Hearthpwn

I wish there was a way to report people who friend you and start cursing you out and stuff. Not because I'm particularly offended by it, but hey, if I could push a button and punish them, why not?

As far as in game stuff (roping, etc.), I always laugh when people post these topics because they always seem to say things like "I hate it when people rope me! I only rope when it's Hunter or Secret Pally!"

When it comes to people overplaying their hand or refusing to kill you, just CONCEDE. As long as you are gambling on the chance they screw up, it's completely on you for wasting your own time.

I don't understand Little Prince Mrgl.

Just as some notes:

1. There's no reason to think that Wild is going to become ridiculously unbalanced because Blizzard won't care about it. WotC still issues bans for Modern, Legacy, Vintage etc. Sure it tends to happen less often than Standard rotates and some things are allowed more than they would be in Standard, but if you saw 100% Secret Paladin, it's not like they'd say "Hey, it's Wild. Anything goes. No nerfs."

2. As far as Standard leading to power creep, power creep is more likely to occur in the current system. When a new expansion comes out, the only way those cards see play in old decks is for them to be better than cards that came before. Sure, every once and a while you get a new type of deck, but it's usually at the expense of a weaker, older deck. With Standard, they can make a card that's worse than Dr. Boom which still sees just as much play, because it just needs to be good in comparison to the cards around it.

3. Standard is great for diverse experiences over the years. You could have a standard environment where all of the good decks are slinging spells back and forth while another standard environment is very low to the ground creatures or another where you mostly buff up a single creature and beat down the other person's "battle cruiser" creature, etc.

Sure it will cost you more, as if most people on this forum don't already buy tons of packs and every adventure anyway.

Quote from XunTsun >>

Quote from ponk87 >>

Tavern brawl doesn't have to give us anything. The fact that the brawl mode is free and gives us pack is more than enough generous. 

 The fact that you get nothing from a pack, even you pay real life money and buy the pack of your choice is more than generous.

Why not apply for a free session to lick blizzard's boots while you are deeply meditating on how much more your could appreciate their lack of effort LOL

Quote from ShadowsOfSense >>

Those are both fine ways to look at it, I suppose, just for me personally, I don't see anything wrong with the interaction currently, so I don't see any need to change it. I suppose that comes from the view that the interaction is working correctly, no bugs are happening with this interaction, therefore there is nothing to fix, but I can understand a need for the game to have more complex interactions in order to make it overall less complex.

Quote from iandakar >>

Can I ask a question.

If what you say is true, why is this aggro focus not demonstrated in tournament settings?  In there, the most common decks are decks like freeze mage and control warrior.  Even hunter tends to be only reliable in its midrange form.  Druid had an aggro deck just earlier but seem to have abandoned it again for their late-game combo style instead.  Tempo decks, which aren't quite aggro but close, are a surprise rather than a regular feature.

So, if it's the game mechanics that push aggro rather than, say, the mechanics of Ranked, which is what most people play, why are aggro decks pretty much dead outside of Ranked?

Quote from T4te >>

You compared both systems - ok. But where are those problems you mentioned in the title? What exactly problems does HS mana system provide? What is average number of class cards in competitive deck argument for or against? You take MTG as example of different mechanism, but from your post comes conclusion that it's worse (and it of course is), so how is this comparision supposed to underline flaws of HS system?

I read your post twice and I still have no idea what those flaws are, how they affect the game making it worse and how do you propose to fix them. None of those subjects is in your wall of text, but they are in the title.

Quote from DFBwin >>

i dont really get your point. do you mean, that the guaranteed acces to mana (1,2,3, ...) is a bad thing?

Quote from Braven10 >>

I don't play MTG so I didn't really understand most of what you were saying.... but I don't see how mana scaling encourages face decks. I could just be uninformed though, I'm not sure.

I play Hearthstone a lot less than I used to and I play MTG a lot more than I used to. At first, when people on forums such as this would compare Hearthstone's mana system to MTGs and talk about how much better it was, it made sense to me. People don't want to have mana screw or mana flood, because it feels like the bad kind of variance. But as Hearthstone has become more "normalized" as the card pool increases, it's clear that the mana system creates some of the problems that are commonly complained about.

1. Impact of "colored" mana.  The class system of Hearthstone is similar to the color system of MTG in that they limit the cards you are able to play in a deck. Unlike Hearthstone, you can combine colors in MTG, but you take a hit in consistency and have to change your mana base, etc. so I'm going to compare decks in Hearthstone to mono-colored decks in MTG.

