Hearthstone 5 Minute Review
Having completely missed the boat, I first tried Hearthstone out some months ago, during the period of Universes Beyond releases before Lorwyn Eclipsed had me in the dumps about Magic. While I was initially pretty impressed with the new player experience, with decent on boarding options and a generous helping of free cards out of the gate, I was quickly turned off by the ranked experience. Not only did I feel lost trying to actually understand what my own cards did, and what each class excelled at, but I was dying out of nowhere. It was common to feel like I was ahead, having answered my opponents threats and begun to establish my own board, just to be killed the next turn seemingly from nothing.
The experience had its highlights — the Christmas tavern brawl was a delight — but it was enormously overshadowed by quite how impenetrable and miserable the actual games were. Concurrently, I'd seen Hearthstone content creators and players online complaining that the metagame was full of combo and OTKs, creating a game feel a bit more like a weird slow-motion Yu-Gi-Oh! than the tempo-oriented, board-centric gameplay I'd heard fans praise. After some intermittent play sessions, once tutorials and secondary modes had gotten board, I uninstalled the game assuming it wasn't for me.
However, once again we're at a time when Magic has done a stellar job of killing all of my motivation to play, so I'm hunting for something to play during down time at work. I saw a new expansion was on the horizon, and there was some excited buzz about it, so I figured I might as well give it a shot. I'd heard that Blizzard was making efforts to reduce the power level and bring back a more board-centric style of play, and that gave me a bit of hope that perhaps my first impressions had misled me.
Turns out Blizzard followed through and I've been having a phenomenal time with the game. I've tried a few different strategies (impressions below), and I've been pretty impressed with how well the game plays. Let's get into it.
A Different Flavour of Pie
The real highlight so far has been just how diverse the different classes feel. There are exceptions, but by and large I've found each class feels extremely distinct and there's a lot to like. Sure, if you go to the Hearthstone data aggregator sites you'll see that the meta isn't particularly balanced, but there's a lot of play to most of the decks I've played and played against. Whether to use your damage spells on minions or face, whether to trade two little fuckers for a big fucker, whether to risk taking a turn off while sitting at fifteen health, there's a lot of decision making for a game without instant speed interaction.
The decks I've been playing all have elements of burn damage, one of my favourite archetypes in card games generally, but each using it a bit differently. Here are a few thoughts on each:
Burn Mage: While I've had the least success with this, it's been a lot of fun to play, and there's nothing quite like blasting a huge board of junk down to ashes off the back of Kalec. Extremely tempo oriented and while it's mostly an aggro deck, can play a decent control game too.
Herald Warrior: This was my first attempt, having opened the fancy new legendary Ragnaros in my starter packs. Initially I played it as a straight control deck, using Ragnaros as a finisher, but after a bit of fiddling I settled on a more midrange-y version that can deal a ton of damage very quickly, but also has a lot of potential to go long. Despite being similar in speed to Burn Mage, they have extremely different feel and succeed against very different strategies in my experience.
Face Hunter: Unsurprisingly, the low to the ground aggro deck has been one of the easiest to pick up. However, the suite of three drop legendaries that this deck employs, alongside the new Confront the Tol'Vir makes the deck feel much more dynamic. Especially when go-tall and stompy decks are so common, I've really loved the break neck pace.
Quest Priest: This is a straight control deck with a combo finisher. Going long, weaving Shadow and Holy spells, and absolutely drowning in cards, this is maybe the most fun deck I've played so far. I've been pretty impressed with just how many different lines this deck offers to dealing with threats, and the combo finish using Reach Equilibrium and deathrattle doublers is awesome.
Like Magic, one of Hearthstone's strongest features is the way it divides archetypes up. The class system does a great job of creating a sense of identity for each deck, even when two classes are doing something similar — like burn. I've also enjoyed playing against almost every strategy in the field. Some of the splashier combos are a bit obnoxious when they come down early (looking at you, Warlock), but the value and minion combat oriented gameplay is fun even when I'm losing.
Gnomish Interface & Larger Men
While the gameplay experience is mostly good, I will spare a moment to complain about the interface. The options menu is light, the resolution of many assets (even common interface elements) is low, and you can tell it's a game from 2014. Not only that, it's clear much of the interface was made with touch screens in mind, as while the higher resolution and framerate makes the desktop experience very smooth, the overlarge interfaces make it somewhat difficult to take in information. Not only that, but while it's clearly made for phones, UI elements regularly ran off the screen, making them impossible to understand on mobile. It is simultaneously difficult to get the information you want, and easy to feel overwhelmed. Day9's return to the game a year ago is very illustrative.
The new expansion has also come with some balance issues that have unfortunately impacted even the lower level ladder. Druid in particular in something of a power outlier and as it's currently extremely cheap to build the deck, it's ubiquitous all over the ladder. For a game that is otherwise very friendly to brewing new decks with the dust system and broad synergies, poor balancing can invalidate some of the game's strengths.
That said, I've enjoyed myself. If you want a grindier card game with an emphasis on playing big creatures or creating cool synergy-based engines, I really recommend trying this expansion out. Blizzard has nicely given free access to all of the recent cards (everything other than the current set) for the next few months, making it very easy to try different decks — just don't expect to blitz your way to legend with a brew. If you're feeling frustrated with Magic the way I am and want something that feels a bit more traditionally fantasy, give Hearthstone a whirl.