So rad man. I'll be listening to this this afternoon! And I keep meaning to get to a PIGSquad event, but still haven't yet. But eventually.

Congrats on your celebritiness!

I've been playing Hearthstone a lot lately. I love the ability to pick it up, play for 5 mins and then put it down. The variety of play is also great. Playing against other people in this game (Greg, I never did comment on your forum post about PvP gaming now that I think about it) is great. The interaction is limited, as you have a limited set of emotes, but you can get a sense of how the other player is feeling through them ("Greetings," "Threaten," "Oops," etc).

My 3 favorite classes to play right now are Druid (because that's what I always played in WoW), Mage and Warlock. I am having a lot of fun with the spell cards. I love just throwing out damage, even when it's to myself at times. And clearing the board of minions is great too. I just love to nuke :)

Good write up, Jon. It was fun to see your enthusiasm over "new" cards and building to your basic decklist. I'm about 7 wins away from having a shiny priest (need 500 wins in ranked play to make your hero and hero power shiny) and I am level 60 (cap) with priest, druid, mage. So those are my favs and I do play a lot! (As I've mentioned before).

Getting Harrison Jones was a great lucky find! I have yet to get him, but he's been one of my considerations to craft for a while. I try not to get too much card draw in my control decks because I often sit with 5-8 cards in my hand anyways and in a mirror-match, we've gone through all 30 cards and are taking fatigue damage. So, I keep all card draw out of my priest deck actually. But destroying a weapon, drawing cards, getting a powerful guy out... it's a great card.

Always look for cards that do more than 1 thing. Those deathrattle guys are great for example (like the harvester golem). Or the rifleman (battlecry deal 1 or 2 dmg).

You should be able to purchase the expansions with in game gold, so check that out, I think it's like 700 and it adds cards and 1 player mode for a bit. The cards you get can't be received in packs and everyone gets the same ones... they are definitly worth having. Like from Curse of the Naxxaramus or whatever you get a Sludge Beast. Costs 5 for a 3/5 taunt - deathrattle, summon a 1/2 taunt sludge dude... really great.

You have to do the 1-player battles in the expansion to unlock each new card, it shows you what you can get I think... but yeah, check that out before getting packs. Also, try some Arena out, a great way to play with cards you don't have yet.

What's funny, is I finally got my 500 wins on Priest and am a shiny Priest now... but now I feel like I must be working on something else. So, I made 8 different paladin decks and am cycling through them to level him up to unlock golden cards. Level 60 is cap and you unlock the golden versions of base cards on the way up.

Taken from wiki:

1-10
Up to level 10, reaching each even-numbered level will reward the player with a new basic card x 2 for that hero's class. These cards are not obtainable through any other means. These cards constitute half of each class' basic cards.
This makes reaching level 10 with each hero quite important to playing that class, in order to complete the selection of basic cards available to that hero. Once level 10 has been reached, that class' full selection of basic cards is available to the player.

11-60
Above level 10, reaching certain levels will award golden versions of existing basic cards. As they are soulbound, it is not possible to disenchant these cards, making the reward purely cosmetic. These rewards are the only way to gain golden versions of these cards.
Between levels 11 and 50/52, golden class-specific basic cards are awarded.
Above level 50/52, golden basic neutral minion cards are awarded.


So, now that I have Priest at 500 wins, my next goal is to get all my heroes to 60 so I have all the golden base cards.

I have:
Mage, Druid, Priest at 60.
Warrior and Hunter are 44
Paladin and Shaman are 42
Warlock is 39
Rogue is 37

I don't like Rogue lol.

I might deviate to work on getting Druid or Mage to 500 wins at some point, but it's all a slow march.

It's also fun making a full deck list of decks for the same hero. I came up with one of my favorite Priest combo decks this way and I found some fun Paladin combos yesterday doing this same thing.

I'm nowhere near 500 wins or level 60 for any of my classes, but I feel like I've played a lot the past month or so (since it's been available on my phone). Looking through the Naxx card rewards, there's only a few cards I could see possibly playing. For now I'd rather take my chances and just buy card packs (and go to the arena occasionally).

