Legends of Runeterra
I finally decided to test Runeterra
I'm a little lost because there's a lot of stuff to experiment with. The game has a bunch of different modes and there's an exp based progression system that rewards you constantly for just playing the game. I spent this entire afternoon just playing against the A.I. to understand how some of the mechanics work and it was pretty simple to get through the Prologue rewards. The F2P factor is as good as people constantly say. After finishing the tutorial i was really surprised with the fact that all three decks were given to me for free. It seems that i will gain more free stuff in one week of playing Runeterra than the amount of free stuff i got from HS in about three and a half years.
The game has some really cool level up animations for each champion and for some of their spells. It isn't as complicated as i thought it would be but i'm still getting used to the whole blocking thing. HS was the first competitive card game i played so i got used to playing blockers (taunts) during my turn and praying that my opponent has no way of getting through them. It adds another layer of complexity because i need to determine which units to sacrifice, if i should block or just let damage get through to protect valuable units and i need to consider spells as well. The only A.I. opponent i had some trouble with was a Shen/Karma deck that had quite a few barrier spells and lifesteal and that caught me off guard during my attacking phase. Other than that, the A.I. opponents are extremely simple to deal with for someone with previous card game experience but they are still a great source of information before diving into the actual competition. I don't know if the basic free decks are good enough for the PvP experience though.
I still don't know if i will keep playing the game but i'm going to need some weeks playing it to see if it catches my interest permanently. It's pretty hard to play two online games like these simultaneously and i already put a lot of time and money into Hearthstone. What is going to be a big factor is the variety of decks (a good balance between aggro, midrange, combo and control) and predictability of matchs. The excessive RNG in HS pisses me off a lot but it's also the thing that hooked me to the game in the first place since i really like games with random generation (mostly roguelikes/rogue-lites but games like Terraria as well). Is there any other site besides this one that provides good information about decks? Or a good content creator that can provide information and help me learn more about the game?
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I'm a little lost because there's a lot of stuff to experiment with. The game has a bunch of different modes and there's an exp based progression system that rewards you constantly for just playing the game. I spent this entire afternoon just playing against the A.I. to understand how some of the mechanics work and it was pretty simple to get through the Prologue rewards. The F2P factor is as good as people constantly say. After finishing the tutorial i was really surprised with the fact that all three decks were given to me for free. It seems that i will gain more free stuff in one week of playing Runeterra than the amount of free stuff i got from HS in about three and a half years.
The game has some really cool level up animations for each champion and for some of their spells. It isn't as complicated as i thought it would be but i'm still getting used to the whole blocking thing. HS was the first competitive card game i played so i got used to playing blockers (taunts) during my turn and praying that my opponent has no way of getting through them. It adds another layer of complexity because i need to determine which units to sacrifice, if i should block or just let damage get through to protect valuable units and i need to consider spells as well. The only A.I. opponent i had some trouble with was a Shen/Karma deck that had quite a few barrier spells and lifesteal and that caught me off guard during my attacking phase. Other than that, the A.I. opponents are extremely simple to deal with for someone with previous card game experience but they are still a great source of information before diving into the actual competition. I don't know if the basic free decks are good enough for the PvP experience though.
I still don't know if i will keep playing the game but i'm going to need some weeks playing it to see if it catches my interest permanently. It's pretty hard to play two online games like these simultaneously and i already put a lot of time and money into Hearthstone. What is going to be a big factor is the variety of decks (a good balance between aggro, midrange, combo and control) and predictability of matchs. The excessive RNG in HS pisses me off a lot but it's also the thing that hooked me to the game in the first place since i really like games with random generation (mostly roguelikes/rogue-lites but games like Terraria as well). Is there any other site besides this one that provides good information about decks? Or a good content creator that can provide information and help me learn more about the game?
"True mastery takes dedication."
Oh boy -- where you begin?
Good luck!
Oh man, are you in for a treat. This game is fantastic, and it clobbers hearthstone pretty hard when it comes to player decisions actually mattering.
