Be Excellent To Each Other

It all depends on what your endgame is. I only play constructed so i can grind for gold to play Arena.

Arena is by far the most fun to be had, so i'm not worried about not having those legendary and epic rares.

Still, even without spending money on packs, my Warlock control deck is almost as good as i want it to be. It lacks Ragnaros and the Warlock specific legendary, but besides that it's good to go. I disenchanted two legendary cards that i didn't needed for the molten giants.

I only disenchant stuff if I've got over the two-card minimum in the event I'd ever want to put both of them in a constructed deck. I have however disenchanted any gold cards that I can, as that's pure vanity and the dust is much better used getting the rest of the basics.

If I keep playing for so long that I've got all cards, then I might start to think about spunking disproportional amounts of dust on a gold version of a standard card.

Just had my first foray into arena. Lost the first two HORRIBLY but then pulled one back, lost terribly in my fourth game.

I was rewarded with 30 arcane dust and a pack of cards, but now it wants £1.49 off me to play Arena again or 100 gold.

I'm clearly still far too shit at this game so will carry on playing normal ranked matches I think, and return to Arena at a future date.

Some games seem to go very well but in others I properly get my arse handed to me on a plate, I may even have to start reading up on some of the Hearthstone sites at this rate.

Bastard priest just did some tricky shit with a load of low-value cards and next thing I know he's got an 18 /18 on the battlefield.

Needless to say this one didn't end well.

I really am fumbling around with this game and persisting with my mage, and I appear to be missing a lot of 'must have' cards for the class too, if Hearthpwned has it right.

Just keep playing Arena would be my advice, that's how you start to know which cards are better than which, and its also fairer as you don't need a great deck of your own to start with. My first go in Arena I didn't win a single game, these days average 3 wins I would say, and for that I get a card pack, some dust and some gold.

It costs 100 gold to buy a pack of cards, or 150 gold to enter the arena and you are guaranteed a card pack even if you lose every game, and more than that if you win a couple or more, so it's pretty much a no brainer to go to the Arena rather than buy packs IMO

Hmmm alright then so whilst it costs me £1.99 for two packs of cards in normal play mode, £1.49 gets me an Arena entry and I'll get a pack of cards even if I totally fuck everything up?

Up to now I've only spent £1.99 on two packs of cards, but I can quickly see myself racking up the costs if I get hooked on Arena, 'cause I'll be buggered if I'm going to grind out gold for entries.....

Still, I've cancelled my WoW subscription until the next expansion comes out so I could logically spend £10 per month on Hearthstone Arena entries and not be any worse off overall

I don't think I'm totally rubbish at the game, just had a match against another mage where it was totally obvious he was holding on for his Flamestrike on Turn 7, so I whacked him around enough before that to guarantee victory even though I knew he'd destroy my entire minion line-up on Turn 7.

I've had a lot of matches that had far more subtle strategies than that going on, I win comfortably (or opponent concedes) and I think to myself 'Yeah I'm getting the hang of this' but then I have a couple of matches where I'm pounded into the ground and decide maybe not.....

Fantastic game though, the amount of properly enjoyable time you could get out of it without spending a single penny really is to be commended (a mate at work has been playing it since the closed beta with his missus and they've not spent a penny between them and have never really felt stymied) - so it's nice to see Blizzard getting the Free-To-Play model right.

That aside though, I think they'll made an absolute fucking fortune with it - some folks just aren't going to be able to resist the lure of buying new packs of cards and other goodies. Me included probably.... Gonna wait for the full release before dropping too much cash though.

If you don't keep trying you won't get better at arena. And while i regularly do 6-3 or 7-3, sometimes i also do 1-3. The fact is, better players last longer in the Arena so it's easier to be paired up with them. That means it's a very competitive environment.

Stuff you should know when playing in the Arena:

- Watch your mana curve when building the deck. Most spells should cost between 2 and 4, with the peak at 4. That means some of the most important creatures are some 4 cost ones like the Yeti, Spellbreaker and Dark Iron Dwarf.

