Be Excellent To Each Other

Really, REALLY starting to hate these fucking secret loaded decks.

Sneaky cunts.

http://wow.joystiq.com/2014/04/02/heart ... and-canad/

The ipad rollout has started.

I expect the ipad version will increase my play rate significantly!

Yet another game on the way from Blizzard, and I expect i'll be addicted to this too, from the looks of it!

Isn't it only available in Zimbabwe and Morocco at the moment though?

TBH considering how fucking flaky the logon servers already are I'm not sure adding a world of iPads into the melange is a great idea....

A couple of my friends and Mrs AE are both waiting on the iPad version before they have a crack at it.

It's almost enough to make me want to get a little Windows 8.1 touchscreen laptop to play it on because it's just so perfect for touch.

Aus, NZ and Canada at the moment.
They are starting the release slowly, I imagine to try and limit the meltdown

That was my initial thought as well - it seems ridiculous that they are adding more users into a system that's already buckling at the knees (and regularly collapses). I'm not sure what the hell is going on with Blizzard's servers - some issues do seem to be down to DDOS attacks, but the majority simply seem to be down to very poor infrastructure. Here we have a company that is worth Billions of dollars that doesn't seem to want to invest in capable server hardware.

Seems like a recipe for disaster (and lost customers) to me.

Blizzard are great at marketing and putting an audio and visual shine to their products released over the past few years, but they truly suck when it comes to making good, reliable software; good, reliable servers and, to cap it all, their customer feedback is bloody dire. Many people moan about all these probvlems but seemingly bugger all is done about it (there was a large thread on the issue on Reddit only a couple of days ago). At most, all you'll get from Blizzard is a mealy-mouthed apology. Have they been taking lessons from politicians?

In all fairness WoW was mostly solid from about Burning Crusade onwards, although there was a period of several months during Wrath whereby low-level instances were effectively broken because there were so many high level characters running other instances constantly on farm for specific items. There was a running joke at the time about fighting the 'door boss', whereby you'd run in and out of the door to an instance to look at the message 'Additional instances cannot be launched' - FOR THE ENTIRE EVENING.

That aside though, I often thought that the whole WoW infrastructure was impressively solid, especially when you considered the incredible length and breadth of the game.

Hearthstone on the other hand hasn't been brilliant up to now, I was surprised they brought it out of beta TBH, there are still issues with the client (some graphics rendering is bust, for example) and the frontend servers aren't at a level of reliability I'd expect for a live release.

I didn't envisage them rolling out the iPad version until the PC/Mac versions were pretty much 100% solid, which they patently are not.

I'd be interested to know how much cash Hearthstone is making for them, and what percentage of players are actually spending any money, because I'm wondering if Blizzard have been 'too good' at making an 'ethical' F2P game, insofar as it really is a 100% playable game even if you never spend a penny. Which is great for us, but not so great for the bean counters at Blizzard HQ.

There's a shared aspect of the infrastructure with WoW, Diablo 3 (just had a paid-for expansion released for it), Starcraft 2 (ongoing commercial enterprise) - so maybe they've pushed Hearthstone to the bottom of the resources pile because it's not making that much money for them?

I've spent £1.99 on the game, and I must be pushing 100 hours of playtime, and I'm not even remotely inclined to spend another penny on the game. You don't need too much of the player base to be of the same opinion for it to stop being a viable commercial proposition for them....

Just had the most amazingly infuriating game against what can only be called a 'Hunter Secret Deck' - I lost track of how many he played but it must have been at least 6.

I know what all the various hunter secrets are so I tried to play around them, and managed to get him one turn away from death, at which point he did a double kill command to just about finish me off.

Secrets annoy me in the same way that priests annoy me, you just don't know what it is you're playing against, like when a priest steals your cards.

Why are they even in the fucking game? (Secrets that is, not priests. Although priests too, now I come to think about it )

I swear to god I have to occasionally check my mage deck just to make sure Flamestrike is still in there, since IT NEVER FUCKING TURNS UP WHEN I WANT IT.

I know RNG cuts both ways but fuck me it stings when you're on the wrong side of it.

I just had the most hilarious card-draw game ever. Playing hunter in Arena.

I've got a Starving Buzzard on the field, and the enemy has two minions.

