I Dunno, Let's Play Hearthstone? 04/22/2014

@hansolol said:

Exactly why I stopped playing after the tutorial.

Talk to Hafu

@patrickklepek I haven't played the casual mode. Frankly I did not realise you could without first beating all of the AI decks.

I'm not sure, but would you get more competitive matches if you tried ranked? You don't lose any rank stars until rank 20.

Rank 18 seems to be about as far as I can make it right now. Game is so much fun.

Thanks for the stream.

Why the fuck is the intro so long.

Edit your damn shit.

@cmblasko said:

Hearthstone an asymmetrical turn-based card game. You take your turn, play your cards and actions, and then pass your turn. Hearthstone is also unstructured. You can perform any action that is legal to you as long as it is within your turn.

Magic is symmetrical, interactive game. While you do play cards perform actions within your turn, such as laying lands and summoning creatures, you are also allowed to interact with your opponent on their turn with spells and abilities. You can cast spells and perform multi-card interactions that looks pretty complicated to an untrained outsider.

Magic's turns also follows a structure and the turns are divided into phases. Actions are restricted based on which phase you are in. For example, you can only declare attackers during the "Pre-combat Phase" and all the creatures that you want attacking must be declared there and then. If that phase passes and you change your mind, it is against the rules to back track, unless you can initiate another "Pre-combat Phase" with some spell or ability.

Also, Magic has a comprehensive rule book that breaks down all these mechanics to the letter. The wording and phrases they employ on their cards are consistent and leave zero ambiguity. This is a far cry from Hearthstone who employs different, inconsistent words and phrases that refer to the same thing and yet sometimes to different things. For example, when a card says "Deal 1 damage", it means deal 1 damage to any character. If this card was meant to only affect minions, it would say "Deal 1 damage to a minion". The card "Wrath" in Hearthstone employs the wording "Deal 3 damage to a minion; or 1 damage and draw a card". By convention, it means that this card can either "Deal 3 damage to a minion" OR "Deal 1 damage and draw a card". The former being only restricted to minions and the latter for any valid target. This is NOT the case as the latter actually means "Deal 1 damage to a minion and draw a card".

Furthermore, Hearthstone does not employ mechanics that interact with your opponent's cards in his hand nor does it interact with cards in the discard pile (Graveyard, in Magic) nor can you selectively search for or look at cards in your own deck. This is by design, according to them.

This is, of course, not the full extent of the differences, but I think you can get the gist that Magic is a whole different level from Hearthstone.

You really don't have to buy anything. I have been playing since the initial closed beta release, and unless you are impatient, there is nothing you have to buy with cash. I only put money into it because I had like five bucks sitting on my account from selling Diablo 3 items.

You're spot on, and I would add that the ability for minions to directly attack the opponent instead of his minions at any time makes another huge difference that's actually interesting, and seperates it from MtG somewhat. Instead of having creatures as a damage buffer that fight a proxy war for you, which can be cleverly played around or manipulated, it becomes a risk vs. reward proposition in which you weigh your minions' survivability against their potential damage done to the opponent before they are destroyed.

It does feel like Blizzard took a long hard look at the universal appeal of Magic and started dissecting it for ways in which it can be daunting or seem convoluted to new players, stripped all of that out and took care to present it in a fun, alluring package with the hook intact. A stroke of genius, really.

@bbqbram said:

They did, in some way. However, as you saw how Patrick, a newbie to the TCG scene, played Hearthstone for the first few hours, it seemed that Blizzard did not do enough to make it easy for new players to understand the game. A lot of the nuances that comes with this genre cannot be properly conveyed through a 30min tutorial. I've learnt the concepts from years playing competitive Magic and even then I still did not master everything.

Blizzard has unintentionally wedged themselves in this in-between spot where it is not as complex as what die hards of the genre want and yet too complex for new players to comprehend.

Try having a conservation about tempo, board control, card advantage, board advantage, mana curve, deck composition, draw probabilities and efficient trading with such new players and they'll immediately switch off.

Hi!

We're having video problems, so we put up the unedited version so that people could watch the video, while we work out what is causing an issue. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

It'd be interesting to see how you progress with this if you decide to keep playing, Patrick. I won't go offering a bunch of beginner tips as most of the key ones have been mentioned already. My one piece of advice is to try and make sure you don't write losses off as "bad luck" from the opponent drawing a powerful card, but always look to see what you might have improved.

