HearthStone?

ANyone played it, is it good? Gimme a BETA key plox. No one mention how blizzard is trying to enter the free-to-play world after looking at LoL.

Its called Hearthstone

I love ccg's so i want to play it
I actually did manage to get 1 key for it last week, but i sold it since people are willing to spend ridiculous amounts of money for a key to access a game that will be f2p
Ill probably get another 1 eventually, i might keep that one, or ill just wait for open beta/release

It looks good from the videos ive seen
Theres only 2 things i dislike about it

1. There are no instants
I used to play magic a lot, in magic there were cards called instants that you could play at any time, even on the other persons turn, so you could react to stuff that they did and turn the battle around in really cool ways
In hearthstone you cant play anything on your opponents turn

2. The resource management is too simple
You just gain 1 mana crystal at the start of every turn, you dont need to play lands, or sacrifice cards, your just get mana automatically
It fixes the land problem that you could get in magic, where you end up with too much land in your hand or not enough, but they shouldve made it more interesting then just get 1 mana per turn
The shaman can overload his mana which is good, but hes the only class that has to make hard decisions about their mana spending
Also you cant have multi color/class decks


And i dont think LoL will effect blizz/hearthstone, the games are so different that their should be a different player base for both games, there will be some people that play both, but most of them will only play 1 or the other
I dont think hearthstone will become as big of an esport as LoL has though
And i dont think blizz is copying LoL either, there have been tons of successful f2p games since LoL so its not unusual that blizz would want something like that too

I would say that hearthstone is a bit pay to win with how card packs are bought and how gold is difficult/slow to get, but all card games like this are a bit pay to win since you buy card packs for all of them, so its pretty normal for it to be like that
Judging from the amount of money people are will to spend on beta keys they will probably make millions within weeks
I do wish they would make gold easier to get, and sell cosmetic stuff too, like foil cards, or different hero characters

Quote :

I love ccg's so i want to play it
I actually did manage to get 1 key for it last week, but i sold it since people are willing to spend ridiculous amounts of money for a key to access a game that will be f2p
Ill probably get another 1 eventually, i might keep that one, or ill just wait for open beta/release

What! Howd you know you got it, did they send an email? Also how much did you sell it for if you dont mind me asking.

Quote :

2. The resource management is too simple
You just gain 1 mana crystal at the start of every turn, you dont need to play lands, or sacrifice cards, your just get mana automatically
It fixes the land problem that you could get in magic, where you end up with too much land in your hand or not enough, but they shouldve made it more interesting then just get 1 mana per turn
The shaman can overload his mana which is good, but hes the only class that has to make hard decisions about their mana spending
Also you cant have multi color/class decks

Ya i thought that was a lil lame too.

Quote :

And i dont think LoL will effect blizz/hearthstone, the games are so different that their should be a different player base for both games, there will be some people that play both, but most of them will only play 1 or the other
I dont think hearthstone will become as big of an esport as LoL has though
And i dont think blizz is copying LoL either, there have been tons of successful f2p games since LoL so its not unusual that blizz would want something like that too

What i ment is, that if LoL hadn't been so successful, i doubt this game would have ever existed, or at least been f2p

I got a key from 1 of the many giveaways that there were, i entered a bunch of them and only 1 came through, i didnt get 1 from the beta opt in yet, thats why i said ill probably get another 1
And i sold it for $270

Eat_Bacon_Daily wrote:

What i ment is, that if LoL hadn't been so successful, i doubt this game would have ever existed, or at least been f2p

I think it wouldve existed, idk if it wouldve been f2p
Before LoL every f2p game was pay to win, most of them were korean MMOs
Those MMOs were really successful though, i think it was only a matter of time before someone took that idea, improved it, and brought it here
LoL just did it first
Im sure if LoL hadnt done it another company would have, i doubt it wouldve been blizz though

Pat the amount of badassness in selling a key for a game soon to be f2p is beyond any expression of words I could use in a sentence.

270$ holy crap, some people cant wait liek a month or 2. Although, being among the first ones online does have advantages. You get to play against casters, develop the first OP STRAT and you can prob get a youtube channel started with it. Assume thats how HDStarcraft and HuskyStarcraft got their fame, i only watched them because of their sc2 casts during the early BETA. They aren't really amazing players.

You cant type to your opponent, so playing against casters isnt really that big of a deal, unless they show your game against them on their channel, and even then its not really that big of a deal

As for starting a youtube channel, theres already a huge amount of hearthstone videos on youtube, by people who already have tons of subscribers, so i dont think hearthstone would be the best option if you are just starting out
Im pretty sure blizz is paying big youtubers to play the game cause youtube is just flooded with hearthstone videos

And i guess being the first to make strats is cool, but not worth $270

People are really dumb with their money, f2p games are offering expensive packages now for early access and some cash shop currency
Neverwinter offered a $200 package for 3 beta keys, a cosmetic mount, and like $100 worth of in game currency, tons of people bought it
Path of exile offered a $1000 package where you could design an item in the game, back when it first opened its beta, you could see who bought it on the forums because they had "Diamond Supporter" on the side (like where your avatar is on this forum)
A lot more people bought it then i wouldve thought (that was the first time i saw expensive packages like that)

Some people have more money than sense

So i got into the hearthstone beta a couple days ago, i thought id make a post talking about it (aka, heres my 2000 word essay on hearthstone) and comparing it to magic and duel of champions (which im going to call doc from now on)

