Magic: The Combattening - Hearthstone

[Numtini]

Lol just got an invite while watching Hex download.

Edit: followed by battlenet crashing.

Edit: Battlenet up this morning, authenticator keyfob out of sync with Bliz. This must be a sign from God not to play this.

[Paelos]

My keyfob was out of sync too. I did a quick CS chat online and got that sorted.

[Numtini]

I ended up removing it via the webform and uploading my drivers license, then adding it again.

[Hoax]

- it's much better in that department than SolForge, for example.

Are they paying mtgo players to shill for SolForge or something lately? I keep seeing people who are smarter about ccg's than me saying SolForge is a real game.

[Ingmar]

I have no idea. It's terrible, but it seems to fool some people into seeing depth that isn't there. The arguments in its favor are all about 'it's so great that you can't get mana screwed' and such, it gives me a headache talking to those people.

[schild]

Solforge could be automated. Easily. It's shit.

[Maledict]

 Sorry but that's crap.

Solforge is a good game, it has plenty of depth - it's just not in the normal place you expect to find it. There's a large amount of thinking and choices around what to level up and when.  There's a reason a lot of decent players are pushing it (and were involved in designing it).

[schild]

Sorry but that's crap.

Solforge is a good game, it has plenty of depth - it's just not in the normal place you expect to find it. There's a large amount of thinking and choices around what to level up and when.  There's a reason a lot of decent players are pushing it (and were involved in designing it).

Ok, I'll bite, in what abnormal place is that depth found?

[jakonovski]

The customer's wallet?






 

[Xilren's Twin]

Yeah i just got in this friday, so spent some time in it while waiting for later hexing.  Seems ok as a game; my kids really seem to like it, but thus far, not much depth im seeing.
Now granted, WoW players have show much willingness to spend money on sparkle ponies and such, so while i am sure there will plenty of folks spending money on this I am not seeing any reason why I ever would.

[Malakili]

I'm another one who got into this last weekend and just got around to trying it out this evening.  It's slick and fast paced, but ultimately pretty boring from what I can tell.  I'm not sure if I'll play it anymore after the hour or so I spent so far.  I can see it being popular as a card game for people that don't play card games, essentially.  But I can't see them breaking into the TCG crowd much.

[lamaros]

I got a beta key. I don't think I'll take it up though, so if anyone wants it let me know.

[rk47]

lamaros a friend of mine is bugging me all the time for a key, if you're willing to PM me the key, I can spare you some steam coupons in exchange.

[Tannhauser]

If anyone has a spare key I'd be grateful.

[Lucas]

Got my EU (italian) beta key yesterday around 10pm CET . Time to put  my total incompetence at card games into practice 

[Hutch]

Does everyone start off as a Mage, or is your initial/tutorial deck selected randomly?

Anyway, I started off as a Mage. In the small sample size of games that I played, I observed that I did pretty well against other casters, and got stomped by any hunter or warrior that stepped to the plate. This was both in practice and play modes.

I tried a couple of different approaches to deck-building, but wasn't having as much success as I'd like. Granted that my Mage is only leveled to 11 or so, I accept that I haven't put a lot of effort (or money?) into discovering a winning strategy.

When I finally did unlock Hunter, I switched. My hunter is now level 8, I've leveled him up almost exclusively in Play mode, and I've lost maybe one or two games so far. My strategy is simple. Stack the deck with minions, especially beasts. Combo them whenever possible with cards that buff them, which is one of the strengths of the Hunter deck. Have minion-clearing cards like Multi-shot, Arcane Shot, and Explosive shot handy. Plink away at the opponent with steady shot (the Hero power) whenever I have 2 mana laying around.

So, at a low level, and anecdotally, the Hunter seems to be easier to win with than the Mage.

I've spent zero dollars on the game. I've bought three of the 100-gold packs so far; that's how much gold I've earned from the in-game questing system.

I haven't tried the Arena yet; if I'm reading things right, this is Hearthstone's version of drafting.

[Ragnoros]

Does everyone start off as a Mage,

Yes

Anyway, I started off as a Mage. In the small sample size of games that I played, I observed that I did pretty well against other casters, and got stomped by any hunter or warrior that stepped to the plate. This was both in practice and play modes.

The game definitely has a bit of Rock, Paper, Scissors feel with champions. Warriors wreck my Mage too.

I tried a couple of different approaches to deck-building, but wasn't having as much success as I'd like. Granted that my Mage is only leveled to 11 or so, I accept that I haven't put a lot of effort (or money?) into discovering a winning strategy.

