I’ve been following Hearthstone for a while now, just wondering if anyone has gotten into the beta and would like to share their impressions. Have you played any TCGs before? How does Hearthstone stack up?
I just got into the new phase of the closed beta. I’m a really bad person to ask though, since I never played TCGs before this. There’s no NDA, so feel free to ask anything. Also, your battle.net friends list is in the game, so if anyone else is in the beta and wants to trounce my ass in the arena, I’m shahrizai#1657.
As a lore nerd, I like how you play heroes, as opposed to being your own character. The beta starts you off as Jaina and you have to unlock other heroes. You have to go through a 6 match ‘tutorial’ (wasn’t enough of a tutorial for me, honestly, as a TCG newb). Anyone who has played TCGs would probably find it super-easy because they understand the basic card gameplay, I only lost once though when I ignored the pre-match tip of ‘Don’t let his minions (cards) get out of control’.
You go Hogger -> Millhouse Manastorm -> Lorewalker Cho -> King mumble-mumble-can’t-remember-monkey -> Hemet Nesingwary -> Illidan (YAY). Then once you do this forced mode, you can get all the game options, like the progression mode, practice mode and arena mode.
I love the flavour text before Illidan. Can’t remember the wording exactly, but it was like ‘This match is is totally unfair. Blame the terrible gamemakers for that.’ So I went into it expecting to be totally trounced, but came through with a late victory.
There’s two additional addons to the TCG gameplay. You get an attack you can use once per turn that isn’t linked to cards. So theoretically, even if you have no cards, you have a chance to damage the opponent. There’s another slot, I don’t know exactly how it works, it’s like a buff slot or something. I never got to use it myself, but Illidan had it when I was fighting him. He could throw the Warglaives of Azzinoth or Dual Warglaives into it and it buffed up his stuff. Bastard. At least the banter was witty! Yeah it’s a bunch of NPCs sniping at each other. My next goal is to unlock Malfurion just to see what happens if I put him against Illidan. 
I’m an asshole.
The first slot you mentioned is the hero power. It costs 2 mana and every hero has a different power. Some heroes can gain a bit of armor, others can deal damage to something or summon a minor minion. The buff slot you mention is the equipment slot. If you play a weapon card, it appears in the equipment slot and you can attack with your hero using that weapon.
I’m in the Beta, and I like the game. I especially like the arena mode, in which you draft a deck by selecting cards from random sets of 3 choices. A lot of it involves making the best out of the choices you are offered, and you see a lot of cards you would never see in “perfect” decks. It’s also an even playing field, because you won’t get any benefit from having all cards in your collection.
I’ve been playing. I think that they hit on something sneaky and possibly evil that you can slowly progress even if you lose, so even one who sucks can conceivably be sucked in again and again. But it helps to win, and even though I don’t consider this my kind of game, I win about half the games I play, which suggests to me that their matching algorithm is about right. Of course, I still often run into players who have cards I’ve never seen before with tricky secret trigger conditions and whatnot. I myself had, before the recent wipe, a Legendary dragon card that allowed me to throw down a last-minute game changer by resetting either my hit points to 15, or the enemy’s.
I like the fact that even when you’re dealing with random internet assholes, neither their tendency to be assholes comes through much from the six response options (of which usually only the positive ones get used), nor does my tendency to want to play friendly hinder me, because the experience makes playing against people very like just playing against a computer. The one problem is that the other players are sometimes slow as hell. I care less myself about winning per se than about getting the hell on with it. And I understand that other people like myself sometimes have to go through their mental processes to make sure that they’re not missing a trick even when it’s clear that they can quickly just beat me into a meaty vapor, because that part is later in the algorithm. But some people take so long to look at their cards they make the game tedious no matter who is winning.
I got the “welcome to the beta” letter today, but have raid tonight. Will be checking it out tomorrow.
I just got in. This game is awesome. I can’t believe I get queue anxiety though, after playing like 1000 games of the significantly more intense Dota.
Bump–are others enjoying this? I’m really loving it: the balance between depth and insta-play feels just right to me, and there’s just enough luck that I can avoid blame for losses while crediting my wins to my mad skillz :D.
