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Hearthstone: Because what Magic really needed was F2P mechanics

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I thought the pity timer worked independently for each expansion set. Like if I open 40 packs of Witchwood and 40 packs of KFT then I'll get 2 legendaries, but they won't affect each others timers. 

 

The annoying thing is I've already DE'd Millhouse a long time ago. I now know you can't open duplicate legendaries so at least I can't pull him again. 

 

Do you think mechs are actually going to be a thing? The community looks pretty split on them. 

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That could well be true, I didn't look up the details of how it works.

 

Now that all the cards are out, I think Mech Paladin has the most potential because the legendary spell can get you a lot of value and affect the board immediately (if you resurrect Mechs that you gave Rush to somehow). I think Warrior mostly has other options, but still will run a few mechs because Dr. Boom looks good. The Hunter mechs look like a weaker version of the current Deathrattle deck themed around recruiting. I figure there's also going to be at least one surprisingly effective Aggro Mech deck (maybe from a different class) that will make use of Wargear somehow. I think that could be one of the sleeper hits, at least early on before everything stabilizes in another lategame Druid meta.

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I bought 11 packs with gold and opened the 3 free ones and got 4 legendaries! Not too bad considering my luck before. One of them was Dr. Boom who I was super excited about, but it seems Warrior has gotten the shitty end of the stick again. Not sure how well he'll do in the future. 

 

I've been playing Spiteful Druid with essentially a lot of tech options and Floop for a third Summoner or Fungalmancer (or hopefully Keleseth in the future!). I've been running 2 Spellbreakers, 1 Gluttonous Ooze, 1 MCT, 1 Blood Knight with a few of them replacing the old Druid of the Scythe slots. It's been working well so far, although I haven't seen too much value out of the Blood Knight so far. 10-5 so far against a lot of the Druid variants and that's with me even accidentally throwing games when I didn't see lethal. It's done quite well against Control Lock too as I can often just get a lot of early pressure, ignore/freeze/taunt their big threats and go face and then close the deal with a Kelesethed/Fungalmancered Leeroy. It also helps that people will tend to mulligan thinking I'm playing some big Druid. 

 

How's the meta treating you so far? It seems like mechs are cute, but not really seeing anything crazy so far. 


 

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How's the climb this season? I managed to get to rank 9 and just haven't have had the time/commitment to keep going. I also keep getting frustrated and just giving up. Odd Paladin also did pretty well for me statistically speaking, but man do I hate playing that deck. I actually dislike playing many aggro decks since they're so one tracked.

 

I'm actually really pissed off about the nerfs as I recently crafted Alune and Stargazer Luna for a total of 3200 dust and then they nerfed Mana Wyrm which ultimately crippled the deck. I can't see them releasing many more aggro cards for mage in the future since that seemed to be the idea of murdering Mana Wyrm. I really wish I'd crafted Hadranox and The 9 Mana Recruiting Guy since they're the only cards I'm missing from big/taunt druid and it seems that Druid is, and forever will be, God Tier.

 

I did manage to get my first 11 key run in arena the other day thanks to Houndmaster Shaw and 2 fungal mancers allowing me to do crazy value trades.

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I've never really climbed and am not about to start, however...

 

After having as legendaries this expansion Dr Morrigan and Harbinger Celestia, I decided to just look at the commons and rares I own to make something simple.

 

Having a lot of fun playing "budget" Deathrattle Hunter and some sort of Shield-a-din. Ladder at rank 15-20 is fun. Haven't encountered a single ranked Druid all season.

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Why have you never really tried climbing?

 

Man, that's unlucky for your legendaries. I got Harbinger Celestia as my latest Boomsday legendaries, and Aviana Duskbringer as my last Witchwood one. That was pretty painful.

 

Are you excited for Blizzcon? I'm not sure how much stuff they'll anounce HS wise. I think there might be a tease for the expansion, but maybe not even that.

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I don't really have the will nor time to climb these days. Because of that, I don't craft cards anymore and just play with what I open up (been playing since beta, so I'm sitting on a hefty pile of dust, just accumulating and clearing daily quests).

 

Completely forgot Blizzcon was soon. Awaiting the announcement of an announcement OR a surprise preview of a bunch of new cards (but most likely the former).

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I guess you're playing on the NA servers? I normally get to rank 8 or 9 every season, and I used to play until around rank 5. I even got to rank 3 once, but that was when I had the time to grind it out. I'm glad I don't have the time any more coz my God was that a frustrating time. It's such a big time sink. I've read several posts on the reddit that say you need like 150 games from rank 5 to legend. I'm not sure I play that in a whole month... it's crazy.

 

I've ended up playing a lot of arena recently. I find it a much more interesting alternative to the ladder, but I'm glad there's 2 modes to choose from. Would be nice to have a third.

 

If you've got the dust then why not just craft the cards?

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I ended up playing from Rank 5 to Legend one month after Spell Hunter quickly boosted me ten ranks over a few days and I thought "oh, I'm pretty close now, how much longer can it be", but 5 to legend really takes about as much time as grinding from 20ish to 5. In the lower ranks, the winstreak bonuses help you climb even if you're really only winning 50 percent of your games so long as wins and losses are somewhat clustered together. The last few ranks don't have these bonuses, so you can easily lose a lot of ground right after gaining it. I was one game away from hitting Legend something like five times only to fall back down again before I finally made it. Overall, don't really recommend the experience.

