Hearthstone Players!

Just an FYI, the next expansion will have adventure elements but there will be no guaranteed card pool. There will be some PVE matches but the rewards will be card packs rather than a fixed set of cards. IIRC, there will be a prologue where the reward is a guaranteed class-specific hero legendary (where the card changes your hero power), but otherwise it's just packs.

Now that Control Paladin is viable again I've been fighting the urge to craft Light Rag. I've been making due with Lay on Hands but Light Rag is such a fun tempo play, and he's also more appealing considering how many epics (and Finja) that I'm missing from all the murloc decks...

SebastianBludd wrote: Just an FYI, the next expansion will have adventure elements but there will be no guaranteed card pool. There will be some PVE matches but the rewards will be card packs rather than a fixed set of cards.

Blah. I'm a bit annoyed at their recent, "oh, you get a pack free when you buy a bunch!" when they've been doling out just 5 cards at a time per pack since beta.

I've been checking out The Elder Scrolls: Legends this week. It's totally a Hearthstone clone in every way but it has some cool things going on.

One of the main differences is that the board has two "lanes" so you can only attack and defend creatures in the same lane. Additionally, the right lane gives your dudes one round of stealth when you play them. I think this feature adds some strategic depth to play.

Another interesting mechanic is Runes. You start with 30 hp and at every increment of 5 health there is a rune on your hp meter. When your rune gets broken you get to draw a card. So let's say you have 30 hp and I slam you for 10 in one hit - you get to draw two cards. Even better, any cards you draw that have the Prophecy keyword allows you play it immediately, for free. Some of these give you free taunt minions, etc. So deciding when to go face can be a big consideration. If you are at 21 hp do I really want to slam you with a 1/1 and let you draw or not? You can also give yourself damage to break your own runes (I think).

One of the things I'm not so sure about is that the 2nd player essentially gets THREE coins. You have this ring with three stones that you can click once per round to get that one mana boost. Seems like a big advantage for 2nd player but I'm too new to really say what's what.

Other Stuff:
Decks are 50-70 cards. You can mix up to two "colors" plus neutral.
Some cards can level up.
Global effect tokens.
Heroes are generic-ish and don't have an innate ability like in HS.

Aside from what I've mentioned the game is nearly identical to Hearthstone but it certainly seems to have a different flow to it. Well, at first anyways. Gold, dust, crafting, same. Rarities, same. Dailies. Keyword abilities are all the same though there are a few different ones like trample which you're certainly already familiar with. Something I thought was pretty funny was that one of the few abilities this game had that HS didn't (lifedrain) was just introduced to HS this week.

I think the base game has more opportunites for solo play if that's your thing. I still suck and am learning the ropes so I can't comment on how good the AI is (probably bad) but you can always play against the computer. Even in Arena you can do runs against the AI instead of a real person if you want. You complete a "story mode" when you start and there is another story adventure you can purchase (which gives you more cards I think).

So far I'm digging the experience, even if it's just for the change of scenery. I encourage you guys to check it out, especially the ones that've become disenchanted with Hearthstone. It's free and you get plenty of cards for doing the usual shit.

I have a friend who's been a long-timer on HS who recently switched to Elder Scrolls, too. He's been encouraging me to get into it for a lot of the reasons you cite (like the card draw for being run over by aggro.) But I just don't have time for another game right now. Think I'm just going to stick to Heroes and running the occasional GR in D3. (Ugh. The Necromancer needs so much tweaking...)

Jack, if you get bored check it out. It's pretty good so far. I'm not quitting HS or anything though. At least for now.

Man, it sucks that there's no necro for 360. Now I'll have to buy the game a 3rd time when I get an xbone. Kind of lame.

Jackwraith wrote: I have a friend who's been a long-timer on HS who recently switched to Elder Scrolls, too.

I played the beta for a while. I liked it a lot but I just didn't feel it was worth investing in when I've already invested so much in Hearthstone, and I'm still enjoying it. Plus lack of a mobile version is a big turn-off for me. I'f I'm on a PC, I'd rather play something on Steam.

Blizzard announced some new freebies and even if you're not sure you're going to play much of the next expansion, it's worth it to play for the next few weeks to at least get what they're offering. During the three week long Frost Festival to celebrate the release of Knights of the Frozen Throne expansion, they will award a free Arena run per week (where runs will start at 1-0), and a free KotFT pack per week if you play 3 Arena games. We're also in the midst of a two week double-quest-gold event if anyone wants to do some last-minute hoarding.

So the total amount of promo stuff for KotFT thus far is:

-1 free Class Hero Legendary (after the prologue single player mission)
-3 KotFT packs for completing each single player mission
-3 KotFT packs for playing 3 Arena games per week during the Frost Festival
-3 Un'Goro packs for the Arena runs (as well as the other Arena rewards for the runs themselves)
-1 non-duplicate KotFT Legendary in your first 10 packs

This week is the first week of the Frost Festival where you get a free Arena ticket. I've sworn off Arena for a long while now but I'm more than happy to play for free and get some much needed practice, so I started my run last night. Like anyone who plays arena I was hoping for Mage but instead my choices were Warlock, Hunter and Shaman. I chose Shaman because it turns out it's the least bad choice of those three and even though I only ended up with 4 spells (Volcano x2, Frost Shock and Earth Shock) and no Legendaries, I was offered several Epics (Gluttonous Ooze, Bittertide Hydra, Lotus Illusionist, Doomhammer, Charged Devilsaur, Primordial Drake) and several other quality cards (Vicious Fledgling, Fire Elemental, Jinyu Waterspeaker x2, Bog Creeper x2, Frozen Crusher, etc.) to end up with a final Tier Score of 71.9. There isn't really any tribal synergy in my deck but I have enough minions with strong effects and/or battlecries that I don't feel like it's such a messy hodgepodge as my other Arena decks have been.

