yxoque said: I’m white and bearded, but I draw the line at Heartstone. Boring-ass game.
I always get the sense that it’s like… baby Magic.
Hearthstone actually does a lot of really intriguing things (but yeah really boring to actually play and as far as I can see is mostly a really well-crafted skinner-box with easily accessible mechanics and some cool puzzle bosses), some of which boils down to the fact that a lot of the cards relate back to Warcraft lore in some way, both aesthetically and mechanically (Leeroy Jenkins is actually a good example, since he’s got shit defense and when summoned gives the enemy a bunch of little dragons so he’s really easy to fuck yourself over with if you don’t go in with a plan).
The big cool thing, though, is the fact that it’s kind of a hyper-TCG, and uses this to the max. There’s a bunch of cards that create other cards, or permanently change the characteristics of cards on the field, or even modify the cards in your hand (often without the enemy knowing exactly what was modified). There’s a lot of possibilities that open up when you have a computer keeping tabs on everything, and it’s fun to think about.
And yeah, no instants. The latency of computer internet play means everything is streamlined so you basically can’t do shit during the opponent’s turn. The closest you get is secrets, which activate automatically on your opponent’s turn when a predetermined trigger is met (so instead of keeping mana for a counterspell you play one on your turn and it goes off automatically for the first spell they cast.
It’s strategic depth is shitty as hell, though, and while there’s a lot of fluff, it’s no better than anywhere else in the Warcraft universe. All the cards have flavor text, but it’s somewhat shitty and only accessible in the deck building mode.