Hearthpwn

She has a very good assortment of nature spells to trigger off of and could lead to some heavy turns.  Just need a good win or board condition setup to really push it.  I like it.

Since it's After you cast a nature spell then cards like Landscaping [/card] will summon the tokens and then one of them will get the +2/+2.  Now would [card]Germination (assuming its Nature) summon the second copy and then both trigger or just one trigger?

Quote from Shadowrisen >>

I'm actually glad you said that Yepapa.  I was thinking that back in the day Sylvannas, Ragnaros, Cairne, and a couple others were in just about every deck.

So, those numbers can be a little misleading.  Even if the overall numbers of legendaries are the same or close to it, it could be that each deck is using more class legendaries, and thus the pool of legendaries is actually bigger.  I was thinking of Demon Hunter and all the class legendaries they use (Malcia, Ilgynoth, Kayne, Altruis).  Pure Paladin has a few also, and those are hyper-specialized.  Yrel can't even be used in the pen-flinger version of the deck.

Now that I think of it, the list is even longer.  All the Highlander Priests have that triumvirate of 3-cost legendaries (Lazul, Illucia, and the guy that deathrattles to copy a minion, can't think of the name), as well as Moru . . . zund?  Whatever the 8-cost priest dragon is.  Shit, and Soul Mirror.  Damn, the list does grow on you.

EDIT:  @Wrathgood - those are all perfectly legit examples, but I'm just thinking it does seem to be the case that class legendaries are more represented than their neutral counterparts when compared to the old days.  I suppose that's a function of power creep combined with the leeway they have to make class cards a little more powerful than neutrals.

 It might also be the fact that when they transitioned to 2 class legendaries per set back in Frozen Throne and Un'Goro they removed neutral legendary minions in the process so that the Legendary count stayed between 20 and 25 (Classic is an outlier with 32 Legendary cards as is DoD with 28 due to Galakrond).  Which also opened up a bigger design space to play with the class fantasy's and pursue some different avenues of play that didn't have to be balanced around multiple classes having access to them.

 a lot of work you did there mate, you have looked at the amount of legendary and epics cards but that is not my point, the point I was trying to come forward with, and maybe iv failed at that because I get annoyed easily, is how key those epics and legendries are.

fx, imagine a libram deck without Libram of Hope and Lady Liadrin those cards are essential for the archetype is what I argue, however what other paladin decks do they fit in? Liadrin a 1600 dust craft is total waste outside of this 1 deck and libram of hope can maybe be played in duels paladin (which is a meme deck) which requires Nozdormu the Timelost and Duel! which does not see play in any other paladin archetype. 

back in the days cards would have more overlap and be used more broadly across many deck types, this is a way which they have raised the price of hearthstone!

understand? it is not just that they are epic or legendries it is that they are essential for certain archetypes which are strong and useless for others entirely

So you're saying that Force of Nature, prior to its nerf wasn't integral to old-school token druid?  Or that Mysterious Challenger wasn't a key part of Christmas Tree Paladin?  How about Shudderwock in Shudderwock Shaman?  Raza the Chained and Shadowreaper Anduin in Mono-priest?  Kingsbane?  All of these example made their archetype.  its something that's been around since day-1 (in the case of Token druid).  The broader the card pool, the more CCG's can expand the idea of set or block themes.  It's not something unique to Hearthstone.

Quote from yepapapepeap >>

you think that is an argument for hearthstone not being predatory? that Gatcha games are worse??
that is like saying kicking and hitting someone is not violence because shooting someone does more damage

if anything they are an inspiration, look at the c'thun package, another time limited purchase option that did not used to be there

 Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you still get C'Thun when you open your first Whispers of the Old Gods pack?  I believe that was the change they made back in 2017 or 2018.  I just checked and WotOG packs are available for gold in the shop so its not a time-limited purchase.  As for the Gatcha comparison, you misunderstood what I said and are trying to twist it.  I never said Hearthstone wasn't playing into that.  What I did say was that it it's nowhere as bad as the flood of Gatcha games on the market.  To use a violence example like you did; Hearthstone is a slap to the face compared to the Gatcha games being a baseball bat to the knee asking you where their money is.

