Instead of flopping around on the old Aggro-Combo-Control cycle we head back in the direction of mid-range for all. Spice it up with more cards like defile to give them cheap board clear options with a skill factor (allowing for the cards to be somewhat OP) that it's possible to play them over more stats/tempo.
I bring this up right now as it looks like we may be heading into a highly polarised phase of hearthstone, odd paladin being what it is, OTKs that reliably go off before or on turn 10 and odd warrior...just wait till we see a refined fast hunter list.
There needs to be room in hearthstone for skill but arguable more importantly RNG, polarised matchups remove all that and suck the life from this game. Gauranteed win macthups are almost as little fun gauranteed losses. Pilot influence over a match is what keeps the game....a game. Mid range is a way out, arena remains fun as it ever was, all largely mid-range by nature.
Instead of flopping around on the old Aggro-Combo-Control cycle we head back in the direction of mid-range for all. Spice it up with more cards like defile to give them cheap board clear options with a skill factor (allowing for the cards to be somewhat OP) that it's possible to play them over more stats/tempo.
I bring this up right now as it looks like we may be heading into a highly polarised phase of hearthstone, odd paladin being what it is, OTKs that reliably go off before or on turn 10 and odd warrior...just wait till we see a refined fast hunter list.
There needs to be room in hearthstone for skill but arguable more importantly RNG, polarised matchups remove all that and suck the life from this game. Gauranteed win macthups are almost as little fun gauranteed losses. Pilot influence over a match is what keeps the game....a game. Mid range is a way out, arena remains fun as it ever was, all largely mid-range by nature.
Midrange really isn't that stable though. It's vulnerable to aggro and nukes control from orbit. It also tends to be just a few card draws away from turning into Combo. So what stops Combo from just using those midrange tools, adding in card draw, then knocking everyone out of the meta with 'fun and interactive' gameplay?
Besides, Deathrattle Hunter is Midrange by design. Is that really healthy to have that as THE driving force of the game? That's a real question, not a complaint.
Not AGAINST it per se, but very hesitant and listening to how others think about it.
People would stop using the term 'polarized'? Matchups are unfavorable for one archetype in that matchup, unless it's an archetype-mirror. Those are also, most of the time, the most fun. A good Control Warlock deck can sink Kingsbane with your suggested RNG, and a strong player behind a viable aggro deck can beat Control decks. It's hard, but it's doable. Hence why the term unfavorable is used more correctly here.
People seem to think they can have a deck with an 85% winrate. This will never be the case. Even if everyone goes mid-range (zzzzzzz), some decks will be stronger than others, and some classes could completely fall out of usage. And that's the one thing I love about this game; the different approaches for each class, and the decks that spawn. Compare it to politics: if the population likes a certain style, than that's what the government (Blizzard) will have to cater to.
Ok, but I specifically said gauranteed wins are no fun. So how that translates into me wanting an 85% winrate I don't know.
60 - 40/65 - 35 matchups are fine, anything beyond that are you are getting into a really negative effect on ladder gameplay. As I said I fear, looking at the experimentation currently going on in ladder, we will be entering a far more POLARIZED period, with many match-ups way overshooting those number.
Am I the only one that find Midrange boring as fuck? Just playing stuff on curve doesn't really feel rewarding to me at all.
Midrange doesn't play on curve: not the hearthstone version. That's more Tempo's thing.
Midrange is sort of like a mini-Control or a softer version of Combo. The first few turns are mostly to defend. If it plays minions, it's mostly just to stall. But it's willing to go less curvy and instead wipe the board. So it's not dependent on the curve or Tempo.
Instead it's claim is in how fast it recovers and goes on the attack. It goes from pure defense to in the face VERY quickly.
Deathrattle Hunter is a good example of this. It DOES have the God draw of egg + activators by turn 3, but most times that tends to be more for pressure than for the kill, to let it get to the later turns. Instead, it's main goal is to have dangerous beasts out at around turn 4-6 either cheated out via recruit or copied via ooze. Then it goes for the throat. If you can get past all of it, which isn't easy, it starts getting desperate with DK, but it has a shot.
OTOH, unless it god draws with the eggs, aggro tears it apart.
