packs?

[popsofctown]

I'm doing really well in Arena, which is good because it's like hey, free packs! But it's bad, because I don't want to buy packs with gold because what if I go on a losing streak, and then don't have gold to play more arena because I spent it all on packs?

Yeah, you probably shouldn't buy packs.  In moments of weakness I end up buying packs, but if I had to set a minimum cushion size before doing so, I would restrict myself from buying packs with less than 1000 gold.

[Titandrake]

The only reason to buy packs is if you prefer constructed to arena, or if you really want to get all the cards. If you're a collector, then any interesting card is likely epic or legendary, and you'd be better off with the random dust awards from arena than the packs. Not sure what the rough equivalent dust<->gold is, but from packs it's not that good.

[blueblimp]

Also, showing the opponent where you're thinking about targeting something seems really stupid.

It's a weird feature. On one hand, it's kinda cool to feel more connection with your opponent as they are playing. On the other hand, the natural response from competitive players will be to avoid moving their mouse at all until deciding on their entire turn (or at least up to the first RNG moment). So eventually you'd expect to the player base to converge on making the feature irrelevant by not giving away info.

From a software engineering economics standpoint, that strikes me as very odd. Why spend engineering effort to implement a feature that provides players an incentive to not use it? I guess it's still nice for casual players.

[popsofctown]

My guess was that it was originally in there for the debug value, then they somehow found it too endearing to cut.

[Lekkit]

I usually mouse hover random cards and move my cursor around to let my opponent know that I haven't randomly disconnected or is being AFK. I look for this in opponents as well when they are taking a long time between actions. Also, it's pretty easy to bluff, which I think is a pretty fun addition. I like mindgames (not the card).

[HiveMindEmulator]

The only reason to buy packs is if you prefer constructed to arena, or if you really want to get all the cards. If you're a collector, then any interesting card is likely epic or legendary, and you'd be better off with the random dust awards from arena than the packs. Not sure what the rough equivalent dust<->gold is, but from packs it's not that good.

There's also a time issue. Arena is more gold-efficient at getting you stuff, but much less time efficient.

[Lekkit]

Is that true? It's 30 constructed wins to get 1 pack if you're not counting Daily Quests. 15 if we say that a Daily Quest nets you 50 gold. Even with arena runs under 7 wins, I think this would actually be faster, or at least as fast. Everytime you hit 7+ wins in a single arena, you've basically saved like 20+ constructed wins.

[Kirian]

Is that true? It's 30 constructed wins to get 1 pack if you're not counting Daily Quests. 15 if we say that a Daily Quest nets you 50 gold. Even with arena runs under 7 wins, I think this would actually be faster, or at least as fast. Everytime you hit 7+ wins in a single arena, you've basically saved like 20+ constructed wins.

On the other hand, if you're winning 2 or 3 in Arena, it ends up being slower than constructed

(More specifically, it takes a lot of constructed wins to get into Arena, and not very many arena losses to make you have to go back to losing a lot of constructed.)

[nkirbit]

Well, if you're getting 2-3 wins in arena, and your goal is to get cards, you would've been better off buying a pack, I think.  It used to be 5+ wins to guarantee that you got at least enough gold to make arena buying a pack, although I'm not 100% sure if that's still the case.

[Kirian]

Technically, my goal should be to get better at arena, but I'm not interested in putting money in to do that.  Which means needing better cards in constructed so that I can play more than one arena every 40 or so constructed games.

(And this is why I haven't actually played recently... it's just not worth the time, time that I don't have anyway.)

[nkirbit]

Fair enough.  One benefit of playing less is that you'll spend more time playing arena, since your ratio of daily quests to time played in game will increase.  Since I started doing a run every two days or so I've found it much much easier to keep the gold total going up rather than dropping rapidly.

What rank did everyone end last season at?  I was 12, although I wasn't particularly close to plateauing.. I just play way more arena than constructed.