So far, the variety of viable decks is pretty high. The devs aim for about 30 competitive decks at any given time. Even when one or two decks are clearly the strongest, there are still many other viable decks.
As for budget decks, there is a great one with Elise that I'm using now in platinum. Link here
https://lorguardian.com/app/deck?metaId=5f71f97556a7347c1e01b243
Just a small tip: Labs is currently PvE and is not that hard. The thing is that you get your daily PvP bonus from winning those games, so it's a easy way to get some extra XP if you don't feel like playing vs other players.
It amounts to 800 XP (1st win), 400 XP (2nd win) etc. on your road maps (with the 50 % boost).
First of all, welcome to Runeterra!
The quality of animations and the amount of unique interactions between cards are amazing indeed.
You've already identified the deceptive simplicity of blocking: you definitely shouldn't aim to prevent all damage to your Nexus at the cost of your own board (=win condition). Another similar decision-making point is the timing of your attack: before you play anything to save room for spells or play more units and attack with full force (I'm personally bit of a sucker for insta-attacks). I love both aspects a lot.
I'm afraid the started decks (without any modifications at all) won't make it too far. Almost every deck is capable of winning games if played correctly but the power level of starters isn't the highest.
All four strategies have viable decks in the current meta. Riot also constantly balances the cards to fix issues if there's any. There are some cards that have RNG in them but at least in my opinion the biggest RNG factor is the one that is inherent in all card games: drawing. If two decks have an equally good luck in that aspect, you can usually predict the winner of the match (assuming that both players also pilot the matchup correctly). Targon's Invoke Celestials are probably the biggest random generation aspect of the game currently.
I am just over 4 months of playing Legends of Runeterra. My collection is almost literally complete. And I have enough resources to complete it, if I wanted to. I just don't value the 25 copies I don't have yet (yes, 25 missing copies across all of the cards in the entire game, at 3x each).
I was never even remotely close to a complete collection in Hearthstone after playing it for 2+ years and spending money on it. In LoR I have an essentially complete collection without spending any money on cards at all. I actually did spend some money, but it was for cosmetics during a special event.
Add to this the fact that LoR also has better gameplay - it's kinda stunning that HS is still alive, honestly.
Edit - total side note about the artwork. If you right-click on any unit card, so it gets bigger, you will see a little eyeball icon under the card. Click that eyeball, and you will get a view of the full card artwork. Click again, and the text will disappear, giving you a complete, full image of that unit's art. And man, there is some really great card art in this game!
Thanks for all the responses. I'm going to step out of Hearthstone for a bit (i'll do my quests and go for Diamond 5 near the end of the month) to test Runeterra a little bit better. It's going to be a difficult month to keep up with as i'm also going to spend time on single player games (Spelunky 2, mainly). It's always a little intimidating to start over in a new online game so i'm going to take my time.
Runeterra (or any other of the popular card games) isn't going to kill Hearthstone. This is a mistake that people makes very frequently when comparing Hearthstone to other card games. HS's selling point is its extreme simplicity. It's a game designed for casual and inexperienced players. I can tell this because i'm not a card game player. HS was the first real card game i played and it was very simple to learn. Casual gamers and people playing card games for the first time are going to be extremely intimidated by the complexity of Runeterra or MtG.
I said that Runeterra isn't as complicated as i thought but this is current me. I learned a lot about card games from interacting with other players and from HS itself. If it was me from a few years ago, i definitely wouldn't have bothered going past the tutorial in Runeterra. They do a good job of explaining the basic stuff but there's a lot more to absorb. The game already has more total keywords than Hearthstone and that's a lot to decorate. It takes a lot more time and dedication and casual gamers most likely won't bother diving deeper into it without outside assistance (friends or content creators).
Hearthstone has a pretty bad economy model and that's a huge issue. It will get a full revamp in two months. Then we will see if the game is going to provide better rewards and become more accessible or if it's going to be bad and die because of it. That's what is going to kill HS. If the economy doesn't become better, it will eventually strangle itself. But, even if it dies, the casual playerbase might not feel like moving to another more complex card game.
