I've spent the last week or so watching a lot of constructed Hearthstone VoDs. Blizzcon was this past weekend and the World Championships were held there, so I've been watching 16 of the top Hearthstone players compete in a format where they had to bring 5 decks from 5 different classes to the table. The opponent bans one of them and then you each pick a deck and play. Winner's deck gets removed from the pool and you repeat until someone has won games with all 4 of their unbanned decks.
I find this kind of format fascinating, though it has pretty much nothing to do with the constructed available to me. Laddering is a very different beast since you have very different goals and opponents to play against. In a very real sense laddering is just a grind so playing a faster deck tends to be better because you can pound out more games. Everyone is aware of this too, so your opponents skew way more towards faster decks than they probably should. In the tournaments you're more choosing decks that are very powerful on their own, or that all target a specific weakness you're expecting to exist in your opponent's decks. One of the players swapped his warrior deck between the top 16 and the top 8 because he anticipated his opponents in the single elimination portion would target his control warrior. He switched to an aggressive dragon warrior instead, which was way better against his first opponent's heavily controlling decks.
Watching all these cool powerful decks has me itching to play cool decks. Watching these top players made me realize that I really would be just as good as they are if I put in the time practicing. And if I actually had cards. One of the interviews they kept showing between games at the tournament talked a little bit about how the player bought tons of packs each time a set came out. Now, maybe he does that to get golden cards, but I simply can't do that. I've slacked a lot on getting my quests done, and I haven't drafted much at all of the last couple sets, so my collection is really pitiful...
I did a bit of thinking about that, and it's not all bad. Sets rotating out after a couple years is actually set up to help me out now. Goblins vs Gnomes leaving was terrible for me since I played a ton when that was the newest set, but the next set to leave is going to be The Grand Tournament, where I don't even have half of the commons and have none of the legendaries. That rotation is expected to happen sometime around March, so I'd still have 5 months of suffering through not having any cards from that set, but I'd have plenty of time to work on picking up cards from the more recent sets.
Another thing I realized is that I don't actually need to keep any of my GvG cards. I have 6 legendaries from that set and a lot of the lesser rare stuff too. I could just dust all of those to give my collection a shot in the arm.
So I went and updated my collection spreadsheet and reality punched me squarely in the face. All of my cards that will not be standard legal come March are worth a total of 8165 dust. To craft all of the cards I'm missing from Classic and Old Gods would cost 115640 dust, and that doesn't account for the fact that TWO sets will be released between now and then.
Of course I don't need every card. I can survive without crafting up a Lorewalker Cho, a Milhouse Manastorm, or a Nat Pagle. There are 11 legendaries from Classic that seem completely unplayable, and 10 more from Old Gods. That shaves off 33600 of the dust from that number above. And even though something like Lord Jaraxxus is playable, I don't need him unless I really want to play control warlock.
So it's still kinda feasible to build up a collection capable of playing the tournament formats, but I won't be able to have all the options that everyone else does. That puts a damper on the whole thing. I even went and checked out some of the coolest decks from Worlds and most of them cost way more than the 2205 dust I have on hand. Throw in all the dust from GvG and I can make any single deck... There's a lot of overlap between the decks too (almost every deck at Worlds played Ragnaros, for example, so if I crafted him it would make all the decks 1600 dust cheaper).
I think this all means it's time to start putting in some time playing Hearthstone again. I need to earn another 445 gold in order to buy the last wing of the Karazhan adventure, and then I'll want to save up some gold to do a bunch of arena runs when the new set comes out to start building up cards from Gadgetzan. I am still missing half of the rares and 13 commons from Old Gods, and it's a set sticking around for a year and a half of standard, so maybe I should draft before Gadgetzan too even though I don't know a ton about the format.
I also need to craft up a Ragnaros and then play some decks. I'll probably hold off on disenchanting all my GvG stuff in case I come up with a good reason not to, but I suspect I'll be doing that soon.
Showing posts with label Hearthstone. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hearthstone. Show all posts
Monday, November 07, 2016
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
Hearthstone Ranked Prizes
My brother came over for supper a week or so ago and in the course of conversation let me know that Blizzard apparently added minor prizes to the constructed system. The higher up the ladder you get, the more free stuff they throw at you. The free stuff really isn't very much, but it's more than the absolutely nothing you used to go. (You get one golden common at rank 20, with increments of 5 extra dust per rank most of the time, with sometimes extra cards thrown in instead.) The biggest jump is at rank 5 where you go from getting 2 golden commons and a golden rare to getting 2 golden commons and a golden epic. Not a huge deal, but it is a bunch of free cards and since they're all golden they're worth more if you want to blow them up for dust in order to help put together other decks.
I haven't played constructed in an awfully long time, since I grinded up to Legend a couple of times at the start of the year. But I figured I like free stuff, and I wanted to stream more Hearthstone anyway, so I played for a few hours on the 21st and then a little bit yesterday and today. I was learning patron when I last played and the newest set didn't seem to change anything for that deck so it seemed like the thing to try out as I went to scoop up some free stuff.
When I last hit Legend it took me 148 games to go from 25 stars to 71 stars, which is where rank 5 kicks in. This month it took me 47 games to go from 1 star to 71 stars. That's a whole heck of a lot faster! I was winning around 52-54% of my games back then. This time I won a little over 87% of my games. There are likely a few reasons for this difference. Patron warrior is a much better deck than mech mage used to be. I started much later in the month, so the people I played against at each rank rated to be a fair bit worse this time around. Perhaps most importantly the metagame shifted and a new paladin has emerged that is terribly positioned against patron warrior. I don't know if it beats other things, but it sure can't beat me!
I'm still not sure I really know how to play the deck well. I am getting a better feel for things just through practice, and it definitely makes me think I'd need to invest a lot of time into constructed to actually have a shot at doing well in tournaments. And that would also require way more cards than I currently have... Which means more drafting?
I haven't played constructed in an awfully long time, since I grinded up to Legend a couple of times at the start of the year. But I figured I like free stuff, and I wanted to stream more Hearthstone anyway, so I played for a few hours on the 21st and then a little bit yesterday and today. I was learning patron when I last played and the newest set didn't seem to change anything for that deck so it seemed like the thing to try out as I went to scoop up some free stuff.
When I last hit Legend it took me 148 games to go from 25 stars to 71 stars, which is where rank 5 kicks in. This month it took me 47 games to go from 1 star to 71 stars. That's a whole heck of a lot faster! I was winning around 52-54% of my games back then. This time I won a little over 87% of my games. There are likely a few reasons for this difference. Patron warrior is a much better deck than mech mage used to be. I started much later in the month, so the people I played against at each rank rated to be a fair bit worse this time around. Perhaps most importantly the metagame shifted and a new paladin has emerged that is terribly positioned against patron warrior. I don't know if it beats other things, but it sure can't beat me!
I'm still not sure I really know how to play the deck well. I am getting a better feel for things just through practice, and it definitely makes me think I'd need to invest a lot of time into constructed to actually have a shot at doing well in tournaments. And that would also require way more cards than I currently have... Which means more drafting?
Monday, May 18, 2015
Constructed Hearthstone in April
I posted that in March it took me 303 games played to hit Legend. April saw Hearthstone fall to my3rd most played Blizzard game with both World of Warcraft and Diablo III jumping to the forefront. As a result I ended up playing only 105 games through the first 29 days of the month. I made a push on the last day with another 62 games played but it wasn't enough. I ended up finishing at rank 3, missing out on Legend, and losing the chance to make that a notch in my imaginary Hearthstone belt.
Most of my play in April was spent learning a neat new deck I saw in a tournament that was widely described as the hardest deck to play in the game. I saw multiple pros fail to finish a critical turn in the minute and a half you're given and lose the game as a result. I won 57% of my 60 games with the deck, which is pretty good, and in almost every loss I saw a way I could have won if I'd played differently. It sure is a deck that takes a lot of practice!
Anyway, it makes me want to really learn the deck and hit legend with it in May. But that hasn't actually gotten me to play much. Less than 2 weeks to go and I've only played 34 games of constructed all month! 19 of them were with the patron deck I'm trying to learn and I've won over 84% of my games with it. I'm not exactly playing good players with good decks yet since I again waited so long to start playing this month, but it's still an encouraging sign. I need to get up to the top and start losing to good players to see what weaknesses this deck actually has!
Most of my play in April was spent learning a neat new deck I saw in a tournament that was widely described as the hardest deck to play in the game. I saw multiple pros fail to finish a critical turn in the minute and a half you're given and lose the game as a result. I won 57% of my 60 games with the deck, which is pretty good, and in almost every loss I saw a way I could have won if I'd played differently. It sure is a deck that takes a lot of practice!
Anyway, it makes me want to really learn the deck and hit legend with it in May. But that hasn't actually gotten me to play much. Less than 2 weeks to go and I've only played 34 games of constructed all month! 19 of them were with the patron deck I'm trying to learn and I've won over 84% of my games with it. I'm not exactly playing good players with good decks yet since I again waited so long to start playing this month, but it's still an encouraging sign. I need to get up to the top and start losing to good players to see what weaknesses this deck actually has!
Wednesday, April 01, 2015
Hearthstone: Blackrock Mountain
Tomorrow brings with it the release of the new adventure for Hearthstone: Blackrock Mountain. The way adventures work in the game is you get a bunch of challenging AI opponents to play against that emulate different dungeons/raids from World of Warcraft. Beating the opponent gives you new cards to use in constructed, including some potentially awesome legendary cards. Loatheb and Kel'Thuzad came from the first adventure, for example, and those cards are in my current constructed deck! Along with some of the commons and rares from that adventure too. Owning that adventure isn't really optional when it comes to playing constructed and I suspect the same will be true of this one too.
