Be Excellent To Each Other

I do not like the latest update for standard, with the extremely OP questlines. Especially the Warlock one.

I haven't played Standard since I quit last November, I had a flirt with Classic back in March but once it became clear there were no 'unicorn' decks that got old pretty quickly.

That said I do keep an eye on Hearthstone, mainly via Zeddy, Solem and to a lesser extent Trump and Regis - and I really don't miss it.

Looks like the latest expansion has added in some more horseshit that says to me Blizzard either don't playtest properly, or they don't care, or a bit of both.

I have played Legends of Runeterra every day since last November though

I still play Battlegrounds a lot, as it's fun. And if I get one of the decent questline cards I will likely play more Standard.

Refusing to give them any money though, due to all the harassment stuff.

I guess if you're enjoying one of more of the other modes then fair enough, but for me Hearthstone was always about the main game, and then when they split it out into Standard and Wild, I enjoyed both. Never liked Arena, or Battlegrounds, or Duels, the solo adventures I'd do once for the rewards, wasn't interested in the heroic flavours, etc.

By all accounts Wild is a total bombsite these days, with no attempt being made to curate it at all, and Standard seems to follow pretty much the same pattern every expansion. Release a load of broken shit, dial some of it back with nerfs, and then ride it out until the next expansion does it all over again.

I spent quite a lot of money on the game over the years, and I don't resent that as I had a huge amount of fun with it, although looking back I probably stuck with it about a year longer than I should have.

Blizzard are a busted flush now in my eyes, WoW is fucking dreadful (I unsubscribed for what I think will be the final time about three months ago), Hearthstone I'm done with, Starcraft 2 they abandoned, and their other IPs I never really cared much for, plus they released the travesty that was/is Warcraft 3 Reforged.

Game over man, game over.

Yeah , the way that one works seems broken (Warlock has 3 quests to deal damage to themselves and they get various heals as they go then any damage they deal to themselves hits you instead and you die in one turn basically).

I did turn a bunch of gold into packs but only drew a few legendaries and none to make a deck out of I'm playing mostly battlegrounds on it just now with a few standard matches at a low level to get the monthly bonuses

i reroll the standard weekly quest, as I only play BG, tavern brawl and arena these days

For the last batch of free passes I played a few rounds of Duels which seemed at least an interesting spin on the Tavern brawl stuff - have you tried that ?

Duels is fun, though I'm currently trying to win as every character in BG, which means I lose a lot as half of them are terrible.

I think I've got most of them now , for the terrible ones its often just worth ignoring their 'power' and just focus on the build

Although the right hero power really helps my most wins right now (after the last reballance) either come from Elementals , Murlocks or Pirates , although i will sometimes use others if the Hero power matches up or I luck into the right early draw

I have also now got to the point where the first 3 or 4 rounds can be rubbish and then I hit the right cards and can switch to another tribe reasonably well.

I never seem to get any wins with Murlocs. I have appalling luck at getting the ones that boost your health, and without them it's nigh on impossible to win, as no matter if you have them all poisonous, if they can get killed easily you're boned.

Yeah they are the key one you need to get - murlocks are easy enough that its

Grab all Murlocs you can
After the first few rounds any boosts should go on your warleader (s)
Always grab and use the +1/+1 to all Murloc
As you said the +2 health ones are key , but slightly later you get the +2/+2 as well
Always grab the 'extra murloc' and the poison one
Its often worth grabbing a Defender of Argus to give some of them Taunt and if midgame i have a few good goldens I will also sometimes grab the Pirate who gains +2/+2 for every other gold minion as he scales up really fast
As a lot of them work well with battlecrys if you can spare the spot a Bran is also useful (or grab a bran one turn , grab some stuff with battlecrys and then play bran / them and ditch bran again at the end of the turn for another Murloc)

Obviously the murloc hero who gets extra murloc's when you sell them is a given but the hero who gives divine shield is good for them (as you often get some with poison) or the one who gets an early Bran when you play some battlecry minions

Yeah, that seems to align with how I play; just seem to be unlucky with them. I tend to do best either with pirates or mixed minions (my two wins today). I do have a Murloc win with the Divine Shield guy... almost got one earlier with Pyramad, as his health boost works well for them, but got to the last two against the Murloc Hero and they were insanely strong, and I didn't have enough poison to kill them.

Also annoying is that one of the two wins I got today was someone who I thought I hadn't won with before, but it turns out I had done. Oops. Still, crossed 'Infinite Toki' off the list...