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I don't craft the cards unless there's something I really want to try, and turns out these days there's no card that really screams "craft me, I'm fun, interesting and good".

 

Looks like the next expansion will be announced this Friday. Looking ahead for some reveals!

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Oh I read somewhere, probably Reddit, that people aren't really expecting a reveal at Blizzcon due to the proposed schedule for Hearthstone. I wouldn't be angry about that though.

 

Yeah, crafting gives me a hell of a lot of anxiety and so does laddering past rank 8 or 9. Whenever I inevitably get there I just give up and arena. Have you tried much arena n490?

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Well boo to my above statement. I'm so glad it is trolls! I love Blizzard's version of trolls and Stranglethorn literally reminds me of being a child and growing up while playing WoW.

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I was reminded of your post when the login reward on day one said "time for big announcements" or some such :)

 

To be honest, I'm sure the cards will be nice and all, but I'm not really feeling this theme. Warcraft is very much "All Dwarves are Scottish" type fantasy cliches through and through, but it gets uncomfortable for me when they extend that to "tribal" cultures. Not an indictment of you or anyone who enjoys those parts of Warcraft, but Blizzard's version of trolls feel like a borderline-racist caricature to me. Hearing about the new expansion sent my mind back to playing Warcraft 3 and hearing spearthrowers go "Ya mon" when I tell them to go somewhere. Then I watch the trailer for the expansion like, wow, how little has changed in all those years.

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You know what you're not wrong about the icky stereotypes. I have thought about that before for sure.

 

I think the cards revealed so far look kind of fun. I like the idea of the Loas. I'm not really sure why/if the classes will get 2 legendaries this expansion. Seems like a good way for them to get more money if they do give us 2 for each class. At least for the last few expansions there's been like Legendary Weapons, spells or quests. I'm not so sure I like the idea of just 2 legendary minions.

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Arena is good. And I'd argue it is good because it is more like Hearthstone than previous Magic games like Duels of the Planeswalkers.

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Man Blizzard must be scared of Magic judging by all the free stuff that came out for HS recently. Or is that a legitimate 100 million players thing?

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Hard to say how legitimate the player count is, but it's not that unusual compared to the kind of promo stuff they do regularly.

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Yeah, I think it probably is a genuine thing. Just having a particularly cynical day judging by my other posts on here on the same day. I got a golden Dr. Morrigan (so a free legendary if she continues to be a dud) and I got 2 golden Giggling Inventors which DE'd for 800 dust a piece.

 

I'm just playing arena at the moment. Got my first 11 arena run the other week. So annoyed I couldn't get those 12 wins! I think got a 9 run with a crazy Twig of The World Tree and UI arena deck. I misplayed like heck 2 of the games and threw them unfortunately. Could've been another 11 wins... or possibly 12.

 

Have you tried Artifact? Or have you been tempted? I'm far too invested in HS now to even consider playing another CCG.

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100 million players sounds easily achievable considering this game is 1) on mobile and 2) extremely popular in Asia

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I've been dabbling in MTG Arena next to Hearthstone and I don't have the energy to indulge in another card game next to that. Arena is sort of a fun nostalgia trip and I really like how the UI/UX stuff works in this iteration, but now that I'm getting a bit deeper into it, it feels odd to push up against its physical roots. Because Hearthstone is purely digital, they get to do balance changes whenever they want, they can rewrite cards if they need to and they also have their own, fine-tuned system for how drafting works in Arena. MTG Arena is much more "it is what it is" and I frequently get my ass kicked up and down the block by people who just got to draft a couple of combo pieces. It's almost as frustrating as playing against Druid!

 

The expansion is starting to look interesting! I'm looking forward to experimenting with Pirate Rogue, Control Paladin and Odd Mage, although I doubt all of those decks will really pan out.

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I never played Magic to any real extent, especially not the actual card game itself so I'm very wary to check it out.

 

It really is! There's a bunch of cards that could be fun, and they're bringing back some Warlock discard stuff. I always find it weird in HS that they sort of tease these archetypes for 1 (Freeze Shammy) or 2 expansions (Discard Lock) and then never really support them, or skip an expansion or two. It just seems odd that they abandon them so quickly. I also like that odd mage could finally shine. We'll see.

 

I haven't spent any where near as much time playing ranked as I used to. I've only gotten to rank 12 this season and I don't think I'll bother pushing any further. I played a bunch of Deathrattle Rogue, but I'm discovering more and more that I really don't like high roll decks. If they can manage to counter one of your cubes or deathrattles and push for the board you're pretty much donezo.

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On 11/22/2018 at 11:23 AM, Deadpan said:

I've been dabbling in MTG Arena next to Hearthstone and I don't have the energy to indulge in another card game next to that. Arena is sort of a fun nostalgia trip and I really like how the UI/UX stuff works in this iteration, but now that I'm getting a bit deeper into it, it feels odd to push up against its physical roots. Because Hearthstone is purely digital, they get to do balance changes whenever they want, they can rewrite cards if they need to and they also have their own, fine-tuned system for how drafting works in Arena. MTG Arena is much more "it is what it is" and I frequently get my ass kicked up and down the block by people who just got to draft a couple of combo pieces. It's almost as frustrating as playing against Druid!

 

 

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. You seem to be conflating some points. It's true that due to the link with paper, Magic can't patch the cards. How is that related to the fact that your opponents may have drafted better decks though? I've lost to bombs in arena a lot as well.

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