I've used this for a little while, the past year-ish. It's functional but there are a few things that would be cool if they fixed. It doesn't seem to sync with your HSReplay account, my W/L on mobile is different than when I play on desktop. Also, you have to manually delete decks if you don't want them to show up in the list of decks, and sometimes that doesn't even work. I gave up and just have a list of hundreds of decks with 1 or 2 games played. The only other annoyance is that whenever a new hero (Illidan) or skin (Aranna) comes out, it can't figure out what deck you are playing until they update the app, which sometimes takes a few weeks.
Ultimately I still boot it up everytime and it gets the job done. I primarily play on mobile and it was starting to feel like a disadvantage, so I'm extremely grateful this exists. It even works with Battlegrounds; when you pick heroes there a link pops up to the hero winrates. It used to also give you the minions at each tier, but that doesn't seem to be working now (at least when I've tried it).
To echo others points, I think Hearthstone succeeds in it's simplicity. I think the challenge for the devs moving forward is going to be to try to find ways to make that simplicity still feel exciting. I think something like spell mana or hero power mana could be a keyword or mechanic that they introduce, but would probably be difficult to tack onto the game as is. Blizzard might have to be more bold about adding new mechanics to the game that persist past an expansion; that decision makes sense from a casual perspective but it makes each expansion feel very isolated and hinders synergies from existing across expansions.
LoR sits in a weird place. It is more complex than Hearthstone, but not as complex as MtG. If people want something more complex, wouldn't they just play Magic? I like LoR well enough, but it feels very generic. I found myself playing it for the dopamine hit of getting so much free stuff rather than actually enjoying the game. We'll see, at least it has the unique space of being "complex card game" on mobile, which MtG doesn't have.
This is really cool! Custom battlegrounds are fun.
How do spells work:
Are the spells listed available to buy in the shop? Confused on how Azshara would get spells otherwise.
Do spells (and their minions) rotate like other minion types? I feel they'd have to for the minion counts to make sense.
Balance:
I really like the design of casting random spells but then you have immune to damage minions.
A lot of the gold/tripled minions have their effects changed, rather than just "doubled" - this is interesting and I wonder if this is something Blizzard will experiment with more. Might make balance hard
In the early game, you are praying not to get Revenge or Breath of the Infinite unless you have some of these immune to spell damage minions (which might be the point).
In the lategame, spells seem very highrolly (which isn't necessarily any different than current BGs!) - you are basically hoping for Deadly Shot, Consume Magic, or Betrayal, the rest won't make much of a difference against a huge Saurolisk, Goldgrubber, Salty Looter, etc.
Is it breaking the spirit of the theme to cast one and add the other, or is it more about directly referencing the cards? Wanted to help make these cards show up more often, since they aren't often run, and I liked the symmetry of using them both on the same card. Technically this is a 5/5 with taunt on 4, but you have to have another minion in play, which admittedly isn't that hard for token druid, which is probably where this would see play.
@ anchorm4n: Maybe something like this? I agree the effect doesn't need to be legendary. It doesn't stack (twice doesn't become thrice) so having two just makes it more consistent. It also isn't that powerful and hard to pull off; something like this is probably destined to be meme-y which is okay. I lowered the mana to 5 since with the randomness it can't be abused as easily. Thanks for the feedback! :)
Not sure on the wording for this as there isn't a "While ..." effect for Spell Damage yet, but I think it makes sense. For balance, my thinking is that, in most cases, you will need to have up at least one Spell Damage minion, because it's hard to play this, minions, and a spell in the same turn. I like when cards like this are neutral because each class can experiment with it in different ways, but it might make more sense as a Mage card, where you can more reasonably increase the power level. Note, you don't have to play a damage spell with this.
The potions would be the same as the ones from Gadgetzan. "Mix" them just means to combine their effects. In my head this would work similar to Hagatha where you are "teaching" the two effects to a single spell. This would allow you to target the effects (which many of the potions do).
I put it in the Rise of Shadows set because it felt too similar to Kazakus to put it in Gadgetzan, but this is a fun callback to both potions and that type of effect (albeit far less powerful). It could've gone in Priest or Mage, but this felt more like a Warlock card from the art (callback to Godfrey) and they didn't "revisit" any mechanics in RoS outside of Rafaam. Would replace Betrug I guess.
It feels a little weak, but in most cases this helps a control-ish Warlock deck. Maybe three potions? That seems too good.
@meisterz39 Thanks for the feedback. Agree with the balance issues. I liked the idea of not being able to use the cards you drew as a counter, but you're right, that is still a lot of draw. Also I figured the art would need to be "nerfed" - that was just what gave me the idea so I figured I would throw it up as is for some feedback.
@linkblade91: Ah, formatting fail! Still a little new at this. It does present some potentially unsavory finishes, but I liked the way it might change playing against Taunt warrior. You would have to think twice about leaving up multiple taunts, and doing chip damage now has a little nuance.
