Hearthstone

I've been thinking for a while about trying this out. I love the Warcraft universe, but I've never played any kind of these card games. Is it pretty easy to get into, and can you make decent progress without spending real money?
 
You can actually do surprisingly well with decks made of common / basic cards. It is definitely slow going to buy new card packs or adventure missions without spending money. It is certainly doable though.

The new Tavern Brawl mode is lots of fun if you are just playing for free as every other week they have prebuilt decks that you play with, and you get a card pack each week for that mode.
 
Space_Coyote said:
I've been thinking for a while about trying this out. I love the Warcraft universe, but I've never played any kind of these card games. Is it pretty easy to get into, and can you make decent progress without spending real money?
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Yes and no.

At this point your going to be behind the ball quite a bit so you will most likely need to at least sink some money into the expansion packs for Naxx and BWL.

Otherwise it can get pretty grindy, but you can still enjoy that.

I ground out Naxx with gold and it wasn't to bad, but I did pay for BWL and that really made the whole experience much more enjoyably.

Overall dropping 20 bucks ever major update isn't to crazy imo.
 
Erasmus354 said:
Bump for TGT expansion announcement. I gotta say, Hearthstone is the most enjoyable mobile game I have. Games are just the right length normally to do a quick gaming session.
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I'll bet. Come on Blizzard, get your WP port out already!
Erasmus354 said:
You can actually do surprisingly well with decks made of common / basic cards. It is definitely slow going to buy new card packs or adventure missions without spending money. It is certainly doable though.

The new Tavern Brawl mode is lots of fun if you are just playing for free as every other week they have prebuilt decks that you play with, and you get a card pack each week for that mode.
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Haven't played in awhile, as I got tired of the lack of gold reward for playing friends. They force you to grind out gold vs random players, and at a VERY slow rate too. My buddy bought me 20 bucks worth of card packs and that made the game much better. Yes you can win with basic cards, but whipping out a whopping legendary OP card... you just can't beat it.
 
Game is a ton of fun. With only 30 card decks, a fixed mana rotation and a relatively limited card pool, the OP legendaries do make a huge difference. I'm still very much a newby, have a hard time hovering around 19 ranked; do much better in casual, winning more = more gold = more packs = better chance to win.

All that being said, it's really fun. Arena and/or Tavern mode are really fun.

I do have a questoin about Naxx and BWL, it doesn't even appear you can get in there with gold now? How many cards do you get out of those, is it really worth it?

Think I'm going to splurge the $50 for the expansion pack of TGT. If you d/l this through the Amazon app store, you can use Amazon coins instead of paying pure cash, which gives you a decent discount.

For example, paid $45 for the amazon coins instead of $50 for the expansion; buying the $50 expansion then gave me 1,000 coins back for purchase, essentially ~$10, although I have to use it in game to buy more packs.
 
You can average about 20-25 free packs a month if you stick with it. The more packs you have, te easier it is to earn more free packs (by net decking) and eventually it will all click


Or just buy some packs if hug aren't patient.
 
ocellaris said:
You can average about 20-25 free packs a month if you stick with it. The more packs you have, te easier it is to earn more free packs (by net decking) and eventually it will all click


Or just buy some packs if hug aren't patient.
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Well yea, that's if you play alone. When i was playing I played a lot... but always with friends. Zero reward for dueling, which IMO is stupid. They'd be better off finding a way to prevent grinding of gold and let you earn when you play real matches with a friend.
 
TwistedAegis said:
If you d/l this through the Amazon app store, you can use Amazon coins instead of paying pure cash, which gives you a decent discount.

For example, paid $45 for the amazon coins instead of $50 for the expansion; buying the $50 expansion then gave me 1,000 coins back for purchase, essentially ~$10, although I have to use it in game to buy more packs.
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By Amazon coins, are those what are rewarded when you have prime and you pick slower shipping???
 
