First impressions: base mechanics feel a lot like Stellaris, which is not surprising, as it uses the same engine. There is a more coherent story to it though: part of that is because there is a strong established lore, but there also seem to be more chained events compared to Stellaris' mostly self-contained events. Additionally, there is a mission tree that contains tasks for you to complete to progress both story-wise and in unlocking buffs.
The progression being more scripted might hurt replayability in the long run, but there are different stories for each of the four playable factions (Federations, Klingons, Romulans and Cardassians) and different paths you can take for each faction, so I think there is enough game in there. For example, as the Federation you can welcome all new civilizations and try to make them Federation members, or you can develop Section 31 (spy agency) and keep an eye on them from a distance, but not both.
Being a Stellaris veteran myself, figuring out the mechanics was not hard, but I can imagine the learning curve is a lot steeper if you come in to it fresh. There is a built-in assistant, but that only explains what each menu is about; it doesn't help you if you never think of opening a particular menu because you didn't even know it existed.
It definitely plays on the same slow scale as Stellaris: I'm now 5 hours in and I think I'm approaching the mid-game. I'm playing pretty slow though because I'm pausing a lot to read everything; I expect to go through it a lot faster the second time. But it's not the kind of game that you play through in a single day unless you make it a marathon session.
Hearthstone would make sense, as having it pop up in "playing now" notifications of friends might remind potential new or returning players of its existence.
I guess all their games will make the move eventually: despite Overwatch 2's review bombing, they still went ahead with Diablo IV. So there must be significant upsides as well, either in terms of more players or the amount of money they save by not having to keep developing the Battle.Net client.
The anomalies seems to be balanced: enough impact to matter, but not so big that it completely dominates the game. At least, that's my impression after reading them; we won't actually know until playing with them.
I expect the C'Thun skin to also get a legendary price tag, in which case I won't be buying it.
For Wonders XL, I think the XL approach is very interesting from a deck building perspective. In the case of the Wonders sets though, there isn't all that much card draw available and while some cards were buffed, the average old card isn't very powerful. This means watering down the quality of the average card in your deck is going to hurt a lot more compared to modern Hearthstone. We haven't seen Reno decks be all that successful, for example.
This one is pretty greedy, which was useful to out-greed my opponents. I only played 3 games so far, so not enough to really know how good it is, but it felt fine and is a lot of fun to play.
Yes, this is one of the better ones and it was over 4 years ago that we last had it. As demonstrated by the fact that Serpent Egg, from Saviors of Uldum, is not banned because that set hadn't released yet.
I've played against a few DKs, and while they weren't bad, I think overall the Wild cards are better than most DK cards. But maybe a good deck exists that uses the neutral Wild cards combined with a small number of DK cards that can swing games.
In my games Voodoo Doll was sometimes useful, but it getting pulled is not only a low roll on deathrattle synergy but also means you have less removal available. And you have less need for hard removal if your minion has more stats than theirs, since you can just trade then. Having an extra 1-drop helps there.
I'm now using Sludge Belcher to stall rather than remove on turn 5, as the ideal turn 6 play is Sylvanas stealing their huge minion. And Blecher is a good card to pull with Blackthorn. Actually, Sylvanas is so good that I'm wondering if it's worth playing both the old and the new Sylvanas.
Humongous Razorleaf might be better than Static Waveform: I'm not sure whether attack or health is better overall, but +1 attack is probably not worth -2 health.
I tested Creepy Painting and while it can get value from removal or trading, it seems all the deaths at the end of the turn are processed simultaneously, so it doesn't copy anything then.
All the old eggs are banned, but Foul Egg and Serpent Egg are not, so those are great additions to almost any deck. Korrak the Bloodrager is very useful as well, since being crushed into a Void Singularity doesn't count as an honorable death.
As for the new caverns of time set, Im only in support of it if its free, but I highly doubt that its completely free. You'll need to open packs for the new cards Im sure, and Im not 100% certain theyve made the right choice here. Its already hard enough you need to open wild packs for this mode, now you got to buy very specific packs for that mode only too?
