Hearthstone Wiki just revealed a new Showdown in the Badlands card: Snake Eyes
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Hearthstone Dev Talks About Dice
Quote from HearthstoneRolling dice? In Hearthstone!? YEAH!
Early on in class design for Showdown in the Badlands, I set out on a mission to design a card that literally rolled dice. Why? Because rolling dice is COOL! It was also tricky to get right, and I wanna talk about why!
Dice rolling is essentially a cool way to showcase a random range of values or options. It's important for each value to feel different in gameplay. Otherwise, why did I even roll any dice at all?
The obvious idea was using that value as a scaled output, like Crackle. This idea has major issues that leaves both players feeling bad. The player is unhappy with anything other than a 6, and the opponent feels scammed with anything above a 1. We didn't even try this lol
A version we DID try was giving each outcome a unique effect, all at around the same power level. Playing it felt fine, BUT the card was essentially 7 cards in 1: Snake Eyes + 6 roll outcomes. When people saw it for the first time, they were more overwhelmed than excited.
With those things learned, I knew the outcomes had to feel different but share the same shape whie having little to no variance in power. I also really wanted the literal number rolled to be represented in the actual effect, to make the card easier to understand.
The solution: creating cards of different Costs in hand! Every card has a Cost value, letting us use the value rolled easily in the effect. And any random card in your hand is about as valuable as the next. But a 6-Cost card feels different from a 1-Cost card, and vice versa!
A version we tried for a long time was similar to the one we shipped, but it drew the cards from your deck. That is a HUGE ask for deck-building, and we didn't really like that this one card being in your deck meant "having to" run multiple 1-6 Cost cards.
Discover was even better than I had thought initially because of how different the outcomes became. If you roll two different faces, like a 2 and a 4, youll see SIX completely different cards to pick from - no repeats!
Oh, and the "doubles get a extra Discover" was just to add some dreamy spice to the card. Yes, it does kinda go against the previous point of trying not to have outputs of varied power-levels BUT it happens infrequently enough to not feel that problematic. And it's just COOL!
Showdown in the Badlands Card List & Expansion Guide
Learn more and see all the cards in our dedicated Card List.
artists do not know that the sum of opposite face in a dice is always 7, so the card with "2" is incorrect
Well, I didn't know either, thanks, sir.
Honestly, this card will be meta, and people for sure will complain of rng outplaying them and will ask for a nerf. Keep my words in mind
Yay! Let’s make RNG in Hearthstone, cause Hearthstone don’t have any RNG atm, isn’t it? 👀
Seeing the dev note:
I totally agree with the dev that dice are a good way to implement a random element. You have clear odds and easily identifiable outcomes. As I said before, I like it much better than most other random elements in the game.
And I will admit that they found a decent solution to the conundrum that you want every outcome to feel meaningful without it being "bigger number=better result" and without making it obtuse by having a hidden table for what each number would represent.
But if they don't want high- and lowrolling (that's how I interpret the Crackle-comment)... what do they even think Discover is?
You feel bad when you get 3 (or 6 in this case) equally useless options and your opponents wants to smash their phone against a wall when that discovered card is the exact one out of X possible that will instantly decide the game in your favor. Only that I know exactly what the odds are for a 6-sided die, while I don't have a spreadsheet with every possible 5-cost card in the format I am currently playing, making the highrolls (in my opinion) even harder to stomach.
The idea of including a diceroll here is kinda lost, when the real diceroll happens on the discovers: Some cards will be extremely good, some won't do anything for you. The manacost is almost entirely superficial, because manacost has close to no meaning for power in Hearthstone, only that higher cost cards tend to be numerically more powerful, but even that is not a given.
It is far more important that cards, whatever they cost, have a high impact on the turn they are played. A big minion is only threatening when you have high enough health and your opponent's board and hand is small or empty. A cheap damage spell wins you the game against a low health opponent, and is completely useless against a high health minion that threatens to kill you.
And as a sidenote: Rolling dice can be cool when everyone is in on the game. The Yogg-Saron Tryouts Tavern Brawl is (in my opinion) fun, because both players know what they sign up for: Every minion casts a completely random spell that can be extremely beneficial or absolutely disastruous at any moment in the game. You have to consider how much risks you want to take, and you haven't really lost until your health reaches (or will reach) 0. When me and my opponent can both laugh at the hilarity of outcomes, that's awesome.
