Be kind to one another and smile even if someone is not so nice its a great distraction with no way of knowing how to remark what you saying have a lovely day and smiling LOL!!
KIMBERLY
TV REALITY MOM
===============================
http://www.tcgunity.net/a-magic-player-reviews-hearthstone/
March 23, 2016
Hearthstone, Magic The Gathering, Trading Card Games
Previously this month we’ve released an article on Magic the Gathering online and Hearthstone,
in which we’ve listed major reasons why you should try both of them.
Now it’s time to take a closer look at how HS is perceived by a Magic
the gathering player.
Hearthstone, in
case you’ve been living under one and haven’t gotten the word, is the
electronic trading card game from Blizzard. I’ve been hearing buzz about
it around Magic: The Gathering circles for months. I could only hold
off on the Kool-Aid for so long, so I snagged a copy on my LG Tablet.
That was a week ago. Today, I finally shuffled out of my bedroom. My
family hazily recognized me. I’d lost weight. My inbox was full of
increasingly panicky emails from the class of people with standards low
enough to call me a friend, inquiring as to my health and alleged
sanity. So yeah, the game’s kind of addicting.
So far I’ve built a deck sufficient to gain the rank of
“Shieldbearer” in ranked play. I have no idea if that’s par for the
course, but I’m pretty happy with it considering this was a free
download and everything I’ve achieved so far has been from grinding for
in-game gold.But I’m here to visit the land of Hearthstone and report back to the land of M:TG. So, for Magic players wondering what the fuss is about, how does Hearthstone stack up?
Cons:
- Electronic only. That’s even a plus to some of you, but for me, nothing replaces an actual physical object I can buy and hold and store and leave in my will.
- It is, indeed, a far smaller and simpler game than Magic. There’s really no getting around it, it was designed that way.
- It’s also pretty linear in gameplay. There’s no playing on another opponent’s turn, no permanents on the field that don’t have legs, and no losing case except running out of life. Most of your decisions will involve what to do with the guys on the field. At times it feels more like chess than a card game.
From
the screenshots, you might be wondering if there’s a limit to the size
of your board, and you’re correct. The limit is seven. Want more than
seven permanents at once? Too bad. Wait until something dies so the card
you’re holding can inherit that slot. You’re limited to ten mana, for
that manner, which cuts into the scale of card strength as well.
Pros:
- The biggest difference is the way mana is handled. In Hearthstone, all mana spends the same, and you don’t need land to get it. Instead, you automatically get assigned a mana unit each turn, up to a maximum of ten. Kiss mana screw goodbye!
- However, deck variety comes from the heroes. There’s nine heroes to play, and they each have specific cards that only they can pack into a deck. So instead of five colors of mana for different aspects of strategy, you have strategy for nine heroes.
- The next biggest difference is deck construction. You can only have two of each card, maximum, and 30 cards in a deck, no more, no less. Since mana is handled outside the deck, however, this means your whole deck is SPELLS! No more mana flood either – every card you draw is gas, gas, gas, GAS! At a minimum you will have 15 different spells in your deck, and the game’s pace guarantees you’ll see more of them. So there’s more flexibility, more design space in building a deck, and more variety in playing it.
- It’s definitely more casual. This makes Hearthstone suited well to break-time play. Games are over in five minutes, the time it takes just one typical Magic player to activate Sensei’s Divining Top.
- Permanents can interact directly with each other. This is the chess-like aspect. Several turns can be burned up with the players’ guys grappling for control of the field, with neither player losing a drop of blood in the process.
- It’s got a huge boost in creativity. Instead of being tethered to paper cards, Hearthstone embraces its electronic medium by having each card be its own little object doing un-card-like things. They explode and turn into something else when you cast them, summon more cards, spawn their own effects, and all of this is handled in-game so you don’t have to remember all the triggers. They mutate and get into their own fights and run around the board and yell stuff.