So then the question is... How to buy it? There are 5 wings to the adventure and they're going to unlock one per week. You can pay 700 in game gold for a wing, or you can pay $7 for a wing, or you can pay $5 per wing for every wing you don't own. I think the $7 for one wing is a little silly. You have to buy them in order and you need them all if you want all the cards. So buying one wing at a time with cash feels just wrong. So the real question, assuming you have gold to spend, is if you'd want to spend $5 to get 700 gold or not. Personally I'm sitting on 2190 gold so I could buy 3 wings with gold easily. And it's certainly possible that in the next 3 weeks I'll make 700 gold to get the 4th one too... But I do need more classic cards, so spending gold on packs is a real thing I might want to do.
Assuming I was willing to spend $25 on packs, how many would I get? 40 packs would run me $50 so you'd think $25 would get 20. You get a bulk discount so I'd probably only actually get 18 or so, but whatever. Spending 3500 gold on packs would get me 35 packs. So if one was going to spend cash, spending it on the BRM adventure would be about twice as efficient as spending it on packs.
I do think this is a pretty sensible way for a 'free' game to make money. Sporadically put out extra content you can buy efficiently or can grind in game to earn. It makes it easier for someone like me to justify paying them some money without feeling too much like it's just a pay to win scheme. Though as a CCG it certainly still has aspects of that.
I bought Naxx because I didn't have any gold at all. I want more classic cards enough that I think if I was currently employed I'd have no qualms at all about plunking down the $25 for BRM. But I don't have a job, and I do have gold sitting around, and I certainly have constructed viable decks without buying more packs... So I'm going to spend the gold I have on BRM wings.
So then the question is... How to buy it? There are 5 wings to the adventure and they're going to unlock one per week. You can pay 700 in game gold for a wing, or you can pay $7 for a wing, or you can pay $5 per wing for every wing you don't own. I think the $7 for one wing is a little silly. You have to buy them in order and you need them all if you want all the cards. So buying one wing at a time with cash feels just wrong. So the real question, assuming you have gold to spend, is if you'd want to spend $5 to get 700 gold or not. Personally I'm sitting on 2190 gold so I could buy 3 wings with gold easily. And it's certainly possible that in the next 3 weeks I'll make 700 gold to get the 4th one too... But I do need more classic cards, so spending gold on packs is a real thing I might want to do.
Assuming I was willing to spend $25 on packs, how many would I get? 40 packs would run me $50 so you'd think $25 would get 20. You get a bulk discount so I'd probably only actually get 18 or so, but whatever. Spending 3500 gold on packs would get me 35 packs. So if one was going to spend cash, spending it on the BRM adventure would be about twice as efficient as spending it on packs.
I do think this is a pretty sensible way for a 'free' game to make money. Sporadically put out extra content you can buy efficiently or can grind in game to earn. It makes it easier for someone like me to justify paying them some money without feeling too much like it's just a pay to win scheme. Though as a CCG it certainly still has aspects of that.
I bought Naxx because I didn't have any gold at all. I want more classic cards enough that I think if I was currently employed I'd have no qualms at all about plunking down the $25 for BRM. But I don't have a job, and I do have gold sitting around, and I certainly have constructed viable decks without buying more packs... So I'm going to spend the gold I have on BRM wings.
Saturday, March 28, 2015
Hearthstone: March Legend!
From my post it took 266 wins last month to get to legend in Hearthstone. I just hit legend for this month this afternoon and it took 174 wins in 303 games. Part of the difference is going to be starting from a higher point this time around so I needed to earn something like 14 fewer wins this time around, but a much bigger part would have to be my winning percentage. I have 414 games recorded from last month before I hit legend and I didn't log the first couple days! I was winning about 53.6% of my games that month. This month I won 45.5% of my 22 games with hunter, 56.4% of 78 games with mage, and 59.1% of 203 games with paladin. I'm still learning hunter and know I threw some of those games away with obvious mistakes, let alone the subtle ones, so I'm not saying hunter is bad or anything. Just that I hadn't practiced it before while I had played the other two.
I thought it would be interesting to take a look at my opponents over the course of this month. I'm not super in the know with how to classify decks so I'm going to use the rough categories of aggro and control. Mech decks, zoo warlocks, face hunters, and a few misc weenie decks got classified as aggro. Pretty much everything else is control, even if 'control hunter' is still a pretty aggressive deck. Anyway, 28% of my games were against aggro decks and 72% were against control. The vast majority of the aggro decks were hunter (36%), mage (32%), and warlock (13%). Control decks were much more varied, with hunter (17%), druid (16%), mage (15%), paladin (13%), and rogue (10%) all showing up.
Overall when it comes to class mix hunter lead the way with 22% of my opponents. Mages made up 20%, with druid (13%) and paladin (10%) being the other classes to break the 10% mark. So if you were trying to hit legend this month having a deck that could hold up well against those classes would be a good idea. My paladin deck crushes druid (70% win rate) and holds up quite well against the other three popular classes. (59% against hunter, 56% against mage, 63% against paladin!) It has a rough time against rogues (44% win rate) but was better than 50% against every other class. Some of the games could go rather long so I wouldn't be surprised if mech mage would have been faster even with a lower win percentage.
I slotted in at 652 on the legend ladder, which is far off of top 50 or top 100. With only 3 days left in the month I'm not sure if it's worth trying to win my way up or if I should use this time to play other games. Or maybe to get more experience with hunter?
I've included an image of my current paladin list. If I owned the cards I would want to test out using Sylvanas Windrunner and Harrison Jones instead of Piloted Sky Golem and Kel'Thuzad. More than half of my opponents played decks with weapons in them! Maybe I should think about putting in an ooze until I get a Jones...
I thought it would be interesting to take a look at my opponents over the course of this month. I'm not super in the know with how to classify decks so I'm going to use the rough categories of aggro and control. Mech decks, zoo warlocks, face hunters, and a few misc weenie decks got classified as aggro. Pretty much everything else is control, even if 'control hunter' is still a pretty aggressive deck. Anyway, 28% of my games were against aggro decks and 72% were against control. The vast majority of the aggro decks were hunter (36%), mage (32%), and warlock (13%). Control decks were much more varied, with hunter (17%), druid (16%), mage (15%), paladin (13%), and rogue (10%) all showing up.Overall when it comes to class mix hunter lead the way with 22% of my opponents. Mages made up 20%, with druid (13%) and paladin (10%) being the other classes to break the 10% mark. So if you were trying to hit legend this month having a deck that could hold up well against those classes would be a good idea. My paladin deck crushes druid (70% win rate) and holds up quite well against the other three popular classes. (59% against hunter, 56% against mage, 63% against paladin!) It has a rough time against rogues (44% win rate) but was better than 50% against every other class. Some of the games could go rather long so I wouldn't be surprised if mech mage would have been faster even with a lower win percentage.
I slotted in at 652 on the legend ladder, which is far off of top 50 or top 100. With only 3 days left in the month I'm not sure if it's worth trying to win my way up or if I should use this time to play other games. Or maybe to get more experience with hunter?
I've included an image of my current paladin list. If I owned the cards I would want to test out using Sylvanas Windrunner and Harrison Jones instead of Piloted Sky Golem and Kel'Thuzad. More than half of my opponents played decks with weapons in them! Maybe I should think about putting in an ooze until I get a Jones...
Friday, March 06, 2015
Hearthstone: Pinnacle Tournaments
A couple weeks ago one of the constructed streamers I watch (Massan) was talking on his stream that he'd won the 'Pinnacle 3' tournament the previous weekend, whatever that is. I filed the name in my mind to look up the tournament but never got around to it. Today a different streamer mentioned he probably wouldn't be streaming this coming weekend because he was going to be playing in an open qualifier for 'Pinnacle 4'. Now, I doubt I have the cards to actually compete in a tournament but I like to try things and see how they work even if I can't expect to win right off the bat. So I went off to do some research.
Unfortunately it turns out the guy putting this particular tournament series together is taking some liberties with the word 'open'. Maybe it's a standard term for the Hearthstone tournament scene, I don't know, but entries are limited to 128 and are restricted solely to people who have hit the top 100 on the ladder. Finished in the top 100 I think, so my peak of 40 isn't any good here. I'm actually pretty sure I could have finished top 100 last month if I just stopped playing completely once I hit 40. I'd dropped down some, sure, but I doubt enough people would have passed me to bump me out of 100. Oh well! I didn't know there was any pressing need to finish top 100. Now I do!
But at least now I know there is a tournament going on this weekend so I can try to tune in and check out the stream to at least get a feel for what's going on as a spectator.
Unfortunately it turns out the guy putting this particular tournament series together is taking some liberties with the word 'open'. Maybe it's a standard term for the Hearthstone tournament scene, I don't know, but entries are limited to 128 and are restricted solely to people who have hit the top 100 on the ladder. Finished in the top 100 I think, so my peak of 40 isn't any good here. I'm actually pretty sure I could have finished top 100 last month if I just stopped playing completely once I hit 40. I'd dropped down some, sure, but I doubt enough people would have passed me to bump me out of 100. Oh well! I didn't know there was any pressing need to finish top 100. Now I do!
But at least now I know there is a tournament going on this weekend so I can try to tune in and check out the stream to at least get a feel for what's going on as a spectator.
Saturday, February 28, 2015
Hearthstone February Results
The 11th Hearthstone ranked ladder season ended at 4am. I ended up finishing at 968th place, and I'm pretty sure there were over 2k people who made it to legend so I was in the top half of legends. The claim is that only .5% of people made it to legend in the first few seasons, so it's entirely possible that I'm what, 1 in 400? Not too bad.
Of course, 968th place is worth no qualification points towards worlds, so it isn't actually very good. My goal is to get top 50 in a month, or top 100 in two months, and I now have two failed months. (One because I didn't play, and this one.)
