Season 4 End Date and Season 5 Start Announced!
Heroes Patch 39595 - Datamined Changes, Greymane, Lunara, Official Patch Notes
Legion PvP Preview
Ben Brode on Value Town
Ben Brode was on Value Town earlier today, where they talked about the past year of Hearthstone and built a dark bargain themed deck. We've recapped the interesting points below.
Quote from Ben Brode
- Secret Paladin was one of the most surprising decks that was introduced into the game through Mysterious Challenger. They didn't expect it to do so well.
- They thought Lock and Load would have been used more.
- Dreadsteed used to summon 2 of itself!
- The team originally had 15 members, now they're up to 50.
Gift Exchange Tavern Brawl
The much-anticipated Gift Exchange Tavern Brawl finally went live today! The brawl rewards us with a special Winter Veil card back rather than a card pack this week (see complaints here) for your win, so don't forget to play it this week to help complete that card back collection.
Feast of Winter Veil
Winter Veil Brawl
We've got a dedicated discussion thread over on the Tavern Brawl forums to talk about the Gift Exchange.
- Create your own decks this week.
- If a Winter's Veil Gift doesn't exist on your side of the field when your turn begins, one will spawn.
- Killing a gift will give the currently active player a Stolen Winter's Veil Gift.
- The stolen gift uses the Discover keyword. The gift determines the class cards based on which side of the field the gift was originally on. Makes for an interesting strategic component.
- Crazed Alchemist is a cheap way to kill gifts!
While on the subject of winning the brawl, a certain Warlock deck we've been fooling around with, courtesy of TSMS, has been doing quite well for getting that quick win. Check out that deck below, don't forget to toss it a vote if you find it works for you, and if you're looking for some alternative decks, go check out the full listing of decks created for this week's brawl.
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The Angry Chicken #125 - Rafaam Cheats
This week on The Angry Chicken podcast, the crew discussed the Hall of Explorers, Winter Veil, the usual crazy game stories, and your emails. You can watch the episode below!
The Angry Chicken is a Hearthstone podcast featuring Garrett, Dills, and Jocelyn who discuss the latest Hearthstone happenings, strategy, and stories. You can find previous episodes of TAC over on their YouTube channel.
I've been playing this game since before the beta reset. I played Magic when I was in high school, I've played other card games over the years. I have all of the cards on my main account, and then every season i start a new account and try to get to legend with a new deck on that new account each season without spending any money. There are decks that are irritating, there are cards that are irritating, but I haven't found anything to be blatantly broken.
Just because the community loudly cries that something is broken, that doesn't mean it's so. From the start of beta until somewhere after Naxx players complained Ragnaros and Ysera, they weren't overpowered they were just annoying as shit to play against. Even before Naxx was released those two cards started seeing a lot less play, so it's not from power creep. Cairne went from being considered a shitty card, to an amazing card, back to a shitty card.
If something truly gets out of hand, it gets nerfed. Sometimes it gets overnerfed like Buzzard. I'd actually say Blizzard has more of a problem with overnerfing the cards that due turn out to be problematic than they do with introducing cards that are too powerful.
TLDR: MC and Dr. Boom are annoying cards to play against, but that doesn't make them broken or in need of a nerf. And yes, I know, much like how it feels that every single warrior (except you, obviously.) has Fiery Win Axe in their opening hand, it feels like every single secret pally has MC by turn six, but if they don't have that one card they're completely screwed.
With two summoned copies of Dreadsteed it wouldn't be more powerful, but would just flood your board with 1/1s and you can't even kill them off to make room for new minions. The current version is way better but maybe one mana too expensive.
I can rarely, if ever, think of instances where the developers of M:tG made cards on par with things like MC and Dr. 7 and didn't catch within the first three months that they would need either a. restriction or b. to be banned in certain formats. Which is exactly why they have format play in the first place. Even in instances where I recall cards being even close to on par with MC and Dr. 7 in the game, they were restricted or banned in certain formats. Type 1 has a very long restrictions list, Type 0.5 has a banned list nearly as long, and Type 2 has the advantage of being limited only to the most recent three block sets and base edition.
The reason I bring up this comparison is that in development of this game, the team said that they were all card fans and played M:tG. So, you played the card game that has a huge list of balancing types...and obviously didn't learn a single, solitary thing from that. And you wonder why everyone complains about the design of this game. 80% cancer decks everywhere, a "casual" mode that's about as casual as sticking a fork in your eye socket and then inserting the other end into an electrical outlet for good measure, no tournament mode still (which will honestly just end up being terrible anyway, because it'll just give even more spotlight to the extreme lack of creative capability in this game), Tavern Brawl which is just "pick class X to win the game" every single week (gotta love the Warlock Veil Tavern Brawl that they obviously didn't put any thought into), and the one mode that actually has some sort of balance to it and is the most expensive mode to participate in....arena. Where 99 times out of 100, the rewards don't even remotely come close to the cost. The last ten times I did a draft tournament in any card game ever, I did no worse than break even on the money I spent (since I kept the cards, so I basically just paid for boosters I would have ended up buying anyway).
