What is Discuss The Hearth and Hearthstone?

This blog is about me explaining my thoughts, opinions, and ideas about the game Hearthstone. Here, I will be focusing on parts of the game like strategy, casual play, the state of the game, nerfs, and other posts from the subreddit  r/hearthstone.

However, for today, I’ll talk about what is Hearthstone and a great beginner’s guide.

Hearthstone is a free-to-play, fun, and addictive digital collectible card game made by the game company “Blizzard Entertainment.” In it, players create decks constructed of 30 cards with a chosen class out of the nine total tied to the deck. In the deck, you can put in cards from the neutral selection, or class specific cards that range in effects and mana costs Players can then select from a series of game modes to play and queue into for a 1v1 experience.

At the start of a game, each player starts of that 30 health and the goal is to reduce the opponent’s health to 0 and keep yourself alive. Each player starts off with 1 mana crystal, which are used to play cards. At the start of each turn, the player refreshes their mana, gains an additional mana to spend (up to 10 mana), and draws a card.

Before the mana is given, however, each player separately draws three cards from their deck and can choose to mulligan, or reshuffle the selected card and draw another card, their hand. It is at this stage where it is chosen who goes first and second. The player going second gets another card draw in the mulligan stage, meaning they can mulligan it, as well gaining a card called “The Coin.” The coin is a 0 mana spell that grants the caster an additional mana crystal for that turn only.

During a game, a lot of crazy things can happen such as turning a minion into a sheep, getting a legendary cards that didn’t start in your deck, or bursting down your opponent in one turn!

For more information about how to start playing well as a beginner of Hearthstone, I would recommend the series “Trump’s Teachings,” made by professional player, Youtuber, and streamer of the game, TrumpSC or more commonly referred to as just Trump (not related to the current POTUS).

Hearthstone ©Blizzard Entertainment

Trump Teachings ©TrumpSC

I do not own any pictures on on this post.

Global School Play Day and Hearthstone

Recently, I got to participate in the Global School Play Day this year. I had a ton of fun  relieving the stress of school and introducing a new game to my friends: 1000 Blank White Cards. A better explanation is on StephenVlog’s channel, but in short, it’s game where you make your own cards with tame to very drastic effects and play games with them. It encourages creativity when creating your cards and you can create more cards after being inspired by others’ card designs.  Coincidentally, the game’s ideas of innovation and rules line up perfectly with the ideas of Global School Play Day.

With some of the cards I created, I had based off of card designs from Hearthstone. One of them was my card, Recycle: target [player] discards 3 cards and then draws 3; which I had based off of the old design of Illidan Stormrage. I believe that the process can go in the other way: creating cards to be put into Hearthstone. For example, one could create an interesting way of drawing cards that could be adapted into a Hearthstone card and post onto the r/customhearthstone subreddit. From the subreddit, if your idea is good enough, the post could be seen by a Blizzard employee and have their card design put into the game. If one creates enough well designed cards, one might also have a chance of getting a spot in the Blizzard design process.

My card: Recycle.

There is a large disconnect from the table to the computer, as well as central game mechanics that one might have but the other doesn’t, however. An example is that there is no mana curve/ramp or system in 1000 Blank White Cards. So, the card design adaptation is mostly limited to card draw and  replacing Hearthstone’s health points with a proportioned version to points from 1000 Blank White Cards. Many of the best designed cards from both card games are the ones that break the rules, though. Creating cards for both encourage creativity through being different and having the card stand out. So not only does having this game be played during the Global School Play Day benefit students in making a creative mind, but it could also land them a job at Blizzard in the future.

A small side note about the Global School Play Day is that I wish we had was a gathering of Hearthstone players, like an unofficial Fireside Gathering. Unfortunately, the guidelines/ rules of Global School Play Day say no screens or devices. If we were able to go through with this idea, though, we could possibly host a miniature tournament, probably just for fun and acknowledgement rather than a monetary or physical prize. We could also see each other’s either creative or competitive deck building, as we challenged each other and connect on through a similar interest. Some would bring their “meme” decks with cards known by the community to be fun, but not competitive. Others might bring their competitive decks that fit within the current meta game. But in all, I think it’s put elegantly in this quote by a fellow classmate:

I learned that sometimes it’s okay to just play or do something for ourselves, because it can make us forget, even just momentarily, about things that we’re worried about. We can enjoy ourselves in the moment and not focus on the past or the future, just the thing we’re doing or game we’re playing. -Diana Naughton

 

The Price of Hearthstone

Hearthstone is a free to play game, but as with all other games with that tag, there are lots of microtransactions planted into the game as well. I believe it’s time to get a raise to counteract this hurdle.

