Hearthstone Hillarities

Ha!

Hearthstone: What's the Pick

We're back with another edition of What's the Pick. This time we have a trio for you. Let's go!

Hearthstone Terrible First Picks

Sorry about that?

I guess I'll take the 3/3 and hope the villain doesn't summon Murloc Tidecaller.

Hearthstone: What's the Pick

Welcome to another installment of What's the Pick? We're starting off easy. These picks are basically on an empty deck. Here we go!

and here's the second one

discuss in the chat.

For Luke

The guys over at Ihearthu have posted a beginner handbook. I haven't read it yet but it's probably worth the read. Especially if you are just getting into it.
http://ihearthu.com/hearthstone-101-beginner-handbook/

Hearthstone Arena Expectations

Recently I have been struggling with my performance in the Arena. I want to be winning more. Really I just want to go infinite. We've been keeping some stats and have made a pretty good measurement of our win percentage.

Based off of that 61% win rate I then created a monte carlo simulation. Assuming everything else is equal how many wins do you expect to get per run if you win rate is 61%? Here's the correct answer:

Your expected number of wins is 4.6. But how accurate is my model? After all I only included one parameter. Well here is what our winstogram looks like:

Looks pretty good to me! Please ignore the binning offset. Let's take a look at the features. First of all we see more 12 wins than 10 or 11, and that is just what the model predicts. It makes sense since all the 12's are really >12s because the run could have kept going. The next feature is our complete lack of 0s. I think that comes from the matchmaking nature of the Arena. A better model would track win rate as a function of record and use that function as the MC seed. Outside of that everything looks to be within the noise to me.

So now that we trust our model lets take her for a spin and figure out what kind of win percentage we need to get an average of more than 7 wins. We would also like to know what win percentage we need to go infinite but the rewards are pretty variable. So instead we will just find a win percentage that guarantees over 7 wins. So we turn the mc crank for a while and here's a plot of expected number of wins versus win percentage.

So it looks like to expect 7 wins we need to hit a win percentage of about 72%. That is a redonkulous improvement in play from where we are at. Assuming a baseline of 50% we have gone up 11% and need to go up another 11% to hit the goal. But presumably the first 11% is easier than the next. We are going to need to level up hard.

But how satisfying is a 72% win rate? Here is the winstogram.

And just for good measure here it is for 85%.





We've got a long way to go. Peace.

Hearthstone Open Beta is Open!

The long-awaited Hearthstone beta has been opened up to the public. (as of 1/21 at 5:00 PM eastern).

Hoo-ray! (photo found here)

Short version: click here to start. (http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/)

Longer version:

1. download the game
2. poke around play the tutorials
3. play the AI for a while to unlock all nine characters, beat them all in expert AI mode too
4. level each of your heroes to level 10 against the AI (or in casual play mode, but this is harder when you don't have all the cards unlocked)

Doing all that should unlock all your cards and provide you with a bunch of gold. Now you are ready to venture into the arena and get decent value out of your first free arena ticket and all the ones you can enter with the gold you earned.

Do not buy packs with gold! That is what arena is for. Every arena you enter costs 150 gold, whereas a pack only costs 100 gold, but you get experience with all the cards, the chance to win more gold, plus best of all more Hearthstone, which is what we are all after right?

For more information about arena strategy, check out some of our older posts, especially this one: Successful Paladin Decks - Hearthstone Arena

Hit me up with your gamer tag in game, mine is caruthers #1880. Maybe we can play a match sometime, but unlikely, since I'll probably be in the arena.

I'm ready for battle!

Responding to Rosewater Making Magic #8

This week mark talked more about the new set. I want to highlight one discussion he touched on right at the end of the article. The discussion is about what can an Enchantment Creature do that a Creature cannot do. I feel this is but a small piece of a broader discussion that is the very lifeblood of Magic.

I've been talking about this for a while; creatures with enter the battlefield (ETB) triggers really bother me. For me, each card type should have a mechanical identity much like the colors. For creatures that is the Power/Toughness split and the combat phase. ETB things are the domain of sorceries. That's the whole point of having different card types (don't get me started on Legions). Creatures are something you have to wait to get the payoff from, but unchecked they will win you the game. Sorceries you get the payoff immediately but it is fleeting.

When you put a rider on a creature like, "return target permanent to its owners hand". You are effectively stapling a spell to a creature. This blend, to me, is on the order of giving Blue direct damage. Now I don't say you should never put ETBs on creatures. Just like with the color pie, everything is in flux, the pendulum swings. But when should you do it?

