I'm much further along than most anyone who would be reading this, so here is a list of the best cards that most new players should have before too long. These are just the best early cards in terms of raw power level and utility:
Nightcrawler
Angela
Scarlet Witch
Cable
Bishop
Namor
Iron Man
Whatever else you are doing with your deck, you should have several of these cards in it, if you are a new player. And some of these cards are even still used when you get to Pool 3 decks.
Now that we're past the first 24 hours of the expansion, it's clear that the meta is pretty wide open. Lots of viable decks, though Vayne and Seraphine have made the biggest impact.
A version of Pirates is still strong. Fiora Pantheon and Jhinnie are both still strong. Somewhere between 5 and 10 new Vayne decks, and two different Seraphine decks are strong.
So yeah, feel free to keep away if you want, but it's pretty crazy out there. And frostbite is super viable currently (due to all the Tumbling), making Freljord actually good.
I've played a lot of pirates, and I'm not sad to see it knocked down a notch. However, it's probably a mistake to think that this kills the deck. That deck always finds a way to be relevant (at least in lower ranks), regardless of the nerfs that target it.
Swain is going to be terrifying.
Fiora is going to find a way to break the game.
If their goal was to completely shift the entire meta, I think they accomplished that.
I think it's too broken. The mana stops mattering after a certain amount of turns, and the monsters on the field is of most importance. If you don't have any outs you simply lose the game just like that. I think it should have an errata where ir states you can only have max 2 cards other than itself. Cuz they got ways to protect their nexus, they just gonna stall you out and then use it just like that when I have an op board set up and basicly no cards left in hand. My only out is deny.
It will take you some time to learn how to play around The Ruination, but it's very doable with just about any deck.
One of the key skills in the game is knowing when to just say, "Nope, I'm good." And then not play anything else onto the board. This forces them to either tap below 9 mana to respond to your board, or else just lose their turn and face your open-attack. (Open attack is when you attack immediately at the open of your turn with the attack token). It's actually quite awkward to find a good time to play Ruination (if you're the one playing it) - you have to kill enough things to make it worth it, but you also have to do it when your opponent doesn't have much mana or cards left. This is why the Ruination player will often "open pass" on his attack turn - he's trying to get you to play an additional unit into his Ruination. It's almost always correct in that situation to just say, "OK, let's just skip this turn then," and then end the turn and Open Attack into them.
Bottom line - the way you beat control decks who have The Ruination is to force them to have to use mana and go below 9 mana, so they cannot use it anymore. Or else force them to use it by threatening lethal damage, leaving them very little mana to do anything else on that turn. Then you just reload the board afterward and kick their teeth in.
So what stops a player from conceding during turn 6 when it's clear they are gonna lose? Or simply to prevent the other guy from gaining 2 cubes instead of 1? Or to cut your own losses during any point of the game?
I mean, it must be quite a bit swingy for there to be options against losing after every turn. Or a huge amount of cards, or just some binary mechanics, etc. Otherwise there's no incentive to ever finish a game, let alone risk more cubes by snapping.
At least this is the impression without playing the game. Feel free to contradict me with some examples if possible :)
It's completely intended that you can "cut your losses" at any point you see fit. It's actually one of the issues with snapping - you might scare your opponent away and only get 1 cube - whereas not snapping could win you two cubes instead. It's all part of the mind games
Can you do a more or less thorough comparison between that game and HS regarding stuff like: amount of luck needed to win a game, prevalence of random things, prevalence of controlled randomness, swinginess of turns/plays, how much skill matters, whether the game provides enough room for player skill to flourish rather than cutting it down like in HS, how they plan to deal with cards clutter in the future, etc.
And most importantly, how far/close is it to a gacha game and others that like to pray on people's weakness and whales (see the diablo immortal videos of some people where everything they are doing is explained in detail). I.e. how much pay-to-win is/will the game be?
Thanks!
I haven't played Hearthstone in a long time, but I'll give it a try - to add onto what Cleef2 already said.
1. The game currently doesn't have any loot boxes at all. You get new cards by using in-game currency to upgrade your existing cards. This is too confusing to explain in detail. Just suffice to say - the way you get new cards is by upgrading your existing cards. Note - upgrading cards is purely cosmetic. It doesn't change the function at all. This is clearly very different from HS. However, there is also RNG as to exactly which card you get when you get a new one, so that part is pretty similar to HS.