The new event rewards include Caverns of Time packs, so that confirms it.
It's not so bad for me as I only dust Wild cards as they get nerfed, so I'll probably start out with over half the set pre-collected, as 3/4rd of the set is reworked cards but I don't have a full Wild collection. However, for people without a Wild collection, playing Caverns of Time will not be cheap. The Caverns of Time cards will be playable in Wild though, so it's not worse than buying Wild packs, probably slightly better because a larger percentage of the cards will be actually usable in decks (there are a lot of unplayable cards in Wild sets).
It seems the business strategy for Hearthstone is to get more money out of the existing player base, with expensive cosmetics (diamond and signature cards) and more modes. I don't know how sustainable that is though, as it does increase the barrier for new and returning players (the modes more so than the cosmetics), so it might create a feedback cycle where ever more money is expected to come from an ever dwindling player base.
Yeah, that's weird one. It's fun to see cards that never saw play or stopped being played long ago being buffed, but Kabal Crystal Runner is currently being played. Not only that, it's a prime example of mana cheating feeling unfair.
The "in one transaction" part is new: previously it would do a transaction for every pack you bought, which especially on launch day adds a noticeable delay (like half a second per pack) as a lot of people are buying packs.
My guess would be that the surprise is an event with pack rewards, based on:
timing: the Ulduar Grand Championship event will run from August 3rd to 22nd, which means that in September they'll have space for another event
one of the criticisms that Twist got is that a lot of Standard players dusted their cards on rotation and weren't able to participate without investing a lot into a mode that is only temporarily available
A different way to address the second point would be to grant people temporary copies of eligible non-Standard cards, similar to the Core Set. However, that would make it harder to sell battle-ready decks at full price, so I don't expect them to go that route.
Launching games is actually one of the areas where old consoles did better than modern systems: you find the right cartridge, insert it, power on the console and the game boots. You didn't have to deal with installation, managing disk space, downloading updates, excessive loading times, tweaking settings to get good performance etc.
I still have a ton of unplayed games, so I'm not going to play it immediately, but I wishlisted it at GOG in case I'm in the mood for a horror game later.
Team5 couldve seen this coming and at very least make the game slightly slower.
Instead of adding a 1-drop mech directly to the board, they could have made your hero power discover a mech. That would slow things down and add a bit more decision making.
If you get Galvanizer in your opening hand, I think you have a decent chance when on the coin. But indeed, whoever gets V-07-TR-0N first has probably won.
Note that unlike the card Mimiron's Head, the hero power destroys exactly 3 mechs if you have more than 3. At some point I had two copies of V-07-TR-0N in play.
And there was much rejoicing...
First impressions: base mechanics feel a lot like Stellaris, which is not surprising, as it uses the same engine. There is a more coherent story to it though: part of that is because there is a strong established lore, but there also seem to be more chained events compared to Stellaris' mostly self-contained events. Additionally, there is a mission tree that contains tasks for you to complete to progress both story-wise and in unlocking buffs.
The progression being more scripted might hurt replayability in the long run, but there are different stories for each of the four playable factions (Federations, Klingons, Romulans and Cardassians) and different paths you can take for each faction, so I think there is enough game in there. For example, as the Federation you can welcome all new civilizations and try to make them Federation members, or you can develop Section 31 (spy agency) and keep an eye on them from a distance, but not both.
Being a Stellaris veteran myself, figuring out the mechanics was not hard, but I can imagine the learning curve is a lot steeper if you come in to it fresh. There is a built-in assistant, but that only explains what each menu is about; it doesn't help you if you never think of opening a particular menu because you didn't even know it existed.
It definitely plays on the same slow scale as Stellaris: I'm now 5 hours in and I think I'm approaching the mid-game. I'm playing pretty slow though because I'm pausing a lot to read everything; I expect to go through it a lot faster the second time. But it's not the kind of game that you play through in a single day unless you make it a marathon session.
I'll be playing Star Trek: Infinite. Will post my thoughts later. Could be a few hours though: this is not a fast-paced game.