Recently magic has a made a big push in the direction of resonance and elegance (are they paying Aaron Forsythe enough money?). This shift, best exemplified by the core sets since M10, is why the game is stronger than ever before. So I say a time for creatures to dip their toe into ETBs is for flavor. Take for example:

This card is probably one of my all time top 10 magic cards. I could write for days just about this card. But the point here is it does have an ETB. It does act like a removal spell but that removal is conditional and tied to the vary nature of the card. It says, you're under arrest. But if I can take out the cop, my minion is back on the street. There is just so much win that this design deserves to bleed into the sorcery world. And even then bleed is only slight, this effect on the game only works on other creatures and is tied intrinsically to this creature.

So what's an example of a creature with an inappropriate ETB trigger?

I know it's easy to pick on this guy. But there is a reason for that.

Just compare him to Banisher Priest. What a miss. Why in the world does a Thragtusk give you those effects? It just feels so contrived. 

The counterpoint to my argument is that, "Well flavor is super flexible. I can flavor anything." My rebuttle is simple, "Exactly". Make it work because the design couldn't work without it and I'm on board.

Now let's return to the card from the article:

In this case it has both the type Enchantment and Creature. As Maro points out, "One of the big discussions we had about the global enchantment creatures was that normal creatures can basically have global enchantment effects." Correct!! Ding Ding Ding. That's something creatures shouldn't do. Again I would point out that there are times when it makes sense for the bleed. Take this card for example:

The ability on this guy is totally a global enchantment ability. We could have made a card flavoured about a maze, call it "Maze's Bloodlust" or something. But here we put that ability on a creature. And I am fine with it. When a general enters the battle his troops get a boost, of course he should grant his team a bonus. Again this is done for flavour/resonance reasons. Without the freedom to bleed abilities from one card type to another the designer is too hamstrung. And again this ability is not quite what Global Enchantments are all about.

For me the effect of a global enchantment should be to alter the way in which the game is played. So the Warcaller's ability really isn't a global effect. Sure your minotaurs get bigger, but you're still playing the same way. However this new design ...

Now that changes the game. Take a fundamental rule (or lack of rule) and turn it on it's ear. That's what global enchantments do. What Mark say is ok, "What makes these feel any different? My answer was that there will be ways to take advantage of their enchantment nature. Also, because the creature is vulnerable to both creature destruction and enchantment destruction, the development team felt able to push it a little." He's not wrong but I thing there is a bigger point there. This guy feels like an Enchantment because it messes with the way the game is played.

But it's not like I can take credit for this. If you look at Alpha ("limited edition alpha" if you're on the gatherer). There are only 4 dudes with ETBs and all of them qualify by my criteria. Richard Garfiled had cooked this in originally. I would speculate that creatures became more spelly because that's the easiest way to bring their power level up to that of spells (which is certainly an issue the game had in the early days).

Well that's enough of this for now. Leave some comments below. Also I guess I should finish with my definitions of what each card type does.

Artifact - Exists outside the color pie

Creature - Combat, exemplified by P/T and combat keywords

Enchantment - Change the way in which the game is played, exemplified by altering fundamental rules

Instant - Subset of Sorcery

Land - Provide resources

Planeswalker - This one is tricky and worth an entire article on its own. But first and formost is to put a face on the game. That feature is more important than any individual gameplay mechanic.

Sorcery - Immediate effects, non permanent 

Hearthstone Oddities

Today I had to grind out some quests. Along the way I encountered some unusual stuff. Take a look!

Lookit that Golden weapon! Cool!

whoa! that's big/

I totally lost this game. Man the warrior sucks.

Hearthstone Arean Deck Tech

I rumbled into the arena and due to my quest assignment I decided to play Hunter. I hate the hunter. Mostly because I think the hero power is lame. But I decided to give it a go. Beasts are their thing so I went with it. Here's the deck list.

I didn't have much late game so I decided to play a rush style. I managed 5 wins which I was pretty happy with to be honest. I really don't like the 1/1 for 1 beast dude. I was also bummed to not see more of my Animal Companions. Never drew the Auctioneer but I don't really think this is his kind of deck.

Bwa ha ha ha hah!

and yes I did beat him down in the face with it.

New Card Frame, Some hits and some misses.

That's what your magic cards are going to look like in the forseeable future.

just for Michael.

