I used to be a huge Hearthstone fan. I’ve spent years and a fair amount of money honing my skills in the collectible card game. I played all the time, from sitting at the back of select university colleges, waiting for my opponent’s turn with my laptop screen handily turned away from my tutor, to long train journeys across the country. And then it burned me out.
When thinking about how nerfs influenced my gaming experiences (opens in new tab) over the years I remembered how hard it was to keep up with Hearthstone’s regular rotations, especially as a college student. The game required enough dedication to know the new meta enough to anticipate the opponent’s moves, as well as having the money to build your own competitive decks.
I’m reassured that the economy has gotten a little better with the introduction of things like double protection, but the moment I sat down to become Hearthstone, the arms race was exhausting. I loved the gameplay but couldn’t afford the financial and mental upkeep.
I gave up on it altogether a few years ago, after the Battlegrounds mode came out. I loved that update but was still ready to move on. Until yesterday, when brand director Tim Clark kindly sent me a code for the latest expansion coming out August 2nd and oh boy.
Suddenly Hearthstone feels great again.
decked out
I even got a little smug when everything flowed back
There’s a lot to be said about loot box systems and their harmful effects, but the reason they work is because opening them feels so good. And I’d forgotten how good opening packs felt in Hearthstone. It’s still a pleasure to call out the merry innkeeper Harth Stonebrew (heh, I didn’t know his name until now), in amazement at every rare, epic and legendary card. I’m genuinely annoyed that after all these years leaving Hearthstone to sit on my hard drive, I came back and felt so at home. Why does this damn card game feel so good?
After opening barely a hundred packs, it was time to put them to good use. Expect to be completely out of the loop. Trying to build a deck using only the latest expansion and the default set was a bit of a challenge as I was missing a lot of key cards, but I cobbled together a solid Warrior deck and wanted to learn how to play the game again. And then went on to win not one but two games back-to-back without any hassle.
I even got a little smug when everything flowed back. Admittedly I didn’t play at a high level, I’m in bronze for being away for so long, but gosh, I’m in it and feel almost no resistance to knocking my opponents on the ass with a deck of cards that is over in minutes made was pretty cool.
And I smiled, knowing I still had it. And apparently Hearthstone still had me.
The first game was against a villain that my followers couldn’t keep up with. Buffs on buffs, and deal damage to my own team to harvest even more buffs soon created an unstoppable board, and so the Rogue gave up. Then I played against a Warlock who was sacrificing health back and forth, but not fast enough. Although he held me back for a while by healing with bullshit Battlecry effects, he didn’t have any taunts on the board to keep me from taking his most vulnerable cards. Tut-tut-tut, Gul’dan. He too fell for my constant swarm of furious followers. And I smiled, knowing I still had it. And Hearthstone apparently still had me at.
I’m not sure exactly how much Hearthstone has changed in the years I haven’t played, but this new expansion titled Murder at Castle Nathria has a murder mystery theme. Father Denatrius has been found dead and the great Murloc Holmes is on the case. In terms of gameplay, the main consequence is the new Cluedo-esque location maps. These are played on the board and for the most part targeted. Similar to weapons, they have a durability value that refers to how many times their effect can be processed. Oh, and there’s also a one-turn cool-down between uses.
In my Warrior deck, Sanguine Depths allowed me to buffer a minion’s attack with one after hitting him for one health. The synergy is that many of my cards give an advantage when taking damage.
There’s also the new Infuse keyword, which encourages you to keep cards in your hand until a certain number of friendly minions on the board have died, after which the card changes to a more powerful version. Figuring out these new tactics and weighing the pros and cons of the cards I’d been dealt felt so familiar. Adapting and learning on the fly, along with other players who no doubt did the same on the first day of the expansion, was like stepping into an old pair of shoes. And yet old cards like the Acolyte of Pain, which fits perfectly into my self-damaged Warrior deck, held my hand and assured me that there was still something familiar in this new world.
I think there is another layer to my surprise. Live service games are famous, um, live. When you stop playing, they don’t just pause in time, they march on ahead of the players who are still active. And so live service games can be particularly difficult to dive back into. Valorant, my current obsession, is very hard to start over after only six months away because new agents, their skills, buffs, nerfs and maps can completely change the meta and flow of the game. You become bad before you are good again. The same is true for most live service games these days.
But Hearthstone doesn’t have that problem. Since rounds give you a certain amount of time to read and absorb the state of the board, it gave me space to find my feet, making these two games a comfortable way to remember how good the game feels, rather than from how out of practice I was. So, I’m just annoyed that I’m craving Hearthstone again. I want to build more card games, open more card packs and beat more players, even though I thought I was done. Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in.
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