Hearthpwn

Quote from SirJohn13 >>

Although mercenaries is much more F2P-friendly than constructed (since with some moderate motivation and time investment you can grind the coins you need to craft and slowly upgrade all the mercs you want), its economy when it comes to packs is pure trash. One mercenaries pack will generally give you the equivalent of 200 coins, which is more or less what you get  if you do 2 full heroic PvE runs of level 28 or higher (which should take approximately 1h or less). On the other hand 1 pack costs 100 gold which equals 3000XP on the Rewards Track or 7-8 hours of grinding HS...

Bottom line: Unless you have a huge amount of gold and no other use for it, don't buy packs with gold it is really not worth it as it is right now

 But that's just not true no matter how you slice it. Hearthstone's constructed game mode allows you to focus on getting a competitive deck on day one for free if you know what you're doing (and if you don't, there's plenty of places to look for advice), they also give you a pretty good deck of your choice if you return after a long time. You don't have to grind boring pve content for hours just to maximize a deck, since, once you have the card, it stays there forever. You also have duplicate protection when you open packs. You also open actual cards, and not tiny fragments that you have to spend a lot of money or time (same difference) to put together. You can actually save currency in gold for future expansions, while in Mercenaries there is absolutely no way to save for upcoming characters. Horrible design. Also, you can disenchant duplicate or unwanted cards, with a full refund, for a quarter of their value, meaning that with every rotation, you get a quarter of all the cards you owned that year refunded if you don't play wild. The fact that I played mercenaries for almost a month for at least a few hours daily and I have maxed out only a few characters tells me the game is way too expensive for the boring mess it is. It is not F2P friendly, unless you are having fun playing the same pve adventure many many times to (maybe) get some desired coins. As a final point, you can buy a tier 2-3 deck including 4 legendaries for £12.99. What does that get you in Mercenaries? A legendary and 15 packs, which will contain a lot of unwanted coins and maybe another legendary if you don't just land a portrait . And that's quite a good offer compared to the other "deals" they have. :)

Don't buy packs. It's a complete scam. Not only is there no duplicate protection and there never will be (enjoy thousands of cariel coins), but the grind is insane, and even that grind does not guarantee you the coins you want. Extra coins are not disenchantable for even a tenth of their value. New heroes will probably be always introduced, meaning that you will always have to spend to get them, or grind like a madman for 20 hours. Because of this game having more currencies than anything I have ever seen before, you cannot save up for new stuff. Looking at the published list of best heroes, and seeing that I am missing a big chunk of them, and most of the ones I had were maxed out, I decided to stop even doing the daily crap. The game mode is a complete failure, and a devilish spawn of corporate greed. Good luck getting your refund lol.