Hmm...I guess you might get coins, lately they've been giving weird rewards for slow shipping. Seen $5 for outdoor goods, or $5 for pantry goods, if it says "coins" that is what are used in their mobile ecosystem, yes.
 
chockomonkey said:
Well yea, that's if you play alone. When i was playing I played a lot... but always with friends. Zero reward for dueling, which IMO is stupid. They'd be better off finding a way to prevent grinding of gold and let you earn when you play real matches with a friend.
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Yeah, because that would work. There is no way to prevent just throwing games for collections.

Also, I will never understand people who refuse to spend money on good fun games. Grinding in this game just plain sucks.

$50 or even a couple hundy would go a long ways to spring boarding your enjoyment if you like card games.

If you don't like card games then move on... if you like the game and don't understand that card games require way more money then other games then they aren't for you.

TCG/CCGs are the epitome of P2W for 90% of the player base.
 
chockomonkey said:
Well yea, that's if you play alone. When i was playing I played a lot... but always with friends. Zero reward for dueling, which IMO is stupid. They'd be better off finding a way to prevent grinding of gold and let you earn when you play real matches with a friend.
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They don't reward for dueling because people are assholes and everyone would just setup extra accounts.
 
ocellaris said:
They don't reward for dueling because people are assholes and everyone would just setup extra accounts.
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I'm sure they could find a way to moderate it. Like if your account has a 100% win ratio in duels, you can't get gold off it anymore.
 
ocellaris said:
So you just have each account win 50% of the time...
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and how is that different than playing other people? =P

If someone really wants to sit there playing themselves, what's the big deal?

As long as you take care of the extreme cases where you get no gold for surrendering, so you must play a full match and no gold if anyone goes afk,... just make it take as long as a regular match. I think that'd be a pretty good deterrent.
 
chockomonkey said:
and how is that different than playing other people? =P

If someone really wants to sit there playing themselves, what's the big deal?

As long as you take care of the extreme cases where you get no gold for surrendering, so you must play a full match and no gold if anyone goes afk,... just make it take as long as a regular match. I think that'd be a pretty good deterrent.
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so people just pick ultra aggro decks and a game is over in 5 mins with your opponent friend passing turns. if there is a reward for playing friends, it will get exploited.
hell, people even went at lengths to farm lower ranks for gold for a while.
 
Yes, this game can get expensive to buy cards, but once you've got them all, you just start piling up gold. When the expansion comes out I'll just blow it all on a pile of them. Probably drop $50 on it too.

Also, if you think this game is pay to win, you need to play high level Ranked. Get up to Rank 5 and above and you'll soon find out only the best players are there. Hell, I can't even get up over rank 7 this season. Lot of good players out there. You don't need to spend a fortune. There's actually tons of cheap decks posted online that can get you up pretty far in the ranks. I have a cheap Paladin deck that counters the current meta game. Or, you can be an official "Huntard" for super cheap. Warlock too. Try hearthpwn.com for tons of good net decks if you want help picking out the cards you need for a good deck.
 
Astral Abyss said:
Yes, this game can get expensive to buy cards, but once you've got them all, you just start piling up gold. When the expansion comes out I'll just blow it all on a pile of them. Probably drop $50 on it too.

Also, if you think this game is pay to win, you need to play high level Ranked. Get up to Rank 5 and above and you'll soon find out only the best players are there. Hell, I can't even get up over rank 7 this season. Lot of good players out there. You don't need to spend a fortune. There's actually tons of cheap decks posted online that can get you up pretty far in the ranks. I have a cheap Paladin deck that counters the current meta game. Or, you can be an official "Huntard" for super cheap. Warlock too. Try hearthpwn.com for tons of good net decks if you want help picking out the cards you need for a good deck.
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Half of the game is reading about it and researching decks.

Half of the game is spent on reddit bitching about draws and watching funny/sad videos.

And half of the game is actually playing :D
 
Recently I've watched videos from a number of prominent youtubers where they talk about their impressions of the game and how difficult it must be for new players. I had stopped playing shortly after the game officially launched and didn't come back until recently. I had decided to investigate what it's like to be a new player or, more precisely, a returning player who was severely behind the curve when it comes to cards.

