Check out the newest animation video from Carbot.

You know things have gotten bad for Blizzard when this hit the nail pretty good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5Hzh43k330

Greetings there! I am coming with something a bit different, after watching a fair bit of Solem playing niche card games, and also being a player of a few like Duelyst and Faeria. It's a concept of my own Collectible Card Game with the placeholder name Cyber Zone.

This picture shows what would separate my game from other card games. It has some elements of a Tower Defense game, played on a 8x5 grit (size subjective to change).

• Black dots are the 5-tile path every player creates at the start of the match. One on each side is covered by a beige dot, which I'll explain soon.
• Cyan dot is the Nexus that you also place at the start of your match.
• Purple dot is the Portal, but your opponent places it where they want, still near the end of the track you've built. This is where troops come from.

Troops are one of two minion types, marked by a beige dot, used to be summoned on your opponent's board, and once they reach the Nexus, they damage the opposing player for their Attack damage. They move one tile forward each turn. Heroes have 15 Health for now.

Turrets are the other minion type, marked by a dark blue dot, used to be summoned on your own board to prevent the enemy troops from reaching your Nexus. They can attack in straight lines as shown on the picture, but some will be able to bend those rules.

The yellow lines indicate how far and in which directions a turret can attack. On average, they can attack within a 3x3 area around themselves, like how King moves in Chess, and fire in straight lines. This picture shows an example card (Spiteful Flame Sentry) and from how afar it can attack the beige dot when positioned correctly, albeit my bad for slight misleading. The example cards are shown below (with obvious placeholder art and prototype covers).

Keywrords and more info here

Sentry Icon - for Turret cards. They can be only placed close to your track unless specified.

Solider Icon - for Troop cards. They come out of the Portal a turn after you play it.

Crystal Icon - for Pylon cards. These are like your Hero Powers that start in your hand like Quests. They can't be placed near the track, though, but can be placed everywhere.

Battery Icon - for Action cards. These are the equivalent of spells. For now, they are split by the same speed pattern from Legends of Runeterra (ignore Force Barrier and its inconsistent wording plz). Traps give a secret bonus to a tile of your choice, triggered when an enemy troop steps on it. They are always of Sharp speed, or otherwise Focus like in Exhaust.

Gear Icon - for Gear cards. These are the equivalent of weapons. You equip them on turrets. They have Attack and Durability.

There are six factions, five of which you can see on example cards (Fire, Thunder, Sun, Snowflake, Plasma) - the Squirrel's one is Neutral. Also, there are four rarities - Common, Rare, Epic and Legendary (may change names or add Mythic for Pylons).

Turn starts draw you a card, give a Crystal (Mana Crystal, up to 10) and move your Troops one tile. You start with 1 Crystals, and the player going second may get an equivalent to Coin.

There would be a casual gameplay mode, split into the equivalent of Hearthstone's Classic (only base set cards) and with all cards, and Ranked with all cards, MAYBE split into Standard and Wild once enough cards are created to warrant the separation.

Monetization system should be similar to LoR, as... come on, it's clearly the best and most f2p friendly so far on the market, so why not use it?

Keep in mind I never played Kenin Ezreal I am simple going imperically based on stats.

The deck has gone from a commanding 55% winrate to a 45% winrate. Putting Lee back as the best Ionia deck seeing it go up 1% to 52.

Honestly I don't know if it was actually worth it, like if you enjoy midrange decks absolutely they are doing better control is also doing better.

But it hasn't shaken up the meta in the way people thought, while simultaneously killing an entire archetype just because people couldn't tech properly or play the matchup.

So on the one hand you have a new champ being murdered one week into his release, just so the other decks can go up 2% on ladder like it seems like maybe the reaction was too strong here.

But on the other hand if a deck like Azir Irelia could be considered meta altering maybe Kenin was just as bad, who's to say.

What do you guys think?