Instead of flopping around on the old Aggro-Combo-Control cycle we head back in the direction of mid-range for all. Spice it up with more cards like defile to give them cheap board clear options with a skill factor (allowing for the cards to be somewhat OP) that it's possible to play them over more stats/tempo.
I bring this up right now as it looks like we may be heading into a highly polarised phase of hearthstone, odd paladin being what it is, OTKs that reliably go off before or on turn 10 and odd warrior...just wait till we see a refined fast hunter list.
There needs to be room in hearthstone for skill but arguable more importantly RNG, polarised matchups remove all that and suck the life from this game. Gauranteed win macthups are almost as little fun gauranteed losses. Pilot influence over a match is what keeps the game....a game. Mid range is a way out, arena remains fun as it ever was, all largely mid-range by nature.
Midrange really isn't that stable though. It's vulnerable to aggro and nukes control from orbit. It also tends to be just a few card draws away from turning into Combo. So what stops Combo from just using those midrange tools, adding in card draw, then knocking everyone out of the meta with 'fun and interactive' gameplay?
Besides, Deathrattle Hunter is Midrange by design. Is that really healthy to have that as THE driving force of the game? That's a real question, not a complaint.
Not AGAINST it per se, but very hesitant and listening to how others think about it.
Well, I actually do enjoy playing rattle hunter - though cube combos can feel a little dirty sometimes. You are right in saying it's mid-range by design. One of the reasons I enjoy it is I have decent match up vs most decks, very rarely is a game an insta-loss. Very few other decks offer this right now...evenlock maybe? It's a problem IMO.
Instead of flopping around on the old Aggro-Combo-Control cycle we head back in the direction of mid-range for all. Spice it up with more cards like defile to give them cheap board clear options with a skill factor (allowing for the cards to be somewhat OP) that it's possible to play them over more stats/tempo.
I bring this up right now as it looks like we may be heading into a highly polarised phase of hearthstone, odd paladin being what it is, OTKs that reliably go off before or on turn 10 and odd warrior...just wait till we see a refined fast hunter list.
There needs to be room in hearthstone for skill but arguable more importantly RNG, polarised matchups remove all that and suck the life from this game. Gauranteed win macthups are almost as little fun gauranteed losses. Pilot influence over a match is what keeps the game....a game. Mid range is a way out, arena remains fun as it ever was, all largely mid-range by nature.
Midrange really isn't that stable though. It's vulnerable to aggro and nukes control from orbit. It also tends to be just a few card draws away from turning into Combo. So what stops Combo from just using those midrange tools, adding in card draw, then knocking everyone out of the meta with 'fun and interactive' gameplay?
Besides, Deathrattle Hunter is Midrange by design. Is that really healthy to have that as THE driving force of the game? That's a real question, not a complaint.
Not AGAINST it per se, but very hesitant and listening to how others think about it.
Well, I actually do enjoy playing rattle hunter - though cube combos can feel a little dirty sometimes. You are right in saying it's mid-range by design. One of the reasons I enjoy it is I have decent match up vs most decks, very rarely is a game an insta-loss. Very few other decks offer this right now...evenlock maybe? It's a problem IMO.
Instead of flopping around on the old Aggro-Combo-Control cycle we head back in the direction of mid-range for all. Spice it up with more cards like defile to give them cheap board clear options with a skill factor (allowing for the cards to be somewhat OP) that it's possible to play them over more stats/tempo.
I bring this up right now as it looks like we may be heading into a highly polarised phase of hearthstone, odd paladin being what it is, OTKs that reliably go off before or on turn 10 and odd warrior...just wait till we see a refined fast hunter list.
There needs to be room in hearthstone for skill but arguable more importantly RNG, polarised matchups remove all that and suck the life from this game. Gauranteed win macthups are almost as little fun gauranteed losses. Pilot influence over a match is what keeps the game....a game. Mid range is a way out, arena remains fun as it ever was, all largely mid-range by nature.
Midrange really isn't that stable though. It's vulnerable to aggro and nukes control from orbit. It also tends to be just a few card draws away from turning into Combo. So what stops Combo from just using those midrange tools, adding in card draw, then knocking everyone out of the meta with 'fun and interactive' gameplay?
