Be Excellent To Each Other

I decided yesterday I really must do Arena instead of just straight up pack-buying. I think I'm passably good and really should be able to make a profit on the run most of the time. Ideally you'd make enough to immediately rebuy the next run and just keep on going.

It can be so hideously frustrating though!

Logically speaking even a total wipeout run of 0:3 gets a pack of cards and a bit of something else, if you reckon on managing 3:3 on average and often somewhat better than that, I'm sure it'd work out more profitable to do Arena runs than buy card packs, but for some reason, and for quite a while now, I just can't jig myself up for Arena runs at all.

I'm sat on over 200 gold at the moment, maybe I'll have a crack at Arena today and see how it is, as I have had a fair break from it now. Might be interesting with all the new cards out there.

I'm on the last guy now, and stuck. For the frost wyrm...

Hunter might be a little better - essentially you need to stall for time until you have enough mana to actually do the necessary damage. Freezing, exploding, sniping, misdirecting, I could see how all those things would work.

I'm keen on the mage though, if only because I like the idea of playing a decent minion and then ice-lancing it to make it survive through the turn

All done. Heroic KT was a joke though, it's just a matter of getting a half viable deck and waiting for the random gods to go your way. Must have taken me at least 30 attempts over the course of today.

Day off? Working from home?

Working from home Write a bit, try again, take a phone call, try again, send an email... etc...

Yeah, wow, fuck Heroic KT.

I don't find the heroics fun or interesting at all (well, a couple of them were OK but TBH they got old pretty sharpish), even when you know you've got the deck that can do it you're still totally at the mercy of the RNG.

For a single extra card back, I really can't be arsed.

The mechanics of the final matchup are bobbins. After you remove his 20 armour, the hero power changes to an 8-mana permanent minion steal.

So, you clearly can't afford to play any epic big minions. Any minion you do have out tend to be murdered by the turn 8 twisting nether. So you hold back a bit, and replenish the board on turn 9. On turn 9 the fuckface plays another twisting nether. All the while pummelling the shit out of your face.

Thank the pissing bollock balls for that.



It was a Paladin deck in the end, but took many attempts. Many secrets, some taunt, healing, and lots of dudes to make the odds of him stealing something good a bit more unlikely.

Hilariously, I finished the match on 30 health, which went down to 28 when I killed his Abomination which dealt the final 2 damage that killed him

Too much RNG. Some attempts had me die incredibly quickly with the exact same deck.

I'm also a bit sad as I initially tried to go down the Warlock path and decided I needed a Molten Giant. I disenchanted much to get the dust, and it turned out not to be necessary.

Ah well, at least I've got one of those now anyway. Back to questing.

Congrats EBG - can't see me ever getting that card back!

It's surprising to me that they'd despoil the 'WoW Heroic Mechanic' so much for Hearthstone, although I suppose there was a limit to what they could do when you're drawing randomly out of a deck of 30 cards. (And allegedly so is your CPU opponent, although I can't help but have my doubts about that, but then again I one-shotted the Warrior class challenge whereas Trooper had a right old time with it, and I also one-shotted the Paladin challenge which apparently can be a bugger too, so maybe the CPU does play 'fair' in terms of the random card distribution.)

Anyway, in WoW the idea of Heroics was that they were tough, indeed brutally tough if you were going into them marginally geared, but that they were always scrupulously fair too.

Hearthstone seems to chuck that right out of the window in that you can go in there knowing that you've got the tools to get the job done, but are still relying on what's basically a fucking roulette wheel as to whether or not you'll win.

I remember when me and the guys first starting chipping away at Heroics in WoW during the Lich King expansion (we were too late to Burning Crusade to do any of the heroics on level as we all fucked off to Northrend as soon as we hit 68), and by fuck those bastards were hard, but they were consistent and fair, and that's where the challenge came from, and the satisfaction came from in beating them. (And even the normal mode Vanilla/BC dungeons were often pretty damn tough, but they've all been nerfed into the ground now.)

Even just beating Kel'Thuzad in normal mode in Hearsthone felt like more of a roll of a dice than anything else, (I knew I had the deck for it but still failed several times as I had shit draw and/or he had good draw, it was just a matter of banging my head against the wall until the cards came out in the right order), and certainly not anything I'd want to try again in Heroic.