Surprisingly, gold, the in-game currency, can only be earned through playing the game. This differs from most other free to play games where you can buy the main currency and a second, rarer currency for real-world money. Gold is used to buy packs to earn cards and pay runs of arena.

The game also has a secondary currency of enchantment dust, which is used to craft cards. You get from an end of season’s reward chest, the end of an arena run, or disenchanting other cards.

The disenchant to crafting ratios are absurd, however. You get only get 5 dust for dusting a common versus crafting a common card for 40 dust. Rares are 20:100, epics are 100:400, and legendaries are 400:1600 dust. It’s even worse for the purely cosmetic golden cards, being 50:400, 100:800, 400:1600, and 1600:3200, in order of increasing rarities. These prices would’ve been fine if it was 2014, when the game came out, but now with the demand of so many epics and legendaries in meta decks, these prices are monstrous, especially for the amount of dust newer players start with.

There are three ways to supplement this issue: increase gold gained from daily quests, reduce crafting prices, or increase dust gained from disenchanting.

Increasing gold has its benefits as you can buy more packs and buy more arena tickets to get more cards. This effect has already happened and has seen success in the form of the Midsummer Fire Festival. This event gained a lot of traction because it not only helped hype the next expansion, but it helped people gain more gold to buy more packs for that expansion.

Changing the dust numbers is a topic discussed much on the subreddit. The idea is that it can supply the dust needed to craft the cards that people really want: epics and legendaries. It also helps newer players get these cards and help them create decks to get them to rank up and be more competitive.

In a real world scenario, an increase would cause an inflation and devalue the currency. However, this didn’t happen because pack and arena ticket prices won’t change as well as the fact that players cannot trade currencies or cards. So, it’s more akin to getting a raise for a job. You can use your increased wage from quests can help you get your essentials, in this case in the form of cards in your collection.

The most plausible concept is making the Midsummer Fire Festival effect of double gold from daily quests permanent. I say this because they made the Friendly Feud event permanent after its positive feedback, so it’s likely that this event could be made to just be a part of the game as well.

However, there is a large possibility that Blizzard doesn’t do any of these suggestions. This is because Hearthstone’s main profits are from people buying packs, especially for the 50 pack preorder before an expansion drops. Blizzard is still a business that needs to make a profit, after all. But to keep Hearthstone’s community from leaving the game, they will need to make concessions and help keep them coming back.

Image Source: Photo edit of Dirty hands from Wikimedia commons and a gold coin vector image from goodfreephotos.com

Who’s the New Prodigies in the Post-Patch Meta?

Semi-recently, a patch came out with seemingly minor, but game-changing nerfs. These nerfs stopped the oppressive Druid from completely dominating the standard meta-game by changing one of its key cards, Innervate, effectively turning it into two copies of The Coin that you can put in your deck. This single card change has pushed the aggro out of the meta and has dethroned Jade Druid from the top. According the Vicious Syndicate report #62, a Hearthstone data tracker, druids took up almost 28% of ranked matches before the nerf! Compare that to second place with only 17% representation in the pre-nerf meta: Razakus priest.

The Innervate nerf wasn’t the only card that got changed, however. other nerfs were mainly targeted at the meta aggro decks, being Murloc Paladin and Pirate Warrior. Murloc Paladin’s key card of Murloc Warleader no longer granting a health buff is actually a bigger deal than thought. That health buff used to be able to save another murloc from dying to a trade and keep its presence on the board. A common use was to combine Murloc Warleader with Bluegill Warrior and use its charge ability to get a quick trade and manage to keep a 4/1 for pressure. Now that’s not possible and that cripples Paladin because the Murloc deck was its only real competitive leg left.