[HiveMindEmulator]

What I meant about the time thing is that if you are time-limited, but not gold-limited (i.e. you had infinity gold), then buying packs is faster than playing arena. So if you're good enough at arena that you're stacking up gold (or you're spending IRL money), eventually you want to spend your gold on packs, because you can't burn through it fast enough (or at all) with arena.

[HiveMindEmulator]

Fair enough.  One benefit of playing less is that you'll spend more time playing arena, since your ratio of daily quests to time played in game will increase.  Since I started doing a run every two days or so I've found it much much easier to keep the gold total going up rather than dropping rapidly.

What rank did everyone end last season at?  I was 12, although I wasn't particularly close to plateauing.. I just play way more arena than constructed.

I finished at rank 3 (though I hit rank 2 twice), mostly playing 3 decks:
1. a taunt-heavy Druid, with Watchers, Sen'jin, and Mark of the Wild; and a curve topping out at 6 for Cairne, Black Knight, and Gelbin
2. a Priest with Ancient Watchers, Sen'jins, and Molten Giants to deal with aggro; and Thoughtsteal, Rag, Ysera, Mind Control to deal with control
3. a fairly standard Shaman with Pyromancer for anti-aggro, no 4-drops, Argent Commanders, and a Windfury finisher

It seems the meta-game changed a lot over the course of the season. The Shaman was good when it was a lot of mid-rangey stuff with some aggro. The Priest was good when things polarized to heavy control or heavy aggro. But by the end, when it was mostly tempo Warlock or tempo Druid, the Druid became the best.

[nkirbit]

Gelbin?  Was he good for you?  I never have really played with or against him.

I had a druid deck which I built myself, which beat aggro pretty heavily, since it was all removals and taunters.  It could never really beat an Ysera though... I should get an Ysera for myself, haha.

[HiveMindEmulator]

Gelbin?  Was he good for you?  I never have really played with or against him.

I had a druid deck which I built myself, which beat aggro pretty heavily, since it was all removals and taunters.  It could never really beat an Ysera though... I should get an Ysera for myself, haha.

Actually I guess my curve technically went to 7 with Ancients of Lore, but I did run Gelbin as my biggest creature, rather than Rag, which is most likely better. But I sure didn't want to curve up to 9.

Gelbin is probably (almost certainly) worse than Rag, but he's fun. If you maintain board control, and have taunts, he's great since in that situation Homing Chicken and Emboldener are amazing, Repair bot decent, and only Poultryizer bad.

[Titandrake]

The nice thing about Hearthstone is that if you don't have much time to play each day, you can get 1 arena a day a lot easier. Essentially, every day you turn down a 40 gold quest to try to get a 60 gold quest, then make a decently solid deck if the quest doesn't match your arena class.

I've got budget decks for all the classes, but they're all basically the same. Good neutral cards, plus a couple class specific ones. It's kind of boring though, and I don't have enough rarer cards to make gimmick decks.

[Jimmmmm]

Has the disconnection issue been a problem for people? I lost two Arena games due to it today, one of which I was almost certain to win, and the other I was maybe 60% to win.

[blueblimp]

Technically, my goal should be to get better at arena, but I'm not interested in putting money in to do that.  Which means needing better cards in constructed so that I can play more than one arena every 40 or so constructed games.

(And this is why I haven't actually played recently... it's just not worth the time, time that I don't have anyway.)

I'm okay with spending money on entering arena. I've spent $8 on entering arena so far, the rest of the time paying with gold earned through quests and arena rewards. For the amount of time I've spent playing Hearthstone, that's completely worth it. (It's less than the price of seeing a movie once in a theatre!)

The thing that makes me feel it's acceptable is that it's pay-to-enter, which is a non-exploitative business model. I wouldn't be comfortable with pay-to-win (which is sort of what below-top-level constructed is like), with pay-to-accelerate-play (because that's just a technique to abuse you psychologically for cash), or with pay-for-random-reward (which is effectively a slot machine, and exactly what buying packs is).

