Be Excellent To Each Other

Or saved myself at least £47.49 by just skillfully grinding the game

I burned out a bit the other month, I'm literally only doing the quests now.

30 million Hearthstone accounts have now been created. That's quite a lot!

Blizz really need to get some sort of catch-up mechanism in there though, a mate of mine has recently taken the game up and whilst he loves it to pieces he's a bit bewildered by the various expansions and the amount of time/money it'll take him to get a decent card collection together.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015- ... -milestone

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing

For zaphod as he was asking. The spreadsheet I now use, which does shit like this...

Thanks - i'll see about adding my stuff to it and find out what i'm missing

Jesus Trooper talk about overkill, but I like your style

Two down in my pointless but all consuming quest for golden portraits. Mage and Hunter.

Now going for Warlock.

That is one impressive spreadsheet.

Note to self :

I stole it from someone else, i'm not that crazy to make something that complicated

I'm clearly going to be filling that in today.

Had a couple of fun losses.

One against a priest, he was on 8 health, I had Rag, Dr Boom and a couple more minions. He was on 5 health so had to kill both to survive.

Ruddy lightbomb. Kills them both and he goes on to win!

Next up, I was winning, but we both had a decent board. He trades off all the minions and ends up killing his own last legendary... the one that drops another legendary. It drops Kel Thazad or whatever his name is, and it resurects his entire board! He did apologise!

Also, my first time up against a Mill Rogue. He got a great draw (played six of those Murloc card draw bastards in about 6 turns!) and destroyed me.

All fun games though.

Lightbomb is really popular in Priest decks right now, it deals with all sorts of problems very effectively.

Playing around your opponent having two of them in his deck isn't a bad way to go.

I think the rise of lightbomb is due to the rise of Grim Patron Warrior.

It is the only effective Priest answer to the "Get in here!" man.

Here's a chap who's spent around $5000 on Hearthstone cards, with $3200 of that being in a single session.

http://www.pcgamer.com/meet-the-guy-who ... one-night/



I'd agree with the basic sentiment there, being able to play any deck you like the look of is really what's keeping this game going for me, because there's always something new to try.

My total expenditure is just over £150, and that's in 15 months of solid playing (tenner a month? Sounds fair to me for my second most played game EVER, second only to World of Warcraft), so I've also been getting 5-7 free packs per week from the daily quests and gold for wins.

End result is my collection is 'technically complete' in that whilst I don't have every card, I'm always sat on enough dust to craft a key epic/legendary or two to try something new out, so the net effect is pretty much the same.

So not pay to win, but definitely paying a chunk of cash buys freedom to play any and all decks you fancy a crack with.

Meanwhile, according to this super duper spreadsheet, I have 86.6% of unique cards and 84% of playable cards (i.e. two of each) for £0.

Well yes but you've been playing for long enough for F2P to be viable, and I remember you butt-hurting very badly last year about all the 'pay to winners' who were playing a disagreeable amount of cards you didn't like in your general direction.

You wear your F2P status like a strange badge of pride, different strokes and all that, but to those who don't mind paying a reasonable bit of cash for our entertainment, it doesn't make much sense either.

Also, for a new player coming into the game now, F2P just isn't viable at all, the gold grind required for Naxx alone is a formidable wall to climb and there are some key cards in there, add on what you need out of Classic and GvG to flesh out any sort of half decent collection (you could arguably ignore Blackrock) - and in realistic terms the game needs a chunk of cash chucking at it for a new player to get up and running.

Blizz need to draw a line in the sand IMO and do some sort of reasonably priced catch-up mechanism for Classic and Naxx.

No catch-up mechanism required - it's like any real card game. You have to buy the packs to get the cards, whether you start now or started back then. Giving new players an artificial leg-up flies in the face of those who have put in the hours to build their collection up slowly.

One thing they could do is tweak some of the originally-nerfed basic cards that never see play now, because in their original form quite a lot of them aren't even remotely OP any more. Shattered Sun Cleric as a 3/3 for 3 mana (as it once was) that gives 1/1 isn't even as good as, say, a Dark Cultist that's a 3/4 for 3 and gives +3 health.

