Hearthstone
- Thread starter Azrayne
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The difference between Tempo and Control is whether you have minions on the board? Is there a difference between aggro and rush?
Hatorade
A nice asshole.
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You being up tempo means having more or better mobs on the board and or having more cards in your hand. Opponent is fucked if you have 2+ mobs and 4 cards while he has 1 or less and no cards.
People tend to wait to use their +3 damage cards/charge as a defense or when they are confident they mob will get to attack at least twice. Why not turn that 1/3 into a 4/3 and attack, even only for one turn is fine by me. Will post my druid deck that is cheap and effective as long as you play every mob as expendable.
People tend to wait to use their +3 damage cards/charge as a defense or when they are confident they mob will get to attack at least twice. Why not turn that 1/3 into a 4/3 and attack, even only for one turn is fine by me. Will post my druid deck that is cheap and effective as long as you play every mob as expendable.
Elerion
N00b
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All those terms are really muddled and hard to properly define. You can ask 10 people and get 10 different answers. Here's a longwinded explanation of my use of the terms.
In terms of concepts (not decks):
Aggro vs Control (or Beatdown vs Control) are polar opposite roles on the same axis. In every game, each player typically takes one of these roles. The player who is Aggro/beatdown is trying to end the game quickly, and is willing to sacrifice resources like card advantage and his life total to get there quickly. The player who is Control is looking to drag the game out, to eventually win on card advantage / quality. Note that these are roles played in a specific game, and any deck can play either role depending on what it's up against, what it has drawn, etc.
Tempo as a concept generally refers to actions that make your position stronger in the short-medium term. It's related to the concept of card advantage, but instead of giving you +cards relative to your opponent, you're giving yourself +time relative to your opponent. That can be as simple as playing really mana efficient creatures (Chillwind Yeti). It can mean casting Wild Growth in a druid vs. druid matchup, allowing you to get the big stuff out faster. It can be casting Sap on a big enemy minion, thus making him spend 5+ mana to counter your 2 mana effect. You can buff your 2-drop with a Shattered Sun Cleric, using it to take out a 4-drop. In MTG, you could also destroy an enemy's mana for the same effect.
The concepts are generally agreed upon, but when it comes to naming decks, it's a lot more ambiguous. The naming convention I used above is pretty much as follows:
Deck archetypes
- Aggro: Any deck who will play the Aggro role against most decks in the metagame, because that's all it can really do. Doesn't really want to interact with your shit unless it has to.
- Control: Any deck who will play the Control role against most decks in the metagame, because that's all it can really do. Generally tries to kill your shit, gain card advantage and delay the game until it can play one of its few win conditions.
- Mid-range: A deck who takes a very purposeful middle ground between Aggro and Control, aiming to play the Aggro role against Control decks and the Control role against Aggro decks.
As you can see, these three "archetypes" are named for their positions on the Aggro - Control axis. Thus, with any decks lying "in between", it will be very hard to define them.
- Tempo: Used to describe any deck whose core strategy is to exploit Tempo plays, as defined above. Board Control Warlock/Rogue fits the bill, using lots of buffs to make their previously played low cost minions stronger, and using them to take out their opponent's freshly played, more expensive minions. Thus gaining time advantage, and using that time advantage to win the game. Almost all tempo decks are aggressive by nature to exploit the temporary advantage from the tempo play.
Finally, a deck archetype that we in my opinion have only seen one example of in HS thus far (Unleash OTK):
- Combo: A deck that generally doesn't give a shit what you're doing, it just uses all its early turns to build a scenario where it can unload a combination of cards which ends the game instantly. All resources are used to set up that condition, rather than trying to interact with the opponent.
This is all very spergy, and MTG nerds can (and do) spend hours discussing what these terms really mean. I'm sorry.
In terms of concepts (not decks):
Aggro vs Control (or Beatdown vs Control) are polar opposite roles on the same axis. In every game, each player typically takes one of these roles. The player who is Aggro/beatdown is trying to end the game quickly, and is willing to sacrifice resources like card advantage and his life total to get there quickly. The player who is Control is looking to drag the game out, to eventually win on card advantage / quality. Note that these are roles played in a specific game, and any deck can play either role depending on what it's up against, what it has drawn, etc.
