Hearthstone- Heroes of Warcraft (Enter Your ID!)

[BROseidon]

Warlock pulls 2 Yseras from Historian, proceeds to only get Dreams to prevent me from SMorcing him to death.

[Sudo_Nym]

Wait, it's possible to get cards that aren't laughing sister out of Ysera? Obvious hax.

[chamber]

If you want a less random game, don't play hearthstone. There is a lot of randomness in it even outside of very blatant cases like that, for instance, drawing your late game cards early, or only ever drawing early game cards, or etc.

[Sudo_Nym]

Any card game that involves shuffling is going to have that problem, though, chamber. A big part of the challenge of deckbuilding is trying to adjust the numbers so you get a reasonable curve for what your deck is trying to do. For that matter, a big challenge of the game play is that a lot of cards have non-deterministic outcomes, and you have to decide if their risks are going to be worth it when you play them, and if they're going to be good enough often enough to put into your deck in the first place. Not saying you can't get screwed off random results, or win games you should have lost the same way, but I like that the games have that element of chance to them. It's why I like Blood Bowl, for that matter.

[chamber]

A card game doesn't have to have that problem though, magic and hearthstone do, but you could have cards with multiple modes, 1 for early and 1 for late. Magic even has some effects like this, for instance kicker.

[Sudo_Nym]

Sure, and Hearthstone is experimenting with that with the Forbidden spells. But randomness is always going to be a part of the design, so ultimately, you either have to make your peace with it or move on, because there's never going to be a completely non-random meta.

[BROseidon]

Hearthstone's big issue is with cards like huckster that steal a random card. Sometimes it's trash, sometimes it's absolutely bonkers.

Cabalist's tome is also a huge problem card, since it's balanced around you getting bad spells, except nave has very few of those

[BROseidon]

Like hearthstone would be a good game if it didn't have so many of those wonky effects/didn't make them so good

[Sudo_Nym]

I'm not sure how easy it is to balance that sort of effect. Hearthstone in general seems to have trouble balancing things- like, I imagine Arcane Giant was supposed to be on roughly the same power level that Frost Giant is at, but that turned out differently than expected, too. I think Cabalist Tome was supposed to be comparable to Thistle Tea, but they didn't take into account how strong the average Mage spell really is. Meanwhile, if Cabalist Tome was in warlock, it probably wouldn't be near as good.

[BROseidon]

Yeah, Blizzard just has issues with balance, and refusing to live-balance things except in extreme cases doesn't help.

[BROseidon]

SECOND TIME SOMEONE'S STOLEN PROPHET VELEN TODAY.

[BROseidon]

Except I'm probably gonna win this game.

[PJ.]

If you want a less random game, don't play hearthstone. There is a lot of randomness in it even outside of very blatant cases like that, for instance, drawing your late game cards early, or only ever drawing early game cards, or etc.

I think there is a pretty big difference between the rng of the shuffler(which is a most card game problem) and the the entire format being based around RNG "wish"-like effects like the discover mechanic, tome/book, and huckster & co. That's before we get to the fact that 3 out of the 5 tier 1 decks are running Yogg Saron. The other 2 have been top tier since they were conceptualized each holding the title of best deck in the game for numerous weeks(and that's if you don't count tuskkar totem as an RNG card). Every deck in tier 2 has barnes or effect + random critter cards

[chamber]

Yogg isn't even that bad of a random effect.

[RadiantCowbells]

Face day is coming up.

[Glork]

Dragon Druid is fun times.

[BROseidon]

Yogg isn't even that bad of a random effect.

Yeah, Yogg averages out to "clear the board and draw a bunch of cards."

The worst RNG right now are Barnes, Tuskarr Totemic, and all the steal effects in Rogue.

[BROseidon]

Tuskarr and Barnes are a different issue, though. With them, it's balance (too big of an upside for having no downside)

[Sudo_Nym]

I think Cabalist Tome is still probably the most unbalanced random effect- Mage spells are really good, so it averages to a "Draw 3 without getting closer to fatigue or depleting or resources", and it can generate copies of itself for bonus value.

[chamber]

I think Cabalist Tome is an extremely balanced card, that fixes an issue with the game (control vs control coming down to fatigue)

[Glork]

The problem is, if you're giving Mage a tool to beat fatigue Warrior, you're also giving it a tool to beat everyone else. It's *really* effing strong, especially considering none of the mage spells (except sometimes Shatter) are dead cards. Even the bad Secrets force your opponent to make awkward plays to try to figure out which one it is, because they have no idea what was generated by the tome.

[chamber]

I just don't think 5 mana draw 3 useable cards is some absurdly strong effect. It's inline with pricing in magic. I would expect 4 mana for that effect, but scaling around there is slightly different in hearthstone cause you can't miss lands.

[BROseidon]

I think Cabalist Tome is an extremely balanced card, that fixes an issue with the game (control vs control coming down to fatigue)

No, Cabalist's tome is insanely strong because it's impossible to play around. When they use it, I don't know what cards they got, and that vastly changes how I play. It's much stronger than "draw 3"

[GreyICE]

If you play absolutely passive "I won't do anything at all until I know everything about the gamestate and we're in fatigue" then yes, this is the case. But that playstyle is dead anyway, Yogg and Cthun killed it.

You should know how to check for secrets, run down the checklist. If it's not that then it's spot removal, AOE or draw. They just blew 5 mana to do nothing, that's a huge tempo swing and you can use it. Reason that Druid doesn't often run out 5 mana draw 3.

[BROseidon]

Uh, every Druid list right now runs Nourish?

Also, it might not be so broken if Mage couldn't get so far ahead in tempo by turn 5-7 that "losing tempo" to play Cabalist's Tome gives your opponent time to almost catch up.