I dunno, the game as it stands now is seriously hostile to new players. When we started playing there were just Classic cards, and it was entirely possible to put together a strong deck as an F2P-er in a reasonable timeframe, I can't be arsed checking back to the start of this thread but IIRC I was F2P for a couple of months before I dropped any cash. At that point I had pretty much the final iteration of a Trump F2P mage deck, and indeed when I bought my first 40 packs, the only change I made to that deck was a Cairne for a Boulderfist. (Which was a marginal change.)

(Even right back then, the primary reason I bought packs was just to give me the freedom to try other classes and decks.)

Look at the game now and Naxx is basically obligatory, you'd want maybe 40 packs of Classic, and 40 packs of GvG - to give you a decent chance of being able to put together a single competitive deck. (With the possible exception of shit like Face Hunter.)

Would it be so bad to offer a deal like Naxx + 60 packs of classic cards for £30? Only usable once per account, so even old-timers like us might bite just to get the discounted 60 packs for a chance at some legendaries we don't have and a guaranteed shitload of dust.

A game needs to be attractive to new players to continue to grow and indeed just maintain its player base, as there are always going to be players leaving, and those need to replaced with new players otherwise the game will just wither on the vine eventually.

The mate I mentioned a few posts back is 50/50 on whether or not he's going to jack the game in or persevere, because he's staring down the barrel of a spend of the best part of £100 (Naxx, 40 Classic, 40 GvG) to really feel like he has a chance. Even at Rank 20/19 he's coming up against decks loaded with quality epics and legendaries, producing combos and synergies he has no hope whatsoever of countering.

Your attitude is very much just 'I'm alright Jack' which isn't helpful to the game overall IMO. If new players are given discounts/leg ups to help them get into the game why do we care? It doesn't diminish our card collections in any way, and doesn't invalidate the time and effort we've put in to get where we are.



I dunno, you can bet that established players with near complete card collections will find all sorts of ways to fuck with game mechanics if any cards get 'un-nerfed', so whilst it might help newer players in some regards I'd guess it'd hurt them more as established players go back and look at what they can do with these more powerful iterations of older cards.

Also Dark Cultist versus the Cleric isn't really a fair comparison as the Cultist is a class card and they can be above average, plus the Cultist filled a gap for priest that really needed filling. (Plus Cultist isn't guaranteed to give his bonus, whereas the Cleric always does unless you play her into an empty board.)

Not at all. In fact sometimes 'classic' decks can completely wrong-foot a high-rank player playing a deck fit to the meta, and even I've been beaten by a complete noob with a deck that I just wasn't expecting.

The other question is your objective. Do you want to get to legend? You're probably not getting there with basic cards, but then why would you expect to? Legend takes time, effort, refinement and decent epics and legendaries. It's the top 0.2% for a reason.

In casual you have no idea what you're coming up against. It might be someone's first game or a legend player trying out a new crazy deck. There's no downside to losing, except for a bit of frustration.

In Arena it's a level playing field, and it's all about your understanding of tempo and the quality of the cards. If you're good you'll cash in on packs and cards.

There isn't nothing to do, for sure, but it's not as impossible as you think. If in doubt log in to America and see what you can do with the best basic L10 deck you can make. For some classes that's easier than others. Shaman is complete shit without a few specific commons and rares.

And, with the number of cards now it's really difficult to cut anything from your refined deck, so I think it's pretty unlikely that a 3/3 Shattered Sun would break the game, or a 1/2 Novice Engineer.

More points on this. Cultist is still better than the 3/3 Cleric, so it still fits into your 'Class cards are better' criteria. And I think what you meant to say was that neither one is guaranteed to hit and entirely depends on the circumstances

My card status



I'm not sure if i really am missing a common or have mistyped one field

** edit ** - no i really am missing Rampage which is a common Warrior card - however i've just crafted it for a whole 40 dust

Interesting. How much have you spent in real cash as an idea? I'd be interested to hear this from Trooper too to get an idea of how much pack-buying has gained an advantage.

I'm always tempted to buy packs, and I don't begrudge it at all. But now the major challenge for me *is* the grind to complete the set for free, otherwise I might have stopped playing by now.