You will lose to the luck of the draw sometimes, that's always an element of card games and for me it's part of what makes them interesting, but it can be easy to start pinning every loss on that and lose sight of how you can improve as a player. Learning how to best anticipate what the cards might throw at you and how to maximise your chances of overcoming that will really help you progress.

Also - if you're worried about running into people with more cards, head into the Arena. It's where I spend most of my time, it removes any deck advantage of players who have invested a lot of time/money and I actually think it's a more fun way to play than constructed anyway.

@krabboss: It may simplify things to pull out instants but for an electronic version of the game that's exactly the right move in my opinion. I've played multiple incarnations of Magic on PC and they all suffer from that same issue of needing to allow a few seconds after every single action just to account for opponents wanting to react with instants.

I love Magic to bits, but I'm glad Hearthstone is its own thing. The simplicity of it may put some people off, and I can understand that, but it makes for a fast-paced, snappy game and for me is still a lot of fun as a result.

Hearthstone, at the end of the day, is a game about math.

Is this card worth 8 mana, stats wise? How about with abilities considered? What is the mana cost worth of a specific ability? Is it worth more than my opponent's cards, or less? What's the likelihood he has the card that beats it? If it's in his deck, what's the chance it's in his hand? What about in the remainder of his deck? In what percentage of situations is card X useful? If I build a deck a certain way, can I increase that percentage? How many of card X should I put in a deck? What about when I'm drafting in arena?

And so forth. Really, all that the people who are "pro" at Hearthstone have done is thought about all of these numbers, made decisions about them, and then systematized those decisions.

Hearthstone is Math Blaster for applied learning.

Patrick, you're terrible at Hearthstone...but play more Hearthstone!

LOL, my friend request is still there.

Max BMkins

Oh I see, forgive my impatience.

Keep up the awesome content, I thoroughly enjoy it.

That's only there because this is a stream, not just a video. Until the stream goes live, the music plays. Is it that annoying to just skip ahead 2 minutes?

@maxistentialist YOU ACTIVATED MY TRAP CARD

This is awesome! I would love to see Patrick play more Hearthstone.

Thanks for doing this Patrick, I agree that Hearthstone has a good skill curve similar to how Spelunky and Binding of Isaac did. Looking forward to learning how to play this game by stealing all the advice other folks give you.

When I first started playing, I was skeptical that this made much of a difference in strategy because it all seemed to balance out, but once you get experience with the game and start seeing a more variety of cards, it's crazy how much of a difference letting one minion live can make in a game.

I also must say, Patrick, no payment is necessary through this game. I have seen one player with a ridiculous amount of rare cards, but it was just one guy. Almost every card I've seen competitors play are cards that I've also gotten myself, and I've never payed. Arena is a good place to spend cash instead of directly buying decks it seems, cause you get a pack with the 100, and the extra 50 you spend goes towards a potentially great card.

Also, quick strat tip: think what an action will cost you and what you'll get in return. Like if you can take out a big threat with one of your weak enemies, or if you notice two enemies will kill each other, you attack the enemy hero and let the opponent worry about sacrificing the minions on HIS turn.

Hi Patrick, I would love to see a regular hearthstone feature on the site! There's something very cathartic about seeing someone in the same boat as me (never touched a CCG) run into the same traps I did when I first started out (that bullshit hunter secret, argh!) I'm sure I'll see you have that same glee I had when you start getting your first few, hard-won, victories.

Keep up the great work!

Patrick you should do yugioh next for card games, actually it just takes all of my money has a steep learning curve so maybe not.

Other than playing more I would just suggest watching some of the twitch streamers. TrumpSC generally has the highest amount of viewers and is pretty good.

Holy Cow Yeah!

I had a match up with my Buddy Playing Jaina barely started and him level 10 on each of the classes and he and I were neck and neck one match and he dominating me another i came back with a wipe out card just closing him right out.

Fun sorta, Addictive Heck Yes!

I know nothing of the nuances of this game, but if you can just target whoever you like, why wouldn't you always full swing at the enemy player each turn?

I owe my interest in Hearthstone to TotalBiscuit. If I hadn't enjoyed his videos of it I doubt I would have tried it, but I'm very glad I did. Very easy to pick up and play yet difficult to master.

I know Scoops is a novice but I can't watch this. He needs to play a lot against the AI before trying real opponents.