Not counting the complimentary 1-0 start, I'm currently 3-1 with my loss being against a Priest who rolled a Gruul from Free From Amber that I couldn't ever deal with. But I did manage to survive a run-in with a Mage in my second game where they had Primordial Glyph, Flamestrike, Blizzard, Fireball, Counterspell and two other Secrets. Vicious Fledgling is (obviously) still very strong and Jinyu Waterspeaker has been useful as a tempo play to heal my Hydra or Crusher. It's too bad that I've moved to F2P and have to hoard every bit of gold between expansions because I really like the Arena format, I just don't want to spend what it would take to A) get good at it and play often enough to cancel out the effects of bad drafts.

Same. I took advantage of the free run and went 3-1 with a shitty Paladin deck. My late game is solid and I have a lot of poor early game, but none of the midgame Paladin cards that make the class strong (Consec, Truesilver) except 2 Spikeridged Steeds. Once I won the three games, I stopped, but I guess I'll go back and finish it at some point. It's been so long since I played, I'm not sure why I'm even bothering with free packs, but maybe something will be interesting in Knights.

Same. 2-2 with a crappy Rogue deck. There look be a lot of decent cards in my selection but I've been hamstrung by picking too many "combo" effects and no cheap cards to activate them with, so I'm getting crapped on in the early game, and it's hard to regain enough board control to compensate later.

About to 1-3 with a bad Rogue deck. REALLLLY light on spells, so I have no way of handling the board other than my face, and my bad Rogue minions. Lost a heartbreaker though to some guy who's deck seemed to weigh about 10x as much as me.

The no-duplicate-Legendaries-from-packs changes are live as of yesterday. Not only that, but people are reporting much higher than normal epic, golden, and legendary drop rates from packs. It's as if the change where you are guaranteed a legendary in the first 10 packs you open from a set you've yet to open any from is being applied to all sets. Regardless of what the cause is, it's so widely reported that I think something's going on, and if you have any interest in trying it you should probably try it sooner rather than later in case it's a mistake that they plan to hotfix.

I had some Un'Goro and Classic packs hoarded and I opened them to test it. From 6 Un'Goro packs I got three golden (2 rare and 1 common), 2 epics and a legendary. In 5 Classic packs I pulled 3 golden (1 common, 1 epic, and 1 legendary), 2 epics and 2 legendaries (one golden, one regular).

I been playing ton of arena too since it's great value with the free win. Maybe a dozen runs in past week. Had one to 8 wins and a bunch to 5. I got evolve in a Shaman deck that won a few. Had a crappy warlock deck with renounce that got me awesome cards. I like Rogue because there are so many tools to tempo the board. It's crazy some of the combos you get. I had that warlock portal out that discounts minions by 2. Played dopplegangster which I by no means was drafting. Then brewmaster one back to hand and recast. Suddenly my board is full. Of drafting the shitty blubber baron who gains +1 /+1 in hand every time you cast battlecry minion. The card is utter shit. But I got one to 6/6 in a warlock deck. Arena is crazy. But I am bored w meta. I know all the decks inside and out. I don't see anything in the new set that beats Jade or pirates. But am looking forward to screwing around w dumpster rogue. Play swashburglar huckster shaku and that new legendary that changes all your spells to opponents class, on curve . Then play the guy who discounts all that stolen stuff by 2 and the shard weapon. It'll be so inconsistent. But fun!!!!!

I think I'm officially done with the game. I'd played Arena for the past month to win my three free packs (and reminded myself how much I hate Arena.) I got on today and played through the first wing. Despite the (ahem) warm wave of nostalgia in playing ICC again (including musical cues; Blizzard remains one of the most stylish of game producers) and winning three more packs, plus a few I'd picked up on my own, I ended up with precisely one of the cards that I wanted: Defile. I also got 7(!) Play Dead, which is a bit more of a statistical aberration than I expected.

The only class I wanted to try this time was Warlock and the only deck I really wanted to try was a control Demon thing. I got one card for it. I have next-to-no interest in grinding through more games to gain gold in order to build the deck I'd really like to play. I have even less interest in dumping money into packs and getting another 7 copies of a card for a class that I haven't played seriously in a couple years. I am Roberto Duran: No mas.

Also, while I appreciate the "no duplicate legendary" thing, as I consider it a move to try to limit the complaint I made above, it also makes me hesitant to scrap the legendaries that you do get (in my case, the Rogue DK) because then you don't want to engage the chance of re-rolling them. There is no perfect system, but that's the first drawback I've encountered to this one.

No. A new set dropped today. It's a great day. If you aren't having fun when new cards are released you will never have fun. I didn't think you enjoyed the game for like two years.

As for me. I haven't tried any decks yet. I opened 92 packs and got 5 legendaries. Not the ones I wanted, but I am sitting on 9k dust so it will all work out. Yay, new cards!!!