What are we classifying as 'advantage'?

With enough games played, an F2Per's collection will inevitably gravitate towards being the same as the collection of someone who's paid for cards, as there are only a finite number of cards in the game and all buying packs does is get you those cards more quickly - eventually the curves on the graph are going to intersect.

Yes Blizzard are going to constantly release expansions, but even if you're just managing something easily achievable like 500 gold per week, staying ahead of that curve is fairly straightforward.

So for someone such as yourself, who's been playing for over a year and opening several packs per week (and with good Arena runs quite likely doing better than that in terms of gold and extra cards), it stands to reason that at this stage, your collection is going to be, for example, pretty similar to mine.

I've always said I bought packs to give me the widest opportunity to play whatever class and deck I wanted to have a crack at, and I wasn't patient enough to grind out for months and months to get there.

I've bought a 40 pack and two 15 packs, and both expansions.

As it happens I can't be arsed to fill in that spreadsheet, but it's actually easier for me to list the cards I don't have.

This is across every class and neutral, and I'm only listing missing cards. (Which you'll note are almost all cards you'd never play, or cards you'd only ever play one of so I have the one I need, I'm also sat on 3325 dust so could craft a few cards quite cheerfully if something crops up I really want to have a go with.)

DRUID - One Starfall, one Ancient of War, one Tree of Life, Malorne

HUNTER - Two Feign Death, one Snake Trap, Gahz'rilla

MAGE - One Spellbender, one Echo of Medivh, Flame Leviathan, one Pyroblast

PALADIN - One Coghammer, Bolvar Fordragon, one Lay on Hands

PRIEST - One Shadowbomber, one Shadowform, Prophet Velen

ROGUE - One Patient Assassin, one Headcrack, Trade Prince Gallywix

SHAMAN - Two Far Sight, one Ancestor's Call

WARLOCK - One Anima Golem

WARRIOR - One Bouncing Blade, Iron Juggernaut

NEUTRAL - Lorewalker Cho, Millhhouse Manastorm, one Recombobulator, one Hobgoblin, one Southsea Captain, two Enhance-o-Mechano, two Mini-Mage, Blingtron 3000, Elite Tauren Chieftain, Hemet Nesingwary, Leeroy Jenkins (I dusted him when he got nerfed), Mimiron's Head, Illidan Stormrage, The Beast, Baron Geddon, Foe Reaper 4000, Gruul, Sneed's Old Shredder, Onyxia, Ysera

So that's 49 cards missing in total, for 1016 playable cards out of 1065 - or 95.5% complete.

EDIT - I could craft 8 Epics with my dust, so potentially 1024 out of 1065, or 96.4% complete.

You seem very angry at me and my F2P ways

I paid for both expansions (Nax and Blackrock) 'pre-release' , which looks to have been £17.49 each

I used 'amazon coins' to buy maybe about 20 packs of Goblins cards when they first came out (total cost for that was zero since i already had the coins but you could equate that to a £20 spend)

And I have 'bought' entrance to the arena 21 times (searching through my emails for the acknowledgement email ) - a lot more early on when i had no gold and wanted to play with some different cards

So thats 21 x 1.49 = £31.29 on arena
£17.49 Nax
£17.49 Blackrock

£66.27 / plus another £20 if you want to count that for the amazon coin stuff

And i think i picked the game up 'late' in that I only really started to play it when the iPad version became available

You've done crackingly well then

Two free packs as an apology for recent server issues, apparently

Or in my case, 80 dust. Thx Blizz.

Warlock hit 60, Priest is 60, Warrior is 59, Pally 56. Give me another, erm... 6 months maybe and they'll all be maxed I think.

Hot piss.



Amazing play, didn't even rely on RNG.

Got to level 12 this morning - a long losing streak put me back to 16 and i'm back down at 13 now.

You can get a real feeling for the random number love when you fire an implosion off at a minion

On a good game you target something with a 4 health and kill it
On a bad game you target something with a 3 health and its still alive :-)

I also did not realize the character picture in your quest log tells you your ranking against the rest of the players for the month

Latest news is some alternative Hero characters but they look to all just be re-skins of the existing ones

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/arch ... 05766.aspx

TEN FUCKING DOLLARS for a character skin?