Why do they even bother to release these fun cards if they aren't going to be competitive??? I started playing back in Meanstreets and it's always been the same problem: they release some very clever and enjoyable cards but rarely and never very successfully give them a buff or support when they fall short 

My eyes lit up when I found out neo burgle Rogue was actually decent... Well that was until the experimenting phase ended. Now I'm running into the same libram pals, quest mages and locks and etc ( YOu SOULESs ROBOTs Do Us A FAVOr ANd UNINSTALl YOURSELVEs).

But I really can't blame them. Nobody likes losing multiple times in a row with a horse that can't quite race. But what if it's the horse you love?

Why the crap haven't they learned over these years to just buff what ppl want to play. They A. Have the data. And B. They should have a responsibility to back up these cards they release and ppl look forward to.

So we talk a lot about meta, and card balance, and what Champs are strongest.

But sometimes it's worth drawing back the curtain on matchups we personally struggle with  and anything excluded is relatively easy to deal with or tech against, or play against.

1. Dragons - it challenges and strikes with demacia, it grows large midrange threats, and ramps into Asol...this deck scares me because it essentially perfect at being equally good into everything and the best decks often are.

2. Infinite cycle Heimer - kill one thing and they play another, and another and another and another...this deck is control proof and midrange proof so it's everything I hate.

3. Deep & Lurk - something about these decks just very menacing, one is an excellent tournament deck that is just waiting for its time, and the other will just steam roll you if you arent playing perfectly

4.  Ahiri - out of all the new Ionia cards Ahiri is the trickiest to deal with. Amazing stat line for mana with the best keyword, and she basically has elusive too. You enter into a tough situation do you sharpsite the droplet only to eat a twin disciples no you don't so you eat dmg every turn and it's death of a thousand cuts 

5. Rumble - the ultimate do you have the answer card, you can just throw it out. Much like Sivir it's just a pain but unlike her he has a much better level up, but if he does get answered you just loose.

6. Xerath, I have a lot of respect for players who main this guy because his play pattern when run well is exceptionally erratic and unpredictable. Will you beat him most of the time sure but it will be scary the whole time.

So yeah thats it for my list, once again I don't believe these are the best or most competitive decks just the lists that impact me the most when playing against them. 

Things like aggro, and Ezreal you run into so often you can run those matches in your sleep.

https://lor.mobalytics.gg/stats/decks

Honestly, I consider everything about these new stats to be absolutely terrifying.

All the decks are extremely strong and versatile and their winrates have gone through the roof.

1. Dragons already called that one plus 55%

2. Lisandra plus 55% 

3. Midrange plunder plus 55%

4. Pantheon plus 55%

I guess ezreal was keeping these decks in cheque and now that he's gone they are absolutely dominating

So no longer do you need to tech against aggro and combo now it's how the hell do you deal with all these midrange powerhouses?

Honestly, I don't know it's very possible something like a Lee Sin combo deck will ultimately be the tournament answer, but that lineup is scary and difficult to play against.

Maybe a new king of aggro will emerge and start pressuring from the other end as well, and that's usually when midrange starts to take a hit, but right now it's open season.

Yordle Trible, Kenin Ezreal, Pirate aggro all got hit pretty hard.

So you pretty much won't need to hard tech into these decks anymore and learn to win these matchups properly.

I think a lot of people will be happy about that, and honestly I am too.

Just because something is possible to beat if you work at it hard enough, doesn't mean every player should be required to exist in such a restrictive build space:

1. Poppy is a 2/3 or a 3/4 on swing

2. Ionia allegiance now requires you to run two different 1 drops you can't tutor duplicates

3. The bounce landmark had its countdown increased

4. The yordle Tribal 2 drop only buffs attack now

5. Gangplank is a 5/4

In most cases these decks and archetypes will require rebuilding and I'm happy to show off some options here except for pirate aggro because who cares:

First up splashing yordle mechs might give yordle Tribal a little more sustain. As for discard fodder you have 2 different owl generators, and squire.