I'm sure I'm in the minority, but I'm too impatient to save up 700 gold lol

It turns out that at levels 25 and 24 in ranked matches, losing doesn't set you back, so I've dipped my toe into ranked matches. Right now I'm a 2-star level 24, hopefully I'll make level 23 today :)

And my class levels are:
Warlock 19
Druid 19
Mage 19
Priest 15
Rogue 14
Warrior 9
Shaman 5
Paladin 4
Hunter 1

I definitely stick to the top 4 of my classes lol (Priest is new for me, but I enjoy it, and Druid was my first class to try out, because of my WoW typical characters)

Yeah you don't lose ranks for losing from 20-25. May as well do ranked. You earn new cards backs for getting to rank 20 during a cycle (which is about a month I think). My best rank before they reset me was 7 or 8. I was on a huge win streak. I haven't been able to get there again. I did a surge of arena's this weekend, paying for a few even and in total I had 9 packs to open. I got this warrior card from the packs:

http://i.imgur.com/Nq9qYgU.jpg

And then I got pushed over 1600 dust and I crafted this:

http://imgur.com/yWlgha1

Pretty happy about both those additions for my decks.

Wow, those are both amazing cards!

I've been wanting Lord Jaraxxus for a while, I've lost many a game to him. You can be at 1 health (or 30 health) and when you play him, your hero is replaced by Lord Jaraxxus. You get a weapon that hits for 3 with 8 durability and you get a new hero power. Pay 2 mana for a 6/6 demon. And your current and maximum health gets set to 15.

It's pretty good

I can't wait to get that card now!

It looks like Mal'Ganis is pretty rad too, for the same dust cost.

Yeah, he is, I've lost to him before too, that immunity really forces you to take him out before killing the hero.

I was playing warlock vs warlock the other day. It was turn 5, he had out the demon that has deathrattlle summon a random demon from your hand. I killed it and it brought out Mal'Ganis for him. I bet he was really happy to get that out on turn 5 for free lol... I was holding a Sacrificial Pact in my hand though =]

It does take a long time, I don't remember when they started tracking the wins towards this. It wasn't at release.

Here's my wins on each hero currently for ranked

Priest 500+
Druid 230
Mage 142
Warrior 136
Shaman 74
Paladin 66
Hunter 53
Warlock 46
Rogue 44

That totals 1291. It says I have 1616 Play Mode Wins though. Also, it says My best arena key is 911, but I don't know what that means lol. Ok, I used google. That's my total wins in the arena, my best run is 10 wins.

Let's say for the sake of averages, I have a 50/50 win ratio. Meaning, I've won 1616 games in ranked and lost 1616 games in ranked. For Arena, let's say I average 4 wins with 3 losses. That means with 911 wins it would have taken me 228 arena runs to accrue that many wins which gives me 684 losses. (I'm a little weirded out by that number... that seems crazy to me).

So just in ranked mode, I've played about 3232 games and in arena another 1595. That's 4827 total games for ranked and arena. Let's say each game is average of 10 minutes. That's 804.5 hours (33.5 days) play time.

And that's just in the actual matches, not deck building, not single player missions, not opening packs etc etc.

And 10 minute average might be low, if it's a 15 minute average well, we'd be looking at 1206.75 hours (or over 50 days) played.


The article was dead on about achievables, though. Also, when he mentioned the pro-tip about sticking to one deck while ranking the ladder, that is also true. I bounce from deck to deck a lot and I suffer on the ladder for it. When I locked down a deck and just played and fine tuned that one, that's when I got to rank 7 or 8.

Oh indeed, thos Webspinners are top notch 1-drops. It's so fun getting one of these guys from it: http://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Malorne

Cards I may use in my decks from Curse of the Naxramas:

Haunted Creeper
Sometimes Nerubian Egg
Sometimes Stoneskin Gargoyle
Unstable Ghoul
Sludge Belcher
Echoing Ooze
Shade of Naxxramas
Kel'Thuzad
Loatheb

Loatheb and Sludge Belcher are probably my favorite 2 of the bunch.

Have you had him used against you?

Let me say, I've lost many a game to someone dropping him after they had a solid board state and I needed to cast some spells.

For me, it has multiple uses. You don't really want to drop him as your only minion if they already have some out, because they'll just take him down and play new minions. No big deal.

But, let's say you have a minion or two out and they don't. Drop him and they now don't have a quick and easy way to deal with all your minions. Sure they could drop a charge minion or a taunt minion, but you could still have spells of your own to help you remove their minions, whereas for a turn, you've fairly effectively blocked them from using spells to remove your minions.

So, it's sort of insurance for a turn. Another good use is when you just need to make sure you're going to be protected from a flurry of spells or big board wipe (mage flamestrike).

It also insanely shuts down some decks that rely on comboing cheap spells.

There's been games where they play Loatheb against me and I'm just like well... pass. He's one of those cards that is hard to really see how effective he is since you don't know what he blocked for you, but you just use him as insurance and assume your opponent has spells in hand to kill your threats. If he doesn't, a 5/5 for 5 isn't the worst.

