As we previously datamined, Blizzard has announced a new "catch-up pack" which will help you grow your collection.
- The packs contain cards from all the current standard sets.
- They contain between 5 and 50 cards in the, based on the percentage of cards you already have in Standard.
- Everyone is getting two Catch-Up Packs for free.
- If you bought the BlizzCon Collection you get three Catch-Up Packs.
- Badlands pre-orders will also get Catch-Up Packs.
Badlands Catch-Up Packs will be able to be opened with the launch of Showdown in the Badlands, on November 14!
How Do Hearthstone's Catch-Up Packs Work?
- Number of Cards: Each Badlands Catch-Up Pack includes 1-10 cards from each of the five included sets, for a total of 5-50 cards per pack. The number of cards you get from each set is based on the percentage of cards you’ve received* from that set:
- 25% or less of that set: 10 cards from that set
- 75% or more of that set: 1 card from that set
- Between 25% and 75% completion: scales with collection completion percentage
- Rarity Distribution: At least 20% (rounded up) of the cards in each Catch-Up Pack will be a Rare or better. The overall rarity distribution for Catch-Up Packs is the same as normal packs.
- Quality: All cards are normal quality (non-Golden).
- First Legendary Guarantee: One Legendary in the first 50 cards from each expansion (yes, that means you get to capture five different Legendary offering bonuses in these packs).
- Mass Pack Opening: You can Mass Pack Open up to 20 Catch-Up Packs at once.
How to Get Badlands Catch-Up Packs
Catch-Up Packs have also been added to both Showdown in the Badlands Pre-Purchase bundles: 10 in the regular Pre-Purchase bundle and 20 in the Pre-Purchase Mega Bundle!* Everyone attending BlizzCon in person, or who purchased either BlizzCon Collection level, gets 3 Catch-Up Packs automatically added to their BlizzCon goodies. There will also be a free login reward of 2 Catch-Up Packs, and an event that grants 5 Catch-Up Packs with Patch 28.0—more details on those are coming in the 28.0 Patch Notes. Also in Patch 28.0, Catch-Up Packs will be added to the new and returning player experience. Finally, there will be bundle offers in the Shop that include Catch-Up Packs.
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Comments
Ketchup packs. Gotta love
I'm not sure I got it right. So catch-up packs will NOT contain cards from Badlands itself, amirite?
Yes correct, it will only contain from Sunken City to Titans, so 5 expansions.
I stopped playing shortly after demon hunter was released some years ago, but I want to come back because of the new highlander cards and the catch-up packs. Should I wait until the new expansion drops to login? Or is it better to return now (and maybe avoid doing some things, like opening packs from those 5 sets)?
How much do these catch-up packs cost?
So you get one catchup pack that translate up to 50 cards? Is that how it is?
Theorectically then if youre behind on the collection, then its better just to get a catchup pack than ordinary packs from singular expansion.
Wonder what the pricing would be on these packs and whether you can use gold for it.
So I got the 50 free packs that were going around a while ago, but haven't gotten around to opening them. Should I do that before or after opening a carch-up pack?
After sounds like the correct thing to do. Gives you the most possible cards for the catch-up pack and then the regular packs, most of the commons and maybe even rares would end up being dupes anyway, so any epics or legendaries you get from the catch-up won't really harm the fun openings from the 50 packs.
Hmm, I checked my collection and for this year's sets I have slightly under 75% completion, but last year's sets are all over 75%. So these packs are a good way for people to catch up who have really large gaps in their collection, but don't help much if all you're missing is epics and legendaries.
These are strange packs in the sense that the more you open, the worse they get. I wonder if mass-opening these packs is better than opening them one-by-one: do they recalculate the completion percentage after each pack or after each opening?
My percentages are similar. I assume we'll get 2, maybe 3, cards from each expansion. 10-15 cards per pack, at least 2 packs, probably mostly duplicate commons/rares, but hey, that's at least 160 dust that I wasn't expecting.
You and I aren't the target audience for Catch-up.
Whereas, I AM the target audience for these catch-up packs. I haven't played Hearthstone with any regularity in probably 3+ years.
But throwing cards at me isn't even close to enough to get me to come back.
Hearthstone is only still popular because it was the first to break into the digital card market with a game that was better than any others like it at the time - meaning it gathered a large playerbase, which stays loyal due to all of the money they've invested in it (sunk cost).
Objectively, I doubt it's even in the top 5 best CCGs at present, in terms of gameplay and visuals. But it already had its playerbase ages ago - and stale play patterns combined with multiple company scandals are apparently not enough to get most of them to actually withdraw their support.
Some interesting parallels there to a certain politician.
I'm assuming it's after each pack is opened it'll recalc.
And yeah, these are primarily a way to get people back into Hearthstone easily, which is great value.
So, to think deeper about this - all currently-active players, who have all Commons, Rares, many Epics and some Legendaries... should NOT OPEN the free Catch-Up packs, right?
Why? Because:
1. Right now they give only 5 cards each (? or nowhere near 50 cards for sure)... (so not much, and not much dust either),
2. In case you stop playing temporarily... You will have Catch-Up packs ready for the next time - when you come back to the game?
That's Value, right?
The catch-up packs are attached to specific expansions so when those sets rotate out, you will still get those cards from them.
I'm assuming catch-up packs will start to be added for each year's last expansion. This one is Badlands specific, so the last 5 sets are within it.
Yeah, but is that confirmed anywhere? I understand, that they were referred to as "Badlands catch-up packs".
But if they took the effort, to actually make amount of cards from packs "dynamic" (depending on collection), it would be natural, that expansions included are made "dynamic" as well (as in - packs are from expansions currently in Standard).
Otherwise they would need to adjust catch-up packs by hand - either every expansion or every year in November-December expansion. Seems like unnecessary waste of time for programmers if you ask me