Hearthstone

Note: The less obvious downside of Hearthstone's design decision is that it limits how powerful your cards can be in certain respects, and thus it limits deck variety. Unleash the Hounds, for example. The card is interesting and allows for a fun archetype to exist, but it will be nerfed because there is no good way to counter a single turn kill in Hearthstone.

Click to expand...

The really problematic elephant in the room is the fact that instead of charging the defender with assigning blockers, Hearthstone leaves it up to the attacker. This not only makes it nearly impossible to respond to these huge one-turn stampede kills but also makes it futile to rely very much on any one creature because it's so easy for your opponent to take it out. This hugely restricts the types of decks that can be made and the types of cards that can be designed as it would be pointless, you can't build a deck around a creature combo because 90% of the time it'll be dead the turn after you play it. Creature combos do exist in Hearthstone, but they are just minor features of decks that universally end up being some variation of aggro creature rush with whatever flavor of spells is available to the class. Even Hearthstone's so-called control decks are just creature-based decks with a bit more removal in them.

I feel like this one deviation from M:TG core rules has made a gigantic negative impact on the game, one that can't really be changed, and it hugely restricts Blizzard's ability to design new cards outside the narrow scope of creature power value, removal, and basic utility like card drawing and creature buffs. Everything just becomes entirely about the creatures and their ability to deal damage, there's room for nothing else because of how easy it is to kill any creature if you really want to which neuters any creature whose value is in its abilities rather than its power/toughness. This severely limits deck creativity, makes for boring monotone gameplay, and exacerbates the influence of luck because the winner is almost always determined by net creature attacking power which is almost entirely down to luck of the draw.

yeap. agree with all that.

I did suggest neutral traps on the forum at one point.
Thorium grenade, tidecaller charm. haha


that might and magic ccg solved some of those issues in a neat way.
Duel of Champions (Might @Magic F2p CCG)-OpenBeta

Enchantment slots for magic cards. you can play spells on the field, similar to minions.
Still not a reaction phase, but much more dynamic then just secrets in hearthstone.

The attack/defend also puts the power into the hands of the defender, by making "lanes". your minions typically can only attack in a straight line. (some cards can attack anywhere, but still need to kill any minions in front of them, before attacking the hero).
And there are ways to bypass these defenders via instant attack, and spell cards that can move your attackers to another lane without wasting their turn.




would hearthstone be more fun if all removal cards did not exist? (and silence didnt remove taunt possibly as well?)

Araxen_sl said:

Anyone else hate playing against Priests? Holy shit they make me rage way too easily. I can play against any other class but man Priests... fuck em. Yes, I'm not sober when I post this but fuck Priests.

If you want to friend me though it's Araxen.1172

Click to expand...

Make a rush deck...nothing more satisfying than killing them on turn 5

Pyros_sl said:

Maybe they should add more secrets, and to every class? Secrets kinda work like instants, other than you have to play them on your turn and your opponent knows they're there, but if there were more it'd be harder to tell what they are(currently it's fairly easy, other than maybe hunter which has a bunch of different ones). But I don't see them adding a large amount of cards anytime soon anyway, so probably won't happen.

Click to expand...

uh the hunter secrets are the easiest, its either something that affects a minion card being played or when the hunter is attacked, mage has the most diverse selection of secrets out there

Since it isn't really possible to completely redesign the game at this point, the easier but less elegant fix would be to just give taunt to a lot more creatures. Like, if a creature doesn't have any other notable abilities, it should basically always have taunt. This would alleviate the issue of the attacker being able to freely kill off any creature if they want to. There's currently what, less than ten taunt creatures worth playing? That's not nearly enough to protect weak ones with important abilities, so the result is that people don't rely on them. If every Boulderfist Ogre and Oasis Snapjaw type minion had taunt, it would change the metagame a lot and make mindless creature rush less dominant.

I'm new to CCGs, so I'm having to learn to take bad losses in stride. In a Play match, I don't really care. But in Arena, it really chaps me when I lose to an OP combo or RNG bad luck. Need to find my happy place.

The Master_sl said:

What is the shortest game anyone has experienced so far? I just got perhaps the luckiest draw ever with my Mage deck and had a turn 3 kill with a 7/3 Mana Wyrm at the end. Coin really shouldn't count as a spell I think.

Click to expand...