- Arena is mostly about the minions. Usually prioritize top creatures over spells.

- Weapons are very important in this environment because of the card advantage they provide (each weapon usually kills 2 creatures). Thus, Paladin and Warrior are probably the best classes.

- Hunter and Warlock aren't good in this environment. Since Warlock is my favourite class i can't help myself in choosing him, but my results are never any good.

Thanks for the tips Mr San, I shall have another go in Arena, once I have enough gold.....

As a general rule of thumb what sort of card balance should you have in a constructed deck? Out of the 30 cards how would you want the various mana costs of cards to be distributed, is it the same as Arena or do different guidelines apply?

When playing constructed there's no rule for that since mana curves may vary with the strategy. A rush deck has a totally different curve than a control deck.

As for arena, since i can't draw here, i just googled for magic the gathering draft mana curves and this one applies perfectly to hearthstone arena (the average curve that is):



More tips:

- When choosing your starting hand avoid keeping spells that cast over 3. Unless it's one of those that are good for early game control like Conflagration or Hellfire.

- Drawing cards is good. Cult master is one of the best minions to draft. Try to play him before you trade blows, because he has a got a huge target on his head and won't last long.

- Silencers are very good. Sometimes they are as good as removal. Spellbreaker is better than the Owl though.

- The Mage class is also very good for the Arena. I forgot to mention it. If you play with Jaina just draft every fireball you can find and try to have 2 Flamestrikes. I don't think more is necessary.

- That 7/6 Goblin that costs 5 is amazing. Draft him. He may backfire if you're playing against the Paladin or Mage through (Freezing and Humility).

I've seen some spectacular plays. Games where I've had full health and strong board control, just to go to dead within a single turn due to an awesome combination.

Mogushan Warden is one of my favourites. If you were to get him out on turn 5, he'll be ready to attack turn 6 at which point you can do a Power Word: Shield, Double Divine Spirit, and an Inner Rage to turn him into a 36/36 that kills the enemy dead, and then some.

Of course, having all of those cards conveniently in your hand to pull it off is the problem. I've died a lot on games I should have won to a Mage's Pyroblast doing a buffed 11 or 12 damage, urrrgh. So annoying! I've also managed to die a lot with my opponent on 1 health. Fun game. I play it enough to complete the daily quests to keep the gold flowing.

Had a terrible run of cards today, bad cards in the arena selection, and even the best of those never drew.
Compound that with the season restarting, so that you are back up against people at the lower ranks with unbeatable decks, and I have gone 0-10 so far today...

It can be annoying when you go up against someone with an uber deck, but I just write those matches off without getting too aerated about it since you'd never really be expected to win anyway.

I do get very pissed off if I make some sort of dreadful mistake that loses me a match though, or see one that looked like a victory be snatched away from me with a fantastic play by my opponent right at the end.

One of my mates went a bit bonkers today and bought 40 packs of cards for £36.99, so not very free-to-play in his case. He did very much enjoy opening them all though.

I'm exactly the same.



I did that once - never again! Such a rip-off for what you get. Total waste of money.

This fucking game!

I've gone from winning 50% of the games I played last week, to going 2 for over 20 matches the past couple of days.

...and since saying that i've won the last 4 games on the trot.

That's Hearthstone for you!

I actually lost this game. Fucking wanker wouldn't even finish me off on the last turn when all he had to do was attack me with the minions that were already on the board, but instead he started tossing himself off by throwing a legendary down and healing himself up and shit like that so I conceded before he could actually kill me.

I hate it when they wank themselves off rather than just taking a basic killing blow.

YES YOU'VE FUCKING WON I UNDERSTAND THAT I DON'T WANT YOUR FUCKING SPUNK IN MY FACE AS WELL YOU CUNT.

Yeah he played the end game very well and he had the cards for the plays so fair play on that, but I also made a couple of mistakes early-mid game that cost me dear (one was a minor mistake but the other definitely cost me the game), burned out the cards in my hand and didn't land the winning blow that I needed to.