Its a lot of fun, and more complex then i originally thought, its still no where near as complex as magic and doc but in some ways it kindve is
Before i go into that ill go over some of the basics of the game for those of you who have no idea how hearthstone works

There are 9 classes (classes are basically deck types, you cant have hybrid classes so you cant mix decks together, the only cards that can go in any class deck are the neutral cards) each class has its own special power that it can use once every turn for 2 mana
The priest can heal 2 hp to anything
The mage can deal 1 damage to anything
The rogue can pull out a dagger that deals 1 damage and has 2 uses (a dagger is a weapon, the rogue, shaman, warrior, and hunter can all use weapons, a weapon allows your hero to attack something directly)
The paladin can summon a 1/1 minion
The warlock can draw a card, and takes 2 damage doing it
The druid can give himself 1 armor, and 1 attack for that turn
The warrior can give himself 2 armor
The hunter can deal 2 damage to the enemy hero
The shaman can summon 1 of 4 totems at random (the 4 totems are: a 0/2 with taunt, a 1/1 totem, a 0/2 that has +1 spell power, and a 0/2 that heals 1 damage to all friendly minions at the end of the shamans turn

Taunt is the only way to defend yourself in hearthstone, when you play a minion with taunt it will act as a blocker that will stop the enemy from attacking you or your other minions
The way attacking works in this game is that you can chose to attack anything you want, unless theres a taunt minion on the field, if there is a taunt minion your only option is to kill it (you can chose not to attack it until you have a better way to get rid of it)
Because of this system it actually makes it more complex then magic to decide what to attack and how (still not as complex as doc since theres retaliation damage there)

Spell power increases your damage from spell cards, currently theres nothing on a spell card that tells you that it is a spell card so im not really sure what counts as a spell and what doesnt, most of the time its obvious but like with warrior cards im never sure what will get buffed by spell damage (not that you should be playing a warrior that uses spell damage) im pretty sure that anything that says "deal X damage" counts as a spell and will get buffed by spell power though

Most minions have a battle cry which will have some sort of effect when you play that minion, for example the elven archer is a 1/1 that deals 1 damage to anything when its played, there are even minions that have a battle cry that can return a minion to your hand which will allow you to play that minion again and get the battle cry effect of that minion a 2nd time
Some minions have death rattle, which is an effect that happens when that minion dies, some have permanent effects that persist as long as that minion is on the board, like spell power, and some have effects that occur under certain conditions, like when a minion is healed, when a minion takes damage, or at the end of your turn
The battle cry system adds more complexity than i originally thought it could since they are basically mini spells (they arent buffed by spell power) which can turn the game in your favor if played at the right time
There are a ton of different battle cries (you can read them all here: http://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Battlecry ), but some of the basic types are
Deal X damage
Restore X health
Draw a card
Give friendly minion +X/+Y
Give friendly minion taunt
Summon an X/Y minion


You can unlock all the heroes by beating the AI, when you beat the AI you get the deck that the AI was using, you start out with the mage, the premade decks kindve suck, the shaman premade starter deck is probably the worst one, i recommend beating the AI with the last deck you got so you can see how all the decks work
Luckily you also unlock access to all the cards in those premade decks and all the basic cards from the neutral pool, so you can make a new deck that is better pretty easily
I used the premade decks until i was level 10 with each of the classes (im not level 10 with all of the classes yet), reaching level 10 will unlock all of the basic cards for that deck (which is 10 cards per class)
You can make a deck for each class very easily which i really like because in doc you could really only make 1 deck unless you played that deck a lot to earn more gold, i like the ability to play multiple types of decks and hearthstone makes that pretty easy, especially since you dont need to remove cards from a deck in order to use that card in another deck (like in doc)

Decks require 30 cards, no less and no more, which was incredibly odd to me at first, in magic the minimum was 60 (although a lot of those would be lands) and there was no maximum, and in doc the minimum is 50 and the maximum is 200
But the reduced number of cards means the game is much faster paced than magic or doc (that and the ability for minions to attack any other minion), it also means that you will pull your best cards or the combo of cards you want more often

The main deck ive been using is a preist deck that works like a white/black deck from magic
Basically i put minions with an odd amount of health (3.5.7) in it that could also buff or heal other minions, i picked minions with 3, 5 and 7 health because a lot of the damage minions and spells can do is even so an odd amount of health makes trading more awkward for the other person (and gives me the chance to heal it when i attack something of theirs)
The deck has 2 minions that lets me draw cards whenever a minion is healed (healing for 0 doesnt count), several mass aoe heals (2 of which deal 2 damage to all enemies), 2 mind controls, 2 minions that gain +3 attack whenever it takes damage (this is hilarious since you can heal it back up and buff its hp, you can, in theory, end up with a minion that is 34/36 and kill your enemy with 1 attack, best ive done with it is 14/14), several minions that buff hp and attack of other minions, 2 spells that doubles the health of a minion, 2 spells that kill minions that have 3 or less attack, 2 spells that kill minions that have 5 of more attack, as well as some other card draw and dmg dealing stuff
It only uses basic cards and is pretty good, even against people using legendaries, its kindve surprising really