My peak ranking was actually 40th place. But I got to that point on the back of a 10 game winning streak. I then told myself I wouldn't play unless I dropped out of the top 50. Enough people played and passed me that I fell down to 58th and then I lost my next game and tumbled out of the top 100. I never made it back up that high.
The really sad thing is I ended up going 79-78 after the 10 game winning streak that put me at 40th. So going better than 50-50 still meant falling from a good standing to middle of the pack...
The whole thing is reminiscent of the old Magic rating system where I was qualified for Nationals and GP byes and the like but was prevented from playing most games for fear of losing those rewards. Card games simply have too much variance to make it worth playing against people significantly below your rating. And in Hearthstone it seems like they're more interested in getting a fast match going than in pairing you up against an even match. (If my matches were close to even then my ELO should have remained similar after going 79-78 instead of falling so much I fell from 40th to 968th.)
On the plus side I now have 2 decks built and I'm learning more and more about the format every day. So I should be able to do better in future months! Maybe?
Of course, 968th place is worth no qualification points towards worlds, so it isn't actually very good. My goal is to get top 50 in a month, or top 100 in two months, and I now have two failed months. (One because I didn't play, and this one.)
My peak ranking was actually 40th place. But I got to that point on the back of a 10 game winning streak. I then told myself I wouldn't play unless I dropped out of the top 50. Enough people played and passed me that I fell down to 58th and then I lost my next game and tumbled out of the top 100. I never made it back up that high.
The really sad thing is I ended up going 79-78 after the 10 game winning streak that put me at 40th. So going better than 50-50 still meant falling from a good standing to middle of the pack...
The whole thing is reminiscent of the old Magic rating system where I was qualified for Nationals and GP byes and the like but was prevented from playing most games for fear of losing those rewards. Card games simply have too much variance to make it worth playing against people significantly below your rating. And in Hearthstone it seems like they're more interested in getting a fast match going than in pairing you up against an even match. (If my matches were close to even then my ELO should have remained similar after going 79-78 instead of falling so much I fell from 40th to 968th.)
On the plus side I now have 2 decks built and I'm learning more and more about the format every day. So I should be able to do better in future months! Maybe?
Friday, February 27, 2015
Hearthstone: Quest Rerolls
Sceadeau clued me in yesterday that there's a feature in Hearthstone to swap out one of the daily quests if you don't want to do it. I feel a little silly for not knowing about such a feature for so long, especially since it turns out to be pretty simple, but now I know. And other people should know too!
Basically each day you get assigned a quest at random. You're allowed to store up 3 quests at a time so you don't need to play every day to keep on top of your quests but they also don't just stack up forever. Quests can be for a variety of tasks and can be worth either 40, 60, or 100 gold. I've always just done them when they show up, or shortly thereafter.
It turns out, however, that each quest in your log has an X on it in the corner. I assumed this was to delete the quest in case you hit your limit of 3 and wanted to get a different one the next day. That's not quite how it works. Instead it deletes the quest and immediately gives you a different one. It also removes all the Xs from all your quests for the rest of the day.
So it would seem that each day if you get a 40 gold quest you should send it back. If it comes back as a 40 gold quest then you should just leave it sitting there and send it back the next day, too. (Days change at midnight PST, so 4am out here.) And then only worry about doing a 40 gold quest if you've got a big backlog of 40 gold quests.
Realistically I'm not going to go through all that effort. If I have a 40 gold quest for casting spells I'm not going to play games without playing spells all day. I'm just going to get my 40 gold and move on with my life. But it does mean that any time I get a quest I will be sending it back for a chance at a bigger gold one. And if I get a quest to win twice with a class I don't like then I can just ignore it and reroll it again the next day too instead of forcing myself to draft warrior.
Basically each day you get assigned a quest at random. You're allowed to store up 3 quests at a time so you don't need to play every day to keep on top of your quests but they also don't just stack up forever. Quests can be for a variety of tasks and can be worth either 40, 60, or 100 gold. I've always just done them when they show up, or shortly thereafter.
It turns out, however, that each quest in your log has an X on it in the corner. I assumed this was to delete the quest in case you hit your limit of 3 and wanted to get a different one the next day. That's not quite how it works. Instead it deletes the quest and immediately gives you a different one. It also removes all the Xs from all your quests for the rest of the day.
So it would seem that each day if you get a 40 gold quest you should send it back. If it comes back as a 40 gold quest then you should just leave it sitting there and send it back the next day, too. (Days change at midnight PST, so 4am out here.) And then only worry about doing a 40 gold quest if you've got a big backlog of 40 gold quests.
Realistically I'm not going to go through all that effort. If I have a 40 gold quest for casting spells I'm not going to play games without playing spells all day. I'm just going to get my 40 gold and move on with my life. But it does mean that any time I get a quest I will be sending it back for a chance at a bigger gold one. And if I get a quest to win twice with a class I don't like then I can just ignore it and reroll it again the next day too instead of forcing myself to draft warrior.
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Hearthstone: Sweet Patch Change
A new patch for Hearthstone went out earlier this week. It didn't have very much in it. No card nerfs or anything like that. The card back reward for playing constructed this month, a new animation that makes me want to resolve Mimiron's Head proc at least once to see what it is, and a bug fix for my old mech deck. (Cogmaster wasn't working properly when you switch his stats with a spare part.) But then there was also a set of quality of life client changes that I really like!
They added a client state that basically makes it so spectators exist between games. If you're watching someone play, their game ends, and then they start a new game you'll automatically start watching that game too. They also removed the idle timeout for people who are watching a game. So now I can start watching Sceadeau or Matt play a draft deck and just leave it running in the background to pop in from time to time and see what's going on. It's pretty sweet!
(PS: My Battle.Net tag is Ziggyny#1233, add me so I can watch your draft games and point out when you miss a point of damage!)
They added a client state that basically makes it so spectators exist between games. If you're watching someone play, their game ends, and then they start a new game you'll automatically start watching that game too. They also removed the idle timeout for people who are watching a game. So now I can start watching Sceadeau or Matt play a draft deck and just leave it running in the background to pop in from time to time and see what's going on. It's pretty sweet!
(PS: My Battle.Net tag is Ziggyny#1233, add me so I can watch your draft games and point out when you miss a point of damage!)
Saturday, February 21, 2015
Hearthstone: Value
The other day when I was helping Sceadeau understand what I think about when I draft I kept using the term 'value'. It's something I've picked up from watching streamers of the game and it's a pretty developed concept I think, but as someone new to the game Sceadeau didn't really know what I meant. I mean, obviously you want to take cards with higher value than other cards... That's what the word means... But how do you weigh the value of different cards in a draft? He asked and I answered as best I could. I've been thinking about it more lately, and here's where I've arrived.
The first thing to understand as someone who comes from a game like Magic is creatures in Hearthstone are designed to die. Creatures in Magic heal to full at the end of each turn which means it's entirely reasonable to expect a good durable creature to live several turns and eat several cards from the opponent in the process. Creatures in Hearthstone rarely heal, and never automatically. The permanent damage on them means that you play a creature, do some damage with it, and then watch it die.
The end consequence of this is the default assumption for a creature is you're going to trade it for a creature that costs the same amount from your opponent. So the basic idea of value that I'm using is that it's what you expect to have left over after trading with an average card of the same cost from your opponent.
For example, how good is spider tank? It's a 3/4 for 3. If you trade it for a 3/3 taunt guy you get to keep a 3/1 and they keep nothing. That's pretty good! Harvest golem? Spider tank remains as a 3/2, golem leaves behind a 2/1. Tank has the edge here, but if nothing else goes on the 3/2 just trades for the 2/1. Dalaran mage? Spider tank straight up stays as a 3/2 against nothing. Harvest golem stays as a 2/1 and then another 2/1. Even the taunt guy sticks around as a 3/1 taunt. Dalaran mage is terrible under this comparison.
Always comparing with something of the same cost isn't exactly fair. Fighting up or down one in cost is a pretty standard situation too, and it does help to think about those situations. There are also hero powers that can be relevant. Sticking around as a 3/1 is a lot better against a warlock than it is against a mage, for example!
You shouldn't go too crazy with comparing up or down though. Obviously an archmage trades very well with a wisp, but it also costs 7 more mana!
What sort of things are typically found on cards I'd consider to provide high value? Big stats compared to other creatures is a good start. 4/5 yetis for 4 are surprisingly good even when they have no ability. It's just super hard for any creature of equal or lower value to kill a yeti in one round, and similarly hard for one of those creatures to survive a round with the yeti.
The stat mix is also really relevant. You want fairly balanced stats, with toughness actually being better than power most of the time. Lost tallstrider is a 5/4 for 4 and it's actually a lot worse than the 4/5 yeti. The problem is the 5th power tends to be wasted against creatures around the same cost. They don't have 5 toughness, so in a trade the extra power isn't used. Having only 4 toughness increases the number of creatures that will kill it is one shot. Especially against a mage which can tag in an extra damage for 2 mana if they need to do it. But while 4/5 is better than 5/4, 1/8 is not better than 4/5.
The 5th toughness is especially important because of the existence of flamestrike. Having creatures you can play before the mage's turn 7 that live through flamestrike is clutch.
Creatures that are 'sticky' can also provide good value for their cost. Stickiness refers to a creature that generates an extra body in some way after it 'dies'. This can come in the form of divine shield, or a deathrattle effect which generates an extra creature, or even a battlecry which generates an extra creature. The battlecry ones tend to be weaker since mass removal can hit both creatures at the same time, but it is still a potential source of value.
Or maybe it's a creature that generates card advantage in some other way. Maybe it has a good sized body for the cost and lets you draw a card when it comes into play or dies. Or maybe it does some bonus damage at some point. Demolisher is a 1/4 for 3 which is a terrible body, but if it stays in play it gets to do 2 extra damage each turn. It's generally pretty terrible value, but I had one game today where I had enough removal via weapons that I was able to keep a demolisher alive for many turns and it just kept picking off small paladin creatures. It was pretty good value, that one time.
