Watch Blizzard's special Hearthstone announcement here!
Blizzard is expected to make a special announcement for its hit CCG game, Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft. So let's pull up a chair by the hearth to find out what they have planned for the game.
Blizzard Entertainment has announced a special Hearthstone announcement will be taking place today, and since the majority of the Shacknews staff is helplessly addicted to the collectible-card game, we’re all waiting with bated breath to hear what they’re preparing to announce.
The event is kicking off at 2:30pm PT at the Folsom Street Foundry in San Francisco, CA where, in addition to today’s announcement, a few “very special” Hearthstone matches will be taking place as well as opportunities to talk with developers.
Blizzard has been teasing today’s announcement for a few weeks now, with the latest tease having fans speculating we’ll see a new card type, called Champion. We’ve also seen Blizzard hint at the Argent Tournament in the past, so both of these teases could coincide with one another.
Let’s pull up a chair by the hearth and see what Blizzard has to share today.
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replyDaniel Perez posted a new article, Watch Blizzard's special Hearthstone announcement here!
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Pleaseeeee new cards and not another adventure.
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T minus 30 Minutes!
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The Grand Tournament.
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Awesome! 130 new cards... New card types. Hyped!!
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Of the new cards revealed, the only one that seems good is Frost Giant. I like that card in Warrior mostly. The other classes don't use their hero powers enough or don't want to play 8/8s ever.
I guess Lock and Load could be useful, but it's one of those cards that's hard to judge until you use it. There's a lot of value to be had, but the random cards could prove worthless.
Maiden of the Lake and the Mage dragon look awful to me.
The Pirate legendary *could* be good, but it depends on there being enough good Pirate cards added to justify a deck. You need two pirates on the board for it to become mana efficient, and that's a harder condition to satisfy than it sounds like.-
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I'm just looking at : http://www.hearthpwn.com/
They have 4 shaman cards listed.-
Ah, thanks.
I like the 2 mana 3/4 1 overload card.
The 4 mana 4/4 that gets buffed for friendly totems is really bad. If you have one or two totems on the board on turn-4, then you're already behind, and a 5/5 or a 6/6 isn't going to help you. This card is worse than Fireguard Destroyer.
Not sure about the Tuskarr Totemic. Seems weak to me.
I'm interested in the 5 mana inspire card that give your totems +2 attack, but it's not nearly as good as Quartermaster. It's not even close.-
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If you get a Flametongue or Manatide, then it becomes very good. There's a 2/7 chance of that outcome.
I disagree with what you're saying about Shaman vs. midrange or control. Shaman takes on the role of aggro/tempo against slower decks. They need to start pressuring early, which means they need to play a minion every turn starting on turn 2. Using hero power is a huge loss in tempo. Two totems and a 6/6 on turn 4 isn't very hard for any worthwhile deck to handle either.-
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The reason I said you're even or ahead if you have two totems on board by turn 4 is because the totems stuck - that implies your opponent had a weaker start than you. Against a shaman midrange & control warrior decks will want to keep the board clear, and especially keep totems off of it since Shaman's are critically dependent on them to regain the board.
If they had the better start, then they should have used their 1/2 drop to clear your totems. And since you had a weak start that means you're likely sitting on a weapon/flametongue/fire ele/hex/etc. to easily deal with their impending plays.
Control priest generally doesn't care, but you just want to grind him out anyway.
Also, Totem Golem is a Totem (does this mean Tuskarr can summon it, too?), so he could have been your turn 2 play. A 3/4 for 2+1 is decently strong.
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I can only see a few situations in which two totems are left on the board with no response. I think \he unlikelihood of this occurring speaks to how bad the Dranei Totemcarver is, but even in the best possible scenario where you do get it out as a 6/6, I don't think it's that good.
Let's imagine a Handlock hero powers twice. He's probably ahead of you still unless you have a card in hand to deal with his turn four threat (Earth Shock, BGH, Hex). His threat will be scarier than your 6/6 and he's more likely to have it on hand.
