Be Excellent To Each Other

Seems they had a bit of a 'grey moment'.

I came back to hearth stone after done time away and it's disappointing to see that they've released another pve expansion that clearly breaks the f2p system. Sorry, but accumulating 700 gold for each wing is unfeasible, and it's just to expensive for how short they are.

At least tavern brawl is good fun.

The latest Tavern Brawl is quite fun, but extremely luck-based.

Still, I have had decent luck so far!

Still, There should be tournaments and stuff. Always the same monthly ladder is boring. And resetting the ladder every month is also ridiculous. Having 4 seasons every year would be much more sensible.

Stupid game, it's almost like it knows I'm hoarding gold and is serving up shit quests to irk me.

Three times in the last week now I've been offered a 40 gold quest, which of course I mulligan hoping for a 60/100 quest (and don't mind getting another 40 quest), only for it to be replaced with the 'watch a friend win a game for a pack' quest, which is even worse than getting another 40 gold quest. So then I have to wait on to the next day and mulligan away the pack quest, which may leave me stuck with another 40 quest. (The pack quests are useless for me (classic pack basically equals 40 dust), I really just want gold at this point.)

On a wider point I wonder how Blizzard are going to address the increasing unfriendliness of the game for new players? Once the new expansion has launched we'll have:

CLASSIC
NAXX
GvG
BLACKROCK MOUNTAIN
ARGENT TOURNAMENT

That's a lot of stuff spread out over a lot of different expansions, they really need to draw a line in the sand at some point and make it so new players aren't just landed in the game with a shit selection of classic cards and a bewildering array of cards/adventures to buy.

I thought they'd taken the watch quest out of rotation as I haven't had it in ages. It's by far the best one if you ask me - worth 100 gold equivalent for watching as little as one game. In terms of time/reward, assuming you still need classic cards, it's the best.

I decided I was bored of grinding gold after a couple of awful-draft Arena runs where I didn't stand a hope against ridiculously overpowered opponents, so I bought 10 GVG packs with my gold, and then pre-brought 50 packs for the expansion. Fuck it.

I've got a complete common/rare set now, and just need to complete epics and legendaries, which are of course the hardest and at the current rate of expansions I'm increasingly unlikely to complete any set without an artificial bump. You win Blizzard.

New players - fuck knows how they'll compete. With so many cards and decks being stronger than ever new players face horrifying match-ups trying to compete with a basic set. Apparently they were supposed to be implementing something where you'd matchmake with people of a similar sized collection, so noobs would only face noobs, but I don't know if they pulled it off.

Oh yes if you're after classic cards then that quest is great, and I do still have some gaps in classic, but nothing I really want - I'm all about the gold in the run-up to the next expansion. I'll just mulligan it today but the risk there is that today's quest is a 40 as well so I'll just have two 40s.



Total spend of £34.99 then, bit of an increase from free but still not bad considering we're some 18 months into our Hearthstone careers now



Are you actually fussed about getting a complete set though? Sure it'd be nice to have everything but we can all live without a Lorewalker Cho or shit like that in our collection I'm sure

(I've had Lorewalker Cho pop out of my own Piloted Shredder a couple of times recently, can be an absolute game-breaker. I even had to silence the fucker in a game the other day otherwise he was going to straight-up lose me the game. (And I still lost.))

I suspect my collection will never be complete but as long as it's got all the cards you'd ever want to actually play, I'm happy.



Yeah the barrier to entry is absurb now IMO. The days of Chillwind Yetis and Boulderfist Ogres being solid playable cards are long gone. We're yet to see how the new expansion will pan out but it's impossible to deny there's been something of a power creep going on with the expansions, a lot of Classic cards look really hopeless now.

Just gunning for the full set for completion, and it remains a goal. With a full set of cards there exists all options, even with the crappest cards. And theoretically there should be no moaning about not getting to legend because the deck lacks cards. When I was grinding with Handlock I didn't have mountain giants which I think worked against the win rate.

Touted expansion release is 24th August.

Had a fun arena game last night as a Priest.

Opponent was also a priest and had got out loads and loads of small minions, plus a Cleric buffed to really high health that was drawing them loads of cards. I was one turn from being killed, but used Thoughtsteal to nick a Holy Nova, which killed all but one of his minions.

He ended up dying of fatigue from having pulled so many cards early on/

Such a cheap priest type win!

RANKED REWARDS: http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/blo ... m-8-5-2015

Woohoo! About fucking time. A reason to grind.

Credit where it's due that's a really good change.