I haven't played WoW much, I think my little Priest dude is up to L7. Are all of those 'old' expansions and raids still playable if you're new to the game? Weirdly in playing the game I recognise a load of the place names and terminology from Hearthstone, but I have no context for any of it.

You may eventually find you want to have a crack at Heroics for a change. Once you've got 'the deck' it's just a question of rolling it a few times, and it's damn satisfying. I have a tendency to put two fingers up at the screen and say 'Fuck you' to the Heroic as I land the killing blow. That's pretty damn weird thing to do sitting in a room by myself, but such is the annoyance that finally killing them deserves some 'BM'.

Ultimately, you're playing a card game. Everything has to have a random factor, else it stops being a card game and starts being a game of defined rules (such as chess).

Maybe that would be an interesting expansion; a mode where you choose the order your cards come in. Much second guessing to be done.

That aside, it's a card game. All card games mix skill and luck, even the ones played for millions of pounds.

Yes and no would be the answer there. The entire old world is still there but they completely revamped the whole of vanilla WoW for the Cataclysm expansion to bring it more up to the standard and design of questing in the later expansions, the end result is that whilst the 1-60 experience is a hell of a lot better than it used to be, the original game as it was back then is lost.

(We didn't start playing until the end of Burning Crusade (the first expansion) but the vanilla game was untouched at this point, so we saw the entire of the old world and instances and raids and what have you in their original state. The game itself is a lot better but they nerfed the instances into the ground, made them a lot easier, a lot shorter, and so on. More friendly for new players but arguably a bit of a shame too. Instances like The Wailing Caverns were literally a 3-4 hour commitment for a five man group of on-level players if you wanted to do a full run.)



Yeah it's possible I'll chip away at them here and there perhaps, but I do find they hit my frustration threshold pretty quickly and that I want to get back to playing other humans who are abiding by the same rules as me! I suppose you have to look at them as a very tricky puzzle game rather than a Hearthstone game.

Dipped my toes back into Arena last night and managed 5:3 with an average pally deck, more importantly I did really enjoy the experience so Arena is very much back on the agenda now.

95 gold and a pack of cards were my rewards.

HUZZAH A LEGENDARY! BOOOO! IT'S NOZDORMU AND I'VE ALREADY GOT ONE!

That new Unstable Ghoul works well if you can get an Acolyte of Pain behind him, as the Ghoul's death rattle draws a card off the Acolyte. In one game I deliberately killed the Acolyte off as I was getting close to 10 cards in hand.

I've never had a dupe legendary, but the 400 dust would be most welcome.

Lots of wacky play in Ranked now, people throwing out most of the new cards rather scattergun. They don't know what they're really doing with Kel'Thuzad yet but he's beng thunked down at every opportunity.

Mass dispel is firmly back in my priest deck. With all of these deathrattles, effects, and the Gruul-esque Shade of Nax, I think it's more than viable now.

These days I save up quests, and do an arena run every other day or so, choosing the class that I have quests for.
I much prefer arena and I average over 3 wins; so that, plus the quest rewards, generally means I can keep playing arena and only ever have to go into the boredom of constructed if I have a day where I play a lot

Hearthstone news!

One of the devs did an interview, this is the synopsis:

http://www.hearthpwn.com/news/604-value ... iew-versus

"The next card expansion will feature "not exactly 100 cards, but it's a lot".
The cards in the next expansion will come out of a new booster pack.
You will still need to purchase Expert booster packs to get Expert cards. You'll have two choices in the store.
There is no current goal for expansion release cycles, but they're working hard on the next one.
The devs are not currently working on 2v2 formats. They're "maybe" thinking about it.
Mike liked the Lord of the Arena series (Congrats Reynad on winning your own tournament) and it would be nice if they could facilitate this better.
Instead of adding more silence cards to the game to combat potential Deathrattle problems, cards should be added which address Deathrattle directly.
The Paladin class challenge was not the best one, it's a lesson learned. Could have been more buff cards."


Not sure about having a new booster pack choice to make in the shop, too much for my brain to handle.

I've just watched ValueTown, where this guy was interviewed. A lot of the answers were a bit reserved, without wanting to give anything away. The guy very often said 'I have no idea' to things that he clearly would know something about.

Some additional points are that Android and phone-friendly versions will be coming out 'this year', and that observer mode seems to be the main focus at the moment. No new classes in the works, at all.