I have been playing about 20 or so matches with this deck over the past 5 days and I have some comments.  Please note that these are based on mid-progression play with an unknown MMR

• Ramp is the way. Most often mulligan for at least one source, two if you can.
• Getting the right card off of Nature Studies is a crapshoot, but certain cards are very good takes. Worthy Expedition is a very strong pull as of the 18 “Choose One” cards have a decent usage and can help you out at times.
• N'Zoth, God of the Deep loves to get pulled out from Strength in Numbers and when that happens you’ll be on your back foot against many classes
• Against Demon Hunter you should expect to get your board cleared easily by a Blade Dance turn. Holding or mulliganning for Lunar Eclipse will help you survive the early game some, but you really need to get some level of AOE from Nature Studies to clear the minion rush out.  It’s a very hard matchup and I think I lost most of my matches to a Blade Dance turn clearing my entire board of taunts.
• When playing against Warlocks expect them to have Cascading Disaster and play around it by keeping no more than 2 minions on board at a time to make it inefficient to use. That said, it is another hard matchup due to the amount of removal they pack and some of their removal’s synergy with the Y'Shaarj, the Defiler.
• Hunter, Mage, & Rogue thus far have been more about reading and predicting what their secrets are more than anything else. Figuring out which one it is can make or break your game.  Some secrets like Freezing Trap, Shadow Clone, and Mirror Entity are particularly dangerous for a big minion deck like this
• Priest and Warrior is all about wondering how they’ll clear your board next. Best suggestion is try and same the N’zoth swing turn for after they’ve used at least 1 Plague of Death or Brawl
• Shaman and Paladin are really about surviving the early game and then being able to apply the pressure. These are matchups that you want to select defensive/recovery spells from Nature Studies as you may need them.

the audience for hearthstone is (I believe) between 16-30 so basically kids and students who are getting targeted by addicting and manipulating tactics

If you're going to choose "Addicting and manipulating tactics" as your point then Hearthstone isn't a great example for that.  Take any and all FTP Gatcha game on the market.  Those are the games that are pounding the drums of "Addiction and Fear of Missing Out" far harder than Hearthstone has ever and will ever.  Its like comparing a caffeine addiction to an addiction to hard drugs.  You think $500 a year is high?  The Gatcha games will wring $500 or more a month from players with their limited time banners.  Come back when Hearthstone starts doing that with cards and make your point again then.

Quote from yepapapepeap >>

Quote from TallStranger >>

Quote from Shadowrisen >>

I don't know about the last six years, but I posted in detail why, over the last 15-20 years, several areas of the process of making video games has dropped to zero.  So unless there's a gigantic increase to offset all that, common sense says video games are significantly cheaper to produce today than they were 15-20 years ago.

There may, in fact, be such a gigantic increase, but I don't see it.  It certainly isn't in hardware.  Computers are significantly cheaper than they were back in the day, I remember vividly paying almost $3k for a slightly-above average model in the late 90s.

The way I read his drivel was that he was claiming that the production costs for HS have not gone up. His "logic" seems to be that, since costs have not risen, prices should not either. I was ignoring the broader idiocy of that idea and focusing solely on input costs.

Certainly, if one compares video games today to those of the 1990's, it's lower. My point (and I should have made this clearer, but I was trying not to write too much, since we know people complain about that) is that the total salary for HS development and production has almost certainly increased over the past 5-6 years. The development team has gotten much larger, if nothing else. You may very well be right that individual salaries in this field are stagnant, but in sheer numbers, I'm quite certain that total salary costs have gone up since 2014. Now, Blizzard has more than made up for that increase (either due to technological advances, increased productivity, and market power), which is (partly) why the game remains profitable.