But when one player tries to play a strategy game, and the other player is just rolling dice to see how random outcomes can overcome any strategy, the fun is a bit one-sided. Just my 2 cents on this discussion whether including dicerolls in Hearthstone is actually "cool".
Since this is a Legendary card, they should make the Discover options to restrict to a certain card pools such as class cards only, spells only, Naga minions only, etc.
Now you see all the cards that you can play, and you thought you'll get away with these games...
Why isn't it a neutral card
Why isn't it a neutral card
Why isn't it a neutral card
D20 incoming.
The card originality gets 9/10, the card usability is at about 5/10.
Discover 2 is not that good when you have no idea what pool you will draw from.
Literal dice rolling... *slow clap*.
Interestingly, as the reveal page on the wiki tells, you get to roll a d6, not a d10, which would arguably make more sense, since most of all Hearthstone cards cost 1 to 10 mana.
I wonder if the designer is so little of a nerd to not even know a d10 exists, or if playtesting revealed 1-6 was the best range to make the card playable. Or maybe they thought it would be too much of a culture shock to reveal to their audience that dice with more (and less) than 6 sides exist. So many questions, no answers in sight.
Now I can't wait for a Dice-Rogue deck, where minion and spell damage is always based on dice rolls. I think of a 2 mana 0/0 minion: "Battlecry: Roll 1d4 to set its Health. Roll 1d6 to set its attack whenever it attacks or is attacked". Or perhaps a 3 mana spell "Deal 1d4 damage, Combo: +1d6."
It's not all that different from Crackle. And the more I think about it, that would be refreshingly calculable compared to usual Hearthstone gamplay.
If this card was just "discover two random cards" you wouldn't bat an eye, but they decided to give it a cool flavourful name and effect and you're complaining. Come on..
It seems I had been off in my messaging. I had not intended my remarks as complaint and failed to make that clear. My bad.
I mean, "discover two cards that cost 6 or less" (which is basically the effect) is honestly kinda boring and feels neither fitting nor necessary for the DH class, but whatever. I think legendaries can and should be more exciting, but that's life.
I wrote my comment because I am purely, innocently puzzled why it is limited to numbers 1-6. I don't understand that. If there's a pun or reference in there, I don't know it. I don't see the "cool" in there. Feel free to enlighten me.
And I honestly, genuinely think that if they put in the effort of animating dice falling on the game board to determine card effects, I like that far better than Babbling Book or Yogg-Saron, Hope's End and the hundreds of cards that followed them (rough guessing). And I think they might as well do more with it. So, in a way, I actually find this card interesting. Not for what it does, but for what might follow.
Ok, to be brutally honest, I find dicerolls in Hearthstone pretty silly. But if everyone just craves more and more random things to happen, I'd rather take my 1 in 6 chance of winning or losing and "fate has decided" over effects with potentially hundreds of different outcomes (rough guessing). At least rolling dice has some resemblence to tabletop gaming with easily comprehensible odds.
It's 1-6 because the theme is wild west and they weren't playing D&D with D20s at the time. "Snake Eyes" refers to throwing two ones in gambling.
I have a feeling of the dice turns will last loooong.
It's a cute flavor. I feel like people is over-reacting a little to the word "Dice", like is mostly for flavor, dosn't really change the card as much, is as if said "Discover a card that cost 6 or less, twice." but with some minor implications like, tou can't Discover 0-Cost card, and you have the little extra of having a 100% Casino RNG of an extra random card. That in my opinion is not such a big deal.
That said is a Legendary that gives you 2-3 random cards, and dosn't does anything else. I guess you play it on Naga DH for being a Naga that gives you value, and on a Reno deck cause you need to fill a deck. But without being a bad card, feels like the first card that you would cut from a deck in case you find a better alternative. I can't imagine many decks when this card wasn't in the top 5 worst cards of the deck.
But the card is fine, 3-Mana for 2 random cards and a 2/3 body is decent.
Well, took them this long to implement dice rolls into the game
Oooooooooooooh boy. Dice in Hearthstone.
All we need now is Pot of Greed.
We already have that Arcane Intellect
Abhorrent grammar being conveyed via overly-emotional fingers is always a sight to be seen.