Anyways the new card design was presented by Aaron Forsythe on the mothership. Here are the things he listed as being new:

• The font
• The holofoil stamp
• The collector info
• Decreased border size
• The designer credit

Let's go through them in that order. First up, the font is basically a few minor tweaks on what they were already using. The best thing about the font is the name, "Beleren". Lol. While we haven't seen every character in the font I am a little worried and it's all because of the "F".

Dear god the "F" is horrible. Seriously, how can they not see that?

The holofoil stamp. Stupid, I don't give a shit.

The collector info. This is a huge improvement. Just take a look

Please excuse the low res. I don't know about you but I had the hardest time reading the collector's number on the cards. In particular when it was white on black as seen above. Now we should be able to read that super easy.

The downside on this one is that the bottom of every card is now black and they totally screwed up how the flame goes from red to black. The rules text box is now just elbowing the shit out of the border. Gross.

The decreased border size is awesome. The border exists to make the printing easier and I'm pretty sure we're lasers are involved somewhere in the printing process. It frees up some extra room especially to make the text box bigger. Which is great.

The designer credit. It's hard for me to see that as anything but them masturbating. We shall see.

Overall I think these changes are ok. We really need to move those mana costs to the upper left though. Future sight style.

Hearthstone Podcast with Blizzard employee

I was cruising the googles for info on Hearthstone and came a cross a podcast interviewing,

Senior Game Designer Ben Brode.

here's the link: http://ihearthu.com/turn2-with-senior-game-designer-ben-brode/

Arena Run Summary

I didn't take screen shots from every run. But I have gotten in the habit of taking notes from each game. Here are the notes from a couple recent runs.

drafted a super sweet mage deck

game 1 - lose v paladin - saw none of my good cards, super pissed

game 2 - win v mage - he played all the shitty secrets. we got a ysera down as well.

game 3 - win v warrior - he did nothing early, we had 2x ooze. it was ugly

game 4 - win v priest - he went all in on northshire cleric from T1. and we just raced him once we drew our pyroblast. killed him on T8

game 5 - win v mage - we squelched this guy because he wouldn't shut up. he misplayed huge in the early game. we were ahead on damage and just rode him down. sadly no pyroblast

game 6 - lose v rogue - drew late game cards early. had ok opener but he played solid card after solid card T4-7. backbreaking defender of argus FTW. we then had 1 turn to draw flamestrike or one of our cone of colds or our frost nova. sadly the deck teased us with a second pyroblast

game 7 - lose v mage - didn't see our good cards, not going to win when that happens

this was super frustrating because the deck was awesome but we didn't see the sweet cards in the games we lost. sometime you lose because of poor luck. but i hate blaming the loss on said bad luck. but i also hate wasting time. my best judgement of the luck in the run was that the draft portion was above average luck and the games were below average luck.

And here is another one::

shaman time - totally shitty deck. no fire elementals

game 1 - lose v paladin - some slight inefficiencies in the early game. no powerful expensive cards so i really get punished for the awkward start. fun stuff with etbs and bounce though. lost with my opponent on like 7 cards and me on 0, ugggg. to be fair he did have 2x consecrate which is super good against me and me low curve

game 2 - win v mage - i was pretty exposed to blizzard or flamestrike but he never dropped one. i crushed him.

game 3 - won v rogue - good start got on a major front foot. he stabilized around 10 life thanks to 2x argent commander. i got a weapon and started chewing away his life total. he began working on me. then i top  decked a lightningbolt ftw! woooo for the easy part of the bracket

game 4 - lose v shaman - he had feral spirit and fire elemental. boooooo. i held my own for a while but he just had better cards

game 5 - lose v shaman - he had a doomhammer

my deck was atrocious. i blame the RNG in the draft phase. i picked shaman and never saw the good shaman cards. 

Just look at me blaming luck again! Awesome. that is totally the way to get better. Ok, here's the breakdown for one more run.

druid

game 1 - win v priest - our opponent is a n00b

game 2 - win v mage - only good spell he played was blizzard, we ground him down and won. at one point it was liek 20-30 and we had a board and like five mor ecards than him

game 3 - lose v warrior - we could not handle a T5 venture co mercenary, we think because we never saw the tools in the draft to deal with hit

game 4 - win v warrior - poor start for us. then we T5 venture co merc and he couldn't handle it, eventual 3-1. so then we just kept playing huge dudes and he died, wasn't close at all

game 5 - win v mage - regular start. he was a little durdly and never showedus a sweeper which is like why you play mage

game 6 - lose v mage - ok early, and the we got to grind out top deck mode. he got pyroblast, defender of argus, defender of argus. we got sunwalker, blank, blank. game loss

game 7 - win v priest - solid early game, then soild 6/7/8 drops. he had a faceless manipulator then a mind control and we still demolished him.

game 8 - lose v warrior - he had weapons in the early game and took the lead. then landed a gurubashi berserkeer which our deck can't handle becuae of the 7 butt. then from the front foot he dominated and everything he played was good.

our deck was awful because we didn't have answers to high toughness stuff. to be fair, we didn't see any.