I signed up for the beta, but only a little while ago. Doubt I’ll get in any time soon.
Not loving the constructed deck gameplay, but the sealed deck/arena games are definitely fun, and I’ve been doing well enough to keep playing them more or less indefinitely.
I’m just the opposite: I’m not especially good at the arena games (I’ve gotten up to 7 before getting kicked out, but 4 is more average for me), but I’m doing fine on the constructed-deck ones, using mostly basic cards. I’m better, I think, at coming up with a deck-schtick than I am at evaluating the accumulation of changing choices on the fly.
Any players of this with experience with M:tG? I’m curious how they compare.
I’ve been playing a lot of MTGO; Hearthstone borrows a lot, and I do think it’s quite good.
The fact that there aren’t any lands; you just get one more mana each turn, until you have 10, is a real bonus. You still have to pay attention to mana curve - if you have nothing but 5 cost spells you will die - but there’s no such thing as mana flood or screw.
There’s a surprising amount of interaction considering that there are no instants and you can’t actually do anything on your opponent’s turn. The basic way the game plays out is that whichever player happens to be in a stronger board position tries to set things up so that his opponent can’t reverse things; the next player then tries to wipe out or neutralize his opponent’s board state and ideally also set up a board position that his opponent has to react to as well. There are a fair number of tools to constrain your opponent’s ability to react that keep this interesting.
My main issue with constructed is that hunter combo deck that just does nothing but play a few defensive spells, then casts 5 guys and swings for 20 in one turn.
Ah–I’ve not played enough to get to “magic bullet” decks, but am still in a stage where folks are messing around and experimenting. Hopefully they’ll get rid of magic bullets.
The game definitely has the common event where halfway through the game the winner is determined: you’re down to your last card or two, the enemy has at least two creatures out, and you have no creatures left. You’re almost certainly not coming back from that. The “concede” function is a great inclusion. It offers the loser the small satisfaction of blowing themselves up and keeps the game from dragging out. I’ve conceded in at least one case in which I had 23 life left: there was no way for me to come back from my loss at that point.
But yeah, there are plenty of “reset the game” cards, and if you get one of those under the right circumstances, it can be a thing of beauty.
I don’t even know where the ‘concede’ button is, but if I know I’m getting beaten I assume that the opponent may have a money goal like deploying so many minions, or doing so much damage to enemy heroes, so I don’t mind helping them cash in if they don’t dawdle. Some of these master strategists, criminy, will dick around until the game nearly forces their turn over.
When I take forever on a turn, it’s usually because I’m losing and I know it and I’m trying to figure out if there’s a way to turn it around.
Lower right-hand corner: little gear icon. Click on it, and one of the choices is to concede.
I’ll generally let someone take the victory if it’s the last turn and they’re about to get it anyway, but if their victory is still a couple minutes away, I’m conceding–and I don’t the least mind if someone does the same to me when they see I’m going to win.
When my turn takes forever, it’s generally because I’m running upstairs to comfort a fussy child, or because I forget to click the “end turn” button. Competence has nothing to do with it. In my defense, I generally take my turns very quickly.
I only concede if it’s certain I’ve lost, there are some stunning victories in this game. I’ve been on both the sending and receiving end of ridiculous turnarounds where someone on the brink of death beats a full health hero in 2 turns becuase of a lucky topdeck and some strategy.
I haven’t played in a bit though, I got a bit tired when I went 3-3 in arena and all 6 of them were priests. Have they nerfed them enough to lessen their flavor of the month status yet? I like priest as a class, it’s just fighting against them so frequently was getting old.
Exhibit 1: YOU FACE JARAXXUS - YouTube
Got my beta invite this evening. Played through the tutorials and now I have to work through unlocking the different classes so that I can play online.
late bump; I got an invite to the beta about a month ago but ignored it until I went home for Christmas earlier this week. My brother, who is notoriously picky about games, sold me on it. We both spent all of free time over the holiday trading matches on our parent’s shitty laptop.
I’m having a great time with this game. It seems stupidly simple only when you’re playing the tutorial (that’s why I didn’t pursue it past the initial beta invite.) It get’s really fun once you start playing other players and exploring all the heroes and making your own decks.