If you take a look at the top class decks listed on the 2015 Hearthstone World Championship (if you feel these don't represent typical ratios, please provide examples you think are more valid), we can look at the ratio of class cards to non-class cards.

Ostkaka Mage: 12 neutral to 18 class (40% neutral)

Ostkaka Rogue: 9 neutral to 21 class (30% neutral)

Ostkaka Warrior: 12 neutral to 18 class (40% neutral)

JAB Hunter: 12 neutral to 18 class (40% neutral)

JAB Druid: 10 neutral to 20 class (33% neutral)

Lifecoach Warlock: 21 neutral to 9 class (70% neutral)

Now, some decks tend to have more class cards, but we're looking at around 30-40% in general for a deck. Now, comparing to the mono-colored decks in Legacy for MTG, you usually have between 0%-10% colorless cards. When you start looking at multicolored decks, that number becomes smaller. What does this mean? Since a larger number of cards are drawn from the pool of cards that everyone gets, cards like Piloted Shredder, Dr. Boom, Zombie Chow, BGH, etc. show up much more often than they would in MTG.  This makes opposing decks feel more same-y. This doesn't occur because of some flukes here or there, but because the number of  class cards is massively outweighed by the number of neutral minions.

2. Guaranteed mana. Perhaps the most complained part of lands in MTG is the flood or screw. Even when you design a deck perfectly, there will be times when you draw too many lands or too few. In Hearthstone, they are guaranteed. That's better right?

The mana curve in both games are pretty similar with a very loose +1/+1 improvement per mana spent. But unlike in Hearthstone, the average turn that you hit X mana becomes more and more spread out in MTG. This means that if you want a dense hand of cheap threats, you can't also pack your deck with 6/7 mana cost cards and hope to ever play them in game. We don't have this affect nearly as much in Hearthstone. While aggro decks can't fill their deck with Nefarian's and Ysera's, a Dr. Boom is well within reach for them. This means there is much room for just curving into better threats than your aggro opponent. On the other side of the coin, this consistency also leads to very predictable sequences of play (Turn 7? Flamestrike/Dr. Boom. Turn 9? Here comes Alexstrasza. Turn 6? Hello Savannah Highmane).

In addition, there is no respite in this system. Your aggro opponent is drawing live every turn. This encourages the face-style decks that have been prevalent on the ladder pre-Explorers.

It might seem like I ragged on Dr. Boom and aggro decks a lot, but those are just the most common complaints I've seen on these forums. My only point is that there are drawbacks to the system we have, even if there are aspects that feel better than other CCGs. That being said, I still enjoy playing both games.

Every time I've picked "Take 10 damage" and every time it's happened.

Quote from Sp0de jump

Ok, my thoughts on the best beasts & random things that can help you win:

Starving buzzard - with little effort you can fill your whole goddamn board.

Tundra Rhino - Because it basically states "give all your creatures charge". Combined with timber wolf it's close to GG

King of Beasts - Pretty situational, but making this one a 6/6 isn't that hard

Haunted Creeper - Insane tempo if you get this one early on

And the class i got most wins as was Mage, because mage spells are insane. Echo of medvith was pretty brutal when i had tundra rhino & buzzard on the table.

And one more thing, NEVER COIN OUT 2 WEBSPINNERS ON TURN 1. You might get some tempo, but this one is ultimately about the fact which one can dish out the big boys earlier to the table. I won every single game against an idiot who did this, one with extremely bad webspinner RNG on my side (even though polymorph helped getting rid of his gahz'rilla).

 I've actually found the opposite. The winner is usually the person who can turn their Webspinners into creatures faster. Obviously it's heavily dependent on luck, but the tempo advantage of being able to do a lot of the trading on your turn so you get to play creatures first is important.

It's not really inconsistent. On every similar card (see Kidnapper), they also use the word "owner". It's inconsistent with the usage you see in MTG, but who cares?

Quote from Brohanro »

Just wanted to point out that he cheated in magic not hs. Mistakes made in the past do not nullify good deeds done in the present. I'm pretty sure everyone has cheated at something or other in life. But does 1 incident make u a cheater on incapable of doing good deeds. Not defending reynad just saying theres more than 1 way to view some thing like this.

So in regards to this, if it had come out later that Reynad was playing different lists than he submitted, there would be plenty of bad publicity. It's not just a "selfless" decision on his part.

Quote from lynxbird »

Don't forget [card]Gnomeregan Infantry[/card], this one is better in every situation.

Beast synergy. Technically.