Its very possible Kenin drops allegiance all together now that both allegiance and combo speed have been nerfed for a more sustained midrange play style, maybe even Yassao will see play in my dreams.

I haven't seen one of these yet, if it exists please point me to it. I rushed to diamond 5 before the expansion and now I'm trying to use this initial week or so to grind out some achievements before continuing my attempt at ladder climbing. While I don't expect achievement centered decks to be super competitive I do want to at least present a challenge while completing them. I'm not a great deck builder myself and have just been throwing a few pieces of class and neutral achievements into various 'good' decks and going from there. It has been a bit slower than I really wanted it to be and I'm hoping to find better ways to do this. Who is willing to share the decks they are using to get that bonus XP?

A new Legendary Demon Hunter Hero, Kurtrus, Demon-Render, has been revealed!

Discuss this card below or head on over to the card page to give it a rating!

Learn more about Fractured in Alterac Valley

Head on over to our dedicated guide for Fractured in Alterac Valley!

Get Cheaper Card Packs

This section contains affiliate links.

If you want to save money when buying Hearthstone packs, you should check out Amazon Coins! It's an easy way to save up to 25% off Hearthstone packs so you can get into the new expansion without worrying about your wallet too much. We've got a detailed guide on how to Get Started with Amazon Coins, but if you've already dealt with them in the past, you can buy some more by clicking right here.

Yeah so you're getting stunned, you're getting comboed out, and burst down and you can't do anything. I know it's frustrating, the meta decks just aren't cutting it right now, and you dont want to play the mirror.

Well boys I've got you covered here are 3 deck concepts that all do well into Kenin, you could call them control lists but they play like midrange.

1. Just challenge everything

Drag that little ****** with laurent protégé or bird as soon as he comes down, and then drag everything else over and over until you get the concede. Keep your singles and sharpsights for reactive plays.

2. Nami TF control

Pings all day long, and lots of attune and draw to keep things flexible. Probably the only "infinite" cycling deck I enjoy because there is some skill involved.

3. Slay Control

Vulnerable is almost as good as challenger, and we have things like vile feast and other sweepers to keep the party rolling. Has the addeded benefit of playing well into other midrange decks.

So yeah if you don't like these lists just build your own, remembering that if you can't out control the combo deck you have to out aggro them consistently so that limits your deck building option to low curve threats like pirate aggro etc. and most people already know those lists so here are the more interesting options.

---Bonus--- 

Swain decks are always strong in combo situations because youre essentially putting them on a clock to go off and they don't run a ton of non self bounces sometimes none. So yeah thats basically all the regions so you can counter Kenen with pretty much anything you want to greater or lesser effect as long as its built right.

Competition Theme: Honourable Mentions

We're all about honour this week - or I am, anyway, and you're all going to have to deal with it being spelt that way.

• You must create a card which utilises the new Honorable Kill mechanic
  • Whether by using the Keyword itself or interacting with cards that have it, we just want you to uphold your honour!

Wailor has asked that we have a clean and honest game this week, so make sure your cards are upholding their honour!

As always, I can be reached through Discord or here on the site via PM if you have any issues to report.

Competition Phases

Here are the phases of this card design competition

• Submission Phase: Starts on Mon, Dec 6 17:00 EST (GMT -0500). Runs until Sat, Dec 11 17:00 EST (GMT -0500)
• Voting Phase: Starts on Sat, Dec 11 17:00 EST (GMT -0500). Runs until Sun, Dec 12 16:00 EST (GMT -0500)
• Finalist Phase: Starts on Sun, Dec 12 17:00 EST (GMT -0500). Runs until Mon, Dec 13 17:00 EST (GMT -0500)
• Winner Selected: After finalist voting concludes and we validate votes.

Discussion Thread Rules

No thread rules were added to this season. Please populate and manually edit this thread with them.

I enjoy laughing at all the kids who cried for the last 4 months about quests are now crying about wombo combos and minion based interactions.  You gotta love the absolute self-hate these people exude.