I created a youtube channel where I am hosting my experiments. Some games I do my best to create net-decks with the cards I have available and see how they perform, but in my most recent video I took a suggestion from someone on Reddit and played with one of the basic decks to see how it performs. If you're interested you can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLxFj913YXcMrCH_8VtiRXA

None of my videos are monetized. I'm doing this as a hobby, not to make money.

If anyone has an idea of something you'd like to see me try, shoot me a message.
 
Interesting... I also just started playing casually recently from scratch. Watched a few competitions to get a feel for high level play, and getting along. May start ranked play soon even if my decks are far from complete, I need some card backs lol...
 
You should really be playing ranked anyway. Casual mode is a misnomer. Casual will pour you up against players of a similar skill or deck level (mostly). Casual is random, and usually used by players for experimental decks or to just faceroll people with crazy high end decks.

Basic decks are actuator pretty good for casual play, just check out dune of the boss you can find online and play and learn. Pay ranked, do your quests, user your gold to play arena, and get decks and dust from that. It's really tempting to use your gold to just buy card packs (I do it every now and then even though it's not efficient), but arena will always give you a card pack, and you have a chance to get more cards and dust to craft better cards.

Speaking if better cards, i opened a pack and got my first legendary: Leeroy Jenkins. Was kind of disappointed to read that he used to be beasty, and a must have for huntards, but got nerfed. Oh well I'm sure he's still useful.
 
I definitely get punched in the dick much harder in Casual compared to Ranked. I normally hang out in Ranked between level 10 to 15 doing the Daily Quests and messing around with decks. Feels like every deck in Casual is a net deck, and Ranked (10 to 15) has people using worse decks, but still trying to win.

If there is hidden MMR for Casual, it is definitely working against my attempts to experiment with decks in there.
 
ocellaris said:
I definitely get punched in the dick much harder in Casual compared to Ranked. I normally hang out in Ranked between level 10 to 15 doing the Daily Quests and messing around with decks. Feels like every deck in Casual is a net deck, and Ranked (10 to 15) has people using worse decks, but still trying to win.

If there is hidden MMR for Casual, it is definitely working against my attempts to experiment with decks in there.
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Ranked matches you up with players in your skill range while casual is anything but, it's usually full of try hard decks doing dailies and grinding for gold by players that want to try different decks without risk of losing rank in ladder mode.
 
MisterClean said:
You should really be playing ranked anyway. Casual mode is a misnomer. Casual will pour you up against players of a similar skill or deck level (mostly). Casual is random, and usually used by players for experimental decks or to just faceroll people with crazy high end decks.

Basic decks are actuator pretty good for casual play, just check out dune of the boss you can find online and play and learn. Pay ranked, do your quests, user your gold to play arena, and get decks and dust from that. It's really tempting to use your gold to just buy card packs (I do it every now and then even though it's not efficient), but arena will always give you a card pack, and you have a chance to get more cards and dust to craft better cards.

Speaking if better cards, i opened a pack and got my first legendary: Leeroy Jenkins. Was kind of disappointed to read that he used to be beasty, and a must have for huntards, but got nerfed. Oh well I'm sure he's still useful.
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Leroy makes a good finisher in a lot of decks, there are definitely worse Legendary cards to get.

I am sitting on 6000 Dust for the TGT release. My net decking will be strong...
 
One of the issues I have is that the each expansion has created cards and combinations that cannot be dealt with using the original/previous cards. When GvG first came out, you were seriously screwed if you had nothing but the original set. Naxx and BRM also introduced cards that had no real counters, which contributes to the messed up metagame of everyone using similar decks and strategies.

I really wish there was a way to better match players based on the content of their decks/collection instead of by rank or by random. Maybe.
 
ghostwich said:
One of the issues I have is that the each expansion has created cards and combinations that cannot be dealt with using the original/previous cards. When GvG first came out, you were seriously screwed if you had nothing but the original set. Naxx and BRM also introduced cards that had no real counters, which contributes to the messed up metagame of everyone using similar decks and strategies.

