Pull up a chair!!!
posted June 10, 2014 12:57 PM   RSS

An in-person meetup to play Blizzard's online card game, Hearthstone. We can play against each other, shoulder-surf each other's Arenas, etc. Location and time TBD. Beer would be nice, wifi required. (EDIT: Hearthstone runs on Mac and PC, and iPad 2 or later.)
So, um, some of us have been getting into Hearthstone, the online collectible card game from Blizzard. The game will be instantly familiar to those who have played Magic: The Gathering.

They have a promotion going where you get a little in-game thing for having physical Hearthstone meetups. The goodie is basically nothing, not even a card, but it seems like a fun thing to do.

If any locals have been playing Hearthstone -- or wanting to play Hearthstone -- they are encouraged to get in this thread and talk about it.
posted by grobstein to Proposed (13 comments total)

Currently running Shockadin minus Avenging Wrath, Tsafy's, and two experimental variations on the latter. Mostly attempting to setup a few early kill combos w/ Dust Devil+Rockbiter or jacked Questing Adventurer/Leeroy + Faceless Manipulator.

Let's do this.
posted by Ryvar at 1:33 PM on June 10, 2014 [1 favorite]


I should resurrect my newcomer Spaman deck for fun, while I'm at it - basic principle is take every additional-summons card there is, a few stock buffs, and flood the board with summons and totems until your enemy simply runs out of board-clears and dies. I took a virgin level 10 Shammy to Rank 15 with that sucker, hella fun for newcomers.
posted by Ryvar at 2:09 PM on June 10, 2014 [1 favorite]


Hm. How hard is it to get into this game
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 4:52 PM on June 10, 2014 [1 favorite]


It is incredibly easy. Matches last 5-10 minutes and your first four will be against AI opponents, all of which have the deck stacked heavily against them (save the final). The way the advancement system is structured encourages playing 20-30 minutes a day, or an hour every three days - with massively diminishing returns for more than that, which is a big plus in my book.

Cards come in two basic types: class-specific and neutral (available to any class). You start with a solid pool of less-situationally-specific neutral cards, and getting any class to level 10 (about two hours' play) will unlock about a third of its class-specific cards - generally the ones most "core" to the class's playstyle.

Probably the easiest way to begin would be to start as a hunter, beat a low-level AI practice opponent from each class with the default deck, and by the time you've accomplished that you should be near level 10.

At that point, stop using the default hunter deck and use something like this deck composed almost entirely of starting cards.

At the point you can start completing quests for gold (used to get packs of new cards) in the casual player play, or honestly you could take that deck from the starting level 25 up to level 20 in Ranked play in another couple hours.

Without paying anything into the system you can reasonably expect to complete sufficient daily quests to open a new pack of 5 cards (1 guaranteed rare) every 2-3 days, putting in 20-30 minutes a day. New cards you don't care about can be disenchanted back to 1/8th their cost in research dust, and *every* card in the game can be forged from research dust (which is fantastic if there's JUST ONE you're missing).
posted by Ryvar at 5:41 PM on June 10, 2014 [1 favorite]


Oh, and if you find yourself getting sufficiently into it to spend money, $40-50 buys you sufficient packs to put together decks any competent player can take to Legend. Takes about 3-4 months of just clearing your quests every three days if you'd rather not spend the money, but that's essentially the point at which you're sitting with the grown-ups, as it were.
posted by Ryvar at 5:45 PM on June 10, 2014


I found the UI to be super bloaty and felt I spent a lot of time waiting for animations, but everyone seems to have found a really deep game in it, so I'll try pushing through the path Ryvar outlined sometime!
posted by ignignokt at 4:24 AM on June 11, 2014


Yeah I pretty much hate all the chrome, but the underlying game is really cool.

The UI becomes much less obnoxious after the tutorial.
posted by grobstein at 4:56 AM on June 11, 2014


I have not played this at all but would be interested in trying it. If a drinking establishment is what you're after, Cambridge Brewing Company had open wifi the last time I was there (working from "home" as it were). If anyone has an in at MIT, the Muddy Charles could also be a really good place.
posted by backseatpilot at 5:21 AM on June 11, 2014 [1 favorite]


This may help, actually. According to that list, Old Magoun's Saloon also has wifi and I've been dying to go there, but it is a little far from public transit if that's a factor for anyone.
posted by backseatpilot at 5:24 AM on June 11, 2014 [1 favorite]


Add me in.
posted by andreaazure at 12:55 PM on June 11, 2014 [1 favorite]


I installed this last night and played with it for awhile. It does remind me a lot of Magic, but mostly how much I sucked at Magic. I think I am equally sucking at this. However, I do like it and it seems (from playing for a total of about an hour) like the F2P aspects aren't horrible.
posted by backseatpilot at 5:14 AM on June 12, 2014


This sounds great! Sign me up.
posted by pickles_have_souls at 5:54 AM on June 13, 2014


Okay, um, so this never got off the ground back in June, but are people still interested?

I'm thinking next weekend (Aug. 9-10) might be a good time. Thoughts?
posted by grobstein at 6:45 AM on August 3, 2014



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