The only part of arena's pay-to-enter that is exploitative is that the amount of games you get to play is partly random, so you're not getting a fixed reward (here, play time) for your entry fee. That bothers me a little, but it's pretty minor overall I think. The play time for a single arena run generally falls within a pretty narrow band (as I tend to go between 3-3 and 7-3), so the psychological effect is minor.

[Grujah]

After a looong break of few months, I am playing again.

Either I suck at counting or there was a bug, but I was 7-1, lose one, and it changed to 8-2 (instead of 7-2).

[Jdaki]

I am still enjoying Hearthstone, but arena> constructed. I do feel I have opened enough packs so that it isn't completely unbalanced in constructed, but it is a bit more boring- less pressure to do well, and I still find rares that I always have in arena that I don't appear to have. I have accumulated quite a lot of dust though, without crafting anything really.
I have only paid to enter one arena, which was my first 12 win which seemed pretty coincidental! Got two packs at the end of that too!
Didn't succumb to buying any more though, often accumulating three quests is enough to cover the disastrous arena runs, and then aiming for the 8 win mark which is where you normally cover yourself gold wise (as in the pack is free). This then keeps me out of constructed apart from when I need a range of heroes. Even then, it's easier to not play ranked.

[popsofctown]

Arena is pretty cool

[HiveMindEmulator]

Arena has a lot of good stuff going for it in that it provides a greater variety of experience, allowing you to see more situations you haven't seen before, which can allow you to have to think more, but there are 2 major drawbacks:
1. The level of competition varies too widely. In your first few games of every arena, you very often run into people who have no idea how to play the game. In constructed this ramp-up happens once every ladder reset, but in arena it happens every 3-14 games.
2. You can't play against friends.

It would be neat if arena were somehow stratified, say maybe having a higher-stakes arena reserved for players who have hit 12 wins at least once or something. And also if there were a way to play some sort of draft format against friends.

[Grujah]

Dunno why people diss constructed so much.

I am on a budget, and only have 2 legendaries (from packs, Mukla and Tirion), have few decks that I run (Druid Taunts, Paladin Weenie, Mage Agro, some random-fun too) and am having quite some fun. I play arena when I get the cash, but am doing significantly worse than before

[popsofctown]

Same reason I diss Cotton Candy flavored ice cream.  It's not my preference.

[KingZog3]

Arena has a lot of good stuff going for it in that it provides a greater variety of experience, allowing you to see more situations you haven't seen before, which can allow you to have to think more, but there are 2 major drawbacks:
1. The level of competition varies too widely. In your first few games of every arena, you very often run into people who have no idea how to play the game. In constructed this ramp-up happens once every ladder reset, but in arena it happens every 3-14 games.
2. You can't play against friends.

It would be neat if arena were somehow stratified, say maybe having a higher-stakes arena reserved for players who have hit 12 wins at least once or something. And also if there were a way to play some sort of draft format against friends.

I very much agree with this. I'm not great at Hearthstone, and it's kind of a waste to be playing high level opponents and only getting 2-3 wins per arena play. I'm better off just buying packs with my gold...

[Jorbles]

Arena has a lot of good stuff going for it in that it provides a greater variety of experience, allowing you to see more situations you haven't seen before, which can allow you to have to think more, but there are 2 major drawbacks:
1. The level of competition varies too widely. In your first few games of every arena, you very often run into people who have no idea how to play the game. In constructed this ramp-up happens once every ladder reset, but in arena it happens every 3-14 games.
2. You can't play against friends.

It would be neat if arena were somehow stratified, say maybe having a higher-stakes arena reserved for players who have hit 12 wins at least once or something. And also if there were a way to play some sort of draft format against friends.

I very much agree with this. I'm not great at Hearthstone, and it's kind of a waste to be playing high level opponents and only getting 2-3 wins per arena play. I'm better off just buying packs with my gold...