Either a. the team lied about their history of card game play, b. they had just as little of a clue of the game(s) they played before they started showing how little of a clue they have designing them, or c. they just don't know how to design a good card game. All I can tolerate in this game is doing my one daily per day, my one TB win per week, and the rest of the time this game collects dust. Meanwhile, Magic Duels (free to play Magic Online on Steam) has seen me play it for a total of 168 hours in about four months. Oh, and did I mention no multiplay in Hearthstone? Something Magic Duels also brings to the table?
Ben Brode should be dragged into the executive office and handed a pink slip. A 14-year-old could do his job better than he does. And wouldn't cost nearly as much to do it.
You cry way too much.
The sad thing is, you're right (for the most part).
Most people don't understand card advantage and why a 5 mana card that can take out most 6/7 and 8 mana cards, is better than any of those cards individually.
I don't think the team at Hearthstone's dev studio misunderstand Magic, I think they're just too focused on making the most profit they can.
Think of all the cards you believe should be nerfed right now.
Now think about how much less dust people would use to craft those must have cards.
Hearthstone is about bringing card games to the masses, true, but it's most often about bringing profit back to Blizzard after they've been hemorrhaging people from WoW this past year.
I agree. I've always thought MtG>>>HS as far as balance is concerned. They understand card games.
They literally invented collectible card games!
6 for 6/6 which is Mad Scientist on steroids because it's a battlecry that can play 5 secrets at once. how do you not realize this will be broken
Because it seems that blizzard devs don't understand what "card advantage" is.
It would be much more reasonable as a deathrattle, than a battlecry.
They are just playing "cover my ass" in these interviews like they always do. It's to be expected they can't be perfect and surely try to pass it off like they did plenty of testing and were surprised it didn't turn out as they had intended.
obviously
Cover my ass and lazyness is blizzard´s way.
You mean to tell me with all your money and a bloody 50 man team you cant add more indirect content like achievements to HS much in the style of wow? this game has so much potential and they take it so casually like this is just a silly app people tinker with
Hopefully they brought (or are bringing) in some people to the team who have more experience with TCGs. Someone along the lines of Kibler.
Actually, I really like Lock and Load. It's one of my preferred Hunter decks. But I don't delude myself into believing it's competitively viable.
The fact that the Blizzard design team didn't expect Mysterious Challenger Paladin to do as well as it has just reinforces the idea that they have absolutely no fucking idea what they're doing at all. The card is the most blatantly broken piece of shit in the history of Hearthstone, with absolutely ABSURD mana value on its battlecry, yet they still saw fit to make it a 6/6 because... reasons. On the other hand they thought The Mistcaller would be so game-breakingly OP that they had to make him a 4/4 for 6 to compensate... yeah, tell us how that worked out, huh?
That simple comparison, Mysterious Challenger vs The Mistcaller, is enough for me to dismiss the Hearthstone design team as simply incompetent. Especially considering I know for a FACT that The Mistcaller will never receive even the tiniest buff (because we "need bad cards") while Mysterious Challenger will continue to dominate the entire game until at LEAST after the release of the next expansion before Blizzard finally nerf it (probably in the most retarded way possible, like changing Avenge to only give +1/+1 because clearly THAT'S the problem, not the ridiculous mana value of the Challenger's battlecry *cough*WarsongCommander*cough*).
Oh and fuck this Tavern Brawl. Why are they so fixated on the idea that anyone gives a flying fuck about card backs?
Yo, not even the pros thought that Mysterious Challenger would see play, watch:
On the top of that, everyone thought that The Mistcaller would be an insane good card. You can see that here at the comments, I can't show you any pro video, they were really divided on this card. Just because they failed to predict that a card would be used a lot doesn't mean that they don't know what they are doing.
And what do you have against the Tavern Brawl? And I do like collecting card backs, many people do.
Not trying to challenge you or nothing, I just think you were mad/salty when you wrote this and you said some stuff you didn't even think about.
It's never correct to compare cards of different classes. Every class has different strengths and weaknesses and as a result, a card that is weak in one class could be strong in another and vice versa. Judging new effects is difficult. As someone has already stated, many reviewers didn't pick Mysterious Challenger as anything special. Hearthstone has many very strong class cards. Those class cards don't end up seeing widespread play or breaking the game because within the context of the class, they aren't game breaking.
No body in their right mind thought Mistcaller would be any good. Only rank 20 noobs.
I seem to remember Strifecro thinking Dr.6 was gonna be powerful.
Yes, Strife said it might see play and sometimes could be better than Dr. Boom, but I'll be honest here, I don't think that Mysterious Challenger is that good as people complain, and I played A LOT of Secret Paladin. I test every single deck that I see. It's a risk-reward card, if you don't draw it, you loose, if you draw it, you get a good edge, but not enough to win the game. Challenger + Boom + Tirion steals the game, that's a fact. However, Boom + Tirion steals the game already, without challenger. Actually, most of the times, Boom steals the game alone.