So many late nights; blurry images and similarly indistinct sound bites. Rage quits, exuberant victories and everything in between. In the past it’s been MMOs that I’ve played almost to the point of obsession, but this time it’s something much simpler. Same company, different game.
Hearthstone has been in beta since late last year, it gained quite a following over Twitch, with many a streamer and YouTube caster treating the masses to some incredible plays, whilst figuring out the best competitive decks. Now it’s officially released, the following has grown even further, and for good reason.
There aren’t many days that go buy where I don’t play Hearthstone. I can’t say that about a lot of games in my collection. It’s an all too rare quality in a game these days, possibly due to my getting older, or maybe that the gaming industry just isn’t putting out as many strong products as back in the days of the SNES and Megadrive. It’s something I think about a lot; my growing cynicism with gaming doesn’t have a great deal to combat it right now. I’m hoping that with more games like this, that will change.
Hearthstone has a very simple concept, it’s doing to card games, what Heroes of the Storm looks set to do to the MOBA genre. By that I mean it simplifies things and adds its own small innovations. Times gone by I would have moaned about developers oversimplifying things, I generally attributed it to them wanting to appeal to a larger crowd. I’m still convinced of that being true; the only difference now though, is that I no longer consider it a bad thing.
Starting off is simple, pick one of nine classes, and then choose 30 cards out of a pool of 465 (at the time of writing). Each class contains approximately 30 cards that are unique to them, only by playing that class can you unlock and use the basic set, expert cards can be unlocked by buying booster packs or playing enough games to earn gold to buy some.
This is the point where I think some of you will start shaking your head and screaming “Pay to win”. Well, I won’t lie to you, to compete at the top of the ranked mode; you almost definitely will need some legendary cards. You will certainly need the expert cards for you class. This isn’t a game you can play for ten minutes and expect to have a good enough deck to go beating all the top players with. Having said that, it is possible. I’ve seen Legendary (highest rank attainable) ranked players using nothing but basic decks.
More importantly than what cards you have, is knowing what cards your opponent might have. This is of paramount importance in Hearthstone. The best advice I can give you starting out, is to make yourself familiar with all the classes. Knowing what might be coming your way on each turn allows you to think ahead of your opponent. This is how you start to win consistently.
It might sound quite overwhelming at first, but it’s not as bad as all that. Each card has three stats on it. Hit points, attack points and mana cost. At the start of a turn in Hearthstone, you will gain one mana crystal, up to a maximum of ten after the respective number of turns. There a few things that can alter how much mana you can use each turn, but I won’t go into that here.
If you are chosen to take your move second, you will be given an extra card and get the Coin. The Coin is a card that gives you one extra mana for one turn only. It’s simply to minimise any advantage that going first can give you. Once you’ve used it, it’s gone, so choose carefully.
You also have a Hero Power that can be used once a turn at the cost of two mana. The abilities range from the Priests heal, to the Warriors armour gain. They are simple to use, as is everything in the game. The real skill and depth, comes with synergy.
Synergy – noun
The interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances, or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects.
This is the single most important concept in Hearthstone. It’s one you will need to master if you wish to create decks that will carry you up the ranks. If you want some great ideas for synergistic decks, you can have a look at Hearthpwn.com or Hearthstoneplayers.com. These will show you some of the Legendary ranked decks that are most commonly used for each class, be warned though, most will contain legendary cards.
The key to synergy in your deck is picking cards that will work well together. Some cards have other effects that can either take place as they are played, or sometimes as they are dispatched. Your classes’ hero power also comes in to play here; it’s not an easy thing to do. It took me several painful weeks of horrible inconsistency before I started to get to grips with things.
When you start coming up against people who always seem to have the right card, that’s synergy. There is an element of luck, there always is in games like this, but loading your deck with cards that work well together will make your life and win streak, much better.
The simplistic nature of Hearthstone will make it instantly accessible, the depth and need for card knowledge will make it difficult to put down. Where the game truly becomes an addiction is through the nearly infinite amount of combinations that can form incredibly fun decks.
From a visual standpoint, it has the usual cartoony charm that you would expect from a Blizzard game. The animations from placing cards are beautiful and intricate in nature, the maps are cluttered with interactive niceties, and some of the higher tier cards make for some superb, dramatic entrances.
The gold cards that are attainable through packs and through levelling your hero bring with them a beautifully rendered moving animation on the card. They don’t change the way the card works by any means, but they do look oh so pretty.
The sound work is equally as pleasing, playing cards treats you to a funny sound bite, attacking with them rewards you with yet more of the same. Spells also sound off with all the appropriate barrage of ear love (weirdest sentence ever), there’s also plenty of sound bites for your character to interact with your opponent.