The other aggro deck nerfed heavily was Pirate Warrior. Fiery War Axe was one of Warrior’s most powerful tempo cards, usually being able to destroy two early game minions with only one card and two mana. Not only was it able to be a good anti-aggro tool and to protect your board, weapons can hit face for a lot of damage. In Pirate Warrior, the deck has many weapon buffs and ways minions benefit from having a weapon, all that want to rush you down. An example is Upgrade! that gives your weapon an extra attack and durability. A way of thinking about that is that a normal Fiery War Axe does six damage over two turns, but an upgraded axe does twelve damage over three turns. That’s almost half of your total health! Increasing the cost by one mana severely limits that potential because the card was one of the only two-cost cards in the deck, a slot that is very important in most tempo decks, as that’s the turn you use to protect your aggressive one-drop. As well as that, a big benefit to Fiery War Axe in the past was that it could be coined out on turn one to deny the board to your opponent.

The last two nerfs were more minor, being the Hex and Spreading Plague nerfs. They got their mana price also increased by one like Fiery War Axe, but the difference is that these cards are reactive cards. You have to react a one large threat or multiple smaller threats that is already on the board, whereas Fiery War Axe and Murloc Warleader were the threats. They also weren’t the core piece of the deck, being extra tools of removal or stall. Spreading Plague can also be cheated out earlier using mana ramp, so its downside of being an extra mana doesn’t make the card that bad.

Before the patch, Priest was still strong competitor in standard with the Razakus and Big variants as somewhere between tier 1 and 2 decks to stand up against Druid. But as of VS report #63, Priest’s place has made its way to being the top class, at 18.6% percent of the current meta, 14.60% being Razakus, 2.86% being Big, and then some random assortment of other, not as strong types of priest. The reason why Razakus Priest is so strong is because of the combo of Raza the Chained, who grants zero mana hero power and the new Priest hero card, Shadowreaper Anduin,  providing a hero power that deals 2 damage and resets after playing any card. This effectively means that the all of the deck’s cards after drawing the combo deals an additional two damage. This leads to variants of the deck being comprised of an OTK (One Turn Kill) or a value-generating deck that simply controls the game and chip away at the opponent’s health. Big Priest is strong just to be a counter to Razakus because it drops big threats that priest has a hard time constantly keeping up with.

The deck to rise up is Midrange Hunter. It’s also fueled by its new death knight card, Deathstalker Rexxar. Before, it was too slow and the pirate and murloc decks would kill them before they can have a chance to play Deathstalker Rexxar. But now with those decks mainly out of the picture, its strength of being a tempo deck or to switch to a value generating deck helps it face off against other tempo decks and control decks of the meta. It now sees play in 16.13% of decks. Even though it has more popularity than Razakus Priest, Midrange Hunter has continued to be the only viable deck the class has had in Standard for the past few years now and makes it only the second most popular class.

Another strong deck is the one that caught people by storm: Tempo Rogue. The deck is also known as Keleseth Rogue, from the card Prince Keleseth. The main idea of the deck is to gain tempo by dropping minions on curve and using rogue’s efficient removal to clear a path and rush the opponent down. Keleseth strengthens that plan by buffing the minions to trade cleanly and deal more damage to face.  It was also a deck too slow to deal with druid beforehand; so much so that no one thought of using this deck before the nerfs. Since then however, it has seen strong play due to its snowballing nature and has landed itself at 9.44% of the meta.

There are some other things to note about this meta like how some other decks are competing for a strong tempo deck, being Token Shaman, Secret Mage, and Zoo Warlock in descending popularity. Druid, though weaker, still has the third most popular deck of Jade Druid because of its mana ramping and value cards of Jade Idol and Ultimate Infestation being untouched.

EDIT: As of the Vicious Syndicate report #64, Tempo Rogue has climbed up and passed Priest in deck popularity. Razakus Priest has now overshadowed Midrange Hunter in return. As well as that, both Zoo and Control Warlock are getting the Warlock class out of the gutter and into the fourth most popular class. Otherwise, not much has changed except for Paladin and Warrior not having any popular enough decks on ladder to show up on the latest report.

Data used is from the Vicious Syndicate.

Clockwork Gnome Card Art, © Blizzard Entertainment, Matt Dixon.

I do not own any of the pictures used on this site.