Yeah, that's what Hearthstone really needs now, shit paid content like that.

Maybe they'll charge us ten dollars for more deck slots next. Ha!

Wow, initially I thought it was $10 for all of them and I thought that was bullshit for a pure cosmetic, and then I discover it's $10 each? Fuck that. If it doesn't affect the game, I'm not bothered. Give me something new, real, tangible that actually changes the game and I'll think about it.

The worst thing about it is they'll sell fucking loads of them, it's the same in WoW, any old cosmetic shit for ridiculous prices, people lap it up. £17 for a single mount, that sort of crap.

If the money were going back into the game in any sort of meaningful manner it'd be OK, but you know it's just lining shareholders' already very full pockets.

(In fact, and rather worryingly, WoW has gone into full scale MONEY GRABBING BASTARD mode recently, I really hope Hearthstone doesn't go the same way. I'd have cancelled my WoW sub months ago but for the fact Mrs Hearthly and Hearthly Jnr are both playing it and they like me to help them out with stuff.)

THANK GOD THE PICTURES ARE HERE.

£6.99 per picture. LOL.

People are also criticising the fact that specific interactions between heros and cards (Cairne with Garrosh, Ilidan with Malfurion) are the same. They haven't been turned off or changed for the new heroes. Lazy and pants.

Game wise my current deck of choice is 'Echo Mage', deck list is as follows, and it can be amazingly good fun to play.

I've had games where I've played 5-6 Sludge Belchers, or Healbots, or multiple Alexstraszas, etc.

Not my deck of course, and it's been around for a while so there are quite a few variations of it out there, but this one works for me as it has a decent match-up against aggro, especially Face Hunter. (I teched in a Kezan Mystic and Frostbolt, because, fuck Hunters.)

These screenshots show the DRAMA FINISH of multiple Moltens and/or Alexstraszas, (note I have two Alexs on the board and one in hand in one of these games), but quite often getting a simple Sludge Belcher and Healbot duplicated/Echoed multiple times can do the job.

The amusement factor of having several Kezan Mystics against a Hunter can be LOL-tastic too

Finally, most people assume they're playing against Freeze Mage, and it has similarities with Fatigue Mage too - so the surprise factor of the deck is very high when you 'reveal your hand' as it were.

Loads of different win conditions, from outright MOLTEN FRENZY to fatiguing out an opponent with near endless Sludgies and Healbots - and lots of stuff inbetween.

Obviously one of the 'fiddlier' decks to play with lots of stuff to learn, but that's where the fun for me in this game is now, trying out different decks on a regular basis. It also helped that I'd got pretty competent with both Freeze and Fatigue Mage, and there are many similar plays with deck, so I could get my head around this one without too much trouble.

Oh yeah, Patron Warrior eh? When is that shit getting nerfed?......

TAVERN BRAWL mode is live - it's ace!

Pack of cards up for grabs for your first win.

It's OK. Way easier as Nefarian and there's no reason to win more than once.

I'll put you in the 'half empty' column then....

It's a fun new mode and it seems to offer decent rewards, a welcome addition to the game IMO.

Even if you only do it once per week it's a nice change of pace.

Yeah it's something as opposed to nothing. I did it twice.

Getting a bit fed up with Patron Warrior now, even when you play around absolutely everything you know they're capable of, their ability to generate a burst of biblical proportions out of nowhere is fucking ridiculous. On top of that they have superb early game, epic card draw, brilliant board control abilities, and multiple win conditions.

It's not the easiest deck to play I grant you that, but even when played sub-optimally it can be epically annoying.

I know people say 'Play Handlock then' but (a) It should be possible to put together a decent counter with more than one class and a specific build on top of that and (b) That's not very helpful when your daily quest doesn't include wins with Warlock.

http://bmkgaming.com/on-patron-warrior- ... t-of-here/

I've won twice so far and both as Raggy - one was a very close run game - the other was a massacre when they played the dragon that reduced spells by 3 points and I spammed lots of spell cards against him (including 2 of the hound cards that respawn each round).

