Edit - You're talking agent of treachery which is 7 mana and steals off board. I would be fine with that, if there was 10 mana card in legends of runterra that said steal a follower I don't think anyone would care, because it would be really bad, it's when you get to literally deny value from your opponents deck and transplant it into your that's where you find problems.
Examples
1. Deck Buffs/hand buffs tempo can't run this because they need allegience and fast plays, but if they get yours it's huge
2. Additional sources of draw, if they get yours this multiplies their card advantage
3. Fast speed answers, again they don't have it but if they get yours they literally get to role play as control
4. Burst speed tricks, against always useful regardless of your deck
5. Value creatures or champion tutors, they run Sej but no tutors so taking yours is huge
I literally just listed things that exist in almost every deck, the only deck that doesn't run these things is deep because they just need to toss and play big creatures, and unlike deck buffs, the deep buff doesn't transfer to the opponent when stolen because it counts the number of cards left in your deck
The problem, IMO, is the Hearthstonish-like RNG factor that comes along with this mechanic. When you steal something from the opposing deck, you either get worthless trash -because it's a highly synergistic card- or you get the exact answer you needed and that your region doesn't provide. Without mentioning that you can remove from your opponent deck a card that it's his win condition. Yes, I think this mechanic sucks and should get rid of, or at least made so that the cards are copied and not stolen, that would fix PART of the issue.
BMM and Stolen goods need a nerf too. BMM should be a 2/1 and Stolen Goods should cost 3 mana.
Not a Good Indicator of my skill level, but currently Silver I 50-ish LP with a 45-11 record. (I don't play much, like 3 games a day). I heard I am on course for Master Tier with that winrate, but I take it with a grain of salt as it's my friends stuck in plat saying this. Not sure if any master players can confirm this or not, but I am slowly climbing.
I hate to say it but that win rate doesn't mean much. I had a really high win rate too till I hit gold 2, then it started to dip. At gold 1 I struggled a bit but finally moved into plat. At that point you really have to have a basic understanding of most cards in the game and make very few mistakes to climb. I was stuck in plat 4 for quite some time before something clicked one day and now I dance between plat 2 and 1.
At some point I'll get into diamond then I'll work for masters then top 500. I'm invested now. I liked the game so much I put enough money into the game to buy every card and I do mean EVERY CARD. Not just the ones I needed.
I think Baduu suggested heading to the Black Temple herself- which had been a holy place of the Draenei I think?-, since she knew no Demons were there, even though she didn't exactly know who had taken residence. Upon meeting Illidan, she left, because he was too demony for her taste.
The biggest issue with Pilfer is card advantage and additional complexity of playing around your own cards without knowing what they are.
Pilfer is just far too efficient, getting 2 cards for 2 mana. THAT is the problem. This is a card game, and anytime you can significantly out-draw your opponent, you have automatic advantage in that game, regardless of what cards you draw.
I agree that the best solution would be to make the stolen cards visible to the opponent. That should be enough to level the playing field.
Lastly, anyone who is super tilted by yoink mechanics has just not played many other card games (such as MtG or Eternal). Those games have plenty of steal effects as well. You get used to it or you stop playing, but there is no point in raging about it. Personally, the only things that bother me about the yoink mechanics is that I don't know what they got, and that they gained significant card advantage over me. (Also, the fact that BMM always succeeds on his Allegiance ability.)
You're absolutely right that the Yoink mechanic is too mana efficient, and making it more expensive might naturally solve the problem it presents, but the comparison to MTG is a little unfair. Specifically, in MTG because the deck size is so much larger, and because a non-trivial number of cards are largely useless to your opponent (i.e. land cards), the odds of consistently having good cards to steal is much lower, as are the odds of stealing a critical card that your opponent absolutely needs.
That's why this version of card stealing is so much more tilting. Not only is it nowhere near properly priced in the game, but it's also dealing with different deck-building rules that make card stealing way more valuable than other games with similar mechanics.
First of all, I'm really pissed that someone basically copied my card (Shard Mage) with their Orderkeeper Henley. It isn't exactly the same, but the idea of using unspent mana crystals was unique and I find it suspicious that someone should have come up with it by coincidence. Even if that was the case, can't people check the already submitted cards before they enter the competition? With no way to tell which one got submitted first, we'll both suffer now (I'm not necessarily saying my take is better, mind you).
Rant over. My favorites are First Arcanist Thalyssra, Mana Droplet, Nerubian Ritualist and Imbue Energy. Those are my 5 star votes, but I gave lots of 4 stars as well. Good luck to everyone!