I play a second Buzzard: 1 Card drawn.
I play a River Crockolisk: Another 2 cards drawn.
I play Unlease the Hounds. FOUR cards drawn.
I play Unleash the Hounds again.... ANOTHER FOUR CARDS.

In a single turn I overdrew and lost 3 cards in total I think.

I've got 1 mana left and also have Timber Wolf.... yep. That was a great game. He conceded when I had 1 card left (and he had 14).

Oh I also had two mountain giants. I played both on the next turn for 3 and 4 mana respectively. Comedy!

Ooohhhh you'd be off my Christmas card list with that malarkey!

Best one I had last night was a really good game against a druid, proper nip and tuck all the way until he pulled a Ragnaros out which gave me an 8 to the face and very close to death.

On my turn I Facelessed it to get my own, then Big Game Huntered his, killed his remaining minion on the board using my last minion (think there may have been a hero power in there too for an extra one damage), and with him having no minions left my Ragnaros was 100% sure to hit him in the face for 8, to finish the game.

Generally speaking I don't find the legendaries cause me a huge amount of trouble on their own, but in decks that are packing two or three of the buggers, I do struggle.

Hey it's totally legit

Just did something similar in my last game. Now 8-1 on this arena run with this deck.

Something I have noticed, if I play second I generally win, if I play first I generally lose.
I'll need to keep a record in future I think, but the coin plus extra card for going second doesn't seem that balanced...

You know I've been having exactly the same thought the last few nights playing with the Trump mage deck, and I'm at the point now where I groan if I go first, as it really does seem to put you on the back foot right from the off.

Even if you've got a 1 mana card to play if you go first, it's nothing like as tasty as having the extra card and the coin to play with.

The only decks I've played with where I want to go first are rush decks, for everything else give me the extra card and the coin.

Gah just came up against the FULL Warlock Murloc rush deck, the motherfucker had them all, including the legendaries.

Effectively unbeatable if they get the perfect draws unless you have a deck specifically built to counter it IMO.

I'm using ArenaValue at the moment, not to choose my arena cards particularly, but it's a nice tracking tool to see how well I do at arena if you create an account.
Takes a little bit of time to do an arena deck with it, but I like the stats

The way I typically use it is to look at the cards, choose what I would choose, then put it into the arenavalue site and see if it agrees with my choice. 90% of the time it chooses the same card, 5% of the time it chooses a different card but I disagree, 5% of the time if chooses a different card and makes me rethink and go with its choice.

It's a pain to do so on my phone, and when playing HS it won't let me use any other program on my PC, no matter what I do. Is there some setting that stops it from taking up the screen no matter what freaking thing I alt+tab to?

Try taking it off fullscreen?

That works!

Have you got a few cards from card packs, but don't really know how good they are?
Are you coming up to 400 dust and not sure what to craft next?
Are you used to playing one class, but not sure where to start with a new class?

Then you need http://www.hearthhead.com !

Go to http://www.hearthhead.com/collection and tell it what cards you have in your collection (you only need to put in the expert cards, so it doesn't take too long)
Then go to to the decks section http://www.hearthhead.com/decks and apply the following filters:

Cards in my collection = 30
Crafting cost > 0 (to get rid of all the basic decks on there)
My crafting cost <= "the amount of dust you have"

The sort the resulting list by ranking.

Tada! you now have a list of decks, sorted by how good they are considered to be, that you can have a look at and see if any fit your play style, and that are available for you to use with your current collection and dust.

Just got a decent arena deck as a Druid, but went 1-3. Don't think I made any mistakes at all, just the opposition decks were ridiculously strong and lucky. Pretty much every time I played a card the oppo would destroy it and then play two minions. Get a strong minion out; instantly destroyed. Get lots of small ones out, all destroyed in one shot. Their decks just seemed perfectly set up, like you'd see in constructed rather than with any degree of randomness to them.

Oh well, c'est la vie.

Probably all using arenavalue.com......., which is the problem with a Blizzard game when the mix-maxers get their hands on it.

After my 0/3 Arena wipeout on Friday and subsequent sulk and strop I have stopped playing arena and now just buy packs of cards with gold instead.

I think Ranked is a nice middle ground between Arena and Casual, for now at least until it pisses me off in some yet unknown way and I have another tremendous sulk with it and U-turn again.

Just focusing on trying to climb with Trump's mage deck and doing the daily quests.

Have been enjoying this game alot, can be frustrating but hey!