I really wish there was a way to better match players based on the content of their decks/collection instead of by rank or by random. Maybe.
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Very few decks are dependent on cards from BRM. It is basically limited to Dragon Warrior, Patron Warrior, Tempo Mage, Mill Rogue, and Warlock Zoo 2.0. Of those decks, some of the cards don't have a hard counter regardless of what cards people have.

Naxx has a lot more important cards, however people can work towards earning gold to unlock that content. Doing the dailies earns 40 to 100 gold per day, so you can unlock roughly three wings in a month of regular play. Is that perfect? No, however at least when you buy expansion content you are guaranteed the cards you want.
 
ghostwich said:
One of the issues I have is that the each expansion has created cards and combinations that cannot be dealt with using the original/previous cards. When GvG first came out, you were seriously screwed if you had nothing but the original set. Naxx and BRM also introduced cards that had no real counters, which contributes to the messed up metagame of everyone using similar decks and strategies.
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This is intentional, every other CCG does this. It will make sense after a few more expansions are out and Blizzard eventually starts rotating out old sets like Naxx and GvG from competitive play. The meta will shift massively when Naxx is eventually removed from standard ranked play. Without cards like Mad Scientist and Sludge Belcher, certain deck types won't be competitive anymore, but new cards will fill the gaps.

ghostwich said:
I really wish there was a way to better match players based on the content of their decks/collection instead of by rank or by random. Maybe.
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Once they split series like this, you'll be able to play a different mode or something (probably just "Casual") to play against players using any cards, not just the current series.
 
ocellaris said:
Very few decks are dependent on cards from BRM. It is basically limited to Dragon Warrior, Patron Warrior, Tempo Mage, Mill Rogue, and Warlock Zoo 2.0. Of those decks, some of the cards don't have a hard counter regardless of what cards people have.

Naxx has a lot more important cards, however people can work towards earning gold to unlock that content. Doing the dailies earns 40 to 100 gold per day, so you can unlock roughly three wings in a month of regular play. Is that perfect? No, however at least when you buy expansion content you are guaranteed the cards you want.
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I was able to get Naxx through gold alone, but bought into BRM... I don't regret that, but it was a hell of a grind. I know that's part of it - the balance between grind and paying to get past that. As for the BRM cards, yeah I think I was mixing that up with GvG in terms of cards introduced.

CEpeep said:
This is intentional, every other CCG does this. It will make sense after a few more expansions are out and Blizzard eventually starts rotating out old sets like Naxx and GvG from competitive play. The meta will shift massively when Naxx is eventually removed from standard ranked play. Without cards like Mad Scientist and Sludge Belcher, certain deck types won't be competitive anymore, but new cards will fill the gaps.
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Yeah I was hoping that it wouldn't turn into this - where older cards would just become obsolete and ultimately worthless. But outright removing cards/sets? I'd be surprised, I would imagine there would be vocal backlash against it.

CEpeep said:
Once they split series like this, you'll be able to play a different mode or something (probably just "Casual") to play against players using any cards, not just the current series.
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Not that it's a concern yet, but there is a fair amount of player base splitting with Arena, Casual/Ranked, and Tavern Brawl. To introduce another mode would create as many issues as it may solve.

I've only really gotten back to this game recently and I'm anxious to see how the new expansion turns out, and if I'll want to stick with it. :)
 
ghostwich said:
Yeah I was hoping that it wouldn't turn into this - where older cards would just become obsolete and ultimately worthless. But outright removing cards/sets? I'd be surprised, I would imagine there would be vocal backlash against it.
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I don't mean that the sets are literally removed from the game or that the cards disappear from your inventory, just at some point older sets will no longer be balanced in Ranked play and Blizzard will eventually make those cards unusable for play in that mode. MTG has been this way for years now without any real backlash from players. It helps keep the meta from getting stale and gives the developers more flexibility. Hearthstone is already starting to see some meta stagnation and it's only 3 expansions in.
 
ghostwich said:
One of the issues I have is that the each expansion has created cards and combinations that cannot be dealt with using the original/previous cards. When GvG first came out, you were seriously screwed if you had nothing but the original set. Naxx and BRM also introduced cards that had no real counters, which contributes to the messed up metagame of everyone using similar decks and strategies.