"True mastery takes dedication."
If you read my comment again more carefully, it was almost entirely about the economy and accessibility of cards in HS. Hearthstone was also my first ever card game. I never did MTG or anything else until HS. I'm in exactly the same boat as you, in that regard. And I'm still vastly more satisfied with my experiences in LoR than in HS.
Side note - LoR does not have more keywords than HS. I counted them out a couple of months ago, and HS had at least 5-10 more, depending on whether you count the keywords that are pretty obvious what they do. Since then, LoR added more keywords, so they are probably close to even at this point. But LoR does not have more.
I counted 64 keywords in Runeterra, and only 19 in Hearthstone. There are some things like "Round start" or "At the end of your turn" which may or may not count. But there is a significantly larger number of keywords in Runeterra than in Hearthstone. Also, Runeterra is only about a year old, with only a few sets. Hearthstone has been around for roughly 6 years, and has 19 sets. So not only is there a much larger number of keywords in runeterra, they also came out a lot faster.
I have played Hearthstone, Legends of Runeterra, Mythgard, Gwent, and Magic: Arena. Every time I try a new game I appreciate Hearthstone's simplicity and friendly UI more and more. The biggest reason I think Hearthstone will beat any competitor is because of how well friendly and easy it is to use.
Carrion, my wayward grub.
Here's a full list of keywords and abilities in HS. As I said, some of them are fairly obvious, but you still have to learn what they mean. There are 39 just counting the actual keywords. If you include all of the abilities that are printed in card text without keywords, you're up to nearly 80 different things that are found across more than just one card. We also must account for things like Lich King cards, or E.T.C. cards that generate extra cards out of a completely invisible pool of card options (there's a REALLY big one for confusion - absolutely nowhere in the entire game interface can you find what cards can be generated by those things; you can only find them on fansites). And yes, some of the HS abilities and keywords are quite obvious, such as Start of Game, Choose One, or Casts When Drawn, Can't Attack, Can't Attack Heroes, Draw, Discard, etc.
As for counting 64 keywords in LoR, yes, you can actually get up to 66 keywords in LoR (see here), if you count all of the following as keywords: Attack, Block, Can't Attack, Can't Block, Collectible, Death, Discard, Draw, Immobile, Play, Round End, Round Start, See, Silence, Strongest, and Weakest. Otherwise, it's 50, and some of those are almost as obvious as the ones listed above, such as Trigger, Stun, Revive, Lifesteal, Level up, and Capture, to name a few.
Hearthstone has a LOT more keywords and abilities than most people realize when they have played it for a long time. And they have some downright completely opaque mechanices (such as the ETC Battlecry).
Lastly, HS has literally zero explanations during a game of what a thing does or what a keyword means. You cannot mouse over anything, get any popouts, absolutely nothing. In contrast, literally everything you want to know about cards or mechanics can be found on every card in LoR, even in the middle of a game. If ETC were a card in LoR, it would have a popout showing every possible Power Chord card that could be generated when you play it.
I actually recently popped back into HS for a Tavern Brawl game and saw "Spellburst" for the first time ever. Tried to figure out in game what it does. Literally no way to find out what it does if I didn't already know (and I didn't). This would NEVER happen in LoR. I would have clicked on a card with Spellburst, and BAM! the explanation would be right there.
Bottom line- despite being more complex and much more difficult to master than Hearthstone, I argue that LoR is actually MORE friendly to new players than Hearthstone is.
Yeah, I agree with you guys that hearthstone isn't going to die anytime soon. Hearthstone is basically as simple and intuitive as a card game can be, and even if another company made a comparably simple TCG with just as popular an IP, it would still have difficulty drawing the extremely casual players away from HS that have already invested time and money in it. If anything, I could see Battlegrounds becoming taking those casual players and making them give up on the TCG part of HS. I know that towards the end of the time that I was playing HS I was just doing Dungeon Runs and Battlegrounds and not playing ranked at all.