Mainly have my Paladin deck for ranked but have a good Mage deck also. I have totally lucked out with a few legendaries from packs earned in the arena. Have Alexandra (has won me a quite a few games) and can't remember the other one as it is rubbish and I don't use it (Rubbish with regards to the deck style I play.

In the last season I made it to the giddy high of Rank 17, then had a shocking run and fell back to rank 19. Bloody Murloc decks are just pure evil cheese, Mages generally give me more problem than Priests but guess that comes from the deck setup again.

Out of curiosity I have decided to have a poke at the American side, and it seems to be alot softer (might help that I am playing Trumps mage deck, just got her to lev 14) than the European side, could be I am just abit better at the game now. In the free arena game you get I had a nice deck fall and went 10 - 3, bit annoyed as the first loss was the 2nd game and it was due to the game bugging and me not being able to use the bloody card I needed. The last 2 losses happened when I had 10 wins under my belt and thought I might go all the way.

Think I am going to see how high I can get in the American leagues using the mage deck, and since it is on a different server I feel no qualms about dusting all the cards other than mage.

Oooh, good idea, I'll do the same I think and use the US server to dust all the cards and focus on just one deck...

Pretty impressive pack of cards in colour terms, but the legendaries are crap!

Oh well, it was an exciting pack to open at least.

Started doing this for a warrior deck on the US server. Takes ages to get through all the tutorial missions!

Hogger is pretty nice, assuming you can keep him alive for the first round.

That's the problem with him though, he's more of a gamble card than anything else, if your opponent understands his potential threat then he won't last long, immediately negating his ability. (So he'll either get killed/sheeped/silenced as soon as you play him.)

I'd rather have a 6/7 Boulderfist out than a 4/4 plus 2/2 given that he costs six mana so the game is already some way along by the time you can play him.

I might consider using him in a deck other than my Trump mage deck, but he's certainly got no place in that deck.

And as for Malygos, total wank of a card.

At least it gives me something to disenchant for a chunk of dust

Hmmm... maybe I shouldn't have jumped straight into ranked mode, before even getting all the basic cards! Still, i've won one out of the three i've played so far...

Got to Rank 15 Two Star but then lost 6 on the trot and I'm now on the cusp of dropping back down to Rank 17.

This game is so infuriating.

And yet so compelling.

ONWARD TO BATTLE.

Yup thats exactly what I did, Americans are so squishy

I'm not using any reference sites when picking Arena decks. I'd prefer to go with my own sense of what's good, and I don't think I'm too bad at it.

I've had a nice positive run at Arena lately, I only really lose when the initial draft gives me nothing but terrible cards. Sometimes you never even see a class-specific option!

Beating up Americans is practically cheating!

I might partake of a bit myself though, since I can't get past Rank Bastard 15, and am currently back down at 17 again

Was just in a game where I was waiting on my Flamestrike for about 5 turns, seriously, any of them would have been good for me.

End game, I control the board down enough turn after turn, we're both down to three cards and both top-dealing.

Finally he's got me UNLESS I CAN DRAW THE FLAMESTRIKE, get an Azure Drake instead which I play for sake of it, and that deals me the Flamestrike which of course I can't play because the Azure Drake already cost me 5 mana that turn.

Sickening RNG in this game when you're on a bad run, down to Rank Fucking 18 now.

Last night it was fun, tonight I'm wondering why I bother.

Either way I don't feel like investing a penny beyond the £1.99 I spent on the beta, and even that I wish I hadn't bothered with because the legendary was crap anyway.

Wow. Playing against a Priest. Winning by a mile. He brings out the attack = health minion, buffs it to 20/20 and that's game over.

Yeah everyone hates Priests, apart from EBJ

Do watch out for them if they seem to be 'not doing much' and you think you are indeed winning by a mile, they're probably just trying to keep you at bay until they have the cards to pull off one of their ridiculous combos.

I find it's best to keep all over Priests like a cheap suit, especially their gimmicky minions, even if it costs you more cards/spells than it appears to be worth in the process.

Not that I'm one to give advice, last night I was looking pretty good for getting to Rank 14 if I could maintain my winning streak, finished tonight in the doldrums of Rank 18 and feeling very sorry for myself.

#firstworldproblems

Heh. Close game against a Rogue. I have a 5/7 out, he has nothing, we're both top drawing.

He pulls Ragnaros.

And then next card Faceless Manipulator.