It feels like creatures often pay some amount of power or toughness to get an ability on them, and then that ability just doesn't do much. Spellpower, windfury, and taunt are some of the big ones. When they work out they do great things, but if you spend 6 mana for a 4/5 windfury and the enemy just trades for it right away you never get to attack twice and you ended up spending 2 more mana than a yeti for just a yeti. That sucks. The 2/2 spellpower guy for 2 can be good when you follow him up with a swipe or something, but if instead he just gets eaten by a 2/3 then he was low value for you.
The first thing to understand as someone who comes from a game like Magic is creatures in Hearthstone are designed to die. Creatures in Magic heal to full at the end of each turn which means it's entirely reasonable to expect a good durable creature to live several turns and eat several cards from the opponent in the process. Creatures in Hearthstone rarely heal, and never automatically. The permanent damage on them means that you play a creature, do some damage with it, and then watch it die.
The end consequence of this is the default assumption for a creature is you're going to trade it for a creature that costs the same amount from your opponent. So the basic idea of value that I'm using is that it's what you expect to have left over after trading with an average card of the same cost from your opponent.
For example, how good is spider tank? It's a 3/4 for 3. If you trade it for a 3/3 taunt guy you get to keep a 3/1 and they keep nothing. That's pretty good! Harvest golem? Spider tank remains as a 3/2, golem leaves behind a 2/1. Tank has the edge here, but if nothing else goes on the 3/2 just trades for the 2/1. Dalaran mage? Spider tank straight up stays as a 3/2 against nothing. Harvest golem stays as a 2/1 and then another 2/1. Even the taunt guy sticks around as a 3/1 taunt. Dalaran mage is terrible under this comparison.
Always comparing with something of the same cost isn't exactly fair. Fighting up or down one in cost is a pretty standard situation too, and it does help to think about those situations. There are also hero powers that can be relevant. Sticking around as a 3/1 is a lot better against a warlock than it is against a mage, for example!
You shouldn't go too crazy with comparing up or down though. Obviously an archmage trades very well with a wisp, but it also costs 7 more mana!
What sort of things are typically found on cards I'd consider to provide high value? Big stats compared to other creatures is a good start. 4/5 yetis for 4 are surprisingly good even when they have no ability. It's just super hard for any creature of equal or lower value to kill a yeti in one round, and similarly hard for one of those creatures to survive a round with the yeti.
The stat mix is also really relevant. You want fairly balanced stats, with toughness actually being better than power most of the time. Lost tallstrider is a 5/4 for 4 and it's actually a lot worse than the 4/5 yeti. The problem is the 5th power tends to be wasted against creatures around the same cost. They don't have 5 toughness, so in a trade the extra power isn't used. Having only 4 toughness increases the number of creatures that will kill it is one shot. Especially against a mage which can tag in an extra damage for 2 mana if they need to do it. But while 4/5 is better than 5/4, 1/8 is not better than 4/5.
The 5th toughness is especially important because of the existence of flamestrike. Having creatures you can play before the mage's turn 7 that live through flamestrike is clutch.
Creatures that are 'sticky' can also provide good value for their cost. Stickiness refers to a creature that generates an extra body in some way after it 'dies'. This can come in the form of divine shield, or a deathrattle effect which generates an extra creature, or even a battlecry which generates an extra creature. The battlecry ones tend to be weaker since mass removal can hit both creatures at the same time, but it is still a potential source of value.
Or maybe it's a creature that generates card advantage in some other way. Maybe it has a good sized body for the cost and lets you draw a card when it comes into play or dies. Or maybe it does some bonus damage at some point. Demolisher is a 1/4 for 3 which is a terrible body, but if it stays in play it gets to do 2 extra damage each turn. It's generally pretty terrible value, but I had one game today where I had enough removal via weapons that I was able to keep a demolisher alive for many turns and it just kept picking off small paladin creatures. It was pretty good value, that one time.
It feels like creatures often pay some amount of power or toughness to get an ability on them, and then that ability just doesn't do much. Spellpower, windfury, and taunt are some of the big ones. When they work out they do great things, but if you spend 6 mana for a 4/5 windfury and the enemy just trades for it right away you never get to attack twice and you ended up spending 2 more mana than a yeti for just a yeti. That sucks. The 2/2 spellpower guy for 2 can be good when you follow him up with a swipe or something, but if instead he just gets eaten by a 2/3 then he was low value for you.
Friday, February 20, 2015
They ALWAYS Have Fiery 'Win' Axe
Watch practically any Hearthstone constructed streamer for very long and you're apt to hear them complain about their warrior opponent playing the 2 casting cost card Fiery War Axe on turn 2. It lets the warrior attack for 3 damage twice, which is a huge setback for most aggressive decks. It makes it tricky to decide what creatures to play early when I have a choice in the matter. Heck, if I knew for sure that they had a fiery war axe then I might even decline to play a creature right away. Especially if I had an unstable portal in my hand. But if they don't have one then leading with a mechwarper is way better...
So I've been wondering... What are the actual odds that they have a fiery war axe in hand to kill my 2 drop? To give them the best chance at having one you'd assume they mulligan away every single card that isn't a fiery war axe. I'm not even sure that's an unreasonable assumption to be honest. It's so much better than any other card they could have early and pretty much ensures they'll get to the mid/late game in order to use their other more powerful cards. Maybe they'd also keep something like armorsmith against a known aggressive deck? This is one of those places where I wish I had the cards to play around with more decks so I could get a feel for what their decisions would actually be like.
If you're going second then you start with the coin and can play your 2 drop on turn 1. This means the warrior gets to look at 3 cards in their initial opening hand, and then 3 cards after they mulligan them all away and 2 draw steps. So they need to whiff on a 3 card hand and then whiff on a 5 card hand. This nets out to them having a 44.4% chance of having a fiery way axe on their turn 2 to use against my mechwarper.
If you're going first then you no longer have the coin and can only play your 2 drop on turn 2. This means they get to look at 4 cards in their opening hand, then 4 more cards and 2 draw steps. So they'd need to whiff on a 4 cards hand and then whiff on a 6 card hand. This nets out to them having a 52.6% chance of having fiery war axe on their turn 2 to use against my mechwarper.
So, does a warrior ALWAYS have fiery win axe? No. No, they really don't. If they have the coin then they're a little bit of a favourite to have one, and if they don't have the coin they're a little bit of a favourite to not have one. Overall they'll only have one a little under half the time.
I can see why it's frustrating though. Personally I've won 58.5% of the time against control warrior with my mech mage deck and my feeling for how that match goes is I win if I get an early rush in, or if I get a stealthed archmage antonidas. And I lose if the game goes long and I don't get infinite fireballs. Them having the war axe means my early rush is almost certainly destined to fail, but when they don't have one, and they don't rate to have one, I get my rush on and get a strong edge. They can stunt me with an armorsmith into a coined death's bite too, so it's not the only determining factor, but I suspect if I'd actually been tracking turn 2 FWAs it would be positively correlated with their chance to win.
So I've been wondering... What are the actual odds that they have a fiery war axe in hand to kill my 2 drop? To give them the best chance at having one you'd assume they mulligan away every single card that isn't a fiery war axe. I'm not even sure that's an unreasonable assumption to be honest. It's so much better than any other card they could have early and pretty much ensures they'll get to the mid/late game in order to use their other more powerful cards. Maybe they'd also keep something like armorsmith against a known aggressive deck? This is one of those places where I wish I had the cards to play around with more decks so I could get a feel for what their decisions would actually be like.
If you're going second then you start with the coin and can play your 2 drop on turn 1. This means the warrior gets to look at 3 cards in their initial opening hand, and then 3 cards after they mulligan them all away and 2 draw steps. So they need to whiff on a 3 card hand and then whiff on a 5 card hand. This nets out to them having a 44.4% chance of having a fiery way axe on their turn 2 to use against my mechwarper.
If you're going first then you no longer have the coin and can only play your 2 drop on turn 2. This means they get to look at 4 cards in their opening hand, then 4 more cards and 2 draw steps. So they'd need to whiff on a 4 cards hand and then whiff on a 6 card hand. This nets out to them having a 52.6% chance of having fiery war axe on their turn 2 to use against my mechwarper.
So, does a warrior ALWAYS have fiery win axe? No. No, they really don't. If they have the coin then they're a little bit of a favourite to have one, and if they don't have the coin they're a little bit of a favourite to not have one. Overall they'll only have one a little under half the time.
I can see why it's frustrating though. Personally I've won 58.5% of the time against control warrior with my mech mage deck and my feeling for how that match goes is I win if I get an early rush in, or if I get a stealthed archmage antonidas. And I lose if the game goes long and I don't get infinite fireballs. Them having the war axe means my early rush is almost certainly destined to fail, but when they don't have one, and they don't rate to have one, I get my rush on and get a strong edge. They can stunt me with an armorsmith into a coined death's bite too, so it's not the only determining factor, but I suspect if I'd actually been tracking turn 2 FWAs it would be positively correlated with their chance to win.
Thursday, February 19, 2015
Hearthstone: Spectating
An interesting feature of the Hearthstone client that I stumbled on last week is the ability to spectate games being played by people on your friends list. It turns out this lets you watch their game, in real time, including being able to see the cards in their hand. It even lets you see their mulligan decision if you start spectating fast enough.
This is a really useful learning tool, for both people. It lets the spectator see what decisions the player is making in terms of cards to play and whatnot. It lets the player ask for suggestions from the spectator without needing to provide extra information about game state. It's especially useful when using an external voice chat program like Skype.