Full marks to Blizzard overall with Hearthstone IMO, they're fleshing it out very nicely as the months roll on and resisting the dark calls of gouging people for cash at every opportunity they get.

(I'm still on track to spend nothing on the next expansion, currently sat on 3010 gold.)

How much gold is the expansion going to be? I've been wasting mine on arena runs.

It's free, just need to buy the packs.

As the next expansion is basically the same size as GvG (around 135 cards) I'd say that similar numbers of packs will be about right to get a good spread of decent cards.

I bought 60 GvG packs (with CASH) and TBH that was overkill, 40 packs would have done the job IMO.

As such I'd like to have 4000 gold by the time the expansion is released, which will easily happen if the rumoured release date of the 24th of this month turns out to be correct, anything over 4000 gold I'll probably just buy more packs. (Indeed if it is the 24th I'll get there with around 4500-4800 gold, although I'm on quite a bad run of 40 gold quests at the moment despite aggressive mulliganing.)

There's going to be rewards for each month ranked performance. Great news!

This week's brawl appears to be every minion has a deathrattle of summoning a minion worth two less.

Urgh, and a horrible one it is to play too. Removal doesn't work meaning that Druid is OP with Force/Savage. Priest might have a shot with Mass Dispel being useful.

Interestingly Druid cards where it's a minion from Pick One aren't given a deathrattle. Druid of the Claw hasn't got one, for e.g.

Play little exorcist. And Baron Rivendare. And Undertaker. And SILENCE.

I won it fist time with a very basic warrior deck, which kind of disappointed me, since it seemed a fun brawl, and now I don't have much motivation to play more.

I disagree. The PvE portion of the game is clearly p2w

I'll tell that to my mate at work who routinely hits Rank 4 or better every season and hasn't spent a single penny on the game.

Or EBG, who's also 100% F2P and has managed Rank 5 IIRC. (Well he's only just recently pre-ordered the packs for the Grand Tournament expansion, but that hasn't affected his collection yet.)

Now if you're talking about new players entering the game now or maybe in the last six months then yes they're going to have a bit of a mountain to climb to get a decent card collection, but for any players who were in early days (any time before Naxx I'd say), the game most definitely is Skill To Win and not Pay To Win.

In terms of an F2P model, I'd say Hearthstone is the gentlest, and most generous iteration of the genre you're likely to find anywhere in the world of games. I mean, as time goes on they're actually making it EASIER to get packs of cards, not harder, and not hiding anything behind a cash paywall, EVERYTHING is available with gold which you can earn freely in game, and at a decent rate of knots too.

Oh yes, and Patron Warrior of course, which is an incredibly cheap Legendary Rank capable deck and is regularly taken to that rank by the best players.

Have a tickle with it yourself. If you're losing a lot it isn't because you haven't paid enough.....

Ironically I've been beaten by basic decks because by chance they'd sidestepped the meta and I had surprisingly little answer for them.

Yes that can happen too, I put together a simple Mage deck for a mate with the best basic and non-basic cards I could get out of his limited collection, and he then proceeded to beat me with it! (He bought 40 Classic packs early doors but nothing since then, but he did have some useful cards like Knife Juggler, Faceless Manipulator and Pyroblast.)

It was just a good solid deck capable of establishing decent board control with a sensible selection of minions and spells, but a chunk of long reach too, including that Pyroblast.

He then reported having a reasonable amount of success with the deck in Casual and Ranked, albeit it hit its limitations in Ranked, as you'd expect.

Rank 4 isn't rank L, right?

I was a top MtG player (top 10 in national rankings) in the late 90's, and not having just a single card, even if is a card that is just situationally slightly better, is a really a big difference.

To be a top player, besides being a good player, you had at least to be sure to have access to every card you can possibly need.

Rank 4 puts him in the top 1.5-2% of players, this is someone who hasn't spent a penny on the game. (0.5% of players get to Legend.)

So in a 'pay to win' game he's managed to get into the upper echelons of players without spending anything. (And if he's better than 98% of other players out there, it's fair to say he's in the upper echelons, hopefully we can agree on that?)

The pay to win element of Hearthstone is really rather limited IMO, what paying gets you is access to more cards in a shorter timeframe, which gives you more freedom to play different decks.

One of the most powerful decks in the game at the moment is Patron Warrior, which is also incredibly cheap in terms of cards/dust - what it does require however is an awful lot of skill to play correctly. (Indeed, playing against someone piloting it badly is quite a comical experience.)

Let me give you just a simple example. Webspinner is a staple hunter card, yet you must fork out for the expansion to have it. There's no way to get it from regular packs.