LOL!

I'm rank 19 on the US server now, I think. I'm enjoying playing as a warrior, I just took out a priest in round 6

7/3 in arena.

Lost the first two, then won 7 on the trot with a Druid. Was doing ok until I came up against a Mage who had 3 good legendaries in his arena draw! Caine, Black night, and another one which I can't remember (low mana, deathrattle is to draw a card I think)

Lore Walker Cho priest synergy



Shame they didn't get the inner fire off, but over 1 billion health before it crashed out

Was having a lot of fun on the American servers last night, 10/3 on arena followed by a epic win streak on ranked. Americans do seem to be ALOT worse on arena.

Beat 3 murloc decks in a row along with some on others and hit Rank 14. Mage deck seems to be able to stay on top of the Murloc hoard now, have they been nerfed? Or have my skillz increased? Will let you know when I manage to tank back to 20 tonight

Old video - power word shield hasn't given +3 health for ages.

Christ, annoying accents on those Americans, and they spend two minutes explaining what is an incredibly basic behaviour before even starting. They mince on about it, torturously, the entire time.

Still found it funny. And with the dislike of american accents I would have thought you would be trouncing the Yanks in glee on the American servers

Can't be arsed to build up another collection on a separate server, just to score some easy wins against Americans who barely have the cognisance to use a mouse.

Heh, just lost to a murloc rush deck in arena. That's a pretty ballsy card choice to try and build!

Hmmm... Something I have noticed, the games around the 20-18 rank are harder and you often come up against people with legendaries. Yet once you get to 17 and above, it's relatively easy until you get closer to single figures.

Have you noticed that every so often you start a game and the other person immediately quits? I expect those are shit players with good cards, who are purposefully dropping to the bottom of the ranking, so they can beat up on the people with much fewer good cards. I can't see any other reason for it?

From what I understand, some people deliberately hang down in the 18-20 rank when mining for gold. With a decent deck and superior experience you can trash players at that level quickly, and so complete your daily quests a lot easier than if you try to grind it out against the top-rankers who are more your level.

I see the logic in that, though I'd never feel it necessary to do it myself.

How many Flamestrikes do you guys run with in Constructed on your mage decks.

Trump got to Legend with 1 (after having run with 2 for a while), sometimes I really wish I (a) Had two in there anyway and (b) Had the better opportunity to at least get one of them when I want it. Losing against a rush deck before seeing the Flamestrike I know is in there being dealt to me is soooooo annoying.

But at the same time I look at the rest of the deck and wonder what the hell I'd take out to make room for the extra Flamestrike.

I've lost the Big Game Hunter to let the Earthen Ring Farseer back in.

This is my current mage deck

mage 2

• 1 x Chillwind Yeti
• 1 x Spellbreaker
• 2 x Flamestrike
• 1 x Arcane Explosion
• 2 x Boulderfist Ogre
• 2 x Acidic Swamp Ooze
• 1 x Raging Worgen
• 2 x Frostbolt
• 1 x Archmage Antonidas
• 2 x Mana Wyrm
• 2 x Water Elemental
• 1 x Azure Drake
• 1 x Sen'jin Shieldmasta
• 1 x Harvest Golem
• 1 x The Black Knight
• 1 x Pyroblast
• 1 x Ironbeak Owl
• 2 x Fireball
• 1 x Arcane Missiles
• 2 x Polymorph
• 1 x Gurubashi Berserker
• 1 x Amani Berserker

Another incredibly frustrating session, the number of decks I'm coming up against now that aren't what I'd call 'gimmick' decks as such, but just 100% focused on a certain style

SHAMAN - Maxing out on overload and alternating with 'normal' turns, so overload to fuck you up, which takes your turn to come back from, then they get a normal turn in, then another overload to fuck you up again, rinse wash repeat.

ROGUE - Combo shit, time and time again, chaining that shadowstep thing (think it's that) with the SI3 or whatever it is, just endless free goes basically. I know they're rogues and that, but there are so many fucking slippery things they can do.

HUNTER - Yeah we know already. Very secret heavy it seems to me with the usual combos on cheap cards.

WARLOCK - Murlocs, yeah, cheers.

And so on, it's a relief just to get a game that isn't against a one-trick-pony deck, TBH.

Funnily enough it's possibly priests that are bothering me the least at the moment.

Still absolutely cannot get past Rank 15.