The other deck ive been playing is a pally deck, since the paladin can summon a 1/1 minion every turn i made a deck that buffs those 1/1's to at least 3/2 (in theory i could get 1 up to 19/11 while the other 4 are 5/3, but the best ive ever done was 3 at 4/2 with 1 that was 9/2), it also has 2 minions in it that start out as 4/4 but gain +1/+1 for every other minion on the board, so the goal of the deck is to flood my board with 1/1s and whatever else i can play from my hand, then use that minion for a 9/9 or a 10/10 on turn 5 or 6
The best part is that those buffed 1/1s that are now 3/2 or 5/3 are disposable (anything above 5/3 isnt disposable since you have to use a card on it to get it above 5/3) and you can just throw them at there minions to get really great trades
The main problem is that its susceptible to silence (silence negates any ongoing effect on a minion), so if my big 10/10 is silenced it ends up as a 4/4 which still isnt bad, or if they silence the stuff that buffs my other stuff, but generally people dont have enough silence in their deck to silence everything i have so it ends up working out (it usually means i cant get any higher then 3/2 on my 1/1s but even that is enough since they are disposable)
Also its lacking in taunt so the stuff that is buffing my 1/1s are vulnerable to attack but im hoping to have board control so that it doesnt matter, and most of the cards in it are 3 or 4 mana, so the first 3 turns of the game im relying on the 1/1s and some spells
Im certain that my pally deck would lose to my priest deck so i need to improve it, but the basic cards arent enough so i need more cards


The best part about the game is arena, in arena you cant take your constructed deck, you have to make a new deck that is semi random, basically youre given a choice of 3 cards and will have to pick 1 of those to go in your deck, you do that 30 times until you have 30 cards and then fight against other people that did the same thing
If you win 9 times you get a pack, a golden card, and like 200-300 gold, if you lose 3 times before you reach 9 wins you are eliminated from the arena, that deck is deleted, and you only get a pack some dust and a tiny bit of gold depending on how close you were to 9 wins
The reason i like it and say its the best part is because you have access to any card when you play arena, so the choice of 3 cards will include any card from the game (obviously it will be a card your class can use), which means everyone is equal and you get to try cards you dont have yet
It costs 150 gold to enter the arena (or $2, but i would only spend gold on it) so you cant play it all the time
If you win 7 times before being eliminated from the arena you will have enough gold to get back into the arena
If you win 5 times youll get 50 gold and a pack which is enough to make the arena run worth it (packs cost 100 gold, you are guaranteed a pack from arena, as far as i can tell, so the 50 gold from 5 wins canlces out the extra 50 you spent on playing arena rather then just buying a pack)
The first time you play arena is free

Getting gold is pretty slow, each day you can get 40 or 60 from a daily quest which is usually get 2 wins with a certain class, or destroy 40 minions, stuff like that
And you get 10 gold for every 3 wins against a person, so in order to play the arena every day (unless you win at least 7 arena games at least) you have to do the daily for 60 gold and then win 27 games which isnt really something you can do unless you play a lot (even with a 27 win streak it would take at least 4 hours)
You should be able to play arena every 2 days though, 120 from 2 dailies (hopefully you keep getting the 60 gold dailies), and 30 from 9 wins in normal mode would be enough to play arena every other day
You also get gold from special 1 time achievements, unlocking all the classes, getting all the classes to level 10, beating all of the expert AIs, and getting 100 wins against people, its 100 gold for each of those

My first arena run was pretty bad, i went 1-3, i only got 10 gold, like 20 arcane dust and a pack
Arcane dust is for crafting cards, basically you spend X amount of arcane dust in exchange for the card you want, legendaries are 1600 dust and commons range from 40-100
Theres only 2 ways to get dust, by playing in the arena (which gives you a small amount) or by disenchanting a card you already have
Disenchanting will destroy the card, commons disenchant for almost nothing, like 5-10, golden commons disenchant for 100
The exchange rate sucks, but the good thing is you never need more then 2 copies of a card, so once you have 2, if you get more then 2 of that same card you can disenchant it without having to really lose anything


The game is more fun than doc is, and it feels more balanced, like basic cards stand more of a chance against super amazing epic cards, its probably because theres less stuff to balance around in hearthstone
And doc doesnt have anything like the arena mode, which even though i lost miserably in, was more fun to me then playing constructed (if i could i would play nothing but arena once i learn more of the cards, but ill have to play constructed to get the gold for it)
And making decks is quicker and easier then doc since you can have the same card in multiple decks, and since you can unlock basic cards pretty easily theres more variety in the type of stuff you can play than there is in doc (unless you play a lot to get 100s of cards in doc)
Ill probably still play doc sometimes, like when i want that extra complexity, but ive already played more hearthstone than doc so ill probably play hearthstone more often



TLDR: Hearthstone is fun

i honestly could not tell you why i read all of that

if anyone gets an extra key, you should give it to me@!@

I slit your throat in the night if anyone gives kallock a key before me <3

I got all the heroes to level 10 and unlocked all the basic cards
So i feel like i can talk a bit about balance

The most common deck i see is a hunter deck that kills in 1 turn (usually turn 8 ), what they do is they only play removal cards and their hero power until turn 8, and then on turn 8 first they play a starving buzzard which lets them draw a card every time they play a beast, then they play 5 or 6 more low cost beasts (1 or 2 of which will be the timber wolf which increases attack of all friendly beasts by 1 for each one), then they play unleash the hounds which gives all beasts charge and +1 attack, and attack you directly with all that (it usually adds up to about 20 damage), which should be enough to kill you since 5 of the first 8 turns wouldve been the hunter using his hero power to deal 2 damage to you every turn