2. As your collection level increases, you progress through certain pools of cards. Up to Collection level 214, you will slowly collect all of the cards from "Pool 1." This is sort of like a starter collection. Everyone gets the cards in a different order from each other, but everyone also has exactly the same collection when they hit level 214. So, the only "P2W" aspect there is how fast you get to the break points between card pools. After Pool 1, though, the progression slows down, and it gets harder to acquire specific cards. Currently, there is no crafting system, so you just have to keep playing until the RNG is on your side and you get the card(s) you want.
3. For gameplay, the games are TONS faster than HS games, and it's not possible to get trapped in a control match that lasts for 30 minutes. The longest game you will ever play in Snap is probably about 5 minutes.
4. In terms of RNG in the gameplay, there really isn't that much. As Cleef said, most of the RNG comes from which locations happen to spawn in for each game. Some will work well for your deck and others won't. If you play Discard, only one of the discards is targeted to a specific metric (it discards your highest cost card), so there is a lot of RNG in that deck - whether you get the correct discard or not. Otherwise, the game's RNG is mostly from the locations and not from the cards or the players.
5. Player skill - this matters for sure. I find myself thinking pretty hard sometimes about my best play in a specific situation. The fun part is that it usually comes down to trying to predict what my opponent is going to do. At bottom, Snap is largely a mind-game against your opponent - trying to figure out how they plan to win, and then trying to outmaneuver them.
6. Swingyness - This is hard to say exactly, as a comparison to HS. Sometimes, you just draw crap and your opponent draws like a god. However, in those cases, you can just "peace out," and have a minimal loss of ranking (usually just 1 "cube." I'll explain cubes below). That being said, the game is almost never decided until the cards flip on the last turn (turn 6). I've lost games I was expecting to win, and I've won games I was expecting to lose. So, yeah - a lot of games aren't decided until right at the end. I'm pretty sure that doesn't count as swingy, but I could be wrong.
7. Cubes - Each game starts with one cube at stake. If you win, you would gain 1 cube and if you lose, you lose 1. In reality, if the game goes to the end, you never gain or lose less than 2 cubes, because the "pot" doubles at the final turn. But if either player "Retreats" before the final turn ends, they will only lose 1 cube and their opponent will gain 1 cube. EXCEPT - if you are confident of winning the game, you can "snap" your opponent and the cubes will double when that turn ends (going from 1 to 2 or from 2 to 4). If both players snap and stay to the end, the game is worth 8 cubes. So, each game brings the possibility of gaining or losing either 1, 2, 4, or 8 cubes, depending if either or both players snap (or if one of them retreats before the end).
What does having lived in the Philippines have to do with getting into the beta?
They just released the beta in the Philippines a few days ago
Indeed, I said Open Beta on purpose. The game is released in the Philippines region only, in Open Beta. Anyone in the Philippines who has a Google Play account set to the Philippines as their country (or presumably the same for iOS) can download and play the game. So, therefore, I've downloaded and am playing the game.
I've lived in the Philippines for a long time (though I'm actually American). Long story short, this means I was able to get into the open beta.
If you guys want to ask anything about my experience so far, feel free!
Note - Marvel Snap has been released to Open Beta in the Philippines only, so no beta invite is needed here. Any other country still requires an invitation to the closed beta.
I've played quite a bit of Marvel Snap (in the beta) at this point, and I can say this - it's a VERY good game.
There are some definite issues with how you progress your collection and acquire cards. And there are still some bugs with matches crashing for no reason and things like that. One hopes all of this will be addressed before launch.
But regarding the actual game-play, it's a ton of fun. Every game feels unique and fresh. Player decisions matter - the depth of gameplay is impressive. I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of how to play optimally. And there are lots of viable options for making a deck that works well.
OK, I think I wasn't grasping how Jhin works. I understand now.
But here's my take on this idea- Annie is kinda bad. So, why advertise immediately to your opponent that you're all-out face aggro? Especially since Annie isn't really that good anyways?
I started with 3x Katarina instead, but with the burn aggro package. Then I realized that I could get more early aggression and tempo by dropping to 1x Katarina (with 1x Jhin).
But at that point, I figured Katarina still looks pretty aggro, and there's only 1 of her anyways, so why not disguise it a bit? So now I've landed on 1x Vladimir and 1x Jhin as my champs.
You need to explain this better. I have no idea how you are getting five different aggressive 1-drops with skills and four 2-drops with skills as well.
The only 1-drop with a skill that I see is demolitionist. 2-drops, also don't see many of them there either.
Nagakabouros looks flipping insane as a finisher. If he comes down and the opponent doesn't have a kill, silence, or stun immediately ready, it's just game over. And in this case, quicksand won't cut it. Opponent would have to have a minimum of 4 chump blockers to avoid dying, and all of those blockers would be toast after the attack.
