I, like a lot of people, thought it would be terrible. Even watching streamers, it feels like it's a bad game. Then I played it. It turned out to be a lot of fun and is easy to get in to. It's a classic "easy to learn, hard to master" kind of game. Sure, you can boil it down to "just go mechs", but that isn't always the right answer. You have to pay attention to what others are playing, play to the strengths of your hero power, build around the tech offered to you at the early, mid and late game, and know when and how to pivot to a different build.
The mode is currently in beta and needs some tweaking. Toki is a bit too strong. Mama Bear wins games by herself. Amalgam probably needs to move to the rank-3 tier. Those are minor complaints though, and something you should expect from any auto-battler.
If you don't like RNG, don't play this mode. It has a lot of RNG. What cards you're offered. What targets your cards attack. Who you play against. What heroes you're offered at the start. But for me, the RNG is part of the fun. It's like playing a slot machine mixed with a puzzle mixed with XCom-2 levels of "woot" and "are you kidding me?". The first time your 3/6 poison high-rolls an attack against your opponent's 31/36, you'll love the RNG...then you'll have a round where none of your cards attack your opponent's naked hyena and you'll curse the RNG.
Anyway, considering it's 1) free and 2) FREE, I think it's a great mode. Will it last for years? Not unless they keep if fresh with rotating cards and new heroes. But is it worth playing until it's not fun anymore? Heck yes.
I've always been F2P so I haven't given it a go yet but i'm curious about the general consensus.
How would you rate it taking in to account your first experience and longevity?
Would you say it is worth getting excited for to a player who has yet to play it?
Is it balanced and does that even matter if it's enjoyable anyway?
I would be really excited if I were you. After my first 2 games I was like "it is alright, but nothing special", but then I continued playing it and damn I have become addicted to this mode. The more I got into it the better I got.
When you get into the mode, tips: -Learn the different heroes and their strengths cause some heroes play out different in relation to when it is important to tech. Example Patchwerk is a good early tech hero as you can use his increased health pool as a resource. -Toki is probably my favorite as she can get really strong if you sacrifice some health for tech. - I also really like Curator for the early amalgam and Yogg for his heropower (2 mana get a random buffed minion). - One of the strongest minions are Amalgam - you can give it all buffs, poison, divine shield and summon small robots. For the balance of the game they might remove him at some point or atleast the option to give him poison. - If you get 3 of the same minions, it gets upgraded and can be played again which gain you a card that discover a minion that is one tech higher than your tech level. - Divine shield, Cleave and Poison are really strong effects, but divine shield are countered by Nefarien. - Strongest tribes are beasts and mechs - Mama bear, Hyena and Ratpack - Mech giant or what the name is, lots of mechs that summon more mechs and Junkbot. - Murlocs and demons can be strong, but needs some good RNG. For murlocs getting poison from Gentle Megasaur. For demons getting Soul Juggler (When a demon die deal 3 damage to a random minion) and hope he hits the right minions first. - Also murlocs and demons barely benefit from tech 6 which is the last stage. Murlocs do get Gentle Megasaur tho.
My favorite strategy is to go wide on tribes, get an Amalgam and get Lightfang Enforcer through an upgraded minion at tech 4. Most of the times you can just lean back and let the game run its course. Getting +2/+2 on each minion every turn is really strong if you get it early - always end in top 4 when it happens.
Sorry for the text wall - I blame Trump - enjoy the mode when you can :D
Mechs - Over Powered. Mechuser mit Junkbot allways win
Attackorder - the order is way too much rng. too much stupid attacks. Example: My full 20/20 cave hydra attacks the poison minion and not the minion next to it, to kill the poison minion.
I haven't tried it yet, but it looks like a glorified game of 'war'. You know the card game where you split a deck into two then flip cards until rng decides the winner.
It just seems like there will always be a "best' strategy and beyond that only rng will decide games. With no ability to build a strategy to counter the best strategy ther is no counter play.
This is at least how I'm seeing it. Unless you really like playing war I suspect you will tire of this quickly.
I really, really hate other autobattlers, and I was pissed when they announce this piece of garbage.
Then I played this piece of garbage and had a lot of fun.
I'm very happy I gave it a chance, because it totally won me over. Can't wait for the updates in a few weeks!