You'll see people (I've had to do it) still pay the 5 extra mana for a spell too, that's always fun.

I do like that Ironbeak Owl. Very helpful, and I use it often. I've only crafted one card, the Gadgetzan Auctioneer. I cast a lot with Warlock, Mage and Priest, so I plan on using him often. He's a 6 cost card, but with my Summoning Portals, hopefully I can get him out sooner.

http://media-hearth.cursecdn.com/avatars/147/939/131.png (Gadgetzan Auctioneer)
http://gkrage.com/hearthstone-cards/summoning-portal.jpg (Summoning Portal)

If you're wanting a really powerful rare card for Mage, go with Unstable Portal. That card can win you a game or give you enough advantage to win you the game. Getting a random creature that will cost 3 less can be really fun when it gives you a super sweet legendary.

http://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Unstable_Portal

I was able to chain some Arenas this weekend (meaning, went 5-3, 7-3, 4-3, 8-3 and with quests and prize money I was able to just keep doing more arena). This meant that at the end, when I finally ran out of coins (100 left) I had 12 packs to open. Now, I've opened 20 packs in one sitting and not opened a legendary. So, my last couple times have been pretty lucky. Because this time, I opened not one, but two legendaries. The small caveat to that was I had to break one down...because it was one I already had. I had opened one just a minute earlier lol.

http://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/File:Sneed%27s_Old_Shredder(12187).png

Not complaining of course! I'll take that guy and the 400 dust for breaking down the duplicate. In fact, I'm now at 1600 dust again and can craft another legendary (or 4 epics). Not sure what my next target is though, that Old Shredder was probably my next target. There's certainly some good ones I don't have yet, but I'll likely wait until I get an urge for one in a deck. May end up being the other warlock legendary.

Dude, that thing is rad. I've lost to it and want one.

yeah, the randomness is just so hard to plan around. I've seen so many things come out of it from a dumb 0/4 to an 8/8 charge. I've even seen itself come back. Would be fun in a shaman deck using the deathrattle cards it has.

In fact, I through a shaman mech/death rattle deck together at lunch time, here's a fun result lol

http://i.imgur.com/PDBlRRq.jpg

Note, those other two legendaries are spawns from the Shredder

NICE

Picked up Illidan Stormrage from a pack. Looking forward to playing him in my Warlock deck!
http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20131211224446/hearthstone/images/e/ef/IllidanStormrage.png

I had the Sneed Old Shredder in my last Arena deck. In one game as he died, he summoned Kel'Thuzad, which brought back the Shredder... I wish the game hadn't ended so soon after that, because it would have been fun to see how many legendary cards I could have gotten out!

And just got my butt kicked by Lord Jaraxxus lol

Nice, Shredder is so fun, so is Kel'Thuzad, so many cheap tricks with him to get out 2 copies of him (well, have 1 out and kill it plus bringing it back to life same turn thereby having him resurrect himself again).

I wish there were more replacement hero cards besides Lord Jaraxxus and the Ragnaros one. Going to max of 8 health is too risky, so only Jaraxxus is viable, but it's cool getting alternate speech.

I stole Lord Jaraxxus as a Priest once, that was lots of fun :D

It's 700 gold per tier?

5 tiers right? So 3500 gold for the whole thing? or $25

$25 would get you 15 packs for $20, 2 packs for $3, and a draft for $2. SO if you spent $25 you'd only get 18 packs. If you spent 3500 gold, well 35 packs. (or 23 arena runs). I guess that's the price of playing for free though. Doable, but not as effectively.

I feel odd spending money on Hearthstone sometimes just because there's no retained value...but really, I could probably sell my account or something. Not to mention the fact that I play it on multiple devices every single day. It keeps me from buying more games I know I won't have time to play.

That's very true. If the game were to lose popularity and be shut down then you'd be out money. I'd definitely be more upset about losing the game itself than the money I've spent. It's also cheaper than playing magic online. I started that up a couple times and one of them I learned that you can pretty much do drafts 24/7. But they cost just as much as in real life. The cards are worth $ in real life, but it's harder to cash them out. And if you are good at drafts you can win prizes and do them again for free basically. But I was never good enough for that. I played for one month and spent like $200 doing drafts that month and that's with trading off the good cards I was pulling for more $... it was crazy addicting!

And yeah, account selling would be akin to selling your steam library I suppose. I don't have any of the other games though.

Well, I lose a lot too, it is a lot of luck sometimes. There's a lot of factors to a match and a lot of them are random. Some are deck design, some are timing/knowledge/experience based, and some are random number generator (RNG).