I will stress again how annoying it is that they did this brawl NOW and not 2 months ago..
It could be the BEST brawl.. if they did it.. you know.. on the first week or before release at least that way you get a geniune first experience of full decks before you go to craft stuff..
or maybe bring back whizbang? I never played that card but I really think they should incorporate either whizbang itself or a whizbang mechanic as a permanent feature I don't see why they let him rotate.. people really liked playing that card..
Yeah, it'd be nice if they'd done it earlier and I get what you're saying about Whizbang. But imagine if it WAS earlier and people crafted Libram Paladin cards based on this Brawl... let's just agree HS could still use some work when it comes to allowing experimentation and deckbuilding mistakes without feeling like you have to spend a lot of money.
I think libram paladin would have much worse wr without the 2 buffs it got.. It's actually decent on ladder rn.. So it shows on this brawl.
Tog's pretty important for getting through your deck quickly, while sometimes dropping some cheap reduced stuff that also lets you play your Galakrond easier for even more cycling. Without him it will feel slower getting the combo together, but if you don't have him right now I'd through in another cheap card draw instead.
Alright, so I finally got round to finishing the adventure. Here's a few thoughts;
- The rhymes are neat, and I'd imagine it couldn't have been easy to write and make it work. There's some hit and misses but overall, I'm a little impressed. Unfortunately, its one thing to hear a rhyme, its quite another to hear the same fucking thing over and over each time you're forced to restart. They just get in the way of your game and there are some sequences that last more than my patience can take. Wish blizz would just get rid of all the dialogue on the second time playing.
- Its not a dungeon run where you build your deck, so that's a little less interactivity there. But it does mean that team5 has better control of what you get so you're not facing Jaraxxus with a bs deck that can never win. But it also means there's less stakes involved. You can easily just cheese each battle by restarting until you get the perfect hand i.e. mostly if you can get a 2 drop on 2, or get one of your outcasts heros you're pretty much going to win (if you can get karnuk to spawn that imprisoned antaen on curve, the match is heavily in your favor from there). Also it eliminates most of the replayability, since you're essentially playing the same deck on the same boss.
- Story is bland, like really bland. Spoilers ahead, so if you don't care about the story just click below.
Show Spoiler
So we follow the adventures of Arrana, sister to Elise Starseeker, who for reasons only known to her, travels to the dangerous world of outland to do…something…and on her travels saves, meets, and groups together with alleged outcasts of various races/species and for very unconvincing reasons decides to ride to the black temple to accomplish…uhhh…power and success? a place to call home? to have a cup of coffee? Self evident reasons, I guess.
Half way down the line, Baduu, who by the way just joined up like 2 missions ago, decides that she doens't want to join up with Illidan (probably because she recognizes how vacuous the idea seems to be) and leaves. And the way the game portrays this is to fix it so she is drawn into your hand on turn 5-6 (cant remember) and is promptly removed from your hand. And if you lose that fight, you get to see this over and over again until you win. I don't get why this isn't handled outside of the battle or at the end of the battle so technically you're only going to see this once. As it stands, I've seen her leave like 3 times in my playthrough, so whatever emotions I have for her (which is nill, since we only seen her like twice. I've never even got to play her for fuck sake) is just dragged through the mud until I just wanted to get it over with.
Then you meet Illidan, and he trains you to be dhunters. Apparently the process involves you fighting each other until you lose your eyes and sprout horns on your head. I'm no lore expert in WoW, but I'm pretty sure this is not how one becomes a demon hunter.
So with better powers she fights through the rusted legion, defeats Jaraxxus with the power of friendship, and ONLY THEN she realised that Illidan's a bit of a nutter. She then fight him, and depending on your luck she might actually beat him but I've heard it doens't really matter (I did it on my first try, so I couldn't confirm if its a supposed to lose fight) and by your stark powers of reasoning actually made him see the error of his ways. Which is entirely bs to be honest.
The best way to describe the story is that it feels safe. It pulls no punches and takes no risks. Suffice to say you're the good guy fighting the bad guys. No attempts have been made to make Arrana or the other outcasts even slightly relatable, likable, or unique. It almost feels disney-esque; a heroine (because of course it is) with a rag-tag group of diverse races, genders and religions complete with mascot-like comedic sidekick for that sweet merch sales, fighting against a self-evident and proudly villainous bad guy.