Besides, Deathrattle Hunter is Midrange by design. Is that really healthy to have that as THE driving force of the game? That's a real question, not a complaint.
Not AGAINST it per se, but very hesitant and listening to how others think about it.
Well, I actually do enjoy playing rattle hunter - though cube combos can feel a little dirty sometimes. You are right in saying it's mid-range by design. One of the reasons I enjoy it is I have decent match up vs most decks, very rarely is a game an insta-loss. Very few other decks offer this right now...evenlock maybe? It's a problem IMO.
Odd Rogue is another example. A good Odd rogue player can win against any match up once you learn the mulligans, even odd warrior or taunt druid where its an almost guaranteed loss.
Nobody considers what tech cards can do in these types of threads. Two oozes can stop kingsbane, or 1 chief inspector against spell hunter. To me there are no polarized matchups, only decks you do not tech against.
Hearthstone needs counterspells and instants in general (cards you can play on your opponents turn as long as you have mana to cast them). I mean it gets boring fast this way .Hs turns either to ladder coin flip or curvestone since the 1st days of evey expansion. Not even a week and i find myself enjoying my grixis deck i built one month ago more than all the decks i made in the 1st week of hs expansion....
Hearthstone needs counterspells and instants in general (cards you can play on your opponents turn as long as you have mana to cast them). I mean it gets boring fast this way .Hs turns either to ladder coin flip or curvestone since the 1st days of evey expansion. Not even a week and i find myself enjoying my grixis deck i built one month ago more than all the decks i made in the 1st week of hs expansion....
Ladder coin flip is cool to say, but in reality, the people who keep on spamming it are simply pathetically bad at the game and too stupid to face up to it.
OP's suggestion sounds like Curvestone. No thanks.
With more cards like defile it really doesn't have to be. Also, rattle hunter as we have discussed in thread, is mid-range, but certainly not a curvestone deck.
Hearthstone needs counterspells and instants in general (cards you can play on your opponents turn as long as you have mana to cast them). I mean it gets boring fast this way .Hs turns either to ladder coin flip or curvestone since the 1st days of evey expansion. Not even a week and i find myself enjoying my grixis deck i built one month ago more than all the decks i made in the 1st week of hs expansion....
I think it's okay to have turns having different playstyles in the limelight, i mean 2014-2016 until MSG got released was basically curvestone, i think even un'goro could be considered curvestone but then we've had COntrol stone both in Reno vs Pirates meta and when Razakus priest, Big priest Cubelock and <<Weasel pries of all thingst>> were all top tier, and all 2018 has been pretty much Combostone (which honestly has been super cool, yes i am biased sue me), and it seems nesxt rotation is heading to curvestone again, different people like different things and it's actually good to let them have turns having fun.
Hearthstone needs counterspells and instants in general (cards you can play on your opponents turn as long as you have mana to cast them). I mean it gets boring fast this way .Hs turns either to ladder coin flip or curvestone since the 1st days of evey expansion. Not even a week and i find myself enjoying my grixis deck i built one month ago more than all the decks i made in the 1st week of hs expansion....
Ladder coin flip is cool to say, but in reality, the people who keep on spamming it are simply pathetically bad at the game and too stupid to face up to it.
Oh nice indirect insult you threw there. If what you said is true then hs has been a joke since vanilla because a bad and stupid player like me managed to reach top 300 with his own decks multiple times.
Well, I actually do enjoy playing rattle hunter - though cube combos can feel a little dirty sometimes. You are right in saying it's mid-range by design. One of the reasons I enjoy it is I have decent match up vs most decks, very rarely is a game an insta-loss. Very few other decks offer this right now...evenlock maybe? It's a problem IMO.
The polarized matchups aren't because of the archetypes. It's because of the way they were designed. There's FAR too little RNG (OMFG I just wrote that!) and far too few alternative win conditions on many of these decks. The guaranteed results (always having 4 armor a turn, easy access to Kingsbane, ext) means the deck can easily go full on their strategy and dominate, instead of just have an advantage, over their key opponents. Without an alternative win condition, it means decks that can disrupt their main condition slaughter them.
