Welcome to this originally mildly salty thread, turned into a productive one!

I thought it was pretty fun to mention here all the obvious whiffs of Zephrys the Great, specifing the game context as precisely as possible.

REMINDER: zephrys the great calculates solutions based exclusively on PUBLIC elements. He does not know the identity of your cards or secrets, nor those of the opponent, but he can see that they are there and their number, plus health, weapons, board.

Let's gather enough data to improve his code!

Here i start:

(10) mana as Valeera the Hollow, with Eviscerate at hand, against Wild Secret Mage, with 2 secrets up (including ice block) and 1hp left:

i play Zephrys TWICE in the same turn, and in neither case did he offer me the SI:7 Infiltrator or Flare that could give me lethal.

Only 3 redundant options: Eviscerate, Fireball, Swipe. Twice.

I'm posting this on Out of Cards, since this is the most decent and civil Hearthstone-related forum right now, and opinions about controversial subjects like this will probably be kicked on the floor.

Hearthstone's new reward system has left the playerbase up in arms, since gold and experience became harder to get and are rewarded in smaller quantities, and the Battle Pass is a scam. Forcing people to pay up only to get less rewards than they were promised. I've seen people against it, and some defending it. But as for me, the reward system has not hindered my enjoyment of the game, mainly because I don't play for the rewards anyway. I usually play Hearthstone to try out cards and witness all sorts of crazy RNG. But even with the new system ruining things, there are enough alternatives to keep Hearthstone enjoyable. Card packs are more expensive? No problem, I've got enough cards in my collection and even have plenty of legendaries. Singleplayer isn't appealing anymore? No problem, there are lots of single-player adventures to keep me occupied. Dalaran Heist and Tombs of Terror in particular, since the RNG starting decks mean you can try out any card in the game, even for a moment, without having to spend currency on packs. And besides, even Hearthstone's current gameplay is disappointing there's always custom cards in Hearthcards and the Out of Cards fanmade content, so one can still dream.

Ever since the system was implemented, I've seen AFK farmers in Battlegrounds. They boot up Battlegrounds and do nothing all game because they'll just gain rewards anyway. One time I was in a Battlegrounds match (playing as Jaraxxus) in which EVERYONE ELSE was AFK. I just played the match normally and had fun building my warband and defeating my opponents one hit at a time. And upon winning that match, I had just learned an important life lesson. I started seeing this situation in a whole new perspective.

I realized that generosity was enough to keep Hearthstone satisfying for me. Playing for fun rather than rewards made me feel genuine satisfaction, because for me winning or at least having a worthwhile match was the reward I needed. Ask yourself this: Were you truly satisfied by Hearthstone's rewards before the new system? Why do you want rewards in Hearthstone anyway? And finally the biggest question: It's only a game, why you heff to be mad? Okay, just kidding. The main point is: greed begets greed. The temporary elatement from a materialistic desire to get rewards in a game, this is what many monetized games exploit in their consumers. (EA is a notable offender.) They know that players will pay them to get more cool content, and they will make more profit. Even if you complain about rewards being harder to work for, you're probably just playing Hearthstone only for the rewards anyway. I'm not trying to riff on the people whose hate towards the system is understandable, nor force my opinions on everyone. I'm just talking about my own experience with finding satisfaction with the game anyway without paying a dollar.

Besides, blaming "Blizzard" and having them not respond is kinda... yeah. The players' rage is directed at this hivemind of an evil corporate game development company who swindles them out of their money. (Just don't pay them...) But like all companies, Blizzard is composed of employees who make bad decisions, but are still human. Are we going to forget about the developers who have made Hearthstone a better place for everyone? Ben Brode, Hadidjah Chamberlin, Dave Kosak, John McIntyre, etc. Don't put them under the blanket blame since they've only made the game more entertaining. Look at all the stories that they've come up with: the League of Explorers, Rafaam and the League of EVIL, the Book of Heroes... do the rewards undermine all of the adventures and events that have turned Hearthstone into a world of its own?

It feels like we've been dealing with this turbo meta for over a month.

Its literally just Irelia Azir every match with its 60% winrate that should of been seen a mile away with internal play testing.