Well this time I'm blaming the RNG for a bad deck.


So I seem to be explaining away the losses on luck somewhere. I think what is more likely is a failure to see all of my options. I am going to go forward and try to think of other options. My card evaluation is probably not the best but I think it is good. I think the mid game is probably the biggest place for improvement.
All of that being said. Even the pros don't go 12 wins every time. To that end we have been tracking results. Up until this point the blog post has been lacking. But no longer. I made some graphs.

the first one is pretty clear add up all our wins divide by all our games played. the second one includes gold earned in the arena and not gold earned in other ways. And here's the 5 run moving average.

I love the beta

One of the best things about Hearthstone are the boards. So many things to click on. The obvious best board is the pandaren homeworld. Take a look at this screen grab:

What is that weird thing. It looks like a miscolored beet.

But that's just a simple bug nothing too exciting. But look what you find if you keep clicking.

I think that's a boot. Awesome.

Arena Run

Here's the deck we drafted:

Thoughts on the deck: Our initial reaction is that this deck was pretty lame. We felt pretty weak in the 1/2 slot, a lot of them have 1 butt. The 3 slot was stacked as was the 4 slot. But the high game just wasn't there. Don't get me wrong the 5-10 drops are all solid, it just didn't feel like a winner. However the weak early drops were bolstered by the super strong 3 drop selection. The deck just sort of got there.

Thoughts on the cards:

• explosive trap: lame, opinion is dropping. we play a very tradey game plan so profit is minimized
• eaglehorn bow was very nice for us
• animal companion is quickly becoming a fan favorite
• tauren warrior was lame for us
• defender of argus is not a 4 drop, kind of tricky to set up, but the payoff is worth it. he can just end games
• dragonling mechanic was lame
• venture co mercenary is really growing on us. often creatures don't survive so you don't have to deal with his downside and they probably spent 2 cards on him. if you do have to deal with his downside then you got to untap with a 7 power dude on the board. yes please!
• the 6+ dudes are all super solid.
• giants: i think sea giant is my favorite

Here are the game notes:
game 1 - win v druid - we played our standard game, got value from flesheating ghoul and a sweet multi shot

game 2 - win v warrior - weird game. he didn't really play much and then we dropped some beats and he left our 7/6 alone, oops

game 3 - win v warlock - we played good 2-1 and a great flesheating ghoul

game 4 - lose v shaman - he played better cards and then overwhelmed us

game 5 - win v shaman - we had a good early game so he was low on life. then we drew removal so he got board presence and then we 2-1 all over his face. and hero powered him down. the only thing that made i close was his DOOMAHMMER

game 6 - lose v mage - turns out a lot of our dudes have 1 toughness. also he had a flame strike, that was bad. but still it was super close with him at 3 and us having a 3 damage weapon. sadly he dropped two taunters and we could only spell away one of them.

game 7 - win v hunter - good early game and a really lucky mad bomber. then some 2-1s. then we stuck a golem and a highmane lion. and dropped a back breaking defender of argus between them. he rocked a core hound with haste off that 2/5 beast guy and it still didn't matter.

game 8 - win v shaman - never used his totems, he did have a fire elemental but nothing good outside of that. he did a spirit wolf which we them multishotted, brutal.

game 9 - win v shaman - dirty defender of argus on turn 6. played a turn 7 sea giant and he didn't have an answer. he did have two fire elementals and played one of them again after a panda. still crushed him super hard

game 10 - win v warrior - he had none of the good warrior cards. so we just 2-1 to death. it wasn't close at all

game 11 - win v shaman - we had it in the bag when he coined out a totem on T1. and then totemed on turn 2.

game 12 - win v rogue - pretty even. sweet defender of argus by us. then late we dropped a value sea giant and he had no answer. still very close at end.

game 13 - lose v mage - he had all the good cards. we manage to over come all three flamestrikes. and the 2 frostbolts, the water elemental, the cone of cold, polymorph, and molten giant. he was at 4 and we had 5 on the board. then he played alexstrazsa. bullshit.   side bar: sweet move where the mutishotted his 2 mirror images so our venture co could kill a boulderfist ogre. and he silenced our sun walker which we played to rebuild the board after his second flamestrike

final record: 10-3  a massive over performance of the deck in our opinion. but after we almost bead the most insane mage deck every. who knows.