A good counter example, again, comes from Deathrattle Hunter. Against regular control decks and tempo decks it's normal win condition slaughters them. However, it's not completely dead if a fatigue deck kicks in as it has it's DK as an alternative tool. That it's literally one card saving it from an entire achetype is bad but it would've been MUCH worse without it.
As we move away from these guaranteed card designs and accept a bit more RNG back into the game, decks will push for more alternative routes and less focus on dominating a specific archetype and polarization should soften.
Hearthstone needs counterspells and instants in general (cards you can play on your opponents turn as long as you have mana to cast them). I mean it gets boring fast this way .Hs turns either to ladder coin flip or curvestone since the 1st days of evey expansion. Not even a week and i find myself enjoying my grixis deck i built one month ago more than all the decks i made in the 1st week of hs expansion....
There's a point when it goes from asking for an addition to a game to asking for a different game. Sort of like asking if Street Fighter can add a turn based system to allow for more strategic planning. It CAN add it but then it wouldn't be Street Fighter.
Hearthstone, at its core, WILL be simpler than MTG. It's a key selling point. If it deviates too much it'll just be "MTG with orcs" and we'll wonder why we can't just play MTGA.
Not completely ruling it out but I'm not sure hearthstone can really add such things in a truly effective way that doesn't push the game into MTG, with orcs territory or REALLLY mess up its faster flow (MTGA had to add pauses with each and every phase which is ok for over there but would be a nightmare here, especially with a community that gets sick of just one roping per turn).
A serious question: if you were to add in what you wanted to make the game 'great' would hearthstone really look like its own game or would it just play like MTGA? And if its the later.. we have MTGA so why do we need a second one run by folks without over 20 years of experience running MTG?
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One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
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Instead of flopping around on the old Aggro-Combo-Control cycle we head back in the direction of mid-range for all. Spice it up with more cards like defile to give them cheap board clear options with a skill factor (allowing for the cards to be somewhat OP) that it's possible to play them over more stats/tempo.
I bring this up right now as it looks like we may be heading into a highly polarised phase of hearthstone, odd paladin being what it is, OTKs that reliably go off before or on turn 10 and odd warrior...just wait till we see a refined fast hunter list.
There needs to be room in hearthstone for skill but arguable more importantly RNG, polarised matchups remove all that and suck the life from this game. Gauranteed win macthups are almost as little fun gauranteed losses. Pilot influence over a match is what keeps the game....a game. Mid range is a way out, arena remains fun as it ever was, all largely mid-range by nature.
Midrange really isn't that stable though. It's vulnerable to aggro and nukes control from orbit. It also tends to be just a few card draws away from turning into Combo. So what stops Combo from just using those midrange tools, adding in card draw, then knocking everyone out of the meta with 'fun and interactive' gameplay?
Besides, Deathrattle Hunter is Midrange by design. Is that really healthy to have that as THE driving force of the game? That's a real question, not a complaint.
Not AGAINST it per se, but very hesitant and listening to how others think about it.
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
Am I the only one that find Midrange boring as fuck?
Just playing stuff on curve doesn't really feel rewarding to me at all.
Ok, but I specifically said gauranteed wins are no fun. So how that translates into me wanting an 85% winrate I don't know.
60 - 40/65 - 35 matchups are fine, anything beyond that are you are getting into a really negative effect on ladder gameplay. As I said I fear, looking at the experimentation currently going on in ladder, we will be entering a far more POLARIZED period, with many match-ups way overshooting those number.
Oh it can definitely be bad as well.
Remember secret paladin meta? It doesn't have to be that way though, that was bad design.
Midrange doesn't play on curve: not the hearthstone version. That's more Tempo's thing.
Midrange is sort of like a mini-Control or a softer version of Combo. The first few turns are mostly to defend. If it plays minions, it's mostly just to stall. But it's willing to go less curvy and instead wipe the board. So it's not dependent on the curve or Tempo.
Instead it's claim is in how fast it recovers and goes on the attack. It goes from pure defense to in the face VERY quickly.
Deathrattle Hunter is a good example of this. It DOES have the God draw of egg + activators by turn 3, but most times that tends to be more for pressure than for the kill, to let it get to the later turns. Instead, it's main goal is to have dangerous beasts out at around turn 4-6 either cheated out via recruit or copied via ooze. Then it goes for the throat. If you can get past all of it, which isn't easy, it starts getting desperate with DK, but it has a shot.