I get pretty upset sometimes when something crappy happens from the RNG and I was about to win but lose instead because my spell did 3 dmg instead of 4-6 that would won me a game. But, the flip happens too and I laugh gleefully at my opponent when he had lethal (meaning was about to swing and win) but he decides to kill my Piloted Shredder (http://www.hearthpwn.com/cards/12191-piloted-shredder) and it spawns a taunt minion or something causing him to be short and lose.

I check this site pretty frequently and if you have some questions or want some advise or tips, let me know. My hearthstone name is Nardraug#1711. I'm usually in the 13-17 rank as I don't play a consistent deck and like to play with fun (albeit not the best) combos. I'm also just working on leveling up the other classes to get gold cards unlocked.

I have a lot of cards and deck possibilities, which is nice. If there's some cards you want to see interact or wonder how useful something is, I can maybe show you (goes for anyone on here).

I do play for the achievable goals, such as getting paladin to level 60 or trying to get to that 12 win arena run. But I also just enjoy the interaction of the game. The single-player is my least favorite part, but it's not bad to have a relaxed - untimed match with the computer.

That sounds fine to me. I'm open to anything here. I can cover deck construction - arena - ranked play. This game is just so addicting for me and it's one that is easy to oblige.

I don't think there are any new or unique cards you get that are based on Diablo. It's just the 3 free packs with random cards.

One thing I learned from another thread on her was that you can click the x on the quest (once a day) and it respins your quest and gives you a new one. I love that I've finally learned that. I now try to respin any 40 gold quest so as to maximize getting 60-100 gold quests.

Spectating can be fun. With the addition of the spectate quest, I placed my name on reddit and got a dozen or so invites from people for purposes of always having at least one person online to spectate if need be for that quest. It can add some pressure when someone randomly (they do have to be on your friends list) spectates you and you're playing a crappy deck or doing poorly lol. But it's also fun to be pwning when someone spectates.

I finally decided what legendary to craft and it was the other legendary demon. He has been fun. Got one out turn 3 one game.

Turn 3 - use coin - into voidcaller. Then Sacrificial pact my voidcaller to summon a random demon from my hand (and gain 5 life).

A card I'd recommend saving up dust for is the faceless manipulator guy. He's epic rarity, so that's 400 dust a pop, not too bad. He lets you copy any minion for 5. So, even if you don't have powerful legendaries... you can copy your opponent's =] It copies just as they are, so if they are damaged, it'll copy that, if they are buffed up, it'll copy that.

Jon - This week is busy with my mother-in-law visiting from San Diego, but I should be available after this week to set up something up on Hangout.

Card games are my favorite genre of game I think. I devote a lot of time each day/week to both MTG and Hearthstone and I still look eagerly at other card games lol. I think the combination of deck building strategy, playing strategy, luck of the draw, and the quick interaction of it all is just super designed for my tastes. I guess I enjoy player vs player (pvp) games too.

Here's a link to some other Quests too, some are hidden until you complete them:

http://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Quest

For instance, when you acquire all the Pirate cards from the classic set, you'll get 2 free Captain's Parrots cards.

Actually, I find the "sorry" after a good movek to be incredibly insulting. Maybe they do feel genuinely bad, but I seriously doubt it lol. This is a game where the point is to kill the other player, not to kill nicely lol. But that said, it doesn't happen often and I quite enjoy the game.

I just realized that there isn't any reward for the Tavern Brawls I've won. For some reason I thought it was going to have a similar reward structure to the Arena (more rewards for more wins), but I see I was wrong. And reading around the internet, it sounds like Blizzard didn't want people to feel like they *had* to play it, which I understand. I already miss playing as Blackrock bosses

I finally saved up for the first Blackrock Mountain tier. It was fun to play through, and the 2 class challenges were unique, but pretty easy. I'm looking forward to seeing what tomorrow's brawl will be :)

One thing that's been bugging me lately playing against other players is when they rub in victories. And by rubbing it in I mean not finishing me off, but playing every card they have before killing me. If you have enough damage available out to kill me, I don't want to sit around waiting for you to put out all your other minions, kill mine, and use all your buffs before finishing the game.

Maybe it's just me being a sore loser, but when I win, I feel that the proper way is to do it quickly. Sort of an unwritten rule in my head :)

Ok, I admit I didn't know the exp from playing cards/killing minions, so I'll rethink my stance on that. I still would rather someone just finish the game, as when we're up in levels, that 6 or 9 more exp doesn't seem like it would make much difference.