I used this one time with Sceadeau as he asked me for some quick tips on arenaing. Being forced to explain why I would do what I do certainly helped him out, but it also helps me out too because it gives me a chance to figure out why I do what I do. Being questioned gives me a chance to reinforce my choices as right ones, or it gives me an opportunity to fix a leak in my game I didn't know existed. Win-win!
I don't have many Battle.net friends after my adventures with being hacked late last year. My tag is Ziggyny#1233 if anyone wants to add me.
This is a really useful learning tool, for both people. It lets the spectator see what decisions the player is making in terms of cards to play and whatnot. It lets the player ask for suggestions from the spectator without needing to provide extra information about game state. It's especially useful when using an external voice chat program like Skype.
I used this one time with Sceadeau as he asked me for some quick tips on arenaing. Being forced to explain why I would do what I do certainly helped him out, but it also helps me out too because it gives me a chance to figure out why I do what I do. Being questioned gives me a chance to reinforce my choices as right ones, or it gives me an opportunity to fix a leak in my game I didn't know existed. Win-win!
I don't have many Battle.net friends after my adventures with being hacked late last year. My tag is Ziggyny#1233 if anyone wants to add me.
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
Hearthstone: Revising 'To Legend' Numbers
Sthenno pointed out that starting my simulation off at 0 stars isn't terribly realistic, especially now that I'm actually at legend this month. When the ladder resets for the next month you don't get set back to the very bottom of the ladder. Instead you get to start with a number of stars equal to the number of ranks you gained in the previous month. This means that I'll start off at 25 stars next season instead of at 0 and will therefore only need to gain 71 stars to hit legend.
Now, this isn't quite as good as it seems. The first 10 stars are practically free in that losses don't cost you stars down at that level. The last 26 stars are harder to get because the '3 wins in a row' bonus is removed at that point. So you're shaving off easy stars and still have the big slog at the end, but it should still make things a little faster. But how much faster?
I'm on my real computer now so I bumped the size of my spreadsheet up to a million runs, coded it to start with 25 stars, and set it running. Check the same things I checked last time, which was the minimum win percentage to guarantee legend in X games... (I checked both just the first 100k and all million and the numbers were the same.)
1700 games - was 52%, is now 52%
850 games - was 54%, is now 54%
567 games - was 56%, is now 55%
So not a whole lot of change, actually. But I'm now more wondering the inverse of what I'd been checking. With a given win percentage, what is the most games it took to hit legend? Average? I mostly care about the range around 50%, and anyone who didn't hit legend at all is counted as hitting it in 5000 games just because of the way I set things up. So averages close to 5k were mostly people who didn't hit legend at all.
45% - 1428 min, 4990 average
46% - 1035 min, 4922 average
47% - 809 min, 4522 average
48% - 718 min, 3482 average
49% - 606 min, 2228 average
50% - 502 min, 1418 average
51% - 459 min, 985 average
52% - 417 min, 733 average
53% - 353 min, 583 average
54% - 305 min, 484 average
55% - 280 min, 412 average
56% - 251 min, 360 average
57% - 241 min, 319 average
58% - 221 min, 286 average
59% - 206 min, 260 average
60% - 189 min, 238 average
61% - 174 min, 219 average
62% - 164 min, 203 average
Basically it really feels like 54% win rate is a good target. Find the fastest deck that wins about that much and you're good to go. Slowing down to eke out a slightly higher win rate isn't likely to be worth it. Speeding up by losing more often than that is probably too big a hit to your actual speed to legend, especially if you're far away from the minimum values.
Now, this isn't quite as good as it seems. The first 10 stars are practically free in that losses don't cost you stars down at that level. The last 26 stars are harder to get because the '3 wins in a row' bonus is removed at that point. So you're shaving off easy stars and still have the big slog at the end, but it should still make things a little faster. But how much faster?
I'm on my real computer now so I bumped the size of my spreadsheet up to a million runs, coded it to start with 25 stars, and set it running. Check the same things I checked last time, which was the minimum win percentage to guarantee legend in X games... (I checked both just the first 100k and all million and the numbers were the same.)
1700 games - was 52%, is now 52%
850 games - was 54%, is now 54%
567 games - was 56%, is now 55%
So not a whole lot of change, actually. But I'm now more wondering the inverse of what I'd been checking. With a given win percentage, what is the most games it took to hit legend? Average? I mostly care about the range around 50%, and anyone who didn't hit legend at all is counted as hitting it in 5000 games just because of the way I set things up. So averages close to 5k were mostly people who didn't hit legend at all.
45% - 1428 min, 4990 average
46% - 1035 min, 4922 average
47% - 809 min, 4522 average
48% - 718 min, 3482 average
49% - 606 min, 2228 average
50% - 502 min, 1418 average
51% - 459 min, 985 average
52% - 417 min, 733 average
53% - 353 min, 583 average
54% - 305 min, 484 average
55% - 280 min, 412 average
56% - 251 min, 360 average
57% - 241 min, 319 average
58% - 221 min, 286 average
59% - 206 min, 260 average
60% - 189 min, 238 average
61% - 174 min, 219 average
62% - 164 min, 203 average
Basically it really feels like 54% win rate is a good target. Find the fastest deck that wins about that much and you're good to go. Slowing down to eke out a slightly higher win rate isn't likely to be worth it. Speeding up by losing more often than that is probably too big a hit to your actual speed to legend, especially if you're far away from the minimum values.
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
Hearthstone: Winner Winner, Legend Dinner
Now the goal would be to get up to the top 50 or the top 100 to earn some of those worlds qualifier points. But I'm wondering if maybe I should work on a better deck first? I've been finding more and more I play the same people repeatedly as I got closer and closer to legend, and some of them have decks I have very little chance against. (This version of the deck has gone 2-9 against zoo warlock, for example.) So having more decks to switch between when the guy who plays zoo is around would be really nice.
But what deck should that be? My problem is I don't have enough experience with constructed to really know what beats what. I'm getting a decent idea of what beats mech mage, but that's it. Probably the right thing to do is to build a zoo deck and use it next month on my way up the ladder! Focus more on drafting for the rest of this month and grind out a bunch of mech mage games closer to the end of the month and try to eke into the top 100.
In case anyone wants to try out my current mech mage variant (not exactly ground breaking stuff here, and some decisions were based on not owning many classic cards) here's the list:
2xclockwork gnome
1xcogmaster
1xmana wyrm
2xfrost bo9lt
2xunstable portal
2xmad scientist
2xmechwarper
2xsnowchugger
1xduplicate
2xmirror entity
2xspider tank
1xtinkertown technician
2xfireball
1xpolymorph
2xgoblin blastmage
2xpiloted shredder
1xloatheb
1xarchmage antonidas
1xdr boom
Monday, February 16, 2015
Hearthstone: Disenchanting Value
A while ago my brother suggested to me that maybe the optimal line of play for a 'free to play' constructed player would be to flat out ignore some of the classes. Thus far I've been only disenchanting excess cards but I could just blow up every card for a class I'm unlikely to play in constructed like hunter. Certainly with the new information that I'm going to want constructed decks for 3 or 4 classes it certainly seemed like investigating the value I could earn by sacrificing 4 or 5 of the 9 classes seemed reasonable.
I've had a spreadsheet under construction for a while now with every card list and how many I owned to make it easier to track what cards I still needed for specific decks. It was a simple matter to modify that sheet to take into account the value for blowing cards up and then break things down by class to see where I stood.
For reference I have specced out a a few decks I'm potentially interested in and they mostly cost in the neighbourhood of 5500 to 6000 extra dust to make.
Now, if someone were to step into things with no cards but infinite dust, how much dust would they need to make all the cards? Each class currently has cards that cost a total of 9440 dust to make. The neutral cards cost 90160 dust. All told it would run you 175120 dust to make all the cards. I've averaged about 100 dust per arena run with my ~67% win percentage so I would need to draft 1751 times to craft all the cards. (Fortunately most of that dust is generated by blowing up cards from packs and I can just keep 2 of each... But even then, the relevant cards are only worth 4 times the disenchant cost so it's still a silly number of drafts to get all the cards.) I could also buy packs with gold, and I do average 125 gold per draft.
Anyway, those are just some numbers with no real importance on my current dilemna. The question that actually stands is what I could get by blowing up all my cards of a class. Could I get the 18k dust I need to make 3 more decks? (Actually less than that since all 3 decks run The Black Knight which runs 1600 dust to make alone.)
The answer is a resounding no. If I were to blow up every single card I owned I'd only get 5850 dust out of it. And that includes blowing up Dr Boom for only 400 dust when he also goes in one of those decks! Choosing to sacrifice all of my druid cards would only get me 135 dust! I could get almost 700 out of my mage cards, but I'm using many of those in my only deck! Heck, I have 750 dust on hand as it is, and I've spent 3200 making cards already.
So while sacrificing a class or two is an interesting idea, it actually isn't very useful for me. It wouldn't get me any of the decks I'd want, and it would certainly set me way back in the long run. You never know when I'd suddenly want to play a shaman deck and be sad that I didn't own any shaman cards at all. It would also take a lot of clicking to blow up all those cards (there's a button to automatically blow up all the excess ones).
There is the option of manually picking out the epics and legendaries I own that really suck and blowing those up. I have a Bolvar Fordragon card, for example, and I can't imagine ever putting him in a deck. But that's one card, worth only 400 dust.
Realistically there are only three options that I see to actually get a bunch of cards. Pay a bunch of money, draft a ton for dust, or spend gold on packs instead of on drafting. (Or go super infinite on drafting...) I've actually been hitting the gold earned cap in ranked play every day this week and while that only gives one pack it is a pack for a set I can't win in draft.
Touching on that last point a little... I now own every common in GvG and 93% of the rares. By contrast I own 27% of the commons and 10% of the rares in the classic set. So I actually do think I need to buy a bunch of classic packs in some way.