A Warrior who hero powers twice will be able to Shield Slam a 6/6 and play another card in the same turn.
If you go first and a Paladin hero powers twice, he would could have a board with two recruits and have dealt one damage to one of your totems. That's enough power on the board to kill your 6/6 with a Truesilver.
The only control match-up where your opponent only used his hero power is against a Priest. You'd have a big lead then.
The point is when you're playing Shaman you don't want to be using your hero power in the early stages of the game. It won't get you board control, which you despearately need. Shaman has very poor comeback potential, so beating your opponent in value has to be the priority from the start.-
You don't want to be using your hero power early, but you want to be using your hero power on almost every turn starting at 4 unless there's a better tempo play or you have 4 totems on board.
At which point this is a turn 6 play if you've had a decent start and don't need to fire else, or a turn 4 play if you're looking at a bad draw.
Totem synergies are neat and might help out a lot. The fact that they're adding in a totem minion might indicate they're going beyond, too, which could open up more possibilities.-
The only time I'm happy using my hero power in the early stages of the game is on turn 4 if I've used Feral Spirits. Otherwise, I generally feel behind.
A solid opening might look like this:
Zombie Chow -> Haunted Creeper -> Feral Spirit -> Totem/Creeper -> Drake/Belcher/Loatheb -> Fire Elemental
If I don't play Feral Spirits, then I want to play Mana Tide or a Flametongue instead, and a Piloted Shredder on turn 4.
I want totems to be good, but right now they are garbage. I don't see any of these new cards making me want to use my hero power all that much.
As always, we'll see when we get to play with the cards.
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Provided you don't get Polymorph/Hex'd, Effigy could be an incredible play with a high-mana card.
http://i.imgur.com/djnzqBi.jpg-
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Except this calls a minion immediately. So if you play it with Thaurissan and it gets taken out immediately, you potentially get a 6-mana powerhouse.
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I mean, you try to play around duplicate by killing a shitty minion first. You would play around this card the same way.
Often times secrets get a lot of value when your opponent guesses wrong and plays around it incorrectly. Having multiples that you play around the same way seems somewhat counterproductive. -
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This stream presentation has been god awful. Blizzard dropped the ball on the streaming so far.
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Arena just got worse. A random pack is pretty much the worst option that fucks over everyone instead of letting people pick their pack or giving them just the new packs.
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Did they announce random packs for arena?
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Yep. Quietly on their blog: http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/blog/19819218/
This is pretty terrible for just about everyone and the problem will only get worse with time. I would rather them do a special arena reward pack which is just pulled from the entire collection although this ends up being the same thing in the end. Ideally it would just be a token system to buy packs in the store.-
I guess it's better than all GvG.. my guess is they don't have time to work up a UI for it and decided to keep it simple
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I don't understand how this team is still so understaffed that they can't ship these features. They've had a year or more to plan for this. The same goes for deckslots or improving the ladder system.
For how much money this game generates, they improve it at a glacial pace. It's really disheartening. The one thing they do well is come out with new cards semi-regularly.-
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They should take one of the billions of dollars the game is making and hire a couple dudes.
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Yeah, that's a good point. They have a history of doing a really poor job with this kind of stuff though. StarCraft II shipped with a lack of basic features like chat rooms. Five years after its release and you still can't watch live pro games like you could in Dota 2 from the early beta.
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Glacial pace? I'd say their expansion content has been perfectly timed. Neither too fast nor too slow.
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"The one thing they do well is come out with new cards semi-regularly."
I'm talking about improving the platform. The only significant feature they've added to the game in the 18 months since release is the spectate mode.
The game still doesn't have basic features like replays or even a way to view match history.-
I'm not good at reading.
Yeah the lack of other features has been surprised. I'd love for their to be web browser viewable replays. Similar-ish to the WoW/D3 armory. I mean why not?
They have released ipad, android tablet, iphone, and android phone (I think?) support. That's kinda super major. Doing a good job on the phone version is no small feat! -
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I don't see how it's better for new players than letting them pick which pack they want.
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