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Astral Automaton

Don't know if Pip the Potent is...potent enough, but the Bottle spells are a really cool design.

I read it!

I'm really liking this season of Twist because the deck to play (and beat) seems to be old-style Handlock, which is still one of my favourite decks in HS history. My main problem with it is that it doesnt seem like there's many people playing it, so whenever i hop in it takes a while for a game to actually start, meanwhile on Standard i get games almost right away.

Normally it's not that big of an issue, but i get the bulk of my HS time during my lunch break.

Capture Coldtooth Mine is very nice in a Jungle Giants deck, because it allows you to reliably pick Wildheart Guff from the deck after quest completion. And in the event you already drew Guff, it either directly draws you a 0-cost minion or Aquatic Form which is very likely to offer you a 0-cost minion.

I do.

Just bought the ebook Steve Frech - Dark Hollows, in dutch though.
the title doesn't match lol, in dutch it's " ik kan niet slapen"  (I cannot sleep). 

How they came up with that....
Now gotta find some time to read it haha

I see some people asking who the mode is for, well for me it's the mode I've always wanted and I'm having a great time, since it came out I've split my time fairly evenly between twist and wild.

The things I'm interested in with hearthstone are inventing decks and trying new combinations of cards. I especially love making decks around old cards that never saw play at the time they were released. That used to be possible in wild and sometimes it still is, but as the years have gone by it's been getting harder and harder because the power level of the top decks has been going through the roof. If I have a fun idea for a deck that is great at fighting for board, I will just get killed from hand on turn 4.

In twist I've been having a great time experimenting with old cards that have been buffed like Explorer's Hat. The list of buffs is like a challenge to make decks around. I would have zero interest in the format if it was just an exact recreation of what the game was like when these old sets came out. I already played that at the time, and by the end of each set I couldn't wait for a new expansion to come out to shake things up. When classic came out I think I played 3 rounds and then never touched it again.

From the article, I assume that the "Random Twist" is something that they're going to do anyway? I've been under the impression that the main reason they are buffing cards is so when they put older sets with newer ones, the average power level of newer ones don't make all the old sets unplayable.

The main problem I've had with the format was how slow they were to nerf discard warlock. I know it was for technical reasons, but I think they need to get things in order so they can do it faster in future. I know a lot of people who were enjoying it at first, but lost interest because of how powerful that deck was and lost faith that they would balance it properly in the future. Going forward, I hope they have a system in place where they can just quickly ban cards from the format that are vastly over performing for that month. It's unrealistic to expect them to fine tune balance multiple cards just for a one month meta and we wouldn't want a lot of cards permanently nerfed in wild for the sake of twist.

I think twist was designed to be a niche mode and perhaps it's even more niche than they hoped. I don't think there will be many players who don't have a wild collection, but I expect there are enough of us to keep it going as a mode for veterans.

I think the main problem here is beyond simple explanations like monetization, staleness, both of which are valid points. But the main issue to me is simply burnout. There's just no reason why I would want to play twist more than I would standard or wild. Certainly not both, unless youre a particularly obsessive player of hearthstone. Many times I'd boot up hearthstone, play like 5 games then turn it off. Sometimes when there's interesting decks or events Id go beyond that, but very rarely so.

Take a look at duels, which is pretty much just twist except with progressive deck building elements. People still play that format, but substantially less than both standard or wild. Even at its heyday it'll take about 2-4 minutes to find an opponent, and that's putting it mildly. Lose two games and the wait extends further. I dont expect twist to do substantially better than that.

But of course, another big reason to be pissed off over that game mode is simply monetization. New players would be easily 6 sets off, and some old players would have dusted those cards ages ago. Re-crafting them, or worse still, buying those packs, is a slap in the face. You cant even justify buying the pre-made decks because its blatantly obvious that these decks arent the optimized versions of the decks being played. Even the bundles are a joke, because the CoT packs are being bundled along with expansion packs you may not want, not to mention the sheer number of legendaries available, making each pack worth a hell lot less, yet charged at a ridiculous sum of real life cash.

Its just my opinion that hearthstone is no longer in that state where there's throngs of players rushing in, that a new mode can even be justified. But if team5 really wants to milk that format, I would recommend simply making a different reward system for it. For example, winning 3 games a week nets you a pack for each of the sets available. These packs are old, very old, some would even say very nearly worthless; giving it away improves interest in the game, while really having little to no impact to the monetization for standard or wild.

At this point, interest in the game is worth way more than any amount of money in real life.

That flayed dragon artwork is siiiiiick! Definitely going infernal host as my main faction when the game comes out