And no, using gold to pay for the expansion wings is not feasable.

I'm at a loss to understand what it is you're expecting or what your criticism is?

The game has been live for 18 months now and absolutely 100% of all released content/cards has been made available to all players, whether they've spent zero, or £100, or £5000, or £1000000.

If you're prepared to log in every day and do the daily quest (with a mulligan on 40 gold quests hoping for a 60/100) and win a few games on top of that, then the game gives you 500-600 gold per week, which is enough for 5-6 packs or most of an expansion wing.

On top of that Blizz have introduced the Tavern Brawl, a new and free game mode which cheerfully hands out a pack of Classic cards every week. (And they added in the 'get a pack of cards' quest for watching someone on your friends list win, which is effectively another 100 gold quest.)

My chum at work has bought all of Naxx and Blackrock Mountain with gold, and has also gathered together enough cards to have a few viable decks at high rank Constructed play. As you'd expect however, his collection isn't as complete as mine, so for example he'd love to have a crack at Echo Mage but he's missing the Doomsayers and Molten Giants, and he's been using his dust to craft key cards for other decks, and the Doomsayers are just a bit too niche for him to justify the dust outlay.

(I believe EBG has bought all of Naxx and Blackrock Mountain with gold too, so it clearly is feasible.)

What would you like Blizzard to do? Just give everyone a complete card collection for free, and convert themselves to a charity? I'm a right old-fashioned leftwing Socialist bastard, but even I understand that Blizzard are a commercial entity and Hearthstone is something they want to make money out of, and as such there needs to be a mechanism whereby people are enticed to pay for things.

That said, the game is objectively and demonstrably not pay-to-win, what I would say it is however, is 'pay-to-play', in that an investment of cash fleshes out your card collection more quickly than is possible as a F2Player, and thereby gives you the scope to play a wide range of classes and decks of your choosing.

I note you keep ignoring the elephant in the 'THE GAME IS PAY TO WIN! GRRRR!' room, namely the Patron Warrior deck, which is comprised mostly of basic/common cards, a single legendary and two rares that come out of one wing of Blackrock Mountain, two weapons out of one wing of Naxx, and a handful of other low cost rares. In fact, a player with a brand new account could put together the deck in around a month of play, without spending a penny, and there you go - they're wielding what all the top players agree is currently the MOST POWERFUL DECK IN THE GAME. You can try to twist that however you want, but pay to win it is not.

Yes there are decks that are very legendary heavy (Control Warrior for example), yes there are decks that need a lot of epics and suchlike (Hand Lock), and so on - but that comes back to the concept that there needs to be some incentive for people to spend cash, and if you want to be able to play most of the decks, you're going to need most of the cards - and that's where money can help you.

Your single example above, 'Webspinner', you get two copies out of one wing of Naxx, 700 gold, which is just over a week of play. You're saying that's not feasible?

Seriously, we just have to agree to disagree. If I only I could get those cards in regular packs, I would probably buy done to make up for the time I hadn't played, but as it is I would have to invest heavily in both packs and wings, so about 70-80 euros

CORRUPTION! It's done it again today.

Why not give me the actual 100 gold quest with this regularity? Asshats.

I wonder what rarity this quest has? Obviously the 100 is rarest, followed by the 60s, with the 40s being the most common, I'd be interested to know where the 'get a pack' quest sits in that hierarchy - 'cause I seem to be seeing an awful lot of it.

Either way that's what it gave me after mulliganing a 40 quest, so now I have to wait on until tomorrow to mulligan the fucking thing again.

I've not had that quest in ages even though i bounce 40's if it bounces to another 40 i typically take it anyway

Yeah if a 40 mulligans to another 40 then I just do it.

It's the surprising frequency with which I've been offered the win a pack quest* since I started hoarding gold for the next expansion that irks me a bit.

* Or 40 dust, as it's also known

How much gold / dust are you sitting on ?

I started holding onto gold around 3 weeks ago - I've bought the 50 pack deal but can either go to the arena or buy more packs when the new expansion comes out and I've 1575 gold / 1650 dust (so enough for a legendary if i need it) which i guess is quite a bit behind you

3320 gold, 6650 dust at this moment in time.

As of tomorrow I'll have been saving for six weeks, so I've started to lag behind my 600 gold per week target, but I have had a bad run of 40s and win a pack quests recently, plus my overall play rate has tailed off a bit so I'm getting less 10 gold rewards for winning three games.