I like the 'new' cards that are different to play with (and against) and that you have the other tactical changes (60 health vs 30+30 armour - one person starting with 4 mana vs 1)

Chatting with Hearthy about current decks and this is the one that i'm enjoying playing with right now





Almost dont care for the mulligan at the start but the main thing here is doing nothing until you hit round 4 (or round 3 with the coin) - you really want to have shadowflame as its basically your clearup card but by round 4 or 5 you'll have 10 cards anyway

Turn 2 and 3 are probably tap for more cards , possibly drop a minion out if absolutely needed to block but turn 4 is one of :

Hobgoblin + Voidwalker
Implosion (if they only have a single minion to hit or some low power stuff)
Hellfire (typically 3 is enough to kill stuff at that stage)
Nullifier (cant be targetted by magic and 5 points health is normally enough to buy a round)
Twilight drake (i will have 9 or 10 cards here)

Turn 5 / 6 - similar to the above or hob + annoy / ghoul , if they have a big minion at this point then soul syphon or dropping the sheep + a hellfire knocks *5* off everything on the board - at this point they should have nothing left on the board

6 is also a good time normally to get thaurison out - again you'll have 8 or 9 cards in your hand so even just having him for 1 round gains you 8 or 9 points of mana that you dont need to spend in the future

At any point if you are down to 15 health (happens quickly some time) your best clearup move is moten giant and Shadowflame to destroy their board - if they dont have stuff down then getting your moltens out with a starfury / defender to get taunt on them both and then healbot to get your health back up out of the danger zone

Sea Giant is good if you do get an implosion to stick and it works against people who fill the board with junk :-)

Chromaggus only goes out if i can tap at the same time (tapping gets you double cards)
Mal'ganus shields you and boosts imps and the mistress of pain - and no-one seems to get that if they leave you with a few imps on the board then you play Mal then they are 3/3's and do a lot more damage
Kel is very useful if your burning your characters (for shadowflame / hellfire / ghoul / sheep) so you can re-gain them but he's the one I may swap out

Jaxx with 8 points (after Thaurassun) means you can either drop a 6/6 out or tap for a card then play Jaxx to jump back up to 15 health (although he breaks the MoltenGiant stuff)

I do well against almost everything apart from Facehunters as long as i dont get a bad draw :-) or some Druid decks

Facehunter just knocks me down too quickly , and druids seem to have too many 4 health cards / or stuff that silences out my taunts

Here are two quick games using this (no sound) - won both although a fair bit of luck , the second game worked better for me but a win is a win :-)

The main issue I'd have with that deck is the one you identify yourself zaphod, that Face Hunter knocks you down too quickly.

There are so many of them out there that any deck I play has to have a chance against them, yesterday I got four on the trot..... Looks like a fun and interesting deck though, and like I said when we were chatting, having something bespoke rather than net-decked can be a big advantage just in itself. (Won't give a Face Hunter pause for thought though, since they generally don't interact with anything you do whatsoever, unless they have to silence a taunt.)

What are you using for your video capture there BTW?

Against a hunter i will drop the 1 and 2 point taunt cards (voidwalker / annoy a tron / ghoul) and the sheep without the hobgoblin just to get something to block but at turn 3/4 I need to have a hellfire to clear the board and turn 5 pretty much needs to be a healbot

I can win against them however i need to get the right cards just to survive - if i can make it to a later round my big cards clear things out and Mal' being able to give me invincibility / Jaxx bumping me back up to 15 health is perfect - I just lose to them more often than I win



I'm on a Mac and i'm using something called snagit - its a slightly older version (came as part of a software bundle) and it only captures sound via the speaker (so you can get some echo-y FX or just turn it off)

Another game against a priest who never really got anything going (unusual starting strategy for them to get a card draw)

New tavern brawl live - make up your deck (nothing seems to be blocked) and every time you lose a minion you gain a banana

Banana types I've seem so far :

Rotten banana - deal 1 point of damage
Banana - give minion +1/+1
Big banana - give minion +2/+2
Displacement banana - swap health and attack