Tempo as a concept generally refers to actions that make your position stronger in the short-medium term. It's related to the concept of card advantage, but instead of giving you +cards relative to your opponent, you're giving yourself +time relative to your opponent. That can be as simple as playing really mana efficient creatures (Chillwind Yeti). It can mean casting Wild Growth in a druid vs. druid matchup, allowing you to get the big stuff out faster. It can be casting Sap on a big enemy minion, thus making him spend 5+ mana to counter your 2 mana effect. You can buff your 2-drop with a Shattered Sun Cleric, using it to take out a 4-drop. In MTG, you could also destroy an enemy's mana for the same effect.
The concepts are generally agreed upon, but when it comes to naming decks, it's a lot more ambiguous. The naming convention I used above is pretty much as follows:
Deck archetypes
- Aggro: Any deck who will play the Aggro role against most decks in the metagame, because that's all it can really do. Doesn't really want to interact with your shit unless it has to.
- Control: Any deck who will play the Control role against most decks in the metagame, because that's all it can really do. Generally tries to kill your shit, gain card advantage and delay the game until it can play one of its few win conditions.
- Mid-range: A deck who takes a very purposeful middle ground between Aggro and Control, aiming to play the Aggro role against Control decks and the Control role against Aggro decks.
As you can see, these three "archetypes" are named for their positions on the Aggro - Control axis. Thus, with any decks lying "in between", it will be very hard to define them.
- Tempo: Used to describe any deck whose core strategy is to exploit Tempo plays, as defined above. Board Control Warlock/Rogue fits the bill, using lots of buffs to make their previously played low cost minions stronger, and using them to take out their opponent's freshly played, more expensive minions. Thus gaining time advantage, and using that time advantage to win the game. Almost all tempo decks are aggressive by nature to exploit the temporary advantage from the tempo play.
Finally, a deck archetype that we in my opinion have only seen one example of in HS thus far (Unleash OTK):
- Combo: A deck that generally doesn't give a shit what you're doing, it just uses all its early turns to build a scenario where it can unload a combination of cards which ends the game instantly. All resources are used to set up that condition, rather than trying to interact with the opponent.
This is all very spergy, and MTG nerds can (and do) spend hours discussing what these terms really mean. I'm sorry.
Gavinmad
Mr. Poopybutthole
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Accurate enough. Although Hearthstone really is more like Yugioh than MTG.
*edit*
Warlock/Shaman victories for my daily today. FML
Hatorade
A nice asshole.
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Here we go:Druid - Deckbuilder - HearthPwnfeel free to switch out BGH and ooze with more summon cards that summon mobs, all about getting as many mobs on the board as possible before using +3 Savage roar.
Priest one on the cheap as wellPriest - Deckbuilder - HearthPwnthis one has early and late game, going from memory I will look at what I use when I get home, pretty sure I use gurubashi in both of these decks instead of something I picked.
Priest one on the cheap as wellPriest - Deckbuilder - HearthPwnthis one has early and late game, going from memory I will look at what I use when I get home, pretty sure I use gurubashi in both of these decks instead of something I picked.
Hatorade
A nice asshole.
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3/2 mobs freak people out and they use up some big hitters to remove them, and if they don't they become 6/2 or 7/6, ooze removes weapons and always good to have running low health mobs to keep the tempo, and knife juggler fucks with people not to mention when it does hit that yeti or whatever it becomes killable with my low damage mobs the same round. Also this is for people just starting out that may not have other options.
Will post my slightly more expensive decks when I get home.
