Bombin' the A.M. With Scoops and the Wolf: 04/18/2014

There was a weekend where I probably played Hearthstone nonstop. It was kinda fun but it was just kinda a pain in the ass when I played ~50 games to actually start winning consistently. Maybe I just suck at card games but I felt like the bigger issue was that I would do well against an opponent, next round I'm going to win, and then they'd use some shit like a 10 damage fireball to finish me off. The annoying part is that person just played longer than I did to get those fireball cards that I didn't have right away. So it wasn't about skill as much as it was about having the right cards. Of course, there is skill enough to be competent but just having the cards gives you a huge advantage I think. It would be nice to have it work more like Netrunner or something and pay a subscription. That wouldn't work most likely since people are more willing to spend their time instead of money but it would base the game way more around skill. You'd still have the random factor from drawing cards but its very difficult to work that randomness out of a draw game.

It warms my hearth...

Just play Magic and get it over with already.

@cornrpeople2:

It's like trying to get blood out of a stone...........I'll get my coat.

Magic is a much better game than HearthStone

Welcome to the future.

That picture of magic cards got my hopes up only to be dashed by hearthstone.

Why is Hearthstone being mentioned?

I'm sorry Alex, but the Trials Fusion's song is awesome.

Look at those lyrics.

Fucking Jund. Bloodbraid into Blightning.

I played it as well.

Alex, if you can play Civ5 and WoW then hearthstone would be extremely easy to understand.

I'm actually one of those people who "Dips in" to hearthstone. I play two or three matches just to kill time occasionally.

Just play Pokemon and get it over with. Old collections are cheaper anyway.

@ Patrick - Play those board games. Do it. I bet half of them are great.

Hearthstonned with Scoops. Coming soon.

7 million PS4s sold through to consumers in 5 of months?

Wow. PS4 is curb stomping Xbone bad...

The Epic Yarn quick look is my favorite quick look.

@lausebub: You know what was even worse than that?

Fucking Cruel Ultimatum, man.

"I think most videogame soundtracks are pretty terrible" is a pretty broad blanket statement to make. "Not memorable" is more appropriate but you don't gotta bring everything else down in order to highlight something that you think is great.

Resume is back!

GoogleHangout is having some issues lately it seems, random computer voices seem to happen at times, even when I'm talking to friends over hangouts.

Man, that is like putting up a picture of Guardians of Middle Earth on Daily Dota. The fact that Hearthstone is applauded over Magic is a sad incitement of of how incompetent wizards has been on the digital side.

I enjoyed your Meek Mills "Levels" reference @alex. Assuming that's what you meant.

Play more Hearthstone. Hearthstone is the highest grade more refined digital card game by leaps and bounds.

@matatat: Oh man, but that's a lot of the fun from the other perspective! Imagine being the guy, one turn away from certain death, top decking just the right card to give you lethal exactly when it was do or die. It feels sooo good. I imagine that's what a perfect game of DOTA HOTS feels like.

Also you don't have to worry about Pyroblast (the 10 damage fireball) since they nerfed it to cost 10 mana instead of 8 so no one runs it anymore. The biggest card these days is Unleash The Hounds which a Hunter card that summons as many 1 1 beasts with charge as your enemy has minions. So you combine that with a Scavenging Vulture (2 1 draw a card every time a beast is summoned) and a Timber Wolf (1 1 +1 attack for each beast) and you're doing a lot of damage and drawing a lot of cards. There's a lot of hunters these days and every one of them runs this combo if not for game ending damage than for card draw. The other big deck right now is Zoo which works because Warlocks can draw as many cards as they like rather than due to any specific card.

Maybe Bungie felt that Martin O'Donnell was having trouble moving onto a new franchise after his superb work with Halo (especially considering that they are both big-budget sci-fi shooters). It might end up being a positive thing for Destiny if they move forward with a new composer, giving them a fresh creative force for the audio side of their new game. Nevertheless, I hope he finds work as soon as possible, he's obviously extremely talented.

if only MTGO would have an interface like Hearthstone.

Then I can finally play mtg.

I've played about 50 hours of Hearthstone in the past five days. It's an addiction. And I have no problem with that.

What word did Patrick say he stole from Ryan?