These are completely normal stats, as far as what I've been seeing for the last few months. Especially Lurk. It's always been around 51 or 52% at best.
Lulu/Fizz is a version of Yordles in Arms. It's had a similar winrate to that for a long time as well.
I've told you for a long time that spiders is not actually very good, and it's not. Pirates is doing better, but also not that great (and has a very low playrate).
In short, nothing surprising here for me.
Maybe the difference is that you stopped looking at the Mobalytics stats page, which has always been a very inaccurate picture of the actual meta?
I'm much further along than most anyone who would be reading this, so here is a list of the best cards that most new players should have before too long. These are just the best early cards in terms of raw power level and utility:
Whatever else you are doing with your deck, you should have several of these cards in it, if you are a new player. And some of these cards are even still used when you get to Pool 3 decks.
Now that we're past the first 24 hours of the expansion, it's clear that the meta is pretty wide open. Lots of viable decks, though Vayne and Seraphine have made the biggest impact.
A version of Pirates is still strong. Fiora Pantheon and Jhinnie are both still strong. Somewhere between 5 and 10 new Vayne decks, and two different Seraphine decks are strong.
So yeah, feel free to keep away if you want, but it's pretty crazy out there. And frostbite is super viable currently (due to all the Tumbling), making Freljord actually good.
My first impression was that this whole package looks really good. I think you spelled it better than I could have done, though.
I've played a lot of pirates, and I'm not sad to see it knocked down a notch. However, it's probably a mistake to think that this kills the deck. That deck always finds a way to be relevant (at least in lower ranks), regardless of the nerfs that target it.
Swain is going to be terrifying.
Fiora is going to find a way to break the game.
If their goal was to completely shift the entire meta, I think they accomplished that.
It will take you some time to learn how to play around The Ruination, but it's very doable with just about any deck.
One of the key skills in the game is knowing when to just say, "Nope, I'm good." And then not play anything else onto the board. This forces them to either tap below 9 mana to respond to your board, or else just lose their turn and face your open-attack. (Open attack is when you attack immediately at the open of your turn with the attack token). It's actually quite awkward to find a good time to play Ruination (if you're the one playing it) - you have to kill enough things to make it worth it, but you also have to do it when your opponent doesn't have much mana or cards left. This is why the Ruination player will often "open pass" on his attack turn - he's trying to get you to play an additional unit into his Ruination. It's almost always correct in that situation to just say, "OK, let's just skip this turn then," and then end the turn and Open Attack into them.
Bottom line - the way you beat control decks who have The Ruination is to force them to have to use mana and go below 9 mana, so they cannot use it anymore. Or else force them to use it by threatening lethal damage, leaving them very little mana to do anything else on that turn. Then you just reload the board afterward and kick their teeth in.
It's completely intended that you can "cut your losses" at any point you see fit. It's actually one of the issues with snapping - you might scare your opponent away and only get 1 cube - whereas not snapping could win you two cubes instead. It's all part of the mind games
This cannot be correct. Its stats, cost, and effect are all identical to Kazar, who already exists in game.
I haven't played Hearthstone in a long time, but I'll give it a try - to add onto what Cleef2 already said.
1. The game currently doesn't have any loot boxes at all. You get new cards by using in-game currency to upgrade your existing cards. This is too confusing to explain in detail. Just suffice to say - the way you get new cards is by upgrading your existing cards. Note - upgrading cards is purely cosmetic. It doesn't change the function at all. This is clearly very different from HS. However, there is also RNG as to exactly which card you get when you get a new one, so that part is pretty similar to HS.
2. As your collection level increases, you progress through certain pools of cards. Up to Collection level 214, you will slowly collect all of the cards from "Pool 1." This is sort of like a starter collection. Everyone gets the cards in a different order from each other, but everyone also has exactly the same collection when they hit level 214. So, the only "P2W" aspect there is how fast you get to the break points between card pools. After Pool 1, though, the progression slows down, and it gets harder to acquire specific cards. Currently, there is no crafting system, so you just have to keep playing until the RNG is on your side and you get the card(s) you want.
3. For gameplay, the games are TONS faster than HS games, and it's not possible to get trapped in a control match that lasts for 30 minutes. The longest game you will ever play in Snap is probably about 5 minutes.
4. In terms of RNG in the gameplay, there really isn't that much. As Cleef said, most of the RNG comes from which locations happen to spawn in for each game. Some will work well for your deck and others won't. If you play Discard, only one of the discards is targeted to a specific metric (it discards your highest cost card), so there is a lot of RNG in that deck - whether you get the correct discard or not. Otherwise, the game's RNG is mostly from the locations and not from the cards or the players.