 for someone who has a bare minimum understanding of capitalism it sure is rich to call my simplistic take of the raise of product cost of games idiocy, what do you know about running a business? I assume bare minimum


blizzard is artificially increasing the price of their product with tactical, discreetly measures, something a simpleton who does not understand the game to its full effect will not catch on to due to community backlash.

legendary and epic cards have become more essential, fx what is a highlander deck without the legendaries? 
they are rotating the archetypes - making a class like hunter, known for aggro into combo and a class like shaman known for combo into aggro in hopes that the people who enjoy the archetype of lets say combo will start building a hunter deck to get his combo fix and the guy who likes aggro will build a shaman deck to get his aggro fix

All card games add in set rotation at some point. It’s the nature of the beast.  It’s never easy and never pleasant, but it’s why evergreen formats exist in most games (like Wild in Hearthstone). Heck I remember when the Pokémon TCG first added set rotation and there were so many complaints about collections going to waste, but 18 years later the game is still going strong.  Rotation is also a time to try new things with a class/creature type which lets people who enjoy a single class try different play styles.  It also keeps things fresh and allows newer players a chance to join in instead of having to buy 4+ years worth of cards.  Lastly, rotation in Hearthstone, unlike other CCG, Is less brutal.  When a set rotates you aren’t left with the old cards if you don’t want them.  You can dust them (at a very poor rate, but that’s for other discussions) and craft new cards.

I would love to see Blade Dance changed to "Your hero attacks 3 random enemy minions (weapon durability is not lost)".  It would make it a much harder choice to use against big minions, but would still pair well with the new Relentless Pursuit  and the Hunter/Demon Hunter legendary from Scholo as they would prevent the face damage from each attack.

Quote from yepapapepeap >>

Quote from DeafKnight >>

It takes a much bigger person to stand up to the nasty, vocal minority than it does to be a sheeple and join in with the moaning and greedy demanding for fear of being shouted down for your opinion.

I have not seen any  statistic on this subject, using a term like "vocal minority" is just an attempt to do gaslighting..  anyone who falls for that sort of rhetoric or uses it themselves is by definition a manipulator or a sucker who have fallen for the manipulation and even spreads it themselves now without even knowing the root, and ill consider you the latter.
not saying that you do it on purpose :)

it is sort of like when people are voting and someone says, if you don't vote for blue it is a vote for red because yellow (who you want to vote for is a smaller party) they will consider it a waste, but no it is not a waste that is your opinion and you should stick to it and not let people bully you into their own believes 

please don't miss use data and adding biased adjectives is not really in good taste either

 The concept of a "Vocal Minority" is not gaslighting, its a commonly observed trend.  There is a reason the phrase "The squeaky wheel gets the grease" has been around since the 19th century.  Take Blizzard for example.  it had about 30 million monthly active users (MAU) last quarter.  Of those users, how many go to forums and post threads about "Nerf X" or "Make Y cheaper" (thus making them vocal)?  I'd bet its not 15 million users or even 1 million users (making them a minority of MAU).  Thus the minority of MAU are being vocal about their complaints, thus they are a "Vocal Minority".  The same goes for those that praise the game or defend the company, they are also a "Vocal Minority" just on the other end of the spectrum.

Quote from yepapapepeap >>

Quote from Shadowrisen >>

@3nnu1

So, the most I've ever spent in the post-duplicate protection era was $220 for one expansion, but that was unusually high, because I had basically been unable to play much of the 4 months before it, so I didn't have any gold saved up at all.

A more reasonable estimate is $150-190 per expansion, which represents either the bigger pre-order or both pre-orders plus one batch of the largest regular pack bundle.  Whether or not I get both preorders depends on how many gold packs I'll be able to get, as well as whether or not it's the first expansion of a year.  The first expansion of a year is always cheapest, because I will have a few cards I'm confident will never be played in wild that I can disenchant for some extra dust.  Occasionally, I can get it down to $80 for the preorder only, if I have a particularly heavy gold / disenchanted dust run.

