What is the meaning of interactive deck?

Can someone explain me why there are interactive and non-interactive decks? I keep hearing those terms and don't know what they mean.

At this point, the conversation is so all over the place that it is basically a meme.

Hearthstone is not an overwhelmingly interactive game. This is actually one of the main reasons for its success. But it makes the conversation regarding interactivity very cumbersome.

Fundamentally, I think what people mean when they talk about interactivity as it relates to Hearthstone is that they want the game to feel like they have decisions to make and that those decisions ultimately matter. Because this is about how people "feel," it also clouds the conversation.

People will also try to roll RNG into this discussion (wrongly IMO), and that also confuses things.

A recent example of un-interactive gameplay: Baku Rogue v. Baku Warrior
- There was almost no way for Baku Rogue to out damage the hero power of Baku Warrior. And since the most impactful thing Warrior could do on most turns was to hit the hero power button, and the game doesn't provide a way to interact with hero powers, the game was not very interactive.

An example of interactive gameplay: Midrange decks playing one another
- This one is more easy. I'm sure we've all played this game before. Both decks are aggressive-to-midrangey. Both players open well (or poorly) so no one is snowballing an early lead. The game comes down to eeking out as much value as you can with smart trades and resource use. This is the type of game that makes you feel like a good and smart player.

I was told that Tempo Mage and Aggro Mage are not interactive decks. Is that true, bro?

If my win/loss odds are almost entirely dependent on my draw and almost entirely independent of anything my opponent does, I have a non-interactive deck. I think the original Quest Rogue is a good example. 

Hearthstone by its design is not exactly what I would call 'interactive.'  Unlike MtG, the attacker chooses the defenders, and so normally when you hear people talk about interactive vs non interactive decks, they're talking about one of two things generally.  

#1 Aggro/Tempo decks - these are 'non interactive' in the sense that the whole goal is to kill the opponent as fast as possible and/or to seize tempo and never let go.  1-drop on 1, 2-drop on 2, 3-drop on 3, etc, and only trade if not trading would mean less total damage over time. They feel 'non interactive' because the defending player will try to contest the board with minions, which the aggro/tempo player will simply ignore.

#2 Combo decks - these are 'non interactive' in the sense that their win condition has nothing to do with the board state, and everything to do with simply drawing the right cards before they're dead.  They feel 'non interactive' because the opponent usually can do very little to prevent their opponent from winning, once the combo has been drawn. 

Everything else is either 'interactive' or someone being salty about a loss. 

edit: I don't generally consider control decks to be 'non interactive' (though they've been accused of being such, usually by aggro players...which control decks are generally made to beat anyways).  

"A recent example of un-interactive gameplay: Baku Rogue v. Baku Warrior
- There was almost no way for Baku Rogue to out damage the hero power of Baku Warrior. And since the most impactful thing Warrior could do on most turns was to hit the hero power button, and the game doesn't provide a way to interact with hero powers, the game was not very interactive"

There are ways to interact with the Hero Power though. Sideshow Spelleater is one and that dude with the mad Yu-gi-oh Hair that stops your Hero Powers from working.

 I wish Blizzard would release more cards like that, and Sir Finley Mrrgglton of course. But that's allowing you to choose a new Hero Power rather than interacting. Potato Potatoe. 

Have you had a match where you just sit at your computer and put some minions on the board only to have your opponent freeze them over and over again, so it gets to the point where all you can do is press "end turn"? That's what we call a "non-interactive" match. You are not doing anything because your opponent has made it impossible for you to do anything, by design. All you can do is watch yourself die eventually.

Another example is when you kill a taunt, and then another, and then another. Then your opponent resurrects all of them three times and you have nothing to do but concede or press "end turn." Or, if you have anything left to use, you could try killing those. Eventually, you will die from not being able to answer the board effectively by design.

Finally, maybe your opponent just found this cool way to kill you in one turn. Boom, you're dead. Nothing you could do to prevent that. They got the right combo on their turn and zapped your rear.

This is what is meant by "non-interactive" in the most extreme sense. Hearthstone is not interactive as other games might be because your opponent can create situations by design that make you feel like you are watching them play solitaire. It stems from the fact that players can't interrupt each others' turns or intervene. Other card games allow for more interaction from your deck. Or your hero. Or both. Hearthstone turns are total turns. One player does a turn, then the next player does a turn. During a player's turn there is no interaction from the other player which can lead to scenarios I just listed as examples. In Hearthstone, your interaction is with the cards, not the opponent, which makes it "non-interactive." You do what you can with your hero power and your cards against your opponent's cards and hero power. You can't respond to what your opponent does on his or her turn and therefore you have no interaction with that player and / or their actions, just with the state of the board when they finish a turn

You will never find a clear definition, because everyone stretches the meaning as they see fit, while staying in a dualistic system of meaning, which is objectively wrong. Just a rethoric trick.

We can go past that empasse, and define it as a spectrum of interactivity as it follows:

- the more a deck acts THROUGH* the board, the more interactive it is. **

*"Through the board" means using the board in order to reach the Face. This implies that a full-blown Control deck is very little interactive, equally to a Burn deck, just on opposite sides: the former mostly stops on the board, ignoring face, the latter mostly ignores the board and goes straight on the face.

** Despite all the other different actions, this is a board-centric game, designed to fight on the board. Anything else can only be indirectly answered at best (eg Aggro against Mill, Aggro counters Milling, but cannot really counter the forced card draw), hence being contextually uninteractive.

