Too little too late
or
Better late than never
Too little, too late. The meta adapted. The Rogue quest became much less common.
Thanks to the new copy/paste feature it is very very easy to import decks. All the major sites/apps like Hearthpwn, Innkeeper, and Hearthstone Deck Tracker have added features for it. My favorite is that Hearthstone deck tracker has some trending decks for you to import very easily.
So I had the quest for playing Rogue cards, and I didnât have a Rogue deck. I refuse to play that evil quest Rogue. So I go to the trending decks, and I get this one.
It is not the winningest deck. It is not the strongest deck. It loses a lot to some bad matchups. It loses a lot with bad draws. Iâve had hands full of reactive cards against opponents not playing any minions. It can sometimes be hard for it to refill a board after it gets wiped.
I donât care, though. This is the most fun deck I have played. Itâs fun whether I win or lose. There are new interesting decisions to make every game. Most turns I have do not have obvious plays. Even the Priest deck I was playing with crazy cards like Lyra and Shadow Visions was less interesting than this. Jades, Pirates AND Deathrattle NâZoth. I dusted some stuff to craft two Vilespines, and I have no regrets.
The final bmkibler and bbrode card reveal is imminent!
Dual class arenas! Going to spend all my gold on that biz.
Plus a free Arena ticket.
New expansion looks good. The free single-player roguelike dungeon crawling mode seems way fun.
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I reinstalled.
I also scheduled a Fireside Gathering during PAX.
Oooooh. Iâve never done a gathering.
We wanted to do some bigger Handheld Dept stuff at Unplugged, but scaled it back b/c of uncertain reliability of convention center wifi. I want to do a small Hearthstone meetup to test it out.
I donât really care about the exclusive card back or the free Warlock hero, but apparently the first one hosted by me gets everyone a card back, and if I hosted a second one (would do it on Sunday), everyone gets an exclusive hero.
Math is pretty accurate there.
By comparison, Netrunner costs < $200 a year depending on how quickly they release packs. But of course, to get all the existing Netrunner cards if you are just starting out will cost you⌠$750-ish?
To play competitive M:tG costs way more than $400 a year. Canât even do the math on that one.
So basically, itâs in the middle somewhere. I think what you have to take into account is that the downside is that you are not getting physical cards. No resale market. No trading. No escaping. The upside is that you can actually play online at any time you want! I play Hearthstone way more than Netrunner simply because you can play it whenever.
Also, Hearthstone does things that no other card game can possibly due because of its digital nature. You are paying for that unique experience. Theyâve also recently become more responsive to the community and such, so you are paying for that continued maintenance.
Hearthstone is also absolutely free to play. The new single player dungeon run mode is 100% free and crazy fun. Iâm actually playing that the most these days. You can play the free mode and have a shit ton of fun, you just canât ever expect to be competitive and win against other non-free players.
Iâll object to the idea that MTG costs more than 400 a year. It depends on the meta, but unless you define âCostâ as âcost of every single cardâ, then you can make a pretty competative Standard deck for $150-200 thatâs competative.
Thatâs one deck. The price for Hearthstone is for almost every card. At least every card you need to be competitive with all 9 classes. With Netrunner the price is literally for every single card, so you can build absolutely any tournament legal deck.
The fact that $150-$200 is the price of just ONE deck in M:tG shows how ludicrously expensive it is by comparison. Wouldnât it be boring as hell to only have one deck? Every game the same. Gotta mix it up!
I guess define âcostâ as the still subjective but more narrow âPrice of owning every card required to make and play all competitively viable decksâ
With that in mind:
Netrunner: Unchanged
Hearthstone: Probably a smidge less than $400 but not much
MtG: â
Even if you want to define it as simply the cost to play and remain competitive for an entire year in the standard format. You can do that with the just one M:tG deck. But you have to update it whenever new cards come out. Thatâs going to be a little bit more than the $150-200 the deck initially cost to build.
If you only want to play ONE competitive deck in Hearthstone, and arenât interested in the other 8 classes, you can do that for $0. It will take some time and luck to get your legendaries and epics, but you will get there. If you spend even a little money just pre-ordering packs for $50 and dust all the cards you donât need, you will get there really quickly.
For Netrunner, or any other LCG, the cost is still the same no matter how you change the definition.
True but Iâve got another 2 holes to poke.
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Only having 1 Mt:G deck for a year means youâre fine with dealing with the ebbs and flows of the meta. Your competitive deck will be dominant, non dominant but viable, and barely clutching onto viability at various points throughout the year depending on what new cards come out and just the trends seen among players.
To deal with these changing tides, youâll at minimum have to invest in some tech/sideboard cards (not sure how often sideboards are things in Magic) -
Youâre assuming spherical magic players inside a vacuum. One usually doesnât walk into a new card game sight unseen and immediately know the best deck they want to play. Immediately pony up $200 do buy exactly the right cards and then be completely satisfied with their decision for a year. It happens much more organically and expensively than that. Maybe it turns out deck attempt #1 you thought youâd enjoy but donât, you really wanna play deck #2, 'nother $200 please
Well, I mean, the cost to play Overwatch includes some percentage of my gaming PC theoretically.