God damn this game winds me up far more than it should....

When they do that i just click concede in a hurry. It also annoys the hell out of me.

Erm, bear in mind they're probably doing it for other reasons, like completing a quest to cast spells or play minions worth 5 or more. Very few people waste time for other reasons.

You're not dead until you're dead. I had the most awesome match recently where the guy had lethal on me, but rather than concede I played my Ysera card. It scared the idiot so much that he threw all his minions at it instead of killing me. It gave me just enough of an edge to stay alive, and the game played out to the point where we'd both run out of cards, but because I was a priest and could heal myself every turn, he ended up dying to the card fatigue before me. The guy could have probably killed me at least 3 times but allowed himself to be distracted by what was on the board. Funniest game I've had yet - I think it was in Arena too.

Total amount spent on this game so far: £0.

In that case they can wait a few minutes and do that next turn. Still seems like they're just being asses to me.

Oh, and fuck Priests. Through the face. Multiple times. Them and their cowardly plays, healing spells, health and "attack is equal to health" spells. Etc. They are so incredibly annoying to play against.

I'm in a hotel in York. I know, to stave off boredom i'll play some Hearthstone!

Down for maintenance

Another thing i hate is when people start saying "thank you" for everything you do, implying that you're doing bad plays and actually helping them. Idiots. I'm glad Blizzard eliminated text from the game. i can only wonder what kind of toxic environment that would be.

Meh nuts to that, achievement goals are reached naturally without using an already beaten player to tick off quest objectives, I certainly wouldn't think of doing that myself, and always go for the killing blow as soon as I'm able to do so, anything else is just being rude and an arsehole IMO.

I always give an opponent chance to land the killing blow as that's polite, but if he starts tossing around with grandiose plays or anything else that doesn't just finish me off, I press the concede button and that's that.

Really? Works for me. I see it was down in the early hours, but that's hours ago.

Squelch is the answer for that shit.



Totally agree. However, there IS text, but only amongst 'friends'.

Up and running now

The cool thing about this game is that it's totally laptop friendly, we've got an old Sony Vaio laptop that was pretty damn good back in its day but it's 4 1/2 years old now (Core Duo M, 4GB RAM, 4650M GPU with 1GB of its own RAM, 1080p screen), and of course the battery was totally shagged.

One new battery later and I've got a perfect Hearthstone gaming machine that lasts well over two hours on a single charge, worked very well on Saturday night when Mrs AE was out and AE Jnr was watching a film and then doing all her bedtime routines

(As an aside, the original hard drive the laptop came with died, so I replaced it with a second hand 128GB SSD that I bought for £50, and the bugger absolutely flies, really impressive for such an old laptop.)

Having lots of comms issues tonight. I can see the other guy moving his pointer around and looking at cards, but every so often it just sits there and doesn't allow me to do anything. Occasionally it has frozen for the duration of my turn, which is frustrating as you can imagine...

Is that maybe just down to notoriously horrible hotel internet?

Last time I was in the UK I tried to use the internet there (which the fuckers charged me £10 for) and for any sort of gaming activity it was essentially a waste of time.

It doesn't even load on the hotel internet, this is using my phone which has a strong HSPDA+ signal.
I suspect it is to do with the connection, but when it freezes up all other internet stuff is working fine. Doesn't bode well for how resilient it is going to be!
I tried it on the train via my mobile connection on the way up, planning to play the practice games against the AI, but it turns out even those matches are fully run on the servers and not in the end client at all, so that was a no-go.

I've got every character up to level 10 now though, but I don't want to do any arena until i'm back on a proper connection

You all sound like the kind of people I like to play against. Taking it all personally and easily rattled!

I think my priest is up to level 33, as I like him. Balance in this game is pretty good. A well-played hand by any character can beat me and often does. It's frustrating to lose but I don't think my opponents are pricks because they've won, or even if they chuck down a couple of pointless cards before they kill me.