Personally when I looked at the card lists I knew it was going to be an rng clown fest of high rolls and destroyed keyboards and mice. People will never be happy. This cycle has repeated itself since I started playing back in closed beta of 2014.  I’m done with the 7200 honor I’m level 30 on the RT and I’m just knocking down achievements. 

People really need to get over winning and losing because the game doesn’t track losses so  it’s all just meaningless grinding. The whole point of the game is to enjoy card based WoW and have some laughs.

I for one love the artwork and voice lines. The art in this expansion , I think, is the best yet.  

Casino mage is really crazy this time around and I already made my personal list solid gold for maximum effect. 

How is everyone dealing with the day 1 clown fest?

There's a lot of disruption/removal so spending all your mana on 1 huge minion seems like it still won't be very good in this meta.

There's a lot of new control cards so it looks like aggro may not be as good this expansion

This makes me think the meta will be Control, Tempo, Midrange, and just slowly bursting down your opponent while you stall them with control cards.

Control may still be too slow though.

Shadow Priest, Burst down freeze Shaman decks, Quest mage, tempo rogues. Any decks that can kill by turn 6 I think will be meta if not you will just lose to the control.

Hi team, did something about your video ads change this week? I know this is an important part of site revenue, but it's suddenly covering almost a third of the screen, and the X isn't always reachable. 

As of last week, my Android device showed one footer video per URL, now I have to close the thing up to 9 times per article! 

And I also understand the inclination to recommend a premium subscription, but at this particular moment that feels like rewarding user-unfriendly behavior. 

https://lor.mobalytics.gg/stats/archetypes

Really happy the new decks are performing well, kennen Ezreal easily counterable but also there are enough tech choices availible that you can counter attempts to counter it.

Ie proactive plays cloud stance instead of recall which gets really bad when the opponent knows its coming. Like it isn't fiz, you just drag kenen or block kenen and wait for the recall/buff and respond accordingly. Basically screws the entire deck...so yeah cloud stance is op run it and run with both twin disciplines and the Lee Sin card.

The deck becomes a lot more powerful when your opponent forced to make the first move instead of vice versa and you won't always have the luxury to play solitaire.

But right now yes absolutely every meta deck plays solitaire because card interaction is hard so it's doing great.

Pantheon is fantastic for a all in on one card type strategy, he's basically a mini arsenal and who doesn't love that card?

Ahiri already has a solid home, and personally I think robo boy is amazing people just run him wrong he's a Jinx activator, it's what he does well, he isn't good when you try to use him as a worse pantheon or a Sion pal, because Sion doesn't want you invoking mechs.

And yes all the old decks are still good too so I would say the meta is in a fantastic place, the only really big loosers are the old solitaire decks that cycled infinitely because Ezreal Kenen just does it better and that's okay.

Bugs are back for all legendaries chain reward completion and I’m getting the same bug with neutral cards. I have every card in the set and multiple duplicate legendaries after opening 355 packs. Progress says 24 of 25 legendaries and 33 of 34 neutral cards collected. Also I am stick on 2/3 for games played with shaman, mage or demo hunter even though I’ve played 5 games. 

im sure they will fix these soon. Anyone else can confirm?

So...what'd you get? I'm at work on lunch so I won't be opening my packs until later (to keep track of pity timers), but I did see that my two free golden Legendaries were Bru'kan of the Elements and Bearon Gla'shear. The game must've known I did the Shaman review and rewarded me thusly 😁

Tried to load the plugin to sync my Collection for the first time, but it throws the error in HDT.

Any newer links than this one?

Out of Cards Plugin

Hey there dear Oocians! Let me welcome you the third Rewards Track Thread! I was waiting for someone else to make this thread, but after a week into the new expansion I´ve decided to make another one myself. Maybe some of you are tired of it already or simply don´t care, but for those of us, who want to track their progress, and see how is everyone else doing, this is the right place! I wish you´ll enjoy the new climb and hope you´ll end up higher than in the previous one!

