Hearthstone - Big Game Hunter

This is one of those cards that has saved my behind on a few occasions.  Or at least bought me an extra round or two until my demise.  So it's got a spot in several of my decks as fast solution to the other player dropping a big bad right when you don't need it.

The overall goal is to hold on to this guy until he's needed.  Don't be tempted to drop him down when his Battlecry is useless, even though he's a decent price for a 4/2.  Keep him in your hand for just the right moment to eliminate a large or pumped up minion that will be causing you much trouble the next round.

He's not a fit for every deck as some already have built in solutions for powerful minions in their class cards.  Although sometimes he may be better cost wise as he takes out the target and is still a 4/2 on your side of the table afterwards. 

One good combo for this card is the Youthful Brewmaster.  Allowing you to pull the Big Game Hunter back into your hand for a second hit.  With their low mana costs you could drop him twice in a round and really knock the wind out of your opponents sails.  There are other cards that pull your minions back into your hand but not at this low of a cost.

Hearthstone my early review

Hearthstone is an online collectible card game put out by Blizzard Entertainment.  It is based off of the World of Warcraft world uses many of the well known NPCs, creatures and abilities from the setting.  It is accessible as free to play through their battle.net set up. 

This is my quick review of the game after playing it for a week or two.  I've been reading up on various sites, play advice and reading the forums in various communities about it as well.  Going to simply break it down to the good and bad that I see in it's design or implementation along with some final notes at the end.

The Good

Basic set for free almost all right up front.  You start with all the basic 'any class' cards and with the starting cards for the Mage class.  Other classes are earned by beating either the computer in practice mode or by beating other players.  When you beat another class you unlock it and get their starting cards.  Then as you level your class up you unlock the rest of their cards pretty quickly.

Expert expansion set card can be gotten for free with some work.  The expansion or 'expert' cards are also available for free... with some work.  You earn gold in the game through completing missions and beating other players.  Every 100 gold gets you an expert pack.  Of course there is the option of spending real money to buy packs as well.

Great art, card layout and production values.  It's Blizzard so you know the visuals are top notch.  But they've also done a find job on card layout and the general appearance of the design.  Each card also has a 'gold' version that has some animation tossed onto it.

Disenchanting.  You can turn your old or extra cards into dust.  Any number of cards above two are useless, so you disenchant them and then use the dust provided to create the cards that you need.  The rarer the card the more dust it will cost.

The Bad

More luck than strategy at times.  An early bad draw can really just end the game for you at times.  The other player can build up to quickly, especially if they get a great hand.  I know this is standard for any card game out there but it seems to magnified even more in Hearthstone.  Granted that same luck could lead you to a comeback as well.

Mister Suitcase is alive and well.  The rare, epic and legendary cards usually have more punch to them than most of the common cards.  This leads to the sad fact that he who can buy the most packs has a better chance of making a kick ass deck.  Common cards and common sense still apply in construction but those epics can be the big bullets that drop your opponent into oblivion. 

30 card decks and two card limits cut down strategy. This is where the game sort of falls down and it also leads to the first bad point I mentioned.  Small decks and small card limits lead to strategy not really forming up as much as it should.

No trading, probably to make enchanting more useful.  Card trading is not possible.  I assume this is for two reasons.  First it makes it hard for the 'gold seller' types to move in with bots and start selling rares for actual cash.  Second is to make disenchanting more important.  But it would be nice to be able to swap cards with friends.

Final Notes

I still find it a fun game.  There are lots of odd ball card affects and neat ways to pull things off in there.  It's one of the better one on one card games that I've played to be honest.  Although it still doesn't break into my own personal 'holy trinity' of CCG's (Doomtown, Kult, Vampire: The Eternal Struggle).  Some of that is probably my taste in multiplayer games.

Would definitely recommend that people give it a shot.  After all it's free to get into and if you don't want to go all out cash wise you don't have to. 

WoW - Back to the old game

Due to my work schedule, my kids and just life in general I haven't been able to make much time to do any tabletop role-playing lately.  So to give myself a bit of escapism I've fired World of Warcraft back up after about a year and a half away.  Yes I know there are other MMORPGs out there on the market but WoW is the one I know how to play and I already have quite a few characters built up and gold accumulated in their pocketbooks. 