I really wish there was a way to better match players based on the content of their decks/collection instead of by rank or by random. Maybe.
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You have to buy into new expansions which is how all CCG are, with the limited card base the effects of this are more apparent, that and the high level of RNG in this game really exacerbate the issue.

The Hearthstone metagame is really flat which is the main issue I have with the game.

I always seem to queue into my classes counter or mirror match in ranked.
I am never lucky, BabyRage.
 
Ugh, I can't get win the "Watch and Learn" quest since I don't have any Hearthstone friends. (And it's a good quest to get because... you know, free pack).

Add me you badasses! #Jeremiah1810.
 
UnknownSouljer said:
Add me you badasses! #Jeremiah1810.
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Added. I'm CEpeep#1409 if anyone wants to add me.

I haven't been legend since May but I might try for it again this month due to the new rewards. Anyone else thinking about making the climb to the top this month?
 
CEpeep said:
Added. I'm CEpeep#1409 if anyone wants to add me.

I haven't been legend since May but I might try for it again this month due to the new rewards. Anyone else thinking about making the climb to the top this month?
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I normally tap out after I get under 10, whats the legend reward?
 
thedocta45 said:
I normally tap out after I get under 10, whats the legend reward?
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Your first time making Legend you get a special card back, but Blizzard just announced new rewards at the end of each season. You will now get gold cards and dust depending on how high up the ladder you climb. I can always use more gold cards (I refuse to waste dust on them, but I like the way they look).
 
CEpeep said:
Your first time making Legend you get a special card back, but Blizzard just announced new rewards at the end of each season. You will now get gold cards and dust depending on how high up the ladder you climb. I can always use more gold cards (I refuse to waste dust on them, but I like the way they look).
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That sounds like its worth it, guess I will have to put some time in on the climb, might have to tweak my Midrange hunter to be a bit more aggressive.
 
UnknownSouljer said:
Ugh, I can't get win the "Watch and Learn" quest since I don't have any Hearthstone friends. (And it's a good quest to get because... you know, free pack).

Add me you badasses! #Jeremiah1810.
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Abandon the quest and get another one.
 
thedocta45 said:
That sounds like its worth it, guess I will have to put some time in on the climb, might have to tweak my Midrange hunter to be a bit more aggressive.
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The highest the rewards go was rank 5, so don't worry about grinding beyond that. The rank 5 reward was like 3 gold cards and 40 dust.
 
ocellaris said:
Abandon the quest and get another one.
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Why? He just got it from watching me kick someone's ass. Also, re-rolling Watch and Learn is stupid as hell, since there's only one quest that's better than it. You'll feel like an idiot when you throw away a free pack for 40 gold.
 
UnknownSouljer said:
Ugh, I can't get win the "Watch and Learn" quest since I don't have any Hearthstone friends. (And it's a good quest to get because... you know, free pack).

Add me you badasses! #Jeremiah1810.
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I'll add you when I get on later Jeremiah.

Here's some of my thoughts from the last few posts I have seen here lately. At this point if you are new to the game and want to be competitive you will likely need to spend quite a bit of money to catch up. I have a friend who started maybe a month ago. I think he said he's had to spend almost $100 just to get some decks going so it doesn't take him hours to finish his daily quests. Lucky for me I've been keeping up with the game since the tail end of beta, haven't spent a dime on the game, and have enough of a collection to do whatever I need to do.
 
TheGardenTool said:
At this point if you are new to the game and want to be competitive you will likely need to spend quite a bit of money to catch up. I have a friend who started maybe a month ago. I think he said he's had to spend almost $100 just to get some decks going so it doesn't take him hours to finish his daily quests. Lucky for me I've been keeping up with the game since the tail end of beta, haven't spent a dime on the game, and have enough of a collection to do whatever I need to do.
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Yeah this is pretty much it.

I'm ghostwich#1251 and anyone's welcome to try and watch when I'm playing - I probably won't win if I'm in the Arena though :( :p
 
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