OK, I´ll start then:

I´ve hoarded the 3 Weekly and Daily quests and bought the TP once again, so I´ve jumped to lvl 24 the first day I believe.. After a week in I´m at lvl 45, which feels good so far, but I know the climb will become way too slower. I´ve started to do the new XP achievements aswell, currently I´m at 30% done.

So, how are you all doing? Feel free to share your journey with us, your thoughts, feelings - happy or sad, just keep it friendly as usual, please. Have fun! :)

Hi, popping in despite not being a part of the community for years to quickly voice a suggestion which I'm sure has been made many times prior:

On pages for cards with additional non-visible information (e.g. Hero cards), it would be very desirable to have that additional information on the page. For the example given, a Hero card should show the new hero power alongside it, given that without that context it's impossible to actually 'look at' the card (if that makes sense).

I want to use Out of Cards as my resource for things like expansion information and reference, but when it's missing this context it's basically impossible to do so and I'm forced to use one of your competitors. In this case, being forced to use hstopdecks despite despising the site, simply because that information is all present.

I'm sure this would require manual coding rather than the automation which is presumably used to pull card information - but it would be worth it, in my view, to make the expansion guide function as intended.

Blizzard have halved the XP gained from PVE for the Rewards Track. Before the new expansion we can gain 168 xp in 30 minutes (without the Pass), now it's 84 xp.
This stealth nerf is so bad that people need to know...

A new Rare Neutral Minion, Kobold Taskmaster, has been revealed!

Discuss this card below or head on over to the card page to give it a rating!

Learn more about Fractured in Alterac Valley

Head on over to our dedicated guide for Fractured in Alterac Valley!

Get Cheaper Card Packs

This section contains affiliate links.

If you want to save money when buying Hearthstone packs, you should check out Amazon Coins! It's an easy way to save up to 25% off Hearthstone packs so you can get into the new expansion without worrying about your wallet too much. We've got a detailed guide on how to Get Started with Amazon Coins, but if you've already dealt with them in the past, you can buy some more by clicking right here.

A new Common Neutral Minion, Corporal, has been revealed!

Discuss this card below or head on over to the card page to give it a rating!

Learn more about Fractured in Alterac Valley

Head on over to our dedicated guide for Fractured in Alterac Valley!

Get Cheaper Card Packs

This section contains affiliate links.

If you want to save money when buying Hearthstone packs, you should check out Amazon Coins! It's an easy way to save up to 25% off Hearthstone packs so you can get into the new expansion without worrying about your wallet too much. We've got a detailed guide on how to Get Started with Amazon Coins, but if you've already dealt with them in the past, you can buy some more by clicking right here.

A new Common Neutral Minion, Sneaky Scout, has been revealed!

Discuss this card below or head on over to the card page to give it a rating!

Learn more about Fractured in Alterac Valley

Head on over to our dedicated guide for Fractured in Alterac Valley!

Get Cheaper Card Packs

This section contains affiliate links.

If you want to save money when buying Hearthstone packs, you should check out Amazon Coins! It's an easy way to save up to 25% off Hearthstone packs so you can get into the new expansion without worrying about your wallet too much. We've got a detailed guide on how to Get Started with Amazon Coins, but if you've already dealt with them in the past, you can buy some more by clicking right here.

A new Legendary Druid Minion, Wing Commander Mulverick, has been revealed!

Discuss this card below or head on over to the card page to give it a rating!

Learn more about Fractured in Alterac Valley

Head on over to our dedicated guide for Fractured in Alterac Valley!

Get Cheaper Card Packs

This section contains affiliate links.

If you want to save money when buying Hearthstone packs, you should check out Amazon Coins! It's an easy way to save up to 25% off Hearthstone packs so you can get into the new expansion without worrying about your wallet too much. We've got a detailed guide on how to Get Started with Amazon Coins, but if you've already dealt with them in the past, you can buy some more by clicking right here.