As far as making new decks or incorporating new cards, if you have a deck you like, but a card you want to try, sometimes I'll just find a card that has the same cost to exchange out. Working through Blackrock, different bosses forced me to create new decks to counter what they were doing (I had to make a deck with no taunt, and almost all my decks depend on a lot of taunts). This could help put you in the mindset of deck rebuilding. Also the Arena is a great way to experience cards/styles you would normally not play (also the Tavern Brawl potentially).

I sort of wish there was some other chat available, because in a sense it creates faceless bodies you can be as rude to as you want.

I gave someone a well played after a match and the guy friend requested me. I accepted to hear what he had to say. He basically was a sore loser and asked why I said well played after that match when I beat him by getting lucky draws, then he calls me a moron and defriends me.

I've also had ppl add me after a match just to talk about how crazy the match was or how good it was. That's more typical.

As far as emotes go though, they can be read so many ways. I too get frustrated when my opponent is winning and rubbing it in by emoting things like "sorry" or "hello" and I actually prefer if they threaten because it just feels more appropriate than a snarky "sorry"

Conceding at the end of a match happens a LOT. I do it, my opponent does it, it's just normal. Sometimes when you know it's over, you just want to move to the next match. I do let my opponent swing for the win most times, but when they start playing other cards that they don't need, I just concede.

Now I do that too sometimes, if the match was really close, sometimes I want to show them that the cards in my hand would have easily killed him even if he managed to deal with my other threats. But I do it quick and just throw it out there and quickly end it. I don't want to be that guy that's showboating and killing his board OR even worse, the very worst kind of a-hole is the one that sits there almost dead with you almost dead and if it makes it to your turn then you can win. But they sit and sit pondering their cards and doing dumb little things and then when the turn timer starts they finally fireball you or some stupid crap. I HATE the slow-rolling. That's the worst for me lol.

I feel like not having chat leads to people treating their opponents like faceless robots more often. If you could chat, maybe people would be nicer. Maybe not.... lol.

Your opponents do leave some matches right as they start. One thing I know happens is people sand bagging their rank to increase their chances at winning matches. So instead of going higher on the ladder, they'll concede matches to lose rank to 20 and then play against easier opponents.

I have some fun screenshots to post of a couple matches gone crazy.

http://i.imgur.com/yDVOcDN.jpg

It's a little greedy, but so fun when you pull something like this off



This next one, you can see he was at 4 life while I still had effects going off (also, notice the turn timer has reached the end... it stayed there for a while because A LOT of effects were stacked up)

http://i.imgur.com/PBheUwk.jpg

And then the final result. He had a 2/8 defender out before all that started happening that had to get mowed down by my shadow boxers first too.

http://i.imgur.com/WcB1u2N.jpg

He had 4 mana...

I need to fraps or record one of these combos going off... I almost won like this on turn 3 yesterday, but my opponent had a 4/5 taunt out that I couldn't quite get around.

Losing ranked matches does you no harm until level 19 (then you can only fall back to level 20), plus you get a new card back when you end the month at level 20 :)

Speaking of card backs, is it possible to change these on the mobile game? I've not found a way to do that, and I've not installed it on any computer yet.

Here's to add to the topic of player communication.

Setting. Arena. Guy just lost on turn 6 (he had 5 mana to my 6). He instant friend adds me... I know what to expect. He adds me and I see his status as collecting arena rewards, so this knocked him out.

https://scontent-sea1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xfa1/v/t1.0-9/11951242_10207825357971221_8586269260636546518_n.jpg?oh=bc05d6904406d75a160e472de1ccb186&oe=567AF865

https://scontent-sea1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xfp1/v/t1.0-9/11903931_10207825358331230_4961200851694721159_n.jpg?oh=b10e5eeb3e64ba9ace2a3186a0a21b5d&oe=56788524

Some people are just bitter a-holes lol

holy crap. I've not run across anything like that.

Yeah, that's exactly my thought, I want to make a mini-series based on people playing a game in real life, but talking like they would if anonymous on the internet... I think it'd be funny as shit and point out just how dumb people are.

But ya, as I said, I knew this guy was probably going to be a dick when I accepted. I was ready for it and I didn't get upset over what he said, it amused me. I like that over the passive aggressive spam taunting or slow playing a win.

haha right, it's like the Ducks beating the Beavers... you don't get to gloat afterwards... the Ducks are way stronger of a team right now. But if you lose or even come close... yeah, I feel yah.

Ppl are dumb

Yeah, I hate losing priest matches because I have a gold portrait. or like, if I throw out 5 legendaries and lose and they didn't play a single one, I'm like awesome, I suck lol

I started playing it again on Sunday night. Because it had been so long, I decided to start over from the beginning, so I just got to the second half today. So far so good; no guide yet, but I'm not very far in, so we'll see.