Pro-Tip: You stop getting new cards at level 10. After that it's just gold (read: foil) versions of the ones you already have.

Hunter, I switched. My hunter is now level 8, I've leveled him up almost exclusively in Play mode, and I've lost maybe one or two games so far.

Yeah, I won a LOT when I started playing. People are bad at cardgames. However card quality (read:cash) trumps skill majorly in this game. So expect to start getting trounced by ridiculous cards shortly.

I haven't tried the Arena yet; if I'm reading things right, this is Hearthstone's version of drafting.

Yup, sorta. You pay 150g, then build a deck by picking between 3 random cards, 30 times. It's kinda shit, especially given that the number of rare cards you get is random. Then you play until you lose three times or win nine times and get some prizes (a booster + 40-160ish gold depending on wins, plus potentially other cards/crafting dust).

[Lucas]

As a starting Mage, lost countless matches in a row against AI hunter and warrior, and finally managed to win my first match against the (AI) shaman on my second try. I'm so GOOD    . Currently at lv 7

[Xilren's Twin]

I'll just post something i wrote about HS elsewhere.
Having played the beta for a few days, i can generally agree with others comments. Fun, fast paced, but missing much of the depth and complexity of Magic.
In greater detail, 30 card decks with any single card limited to 2 copies. You CAN run out of cards in a drawn out game, or if both players use a lot of draw spells, at which point you take 1 damage your first turn having no cards in library; 2 damage the next turn, 3 the following etc etc. In other words an empty library is not an auto win, but an escalating damage time bomb.
This means each deck more or less has to play an aggro role. No alternate win conditions, no mill, no graveyard manipulation, etc. You basically have aggro and mid-range aggro.

There are no actions you can take during your opponents turn - no instants. It's all summon creature, cast sorceries, summon equipment or use character ability. The only exception to this are Trap cards, which you play on your turn and if their conditions are met, they trigger when your opponent does something. Example, a trap that when your character is damaged, it does 2 damage to the whole opponents team. Or a trap that triggers when your opponent summons a creature, you get a copy of that creature. Lack of reactivity means less complexity. In magic terms, this means no counterspells, no mid combat tricks, no activated/triggered abilities on your opponents turn other than the few trap cards etc.

The other big issue is not unique to Hearthstone, but more pronounced due to no trade ability - the high rarity cards are way more powerful than common cards. To get them, you either need to grind a ton of matches to earn gold to buy packs of 5 cards that might have a rare or higher (i.e. win 3 matches to earn 10 gold - packs cost 100 gold), or you need to buy packs with real money.  Serious magic players don't buy packs to get the cards they want, they buy singles, or buy in bulk and trade. With HS, even though the game is technically free to play, it seems much more pay to win then even magic, and for less reason. With the small deck sizes, having 1-3 really powerful cards becomes much more noticeable and some of the folks i've played had much more than that.

The limited area is like a draft knock off where you don't keep the cards, and your winnings are pretty low. The crafting tool to turn extra copies of cards into crafting resources is very expensive, and only works on rare and above cards. There's a large character level grind related to the MMORPG which seems totally unneccesary here. etc.

TL;DR version - decent fun but very shallow and potentially dangerous to your wallet. Shore is Purty though...

[Fabricated]

Got into the beta. Fun, but not exactly the deepest game out there. Probably would be pretty fun for a fuck-around game on a tablet.

[Simond]

I'm another one who got into this last weekend and just got around to trying it out this evening.  It's slick and fast paced, but ultimately pretty boring from what I can tell.  I'm not sure if I'll play it anymore after the hour or so I spent so far.  I can see it being popular as a MMO for people that don't play MMOs, essentially.  But I can't see them breaking into the Everquest crowd much.

Serious Internet Critics, circa nine years ago, about another Blizzard product. 

[Merusk]

Question was asked at Blizzcon about trading.  The answer was "Never."

Basically he said, "It makes new players not know the value of a card, so we aren't going to do it.  That's why we have the crafting system."  (And this is in 'no way' linked to being able to sell more cards than if trading were there!   )

[Tannhauser]

You stay classy Blizzard!

[K9]

Coming to Android and IOS next year. Cool cool.

[Fabricated]

Man, the 1/3 priest minion that lets you draw a card whenever a minion is healed is kinda fucking awesome if anyone is stupid enough to not immediately blow any burn/removal they have on it.

Also I guess there's no max hand size.

[Der Helm]

I am interested in a beta key as well. Just in case another one pops up. 