Its incredibly powerful (to the point where i would say it needs to be nerfed) and really hard to stop, even if you survive that turn youll be on like less then 10 hp and will have a board full of high damage low health creatures to deal with (aoe is really the only way to deal with it)
My priest deck is the only one that can reliably deal with it (i just pray i have a holy nova or a bunch of taunt), the good thing is that i can use divine spirit on a lord of the arena for a 6/10 with taunt (or even just a shield master for a 3/10 with taunt since all the beasts should have 3 or less hp) which will absorb most of it, the hunter cant really get rid of a big creature like that without using 2 kill commands (which means he wont have the mana to do everything in 1 turn), or if he gets lucky with the card that destroys a random enemy minion

My paladin deck cant beat it unless i pull 1 specific card before or on turn 5 (which is a terrible plan) and my druid deck is just hilarious
I recently made a druid deck specifically to counter that hunter deck
It has a lot of low cost minions with charge (charge allows the minion to attack as soon as its summoned), but it also has high cost 8/8 taunt minions (which costs 8 mana)
It has some cards that can buff minions and 4 cards that increase the amount of mana i have which will let me play more of those low cost minions in the early turns
The plan is to kill the enemy before turn 6 and if it gets past turn 6 i pull out the 8/8s (i only have 2 of them so hopefully i did enough damage earlier to use them to kill him, or to delay long enough to pull starfire (which deals 5 damage to an enemy) or swipe (which deal 4 damage to the enemy

Sometimes it completely destroys people within the first 5 turns, not just that hunter deck (it decimates that hunter deck) but even warriors rogues priests and other druids, other times i draw the high cost stuff at the start and get completely screwed
And sometimes i face someone else thats using a similar strategy where we end up in this race to kill the eachother, its actually really intense with turns only lasting a second or 2 each, but since my deck isnt pure rush down i usually lose because ill draw stuff like wild growth or innervate instead of low cost minions
Its also very weak to people that use taunt since all the minions for the rush down part of it have really low hp and not enough individual damage to kill anything with 4 or more hp



Priest mirror battles can get pretty silly
There was 1 game where i had 2 northshire clerics on the board (its a card that lets you draw a card when a minion is healed), so every time a minion was healed i would draw 2 cards
I had 5 minions on the board and 3 were damaged (you cant draw cards with healing if you heal for 0, like when a minion is on full hp), i used holy nova (this heals all your minions for 2 and deals 2 damage to all enemies) and with the clerics i got to draw 6 cards (i only had 1 card in my hand so now im up to 7 cards in my hand)
It left 2 of his minions alive with low hp and 2 of my minions had less then full hp
Then on his turn he plays 2 injured blade masters (this card deals 4 damage to himself when you play it), so now theres 6 damaged minions on the board, and then he plays circle of healing (which heals all minions for 4hp) which activated my card draw and caused me to draw 12 cards (you can only hold 10 cards, if you draw a card when you have 10 cards in your hand the card you drew is destroyed, so i lost 9 cards to that, then he attacked my stuff with his stuff, 1 of them died, the other was damaged so he used the rest of his mana to heal that so i lost 2 more cards, then i lost another card at the start of my turn
The worst part was he damaged my stuff to the point where i needed to heal it in order to keep my stuff alive when attacking him which would cause me to lose 4 more cards (i only have 3 cards left at this point), i couldnt even sacrifice my clerics to stop drawing cards cause i buffed them to 6 hp and injured blade masters only deal 4 damage
So i knew he was going to keep healing his blademasters (and possibly my stuff) to cause me to run out of cards so i mind control 1 of his guys and attacked him directly in a desperate attempt to end the game (hes on 3 hp now, ill win next turn), he plays holy nova to damage my 6 creatures, buffs his blademasters hp to 9, attacks my 7/7 with his 1 blade master to damage his blade master and leaves my 7/7 at 7/1 then plays circle of healing again which causes me to draw 14 more cards
Once you run out of cards you start drawing fatigue cards, they deal damage to you that increases every time you draw 1, so the first one deals 1 damage, the 2nd one deals 2, 3rd deals 3, 4th deals 4 damage etc
So i had to draw 11 fatigue cards which delt 66 damage to me, more then enough to kill me
It was the weirdest loss ive ever had

Im never playing 2 northshire clerics at the same time again

This is a ignorant question, but do you have to blindly pick decks before playing? or does 1 person get to pick their deck then the other guy picks one in response.
Or like, rock paper scissors for second choice.

It'd be kinda funny if people could keep switching their decks before the game started until neither person wanted a different matchup.

I guess it evens out with some decks wrecking certain combinations and being wrecked by others.