I'm going to try and freeload the next expansion, but if I need to buy some packs to give me a card/dust boost for critical cards I wouldn't be averse to doing so. That said, the 6650 dust should go a long way to fill in whatever key gaps are left by the packs I'll buy with the gold.

Mind you, having watched the Trump videos on the card reveals thusfar (which is most of them now), I'm starting to wonder how much the meta will really be shaken up. I guess we'll just have to wait and see how it pans out when it all goes live.

Fair to say that Kel Thuzad is an absolute fucking BOSS in the current Tavern Brawl.

I think key characters for it are Kel (as you mentoned) - get the minion back + what it spawned + regain other stuff as well
Alex (knocks their health down and you get a high value replacement)
Baron Riverdare - double deathrattle (so characters with a deathrattle get 2 of those things + 2 others spawned)
Exorcists (gains for virtually every enemy out there)
Piloted shreders (again you get double the drop)
I've not tried molten giants - since their core score is 20 i assume you'll get something back at 12 (next tier it can drop which is another giant ?)
Mountain Giant / clockwork Giant at 12 should only be able to give you sea giant or deathwing (at 10 - not tried but that makes sense?)
Undertaker (because every minion has deathrattle)

Just tried and yes a mountain giant gives you a 10 point card - and with a Baron R you get double



The Deathwing and 'non' deathrattle Sea Giant just came out of a Mountain Giant (which i stole from him with my Sylvanus and i used echos while she was on the board so i have her in hand again)

Actually thats another important card - Echos for a mage - if you have stuff down that has a good battlecry you get the chance to pull it back and get it again (also duplicate)

And of course after saying i'd not seen it in a while todays quest was a 40 - i bounced it and get the 'spectator' one

Molten Giant actually doesn't get you anything, which cost me a match earlier.

:-( - so because there is nothing at 2 below (obviously 0 and 1 manna minions also give none) so the best are clockwork / mountain giants then which drop the Sea Giant or Deathwing

If you play a sea giant for 1 or 0 mana you get no deathrattle. Due to a quirk of the reduced cost and how they calculate it I guess. But if you play it for 2, you get the deathrattle for an 8 mana minion.

Anyway, the brawl is over. I didn't really like that one. Probably one of my least favourite.

I quite liked it. Definitely better and more strategic than the portal one.

Minions summoned at the same cost as your spells again, AKA Play As Druid And Win.

Yeah it really is Druid or Druid for that one.

If you're facing a Druid and he has the coin. Concede.

TODAY WAS THE DAY that I would achieve 4000 gold saved up. I finished yesterday with 3960 gold so it was in the bag, innit?

Just logged in and had a 40 gold quest, so I mulliganed it and got.... Yes, of course.....

4000 gold tomorrow, then.

Today is exactly seven weeks saving up, so averaging just over 570 gold per week, if we pretend I'd just taken the 40 gold quest today....

In this Tavern Brawl, the cards that get summoned are not random, are they? Or if they are, I've had an unfeasible run of luck.

Must have seen Lorewalker Cho in 90% of matches. God he's an annoying bastard.

Yes they're random, but random numbers do very strange things sometimes.

As someone who's done millions of spins on online random slots, I've developed quite a keen appreciation for how mental randomness can be sometimes.

Playing a few games with Patron Warrior.

Cripes. Sometimes it feels like cheating. Two epic ways to win via the Warsong Commander. Wouldn't be surprised to see that card nerfed in some fashion.

Funny I'm doing the same - its worth trying it while it still works because i'm sure the nerf will come shortly - and multiple ways for the big wins with Warsong - Grim and just overload the board / Frothing Berzerker and lots of damage to many characters / Gurubashi Berzerker and hits to it , or the same with a Raging Wargen

When it works it kills the enemy without them really having a chance its just hard for a newbie to see all the 'correct' moves to make

I think they're going down the 'passive nerf' route like they did with Naxx to Miracle Rogue (adding in the sticky and cheap taunt cards, plus Loatheb and suchlike), albeit they did then subsequently nerf the Gadgetzan but they say that was because of all the spare parts in GvG which counted as spells, and could have made Gadgetzan silly in any deck, not just Miracle Rogue.

Patron Warrior is an incredibly powerful deck, no doubt about it, but it is beatable and it's very tricky to play optimally so it's not like the old Buzzard > UTH combo that Hunter used to have which was both brainless and immensely powerful, for example.

On balance, I'm guessing they'll probably leave Patron Warrior alone. It's a very slow deck, basically entirely reactive until such time as it can start to unleash its combos (with a very high skill cap) - I suspect its nemesis is already waiting in the wings, in the Grand Tournament expansion which is very close to release now.