If I understood the article correctly, you still need a Battle.Net account, but not the Battle.Net launcher.
Hearthstone would make sense, as having it pop up in "playing now" notifications of friends might remind potential new or returning players of its existence.
I guess all their games will make the move eventually: despite Overwatch 2's review bombing, they still went ahead with Diablo IV. So there must be significant upsides as well, either in terms of more players or the amount of money they save by not having to keep developing the Battle.Net client.
The anomalies seems to be balanced: enough impact to matter, but not so big that it completely dominates the game. At least, that's my impression after reading them; we won't actually know until playing with them.
I expect the C'Thun skin to also get a legendary price tag, in which case I won't be buying it.
For Wonders XL, I think the XL approach is very interesting from a deck building perspective. In the case of the Wonders sets though, there isn't all that much card draw available and while some cards were buffed, the average old card isn't very powerful. This means watering down the quality of the average card in your deck is going to hurt a lot more compared to modern Hearthstone. We haven't seen Reno decks be all that successful, for example.
This one is pretty greedy, which was useful to out-greed my opponents. I only played 3 games so far, so not enough to really know how good it is, but it felt fine and is a lot of fun to play.
Yes, this is one of the better ones and it was over 4 years ago that we last had it. As demonstrated by the fact that Serpent Egg, from Saviors of Uldum, is not banned because that set hadn't released yet.
I've played against a few DKs, and while they weren't bad, I think overall the Wild cards are better than most DK cards. But maybe a good deck exists that uses the neutral Wild cards combined with a small number of DK cards that can swing games.
In my games Voodoo Doll was sometimes useful, but it getting pulled is not only a low roll on deathrattle synergy but also means you have less removal available. And you have less need for hard removal if your minion has more stats than theirs, since you can just trade then. Having an extra 1-drop helps there.
I'm now using Sludge Belcher to stall rather than remove on turn 5, as the ideal turn 6 play is Sylvanas stealing their huge minion. And Blecher is a good card to pull with Blackthorn. Actually, Sylvanas is so good that I'm wondering if it's worth playing both the old and the new Sylvanas.
Humongous Razorleaf might be better than Static Waveform: I'm not sure whether attack or health is better overall, but +1 attack is probably not worth -2 health.
I tested Creepy Painting and while it can get value from removal or trading, it seems all the deaths at the end of the turn are processed simultaneously, so it doesn't copy anything then.
All the old eggs are banned, but Foul Egg and Serpent Egg are not, so those are great additions to almost any deck. Korrak the Bloodrager is very useful as well, since being crushed into a Void Singularity doesn't count as an honorable death.
Yeah, that's weird one. It's fun to see cards that never saw play or stopped being played long ago being buffed, but Kabal Crystal Runner is currently being played. Not only that, it's a prime example of mana cheating feeling unfair.
The "in one transaction" part is new: previously it would do a transaction for every pack you bought, which especially on launch day adds a noticeable delay (like half a second per pack) as a lot of people are buying packs.
My guess would be that the surprise is an event with pack rewards, based on:
A different way to address the second point would be to grant people temporary copies of eligible non-Standard cards, similar to the Core Set. However, that would make it harder to sell battle-ready decks at full price, so I don't expect them to go that route.
Launching games is actually one of the areas where old consoles did better than modern systems: you find the right cartridge, insert it, power on the console and the game boots. You didn't have to deal with installation, managing disk space, downloading updates, excessive loading times, tweaking settings to get good performance etc.
Never played it, didn't even know it existed.
I still have a ton of unplayed games, so I'm not going to play it immediately, but I wishlisted it at GOG in case I'm in the mood for a horror game later.
And please, more articles like this.
Instead of adding a 1-drop mech directly to the board, they could have made your hero power discover a mech. That would slow things down and add a bit more decision making.
If you get Galvanizer in your opening hand, I think you have a decent chance when on the coin. But indeed, whoever gets V-07-TR-0N first has probably won.
Note that unlike the card Mimiron's Head, the hero power destroys exactly 3 mechs if you have more than 3. At some point I had two copies of V-07-TR-0N in play.