- Arrana as a character is paper thin and about as relatable as a piece of cardboard. Her motives to become a demon hunter is almost nonexistent; her motives in general for risking life and limb in outland is nill, other than the vague "must be better than my sis" thing. Almost no effort has been made to make Arrana feel weak or remotely human; she literally becomes leader of a group of similar cardboard cutouts from the outset, beats foes with merciless ease, highly intelligent, and even manages to out-argue the lord of angst himself. From this adventure, it seems like Aranna can do anything. And we are led to belief that her sister Elise can do even more. One wonders why they haven't just team up and be queens of Azeroth yet.
- Is it fun? Well, its something. I confess its not entirely bad or boring. But I won't be coming back for more, unfortunately. Its not as engaging as the final boss battle against Hagatha in Witchwood (probably the best way a story is handled in hearthstone), not as fun as Rastakhan's adventure (which I think the character Rikkar is a better character and features a better story than this), and there's no fun villain like in KotFT and Naxx.
Quite a forgettable experience, but hey at least its free.
I agree with most what you said. I think the reason why Baduu ditched her team in the Black Temple was because of the history of the Draenei. I believe she didn't want to train in a formerly sacred, now a blemished place and become that, what she despised.
She saw Illidan as yet another tyrant influenced by demons and didn't want to have anything in common with him. Now, this spills other questions - like why didn't she try to assassinate him in the BT? If she wanted to leave so badly, why didn't she leave before going in? I mean, Elise Aranna told her group where they were heading to, why was she surprised? If she was disgusted by Illidan's doings and the actions of his trainees, why didn't she stop Aranna's group after hearing about their plans? How did the rusted legion capture Baduu and bend her will? So many questions left unanswered, so I agree that the story wasn't well thought out.
For the last few days, I've realized myself that anger can be diminished by willing to admit I'm making numerous mistakes and that I should try to learn more about some complex interactions. Committing to this resulted in me playing much, much better, after just several days. My problem was not playing around anything! The game looked inconsistent and messy to me. Then I stumbled across some streamers and content creators who suggested learning the most common removals and power plays in the meta decks. That was like - eureka! Suddenly, I started winning games and climbing... by playing around Riposte, Fury of the North, Will of Ionia, Deny, Noxian Fervor, Thermogenic Beam, Get Excited!, Withering Wail and many others. There's no need to rush, often is better to bait, force an opponent's plays and test for the previously mentioned tricks. My hand reading, sequencing and timings got much better. I keep open a page with the meta decks to know what's the best play my opponent can do with a given amount of mana.
Here's another constatation: LoR seems a much better game now! This may be due to my insufficient knowledge and current personal experiences. But, it just seems better now then during Beta when my involvement in the game got reduced to casual levels. I resented various design solutions, lack of enough counterplays and domination of those dull Elusive and Fearsome decks (these 2 keywords locked down everything). What I see now is that there is a lot more viable archetypes and variations... counterplays ...and "back and forth" gameplay is much more meaningful. A great number of games are - very dramatic - in a positive way. Tough decisions to save 2hp, a minion, a buff... end being absolutely crucial. And emotionally rewarding. Every other game is close and epic. I'm not giving up, nor my opponent. In the last several days there was a dozen of epic games worth remembering. Different matchups - different challenges, too.
Sure, I don't ignore issues this game still has. I would certainly remove / rework more than several cards, but in general LoR is now what I wanted it to be. Art, flavor and design of a lot of cards is great, too. Conclusion: Hearthstone was rather good during Galakrond's Awakening; LoR was bad. Now HS sucks (DH killing other honest aggro forever, half the classes useless), but LoR shines. LoR is simply not worse than HS, anymore.
I played mtg Arena extensively, Gwent, Hearthstone, and others. Stealing has never been a thing in those games, that's probably why it's been difficult to balance for riot, they have nothing to draw upon experience wise. Now randomization sure, that's pretty normal in hearthstone, but it's always from a random card pool not your opponents deck. Random cards have huge variance, but your opponents cards are usually good, otherwise why would they run them to begin with. Like hey thanks for the rekindler so I get a 4/4 and I get to bring back a champion, what if I draw 2 for 2 mana, that's nuts, and I don't even have to run shadow isles to play them.
The only fight I lost even once was Mother Sharaz. It sounds like I just got somewhat lucky, but I'm still disappointed in how much of a cakewalk it was. I get that it's hard to design challenging AI fights now that cards are so powerful (I did Heroic Naxx recently and blew right through it), but this was particularly weak.
The Illidan fight was especially disappointing. He got me down to ~5, but I actually managed to stabilize with some lifesteal. Just as I was comfortably turning the fight around on my own... it just ended. What a lame anti-climax.
Here's hoping the challenge bosses are more interesting and, well, challenging.