At the moment the most unbalanced card is the Frothing Beserker. Too much health and the fact it buffs attack when ANY minion is injured is far too powerful. Getting rid of them is disportionally difficult and at the very least its health needs nerfing.

So, you've met the wife?

Well, most people play with silencers, so i don't think the beserker is that powerful.

In fact i don't remember any card right now that is way too powerfull, which is a good sign.

I'd go for the Priest's (spit!) Mind Control card - even though it costs 10 mana it's still extremely annoying to have some wet Priest nick one of your good cards. But then they have other theft related cards too. Should just rename Priest to Thief.

I had an hilarious game once. I believe I had a nice, game-winningly strong Gurubashi Berseker that a Priest stole from me using a Mind Control.

"Ha!", I thought. "You think you're so clever?", and pow, I stole it right back with my own Mind Control. I chucklesomely then said 'Thank you' to indicate my smugness.

The bastard then stole it right back with a second Mind Control. I had to laugh.

Just had arguably the dream game.

I was playing my warrior against another warrior but the dude was seriously holding back so I knew he had some heavy stuff and/or specific plays coming on later in the game, he was kind of 'parrying' me more than anything else, and holding onto a lot of cards.

True enough out comes the 8 mana legendary warrior Grommash Hellscream card (decent base stats and a savage +6 enrage).

I've got my Faceless Manipulator in my hand so immediately play that and copy Hellscream, then I attack my own Hellscream with Cruel Taskmaster which adds on +2 attack at the cost of 1 health AND triggers the +6 enrage so all of a sudden I've got a 12/9 Hellscream of my own and a taunt down too.

He then replies with a fucking army of murlocs which he's been holding onto and they all buff each other too, so my Hellscream only has one turn in him, since he's missing a taunt I take 12 health off his hero and let his Hellscream live.

He then loses most of his murloc army to take out my Hellscream, and then enrages his Hellscream, ready to unload a can of whip-ass on me next turn.

Oops! He's now got an attack of 7 or better so my Big Game Hunter one shots him.

Needless to say he didn't win the game.

I'd love to watch a replay of that game, it was so perfect you could almost taste it.

And now I've just lost three on the trot and my dream of getting Rank 19 has been shattered.

Some of these legendary cards are stupidly powerful and hard to counter if you're running with pogger decks like I am.

Have you seen the image with all the basic decks builds in it? It's a good starting point for each class.

http://i.imgur.com/OmfQKEG.png

Hmmm... servers seem to be down at the moment

and back up

This is the kind of thing I get addicted to, so I must avoid it.

Honestly Curio I'm very much the obsessional type myself (as my total WoW playing time will bear testament to...) but it genuinely is easy to take this game in relatively small doses. Just 15-30 minutes if you feel like it, or a longer session if you're in the mood.

It's an exquisite piece of work, it really is. And for free, why not give it a try.....?

I don't have any legendary and i'm usually around ranks 12 and 13. I don't think they are essential at all, which is another proof of how good the game is.

Magic The Gathering was ruined by overpowered rares, which is something i hope it doesn't happen with hearthstone.

Well yes it is entirely possible I'm just a bit rubbish

Nearly hit Rank 19 before and that's the best I've managed so far

FUCK. PRIESTS.

Seriously, fuck them in their fucking eyeholes.

EDIT - Removed unnecessary pic of man being fucked in the eyehole

If i do okay this then I'm definitely going to do so as a Priest

I posted that last night when I was a drop of wine to the good and got VERY ANNOYED at the cheaty antics of a priest. I couldn't work out how to delete the attachment so re-posted it this morning minus the pic.

(The pic wasn't that bad, it was just a still from A Serbian Film where Miloš beats the shit out of Raša and then kills him by jamming his erect knob into his eye socket, but the pic I took wasn't that graphic so not to be too NSFW and stuff.)

Priests bug the hell out of me - they steal cards/minions, copy and buff their own health and that of their minions and are no fun at all to play against.

Stop whining and have better tactics