I haven't seen anyone playing it yet, because I want to test and experience it completely by myself. Hope it's as good as you say... Can't wait for tomorrow!!! :)
It's really fun and I hope to see them develop it further. However it's also more RNG-based and infuriating than regular Hearthstone in my experience, which is.... eh...
Very impressive and easy to learn with a decently high skill ceiling. People overlook that the real skill in the game is building around your opponents. E.g. positioning
Can be frustrating because getting most of your triple rewards to be in line with what youre building is imperative.
Main complaint about the game is on mobile the it gives me like 20 seconds between combat very often. I still get first place quite a bit playing this hardcore mode. Nice thread. I'm off to make my own complaining about that problem.
Such a great way to still play hearthstone competitively, but not thinking too much. Feeling burnt out with all the evolve shamans on the ladder? Then battlegrounds is for you!
It's excellent as an add on feature in hs. It's meant to be played casually... Not everyday... Good work hs team.. Hope u slowly make it more sophisticated in future.
I really enjoy it, have been playing it a bit, and have gotten to 5k rating myself.
That said, it's not without its flaws.
Some tribes are weaker than others, to the point of near unplayability due to their major difficulty in forming an endgame comp. That's not to say that demons and murlocs can't have endgame comps - it's just that if you're pursuing that path, you know you have a tough time ahead as you need some specific things to go your ways (for demons, early on you need to get a few select cards - basically a big Reaver and ideally a golden Juggler - and for murlocs you generally need something like Brann, and heaps of +health battlecries as well as one or two Megasaurs), and that's not to say that even no-tribe is a possibility, it's just that all these non-mech/beast/menagerie strats have an inherent tougher time than those three. All that said, perfect balance in any auto-battler is going to be tough to achieve, so it's mostly fine, and I can't even offer a solution as to what would make it better. Just annoying if you start getting pushed to one of those strats based on offerings and have to pray you actually get the dream.
Getting golden minions. Makes or breaks games. And unfortunately, it largely comes down to luck. Not entirely - there's definitely some strategy (namely in potentially going for less popular minions that you can more likely get 3 of), but it can be backbreaking if you have 2-3 2-ofs and need to break on of those pairs just to make room for a battlecry and not waste your money, especially if you've already been rerolling hard for a couple turns trying to complete a set.
How many copies are in the pool in total, and what actually takes them out of the pool? This is extremely important information, and I personally haven't seen it anywhere yet. When you're chasing 3 ofs, it's very important to know if you might be barking up the wrong tree (or not). Furthermore, it'd be super interesting if a magnetic card actually gets taken out of the pool (or not) when magnetised. Also if discovering a card via a triple treat takes it from the pool or simply materialises you a new copy. All important info that we aren't quite privy to.
Having to break endgame comps if we want to make use of battlecries. This isn't something you see in other auto-battlers because you can move stuff back to the bench - but even in that case, they don't exactly have battlecries. But my goodness, it's frustrating if you have an endgame comp and basically have to sell something pretty good just so you aren't wasting your gold doing nothing but rerolling for a very unlikely triple up. This one would be tough to solve as you can't just implement returning stuff to the hand due to battlecries, but it'd be nice if we did have some way to have some temporary room on the board for things like battlecries. Perhaps, game engine permitting, 8 or 9 slots on the board during the recruit phase, that is restricted down to 7 for combat, and if you haven't manually sold off things by that point the game randomly sells 1-2 of your units.
Overall, solid auto-battler, and probably my fave because it's pretty easy to understand and get into (I enjoyed TFT and played it for quite a bit, but ended up getting annoyed with having to have an item list open in a separate tab so I would know what I could potentially build to - and on that note, the randomness of getting items or not compared to other players; was super annoying when someone would get 3-4 items from the first few creeps and you'd get 1 or none). But it could be better, and hopefully is by the time they take it out of beta.
It needs more diversity, more balancing, and more options. That said it's certainly a worthy effort for a Beta. It may not be the most sophisticated auto-battler out there but then again, this is Hearthstone. RNG is its middle name. If the rewards are in line with the other game mode, The Arena, then it would certainly be worth playing every now and then.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Dependable loan sharks since 1960. We sink our teeth into every deal we make.
You have to wait for correct results. Because the guys who would vote "good" are playing endlessly having no time to check Forums. So the bored guys vote first because they have Time And results not good at first glance :D
I play since Saturday and stopped all other activities (beside work and Sport).