Alright, so I finally got round to finishing the adventure. Here's a few thoughts;
- The rhymes are neat, and I'd imagine it couldn't have been easy to write and make it work. There's some hit and misses but overall, I'm a little impressed. Unfortunately, its one thing to hear a rhyme, its quite another to hear the same fucking thing over and over each time you're forced to restart. They just get in the way of your game and there are some sequences that last more than my patience can take. Wish blizz would just get rid of all the dialogue on the second time playing.
- Its not a dungeon run where you build your deck, so that's a little less interactivity there. But it does mean that team5 has better control of what you get so you're not facing Jaraxxus with a bs deck that can never win. But it also means there's less stakes involved. You can easily just cheese each battle by restarting until you get the perfect hand i.e. mostly if you can get a 2 drop on 2, or get one of your outcasts heros you're pretty much going to win (if you can get karnuk to spawn that imprisoned antaen on curve, the match is heavily in your favor from there). Also it eliminates most of the replayability, since you're essentially playing the same deck on the same boss.
- Story is bland, like really bland. Spoilers ahead, so if you don't care about the story just click below.
Show Spoiler
So we follow the adventures of Arrana, sister to Elise Starseeker, who for reasons only known to her, travels to the dangerous world of outland to do…something…and on her travels saves, meets, and groups together with alleged outcasts of various races/species and for very unconvincing reasons decides to ride to the black temple to accomplish…uhhh…power and success? a place to call home? to have a cup of coffee? Self evident reasons, I guess.
Half way down the line, Baduu, who by the way just joined up like 2 missions ago, decides that she doens't want to join up with Illidan (probably because she recognizes how vacuous the idea seems to be) and leaves. And the way the game portrays this is to fix it so she is drawn into your hand on turn 5-6 (cant remember) and is promptly removed from your hand. And if you lose that fight, you get to see this over and over again until you win. I don't get why this isn't handled outside of the battle or at the end of the battle so technically you're only going to see this once. As it stands, I've seen her leave like 3 times in my playthrough, so whatever emotions I have for her (which is nill, since we only seen her like twice. I've never even got to play her for fuck sake) is just dragged through the mud until I just wanted to get it over with.
Then you meet Illidan, and he trains you to be dhunters. Apparently the process involves you fighting each other until you lose your eyes and sprout horns on your head. I'm no lore expert in WoW, but I'm pretty sure this is not how one becomes a demon hunter.
So with better powers she fights through the rusted legion, defeats Jaraxxus with the power of friendship, and ONLY THEN she realised that Illidan's a bit of a nutter. She then fight him, and depending on your luck she might actually beat him but I've heard it doesn't really matter (I did it on my first try, so I couldn't confirm if its a supposed to lose fight) and by her stark powers of reasoning actually made him see the error of his ways. Which is entirely bs to be honest.
The best way to describe the story is that it feels safe. It pulls no punches and takes no risks. Suffice to say you're the good guy fighting the bad guys. No attempts have been made to make Arrana or the other outcasts even slightly relatable, likable, or unique. It almost feels disney-esque; a heroine (because of course it is) with a rag-tag group of diverse races, genders and religions complete with mascot-like comedic sidekick for that sweet merch sales, fighting against a self-evident and proudly villainous bad guy.
Edit: Okay, I realised after a second reading that I didn't mention the famous fight against Baduu prime. Let's be honest. It'd be a better for the story had the fight been against an un-primed Baduu, and for Arrana, who would be depicted as full of hate and lust for power, after defeating her to see the error of her ways. Lets go even further and suggest that Arrana had to beat Baduu, then beat her again with Baduu's hero portrait changed to depict severe injury to push the narrative that she's doing EVERYTHING she can to stop Arrana. But that would mean Arrana would be less of a pure hero and wavering around the realms of anti-hero. We just can't have nice things, can we?
- Arrana as a character is paper thin and about as relatable as a piece of cardboard. Her motives to become a demon hunter is almost nonexistent; her motives in general for risking life and limb in outland is nill, other than the vague "must be better than my sis" thing. Almost no effort has been made to make Arrana feel weak or remotely human; she literally becomes leader of a group of similar cardboard cutouts from the outset, beats foes with merciless ease, highly intelligent, and even manages to out-argue the lord of angst himself. From this adventure, it seems like Aranna can do anything. And we are led to believe that her sister Elise can do even more. One wonders why they haven't just team up and be queens of Azeroth yet.