Mixed can be really strong if you get the Beast that does adjacent minions, the elemental with windfury and divine shield, a strong demon (like the one who gains health equal to your damage) and then a Quillboar or whatever, plus the minion that grows per different class you own, and the L6 one that adapts when you play it...and constantly boost them with the +2/+2 all minions and suchlike. Fun times.

That's one I've never really got to work as most of the things you need there are all 'lategame' and at that point I'll be pretty much locked into a tribe

About the only 2 hero's I go mixed minions with are C'thun (since your boosting every turn whatever you had at the start you tend to stick with) and the one that gives you boosts on different tribes each turn

An interesting wild 'bug'

That's a mad combo.

Big battlegrounds update (along with others) today

No longer hidden 2 menu's deep its now 2nd in the main list
New hero's , I got to play the one that changes power every turn which can give you some nice bonuses (so you get to for example make a minion golden then switch to something else next turn)
And a ton of new cards , some seem weirdly overpowered but I've not came top in any match yet

The obvious overpowered card that i can see is the new dragon that keeps its bonuses it gets during battle (and keeps + doubles them when golden) - about turn 6 or 7 I played against someone and that dragon was already over 100 health

Mercenaries is coming, so there are now 3 different games in Hearthstone. Card game, auto chess and now a gacha style "rpg", hence the change on the menu I assume.

Mercenaries is getting absolutley slated as a concept by the hardcore fansbase on the usual reddit forums, so I expect it might actually be quite good.

Some of the new cards are fun. I won with a Mech deck. Combine some reborn/deathrattle mech minions with the usual one that refreshes divine shield when you summon a mech, and the new one that refreshes divine shield every time a friendly minion loses divine shield. With some good placement of minions you can basically have them swap shields for days.

The other insane combo is to have leapfroggers, those rat things that summon more rats, and the deathrattle multiplier.

Towards the end of the fight, I hit a rat, and it then gave another minion +80/+80... had I killed that one, it would have given the next one +240/+240 I believe.

Quite hard to combat, even with the divine shields!

On the plus side there are lots of bits of it broken so you dont tend to get overwhelmed by one

The Dragons are broken with the one that keeps bonuses gained in combat (you regularly see ones of them at around 400 / 400) and also the early one that 2x or 4x attack on an upgrade (those tend not to have a lot of health but round 4 or 5 you get one with 80/10) - oh and the avenge minion that just hits what a dragon was about to attack for 6 points (or 12 if 2 of them) even before its attacked

Demons can be crazy , mid game you pick up the avenge card that gives you a new demon for every 3 deaths and late game you get the one that eats a tavern minion after you play a demon and the one that makes all other demons eat a tavern minion at the end of your turn

Beasts have a few crazys , yes the leapfrog , but also the demon that hands over its health + the bird that triggers a deathrattle means that after 1 or 2 attacks your facing enemies with 200 or 300 health each (and there are not a lot of poison)

Speaking of Poison - midgame you have the murlocs that buff other murlocks each time you play one , the murlocs that gain health and attack for every other murloc on the board and then the avenge one that gives all the others poison in a turn or two

Elementals have a mid game avenge buffer that seems to work out better for buffing than they had before and they can get really big for each new buy

So - if you hit one of the magic combinations you win , and there are a lot of them out there :-)

What's the best minions to surround the dragons that keep buffs? Is it some of the newer ones? There aren't many dragons that give in-fight buffs so I assume you've got to get in some other ones. I've not looked into that combo much.

Its the new one that retains buffs from battles , and if nothing else the one that gets a crazy bonus when you go to the next tavern level , you also want the girl that buffs a dragons health every time it gets an attack boost

https://playhearthstone.com/en-gb/battlegrounds

because it keeps buffs in battle

somewhere on the board to buff things (it also buffs in battle but the other dragons dont keep it)

- this is the other one to possibly buff early because when you go up a tier it either doubles or quadruples its attack (4x for golden)

can be crazy powerful just because you break any divine shields and it will often kill things without your minion even hitting them (deals 6 damage when gold)

Yeah, those are good dragons, but none of them will buff the one that keeps enchantments. So if you just have all those then the dragon will remain 4/4 forever. The leapfrog only buffs beasts, as do many of the beast cards... so there's the +1/+1 to all from the slimey guy, the demon that gives you its health, but there has to be more good ones for that 4/4 to be useful.

I might take a look this afternoon.

Sorry I thought you were asking what to stick along side this one



Which buffs the minions next to it every turn.

Or you stick em further along and put this guy next to them

Aha, I see!

I remember the good old days when Hearthstone chat was about Hearthstone!