Quote from RaddinHS »

Quote from Mister_Smith »

You do not seem to understand what the term of powercreeping actually means. It usually refers to a card strictly outshining a very similar card. 

That is not the case with Mechwarper. The card is good in a very specific archetype of deck, the mech deck but strictly worse than Pint-Sized Summoner in every other kind of deck. Sure it got a better stat line than the summoner but his effect is conditional making him more of a niche card. 

So if you want to complain about Mechwarper being OP or something like that it's fine but don't throw around terms like powercreeping when it simply does not even fit the cards in discussion. 

By the way I see the card as perfectly fine. It can potentially snowball out of control if you've got a really good hand and your opponent strangely does not have an answer to the card but seeing how pretty much every class has a way to deal with a turn 2 Mechwarper he barely stays on the field long enough to be the huge tempo swing he's intended to be.

Actually, power creep does fit in the discussion.

While some people seem to have taken a very black and white view on the subject, there is no need for that. Powercreeping is not just something being absolutely, strictly better than something else in every single situation. It also concerns cards with similar effects or stat distribution that are nonetheless far more efficient.

You are basically saying: Since Pint-Sized Summoner's effect and Mechwarper's effect are not 100% identical there can be no power creep between this cards. What if Blizzard suddenly decided to release the following neutral minions in the next update:

• Stone Warrior: A 3/4 for 2 mana (Your Spells cost (1) more.)
• Stone King: A 5/6 for 3 mana (Your Spells cost (1) more.)
• Stone Emperor: A 7/7 for 4 mana (Your Spells cost (1) more.)

In your vision, this would not be powercreep despite these minions being obviously insane.

Of course, there was more to your argument. You also stated that Mechwarper was more of a niche card, imo disrespecting the difference between a 2/3 and a 2/2 but that is besides the point. First off, you are ignoring that Archetypes can powercreep as well. Mech is arguabely already a lot stronger than Murloc and Pirate, and next expansion we might see an even stronger one. In TCG's like Yu-Gi-Oh! we see this as well, where older archetypes cannot hope to keep up with newer ones.

Second, I could make my 'Stone Warriors' more niche by giving them an additional effect ('You cannot play/summon non-stone minions'). This would make them a lot more niche, but if Blizzard makes enough of these OP stone dudes you could probably make a zoo-y Stone Deck that would reck everything.

Would these cards be strictly better than e.g. Bloodfen Raptor? No, but it would be foolish to claim that they would not create powercreep. I am not even really addressing the Mechwarper vs Pint-Sized debate, but we need to admit that powercreep is about more than a card simply being strictly better than an older one.

You are staring yourself blind on whether a card fits a verry narrow definition of powercreep while ignoring the actual issue namely that older cards might not be able to match the newer ones.

Tl/dr: Powercreep is not just about single cards, but can be about whole archetypes as well; Defining powercreep as cards simply being strictly better is: a) Very hard to maintain because there will almost always be situations/decks where certain cards are better and b) Faulty because it makes it impossible to compare cards with slightly different effects in terms of powercreep.

My opinion on Mechwarper vs Pint-Sized Summoner: Powercreep because a deck utilising Pint-Sized Summoner is likely one with many small minions to get the best out of Pint-Sized, while a deck that wants to get the best out of Mechwarper will do the same with Mechs. Pint-Sized may have the advantage of lowering the cost of every minion, but since Mechwarper gets value the turn it is played and can activate more than once per turn it will get more use of its ability on average even in a deck with fewer Mechs. Besides that, it is a 2/3.

But yes, there are decks where Pint-Sized Summoner could be better. Even at 1-2 Mechs I would pick Mechwarper over Pint-Sized in Arena though.

You don't have to be "better in any situation" to be considered power creep. It comes in more in deckbuilding. Is there ever a reason to play Pint Sized Summoner over Mechwarper in a deck? Obviously there is. PSS is designed more for a ramp deck. Mech warper isn't about getting out big minions faster. It's about dumping a bunch of low cost minions for free.

I'm not even saying PSS is good. But when GvG came out, it wasn't like everyone took their old deck with PSS and replaced them with Mechwarpers. Whereas your War Golem deck has no reason to not run Dr. Boom if you have him.

Let's point to Reynad as an example of someone who shows good sportsmanship and doesn't cheat. Certainly he's never gotten in trouble over it before.

If you stream yourself playing in a tournament, know that you're putting yourself potentially at a disadvantage. When money is on the line, don't have people watching you.

On the other hand, people cheating AT in person tournaments is something that SHOULD be policed. There is no way anyone currently playing a round should have access to their phone or other programs and things.