- Is it fun? Well, its something. I confess its not entirely bad or boring. But I won't be coming back for more, unfortunately. Its not as engaging as the final boss battle against Hagatha in Witchwood (probably the best way a story is handled in hearthstone), not as fun as Rastakhan's adventure (which I think the character Rikkar is a better character and features a better story than this), and there's no fun villain like in KotFT and Naxx.
Quite a forgettable experience, but hey at least its free.
The biggest issue with Pilfer is card advantage and additional complexity of playing around your own cards without knowing what they are.
Pilfer is just far too efficient, getting 2 cards for 2 mana. THAT is the problem. This is a card game, and anytime you can significantly out-draw your opponent, you have automatic advantage in that game, regardless of what cards you draw.
I agree that the best solution would be to make the stolen cards visible to the opponent. That should be enough to level the playing field.
Lastly, anyone who is super tilted by yoink mechanics has just not played many other card games (such as MtG or Eternal). Those games have plenty of steal effects as well. You get used to it or you stop playing, but there is no point in raging about it. Personally, the only things that bother me about the yoink mechanics is that I don't know what they got, and that they gained significant card advantage over me. (Also, the fact that Yordle Grifter always succeeds on his Allegiance ability.)
Other people have answered your questions already, but I'll just add this little nugget for some general advice:
Legends of Runeterra is a LOT more complex than Hearthstone; therefore, the learning curve is steeper for understanding how everything works. When you see a surprising interaction or an unexpected result, you need to choose to try to understand what happened and why, rather than just getting angry.
Also, as already mentioned, you can click on any card that involves another card or effect to see a copy of the other card or effect (example: Riptide Rex and Cannon Barrage - if you click Riptide Rex, you can see a copy of Cannon Barrage behind him). By the way, Riptide Rex requires you to hit the enemy nexus first (Plunder) in order for his effect to happen at all.
I was one-and-done with this brawl. I felt dirty picking a Demon Hunter, and of course I played against another Demon Hunter. I was actually glad I had some control-like tools, because the other guy wasn't controlling anything.
My favorite submissions this week are Charged Assaultron, Lightning Power!, Naga Scryer, and Animated Defender, basically anything that supports a board-based midrange Spell Damage Shaman deck. But there are a ton of other great submissions out there!
Has Yoink Gone Too Far?
Edit - You're talking agent of treachery which is 7 mana and steals off board. I would be fine with that, if there was 10 mana card in legends of runterra that said steal a follower I don't think anyone would care, because it would be really bad, it's when you get to literally deny value from your opponents deck and transplant it into your that's where you find problems.
Examples
1. Deck Buffs/hand buffs tempo can't run this because they need allegience and fast plays, but if they get yours it's huge
2. Additional sources of draw, if they get yours this multiplies their card advantage
3. Fast speed answers, again they don't have it but if they get yours they literally get to role play as control
4. Burst speed tricks, against always useful regardless of your deck
5. Value creatures or champion tutors, they run Sej but no tutors so taking yours is huge
I literally just listed things that exist in almost every deck, the only deck that doesn't run these things is deep because they just need to toss and play big creatures, and unlike deck buffs, the deep buff doesn't transfer to the opponent when stolen because it counts the number of cards left in your deck
Has Yoink Gone Too Far?
The problem, IMO, is the Hearthstonish-like RNG factor that comes along with this mechanic. When you steal something from the opposing deck, you either get worthless trash -because it's a highly synergistic card- or you get the exact answer you needed and that your region doesn't provide. Without mentioning that you can remove from your opponent deck a card that it's his win condition. Yes, I think this mechanic sucks and should get rid of, or at least made so that the cards are copied and not stolen, that would fix PART of the issue.
BMM and Stolen goods need a nerf too. BMM should be a 2/1 and Stolen Goods should cost 3 mana.
Quest Trading - Play A Friend!
Battletag: Kratos#25848
Region: EU
Trade Only?: Yes, you go first.
Quest Trading - Play A Friend!
Battletag: Galneryus#1848
Region: NA
Trade Only?: Yes
Rank popularly stats. Where are they?
I hate to say it but that win rate doesn't mean much. I had a really high win rate too till I hit gold 2, then it started to dip. At gold 1 I struggled a bit but finally moved into plat. At that point you really have to have a basic understanding of most cards in the game and make very few mistakes to climb. I was stuck in plat 4 for quite some time before something clicked one day and now I dance between plat 2 and 1.
At some point I'll get into diamond then I'll work for masters then top 500. I'm invested now. I liked the game so much I put enough money into the game to buy every card and I do mean EVERY CARD. Not just the ones I needed.