Been playing more Horde this time around over on the Misha server.  Doing a lot of battlegrounds again, racking up some honor kills.  If anyone is interested the toon I've been using over there is Leadwood and here is a link to his Armory page:

Leadwood - Blood Elf Hunter

Probably be putting up some new articles for it as well here soon.  Mixed in with some articles for regular rpgs as well. 

BG woes... a little look at Arathi Basin tactics.

Going against the grain, a look at the commonly held tactics used in Arathi Basin.

Arathi Basin has always been one of my favorite battlegrounds. You are forced to spread out and communicate in order to succeed. Now there are some stead fast tactics that everyone seems to preach in there. Things that you must do in order to win, otherwise you fail 'u lozer noob'. Yeah well pardon me while I disagree with a few of them.

You must have the Blacksmith in order to win. Bullshit, complete and total bullshit at that. I've had several wins where we don't control it. Many times holding the blacksmith can make you lose instead usually from simple mistakes do to how important people think it is. Teams will over defend leaving to few to go around and take other nodes or they spend everything they have trying to take it. Don't get me wrong it's nice to have with a wonderful tactical position but it's not worth fighting for it while you lose everything else. So if you don't have it, don't worry. Hold onto whatever other nodes you have and keep an eye just in case the opportunity to take it arises.

The Gold Mine is next to useless. Yeah right, only three ways to get at it (each road in and the drop down) which makes it way easier to defend than the blacksmith. You may not have the ability to see the battleground like you can at other points but if communication is going well you don't need to. Not to mention the reputation of the place makes most folks try for other nodes so defenders usually see smaller attacks coming at them. Not to mention the farm or stables can't see you coming until you are more than halfway there. I've personally sat and 'defended' the mines for entire games and never saw a single bit of combat.

You must hold your starting node (stables or farms). Again, nice to keep them, but not necessary. Also this tends to be something the enemy likes to take and hold and will devote several of their force to. So if they hit and take it with a large group then bypass and hit another of their nodes. If you get pinned in at your starting point GY then try to get around (potions to turn invisible are wonderful for this). Actually when they start pinning people in up there they tend to rush from everyplace else to help so it leaves other places lightly or completely ungaurded.

Now another thing I would like to cover isn't really a hard stead tactic but something you see people yelling ALL THE FREAKING TIME. 'Don't fight in the roads fight at the flags' yeah I'm sure you've heard that. To all those genius people I would like to ask “What do you do when you and three teammates run into four team members from the other side while on your way to nodes?”. Do you pass each other and wave nicely and let them continue on to take whatever they want. Hell no. It's a fight right then and there. Sometimes that fighting on the roads keeps them from making it to the flags to fight at. Bonus feature is if they kill you there is a pretty good chance you may rez in time to defend the node they are after, maybe even a few people short themselves now.

Well there is some tactical advice that goes against what a lot of other people tell you. Take it or leave it. Just remember no plan stay intact past the initial encounter with the enemy so be ready to flex.

BG woes... use your damn tools.

Sometimes I wonder how many people are actually using the tools available to them while fighting in a BG. Seriously to many times in Warsung Gulch have I seen someone call out 'Where are the FC's?'. Or not noticing that there is no defense at the Mine or whatever during an Arathi fight. Really? Not to mention some of the people bitching how other people are playing are the ones making these mistakes.

Minimap, Shift+M, it shows up in the lower right hand corner of your screen. Would you all fucking use it please?

See in areas where you fighting for control it will show you each point and colored to represent who has it. Blue for Alliance, red for Horde and grey for neutral. No more having to ask 'Who has the Mage Tower?' in Eye of the Storm for the flag runner. Just a quick look and you know.

Also it has a little dot for everybody on your side. Giving you and idea of where to go when you have a flag to get some defense. If you have a moment or two to spare before making your move you can mouse over the dot and get a name list of who it is. Running towards the healers is usually a good call, or calling out to one what route you will be taking once you pick up the flag. This it something foreign to some folks, it's called tactics, but I'll rant about that another time.

These dots can also change a bit. They get a little triangle pointing in the direction they are moving if the toon is in a siege engine. In Tol Borad the unmanned sieges show up on the map even. Very helpful for backing up a push to break down a wall.