You have to commit to a deck before you see the other persons, so you cant change anything
When i said i made a druid deck to counter that deck i dont always get to use it against that deck, but i encountered that hunter deck so much that i can play that druid deck and 80% of the time will face off against it

Theres no deck that will always win

Other common decks i see are murloc decks that try to kill you quickly by flooding the board with murlocs, some murlocs buff the others and it synergizes really well, you can use it with pretty much any hero but i see it used most with paladin, shaman, and warlock

And spell power mage/warlock decks where all their minions give + spell power and they attack you directly with spells
These matches last the longest when im playing my priest since i have to clear his spell power minions with my minions since most of them have 4 attack (ill talk about that in a bit) also mages will freeze your stuff which makes it so they cant attack which prolongs the fight
The warlock decks are funny because they will go through their entire deck in 15 turns and just wont have enough to win

Theres also cheesy decks (refereed to as gimmick decks), which are like rushing dts in sc2
Theres a priest gimmick deck that uses cards that steal your cards randomly, it works against my priest deck since my priest cards will synergize with his priest cards, but when i play other decks it doesnt work as well (think of it like void proxy, it works best in mirror matches)
The unleash the hounds thing i was talking about earlier is cheese too

Speaking of that they plan to nerf it in the next patch, they havent said how they are going to nerf it but they are
They are also nerfing mind control, which i think they should, they are making it cost 10 mana instead of 8, i dont think thats the best way to nerf it, really there should be a way to get the card back after its been mind controlled like in other card games, but unless you also have mind control theres no way to get it back
Although maybe it doesnt need to be nerfed since thats the priests only form of reliable removal, everything else the priest has for removing minions doesnt work if the minion you want to remove has 4 attack, so people are making decks that use a lot of minions that have 4 attack, it also helps that most of the minions with 4 attack are some of the best minions in the game

They are also changing the ladder system
Currently it works kindve like sc2s system but without bonus points, divisions, or a ranking list
You start in copper league and work your way up by playing, every win gets you a star and once you reach 3 stars in that league you move up to the next one, so winning a game as 3 star copper moves you up to 1 star bronze, as you get higher up you gain stars slower (it starts taking 2 wins for each star), it might have to do with how many times you lose but even after loosing 4 in a row, my worst losing streak, 2 wins still got me a star so idk
You cant go down in rank or stars
They are changing it to work more like a ladder though in the next patch which is good cause the current system is dumb, i think you can get to the highest rank by just playing enough games

As your rank goes up the people you get matched against are harder to beat, even when you play in unranked (it seems to use your rank to put you up against someone of similar skill even in unranked) which makes it much harder to complete certain dailies, 1 of my dailies was to win 2 matches with a rogue or shaman, and i havent made a rogue or shaman deck yet and the premade starter decks arent good enough to win once your rank is high enough, i tried making a rogue deck to get the daily but nothing i tried was working, i eventually managed to get it after like 2 days (you can have up to 3 days worth of dailies in your quest log at a time so if you miss a day you can do it on another day)


Also open beta starts in december so everyone will be able to play soon
Ive only seen 3 bugs in the beta so far, so the open beta may as well be the release
One is where you send a minion back to a players hand, the card ends up face down on the board where the minion was until its played again, which is an annoying visual bug but not game breaking (it happens a lot though)
Another is where you play a minion right after playing another minion and the 2nd minion you played gets put above the other minions and is really tiny, it fixes itself once that minion attacks (ive only seen this happen once, and it doesnt effect the game)
And the last one is where minion positions are changed for no reason, minion position is important because you need to put stuff in the right spots so that they are harder to cast certain aoe spells on (like dont put all your 2 hp minions next to eachother for example)
The last bug does effect the game, ive had shamans use flametongue totem (adjacent minions gain +2 attack) and then summon a totem which changed the order of his stuff to change so now instead of having 4 damage on the field he only has 2 since 1 of the minions next to the flametongue got moved away and is no longer gaining that +2 benefit which was enough to allow me to live long enough to win in some games (this one needs to be fixed asap, hopefully by next patch)

-Mind control-
Cards like that always annoyed me, there was a gameboy card game i played, and if you attacked at any point when a person had a certain card, it would just destroy all your cards on the field, no matter how powerful they were.
I feel like mind control (and types of cards like that) would make more sense if it lasted less turns the stronger the card was, or something.

-ladder-
Yeah, i hope they implement something with some sort of MMR. Maybe they wanted to keep the ranking system as simple as possible until they released the open beta, or the finished game.
I always hated the wc3 ladder system, cuz the only marking of skill were your 'levels' and you gained much more experience by just playing a lot of games cuz you only lost a fraction of the experience from a win when you lost.

Most card games have a way to take mind controlled creatures back, like in magic mind control was treated as an enchantment and you could destroy it, in hearthstone you cant take it back

Most of the mind control cards in hearthstone have strict rules, like shadow madness can only take a minion that has 3 or less attack, and it only lasts 1 turn
The only card that isnt like that is mind control itself which has no restrictions and lasts forever, they plan to make it 10 mana but that really wont change anything, as it is now i normally sit on mind control until i desperately need to turn the battle around
Most games ill have both of them in my hand and never play them until the last few cards in the deck are used (if it gets that far)

Its good most cards like that have restrictions, cus uncounterable cards always seem to produce negative experiences to me.

-Unranked vs ranked-
Maybe theres already a hidden mmr system in place, and each player has an mmr value for their ranked and unranked play. Cuz otherwise you could just deliberately lose a bunch of games in ranked, then grind wins non stop in unranked, and you'd stay at that low level.

-Murlocks-
So Murlocks = zerg?