Trial by Felfire Opinions
I think Baduu suggested heading to the Black Temple herself- which had been a holy place of the Draenei I think?-, since she knew no Demons were there, even though she didn't exactly know who had taken residence. Upon meeting Illidan, she left, because he was too demony for her taste.
Has Yoink Gone Too Far?
You're absolutely right that the Yoink mechanic is too mana efficient, and making it more expensive might naturally solve the problem it presents, but the comparison to MTG is a little unfair. Specifically, in MTG because the deck size is so much larger, and because a non-trivial number of cards are largely useless to your opponent (i.e. land cards), the odds of consistently having good cards to steal is much lower, as are the odds of stealing a critical card that your opponent absolutely needs.
That's why this version of card stealing is so much more tilting. Not only is it nowhere near properly priced in the game, but it's also dealing with different deck-building rules that make card stealing way more valuable than other games with similar mechanics.
Quest Trading - Play A Friend!
Battletag: QUICKSAND#2208
Region: EU
Trade Only?: Yes, you go first (I'll show quest)
DONE with Deepfear#21990
D-A-M-A-G-E - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread
First of all, I'm really pissed that someone basically copied my card (Shard Mage) with their Orderkeeper Henley. It isn't exactly the same, but the idea of using unspent mana crystals was unique and I find it suspicious that someone should have come up with it by coincidence. Even if that was the case, can't people check the already submitted cards before they enter the competition? With no way to tell which one got submitted first, we'll both suffer now (I'm not necessarily saying my take is better, mind you).
Rant over. My favorites are First Arcanist Thalyssra, Mana Droplet, Nerubian Ritualist and Imbue Energy. Those are my 5 star votes, but I gave lots of 4 stars as well. Good luck to everyone!
What Decks are Performing the Best in This Week's Tavern Brawl 'An Outlandish Recipe'
I think libram paladin would have much worse wr without the 2 buffs it got.. It's actually decent on ladder rn.. So it shows on this brawl.
The Daily Life of a Level 7 Magical Ooze
Tog's pretty important for getting through your deck quickly, while sometimes dropping some cheap reduced stuff that also lets you play your Galakrond easier for even more cycling. Without him it will feel slower getting the combo together, but if you don't have him right now I'd through in another cheap card draw instead.
Trial by Felfire Opinions
I agree with most what you said. I think the reason why Baduu ditched her team in the Black Temple was because of the history of the Draenei. I believe she didn't want to train in a formerly sacred, now a blemished place and become that, what she despised.
She saw Illidan as yet another tyrant influenced by demons and didn't want to have anything in common with him. Now, this spills other questions - like why didn't she try to assassinate him in the BT? If she wanted to leave so badly, why didn't she leave before going in? I mean, Elise Aranna told her group where they were heading to, why was she surprised? If she was disgusted by Illidan's doings and the actions of his trainees, why didn't she stop Aranna's group after hearing about their plans? How did the rusted legion capture Baduu and bend her will? So many questions left unanswered, so I agree that the story wasn't well thought out.
Has Yoink Gone Too Far?
It should be - steal a copy of a card, at least.
I keep losing games because of confusing text / mechanics
For the last few days, I've realized myself that anger can be diminished by willing to admit I'm making numerous mistakes and that I should try to learn more about some complex interactions. Committing to this resulted in me playing much, much better, after just several days. My problem was not playing around anything! The game looked inconsistent and messy to me. Then I stumbled across some streamers and content creators who suggested learning the most common removals and power plays in the meta decks. That was like - eureka! Suddenly, I started winning games and climbing... by playing around Riposte, Fury of the North, Will of Ionia, Deny, Noxian Fervor, Thermogenic Beam, Get Excited!, Withering Wail and many others. There's no need to rush, often is better to bait, force an opponent's plays and test for the previously mentioned tricks. My hand reading, sequencing and timings got much better. I keep open a page with the meta decks to know what's the best play my opponent can do with a given amount of mana.
Here's another constatation: LoR seems a much better game now! This may be due to my insufficient knowledge and current personal experiences. But, it just seems better now then during Beta when my involvement in the game got reduced to casual levels. I resented various design solutions, lack of enough counterplays and domination of those dull Elusive and Fearsome decks (these 2 keywords locked down everything). What I see now is that there is a lot more viable archetypes and variations... counterplays ...and "back and forth" gameplay is much more meaningful. A great number of games are - very dramatic - in a positive way. Tough decisions to save 2hp, a minion, a buff... end being absolutely crucial. And emotionally rewarding. Every other game is close and epic. I'm not giving up, nor my opponent. In the last several days there was a dozen of epic games worth remembering. Different matchups - different challenges, too.