In some battlegrounds, like Strand of the Ancients, it shows the gates. Along with changing their icon when they are damaged or broken through. The more you know of whats going on where you aren't the better off you are to react and change you plans.

Now it also lets you know where flag carriers are. In Eye of the Storm it shows up blank in the middle of the map and then goes to the color of which ever side is carrying it. Warsung it goes a bit different though. When somebody grabs the enemy flag it immediately shows up so you can immediately react and move into a position to help defend them. However when your flag is grabbed by the enemy they get a short grace period before showing up on the map. Not to long maybe twenty seconds or so but it gives them time to get a bit of a sneaky head start. But soon enough they pop up on the mini and you can go after them.

So in the end the minimap is a damn good and very useful tool that everyone has. It would be an act of stupidity to not use it actually. So hit that shift + M and pull it up and keep a passing eye on it. Nothing about it will hurt you and all it can do is help.

BG woes part two

Okay so now I think I can figure out why the BOA gear is creating a worse situation in the battlegrounds than the old twink folks used to.

I've seen a lot of people over the time I've been playing remark that the lower level BGs are more enjoyable. So a lot of folks want to stay around that level and keep playing them. Now in the old way you just stopped questing and did only PvP since you gathered no xp. Well some folks whould have their high end guildmates run them through dungeons over and over getting all the powerful gear drops. They would also farm gold with their higher levels and send it to their pvp toon to buy the best gear with. Then once they hit around level 18 they stopped doing anything to gain xp. Maxed out great gear for that level which is something most casual players don't have. This is called Twinking.

People started complaining about this because it made it harder for anybody who doesn't have a guild backing them to put together a toon that compete. So after a while Bliz did two things to try and fix this. First they made PvP grant xp. Second they allowed for people to xp lock their toons so they won't level up but they would also be put in special BGs where you fight only other level locked opponents.

Up until this point twinkers always claimed they liked to fight other twinks and didn't go into BG's just to kill all the ungeared noobs. So now this give them their wish. But guess what? Those BGs were nearly always empty. People weren't signing up to fight in them with their twinks. Why? Because fighting other twinks is hard and they really just wanted to go gank noobs.

The option left to them is making a toon, gearing them out and then twinking for only a level or two before they more out of that range. Then if they want to fight that again they have to make another toon, gear them out again and wash rinse repeat. This takes work over and over for each toon.

Then with WotLK come heirlooms. They adjust to the level of whatever toon they go on and can be traded back and forth between your toons since they don't soulbond. So now this gives them a new option. They work their high level toons quite a bit and buy the heirlooms and send it to their toon. They gear up and go right into the BGs (some of it being in gear slots that you can't get anything for at that level otherwise) and twink until they level out. Then they make a new toon and send all the gear to that one via the good ole mailbox. You see that? They only have to work for that gear one time. It's become easy.

End result is that now there are more twinks ever before. Which isn't the original goal for the heirlooms but it's the way they are being used.

So now if you want to try out battlegrounds you had better level to 85 and grind some instances for a while. That way your pvp toon can at least survive. Want to play a bit on another server? Might as well forget about doing the BGs until you max out a toon first.

Anyways... I'll stop now.

BG woes....

I think who ever at Blizzard thought it was a good idea to drop he graveyard in Warsung Gulch to the level it's at now needs to be fired. Seriously this has really broke that BG. Most of the battles I've been in have ended up as a GY camp. The side with the most BOA's on their toons pushes the other team back and blocks them in. This is really bad on the lower level BG's.

So unless you have an 85 that has farmed up plenty of points to buy your lower level toon all of the BOA's don't even bother going into a random. Seriously this is to the point of being worse than when twinked out toons were the problem.

BOA's basically recreated the twinks all over again but at least before when there was an attempted camp on the GY you had another way or two out. Either back into the keep and down the tunnel or down the ramp on the far side. Now there is one way out of the GY and that's back into the campers.

Yeah. So here lately when my random BG pops up Warsung Gulch I simply afk out and take the fifteen minute cowardice debuff and wait. They've taken one of the best, and well built battle grounds and screwed it up with one stroke.

Good job Blizzard.....