I don't want to spend money on packs at this point, so I think my plan is to keep playing a lot of constructed and spend some of that gold on packs and some of it on drafting.
I've had a spreadsheet under construction for a while now with every card list and how many I owned to make it easier to track what cards I still needed for specific decks. It was a simple matter to modify that sheet to take into account the value for blowing cards up and then break things down by class to see where I stood.
For reference I have specced out a a few decks I'm potentially interested in and they mostly cost in the neighbourhood of 5500 to 6000 extra dust to make.
Now, if someone were to step into things with no cards but infinite dust, how much dust would they need to make all the cards? Each class currently has cards that cost a total of 9440 dust to make. The neutral cards cost 90160 dust. All told it would run you 175120 dust to make all the cards. I've averaged about 100 dust per arena run with my ~67% win percentage so I would need to draft 1751 times to craft all the cards. (Fortunately most of that dust is generated by blowing up cards from packs and I can just keep 2 of each... But even then, the relevant cards are only worth 4 times the disenchant cost so it's still a silly number of drafts to get all the cards.) I could also buy packs with gold, and I do average 125 gold per draft.
Anyway, those are just some numbers with no real importance on my current dilemna. The question that actually stands is what I could get by blowing up all my cards of a class. Could I get the 18k dust I need to make 3 more decks? (Actually less than that since all 3 decks run The Black Knight which runs 1600 dust to make alone.)
The answer is a resounding no. If I were to blow up every single card I owned I'd only get 5850 dust out of it. And that includes blowing up Dr Boom for only 400 dust when he also goes in one of those decks! Choosing to sacrifice all of my druid cards would only get me 135 dust! I could get almost 700 out of my mage cards, but I'm using many of those in my only deck! Heck, I have 750 dust on hand as it is, and I've spent 3200 making cards already.
So while sacrificing a class or two is an interesting idea, it actually isn't very useful for me. It wouldn't get me any of the decks I'd want, and it would certainly set me way back in the long run. You never know when I'd suddenly want to play a shaman deck and be sad that I didn't own any shaman cards at all. It would also take a lot of clicking to blow up all those cards (there's a button to automatically blow up all the excess ones).
There is the option of manually picking out the epics and legendaries I own that really suck and blowing those up. I have a Bolvar Fordragon card, for example, and I can't imagine ever putting him in a deck. But that's one card, worth only 400 dust.
Realistically there are only three options that I see to actually get a bunch of cards. Pay a bunch of money, draft a ton for dust, or spend gold on packs instead of on drafting. (Or go super infinite on drafting...) I've actually been hitting the gold earned cap in ranked play every day this week and while that only gives one pack it is a pack for a set I can't win in draft.
Touching on that last point a little... I now own every common in GvG and 93% of the rares. By contrast I own 27% of the commons and 10% of the rares in the classic set. So I actually do think I need to buy a bunch of classic packs in some way.
I don't want to spend money on packs at this point, so I think my plan is to keep playing a lot of constructed and spend some of that gold on packs and some of it on drafting.
Sunday, February 15, 2015
Hearthstone World Championship
Why does getting up to legend on the constructed ladder matter? Well, other than just wanting to be the best and making a number get bigger (smaller?) there's also a pretty majour tournament which uses ladder rankings as part of the qualifying method. They haven't announced a ton of details about the world championship itself in terms of when/where it will be but they have posted the qualification details.
As far as I'm concerned the basic idea is the top 23 point earners in the US/Canada get qualified into a tournament, with the top 8 getting some extra byes. Beyond that the winner of the fireside series, whatever that is, gets in as well. And then 16 more people who advance from a last chance tournament get in as well. In order to qualify for the last chance tournament you need to have earned at least 2 points total between the months of January and August.
Ok, but how do you earn points? Get into the top 100 on the ladder each month to earn some points. Or participate in tournaments to earn a lot of points for finishing very highly. It isn't currently very clear to me what these tournaments are or how to join them. Some of them (the fireside things) seem to be local events sort of like Magic FNMs? But the closest one on the list is in Ottawa and that's sure not going to happen for me!
There's also the problem that tournament formats require playing 3 or 4 different classes. They sound like pretty interesting formats, but my collection doesn't really allow for building real decks for that many classes right now. Even if they provide the cards (which it sounds like some tournaments do) I don't have the ability to test other decks right now. I've also lost a chance at points from January since I wasn't playing constructed at all then.
So realistically my 'in' would be to just earn 2 points sometime in the next 7 months and use that to get into the last chance qualifier. You get 10 points for top 50 on the ladder in a month and 1 point for top 100 in a month. So I need to get 50th or higher one month, or 100th or higher in two months. I feel like that's actually very plausible. Maybe not this month, but the more I play the more cards I'll get and the more I'll know about the format. I'm pretty confident I could pull this off in a few months.
As far as this month goes, I actually hit the win cap in terms of earning gold yesterday. (10 gold every 3 wins, 100 gold max in a day, so I won over 30 games yesterday alone.) I'm also up to rank 2 on the ladder after making some minor changes to my deck. I'm still not thrilled with where I stand but I have won almost 59% of the 85 games I've played since I added secrets to my deck. I have started getting absolutely dominated by fast warlock decks though... They don't seem to use any expensive cards either, so maybe I should give that a try for variety's sake. And for learning! SCIENCE!
As far as I'm concerned the basic idea is the top 23 point earners in the US/Canada get qualified into a tournament, with the top 8 getting some extra byes. Beyond that the winner of the fireside series, whatever that is, gets in as well. And then 16 more people who advance from a last chance tournament get in as well. In order to qualify for the last chance tournament you need to have earned at least 2 points total between the months of January and August.
Ok, but how do you earn points? Get into the top 100 on the ladder each month to earn some points. Or participate in tournaments to earn a lot of points for finishing very highly. It isn't currently very clear to me what these tournaments are or how to join them. Some of them (the fireside things) seem to be local events sort of like Magic FNMs? But the closest one on the list is in Ottawa and that's sure not going to happen for me!
There's also the problem that tournament formats require playing 3 or 4 different classes. They sound like pretty interesting formats, but my collection doesn't really allow for building real decks for that many classes right now. Even if they provide the cards (which it sounds like some tournaments do) I don't have the ability to test other decks right now. I've also lost a chance at points from January since I wasn't playing constructed at all then.
So realistically my 'in' would be to just earn 2 points sometime in the next 7 months and use that to get into the last chance qualifier. You get 10 points for top 50 on the ladder in a month and 1 point for top 100 in a month. So I need to get 50th or higher one month, or 100th or higher in two months. I feel like that's actually very plausible. Maybe not this month, but the more I play the more cards I'll get and the more I'll know about the format. I'm pretty confident I could pull this off in a few months.
As far as this month goes, I actually hit the win cap in terms of earning gold yesterday. (10 gold every 3 wins, 100 gold max in a day, so I won over 30 games yesterday alone.) I'm also up to rank 2 on the ladder after making some minor changes to my deck. I'm still not thrilled with where I stand but I have won almost 59% of the 85 games I've played since I added secrets to my deck. I have started getting absolutely dominated by fast warlock decks though... They don't seem to use any expensive cards either, so maybe I should give that a try for variety's sake. And for learning! SCIENCE!
Saturday, February 14, 2015
Hearthstone Constructed Progress
I posted a week or so ago about my Hearthstone constructed deck and the potential viability of hitting legend with it. I felt at the time like it probably wasn't doing good enough unless I had been getting unlucky in my previous games or was going to start getting lucky going forward. My deck just didn't seem like it really had enough of a late game. But I didn't have any actual stats to show any of that, I just had my gut feeling about being stuck in the rank 10-12 range for a while.
Anyway, I started keeping pretty meticulous track of my results in a spreadsheet. For a brief period of time I tracked the length of each game (13 games in 83 minutes for a little over 6 minutes per game) and other than that I tracked opposing class, deck type, and result for each game.
After 69 tracked games with my deck I was 34-35. I was actually up 7 stars over this period of time thanks to the winning streak bonus. But I still wasn't really feeling like my deck had enough oomph. My brother suggested the next card I crafted should be Dr Boom because almost every deck that runs any legendaries at all runs him. I have my eye on building an expensive paladin deck at some point and it definitely runs Dr Boom. My mech mage deck could also run Dr Boom, and I had enough dust to make another card, so I went for it. I took out the copy of Jeeves since it was another late game card, probably a better one, and having extra things that cost 7 would make Jeeves worse anyway.
I've put in another 175 games with this version of the deck and I've gone 90-85. Better than before, and I think the change was a positive one, but still not fantastic. That's not at the 52% win rate I thought I'd need with 5 minute games, but it's getting close, and I'm still learning match-ups so I am getting better. I'm up 21 stars in this range but it feels like I've gotten stuck again. This time I'm hovering around rank 4-6. Rank 5 is where the bonus stars disappear, which is surely part of why I feel stuck.
All that said, I have played 244 games in 12 days. That's nowhere near the pace of 1700 games that was my upper bound for games in a month, and I think I'm actually playing more constructed lately than would be ideal what with my hard drive dying and being unable to do much of anything else. So I probably need to find a way to up my win rate even though I'm only 27 stars from legend right now.
I do think the two versions of the deck are close enough that I can safely combine the stats from the two of them to get a feel for what other people are playing. My most played matchup is the mirror match, with 39 plays. I've won only 38% of those games. That number did improve when I added Dr Boom, but not even over 40%. I do know I'm playing an older version of the deck that I copied off the internet and I guess the changes that have been made since then have made the mirror match better for the other people. In particular they're playing mad scientists and secrets and I've lost a few games to being unable to draw a cheap dude and having to choose between giving them a good creature with mirror entity or not playing any creatures. I've tried both choices and they both end in death.