[Merusk]

I am interested in a beta key as well. Just in case another one pops up. 

Open beta is"soon" so more keys might not be distributed.

From watching some of the vs. matches on blizzcon, I'm not a fan of the game board or card design.  Mechanics seem interesting but I'd agree it's lacking the. Depth of magic because there doesn't seem to be a winning strategy beyond aggro & push.  Paladin decks were rocking shit.

[Job601]

There is a max hand size; when you draw too many cards you automatically discard the new ones instead of getting to choose.  This game is definitely not as deep as magic, but I do think that most of the things it streamlines away are the least fun part of magic (not getting to play your spells, turn 1 combos, having your stuff destroyed before you get to use it, etc.)  A big part of what makes Hearthstone fun to play it that the UI is very fast and responsive; on your turn you can execute your strategy with tons of fast clicks and it feels great.  I guess this is what people call Blizzard polish, but I bet achieving that feeling is a big part of why the game doesn't have instants, so it's a game-design decision too.  Compared to magic, the card set feels pretty small, and they'll have to keep adding content to keep me interested.

If you play casually, the free to play model lets you earn 50 gold a day pretty quickly, enough to buy a pack every two days or play arena every three days.  If you do well in arena, you can go infinite and earn lots of gold, but you have to get lucky in deck construction to have a shot.

There are no draw-go style control decks, but there's a hunter deck that relies on early removal and combos you out, a priest deck that uses cheap removal and card draw to get to late game, and so on.  The variety of possible strategies is not as extreme as in magic, but it's there.

[Falconeer]

I've been playing around with this, and I am a bit confused. Back in the days I played a lot of the original WoW TCG, and knowint Cryptozoic left to make its own game (Hex) I was expecting to find a very different card game here. Instead, this definitely feels like a Blizzarded version of the original Cryptozoic's WoW TCG, which is a good thing to me. Granted, there are differences, but there is double the amount in similarities.

I can see why it isn't as deep as the other big ones out there, especially with just one set of cards, but I have to say I am positively impressed especially cause it fels like I found a long lost friend.

No comment on the monetization system or lack of trading, as I haven't really touched those aspects yet.

[Fabricated]

I dunno if this will hold my interest long enough for me to do much playing it on PC since I have better games to play, but man it kinda makes me wish I had gotten an LTE enabled version of my new Nexus. I'd play the shit out of this on a tablet if I was on a plane or vacation when I had to kill time.

[Rendakor]

Got the beta and liking it so far. How does buying packs work now? Will I get an equal amount of packs or whatever when the game comes out?

[Falconeer]

As far as I know, yes. It is good because if you got shitty cards you will get a new chance at rares and stuff. It is bad because if you got awesome cards there's a chance you will get shitty ones instead with the wipe. But yes, I think all you have spent on packs will be refunded to you in the shapes of new packs. No idea about the money you spent on arena though...

[luckton]

They already did the wipe they planned on doing.  As of right now, barring some huge upset, whatever you have now will be carried over to Live, which already has half of the internet trolls trolling on other MMO betas about why they can't keep their beta characters "because Hearthstone is letting you keep your cards." 

[Numtini]

I'm pretty much the target audience and I love the game. It's accessible, not so much in being remedial, but that it doesn't feel like you're doomed to get beat down for six months while you're learning.

I'm not sure where it goes in six months though. Maybe the gold slows down, but it seems like if you catass for a while, you're going to have a ludicrous deck in very short order.

[Quinton]

I gave this another look this evening and lost a few hours to it (played Mage to lv 11 against AI, unlocked all classes, played a few random matches and an arena match (1 win / 3 losses).

While it is definitely less rich than magic it's still pretty fun and it plays quickly, which is nice.

Things that took me a bit to wrap my head around (compared to magic or other CCGs I've played):
- creature health does not regenerate at the beginning of your turn
- there is only one resource type, you gain one resource per turn until you have 10 total
- there's no blocking, just creatures with taunt which prevent creatures from attacking your character while they are on the board
- characters can wield weapons allowing them to directly attack creatures or other characters

The Arena mode (their equivalent to draft) seems like fun -- choose one of three randomly presented characters, then 30x choose one of three randomly presented cards, then you play as many games as you like against random opponents until you lose three (total) games or decide to retire.  Prizes are related to how many games you win (not sure if you get some consolation prize for 0 wins or if you just get NOTHING).  Entry is free for your first ever Arena match, otherwise $1.99 or 150 gold.