Card games (paper or digital) are an RNG fest by default, and that's fine. But i kind of feel the small starting hand size (especially when going first) is really punishing for "slower" decks.
You can play a decent curve centered around 3 mana and still get a hand full of 5+ cards with nothing of what you fished for. Then you mulligan and get a similar hand or even slower... and sometimes you get the same card back into your hand (you know it's the same because you run a 1-of).
Of course you could lower your curve but not all classes can draw 2 cards per turn... or 4/5 cards in a turn (the hate is real). What i'm saying is that is really frustrating to lose when your deck is built properly, and you know how to play it properly, but rng mulligans punish you so hard for not playing a curve centered around 1and 2 drops.
Wouldn't it be better if the starting hand size was increased by 1 card? Or if you could select in your deck builder 1 jolly card that you will always get in your starting hand?
Muligan can never be the same card although you can draw it on your first turn.
Increasing hand-size by one doesn't seem too bad but it would strengthen combo and control, perhaps enough to unbalance the game. If your control deck can't handle aggro though, I think it's a good indication that you have got too greedy with the late game. 3 mana is actually quite an awkward amount because you can't cast two cards per turn until turn six, at which point you want to be doing other things, plus a lot of 2s can trade up to a 3. Maybe refocus toward 2 mana and then cut back strongly on 3 if you want to keep your late game?
Selecting one card is just plain broken. Druid always takes innervate, miracle rogue takes auctioneer, handlock takes mountain giant, shaman takes lightning storm, control paladin takes equality, hunter takes buzzard, etc. etc. Combo decks would get out of hand, the metagame would devolve into picking the right starting card to beat your opponent's starting card, i.e. a giant game of paper, scissors, rock that ruins everything. This is a deck-building game and unfortunately you're going to have to shuffle up and take your hits along with the rest of us. Luckily enough everyone has good and bad draws.
My advice is that if you're having trouble than it's either the curve or your muliganing that you should work on.
Bear in mind that Hearthstone's mulligan system is already extremely generous by the standards of most card games. Being able to freely choose which cards you want to throw back, and having no penalty for doing so.. compare that to M:tG or Hex, for instance, where your only option is to discard your entire hand, and get back one which is one card smaller.
I think it would be extremely dangerous to fiddle with this. As Disasterrofic said above, "it would strengthen combo and control, perhaps enough to unbalance the game." I'm pretty sure that there was a lot of internal testing with different hand sizes. We know that they iterated on the going-first/going-second mechanics a lot to get the coin situation where it is now (virtually no deviation from 50/50 odds based on who plays first).
Increase starting hand by 1 seems fine. Although aggro deck may benefit a lot since they run out of cards at a slower rate, control decks also have more options to deal with aggro.
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Card games (paper or digital) are an RNG fest by default, and that's fine. But i kind of feel the small starting hand size (especially when going first) is really punishing for "slower" decks.
You can play a decent curve centered around 3 mana and still get a hand full of 5+ cards with nothing of what you fished for. Then you mulligan and get a similar hand or even slower... and sometimes you get the same card back into your hand (you know it's the same because you run a 1-of).
Of course you could lower your curve but not all classes can draw 2 cards per turn... or 4/5 cards in a turn (the hate is real). What i'm saying is that is really frustrating to lose when your deck is built properly, and you know how to play it properly, but rng mulligans punish you so hard for not playing a curve centered around 1and 2 drops.
Wouldn't it be better if the starting hand size was increased by 1 card? Or if you could select in your deck builder 1 jolly card that you will always get in your starting hand?
My comments refer mostly to the wild format.
Muligan can never be the same card although you can draw it on your first turn.
Increasing hand-size by one doesn't seem too bad but it would strengthen combo and control, perhaps enough to unbalance the game. If your control deck can't handle aggro though, I think it's a good indication that you have got too greedy with the late game. 3 mana is actually quite an awkward amount because you can't cast two cards per turn until turn six, at which point you want to be doing other things, plus a lot of 2s can trade up to a 3. Maybe refocus toward 2 mana and then cut back strongly on 3 if you want to keep your late game?
Selecting one card is just plain broken. Druid always takes innervate, miracle rogue takes auctioneer, handlock takes mountain giant, shaman takes lightning storm, control paladin takes equality, hunter takes buzzard, etc. etc. Combo decks would get out of hand, the metagame would devolve into picking the right starting card to beat your opponent's starting card, i.e. a giant game of paper, scissors, rock that ruins everything. This is a deck-building game and unfortunately you're going to have to shuffle up and take your hits along with the rest of us. Luckily enough everyone has good and bad draws.
My advice is that if you're having trouble than it's either the curve or your muliganing that you should work on.
Bear in mind that Hearthstone's mulligan system is already extremely generous by the standards of most card games. Being able to freely choose which cards you want to throw back, and having no penalty for doing so.. compare that to M:tG or Hex, for instance, where your only option is to discard your entire hand, and get back one which is one card smaller.
I think it would be extremely dangerous to fiddle with this. As Disasterrofic said above, "it would strengthen combo and control, perhaps enough to unbalance the game." I'm pretty sure that there was a lot of internal testing with different hand sizes. We know that they iterated on the going-first/going-second mechanics a lot to get the coin situation where it is now (virtually no deviation from 50/50 odds based on who plays first).
Increase starting hand by 1 seems fine. Although aggro deck may benefit a lot since they run out of cards at a slower rate, control decks also have more options to deal with aggro.