New tease!
Innkeeper’s Journal - High Stakes
Excerpts from the Journal of Harth Stonebrew, Innkeeper.
A game or two of Hearthstone at the Inn can really draw a crowd! To make sure everyone can see the action, sometimes the tauren and the draenei have to stand in the back—can’t have them blocking the view. I can’t help it if some of us are a bit smaller in stature.
Speaking of getting a crowd going, just the other day there was a particularly rousing game of Hearthstone happening in the back corner of the Inn. The crowd was really cheering, hooting and hollering, but everyone was giving the table itself a particularly wide berth. An odd sight indeed!
The crowd was watching two goblins, entirely focused on their Hearthstone board—playing speed rounds using real sticks of dynamite as timers! I wasn’t particularly fond of having an open-air window in the corner of the inn, so I strongly suggested they continue their dangerous game outside. The goblins sat outside and continued their game as all the patrons peered out the windows to watch.
When a turn finally went a little too long, the poor fella on the wrong end of that stick was madder than I’d ever seen a goblin be . . . ever. Luck was apparently still on his side, though, because he came through in piece. In fact, he seemed madder about the loss than he was about his singed eyebrows! I’m sure he’ll be back tomorrow though.
Menzo
1884
Yeah, sounds like the first real expansion pack will focus on Goblin tech/gadgets. Sounds fun!
I don’t know, it sounds to me like they’re talking about a mode with a faster turn timer or a total time limit on turns. So if you use all your time, you lose.
That’s what I was thinking. Like the clock in chess. Only made out of dynamite.
Maybe they’re hinting at a spectator mode, with all the mention of crowds watching.
slantz
1888
Yeah, my interpretation is that they’re introducing spectator mode and goblins.
They certainly also seem to be referring to the timer an awful lot in their teaser, but it doesn’t feel like there are timer issues in the game that need fixing. A chess clock analogy is a possibility, but I don’t see that happening, as the current system actually works pretty well (all things considered) for turn-length limits, and fatigue already serves as a decent endcap. Plus, their story indicated that even when the dynamite blew up, the goblin wasn’t dead.
My 2 best guesses:
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It represents some sort of new ‘speed match’ mode where you had to complete your turn very quickly or your hero takes damage. But given their high levels of restraint around queue fragmentation and adding new PvP modes, it would seem odd to have this be the first new mode they roll out. It just doesn’t add enough diversity to warrant it.
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Maybe players will now take damage in all modes if the timer runs out. This could more strongly discourage players from griefing or just walking away from their computer, though in most of the latter cases the game would be over soon anyway since the fuse starts burning immediately on subsequent turns.
#2 seems more likely to me, but we’ll have to see.
Yeah, I can’t really see this as a separate mode because I don’t know that anybody would choose to play it.
Brakara
1890
From Blizzcon: the next expansion is Goblins vs Gnomes, coming next month with 120 new cards.
That’s cool, I guess.
I think that I just want them to make a Pirate deck viable.
Brakara
1892
Preview of some of the cards here:
Surprised it’s this quick, but it looks cool and it’ll get me playing again.
Menzo
1894
One thing they didn’t mention on stage - spectator mode!
Kadath
1895
Spectators but no game recording? Sad panda :(
Brakara
1896
Here’s a whole season’s worth of episodes for Trollden in one card.
prolix
1898
There’s a lot of randomness to these new cards. Which will be amusing I guess, but I wonder if people will stick to the old tried-and-true instead of rolling the dice on the new cards. For example, I’ll take Mad Bomber in arena, but I never run it in any of my constructed decks. Some of these cards are Mad Bomber dialed to 11 (like that one!).
Some of those cards are really tasty.
Brakara
1900
I’m fine with RNG cards as long as they’re not old Tinkmaster/Nat Pagle broken. And there’s still plenty of new non-RNG cards as well.
Well sure, profix, but you need cards for both modes :)
More Hearthstone World Championship Quarter Finals tonight. The finish of Kolento-vs-Kranich wasn’t as crazy as FrozenIce-vs-Run and Gun, but it was pretty damn good.
Strifecro and Dtwo is starting right now and the coverage is live. On ESPN.
