Hearthstone - redux

Way back in January, I posted about Hearthstone.  Can't believe I started playing this game in January although to be fair, I don't actually play that often.  Partly, this is due to time.  The other reason for this is actually related to the nature of Hearthstone as a CCG.

To be fair to Blizzard, they have done a good job of creating a CCG where you can play and have fun even without spending money.  However, if you do spend money (or spend a ridiculous amount of time grinding in order to build up your deck), you will have a better deck.

What this means is that I have gone into games and never had a chance simply because my opponents had significantly better cards.  Again, to be fair to Blizzard, they have done a good job of making even basic cards semi-competitive.  But semi-competitive doesn't count for much when you are being destroyed by other players.

What this means in practice is that the game is only worth playing at certain times.  Primarily, playing in the evenings from the second week of the month onwards.

That may sound odd but both of those relate to the type of player playing at that time - specifically, people playing that match those criteria tend to be more casual (like myself) and hence, you are more likely to run into a similar level deck to yourself.

Play in the evenings
Most people have work and family commitments etc.  This tends to take up most of the day and hence, the "casual" players tend to only be online in the evenings.  Fairly obvious but if you play during the day, you are going to be playing against relatively hardcore players who will have uber decks (relevant to mine).  I know this for a fact from playing during daytime at the weekends as well as playing it briefly once when I was off from work due to sick leave.

My advice - do something during the day.
:)

Play from mid-month onwards
This might sound odd but will make sense once you realise how the ranking system works.

The game actually starts you off at rank 25 and you have to work your way down from there (so rank 1 are the best players).  However, each "season" only lasts a month and at the end of the season, your rank is reset.  Not completely reset as you get a bonus based on the rank you achieved in the previous season (so I tend to start each month at rank 23).  What the reset means though is that at the lower levels at the start of the month, you are playing against people who should be at a higher level than you but aren't simply due to the rank reset each month.

By skipping the game at the start of the month, you avoid that group of higher level players and will have a more enjoyable time overall.


One last point to mention - even if you follow the above, you will still get owned on a semi-regular basis by people with amazing decks.  This is just a problem with the game community in that there are groups of people who should be high level players, but they actually deliberately delevel themselves so that they can play low level decks and pwn them.  This is actually a well known problem in the community but there is currently nothing that can be done about it.

On the plus side, a game doesn't take that long so even if you get destroyed, you can quickly get into another game.

Game Night! - 15 May 2015

Woohoo - another game night!

Didn't get a lot of games in as it was a short game night.  Still, had a lot of fun so that's a definite tick in the win column!

Aliens: This time it's war
We started out the night with a quick 2 player game of Aliens: TTIW.  I was the marines again while my friend played the Aliens.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to pull many Ops cards and this allowed my friend to wipe out my marines with alarming ease.  To an extent, this is one of the problems of the game - it is very heavily reliant on luck and there isn't much you can do to mitigate that (unlike say, CCGs where you can build your deck to have more card draw etc).  Unfortunately, this makes it 2 wins in a row for my friend.
>:(

Really need to put a stop to his run the next time we play!

Yomi
We wrapped up with Yomi - our current favourite.

I continued with Setsuki while my friend tried out a new character - Onimaru.  Onimaru is an attack heavy character who can't do combo's but is very card efficient in doing damage to make up for it.  As a result, he doesn't need to win combat too often in order to kill off other characters - particularly for Setsuki as her health is only 70.

This resulted in a very nervy game as each move had to be carefully plotted to try and outguess what card he was going to play.

Ultimately, I managed to out-play my opponent and racked up 2 wins.

Darksiders II

After a long slew of Star Wars games, its time for something a little different.

Darksiders II is a 3rd person action game where you play the part of Death, one of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse.  The story of the game basically involves you trying to restore Humanity who were wiped out in the first game (I think).  What this entails is you running around several different realms doing various quests and wiping out everything that moves.  The game is basically a spectacle fighter.  Gameplay is a mix of fighting and platforming/puzzling.

And it is actually a pretty good game.  When talking about Jedi Academy, I mentioned how the game was well paced between action and puzzle sections and Darksiders II manages to pull off the same feat.  You get a good mix of action and puzzle and, just like Jedi Academy, the puzzle sections aren't too difficult so that you are never too far away from another adrenaline rush.

With that said, playing this game did remind me of why I don't normally play spectacle fighters.

I'm very objective focused in games like this.  Unlike others, I don't spend that much time trying out the various different combo's.  Once I find a combo that works, I tend to repeat that same combo unless I come up against an enemy that the combo doesn't work against.  After a couple of hours though, I always feel bad and jump into the menus to look at the controls.  However, after seeing the massive menu of combos, I always just think - nah, can't be bothered!
:)

Battle Line

Battle Line is a fantastic little game by Reiner Knizia.  Basically, its a 2 player game where you play opposing generals facing off on a battlefield.

It's also one of the few games which I have rated as a 9 on BGG.  Yes, the game is that good.

What makes the game so much fun is that, while there is a small element of luck involved as the game involves card draw, the winner is often determined by the player who plays their cards best and not necessarily who draws the highest cards.  This is a direct contradiction to the views of one of my friends who believes that luck is highly important in this game as you need to draw high cards.  Worth mentioning that he has never beaten me at this game.  :)

Anyway, this principle of playing your cards well was illustrated perfectly in a recent game I had.

The initial draw didn't give me any high cards.  However, I did have a stack of 1's and 2's which gave me the potential for getting straight flushes or three of a kind from the start.  I played them early and set up a potential charge to win 3 flags in a row.

What made this game fascinating though was mid-way through the game.  At this point, I could see my opponent setting up his own 3 flags in a row in the middle of the deck.  I had only one way and that was to try to race and get my own flags won first.  Luckily, he didn't grab any of the tactics cards which might have stopped me from completing my sets.

One round before he won, I was able to get my flags and get the win.  Tight tense finish which shows the importance of strategy in this game.