You're right but it's hardly overwhelmingly positive. I'm very surprised to see 21.4% place it in the bottom tier. Maybe i'm a cynic but i'd like to find out more about why the high number of negative votes on the first week of release.
Because this is the internet and people are awful.
You're right but it's hardly overwhelmingly positive. I'm very surprised to see 21.4% place it in the bottom tier. Maybe i'm a cynic but i'd like to find out more about why the high number of negative votes on the first week of release.
Because this is the internet and some people are awful.
Most fun I have had in years. Rivals the latest single player content.
That said they need to buff Murlocs. Add more cards and heroes. Also make it possible to sell minions without adding them to the battlefield first. That is retarded.
Furthermore, it'd be super interesting if a magnetic card actually gets taken out of the pool (or not) when magnetised.
It definitely does not go back into the pool, just as magnetized cards in the normal game do not go into the death pool.
The justification may be it would be incorrect to allow it to be sold again while the effect is still in play.
Presumably, the magnetic minion is also not resurrected in the pool if the minion it was attached to is sold. That might make things interesting, but it seems like a feature the team would not have prioritized on the coding schedule.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Why, you never expected justice from a company, did you? They have neither a soul to lose nor a body to kick." -- Lady Saba Holland
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I, like a lot of people, thought it would be terrible. Even watching streamers, it feels like it's a bad game. Then I played it. It turned out to be a lot of fun and is easy to get in to. It's a classic "easy to learn, hard to master" kind of game. Sure, you can boil it down to "just go mechs", but that isn't always the right answer. You have to pay attention to what others are playing, play to the strengths of your hero power, build around the tech offered to you at the early, mid and late game, and know when and how to pivot to a different build.
The mode is currently in beta and needs some tweaking. Toki is a bit too strong. Mama Bear wins games by herself. Amalgam probably needs to move to the rank-3 tier. Those are minor complaints though, and something you should expect from any auto-battler.
If you don't like RNG, don't play this mode. It has a lot of RNG. What cards you're offered. What targets your cards attack. Who you play against. What heroes you're offered at the start. But for me, the RNG is part of the fun. It's like playing a slot machine mixed with a puzzle mixed with XCom-2 levels of "woot" and "are you kidding me?". The first time your 3/6 poison high-rolls an attack against your opponent's 31/36, you'll love the RNG...then you'll have a round where none of your cards attack your opponent's naked hyena and you'll curse the RNG.
Anyway, considering it's 1) free and 2) FREE, I think it's a great mode. Will it last for years? Not unless they keep if fresh with rotating cards and new heroes. But is it worth playing until it's not fun anymore? Heck yes.
I would be really excited if I were you. After my first 2 games I was like "it is alright, but nothing special", but then I continued playing it and damn I have become addicted to this mode. The more I got into it the better I got.
When you get into the mode, tips:
-Learn the different heroes and their strengths cause some heroes play out different in relation to when it is important to tech. Example Patchwerk is a good early tech hero as you can use his increased health pool as a resource.
-Toki is probably my favorite as she can get really strong if you sacrifice some health for tech.
- I also really like Curator for the early amalgam and Yogg for his heropower (2 mana get a random buffed minion).
- One of the strongest minions are Amalgam - you can give it all buffs, poison, divine shield and summon small robots. For the balance of the game they might remove him at some point or atleast the option to give him poison.
- If you get 3 of the same minions, it gets upgraded and can be played again which gain you a card that discover a minion that is one tech higher than your tech level.
- Divine shield, Cleave and Poison are really strong effects, but divine shield are countered by Nefarien.
- Strongest tribes are beasts and mechs - Mama bear, Hyena and Ratpack - Mech giant or what the name is, lots of mechs that summon more mechs and Junkbot.
- Murlocs and demons can be strong, but needs some good RNG. For murlocs getting poison from Gentle Megasaur. For demons getting Soul Juggler (When a demon die deal 3 damage to a random minion) and hope he hits the right minions first.
- Also murlocs and demons barely benefit from tech 6 which is the last stage. Murlocs do get Gentle Megasaur tho.
My favorite strategy is to go wide on tribes, get an Amalgam and get Lightfang Enforcer through an upgraded minion at tech 4. Most of the times you can just lean back and let the game run its course. Getting +2/+2 on each minion every turn is really strong if you get it early - always end in top 4 when it happens.