- The game’s just oozing with personality. The battlefields are all interactive with animated doodads to play with while you’re bored waiting for your opponent to quit durdling around and cast something.
- While you can certainly spend money in-game, you can enjoy quite a bit without paying a shekel. This warms my thrifty, leathery, hedonistic heart, because Magic: the Gathering is already more than capable of eating all my recreational income. The main difference with Hearthstone is you have to grind a lot of time into the game to make progress, or you can break down and spend a few bucks to get a full collection right now.
Hearthstone compared to MTGO / DotP:
I HATE having to even say it, but one last pro is that Hearthstone is more stable than the equivalent MTG electronic game. I know I’m not Wolf Blitzer breaking the news to you here that Wizards of the Coast has a record for managing its digital products very near that of Pol Pot managing a Socialist revolution. Half the reason I’m writing this is because I tried Duels of the Planeswalkers on my Android LG pad – newly unboxed just this month, mind you – only to get through the tutorial and then have it die screaming every time I tried to even access anything else on the menu screen. I researched it online, found only dozens of others crying about the same problem with no answers, and uninstalled it in disgust. Hearthstone at least runs. Blizzard knows their software.Hearthstone in a Magic: The Gathering frame:
Now, I trust that both Blizzard Entertainment and Hasbro Incorporated
are big companies and can decide for themselves what’s grounds for
courtroom disputes. But there’s no getting around it, a whoooooole lot
of Hearthstone’s gameplay gizzards are lifted from other TCGs with the
serial numbers filed off.
Hero – Commander. Creature – minion. Lightning Bolt – uh, Lightning Bolt, a one-mana spell that does three damage. Stealth – hexproof. Charge – haste. Deathrattle – “when dies” trigger. Windfury – double-strike. Counterspell – uh, Counterspell, playable by the Mage class, except that it’s done as a secret which triggers when the opponent does something, the closest the game has to an “instant” class of cards. Poison – deathtouch. No, the creature (oops, I mean minion) doesn’t have infect, it just kills whatever it tangled with, no matter how outclassed. There’s even a three mana spell playable by the Mage that lets her draw two cards. No, it’s called Arcane Intellect, not Divination. What, did you think this was Magic: the Gathering or something?
Nevertheless, Blizzards has undeniably created a unique and original game. You could make a role-playing game and have goblins in it and not get sued by Hasbro for infringing on Dungeons & Dragons, after all, so I guess you can have a one-mana card that deals two damage to two different targets and it’s legit as long as you call it Forked Lightning and not Forked Bolt. I am convinced we would have had Hearthstone anyway even if there were no Magic: the Gathering. There’s quite a few cards obviously named as a shout-out to other TCGs, with different effects. There’s even shout-outs to past Blizzard titles such as Starcraft and Diablo.
So in final summation – there’s comparisons to be drawn between MTG and Hearthstone, even broadly invited ones, but Hearthstone is still very much able to stand on its own two feet. They’re different things to play for different reasons, and entirely unique, fun experiences.
My humble little decklist:
Just to show I’ve made my bones, I’ve settled on the Shaman as my
favorite hero and crafted the below monstrosity. I know it’s hilarious,
but give me a break, it’s my first week.
- 2x Ancestral Healing
- 2x Totemic Might
- 1x Earth Shock
- 2x Forked Lightning
- 1x Frost Shock
- 2x Lightning Bolt
- 1x Rockbiter Weapon
- 1x Ancestral Knowledge
- 1x Dire Wolf Alpha
- 2x Flametongue Totem
- 2x Totem Golem
- 2x Vitality Totem
- 2x Hex
- 1x Lightning Storm
- 2x Mana Tide Totem
- 2x Raid Leader
- 2x Tuskarr Totemic
- 1x Bloodlust
- 1x Thunder Bluff Valiant
Get your opponent to barf out their whole hand while you hold back your trumps until you need them. Maybe that’s the strategy with every deck, I dunno.
Until next time, keep your screw on the ball.
No comments:
Post a Comment