Sure, I don't ignore issues this game still has. I would certainly remove / rework more than several cards, but in general LoR is now what I wanted it to be. Art, flavor and design of a lot of cards is great, too. Conclusion: Hearthstone was rather good during Galakrond's Awakening; LoR was bad. Now HS sucks (DH killing other honest aggro forever, half the classes useless), but LoR shines. LoR is simply not worse than HS, anymore.
Has Yoink Gone Too Far?
I played mtg Arena extensively, Gwent, Hearthstone, and others. Stealing has never been a thing in those games, that's probably why it's been difficult to balance for riot, they have nothing to draw upon experience wise. Now randomization sure, that's pretty normal in hearthstone, but it's always from a random card pool not your opponents deck. Random cards have huge variance, but your opponents cards are usually good, otherwise why would they run them to begin with. Like hey thanks for the rekindler so I get a 4/4 and I get to bring back a champion, what if I draw 2 for 2 mana, that's nuts, and I don't even have to run shadow isles to play them.
Trial by Felfire Opinions
The only fight I lost even once was Mother Sharaz. It sounds like I just got somewhat lucky, but I'm still disappointed in how much of a cakewalk it was. I get that it's hard to design challenging AI fights now that cards are so powerful (I did Heroic Naxx recently and blew right through it), but this was particularly weak.
The Illidan fight was especially disappointing. He got me down to ~5, but I actually managed to stabilize with some lifesteal. Just as I was comfortably turning the fight around on my own... it just ended. What a lame anti-climax.
Here's hoping the challenge bosses are more interesting and, well, challenging.
Quest Trading - Play A Friend!
Battletag: Kratos#25848
Region: EU
Trade Only?: Yes, you go first.
Im a scammer, dont trade with me, thanks!
Quest Trading - Play A Friend!
Battletag: Kratos#25848
Region: EU
Trade Only?: Yes, you go first.
Quest Trading - Play A Friend!
Battletag: Kratos#25848
Region: EU
Trade Only?: Yes, you go first.
The Daily Life of a Level 7 Magical Ooze
How critical is Togwaggle here?
Trial by Felfire Opinions
Alright, so I finally got round to finishing the adventure. Here's a few thoughts;
- The rhymes are neat, and I'd imagine it couldn't have been easy to write and make it work. There's some hit and misses but overall, I'm a little impressed. Unfortunately, its one thing to hear a rhyme, its quite another to hear the same fucking thing over and over each time you're forced to restart. They just get in the way of your game and there are some sequences that last more than my patience can take. Wish blizz would just get rid of all the dialogue on the second time playing.
- Its not a dungeon run where you build your deck, so that's a little less interactivity there. But it does mean that team5 has better control of what you get so you're not facing Jaraxxus with a bs deck that can never win. But it also means there's less stakes involved. You can easily just cheese each battle by restarting until you get the perfect hand i.e. mostly if you can get a 2 drop on 2, or get one of your outcasts heros you're pretty much going to win (if you can get karnuk to spawn that imprisoned antaen on curve, the match is heavily in your favor from there). Also it eliminates most of the replayability, since you're essentially playing the same deck on the same boss.
- Story is bland, like really bland. Spoilers ahead, so if you don't care about the story just click below.
So we follow the adventures of Arrana, sister to Elise Starseeker, who for reasons only known to her, travels to the dangerous world of outland to do…something…and on her travels saves, meets, and groups together with alleged outcasts of various races/species and for very unconvincing reasons decides to ride to the black temple to accomplish…uhhh…power and success? a place to call home? to have a cup of coffee? Self evident reasons, I guess.
Half way down the line, Baduu, who by the way just joined up like 2 missions ago, decides that she doens't want to join up with Illidan (probably because she recognizes how vacuous the idea seems to be) and leaves. And the way the game portrays this is to fix it so she is drawn into your hand on turn 5-6 (cant remember) and is promptly removed from your hand. And if you lose that fight, you get to see this over and over again until you win. I don't get why this isn't handled outside of the battle or at the end of the battle so technically you're only going to see this once. As it stands, I've seen her leave like 3 times in my playthrough, so whatever emotions I have for her (which is nill, since we only seen her like twice. I've never even got to play her for fuck sake) is just dragged through the mud until I just wanted to get it over with.
Then you meet Illidan, and he trains you to be dhunters. Apparently the process involves you fighting each other until you lose your eyes and sprout horns on your head. I'm no lore expert in WoW, but I'm pretty sure this is not how one becomes a demon hunter.