The quality is high throughout the game, there has been some bugginess trough the beta which has just about been satiated, a few minor niggles remain, but nothing to cause a huge amount of Jimmie rustling.
Other than ranked play, there is also Arena. This consists of randomly selecting one of three heroes, then proceeding to select 30 cards by way of choosing one of three, which will be refreshed with each pick. It’s a fun game mode that allows you to play without worrying about coming up against decks containing legendary cards in double figures. The only downside here is that you can draw a very weak deck at times. Having said that, it’s entirely possible you will come up against players who have drawn equally weak hands. There is a much bigger random element to the Arena mode, but that is its very nature.
You play until you have won 12 games or lost 3, the rewards you receive will be based on how many games you won. At the top end, it could be a pack of cards and a lot of gold, including a golden card with 12 wins. At the other end you could be left with a small amount of dust and not even enough gold to buy back in to the Arena.
It costs 150g to play Arena, although your first game is free. It’s worth bearing in mind that a pack of cards cost 100g, so you need to weigh up which is more important, as making gold can take a bit of time.
You can also craft cards in Hearthstone, this is done by collecting Dust. You can obtain this from disenchanting cards that you already have, or also by disenchanting cards you got from packs that you already have two of. The cost to craft each card varies from 40-1600. Obviously the more common cards will cost less and the legendary costing the full 1600. Disenchanting only nets you a small percentage of the cards actual value, this is pretty frustrating, but the stick holding that carrot is always a long one.
This is really my only gripe with Hearthstone. The free to play nature of the game leans towards you spending a lot of time unlocking cards. Buying packs is costly and you aren’t guaranteed any decent cards, you could even end up with ones you already have. Obviously when you’re starting out, you are more likely to find at least a few helpful cards in there, just be prepared for it to take some time until you have the cards you need.
It’s not an awful system by any means, the game is still completely playable without paying, I just think the gold you get for winning and how much packs cost could do with some adjustment. At the moment there is a daily cap on how much gold you can earn (100g from winning games, not counting quests); this is to stop people from using bots to farm. I think this is also something that could be changed, as some people have to arrange all their gaming between jobs and family. It would seem better to me to make it 700g in one week, that way it would allow you to try and get that amount in a smaller time.
These are, in fairness, very minor things that don’t in any way spoil a fantastic game. I’m sure there will be some that would complain about the simplistic nature of it all, I can’t argue that it’s not as complex as Magic: The Gathering and I’m certain it never will be, but that isn’t what Blizzard have tried to do here.
They’ve made an incredibly user friendly game, that even for someone unfamiliar with the smallest concept of card games, will be able to play in under ten minutes. The great part is that it doesn’t mean that the game has no depth. As with many of Blizzard’s games, Hearthstone is easy to pick up, but very hard indeed to be great at.
Finally, there is another annoyance that I would like to touch upon, but it isn’t a fault with the game, it’s a complaint about the way Blizzard balance it.
If any of you have been playing through the beta, you will have experienced some the changes that I am about to talk about. The last patch before release saw two cards receive a nerf. Tinkmaster Overspark and Nat Pagle. The latter is still just about usable, but Tinkmaster is now almost completely useless.
Blizzard’s reasoning behind the changes for these cards is that they were used in too many decks. If this is truly the reason, then there are quite a few other legendary cards that would need the chop. Ragnaros, Ysera, Cairne Bloodhoof, Sylvanus Windrunner and The Black Knight. All of these cards are used in a great many decks. Most of mine contain at least two of them. Change is okay, but I’m not seeing a good reason for some of these changes, nor do I think that they are waiting long enough for people to come up viable counters.
On the upside, cards that are changed can be tuned to dust for the exact amount they cost to make. It’s great that you can get at least another legendary out of it, but from what I’ve seen, Blizz are trying to make some of the cards more random, this to me does not equal fun.
I’m hoping that in future that this kind of counterproductive nerfing is staved off; it only serves to detract from the game in my opinion.
With that large rant out of the way, I will just finish by telling you that there really is no reason for you not to try Hearthstone, it won’t cost you a penny should you choose the route of earning your cards and you can find a huge amount of replayability in either of the game modes.
It’s not perfect, but I am confident that Blizzard will continue to make it better. I think as time goes on we will need a much bigger card pool, but again, I think that is something that will be coming our way. That’s not to say of course, that it isn’t already a very playable game in its own right.
The complexity of Hearthstone lays not only with the need for synergy, but with the ever increasing ways to play each class. Reaching the point where a deck of your creating performs with mathematical precision, is nothing short of pure joy.
If you’re ready to jump in for the first time with this genre, I cannot think of a better game to start with. Simple yet complex, accessible yet painfully hard to master. Hearthstone is currently my favourite game release this year, and other than a very small selection of unreleased games, I cannot see that changing.
There’s always room by the Hearth, come and take a seat.