Sorry for the text wall - I blame Trump - enjoy the mode when you can :D
I like the gamemode but 2 things are anoying.
Mechs - Over Powered. Mechuser mit Junkbot allways win
Attackorder - the order is way too much rng. too much stupid attacks. Example: My full 20/20 cave hydra attacks the poison minion and not the minion next to it, to kill the poison minion.
My current mage deck (wild,reno,otk,highlander)
My current hunter deck (wild,reno,highlander)
"The game is dead"
Every salty hearthstone player
I haven't tried it yet, but it looks like a glorified game of 'war'. You know the card game where you split a deck into two then flip cards until rng decides the winner.
It just seems like there will always be a "best' strategy and beyond that only rng will decide games. With no ability to build a strategy to counter the best strategy ther is no counter play.
This is at least how I'm seeing it. Unless you really like playing war I suspect you will tire of this quickly.
Galavant Animation
I really, really hate other autobattlers, and I was pissed when they announce this piece of garbage.
Then I played this piece of garbage and had a lot of fun.
I'm very happy I gave it a chance, because it totally won me over. Can't wait for the updates in a few weeks!
"Why, you never expected justice from a company, did you? They have neither a soul to lose nor a body to kick." -- Lady Saba Holland
I haven't seen anyone playing it yet, because I want to test and experience it completely by myself. Hope it's as good as you say... Can't wait for tomorrow!!! :)
It's really fun and I hope to see them develop it further. However it's also more RNG-based and infuriating than regular Hearthstone in my experience, which is.... eh...
I'd never play it again, it's just very boring.
Very impressive and easy to learn with a decently high skill ceiling. People overlook that the real skill in the game is building around your opponents. E.g. positioning
Can be frustrating because getting most of your triple rewards to be in line with what youre building is imperative.
Main complaint about the game is on mobile the it gives me like 20 seconds between combat very often. I still get first place quite a bit playing this hardcore mode. Nice thread. I'm off to make my own complaining about that problem.
Such a great way to still play hearthstone competitively, but not thinking too much. Feeling burnt out with all the evolve shamans on the ladder? Then battlegrounds is for you!
It's excellent as an add on feature in hs. It's meant to be played casually... Not everyday... Good work hs team.. Hope u slowly make it more sophisticated in future.
I ordered DoD just for playing this early. So much fun. So addictive. Made me wanna try other autobattler games, too.
I really enjoy it, have been playing it a bit, and have gotten to 5k rating myself.
That said, it's not without its flaws.
Overall, solid auto-battler, and probably my fave because it's pretty easy to understand and get into (I enjoyed TFT and played it for quite a bit, but ended up getting annoyed with having to have an item list open in a separate tab so I would know what I could potentially build to - and on that note, the randomness of getting items or not compared to other players; was super annoying when someone would get 3-4 items from the first few creeps and you'd get 1 or none). But it could be better, and hopefully is by the time they take it out of beta.
It needs more diversity, more balancing, and more options. That said it's certainly a worthy effort for a Beta. It may not be the most sophisticated auto-battler out there but then again, this is Hearthstone. RNG is its middle name. If the rewards are in line with the other game mode, The Arena, then it would certainly be worth playing every now and then.
Dependable loan sharks since 1960. We sink our teeth into every deal we make.
You have to wait for correct results. Because the guys who would vote "good" are playing endlessly having no time to check Forums. So the bored guys vote first because they have Time And results not good at first glance :D
I play since Saturday and stopped all other activities (beside work and Sport).
Because this is the internet and people are awful.
FTFY ;)
Most fun I have had in years. Rivals the latest single player content.
That said they need to buff Murlocs. Add more cards and heroes. Also make it possible to sell minions without adding them to the battlefield first. That is retarded.
Liked it a lot
Favorite Cards: 1. Lord Jaraxxus | 2. Malygos| 3. Edwin VanCleef | 4. Zephrys the Great| 5. Deathwing
It definitely does not go back into the pool, just as magnetized cards in the normal game do not go into the death pool.
The justification may be it would be incorrect to allow it to be sold again while the effect is still in play.
Presumably, the magnetic minion is also not resurrected in the pool if the minion it was attached to is sold. That might make things interesting, but it seems like a feature the team would not have prioritized on the coding schedule.
"Why, you never expected justice from a company, did you? They have neither a soul to lose nor a body to kick." -- Lady Saba Holland