Damn Hotmail.com i never use it, decided to check it for the first time in like 5 months and ive ahd a beta key for almsot 2 months now. SEE YOU ON THE FUN SIDE (cept for you loser ach) jk love you

Whats your battle tag bacon, we should play

Achilles.42 wrote:

-Unranked vs ranked-
Maybe theres already a hidden mmr system in place, and each player has an mmr value for their ranked and unranked play. Cuz otherwise you could just deliberately lose a bunch of games in ranked, then grind wins non stop in unranked, and you'd stay at that low level.

Yeah i think there is a hidden mmr, but i dont think it goes up if you just never play ranked, so you could stay at low mmr by only ever playing unranked and do it like that
But you cant really grind, 3 wins gets you 10 gold, so youd need to play for hours to get 100 gold, even at 5 mins a game thats 2 and a half hours for 1 pack assuming you dont lose any of the games
Since it takes that much time theres no point in trying to grind it

The dailies are the only thing you could grind, but you can only have 3 of those at a time and only get 1 per day so i wouldnt call it grinding
Although currently i have 1 that wants me to get 5 wins as a hunter or mage and getting those feels like a grind since i dont really like either of the classes (mage is ok, but i dont have the stuff i need to make the deck i would want)

Achilles.42 wrote:

-Murlocks-
So Murlocks = zerg?

I guess you can think of it like that
Not really the same though since even a murloc deck will have non murloc stuff in it, but yeah, the idea of a murloc deck is to swarm your enemy with fast low cost stuff



I had the chance to use Ysera, a legendary card that i want (imo the best legendary card in the game)
A mage played it in a game where i was playing priest, i mind controlled it right away and it was cool
Ysera is a 4/12 legendary that gives you a card at the end of your turn, but the card it gives you is from a special deck of cards thats separate from your deck, its called the dream deck, all of the dream cards are amazingly good
It was near the end of the game, i was playing against a spell power mage, games against spell power decks take forever for my priest deck, i had 2 cards left and he had 1, i was going to win in 4 turns no matter what he did (probably sooner since 1 of the last 2 cards left was a storm wind champion which is a 6/6 minion) he had lower hp then i did and would die from fatigue with no way to heal himself before i did, plus i had stuff to attack him with, so he played ysera (im not sure if that stops fatigue or not, im pretty sure it doesnt since you still draw from your deck at the start of your turn), i had held on to both of my mind controls this whole time so both were in my hand so i mind controlled it and ended my turn
I never got to play the dream card i got at the end of my turn because he left after i ended my turn, the dream card i got was a 7/6 emerald drake for 4 mana

I kinda wish they made getting gold from wins more profitable for building decks, so that buying cards wasn't incentivesd that much. But it makes sense since its a f2p game. and i guess that with the dailies that does offset things nicely, especially since they let you play them from days back.

pat1487 wrote:

Not really the same though since even a murloc deck will have non murloc stuff in it, but yeah, the idea of a murloc deck is to swarm your enemy with fast low cost stuff

What im hearing is that theres absolutely no difference between zerg and murlocks. Maybe people are just bad with their injects, and dont realize that murlocks would actually be more powerful if they went for the late game and not the early game and kept good macro.

pat1487 wrote:

assuming you dont lose any of the games

And you obviously have been winning all your games. right?
because anything less would bring shame to this clan...

Quote :

I kinda wish they made getting gold from wins more profitable for building decks, so that buying cards wasn't incentivesd that much. But it makes sense since its a f2p game. and i guess that with the dailies that does offset things nicely, especially since they let you play them from days back.

Yeah, you can get 1 pack (5 cards) every other day so it would wake a long time to get all the cards or even just the cards you want
Even if you bought packs it would take a lot of money to buy enough packs to get all the cards, im the kind of person that might spend like $5 or $10 on free to play games if they offer something pretty good for that $5-$10 and i intend to play it for awhile, but in hearthstone 2 packs cost $2.99 which is ridiculous
Basically the only people that will spend money on hearthstone are those that are going to spend a lot of money since it doesnt offer enough for the people that would only spend a little

Quote :

And you obviously have been winning all your games. right?
because anything less would bring shame to this clan...

I was winning like 90% of the games until i got to diamond
Now im losing a lot

Theres a new deck that i keep going up against that keeps beating me, its a warlock deck that uses a lot of 3/2 minions to overwhelm you, but it buffs the hp of those 3/2's with blood imps (they give +1 hp to all other friendly minions, and they are stealthed so you cant target them to stop them from giving that buff), they also use defender of argus (give adjacent minions +1/+1 and taunt) and shattered sun clerics (give a friendly minion +1/+1) to buff them to 4/4 (they never go above 4 attack since priest removal needs minions to be above or below 4)
It counters my priest deck in every way for several reasons, holy nova only deals 2 damage and everything has 3 or more hp, theres too many minions to remove with the removal preists have, 3 or 4 damage is enough to trade with most of my stuff without losing any of theirs (since they have the +1 or sometimes even +2 hp from the blood imps), and theres no good targets for mind control (if the game even goes on that long, usually it ends by turn 6)

Its even more powerful then the unleash the hounds deck i was talking about before (and more reliable since you need a specific specific card to make it work)
None of my decks can beat it, a spell power mage deck might be able to, but it would need pyroblast and ice block, which i dont have


Also day9 made a video explaining the basics of building a deck, he uses the unleash the hounds deck i was talking about to teach since its the easiest deck to play and understand
Heres part 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICmP2st4plQ