I remade my post-Nax Priest deck, but it clearly needs some work. I've managed to get off the Auchenai zombie-chow combo a couple of times, which is nice for the extra 5 face damage, but otherwise it's strictly an early game board-control minion. More work required.

Observer mode. Who really gives a shit? I can't believe that is top of the backlog pile!

Lots of people, particularly those who watch streamers or tournaments. Currently the system is a bit of a jig of switching back and forth between the user's screen feed.

But are those people the majority of the user base? Or just the most vocal? I suspect the latter.

I'd love an Observer mode so that definitely gets a thumbs-up from me.

Not too worried about the specifics of the next expansion at the moment, it kind of goes without saying that they're already working on it, but in reality it's going to take a fair while for the Naxx stuff to settle down and I'm more interested in seeing how that pans out.

Shame that there are no new classes in the works though, Death Knight would be pretty damn cool. (Fucking panda Monks, less so.)

The dude made it fairly clear the new cards would not be part of a Naxx-like adventure - just straight releases using this booster pack format. Essentially two types of purchasable packs - 'old' and 'new'.

Just lost an arena match to a warlock that had pretty much the perfect zoo deck. Not a jot of mana wasted. Painful. Especially when he had 6 minions and I had a Knife Juggler. Played another minion, and of course it hits the one with 'enrage', instead of any of the 5 it could have killed. Subsequent two minions played since I may as well now, and both go to the face. Those 340+-1 shots seem to come in more regularly than you'd think...

First Arena run for a while. Struggled and dropped to 1/2, but eventually pulled it back to 6/3. Reward: A pack, 85g, and a Blessing of Wisdom. The pack had two rares and an epic.

Not the best draft but a fair result, I'll take it.

This is the thing with runs that go like that, whilst the recovery is always welcome of course, I'm also aware now that the matchmaking shit is doing its thing in the background to give you a more favourable match-up as you're doing badly.

I did think in the past it seemed odd how a good run seemed to suddenly come up against brutally good players and/or decks, and similarly how a bad run always seemed to give you a chance to pull some wins back. (I think I was 6-0 on one with what honestly seemed like an indestructible deck, I'd had ridiculously good card draft, and then all of a sudden, BANG, it was like 'OK motherfucker, now try playing against these equally awesome decks'.....)

Not saying that it's all down to the matchmaking of course when you win or lose, and I can see why they did it in some regards, but it still rankles a bit.

I've got 380 gold and we're trapped in the house today because it's the first Manx Grand Prix race day and we're inside the course, so doubtless I'll find the time for some Arena runs..... With the prizes I'll (hopefully) get, should be able to afford four or five I reckon.

I'm amazed you didn't realise that from the get go. It's both kinda obvious and clearly the best way to do things.

I'd disagree on both counts.

If everyone gets a completely random card draft then in the rich fullness of time it'll all even itself out without any kind of jiggery-pokery behind the scenes.

It's pitched as 'Forge a deck from random cards, then see how long you can last in the Arena.'

There's no bit in brackets that says, 'Oh but by the way if you get really good cards and/or play really well, we'll start to fuck with things in the background to make it harder for you. And don't worry if you do completely shit either, 'cause we've got that one covered too.'

To my mind it shouldn't do anything other than look for another player who's currently requesting an Arena game from the server, and pair you off with them.

That's sort of fair, but I also see the logic in trying to make sure the really good players can't just steamroller their way to 12 wins every time by luckily drawing against fairly noobish players that barely know what they're doing.

Certainly on the receiving end, you could go 0/3 on your Arena because you were randomly matched with someone currently winning 11/0 with a killer deck, and that would suck.

Yup.

You see, all (or as close as makes no difference) the arena runs you have made have benefitted from this. Imagine you've got a new deck, it's okay, and you get three in a row of top players with top decks. You go 0-3. This would happen FAR more often than if there was no matchmaking aspect. Your regular 3-3 or 4-3 runs? No matchmaking and they're probably 1-3 or 0-3.

I imagine that without the matchmaking you'd probably have fallen out of love with the Arena a long time before now.

Not to mention that it improves the quality of the games. When I'm hitting 5 or 6 wins, I know that each game after this is going to be great! You get to 7 wins and every deck you play is strong, and generally with a very good player. It escalates the importance, excitement and enjoyment of each and every game. Otherwise you'd be at 11-0 and face off against someone playing their first ever game with a terrible deck. You crush them; they quit and never play again as they keep getting annihilated... you've gotta say that's significantly less satisfying than knowing you actually earned those wins.