I didn't get lethal, but had a warlock concede turn 3 last night due to having a good hand and him most likely having a shitty hand. I went first, played young priestess, he played a blood imp turn 1, turn 2 I played a knife juggler, he used his hero power to draw a card, turn 3 I played redemption and argent protector giving the juggler a shield, his turn 3 he knocked the shield off with his imp then used a card to remove the juggler and when it came back to life he conceded. I have gotten the stars to align and gotten lethal on turn 5 with the same deck though, lots of turn 6's.

Mist_sl said:

If they wanted this game to be competitive you'd need more secrets, a larger starting hand size, and at least 40 card decks. There's just not enough relevant decisions in the game on a given turn with the small hand sizes and limited variability in cards.

Click to expand...

I don't agree with the larger starting hand. Having mana already taken care of effectively gives a starting hand the same size as this game. It also helps eliminate a great deal of luck from MTG. Granted, a huge part of deckbuilding was about setting up your mana situation. Yet even in a deck with high probabilities of decent manadraws you could still get fucked.

I would like to see a 40 card deck but it isn't like 30 is that much smaller than magic. 25ish of your cards or so would be land depending on the type of deck it was, so you would only have 35 or so nonland cards.

Mist_sl said:

That would actually give each player even less decisions to make, since their attacks would be chosen for them.

Click to expand...

Adding a bunch of taunt creatures would definitely lower the amount of decisions. On the other hand, allowing blockers to be assigned would add complexity at relatively little cost to speed I would think.

khalid has a point. Your stereotypical ideal MTG starting hand is 3 lands 4 spells on the play, or 3 lands 5 spells on the draw. Hearthstone has 4 spells on the play and 5 spells (+ a lotus petal) on the draw. From that point you draw ~60% new spells per draw in MTG, compared to 100% new spells in Hearthstone. Add in the guaranteed mana curve and single mana color, and there's already a larger amount of playable cards in hand in Hearthstone than MTG (Disregarding the formats with massive power creep, like Vintage/Legacy).

The issue is the lack of on-board plays and the limited nature in which you can cast those spells.

A larger starting hand size would increase complexity slightly, but it wouldn't fix the core "problem".

The game is designed to be kinda one dimensional in archetypes. Aggro or bust basically, control is hampered due to:

- Weak sweepers, most are expensive or one sided. One sided sweepers favor aggro more than control just due to the huge tempo swing of having creatures while they have none.
- Many charge creatures make it difficult to react to threats without taking damage.
- Without instant speed interaction there are very few on board ways to control the board.

That being said I've been doing well with a cheap mage control list. Most people haven't learned not to overextend yet, so flamestrike is doing ridiculous work.

valishar_sl said:

The game is designed to be kinda one dimensional in archetypes. Aggro or bust basically, control is hampered due to:

- Weak sweepers, most are expensive or one sided. One sided sweepers favor aggro more than control just due to the huge tempo swing of having creatures while they have none.
- Many charge creatures make it difficult to react to threats without taking damage.
- Without instant speed interaction there are very few on board ways to control the board.

That being said I've been doing well with a cheap mage control list. Most people haven't learned not to overextend yet, so flamestrike is doing ridiculous work.

Click to expand...

Whats funny is once you get into the upper ranks just the threat of flamestrike can keep your opponent modest even if you don't have it in your deck.

Hearthstone just needs time to develop into its own game and for its card pool to grow.

Bigger card pool will help, but few branches on the decision trees will always limit its competitive depth.

The view of what Hearthstone could be is warped by what it is now. If it was MtG that was the brand new game and we were playing it online with Alpha only with this many people and a similar ease of access to cards we'd have already broke that game over our knees. The real problem I see with Hearthstone is that it isn't going to move as quickly as it needs to move given it's entirely online nature. I'm sure that much of my enjoyment of MtG would go away if my play wasn't constrained by its costs. Those costs allow the game to progress a bit slower with its new sets. Hearthstone already feels like it needs an expansion. After a few weeks it'll be back to feeling like it needs another. And another. Blizzard isn't a company with a reputation for speed.

What classes do you think are strongest in arena? I'd probably put Priest, Mage, Warrior, and Paladin near the top. Obviously it always depends on what you draft, a Warrior with no weapons doesn't usually do very well. Warlock and Hunter near the bottom. Not sure about the rest.

Also do you think there are naturally advantageous match ups? Granted there is some variance among decks, but in constructed I find Mage beats Warlock and Shaman more frequently than the other match ups. It'd be cool if there were public stats.