Tempo is really a chess term. Gaining tempo means that you are making plays efficiently, generally keeping the initiative and forcing the opponent to react to you rather than vice versa. If you have to make multiple inefficient plays to get a desired result or don't have a good play at a given time, you're losing tempo and likely the initiative as well. If you force the opponent to make inefficient moves, then you likewise gain tempo. Aggro decks rely on the initiative much more than control by definition, so there's a relation there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempo_(chess))
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempo_(chess))
Gavinmad
Mr. Poopybutthole
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I think his point was, why on earth would you go with 2 vanilla 3/2 creature slots, and one each of 3/2 creatures with abilities. Given 4 slots in my deck for 2 drops and the choice between those three cards, I would run two jugglers, two oozes, and zero raptors.
Lumi
Vyemm Raider
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So I just started playing this game yesterday for the first time. It's pretty much crack but I still have a major problem with it which is the RNG cards. Whoever the fuck makes cards with random abilities is a complete retard that has no idea how a competitive skill based game is suppose to be designed. I hated RNG cards in MTG but there's so few of them it's hard to even notice but in this game it's like half the fucking cards. It's exactly like Dota 2 in that there is simply way the fuck to many unnecessary random elements that add nothing to the game play while detracting from skill and adding luck as a factor for no reason. IMO when it comes to TCG's, the only part that should ever be random is the shuffling of the deck itself and who decides to go first or last.
Every single card should require an intelligent decision that does not involve having to get lucky. And what pisses me off is that each card I see with a RNG effect could easily be replaced with a skill based decision effect. Perfect example is knife juggler, instead of it doing 1 random damage every time a minion is summoned, it should have like 2 or 3 counters and every time you summon a minion, you remove a counter and have it deal 1 damage to the target of your choice. 1000x better really.
Every single card should require an intelligent decision that does not involve having to get lucky. And what pisses me off is that each card I see with a RNG effect could easily be replaced with a skill based decision effect. Perfect example is knife juggler, instead of it doing 1 random damage every time a minion is summoned, it should have like 2 or 3 counters and every time you summon a minion, you remove a counter and have it deal 1 damage to the target of your choice. 1000x better really.
Your Knife Juggler example is a good example of a card that can't be balanced without the rng effect. Being able to choose the target would make it OP as fuck, the 2-3 counters would mean nothing because it almost never gets to shoot more than couple times.
There is definite skill in weighing the chances of different outcomes and planning what to do in different scenarios. Some cards are too random thou, like Tinkmaster is pretty retarded.
Elerion
N00b
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I agree, but there are at least three reasons why they have made it as is:
- Random effects are fun for casuals
- Random effects demand less text on the cards (in most cases)
- Random effects don't have to stop the game and ask you for a decision. Note that there are ZERO cards in Hearthstone that prompt a player for a decision at any time other than when you cast it. Every decision point is initiated by the player, not the game.
I'd prefer it if the random effects were all made manual, but I can see why they like designing them. They don't want to make Hearthstone super competitive, they want to make it as fun as possible for the masses.
EDIT: Even a "targeted" Knife Juggler could be balanced just by adjusting his attack/health.
- Random effects are fun for casuals
- Random effects demand less text on the cards (in most cases)
- Random effects don't have to stop the game and ask you for a decision. Note that there are ZERO cards in Hearthstone that prompt a player for a decision at any time other than when you cast it. Every decision point is initiated by the player, not the game.
I'd prefer it if the random effects were all made manual, but I can see why they like designing them. They don't want to make Hearthstone super competitive, they want to make it as fun as possible for the masses.
EDIT: Even a "targeted" Knife Juggler could be balanced just by adjusting his attack/health.
Famm
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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They aren't going to have a number of other things in those decks either though. The priest one especially looks pretty far from basic.
Lumi
Vyemm Raider
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There is no such thing as a card that can't be balanced. Elerion hit it on the head. Make it a 2/2 instead of 3/2 and give it a fixed set of charges, bam, balanced. Not even that difficult to do and adds more skill to the game. I've already had multiple games literally be decided by these RNG cards and it's retarded as fuck. There's already enough randomness in the shuffling of the deck itself. The game itself shouldn't have any randomness other than the interaction of the different cards that are drawn. RNG cards are just poor lazy and boring design.
Mures
Blackwing Lair Raider
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They really need to buff this card, why isn't it a 2/3? that way it is almost a 3/3 for 3 mana.