I mean, this is about Hearthstone. Open your mind maaaaaaaaaan.

This is Hearthstone - I open the Hearthstone program and click the second thing in the menu :-)

My last game I had a revelation which i cant believe I missed before - grabbing the minion that gets extra health when you've lost health and then killing it with the one that steals stats can get you a really big one of them with a much better attack :



(The golden elemental I picked up from the 3rd place player last round and just stuck it in)

Oh yeah, I have done that demon trick a fair few times; it's just rare enough that you get enough of them at the right time, as you need to be hurt badly and need to get several of them, and have two free slots in your lineup.

Bit disappointed that this set-up didn't win (and indeed got thrashed by the winner, who had a similar set-up but with two golden 'demons who summons a demon when they take damage' with divine shield and windfury - they were Tickatus)

As Mr Bigglesworth I stole one from an opponent reasonably early on and it had okay stats but I had the minion who gives you extra demons and picked up 2 in one combat to make it golden for a big boost and then killed it for an even bigger one.

For a lot of these big decks if you can get some poison in place then you can wreck them but (other than Murlocks) poison seems to be really hard to find right now

Yeah, there seem to be fewer big poison decks now, which I'm kinda fine with, and there's enough of the tier1 go boom minions to not worry about divine shield decks (other than the swappers).

Where I always struggle is knowing when to cut a minion out... like for the demon decks you likely need two 'spaces' open to allow you to cycle through demons to boost your stats, and to allow you to put in a non-golden minion from tier 6... and I get torn between cutting one out to go weaker for a couple of turns for longer term gains and not doing so... which leads to a ridiculous amount of second place finishes!

Yeah my last 5 finishes are that firstand then 3 seconds and a third.

On that winning deck up until about 2 turns before I had the minion that gives you other demons and the one that shuffles its heath to others but cut them to get space - there can also be some real mental arithmetic needed at times to make sure you have the right number of minions / use the gold you have / have 7 minions left at the end.

The last change has shook up how the game plays a lot and its a lot of fun to play right now because so much of it can change over a few rounds

I think the recent nerfs to some of the battlegrounds minions and the questlines have improved things a bit.

Still working through the list of battleground champions to win as... another 20 or so to go! Some are ones that should be easy with but that I mess up or get unlucky with, some are just useless (MAEIV!) and some I won with before they started to count, or bugged out when I did win, so are annoying me.

I've played a bit of Mercs - I like the idea but it seems to be a bit samey. Going to persevere a little though.

Yes the balancing seems a bit better for Battlegrounds but it does still sometimes seem that some classes just don't have a good winning condition - I cant remember the last time i really went all in on Quilboar's

But any of Demons / Beasts (even with the nerf) / Murlocs / Dragons / Mechs / Pirates are all winnable with.

Other than the 'win with every' there are also special quests with each as well like win with AFK after AFK'ing your 3rd move , Win after having your Ice block triggered / etc etc

I've played a few rounds of Mercs but yet its not grabbing me just now - and most of the complaints I've seen about it is just how repetitive it is

Of the three new characters in Battlegrounds:

Cookie - Won first time; often see him in the later stages of matches

Sneed - Have come second a fair bit with him; reliant on some luck to get a win with the deathrattles

Diablo - utter shite - haven't won with him or seen anyone else make the last few characters.

Just won the very next game with Diablo. Lol.

Also, it doesn't count for the achievements as he isn't in there! RAGE!

Yeah i won my first game with Diablo , if its available then its worth going with Demons since his extra is a demon and the bonuses you get at the end sumon more demons

I did find the trick with sneed is not clear but you can use the deathrattle power more than once on a single minion , so for the first few rounds make sure your doing the same one and when it pops then you get another 4 or 5 minions at once , and later in the game you can do that with a level 4 or 5 minion again to just flood the board

I've not yet won with cookie but came second a few times - i think its just getting the right tribe to click (and making sure you always use the power each turn so you get an extra minion of the tribe you want every 3 rounds)

I'm old enough to remember when Hearthstone was a card game.

For some reason I keep up with Hearthstone news despite the fact I haven't played it for a year now (I mainly just watch Zeddy on YouTube), there's that new Mercenaries mode which is just.... why? Standard/Wild don't seem to be in great shape (to say the least), and I never played Battlegrounds or Duels anyway.

If nothing else it's quite interesting to see how it's, ahem.... 'evolved'.

Also, whilst I get that power creep in card games is a thing, looking at the current meta decks for both Standard and Wild, if I did decide to pick up again, I'd find that my spend of hundreds and hundreds of pounds over several years would be almost totally invalidated and I'd damn near just have to start again.