Other decks I've played against more than 10 times, in descending order, are ramp druid (57%), mech shaman (67%), miracle rogue (48%), '33 win' paladin (29%), warrior control (56%), priest control (69%), face hunter (64%), and hand warlock (77%). Ramp druid and warrior control both got worse with Dr Boom which seems a little weird but Jeeves actually went to town against both of those people. They're slow decks without good mass removal which meant drawing 4 cards a turn against them would overwhelm them pretty quickly! But I don't play against them enough to justify adding the Jeeves back in I don't think.
Breaking things down just by deck category I've played against 30% mech decks, 18% control, 15% ramp, 9% miracle, 9% '33 win', 6% face, 5% hand, 3% zoo, 2% burn, and 1% aggro. So the meta actually seems reasonably balanced with 40% control, 48% midrange, and 10% beatdown.
Actually, I'm not sure if I should be counting mech decks as midrange or beatdown. My versions seems more beatdown than others, but I am also running flamestrike and 2 other things that cost 7 so I'm nowhere near as beatdown as the hunter charge decks. I did have one opponent friend request me so he could berate me for playing 'cancer' so maybe lumping mech in with face hunter does make sense.
Anyway, I don't know that it much matters... What I really want is a deck that does well against the various varieties of mech decks since they make up such a large chunk of the meta right now. I could look at what's beating me most often... Which of decks I've played more than a couple of times would be burn mage (25%-4 games), '33 win' paladin (29%-21 games), mech druid (33%-6 games), mech mage (38%-39 games), and zoo warlock (43%-7 games). The paladin deck is the one I'm trying to save up for but I need another 5000 dust for it. The burn mage was interesting looking, but realistically what I should be doing is just updating my current mech deck and see where that takes me.
Anyway, I started keeping pretty meticulous track of my results in a spreadsheet. For a brief period of time I tracked the length of each game (13 games in 83 minutes for a little over 6 minutes per game) and other than that I tracked opposing class, deck type, and result for each game.
After 69 tracked games with my deck I was 34-35. I was actually up 7 stars over this period of time thanks to the winning streak bonus. But I still wasn't really feeling like my deck had enough oomph. My brother suggested the next card I crafted should be Dr Boom because almost every deck that runs any legendaries at all runs him. I have my eye on building an expensive paladin deck at some point and it definitely runs Dr Boom. My mech mage deck could also run Dr Boom, and I had enough dust to make another card, so I went for it. I took out the copy of Jeeves since it was another late game card, probably a better one, and having extra things that cost 7 would make Jeeves worse anyway.
I've put in another 175 games with this version of the deck and I've gone 90-85. Better than before, and I think the change was a positive one, but still not fantastic. That's not at the 52% win rate I thought I'd need with 5 minute games, but it's getting close, and I'm still learning match-ups so I am getting better. I'm up 21 stars in this range but it feels like I've gotten stuck again. This time I'm hovering around rank 4-6. Rank 5 is where the bonus stars disappear, which is surely part of why I feel stuck.
All that said, I have played 244 games in 12 days. That's nowhere near the pace of 1700 games that was my upper bound for games in a month, and I think I'm actually playing more constructed lately than would be ideal what with my hard drive dying and being unable to do much of anything else. So I probably need to find a way to up my win rate even though I'm only 27 stars from legend right now.
I do think the two versions of the deck are close enough that I can safely combine the stats from the two of them to get a feel for what other people are playing. My most played matchup is the mirror match, with 39 plays. I've won only 38% of those games. That number did improve when I added Dr Boom, but not even over 40%. I do know I'm playing an older version of the deck that I copied off the internet and I guess the changes that have been made since then have made the mirror match better for the other people. In particular they're playing mad scientists and secrets and I've lost a few games to being unable to draw a cheap dude and having to choose between giving them a good creature with mirror entity or not playing any creatures. I've tried both choices and they both end in death.
Other decks I've played against more than 10 times, in descending order, are ramp druid (57%), mech shaman (67%), miracle rogue (48%), '33 win' paladin (29%), warrior control (56%), priest control (69%), face hunter (64%), and hand warlock (77%). Ramp druid and warrior control both got worse with Dr Boom which seems a little weird but Jeeves actually went to town against both of those people. They're slow decks without good mass removal which meant drawing 4 cards a turn against them would overwhelm them pretty quickly! But I don't play against them enough to justify adding the Jeeves back in I don't think.
Breaking things down just by deck category I've played against 30% mech decks, 18% control, 15% ramp, 9% miracle, 9% '33 win', 6% face, 5% hand, 3% zoo, 2% burn, and 1% aggro. So the meta actually seems reasonably balanced with 40% control, 48% midrange, and 10% beatdown.
Actually, I'm not sure if I should be counting mech decks as midrange or beatdown. My versions seems more beatdown than others, but I am also running flamestrike and 2 other things that cost 7 so I'm nowhere near as beatdown as the hunter charge decks. I did have one opponent friend request me so he could berate me for playing 'cancer' so maybe lumping mech in with face hunter does make sense.
Anyway, I don't know that it much matters... What I really want is a deck that does well against the various varieties of mech decks since they make up such a large chunk of the meta right now. I could look at what's beating me most often... Which of decks I've played more than a couple of times would be burn mage (25%-4 games), '33 win' paladin (29%-21 games), mech druid (33%-6 games), mech mage (38%-39 games), and zoo warlock (43%-7 games). The paladin deck is the one I'm trying to save up for but I need another 5000 dust for it. The burn mage was interesting looking, but realistically what I should be doing is just updating my current mech deck and see where that takes me.
Friday, February 13, 2015
Hearthstone: Board Sweepers
One of the key concepts that needs to be learned for practically any CCG is the idea of card advantage. The super basic idea is that you want to trade one of your cards for two of their cards as often as you can. Since each player draws one card per turn if you can make more of those trades than your opponent does then eventually they'll have no cards and you'll have a couple left to use to actually win the game. It's a lot more complicated than that in reality, and especially in Hearthstone in particular, but it's still a very important thing to keep in mind.
There are some cards that just innately generate card advantage without either player having much say in the matter. Mage has a card 'arcane intellect' that costs 3 and draws 2 cards. There's not anything that either player can do about it... If the mage has time to squeeze that spell into their rotation they're just going to go up a card. Similarly, azure drake is a 4/4 for 5 that draws you a card when you play it. That's innate card advantage assuming you can get any benefit out of the 4/4 body (and you almost certainly will!) There are also weapons like the paladin's truesilver champion that basically guarantees to kill 2 of the opponent's 4 toughness creatures. You can work to minimize the value they get out of the second attack by using taunts or selectively choosing which creatures to put in play but unless you have one of the few cards that kills a weapon they will straight up get to 2 for 1 you just by virtue of drawing the weapon.
On the other hand there are quite a number of cards that may or may not trade for multiple cards, and the play of both players decides just how good they are. The biggest example here is the mage spell flamestrike. It costs 7 and does 4 damage to every creature your opponent controls. If your opponent has a single 8/8 in play then it doesn't even get card parity. If they have a full 7 creatures in play all with 4 or fewer toughness then you get a massive 7 for 1! Both players get to work to make the flamestrike better or worse with the choices they make. The mage can use freezes and stealth creatures to limit the trades their opponent can make in the turns leading up to the flamestrike, letting their opponent potentially overextend into it. The opponent can proactively make trades instead of going face in the turn leading up to 7 mana being available. They can hold onto sticky/big creatures and play them before the flamestrike to minimize the damage done and keep stuff on board after the flamestrike.
Now, if you want to properly play around these kinds of cards you need to know what they all are. This is true in both limited and constructed, with a higher priority in limited being placed on commons and a higher priority in constructed being placed on the more powerful ones regardless of rarity. Anyway, I wanted to make a list of potential card advantage removal spells that can be played around. And then Matt asked me if I had one, so I figured I really should make one. So here we go! Broken down by class and rarity after the break...
There are some cards that just innately generate card advantage without either player having much say in the matter. Mage has a card 'arcane intellect' that costs 3 and draws 2 cards. There's not anything that either player can do about it... If the mage has time to squeeze that spell into their rotation they're just going to go up a card. Similarly, azure drake is a 4/4 for 5 that draws you a card when you play it. That's innate card advantage assuming you can get any benefit out of the 4/4 body (and you almost certainly will!) There are also weapons like the paladin's truesilver champion that basically guarantees to kill 2 of the opponent's 4 toughness creatures. You can work to minimize the value they get out of the second attack by using taunts or selectively choosing which creatures to put in play but unless you have one of the few cards that kills a weapon they will straight up get to 2 for 1 you just by virtue of drawing the weapon.
On the other hand there are quite a number of cards that may or may not trade for multiple cards, and the play of both players decides just how good they are. The biggest example here is the mage spell flamestrike. It costs 7 and does 4 damage to every creature your opponent controls. If your opponent has a single 8/8 in play then it doesn't even get card parity. If they have a full 7 creatures in play all with 4 or fewer toughness then you get a massive 7 for 1! Both players get to work to make the flamestrike better or worse with the choices they make. The mage can use freezes and stealth creatures to limit the trades their opponent can make in the turns leading up to the flamestrike, letting their opponent potentially overextend into it. The opponent can proactively make trades instead of going face in the turn leading up to 7 mana being available. They can hold onto sticky/big creatures and play them before the flamestrike to minimize the damage done and keep stuff on board after the flamestrike.
Now, if you want to properly play around these kinds of cards you need to know what they all are. This is true in both limited and constructed, with a higher priority in limited being placed on commons and a higher priority in constructed being placed on the more powerful ones regardless of rarity. Anyway, I wanted to make a list of potential card advantage removal spells that can be played around. And then Matt asked me if I had one, so I figured I really should make one. So here we go! Broken down by class and rarity after the break...