So, when it all averages out, a liberal estimate is $500 per year.  I've had years when it was less, but never more than that.  And yes, of course that's a huge amount of money to spend, but it's a trivial amount of my discretionary budget, so it just doesn't matter to me all that much.

 

EDIT:  To give some idea of comparison, it was NEVER possible for me to put a full set together for less than $250 prior to duplicate protection, and it could sometimes break the $300 mark, though usually by then, you could dust craft almost everything.

EDIT 2:  I have watched some Runeterra, and so far, I'm not a fan of the priority system.  I'm having flashbacks to the original attempts to take Magic the gathering online, and translating the priority stack to a digital game was a nightmare.  For game design reasons, I hate the banked mana pool (I believe it's called "spell mana") from the previous turn, and the way they have differing classes of spells that effect the priority stack differently is not something I really want to mess with right now.  And if I did want to do something like that, I'd just get back into Magic.

 an average of 500 dollars pr year, I thought lawyers was suppose to be smart...

if you cannot see that is insane expensive compared to any other game then I confirm you a blizzard spy

$500 a year on a Free to play game is nothing.  That’s less than $42 a month, which is cheaper than getting a daily coffee from Starbucks on the way to work (about $60 a month).  Which gives more enjoyment?  The coffee or the game?  Now if we look at a typical CCG, you’ll spend $800 annually or more as many have 4 sets a year and a booster box will run you around $100, which is only 36 packs.  Is Hearthstone expensive?  Yes it is.  Is it more expensive then It was?  No.  Is it unrealistically expensive?  No.

Quote from Madcookie >>

Quote from Asuryan >>

I see Hearthstone as a CCG, not a video game. Coming from an MtG background, HS is incredibly cheap. I don’t get what all the fuss is about.

 Good point to someone who misses the fact that when you buy paper MTG the cards are yours unlike this digital jpegs that you don't even own. On top of that you can sell your MTG cards at any point, sometimes even at higher price compared to what you bought them for, while selling your account is much more difficult, if not prohibited.

 As someone who has played 5 or 6 different physical TCG’s over the past 20+ years I have to interject.  While some cards do accrue in value, the vast majority of your collection (99%+) will be worth pennies.  There is a massive fallacy in treating TCG’s as having any long lasting value that has been created by MTG’s “Power Nine” (or alpha/beta rares) and the nostalgia value of some Pokemon cards.  Outside of these exceptions, inherent value in the cards drives the market price.  Once cards leave the standard tournament scene they lose a lot of value. Yes there are legacy formats, but by and large you don’t see the same market price.  Let’s not even talk about reprints and their impact.  This leaves your “monetary recoupment” at pennies on the dollar spent.  Great job!  You sold your collection of 30,000 cards that you spent $8000 for $400 bucks.  But, you’ll say, Hearthstone makes no money back!  Which you are correct,  but you also miss a huge difference.  Hearthstone provides avenues to greatly reduce expenses:  duplicate protection; crafting of cards; packs from gold (ftp).  Which is better?  Putting more money in and getting a little back out at the end or putting less in initially in the first place?

First two matches with this deck.

• Vs Innkeeper (to get a feel) - Mess around until Yogg is on-line.  Spin the wheel and get classic Yogg effect.  Die to fatigue (from 30).
• Vs Player - Standard druid token shenanigans.  Wriggling Horror was the only MDF card I played, but was clutch for value trades.

So for Druid we have 29 possible minions (right now)

 https://www.hearthpwn.com/cards/minion?filter-show-standard=y&filter-premium=1&filter-cost-val=5&filter-cost-op=5&filter-race=20&filter-class=5&display=3

Of those, Emperor Cobra and Evasive Chimaera look like interesting removal options where as Bad Luck Albatross would be a good way to mess over some decks.  Overall though I am not that impressed with it from a Druid viewpoint.  Hoping that the set as some decent beasts with board effects.

I can already see this going into the Malygos Druid that uses Saytr to discount this/Maly.  That first Moonfire trigger's the burst to refresh all 10 crystals and then its off to the races.