I'm down to 9 heroes with win Battlegrounds with now... I've got second place with all of them at some point, so I'll get there, but these are the ones I hate:

AFK - Bloody useless. Always end up with the worst L3 minions possible and entirely disconnected from each other. My least favourite.
Aranna - Should be easy! Choice of 7 every time more or less... but has an uncanny ability to go through (say) 70 minions with 0 demons, despite being the only person collecting them.
Deathwing - Bloody useless. Definitely up there with AFK for uselessness. Yeah, summon loads of stuff, build up your health... but your power is terrible and that +2 isn't cutting it against a dragon with 1000 health!
Maiev - I seem to come 2nd with this one every bloody time. A decent character that you can get a good production line going. Just for some reason haven't won one yet.
Millicent - Bloody useless. Yeah, there are some good mech minions in there at the moment, though most rely on a smattering of luck. But +1/+1 is RUBBISH... you will get far more from any other character who buffs minions.
Overlord Saurfang - Should be good, especially for hiring things that hit 3 at once, or have divine shield or windfury. Just weirdly don't seem to win with it... but not one I hate.
Patchwerk - Bloody useless. Up there with the really bloody useless ones... no power at all! Just a little extra health to get chipped away. I mostly try to sacrifice health to level up the tavern as quickly as possible, but in the later rounds when everyone is using their powers, you've got jack shit.
Rat King - Keep getting close with this one too. Generally useless power (1 round in 5) unless you're lucky enough to make a good mixed minion band, where it can be good, but it's still a crap shoot.
Y'Shaarj - Hnnnngh. Just cannot get the hang of this fucker. Never gives me anything useful, so I'm sacrificing a spot and 2 coins for 1 coin the next round? Boo. Closest I've come to winning was when I haven't even used the power at all.

BUT I WILL BEAT YOU ALL... ALL I TELL YOU!

Enjoying the latest update. The Colossal minions are good, and the Dredge mechanic interesting.

Lots of aggro decks, but equally lots of interesting counters to them. I have particularly enjoyed the Priest deck that re-uses the deathrattle of causing the opponent to draw cards until they die.

in Battlegrounds I am now down to just TWO heroes with which I have not won - Milificent Manastorm and Patchwerk. Both are slightly better with the introduction of their buddies, and I have come close with both, but they're still sodding useless and given how many heroes there are I very rarely see them, which makes 'completing' it very tough!

Well, they got rid of the buddies, which made my interest in Battlegrounds wane a bit. Still have those two to get.

Instead, I have focused on Standard Ranked. I think it's currently once of the most balanced and varied ladders they have had. I'm running about eight different decks and they can all get wins against most other types in the meta... and I still see new decks as well, which is nice.

My favourite is Curse Warlock, and playing with that and some of the mech decks mostly (as well as Pirate Warrior and Demon Hunter) I'm up to Diamond 5, which is the highest I've been at. Shame I'm away at the weekend or I could have a pop at Legend.

A pity - for previous seasons Battlegrounds perks could be bought with gold , you know all that gold that accumulates because for Battlegrounds you dont need to buy cards ?

Well they are stopping that - if you want to have a choice of 4 heros and whatever else you got with perks now you need to pay real money

https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-gb/ ... s-season-2

Eff that

Stalling around Diamond 5 again this month. Probably because I like playing a different deck each game for funsies, and I'm one legendary away from having the deck i want in each case!

Bellular has covered this in a recent video.

I never played Battlegrounds anyway so this wouldn't have affected me.

There is a world where I could imagine dipping my toes back into Hearthstone to play Constructed Ladder (I've stopped playing Legends of Runeterra), but I couldn't even begin to imagine how far behind the curve I'll be with cards and how much money it would cost me to get back to anything like a competitive place.

I also see they're bringing a new premium currency called 'runestones' into the game as well, which earns an extra 'fuck that then' from me.

I've said to Mrs Hearthly and Hearthly Jnr that I'll play WoW Wrath Classic with them so had to reinstall the Battle.net client for that, figured I may as well lash Hearthstone back on there and take a look.

It gave me a free deck as a welcome back bonus and has also offered me two 'welcome back' bundles, which will set me back £35 and give 20 packs from each of the last three expansions, along with two legendaries and 20 standard packs. Obviously this won't be anything remotely like enough to get me back into the game with competitive decks and more spend would be required.

I'll think about it.

You mostly need a lot of coins to buy the latest expansion packs. Or money obv. But you can get coin pretty quickly.