In part 2 he goes up against a druid deck thats similar to the druid deck i made to counter the unleash the hounds deck, the one i talked about earlier, his reaction to it is hilarious because that opening from the druid is exactly what i do against hunters and is usually never a good idea unless its against the unleash the hounds deck


And i was doing an arena run as a priest
The deck i made for it is amazing, it has everything you could want for a priest deck, i threw shadowform (allows your hero power to do 2 damage instead of restore 2 health) in there, i thought it was a temporary thing, like you could only do 2 damage once with your hero power, i thought it sucked and only took it because the other options were terrible, but it turns out that its permanent and is amazing, it screwed me over in the 1 game i lost, i needed to heal in order to win the turn after his turn but couldnt because of shadowform (although without shadowform i wouldve lost earlier so it wasnt the only reason i lost)

But the reason im talking about this is because i went up against a mage that had 4 flamestrikes (deal 4 damage to all minions), 4 mirror entities (a secret that lets you copy the minion that your opponent plays), 3 fireballs (deal 6 damage), and 4 polymorphs (turn a minion into a 1/1 sheep)
It was the most amazing mage deck ive seen in arena, every other turn was mirror entity flamestrike, and before that was fireball polymorph, so the match went on forever
We ended up like 3 turns into fatigue still trying to kill eachother, he played mirror entity and i played the only minion i had left which i was holding back until the end cause i was afraid 1 of the cards left in his hand was polymorph, i figured if he did poly it i could either kill him with the sheep or make him uses his hero power to kill the sheep instead of hitting me with it, i played a stormwind champion (a 6/6 that gives +1/+1 to all other friendly minions), it got mirrored, i killed the mirror with shadow word death (destroy a minion that has 4 or more attack), and ended my turn, he plays polymorphs it like i thought he would and plays the last card he has, arcane missiles (deal 1 damage to 3 random enemies) which kills the sheep and hits the only other minion i have for 2, then uses his hero power to finish it off

At this point he has no cards left and all i have left is shadow word pain (destroy a minion with 3 or less attack) which is worthless to me now, and holy smite (deal 2 damage), theres no minions left, he has 9 hp, and i have 10, he ends his turn and i take 3 points of fatigue damage (so im at 7 now) i use my turn to deal 4 damage to him (my hero deals 2 cause of shadowform), he takes 3 fatigue damage (im at 7 and hes at 2hp) he hits me with his hero power (im at 6 now), i take 4 dmg in fatigue (2 hp now), and hit him with my hero power for the kill just barely able to win, it was the closest and craziest game ive ever had

GUESS. WHO. GOT. A. BETA. KEY

<=== dis guy

Im super leat pro, so i've already unlocked the first 3 or 4 heroes.
And succsessfully lost 2 games vs real people.

I liked how in the intro it made you think how you were gonna lose vs Illidin, but ended up winning without too much difficulty.
Was clever game design.

Do hero abilities ever 'level up" ?
cuz jaina's ability is bad compared to everyone elses (does 1 damage, but everyone elses does at least 2 points of damage or defense.

Whats the arena mode? i assume its super secret and awesome.


I havn't quite figured out which deck compisitions work beset with which heroes yet,
but i threw together a couple custom decks:
one is just a mass weak creature deck, so all the creatures with charge and all the creatures that had the "summon a 1/1 creature" battle cry ability.

Another deck i made rellies on that 2/7 creater that gains attack damage every time it takes damage. I think this deck would work really well with the priest when i get him, cuz as he takes damage you can heal him, and his damage will just get out of control.

Another deck i just put aaalllll the creatures with taunt into it, which worked better than i expected.
Then i threw some high damage, low defense cards in. My rationale was that i'd get a wall of creatures with taunt, which would allow my high damage cards to do their work.

Achilles.42 wrote:

I liked how in the intro it made you think how you were gonna lose vs Illidin, but ended up winning without too much difficulty.
Was clever game design.

The deck in that match is rigged for you so that youll win no matter what, unless you just dont play anything, not sure what happens if you lose

Achilles.42 wrote:

Do hero abilities ever 'level up" ?
cuz jaina's ability is bad compared to everyone elses (does 1 damage, but everyone elses does at least 2 points of damage or defense.

The mage is the only one that can deal damage to anything you choose regardless of taunt with no threat of taking damage in return (the druid deals 1 dmg and gets 1 armor, but has to attack into taunt in order to use that 1 dmg, and also will take damage when attacking a creature, the rogue is even worse in that you dont even get armor and still take damage/have to attack into taunt)

As for leveling up, the priest is the only one that i know of that can "level up" his hero power, theres 2 cards that let you change your hero power for the priest, 1 doubles its effectiveness (so it does 4 instead of 2), and the other permanently (for the rest of that game after you play it) changes it from a heal into a damage dealing ability, it can be used twice to make your power deal 3 damage to anything, and yes, you can combine it with the double effectiveness card to make it deal 6 damage for 2 mana every turn
However the double card is a legendary, and the deal damage card is an epic, so you probably wont get either of them any time soon

EDIT: I forgot about the warlock, he can "level up" his hero power too, but its more then just that
Jaraxxus is the warlock legendary, when you play it your hero is replaced with jaraxxus
When your hero is replaced, your health is set to 15 (so if you play it at 1 hp remaining you basically heal 14hp), you get a 3/8 weapon, and your hero power lets you summon a 6/6 minion, its pretty OP, ive faced it with my priest deck and lost to it because he kept drawing cards that let him heal and i ran out of cards to deal with his 6/6s
Its 1 of the best legendaries in the game because after its played you cant do anything about it like you can with other legendaries, your only hope is to be playing a deck that has secrets, like a pally with repentance so that that he ends up with 1 hp, infact, repentance is the only card that can do anything about jaraxxus, because even the mage's mirror entity only gives you a 3/15 minion

Achilles.42 wrote:

Whats the arena mode? i assume its super secret and awesome.