@Sinti: It probably is pretty weak compared to Void Ripper the only difference being that you can build your deck around it more easily since it only affects your minions (and only Taunts at that). In that way, maybe it moves away from the goal of the competition; was just trying to think of a way of changing up the play experience of taunt warrior (waiting for Sulfuras) but I didn't/haven't played a ton of it, so that might just be my perception.
I've used this for a little while, the past year-ish. It's functional but there are a few things that would be cool if they fixed. It doesn't seem to sync with your HSReplay account, my W/L on mobile is different than when I play on desktop. Also, you have to manually delete decks if you don't want them to show up in the list of decks, and sometimes that doesn't even work. I gave up and just have a list of hundreds of decks with 1 or 2 games played. The only other annoyance is that whenever a new hero (Illidan) or skin (Aranna) comes out, it can't figure out what deck you are playing until they update the app, which sometimes takes a few weeks.
Ultimately I still boot it up everytime and it gets the job done. I primarily play on mobile and it was starting to feel like a disadvantage, so I'm extremely grateful this exists. It even works with Battlegrounds; when you pick heroes there a link pops up to the hero winrates. It used to also give you the minions at each tier, but that doesn't seem to be working now (at least when I've tried it).
To echo others points, I think Hearthstone succeeds in it's simplicity. I think the challenge for the devs moving forward is going to be to try to find ways to make that simplicity still feel exciting. I think something like spell mana or hero power mana could be a keyword or mechanic that they introduce, but would probably be difficult to tack onto the game as is. Blizzard might have to be more bold about adding new mechanics to the game that persist past an expansion; that decision makes sense from a casual perspective but it makes each expansion feel very isolated and hinders synergies from existing across expansions.
LoR sits in a weird place. It is more complex than Hearthstone, but not as complex as MtG. If people want something more complex, wouldn't they just play Magic? I like LoR well enough, but it feels very generic. I found myself playing it for the dopamine hit of getting so much free stuff rather than actually enjoying the game. We'll see, at least it has the unique space of being "complex card game" on mobile, which MtG doesn't have.
This is really cool! Custom battlegrounds are fun.
How do spells work:
Balance:
Is it breaking the spirit of the theme to cast one and add the other, or is it more about directly referencing the cards? Wanted to help make these cards show up more often, since they aren't often run, and I liked the symmetry of using them both on the same card. Technically this is a 5/5 with taunt on 4, but you have to have another minion in play, which admittedly isn't that hard for token druid, which is probably where this would see play.
@ anchorm4n: Maybe something like this? I agree the effect doesn't need to be legendary. It doesn't stack (twice doesn't become thrice) so having two just makes it more consistent. It also isn't that powerful and hard to pull off; something like this is probably destined to be meme-y which is okay. I lowered the mana to 5 since with the randomness it can't be abused as easily. Thanks for the feedback! :)
Not sure on the wording for this as there isn't a "While ..." effect for Spell Damage yet, but I think it makes sense. For balance, my thinking is that, in most cases, you will need to have up at least one Spell Damage minion, because it's hard to play this, minions, and a spell in the same turn. I like when cards like this are neutral because each class can experiment with it in different ways, but it might make more sense as a Mage card, where you can more reasonably increase the power level. Note, you don't have to play a damage spell with this.
The potions would be the same as the ones from Gadgetzan. "Mix" them just means to combine their effects. In my head this would work similar to Hagatha where you are "teaching" the two effects to a single spell. This would allow you to target the effects (which many of the potions do).
I put it in the Rise of Shadows set because it felt too similar to Kazakus to put it in Gadgetzan, but this is a fun callback to both potions and that type of effect (albeit far less powerful). It could've gone in Priest or Mage, but this felt more like a Warlock card from the art (callback to Godfrey) and they didn't "revisit" any mechanics in RoS outside of Rafaam. Would replace Betrug I guess.
It feels a little weak, but in most cases this helps a control-ish Warlock deck. Maybe three potions? That seems too good.
@meisterz39 Thanks for the feedback. Agree with the balance issues. I liked the idea of not being able to use the cards you drew as a counter, but you're right, that is still a lot of draw. Also I figured the art would need to be "nerfed" - that was just what gave me the idea so I figured I would throw it up as is for some feedback.
linkblade91 - Your idea is so much better! I will think about this - the whole idea was to take advantage of something like Into the Fray.
Forest just setback!
Flavor text: "We're talking about practice. Not a game, practice"
@linkblade91: Ah, formatting fail! Still a little new at this. It does present some potentially unsavory finishes, but I liked the way it might change playing against Taunt warrior. You would have to think twice about leaving up multiple taunts, and doing chip damage now has a little nuance.
@Sinti: It probably is pretty weak compared to Void Ripper the only difference being that you can build your deck around it more easily since it only affects your minions (and only Taunts at that). In that way, maybe it moves away from the goal of the competition; was just trying to think of a way of changing up the play experience of taunt warrior (waiting for Sulfuras) but I didn't/haven't played a ton of it, so that might just be my perception.
Thanks for the feedback guys! This is fun.