Tuesday, February 03, 2015
Hearthstone Legend Thoughts
I got quite a few interesting comments on my constructed Hearthstone post both here and on Facebook which have been running through my mind for the last couple days. One of them from Sthenno basically pointed out that if you just play enough games you'll get to legend. His number was 1700 games, which is a lot of games to get done in a month. If games take 5 minutes then it's over 140 hours to get there, and my games take longer than 5 minutes. That would actually be an advantage to playing the most mindless deck possible. I've fought a few people playing a hunter deck that can pretty much be described as mindless. It's just a bunch of cheap dudes and charge dudes. Win fast or lose and get into another game fast. I tend to be drawn to more controlly decks that have lots of decisions but even if I had all the cards for one of those decks would it even make sense to play it? How much higher would my win percentage need to be to make up for games taking 2 or 3 times as long to play?
I decided to write a spreadsheet simulation that would randomly pick a win percentage and then play up to 50000 games, stopping if it ever earned 96 stars to break into legend rank. 50000 games is actually way too many games since there are only ~45000 minutes in a month and I need to sleep and actually resolve games! But I figured it would make sure to show if a given win percentage really had a chance or not. I ran 100000 simulations with the following results...
Some of the people winning in the 44%-46% range wouldn't hit legend in 50000 games, but some of them would. But I'm not sure the number of games it would take those people make a lot of sense. Realistically if you could expect to average 5 minutes per game, and could expect to play 14 hours per day, then you'd be more like 5000 as an upper bound, not 50000. The lowest win percentage of a player who got legend in fewer than 5000 games was actually 42.7% win rate, who managed to do it in 3262 games. This is possible because there is a win streak feature in the lower ranks and anyone can clump all their losses together at the start and then wins at the end to get to legend. Any one 'can' do it, but most people won't!
Every single person who averaged a rounded 42% win rate or worse failed to hit legend in 5000 games. Every single person who averaged a rounded 50% win rate or better was guaranteed to hit legend in 5000 games. 96% of the people at 49% pulled it off, 69% of the people at 48% pulled it off, but only 32% of the people at 47% pulled it off.
Ok, fine, but I'm not actually going to play 5000 games even if I built the face hunter deck. I want to play a variety of games in a given month. Even my Hearthstone time is going to be split between drafts and constructed. So more realistically I might be able to play 7 hours a day, 20 days per month. That's still almost 1700 games! How does that shake up?
Now 45% and below are entirely failures. 52% and above are entirely successes. 71% of the 50% winners get to legend though. But realistically if I spend 1700 games and don't get to legend I'd be really unhappy, so I wouldn't be happy with a 50% deck under these odds.
What if I'm spending more time per game? What do the odds look like for 850 games? 567 games? Only caring about the full guarantee of legend I'd be looking at 54% at 850 games and 56% at 567 games. It sure feels like finding a deck I enjoy would be the big thing since it only has to be a little better to make up a huge increase in time spent in a game.
My current cheap mech mage deck is fun enough, but I'm not sure it's actually going to better than 50% once I start playing exclusively top notch decks. I have noticed that I keep losing the mirror match because other people have both Archmage Antonidus and Dr Boom while I only have one of them. Our early games are so similar that we always just trade off until we hit late game and their having two (or more) late game legendaries means they have a big advantage.
So really I need to find a faster deck, or I need to get more late game cards. Or I need to keep track of my win rate as it is and then just put in the time if I'm winning even 54% of the time.
I decided to write a spreadsheet simulation that would randomly pick a win percentage and then play up to 50000 games, stopping if it ever earned 96 stars to break into legend rank. 50000 games is actually way too many games since there are only ~45000 minutes in a month and I need to sleep and actually resolve games! But I figured it would make sure to show if a given win percentage really had a chance or not. I ran 100000 simulations with the following results...
Some of the people winning in the 44%-46% range wouldn't hit legend in 50000 games, but some of them would. But I'm not sure the number of games it would take those people make a lot of sense. Realistically if you could expect to average 5 minutes per game, and could expect to play 14 hours per day, then you'd be more like 5000 as an upper bound, not 50000. The lowest win percentage of a player who got legend in fewer than 5000 games was actually 42.7% win rate, who managed to do it in 3262 games. This is possible because there is a win streak feature in the lower ranks and anyone can clump all their losses together at the start and then wins at the end to get to legend. Any one 'can' do it, but most people won't!
Every single person who averaged a rounded 42% win rate or worse failed to hit legend in 5000 games. Every single person who averaged a rounded 50% win rate or better was guaranteed to hit legend in 5000 games. 96% of the people at 49% pulled it off, 69% of the people at 48% pulled it off, but only 32% of the people at 47% pulled it off.
Ok, fine, but I'm not actually going to play 5000 games even if I built the face hunter deck. I want to play a variety of games in a given month. Even my Hearthstone time is going to be split between drafts and constructed. So more realistically I might be able to play 7 hours a day, 20 days per month. That's still almost 1700 games! How does that shake up?
Now 45% and below are entirely failures. 52% and above are entirely successes. 71% of the 50% winners get to legend though. But realistically if I spend 1700 games and don't get to legend I'd be really unhappy, so I wouldn't be happy with a 50% deck under these odds.
What if I'm spending more time per game? What do the odds look like for 850 games? 567 games? Only caring about the full guarantee of legend I'd be looking at 54% at 850 games and 56% at 567 games. It sure feels like finding a deck I enjoy would be the big thing since it only has to be a little better to make up a huge increase in time spent in a game.
My current cheap mech mage deck is fun enough, but I'm not sure it's actually going to better than 50% once I start playing exclusively top notch decks. I have noticed that I keep losing the mirror match because other people have both Archmage Antonidus and Dr Boom while I only have one of them. Our early games are so similar that we always just trade off until we hit late game and their having two (or more) late game legendaries means they have a big advantage.
So really I need to find a faster deck, or I need to get more late game cards. Or I need to keep track of my win rate as it is and then just put in the time if I'm winning even 54% of the time.
Monday, February 02, 2015
Hearthstone: Potentially Frustrating Draft...
I just finished a draft with a druid deck that didn't seem terribly exciting. My best card was probably azure drake, which is a passable body for a 5 drop that also draws you a card. It's card advantage, and card advantage is good, but it isn't jaw droppingly amazing by any stretch. The deck was rounded out with 3 copies of starfire which is a single target burn spell that costs 6 and hits for 5 and also draws you a card. Oh, and 2 copies of swipe which hits one target for 4 damage and all other enemies for 1 damage each. So some pretty decent removal which pretty much all has card advantage baked in. Fill up with some good to mediocre creatures and I guess you have a recipe for success. I did have 4 creatures which gave spell power and at one point I managed to cast swipe with 3 of them in play to kill off a 6/7 and a pair of 3/3s which was pretty sweet.
Anyway, I ended up starting out 9-0. More than a couple of those games featured me playing starfires on turns 6, 7, and 8 on the single creature my opponent played while I attacked with a couple creatures. Huzzah!
Then I got paired up against a mage who also seemed to have an unexciting deck. He didn't play anything amazing either, though he did also play an azure drake. My biggest problem with this matchup was that he never really played anything worth hitting with a starfire. Most of his 'end game' creatures were either untargetable or created other creatures or drew cards. So his deck was a lot like mine, except with better creature quality. He crushed me.
I queued up again and was immediately matched back up with the exact same mage. He once again crushed me. The idea that you can end up playing the same person twice in the same draft is pretty ludicrous to me. Especially in a draft environment that has a very rock/paper/scissors feel to it. Many of my losses I think about afterwards and decide my odds of winning a rematch would be pretty low. Hearthstone decks are so small and drafts often end up pretty homogeneous so if a given opponent has a deck apt to beat mine and has already shown himself to not be bad enough to throw the game away I don't like my chances of winning a second time.
This got me pretty frustrated so I took off to get a drink, clear my head, and make sure I didn't face that same guy a third time. I came back, didn't face him, and finished off my draft with 3 more wins. So I ended up going 12-2 with a deck I wasn't terribly excited about, and both my losses came to the same guy.
I guess this means going forward if I lose a match deep in a draft and don't think it was just misplays on my part that I should probably wait a bit before playing again to make sure the guy who is likely to beat me gets a match against someone else first.
Anyway, I ended up starting out 9-0. More than a couple of those games featured me playing starfires on turns 6, 7, and 8 on the single creature my opponent played while I attacked with a couple creatures. Huzzah!
Then I got paired up against a mage who also seemed to have an unexciting deck. He didn't play anything amazing either, though he did also play an azure drake. My biggest problem with this matchup was that he never really played anything worth hitting with a starfire. Most of his 'end game' creatures were either untargetable or created other creatures or drew cards. So his deck was a lot like mine, except with better creature quality. He crushed me.
I queued up again and was immediately matched back up with the exact same mage. He once again crushed me. The idea that you can end up playing the same person twice in the same draft is pretty ludicrous to me. Especially in a draft environment that has a very rock/paper/scissors feel to it. Many of my losses I think about afterwards and decide my odds of winning a rematch would be pretty low. Hearthstone decks are so small and drafts often end up pretty homogeneous so if a given opponent has a deck apt to beat mine and has already shown himself to not be bad enough to throw the game away I don't like my chances of winning a second time.
This got me pretty frustrated so I took off to get a drink, clear my head, and make sure I didn't face that same guy a third time. I came back, didn't face him, and finished off my draft with 3 more wins. So I ended up going 12-2 with a deck I wasn't terribly excited about, and both my losses came to the same guy.
I guess this means going forward if I lose a match deep in a draft and don't think it was just misplays on my part that I should probably wait a bit before playing again to make sure the guy who is likely to beat me gets a match against someone else first.
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