Hearthstone - Blizzard's F2P Digital Card Game

This is a big deal:

No more opening duplicate legendaries. Unless you own all legendaries in a particular set, then you’re guaranteed to only open unique legendaries from that set.

Changes take effect when the next expansion comes out.

Oh, they’re also running a pack promotion soon, and lowering the usual 40-pack pity timer for the first legendary discovered in a new set.

More info below.

Anyone been playing Un’Goro all these months? For some reason, that Xpac coincided with me pretty much abandoning Hearthstone.

New card pack changes are nice!

I’m still playing. I think the game is actually pretty good these days; I see a lot more variety in decks. Wild mode is also entertaining if you have a big collection. I thought the Gadgetzan expansion was pretty terrible, but am happy so far with Un’Goro.

My only gripe is the quests. First, most of them are awful (I should know, I have four of them, and they’re the worst ones). I know they can’t all be awesome, but some of them – looking at you warlock quest – I just don’t know what Blizzard was thinking. Maybe some of them will be like Purify – i.e. they look bad now, but are a card or two away from becoming viable. We’ll see.

More importantly, they’re all legendaries, which is frustrating for players, because the bar to access is so high. With the Old Gods expansion, everyone got a C’Thun, so everyone felt they could get in on the fun. Not so much this time around.

I’m still playing and have been since launch. Do my daily’s and some times will spent a hour of two on the weekend. Just collect gold for the next expansion and continue on (almost at 4000 saved for the next expansion). Mostly play casual but will played ranked and get to the 12-15 range just so I get a few goodies at the end of the month. This expansion is ok except for the Rogue quest deck. It’s a instant concede because I hate playing against that deck. Net decking is such a turn off and it’s rare to see an original deck. That is the downside of all these types of games. People want to follow recipes and have instant success instead of coming up with something themselves. S

I’m in the middle of about a month long break from HS. I played a bit after un goro, but kind of petered out. Also, Breath of the Wild came out.

I’ll certainly drift back to it again (I’ve taken breaks from Hearthstone before), not least to enjoy the current relevance of Paladin as a real ladder deck, since that’s generally my most played class.

If you like Paladin, try this deck. It’s not cheap, but it’s worked wonders for me:

Vilefin Inquisitor x2
Equality x2
Hydrologist x2
Rockpool Hunter x2
Aldor Peacekeeper x2
Murloc Warleader x2
Stonehill Defender x2
Consecration x2
Gentle Megasaur x2
Spellbreaker
Truesilver Champion x2
Stampeding Kodo
Ivory Knight
Spikeridged Steed x2
The Curator
Primordial Drake x2
Ragnaros, Lightlord
Tirion Fordring

The murloc package keeps you in the early game, and sometimes even gives you an easy win if you can snowball them. Late in the game you taunt up and smash away.

I’d add Sunkeeper Tarim, but I don’t have him. Luckily you can often get him from your Stonehill Defender.

Yeah, the deck i was playing with most recently was basically just stonehill x 2, hydrologist x 2, getaway kodo X2, and the rest of the deck didn’t really matter. Just infinite cycling of those cards.

I never worked out a win condition, so it wasn’t a particularly effective deck…but it sure is entertaining.

Can’t the new deck linking feature be used for this?

Caverns Below (Legendary Un’goro Rogue Quest) is being nerfed soon. It’s changing from “play 4” minions to “play 5” minions.

I’d link directly to the announcement but our forum software is choking on the link, so I’ll just quote it instead:

[quote=Blizzard]In an upcoming update, we will be making a balance change to the Rogue card: The Caverns Below.

The Caverns Below now reads: Quest: Play five minions with the same name. Reward: Crystal Core.

Since the release of Journey to Un’Goro, Hearthstone has enjoyed a wider variety of competitively viable classes and decks than ever before. We’ve been monitoring overall gameplay, and we’ve decided that—even though everything is varied and many decks are viable—a change to The Caverns Below is still warranted.