It depends on whether you get more enjoyment from having cards or playing Arena. To me the only reason I play Hearthstone is to play Arena. So everything I do is aimed at playing Arena more. 2-3 wins per arena play actually evens out usually though. 3 wins guarantees you 50 gold, which means it's even for the run. 100 gold for a pack+50 gold which is the difference between buying a pack and entering arena. (2 wins is usually 30-45 gold which is barely a loss anyways). Over 3 wins and you're in the black gold wise. If you try to pick arena classes to match your daily quests you can also get back in the arena really quickly. I'll ditch a quest to try and match my current arena deck if it's a quest that my arena deck doesn't work towards. (0/2 Rogue or Wizard wins is useless if you're currently playing as a Shaman.) Sometimes I'll play a constructed deck if I'm a few gold off of a new arena run, but usually that's just a couple wins tops needed to go on another run.

[Grujah]

Ok, have to whine.
I rock a Paladin Weenie, am going up and down around level 12 ATM.

And here and there I go against the Warlock Murlock deck. And usually they are an easier matchup - I got Consecrations and Weapons and Knife Juggler and good early "trade" minions (Protectors, Squires, Harvest Golems, heck - Hoarders). So, this game I got no 1 drop. T1, he goes Coin - Young Priestess - Young Priestess. Had no way to remove them right away so more or less now I am forced to make bad trades whole game. He draws perfectly. No Consecration. Lost turn 4.


AAArgh.

[Lekkit]

Perfect draws will happen. I've managed to play two Young Priestesses during turn 1 as well. That's an insane start. That's one of the things with Hearthstone. Sometimes your opponent gets lucky while you don't. You just have to forget it and que up for the next game.

[Grujah]

I know, I know, I just had to release the frustration somewhere.

[Jorbles]

My favourite lucky start is double Innervate hands with a 5 drop (or 6 drop with a coin). Turn 1 Venture Company Merc, Boulderfist Ogre, Chillwind Yeti, or Azure Drake is pretty fun.

[popsofctown]

Coin, Innervate, Innervate, Hogger is hilarious

[Grujah]

Coin, Innervate, Innervate, Hogger is hilarious

Jeez.

[HiveMindEmulator]

Coin, Innervate, Innervate, Hogger is hilarious

Especially when followed by Backstab, Eviscerate.

[nkirbit]

Just hit the 1000 win mark today.. nifty 300 gold for it.  Maybe I play too much haha, although there are people who certainly hit that months ago.

[HiveMindEmulator]

Just hit the 1000 win mark today.. nifty 300 gold for it.  Maybe I play too much haha, although there are people who certainly hit that months ago.

Next goal is collecting all the cards for a whopping... 100 gold.

[Grujah]

Though I'd share, might bring out a chuckle:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/20240121/Hearthstone_Screenshot_3.7.2014.07.44.31.png

 

[Lekkit]

My first thought was: "This is interesting. How do you get this many Oozes in play as Paladin?" Then I figured it out. Too stuck in Constructed mentality.

[Jimmmmm]

My first thought was: "This is interesting. How do you get this many Oozes in play as Paladin?" Then I figured it out. Too stuck in Constructed mentality.

Yeah, my thought was, "Either lame targets for Faceless Manipulators, or some pretty hilarious Mind Control Techs".

[Jorbles]

Just hit the 1000 win mark today.. nifty 300 gold for it.  Maybe I play too much haha, although there are people who certainly hit that months ago.

Next goal is collecting all the cards for a whopping... 100 gold.

You get some extra stuff along the way when you collect all the pirates and something other thing I think... maybe the dragons?

[Jimmmmm]

Just hit the 1000 win mark today.. nifty 300 gold for it.  Maybe I play too much haha, although there are people who certainly hit that months ago.

Next goal is collecting all the cards for a whopping... 100 gold.

You get some extra stuff along the way when you collect all the pirates and something other thing I think... maybe the dragons?

You get prize cards as a reward for getting all the pirates and all the murlocs.

[Titandrake]

Titandrake

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