Quote From RavenSunHS

You will never find a clear definition, because everyone stretches the meaning as they see fit, while staying in a dualistic system of meaning, which is objectively wrong. Just a rethoric trick.

We can go past that empasse, and define it as a spectrum of interactivity as it follows:

- the more a deck acts THROUGH* the board, the more interactive it is. **

 

*"Through the board" means using the board in order to reach the Face. This implies that a full-blown Control deck is very little interactive, equally to a Burn deck, just on opposite sides: the former mostly stops on the board, ignoring face, the latter mostly ignores the board and goes straight on the face.

** Despite all the other different actions, this is a board-centric game, designed to fight on the board. Anything else can only be indirectly answered at best (eg Aggro against Mill, Aggro counters Milling, but cannot really counter the forced card draw), hence being contextually uninteractive.

Interesting take on it all, really, and that's really true if you wish to leave out comparing Hearthstone to other card games, and it probably summarizes really well what players mean when they are playing Hearthstone and not comparing it to other games. However, you are assuming that the goal of every Hearthstone player is to smack the opponent in the face, or to take the liberty of doing so. That's not really the goal, but a means to achieving a win condition. Feeling like you're being "interactive" is not achieving "face-smacking." Your theory is interesting, but you assume that the goal of every player is to face smack. Sometimes the face smack is a way to get control of the board, not a result of controlling the board. And again, that requires taking a turn, which is only interacting with the state that results from a previous turn. How do you account for that in your definition?

I really like the above definition. Since hearthstone effectively constrains the player to interacting with enemy minions or their face (yes, there are *some* exceptions), a non-interactive deck is one that wins without a board, whether by a combo, a collection of burn spells or even fatigue. 

Freezemage variants are an extreme case in that they also use board freezes, doomsayers, ice blocks to limit the opponent's options even more, although the latest iteration at least wins with giant discounted minions hitting face, so yay progress..?

I find it strange when people call control decks non interactive. To me interactive decks care what your opponent are doing and change their game plan accordingly. I find control decks the most interactive because you have to control what the other player is doing. You choose to play reactively and use each card entirely based on what your opponent plays in order to exhaust their supplies and ultimately win. Pure aggro on the other hand and some combo decks are un-interactive in that they have a game plan and they play it out regardless of what the opponent is doing the same way every time all the time. I know that will not fit in with how some people feel but I also think the discussion of interactivity in Hearthstone is pretty tired and worn out. It isn't an overly interactive game which is why it is so simple and fun in a lot of ways and lends to its success. 

Quote From AliRadicali

I really like the above definition. Since hearthstone effectively constrains the player to interacting with enemy minions or their face (yes, there are *some* exceptions), a non-interactive deck is one that wins without a board, whether by a combo, a collection of burn spells or even fatigue. 

 

Freezemage variants are an extreme case in that they also use board freezes, doomsayers, ice blocks to limit the opponent's options even more, although the latest iteration at least wins with giant discounted minions hitting face, so yay progress..?

Right? It makes total sense. The only thing is that smacking the face can undo all that in some situations, like say you're playing a bomb warrior versus a summoner mage. You see a board situation that is totally outrageous, so you smack the face with Wrenchcalibur while you have an Elekk whatever it is (the beast that shuffles cards) and also use your handy Brawl card to wipe out your mage opponent's minions. Hell, maybe your shuffle beast wins the brawl. On your turn you smacked the face and did a control move, hoping to swing the game in a non-interactive way. Maybe next turn the mage draws the bomb and dies. The whole point of smacking the face was not to smack the face, really. It was to screw over the opponent in a non-interactive move. The mage couldn't do much in response to that. Non-interactive

Quote From zoobernut

I find it strange when people call control decks non interactive. To me interactive decks care what your opponent are doing and change their game plan accordingly. I find control decks the most interactive because you have to control what the other player is doing. You choose to play reactively and use each card entirely based on what your opponent plays in order to exhaust their supplies and ultimately win. Pure aggro on the other hand and some combo decks are un-interactive in that they have a game plan and they play it out regardless of what the opponent is doing the same way every time all the time. I know that will not fit in with how some people feel but I also think the discussion of interactivity in Hearthstone is pretty tired and worn out. It isn't an overly interactive game which is why it is so simple and fun in a lot of ways and lends to its success. 

It's because they're using the term in exactly the opposite way. You're describing what the deck does, whereas they're describing what playing against the deck feels like. Yes the control player is interacting with his opponent, *but from the opponent's perspective*, all they can do is put things on the board (to get killed off) and feebly punch into an ever increasing armor total. From the aggro player's perspective, the control player is "non-interactive" because there's nothing the aggro player can do to disrupt the control deck's game plan other than proactively win. OTOH the control player has all the tools in the world to disrupt the aggro player's game plan, that's what his deck is designed to do: control.

If an aggro deck were "non-interactive" it'd be unbeatable as it'd mean the opposing deck cannot interact with its plan to punch face (somehow). The closest I think we've come to that was pre-nerf pirate rogue with its absurd burst potential, but even then the rogue still needed some minions on the board to win.

Imo aggro decks are actually more interactive. You can interact with the minions on board with minions of your own, aoe or removal, heal to get out of lethal range or race them yourself 

What feels less interactive to me personally is playing against say legacy control warrior negating basically every card you play with either removal or boardclears playing scarce minions themselves giving less things to do for the opponent. Decks like these try to keep interaction as minimal as possible. The gameplan is literally to run your opponent out of options without exhausting your own.

I totally agree with #2 though and would like to add fatigue and mill decks to the same category