5. Player skill - this matters for sure. I find myself thinking pretty hard sometimes about my best play in a specific situation. The fun part is that it usually comes down to trying to predict what my opponent is going to do. At bottom, Snap is largely a mind-game against your opponent - trying to figure out how they plan to win, and then trying to outmaneuver them.
6. Swingyness - This is hard to say exactly, as a comparison to HS. Sometimes, you just draw crap and your opponent draws like a god. However, in those cases, you can just "peace out," and have a minimal loss of ranking (usually just 1 "cube." I'll explain cubes below). That being said, the game is almost never decided until the cards flip on the last turn (turn 6). I've lost games I was expecting to win, and I've won games I was expecting to lose. So, yeah - a lot of games aren't decided until right at the end. I'm pretty sure that doesn't count as swingy, but I could be wrong.
7. Cubes - Each game starts with one cube at stake. If you win, you would gain 1 cube and if you lose, you lose 1. In reality, if the game goes to the end, you never gain or lose less than 2 cubes, because the "pot" doubles at the final turn. But if either player "Retreats" before the final turn ends, they will only lose 1 cube and their opponent will gain 1 cube. EXCEPT - if you are confident of winning the game, you can "snap" your opponent and the cubes will double when that turn ends (going from 1 to 2 or from 2 to 4). If both players snap and stay to the end, the game is worth 8 cubes. So, each game brings the possibility of gaining or losing either 1, 2, 4, or 8 cubes, depending if either or both players snap (or if one of them retreats before the end).
*Edited to add points 6 and 7.
Indeed, I said Open Beta on purpose. The game is released in the Philippines region only, in Open Beta. Anyone in the Philippines who has a Google Play account set to the Philippines as their country (or presumably the same for iOS) can download and play the game. So, therefore, I've downloaded and am playing the game.
I've lived in the Philippines for a long time (though I'm actually American). Long story short, this means I was able to get into the open beta.
If you guys want to ask anything about my experience so far, feel free!
Note - Marvel Snap has been released to Open Beta in the Philippines only, so no beta invite is needed here. Any other country still requires an invitation to the closed beta.
There is a video and link about how to do it. You can just search on youtube for Marvel Snap beta and you'll find it.
I've played quite a bit of Marvel Snap (in the beta) at this point, and I can say this - it's a VERY good game.
There are some definite issues with how you progress your collection and acquire cards. And there are still some bugs with matches crashing for no reason and things like that. One hopes all of this will be addressed before launch.
But regarding the actual game-play, it's a ton of fun. Every game feels unique and fresh. Player decisions matter - the depth of gameplay is impressive. I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of how to play optimally. And there are lots of viable options for making a deck that works well.
OK, I think I wasn't grasping how Jhin works. I understand now.
But here's my take on this idea- Annie is kinda bad. So, why advertise immediately to your opponent that you're all-out face aggro? Especially since Annie isn't really that good anyways?
I started with 3x Katarina instead, but with the burn aggro package. Then I realized that I could get more early aggression and tempo by dropping to 1x Katarina (with 1x Jhin).
But at that point, I figured Katarina still looks pretty aggro, and there's only 1 of her anyways, so why not disguise it a bit? So now I've landed on 1x Vladimir and 1x Jhin as my champs.
You need to explain this better. I have no idea how you are getting five different aggressive 1-drops with skills and four 2-drops with skills as well.
The only 1-drop with a skill that I see is demolitionist. 2-drops, also don't see many of them there either.
Literally exactly the same three deck choices (with only slight differences) for both players in the APAC finals. That's nuts.
The Celestial Trifecta is .... very concerning.
Nagakabouros looks flipping insane as a finisher. If he comes down and the opponent doesn't have a kill, silence, or stun immediately ready, it's just game over. And in this case, quicksand won't cut it. Opponent would have to have a minimum of 4 chump blockers to avoid dying, and all of those blockers would be toast after the attack.
Dare I say? It's looking like Deep might become a monster of a deck again.
Hehe.
I did notice that. I also thought it was probably a bit too soon, and also some wishful thinking as well.
The recent changes definitely shifted the meta, but the lasting impact has not been as big as people might have expected.
These are completely normal stats, as far as what I've been seeing for the last few months. Especially Lurk. It's always been around 51 or 52% at best.
Lulu/Fizz is a version of Yordles in Arms. It's had a similar winrate to that for a long time as well.
I've told you for a long time that spiders is not actually very good, and it's not. Pirates is doing better, but also not that great (and has a very low playrate).
In short, nothing surprising here for me.
Maybe the difference is that you stopped looking at the Mobalytics stats page, which has always been a very inaccurate picture of the actual meta?