The Caverns Below is uniquely powerful versus several slower, control-oriented decks and played often enough that it’s pushing those decks out of play. This change should help expand the deck options available to players both now and after the release of the next expansion.

Note: The Caverns Below will be eligible to be disenchanted for its full Arcane Dust value for a limited time after the next Hearthstone patch arrives.[/quote]


EDIT: Duh, I am mentally deficient today.

And in completely unrelated news having nothing to do with this change whatsoever, here’s a brief tutorial on the difference between playing a minion vs summoning a minion.

The play/summon thing is a distinction that has always existed, but except for a couple small exceptions, it has never been emphasized all that much until various Un’Goro cards (mostly class legendary quests) utilized and exploited the differences between these methods of getting cards on the board.

All cards that play or summon a card explicitly tell you which they’re doing when they’re putting minions on the board. But if you’re unsure of the difference, here’s a brief description of the differences between play vs summon:
Play: You actually play a minion card that puts that same minion on the board.

Summon: There are lots of ways to summon a minion (including ‘playing’ them, as all played units are summoned, but not all summoned units are played):
Spells: Such as Jade Shuriken, Resurrect, Unleash the Hounds etc.
Triggered Summon: Patches the Pirate, Violet Teacher etc
Battlecry/Combo: Murloc Tidehunter, Defias Ringleader etc
Deathrattle: Harvest Golem, Jade Swarmer etc
End of Turn: Imp Master, Moroes etc
Hero Power: Shaman and Paladin hero powers
Inspire: Kodorider, Truesilver Regent

And lots of other easy ways I’m probably forgetting.

Legendary Quests that require one to play minions:
Hunter, Rogue, Warrior

Legendary Quests that require one to summon minions (played minions also count as summoned here):
Druid, Priest, Shaman

Nice explanation of play vs. summon, but the nerf is “play four” becoming “play five”.

Interesting nerf.

Thinking off the top of my head, the 4 minion version would do something like minion + shadowstep + ferryman. You only needed to draw both copies of one of those cards.

Now, you need to draw both copies (or generate 2 copies, e.g. firefly) of 2 of those. I cant do the math, but it’d be interesting to see the breakdown on expected number of turns to hit the quest condition for the most common versions of that deck.

Whoops, I thought it was changing from summon four to play five. My head is in the clouds today.

The tavern brawl is very silly this week.

I miss the days where a constructed-deck brawl meant more than 1-2 cards. They messed everything up during the Old Gods release when they stopped giving us constructed brawls with funky rulesets.

Patches is everywhere in this brawl.

I played Armoursmith and got to 103 armour.

If you like gold now would be a good time to get your Hearthstone quests done. For the next two weeks quests are paying out double gold!

Sure, the Midsummer Fire Festival is cool and all, but not as… uh… cool as the upcoming Frozen Throne expansion for Hearthstone, due next month.

Death Knights are (kinda sorta) in the expansion, in the form of a ‘new’ Legendary card-type, Hero Card. Hero Cards replace your hero with a Death Knight version of your current hero (these are similar to spells, but probably can’t be counterspelled etc, and current hero replacements such as Jarraxxus are different, in that Jarraxxus is technically a minion with a battlecry, and Ragnaros is the result of another minion’s Deathrattle). Hero cards trigger an instant effect when used, give you a new hero power, and cosmetically change your hero to the frozen undead version of your class’ basic hero. And there’s a new keyword being introduced, Lifesteal.

Pre-order for $50 and get a free Frostmourne (cardback) for use in-game.

There will also be a free single-player ‘campaign’ with card and hero card rewards for completion.

Video has more details, and new cards.

Yes, good point! Try this:

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Hm. Apparently if you play Jaraxxus against Sacred Trial, you insta-kill. I wonder if there is any practical difference other than possible Sacred Trial or other secret effects.

I’m not fond of this new Hearthstone trend where they announce a new expansion and then go quiet on the details for weeks. It kills the momentum when I realize that I might as well just forget about it for 2 weeks until they announce more cards.