Or at the very least addressed with the last patch. I can't describe the number of decks it shuts down.

Want to meme with Heimer nope, Karma nope, Taric nope, Anivia nope, Riven nope, Yassao nope

They must realize people aren't actually "playing" the game right now

They are playing roughly 2% of the game 

I think saying.that people will always play the meta is a derivative excuse, yes people will but how free players are to ladder with alternatives is entirely up to the devs.

Riot seriously fix your game...

Competition Theme: The Price Of Progress

We saw some Classic Dragons get a new interpretation when the Core Set released - it's time for some other Legendaries to get in on the action. Progress comes at a price, however - or is that a Prince?

• You must create a Legendary minion which is a re-imagining of a Classic Legendary
  • Look to Deathwing vs Deathwing the Destroyer, or Ysera vs Ysera the Dreamer - similar, but different!
• Your Legendary minion must have an effect which is active when you have no cards of the same cost in your deck
  • Prince Keleseth, Prince Taldaram and Prince Valanar were our first introductions to this kind of effect

Arkasaur and MathU both contributed to this week's theme - one for the flavour restriction, and one for the mechanical. 

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, Jun 7 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400). Runs until Sat, Jun 12 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400)
• Voting Phase: Starts on Sat, Jun 12 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400). Runs until Sun, Jun 13 16:00 EDT (GMT -0400)
• Finalist Phase: Starts on Sun, Jun 13 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400). Runs until Mon, Jun 14 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400)
• 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.

Menagerie builds are a huge reason people love this game. The only thing that bugs is there is literally THREE things you look for in a unit: Divine Shields, Cleaves, and big stats.

All mechs are viable because of module but most of the other tribes have units you just simply do not want (the dragon and elemental that semi-cleave for example). I would really like to see some units that compete with the big 3.

Here's a few ideas

-The 2/3 tier 1 dragon could be made immune to poison to make it not completely useless.

-How about a demon that has Overkill: Silence the unit on your opponents right side (to allow for counterplay)?

-Scavenging hyaena (or the two previously mentioned) could be replaced with a 2/2 semi swiper that dealt 1 damage to adjacent units (anti div shield aid)

-Lastly, a tier 6 murloc -something we haven't seen in a while- who doubles your first battlecry every round?

These are a few ideas shot from the hip that a regular player came up with that'd mix up builds and make the game more fun. No telling how balanced they are but 100% making the game more interesting and fun if added.

What units would you like to see added to the game?

In the sidebar (on the right side) of the Hearthstone portal overview the Recent Threads are shown with the amount of time elapsed since the last update. What I do not understand is for instance for New Warlock Minion - Stealer of Souls it says that some update occurred very recently, but when you click on the arrow to navigate to the latest comment it is old and there does not seem to be any new comment added.

Is it another caching issue, perhaps someone fooling around or am I missing something? I am curious about this 🤔

Screenshots from Hearthstone mercenaries marketing survey

https://twitter.com/LeadingmoreH/status/1402757677252493312

A new Rare Warlock Minion, Stealer of Souls, has been revealed!

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

Learn more about Forged in the Barrens

Head on over to our dedicated guide for Forged in the Barrens!

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.

Any suggestion how to defeat him? Its three tentacles x turn are too annoying ...

If there's one thing I can't stand in card games its the ladder climb.

Unless I can brew an anti meta list that will win me somewhere close to 70% of my games so my time remains valuable.

I just jammed out to Plat in one small sitting using this anti meta overwhelm list.

It was easy as cake.

Feel free to try it out yourselves if you're feeling frustrated

--------------------------Big update--------------------------

Just hit diamond folks.

Destroyed all the meta decks at platinum level with this exact deck list

Competition Theme: Built To Scale

We're looking for cards that just keep on getting better the more you look at them this time!

• You must create a card with an effect that scales
  • Think of cards like Overwhelm, Hagatha's Scheme or Lightspawn

Arkasaur wants us to keep things scaly this week - no, not that way! 

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, May 31 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400). Runs until Sat, Jun 5 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400)
• Voting Phase: Starts on Sat, Jun 5 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400). Runs until Sun, Jun 6 16:00 EDT (GMT -0400)
• Finalist Phase: Starts on Sun, Jun 6 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400). Runs until Mon, Jun 7 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400)
• 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.