I'm with you Pat, far too early to let NPD numbers say anything about a console's success or impending failure. I'm waiting for E3 to see what each one has to say. If Halo is out this year and they do a special bundle with it, I will most likely buy one of those.

Patrick mentions Archer, and continues to grow on me.

Patrick: The Heartstone comments were interesting. I'll admit I can't help see it as a dumbed down version of other card games. It does make me wonder though if their MOBA will do the same thing for people that have problems similar to you, just with MOBAs.

Only a matter of time until Scoops plays Netrunner and then it'll be all over

I don't really get any joy from Hearthstone, win or lose. I did get the Hearthstone mount however for WoW. I guess that's fun.

@quasar: As an avid Dota 2 fan I think it's going to be along the same lines. I do honestly really enjoy Dota 2 but I can see how making it faster paced isn't a bad thing for players. Along the lines of spectating I enjoy how complicated it is and watching professionals play at top level is exhilarating. It reminds me of the many people I know that played a popular sport in high school such as football/baseball with a passion. Now they watch those games not with the ability of professionals but with the appreciation of the skills displayed.

I mean, you're not wrong... but it's also been out for like 20 years longer.

Not to date myself too much, but I played some of both the Alpha and Beta versions of Magic: the Gathering, and in a lot of ways they were very similar to Hearthstone: not that many cards, some obviously just better than others, not a lot of variety in playstyles (in the "hardcore" scene, at least), etc.

Magic is a much more complicated game, and currently, I certainly prefer it. But give Hearthstone time. There are some ideas in there (the class-specific cards, no mana management, unique legendary abilities) that could be really interesting. They just need space to tweak the mechanics, and to add more to the game.

While I also vastly prefer Magic over Hearthstone and have long since stopped playing the latter due to the current lack of depth, I absolutely adore the way Hearthstone embraces that it is a purely digital game. Crazy cards like Nozdormu or Jaraxxus wouldn't be possible in Magic.

@crippl3: Enlisted Ultimatum was better.

Enlisted Wurm > Bituminous Blast > Bloodbraid Elf > Blightning > Mic Drop......

Imagine if Wizards of the Coast had at some point managed to create a competent Magic the Gathering Online for Ipad, or even just OS X. To say it mildly, they could have made a lot of money. Though I suppose since MtGO is such a mess as it is, and updates are happening with the speed of a glazier, I guess it is not surprising that it never happened. Maybe Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast are just old angry men, all afraid of this 'new' technology, it is like they just don't see these 'Tablets' or 'Smartphones' becoming popular. That ship has sailed now anyway, even though they've had a decade lead.

It is not that I am a even playing MtGO, I would just rather spend my money on something besides digital cards. Instead I make due with Duels of the Planeswalkers, which leads to another Wizards fuckup, as it seems DotP 15 isn't coming to Sony platforms, which seems really disrespectful to their fans on those platforms. Maybe Microsoft payed for exclusivity? I suppose I'll be playing it on PC as it sounds like it might good, I was pretty excited to learn DotP 14 had Sealed play, and it was pretty fun until i realized how limited it was. This time around it sounds like you will finally have complete freedom when it comes to deck building, that is within the limits of the card pool of course.

Yeah, it is constantly disappointing to me that DotP (insert year here) is not a better product. That sealed play addition is the perfect example: suuuuuuuuper limited card pool, and they make you pay for every deck you build past like 5-10 of 'em. I mean, come ON, guys: you can get away with one of those things, but not BOTH. Give me limited sealed play, sure, but don't make it feel like I'm STILL BUYING BOOSTER PACKS even though I can never use them outside of this context. Ugh.

Problematic. You wanna talk about a word that everybody started saying out of nowhere that is slowly driving me insane, that's the one.

Like, is the thing creepy or messed up or racist or sexist or what? Just say so!

We really need to unpack this narrative into a more compelling paradigm.

Weird Allegory is my favorite Weird Al parody album

Oh no, somebody dropped their alara-zendikar standard jund deck.

Let's burn it in remembrance of its absolute bull-fuckery.

Also, at the beginning, when Patrick starts talking about how he doesn't play card games and has no interest in playing them, blah blah blah...

I remember when he said the same shit about Dark Souls...