Well they should do some sort of Arena ranking system, rather than do it covertly behind the scenes.

A bit like the Starcraft ladders.

I been doin some countin.

Apparently there are 412 cards in total in the game (not counting golden editions of cards):

Neutral has 157
Each class has 25 Cards (9x25 = 225)
Naxx has 30 Cards


I've added up the cards I have left to collect:

Neutral = 50
Druid = 6
Hunter = 5
Mage = 8
Paladin = 6
Priest = 7
Rogue = 6
Shaman = 4
Warlock = 7
Warrior = 6

Total = 105 cards left to get, of which:

Common = 2
Rare = 34
Epic = 45
Legendary = 24

Which would cost me a grand total of:

Common = 80 dust
Rare = 3400 dust
Epic = 18000 dust
Legendary = 38400 dust

Total = 59880 dust!

Seems I have a way to go yet

Mmm that's fun, I might do the same after this latest arena run. 2/0 atm.

Another 6/3, but disappointed after being at 5/0. There were a couple of matches I really should have won, and it was achingly close in the last game.

Pack (Golden Rare, Rare), 75g and 50 dust.

I'm so glad zoo is this amazing deck, as I only had one more warlock fight to win for my current quest.

7 losses in a row i'm up to now...

...and then I go and win the next one on the 4th turn. I should have posted earlier.

Ok Trooper's card counting got me sufficiently curious as to what my own total was, but I couldn't think of a good way to do it. So I made one:



Tabs for each Hero, with all class cards, plus a neutral tab, which calculates dust requirements, and totals how many sets of cards you have 0, 1 or 2 of.

There's also a grand total tab which adds everything together. I *believe* I've correctly calculated the dust requirements to factor in that you only need 1 of any Legendary rather than 2 for everything else, and of course, Basic Gold cards can only be acquired by levelling your characters.

This spreadsheet contains all of my own cards in the collection, and is built on the assumption that you're aiming for 2 of everything.

Please feel free to download and modify to accommodate your own collection, because this thing just took me at least 2 hours to make!

Edit: There will be *slight* inaccuracies because some cards are rewards for collecting sets of other cards (Captain's parrot, for example) and the gold can only be crafted after acquiring the normal one).

Edit2: And now I can see my collection properly, I've just realised I only needed to make 1 more Murloc to get Old Murk Eye, which I just did! Woo, another Legendary down.

Oh looks interesting EBG I'll give that a go.

Do you certify that it is malware and virus free?

I considered spreadsheeting it, but then I figured there would be someone even more nerdy than me who might

I'll give it a go, cheers.

Yes, just enter your bank account number and sort code and I guarantee* no issues.



* Not guaranteed.

I noticed that you had only calculated the crafting costs for the neutrals, so here is a version with crafting costs for all classes and a summary of cards needed by rarity

Cool. I'll incorporate that and probably doing something to highlight things based on their card type (with relevant colours).

Here you go, now there is a "nicer" totals page which shows each class

Probably could do with a nicer total for everything on that page too, and it might be easier to put in your numbers if the card lists were ordered the same way as they are in the collection.

I'll have a play later if you haven't already.

I am waiting for v6.2 of the spreadsheet, you know the one that inputs the data itself so I don't have to do anything

Good job btw

This is fun!

This is where i'm up to.



The summary page tells you how many normal cards you are missing for each class, their rarity, how much it would cost to craft them. Plus it tells you the same info for the neutral cards, and also all cards.
It also tells you how much dust you have available in any disenchantable golden cards you have in your collection, if you are like me and aren't bothered about them and just use them for their dust value

I'm going through and swapping the cards around so they are ordered by the collection order, which makes it easy to fill in the number, then i'll upload this version.
All you have to do is fill in the cards you have in the relevant tab, and everything is automagically calculated from that.

Having already filled in my cards, this will make switching over to anything new almost impossibly difficult

When I was sourcing the card list, the fields did also contain mana cost, which I discarded as somewhat irrelevent, however the order of the list in the game goes by mana cost then alphabetical, so had I left that in then the 'correct' order would have been easy to implement. Ooops. Sorry about that