Ive talked about it in my other posts
It is awesome, but i thought i would like it more then i do
The reason i dont like it is because sometimes i get attached to the decks that you make in it, like the priest deck i was talking about in my last post, i really liked that deck but i cant play it anymore so it made me not want to play arena

Achilles.42 wrote:

I havn't quite figured out which deck compisitions work beset with which heroes yet,

Try to build the deck around the hero power of that hero, like the mage deck i made is a beat down deck where i spend most of the time attacking the enemy hero and using the hero power to force favorable trades
Like i have a 5/2 with charge that i might play against someone that has a 6/6 in the board, instead of killing his 6/6 with my 5/2 and hero power ill attack his hero directly to get that 5 damage in on him and then hit the 6/6 down to 5 hp with the hero power so that when trades it dies the way i wanted
Its risky cause he might have another way to kill my 5/2 but it doesnt really matter because ill probably have a polymorph in my hand if it doesnt work out the way i wanted, and its worth the risk cause i have a bunch of other cards that can deal direct damage so even if the 6/6 stays on the field i should be able to take the damage and win with in a turn or 2 (cause by that point he should be on pretty low hp)

Achilles.42 wrote:

but i threw together a couple custom decks:
one is just a mass weak creature deck, so all the creatures with charge and all the creatures that had the "summon a 1/1 creature" battle cry ability.

This type of deck works really well with shammy, because of bloodlust, if you can keep all your stuff alive you can use bloodlust to give everything +3 attack and just murder everything, throw a raid leader in there, flametounge totem, frostwolf warlord, knife jugglers, and that card that grants windfury to a minion and you have a rush down deck with potentially a turn 5 8/8 (with raid leader and flametounge on the board it would be 12/8, if you give it windfury you can deal 24 damage on turn 6 with just that 1 minion)

Achilles.42 wrote:

Another deck i made rellies on that 2/7 creater that gains attack damage every time it takes damage. I think this deck would work really well with the priest when i get him, cuz as he takes damage you can heal him, and his damage will just get out of control.

My priest deck uses this card, and it can get out of control, but most people will silence it asap so i usually only let it get to 8/7 before ill just use it to hit the enemy hero directly
I have had it at 29/28 before though
Ive actually talked about it before, in my first post after getting the beta, when i was talking about my priest deck

Pat1487 wrote:

2 minions that gain +3 attack whenever it takes damage (this is hilarious since you can heal it back up and buff its hp, you can, in theory, end up with a minion that is 34/36 and kill your enemy with 1 attack, best ive done with it is 14/14)

I still use that priest deck that i made, 1 of the first decks that i made and i havent even changed anything in it even though i have a bunch more cards now that i could add, it still works even in diamond league, ive been meaning to make another priest deck that uses rarer cards but the other one works so well that i havent bothered

Achilles.42 wrote:

Another deck i just put aaalllll the creatures with taunt into it, which worked better than i expected.
Then i threw some high damage, low defense cards in. My rationale was that i'd get a wall of creatures with taunt, which would allow my high damage cards to do their work.

Ive never seen a deck that did that so i dont know how well it would work, i dont think it would work too well though, since you would be lacking in spells and direct removal
The low hp guys would end up running into enemy taunt and dieing off with really inefficient trades (1 for 1 at best) since you wouldnt have that many spells and youd have no other choice but to run your guys into their taunt, plus any aoe would wipe most of your stuff really easily

Wait, actually i have seen a deck like this, a more advanced version, its that warlock deck i was talking about, with blood imps, since blood imps increase the hp of all friendly minions, people use high damage low hp minions so that they end up with moderate hp (cause of the blood imp) and high dmg, most people dont get that many taunts in that deck though, instead they get stuff that gives taunt to multiple things (like defender of argus) that way they dont need to load their deck with taunts and can have spells and more high damage minions
And as i said before, that deck works extremely well



Whats your battle tag, we should play

so, i unlocked all dem heroes.
I scrapped all the first decks i had made, cuz they were the sucksauce
but now i have a leetsauce priest deck. Its kinda vulnerable to rush decks, but i dont think i've lost to anything else with it. Mind control OP, its great. I also have two "double minion HP" cards, which are hilarious whenever i can use them in the same turn. one person gg'd right after i did that, even though his hero still had 15 health.

I also have a rush deck using the druid. i assume its awesome cuz i've won 100% of the time i've played it, spanning all one games.
I also have a Paladin deck that i assume is completely uncounterable. i havn't used it yet cuz it'd be unfair to the other players.

I wish that spinner would some times land on something besides "worthy opponent"
although i guess its good enough that you get to see all the funny 1 liners.

ALSO, im a pro 2 star silver player now. so, ya know. pretty big deal