Hearthstone Beta Impressions

The other day I got a nice surprise in the form of a Hearthstone Beta key.  I'd kind of forgotten I'd signed up for it, to be honest.  The only deck building game I've ever played is Magic: The Gathering but the small amount of time I've spent on it taught me that I really enjoy assembling decks.  Spending a crap-ton of money on cards to get a good deck, not so much though.  I am pleased to report that I have spent zero dollars on Hearthstone but in the two days I've been playing I've gotten 4 card packs which have enabled me to build a fairly solid deck.  Ten points to Blizzardclaw.  But I'm watching you.

I was going to write about the game yesterday but everything was turning into a long whine about how my emotions were behaving like a tweaker ferret.  It wasn't a great day.  Have you every had one of those days that starts out really great, but bottoms out hard about halfway through?  The ride to work was good - my fingers didn't freeze solid and Spotify pulled out some real gems for me.  I had some good games in the morning and won my first PvP in ages.  Things were great, and I honestly couldn't tell you where it started to go sideways.  But by lunch this was a real conversation that happened in my head -
"Well, I see you're having canned soup for lunch.  You know who has canned soup?  SAD PEOPLE and FAILURES.  It is a horrible food and you're horrible."
"Shut up.  That person is having canned soup and they're not a failure."
"Their soup is probably ORGANIC.  It was made in small batches.  There's sea salt in there, whereas your salt is LAZY SALT.  Now stop walking so loudly."
"I swear to god, brain, I will stab you with a Q-Tip."
By the end of the day I was fantasizing about crawling under my desk and glaring at people like a bridge troll.  I didn't do that though, and when I went home I plunked down in front of Hearthstone. After a couple games I felt a lot better.  So another ten points, Blizzard.  Gryffindor is going to have a hard time catching up at this rate.  Ok, whining over.

So far I don't have anything really negative to say about Hearthstone.  Like I said, my main source of trepidation was wondering whether I was going to have to spend money to not have a crap deck and I don't.  I approve of the decision to take land out of the picture and just build up your mana over the course of a few turns - seems more in line with a PC game than a game with physical cards.  The beginning of the game could use some balancing in my opinion, however.  It might be the way my deck is built, but I find absolutely no value in going first.  But if your turn is second you get an extra card and the mana crystal?  Who would ever want to go first?  That's a pretty small nit to pick, though.  I hope they add the ability to trade cards with other players soon because I've unlocked a ton of class cards I don't think I'll ever use because DRUIDS.

I've unlocked all the heroes now but the only one I've really dug into is the Druid.  I know I'm repeating myself but I love druids.  My favorite Pathfinder character of all time was a druid who rode a bear.  She was also half silver dragon, and from thence came my silver dragon quarter sleeve.  When the druid came out in the D&D Next playtest I thought I was going to have a joy aneurysm.  Druids forever.  Eventually I'll get into the other heroes I suppose but for now its all Druid all the time.

When I started playing I elected not to look up tips on how to build a good deck or what people were playing on the ladder and just wing it for a while.  I lost a lot at first because I didn't have a specific theme in mind for the cards I was choosing and just wanted to get a feel for what my options were.  Then I sat down and built a deck with a much better idea of what I wanted to do and how I could do it.  After a couple tweaks I'd say my winrate is about 60%.  So hurray for that.

If I was to name my deck it would be something like the Meat Shield.  Or the Surprise Knife To The Eye.  Or the Possum.  I knew I wanted to do two things - get as many cards into my hand as possible for the late game while forcing my opponent to burn their cards.  So all my cheaper minions either have Taunt or Draw as a Battlecry.  My cheaper spells for the most part buff my minions and give Taunt to the ones who don't have it.  That way I'm drawing more cards while keeping enemy minions off me while I build mana for the big guns.  And the opponent has to burn their minions to keep mine from building up to critical mass.  I also like to think I'm giving the impression that I'm buffing weaker minions because I don't have anything better, but I might be inflating my craftiness a bit.  The only other minion power I use is +1 spell damage.  Because once I get a couple of those out I can either clear the board with Swipe or pop a Starfire (I think that's what its called) for decent damage and an extra card draw.  After that its all huge monsters with lots of damage and Taunt or minions with good heath that buff the minions around them.  If I can get three or four of those big suckers out its usually GG unless the opponent has something really tricky they were holding back.  The other day I was killed by a combo Rogue that the dude or lady just played brilliantly.

Seriously, if there was a chat function I would have told them that.  You can kind of chat to people by making your hero say things like "Hello" or "Well Played" but it seemed kind of inadequate for the situation.

Not being a WoW player, my knowledge of the game is strictly garnered from people I know who play.  And I find my inner D&D supernerd getting its panties in a bunch about certain cards.  For instance, the spell Polymorph turns you into something more awesome than you are already, like a Black Dragon.  Baleful Polymorph turns an enemy into some non-threatening animal.  Also, Flame Strike is a divine spell, not an arcane spell so mages (wizards) don't get it.  Guess who does?  Futhermucking DRUIDS, that's who.  And also clerics, but who cares about them?

So overall Hearthstone is a Most Likely Will Buy At Launch for me, which is a title reserved only for my very favorite franchises because I am cheap as hell.  I haven't gotten into the crafting aspect of it at all, but I'm sure it will be fun times.  I've thought about trying out streaming on Twitch off and on, and I may do that a little bit because my computer can handle it and it would be interesting to see if I can climb the ladder without reading guides or studying the metagame or (and this is the big one) spending any real money of any kind on cards.  Ever.  The beta's been out for a while, so its probably a good guess that someone has already locked down the "Stream Hearthstone In Cleavagey Shirt" gimmick so I'll have to figure out something else.  Maybe weird hats.