Legends of Runterra has changed from a game about spells, strategic passing, and removal to essentially a tempo struggle.

Every hand you play needs to be about hitting the board as fast and hard as possible with as much tempo as possible regardless of the deck you are playing. 

The one exception being Lissandra who tempos out an otk strategy in later turns

There isn't a single top tier deck that doesn't have an early board flood strategy.

Thresh nasus, will usually hit a full board by turn 3 every single time and so you need to mull for your board flood hand to compensate everytime. 

Then you need a way to end the game quickly whether it be a big overwhelm dude or an atrocity or in the case of Azir multiple attack phases.

It just gets a little tiring seeing every game play out as aggressively as humanly possible and only once you pass that gauntlet can you actually "play the game"

I dont know how you actually fix this, it seems to me that Riot needs to start releasing strong and cheap removal options to compensate.

Let me know what you guys think, or should legends always just be a aggro tempo creature swing fest?

This happens to me way too often for it to be a coincidence: I'm strolling along with a good deck I put together doing well and encountering players that have equal decks to mine.

Then I hit six wins and suddenly boss mode is enabled. My opponents have perfect decks and make perfect plays while the primo cards that helped get me to 6 suddenly fail to show up or curve is bust.

Not in my head. This is crafty business decisions to not want to give away anything for free because otherwise decent players like myself could string winning arena runs more often and not really need to pay cash.

Which is fine... If it was transparent. Instead I get this frustrating experience where I can't enjoy the game on a level playing field. I wouldn't be surprised if they have bots set up for it 

Ok, now it's your turn to reply with the obsequious "this belongs in a salt thread" and "I can't agree with anything upset so I 100% disagree even though i don't know how it really works" comments. Go:

Ladies, Gentlemen, and those of us who know better...

I welcome you to the Year of the Bear's Core Set!

That's right, I, a complete stranger (unless you're in the r/customhearthstone discord) am taking a crack at an entire custom hearthstone year! And where else to start than with the year's core set?

WELCOME TO THE YEAR OF THE BEAR CORE SET!~ Claps all around, yay is me, I've somehow made it this far through mediocrity. Failing upwards. Why Bear? I like bears. Bears are cool. This core set focuses a lot on shaking things up for classes, perhaps even more so that the Gryphon set, and includes a few overall changes:

• RARITY READJUSTMENT: YotG's set features 9 Commons, 4 Rares, 2 Epics, and 1 Legendary per class as a general rule (with Warrior as an exception). In this set, we've traded in 1 Common for another Epic, as well as...
• SECOND CLASS LEGENDARY: To allow class Legendaries more room to breathe as well as to allow more powerhouses per class. The classic set features 1 Legendary per class due to expansions at the time doing the same; it's about time we caught up again.
• 10 NEUTRAL EPICS: Why the hell are there only five Neutral Epics? Doubling the number gives me more breathing room to make sure I can get more of the techs and staples the rarity allows.
• THE DAWN OF MULTI-TARGETING: That's right, fucker. Yeah, you reading this. I've done it; butchered a sacred cow. Send kind regards and/or death threats to my discord. In all seriousness, Multi-Targeting is a design space I've wanted to explore and employ for a while now, and I'm not one to worry too much on UI and programming. I understand people won't agree, though, but this is a dead sacred cow I'm willing to die on.
• TRADEABLE RETURNS: (As of 7/27/21) I've decided to make Tradeable an evergreen keyword so that I can continue to use it throughout the years here.

Without any more preamble, here's the set, in class order!

DEMON HUNTER

DRUID

HUNTER

MAGE

PALADIN

PRIEST

ROGUE

SHAMAN

WARLOCK

WARRIOR

NEUTRAL

THAT'S ALL, FOLKS

Already working on the expansions and Mini-Sets that'd comprise the year, but for now you'll all just have to wait~

PATCH NOTES:

*7/27/21: Nerfed Faceless Amalgamator, fixed Ner'Zul (was never meant to be a Battlecry), added Tradeable to Mak'Gora

So Azor Irelia is still just as strong and exhausting to play against non stop.