So with better powers she fights through the rusted legion, defeats Jaraxxus with the power of friendship, and ONLY THEN she realised that Illidan's a bit of a nutter. She then fight him, and depending on your luck she might actually beat him but I've heard it doesn't really matter (I did it on my first try, so I couldn't confirm if its a supposed to lose fight) and by her stark powers of reasoning actually made him see the error of his ways. Which is entirely bs to be honest.
The best way to describe the story is that it feels safe. It pulls no punches and takes no risks. Suffice to say you're the good guy fighting the bad guys. No attempts have been made to make Arrana or the other outcasts even slightly relatable, likable, or unique. It almost feels disney-esque; a heroine (because of course it is) with a rag-tag group of diverse races, genders and religions complete with mascot-like comedic sidekick for that sweet merch sales, fighting against a self-evident and proudly villainous bad guy.
Edit: Okay, I realised after a second reading that I didn't mention the famous fight against Baduu prime. Let's be honest. It'd be a better for the story had the fight been against an un-primed Baduu, and for Arrana, who would be depicted as full of hate and lust for power, after defeating her to see the error of her ways. Lets go even further and suggest that Arrana had to beat Baduu, then beat her again with Baduu's hero portrait changed to depict severe injury to push the narrative that she's doing EVERYTHING she can to stop Arrana. But that would mean Arrana would be less of a pure hero and wavering around the realms of anti-hero. We just can't have nice things, can we?
- Arrana as a character is paper thin and about as relatable as a piece of cardboard. Her motives to become a demon hunter is almost nonexistent; her motives in general for risking life and limb in outland is nill, other than the vague "must be better than my sis" thing. Almost no effort has been made to make Arrana feel weak or remotely human; she literally becomes leader of a group of similar cardboard cutouts from the outset, beats foes with merciless ease, highly intelligent, and even manages to out-argue the lord of angst himself. From this adventure, it seems like Aranna can do anything. And we are led to believe that her sister Elise can do even more. One wonders why they haven't just team up and be queens of Azeroth yet.
- Is it fun? Well, its something. I confess its not entirely bad or boring. But I won't be coming back for more, unfortunately. Its not as engaging as the final boss battle against Hagatha in Witchwood (probably the best way a story is handled in hearthstone), not as fun as Rastakhan's adventure (which I think the character Rikkar is a better character and features a better story than this), and there's no fun villain like in KotFT and Naxx.
Quite a forgettable experience, but hey at least its free.
Has Yoink Gone Too Far?
The biggest issue with Pilfer is card advantage and additional complexity of playing around your own cards without knowing what they are.
Pilfer is just far too efficient, getting 2 cards for 2 mana. THAT is the problem. This is a card game, and anytime you can significantly out-draw your opponent, you have automatic advantage in that game, regardless of what cards you draw.
I agree that the best solution would be to make the stolen cards visible to the opponent. That should be enough to level the playing field.
Lastly, anyone who is super tilted by yoink mechanics has just not played many other card games (such as MtG or Eternal). Those games have plenty of steal effects as well. You get used to it or you stop playing, but there is no point in raging about it. Personally, the only things that bother me about the yoink mechanics is that I don't know what they got, and that they gained significant card advantage over me. (Also, the fact that Yordle Grifter always succeeds on his Allegiance ability.)
I keep losing games because of confusing text / mechanics
Other people have answered your questions already, but I'll just add this little nugget for some general advice:
Legends of Runeterra is a LOT more complex than Hearthstone; therefore, the learning curve is steeper for understanding how everything works. When you see a surprising interaction or an unexpected result, you need to choose to try to understand what happened and why, rather than just getting angry.
Also, as already mentioned, you can click on any card that involves another card or effect to see a copy of the other card or effect (example: Riptide Rex and Cannon Barrage - if you click Riptide Rex, you can see a copy of Cannon Barrage behind him). By the way, Riptide Rex requires you to hit the enemy nexus first (Plunder) in order for his effect to happen at all.
What Decks are Performing the Best in This Week's Tavern Brawl 'An Outlandish Recipe'
I was one-and-done with this brawl. I felt dirty picking a Demon Hunter, and of course I played against another Demon Hunter. I was actually glad I had some control-like tools, because the other guy wasn't controlling anything.
And I see that everybody's playing it. Of course.
D-A-M-A-G-E - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread
My favorite submissions this week are Charged Assaultron, Lightning Power!, Naga Scryer, and Animated Defender, basically anything that supports a board-based midrange Spell Damage Shaman deck. But there are a ton of other great submissions out there!