OTOH, unless it god draws with the eggs, aggro tears it apart.
So when you think of midrange, think of that.
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
Well, I actually do enjoy playing rattle hunter - though cube combos can feel a little dirty sometimes. You are right in saying it's mid-range by design. One of the reasons I enjoy it is I have decent match up vs most decks, very rarely is a game an insta-loss. Very few other decks offer this right now...evenlock maybe? It's a problem IMO.
aggro gives you a decent matchups vs most decks
Odd Rogue is another example. A good Odd rogue player can win against any match up once you learn the mulligans, even odd warrior or taunt druid where its an almost guaranteed loss.
Nobody considers what tech cards can do in these types of threads. Two oozes can stop kingsbane, or 1 chief inspector against spell hunter. To me there are no polarized matchups, only decks you do not tech against.
Or silence against eggs.
OP's suggestion sounds like Curvestone. No thanks.
Midrange Shaman was dominant for a while and people absolutely despised it
Hearthstone needs counterspells and instants in general (cards you can play on your opponents turn as long as you have mana to cast them). I mean it gets boring fast this way .Hs turns either to ladder coin flip or curvestone since the 1st days of evey expansion. Not even a week and i find myself enjoying my grixis deck i built one month ago more than all the decks i made in the 1st week of hs expansion....
Ladder coin flip is cool to say, but in reality, the people who keep on spamming it are simply pathetically bad at the game and too stupid to face up to it.
With more cards like defile it really doesn't have to be. Also, rattle hunter as we have discussed in thread, is mid-range, but certainly not a curvestone deck.
I think it's okay to have turns having different playstyles in the limelight, i mean 2014-2016 until MSG got released was basically curvestone, i think even un'goro could be considered curvestone but then we've had COntrol stone both in Reno vs Pirates meta and when Razakus priest, Big priest Cubelock and <<Weasel pries of all thingst>> were all top tier, and all 2018 has been pretty much Combostone (which honestly has been super cool, yes i am biased sue me), and it seems nesxt rotation is heading to curvestone again, different people like different things and it's actually good to let them have turns having fun.
Oh nice indirect insult you threw there. If what you said is true then hs has been a joke since vanilla because a bad and stupid player like me managed to reach top 300 with his own decks multiple times.
The polarized matchups aren't because of the archetypes. It's because of the way they were designed. There's FAR too little RNG (OMFG I just wrote that!) and far too few alternative win conditions on many of these decks. The guaranteed results (always having 4 armor a turn, easy access to Kingsbane, ext) means the deck can easily go full on their strategy and dominate, instead of just have an advantage, over their key opponents. Without an alternative win condition, it means decks that can disrupt their main condition slaughter them.
A good counter example, again, comes from Deathrattle Hunter. Against regular control decks and tempo decks it's normal win condition slaughters them. However, it's not completely dead if a fatigue deck kicks in as it has it's DK as an alternative tool. That it's literally one card saving it from an entire achetype is bad but it would've been MUCH worse without it.
As we move away from these guaranteed card designs and accept a bit more RNG back into the game, decks will push for more alternative routes and less focus on dominating a specific archetype and polarization should soften.
There's a point when it goes from asking for an addition to a game to asking for a different game. Sort of like asking if Street Fighter can add a turn based system to allow for more strategic planning. It CAN add it but then it wouldn't be Street Fighter.
Hearthstone, at its core, WILL be simpler than MTG. It's a key selling point. If it deviates too much it'll just be "MTG with orcs" and we'll wonder why we can't just play MTGA.
Not completely ruling it out but I'm not sure hearthstone can really add such things in a truly effective way that doesn't push the game into MTG, with orcs territory or REALLLY mess up its faster flow (MTGA had to add pauses with each and every phase which is ok for over there but would be a nightmare here, especially with a community that gets sick of just one roping per turn).
A serious question: if you were to add in what you wanted to make the game 'great' would hearthstone really look like its own game or would it just play like MTGA? And if its the later.. we have MTGA so why do we need a second one run by folks without over 20 years of experience running MTG?
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.