The watcher remains unchanged so if you're running any other control deck with a slow game plan and you que into them you might as well concede.

Cards buffs haven't happened to weaker archetypes to freshen up the game.

There's all this great stuff and amazing potential in Legends that is being held down by a laze Faire card balance approach.

So now after waiting so long for this patch that did nothing we have to wait another month to hopefully see the good stuff.

Is anyone getting a little annoyed at this point?

The new event calendar in the client has a fair few cool looking events which I'm surprised to see nobody talking about.

I tried to insert an image using Imgur but it's playing up (probably user error XD) so here's a link to it instead: LoR event calendar

Yesterday i was testing out my new gonk druid deck, celestial gonklignment when something weird happened. I had anaconda on board and played celestial alignment and all the nature spells in my hand cost one not zero. So I said, okay it works this way I shod have just played her after alignment" but then every nature spell I drew was zero mana just the few I had in my hand when I played alignment weren't. 

Bug or working as intended?

Hey while I wait for the promised changes on reddit to happen, and for ladder to reset so I can climb to diamond again in a fresh meta let's talk about climbing theory.

My theory is pretty simple there are two ways to climb in digital ccgs:

1. Play the best decks better than everyone else whether it's thresh/Nasis or Arelia Azir or dragons or whatever works for you

- how do you play your deck better then everyone else? You dont just play your deck you play the opponents.

- here's an example my rogue overwhelm brew relies on two things high burst dmg, and lots and lots of vulnerable plays

- if you as Azir/Irelia always leave mana open for bounce when I have the attack token you can't loose valuable pieces to vulnerable plays

2. Build a deck that performs well in a certain meta, this sounds obvious but its also built on wrong assumptions.

- Doing well in a meta isn't about countering what is top tier that by definition is impossible

- It's about establishing unpredictable play patterns, and teching in unexpected options

- for example overwhelm decks don't run counters but when one of the best decks revolves around atrocity as a win con it is now one of your best cards because the opponent will assume you don't have it

And thats it really if you want to climb in legends or mtg arena or whatever digital ccg you want, you'll have to get good at one of these two methods. 

If you're creative and easily bored from repetition like me I would choose to master option 2. If you're detailed oriented and highly competitive I would choose option 1.

Let me know which you gravitate towards.

A new Common Paladin Spell, Judgment of Justice, has been revealed!

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

Learn more about Forged in the Barrens

Head on over to our dedicated guide for Forged in the Barrens!

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.

Hi, I made it to level 100 yesterday and am having trouble picking a hero. The fact is I already have Valeera the only one I think looks really good and rest are kinda meh to me. I want to make my choice knowing what each one has in emotes... Oddly on YouTube I can't find anything. Does anyone know where?

I don't even know why I bother opening them anymore. All they do is bring me sorrow. I remember back when opening packs was an exciting process and I would actually open good stuff.

Now it's 40 dust every time or an epic every so often. Golden cards? I'm actually a huge enthusiast and remember getting them at a decent rate every 5-10 packs. I can't remember the last one I opened.

As for Legendaries each and every time it countdowns to 35-40 packs. I recall a time when I would open up an L not long after I just had thinking, oh wow cool so soon. Now it's so far I'm pretty much angry when I finally get one.

I even used to open up golden legendaries. Not often of course, but maybe one every few months and I'd cherish it. I'm a daily player and it has to have been a year since I've found one.

Just wanting to see if anyone else is having this issue. I can't help but feel that since all the big changes they've implemented that they have lowered the drop rate on premium cards. More likely it's just my own bad luck.

So I recently started playing on mobile. I’ve enjoyed the game, but I want to get some better champions. I’ve earned a few champion pods, but it keeps upgrading them to champion wildcards. Are there any sure fire ways to unlock champions? Can I use wildcards to buy new ones?

A new Common Rogue Minion, Water Moccasin, has been revealed!

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

Learn more about Forged in the Barrens

Head on over to our dedicated guide for Forged in the Barrens!

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 Hunter Minion, Sin'dorei Scentfinder, has been revealed!

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

Learn more about Forged in the Barrens

Head on over to our dedicated guide for Forged in the Barrens!

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.