Crazy Moments:

manage to win despite his back breaking Deathwing

we fought through it all but in the end the Alexstraza did us in

Hearthstone Arena Run: Saman #1

This draft was pretty sweet. Here's the list

Overall overload is not as bad as I thought it was. It can be awkward at times but getting the front foot is so powerful that you don't mind weakening the next turn. The stand outs of the deck were

 

and we had 3 of each

Earth Shock was surprisingly good. And Spellbreaker is really growing on me. Unbound Elemental was lame as expected. Finally got the Gadgetzan Auctioneer to fire. woot! 

How did we do?

bam! Feels good to get on the board.

Here are the match notes:

game 1 - win v shaman - awkward mirror, traded away until i had a board and he didn't

game 2 - lose v rogue - going well, better board and hand, then he sprinted - i didnt really draw any spice

game 3 - win v druid - i played 2-1s he did not, cards won out. 2x wild growth for him

game 4 - win v paladin - coined out earth elemental on T4 --> 4-1, burn him out

game 5 - win v shaman - sweet curve, he drew cards never showed good stuff

game 6 - win v druid - turn 5 earth elemental is brutal --> 2.5-1, game dragged for a while but i was in controol

game 7 - win v shaman - very wierd overload and RNG beginning. he landed a DOOMHAMMER and i thouhgt i was toast. but i drew well and pulled it out

game 8 - win v warrior - he didn't understand how weapons work. just 2-1 him to death, it was awesome.

game 9 - win v shaman - 30-0 need i say more

game 10 - win v druid - beneficial trades no trouble with 8/8 taunt or 10/5 

game 11 - win v paladin - he had 2x trusilver but we won the early game and piled on pressure

game 12 - win v paladin - he had 2x trusilver but we won the early game and pile on the pressure then burned him out

game 13 - lose v priest - but he conceded so we wind up 12 and 1

Loot

I am now a huge fan of the shaman. The cards just seem super powerful. Very 2 for 1 all over the place.

Hearthstone Arena Run: Mage

stache and pete ran the arena again! We picked the Mage, because it's our favorite. Here's the deck list.

comments:

Double pyroblast was sweet. Double fireball and polymorph was awesome. we really enjoyed the Spellbreaker had a sweet move where it took out an enraged dude with taunt and devine shield. Imp Master lame as always. Mana Wraith is lame unless it fits your plan.

The basic plan was to get them to 15 or so and then burn em out


Here are the notes we took during the match:

Game 1 - mage - won - silenced his doomsayer ftw
Game 2 - mage - lose - drew shit midgame
Game 3 - druid - win - rush down, pyro out
Game 4 - druid - win - 2x innervate, eggs in 1 basket kill with 1 card

took a break

game 5 - mage - win - 2 x pyroblast on T8 and T9 ftw

game 6 - druid - lose - he was on coin and had all the damage spells that draw cards. board stabilized but he was 4 cards in hand to our 0. we needed to draw our awesomeness and didn't

game 7 - paladin - win - he played 3x repentance, possibly 4 he died with a secret online. so yeah we 2x pyroblasted him to death.

game 8 - paladin - win - even game, burned him out. nice to draw pyroblast and fireball

game 9 - paladin - win - he didn't play 2-1s and we did. and pyroblasted him to death. mwa ha ha

game 10 - paladin - lose - sword of justice on T3 and then two of the 2/3 for 2 pirates, was brutal. we were ok on cards but way behind on life because of the sword

Overall we went 7 and 3 and were pretty happy.

watch out for:

 and 

a 4/4 for 2 is super dirty

Hearthstone Arena Run: Rogue

stache and pete arena time. we went rogue and got 8 wins. mostly because our opponents sucked or we drew a super timely

here's the decklist

stuff we liked - Deathwing, Blade Flurry but we never really drew it, the first 2 assassins blades, perdition's blade

stuff we didn't like - Fan of knives it was under performing. The third assassins blade


How'd it go: 8 wins