Hearthstone has a problem again. A few decks dominate the game – and they are boring, no matter how you look at it.
After a long break, it is finally time for a proper rant Wednesday. The latest expansion of Hearthstone, “The Witchwood”, has been available to all players for a few days now. But the initial joy over new, cool deck ideas was, as is often the case, quickly overshadowed by some particularly effective decks. The new strategy seems to be: I play my game, no matter what you do.
In the “past”, the deck was successful in Hearthstone that had a suitable answer to every turn of the opponent. Those who could counter particularly well were also able to rack up many victories.
This approach to countering has completely disappeared from the current meta. It is no longer the deck that responds intelligently to the opponent that wins, but rather the deck that doesn’t care at all about what the opponent is doing.
Shudderwock – the 3-Hour Games
A particularly prominent example right now is the Shudderwock Shaman with its “Endless” combo. The deck itself doesn’t have a particularly high win rate, but it is still despised for many reasons.
The Endless combo cannot be stopped. No matter how smart and intelligent you play – the Shaman just has to play four cards before laying down the Shudderwock on the board.
Sure, before that, you could have won the match. But if not, the loser can expect 30 minutes of animations showing the Shudderwock insanity. We presented you the relevant problem in this article.
On Reddit, some people report on matches that lasted nearly three hours – and that’s only because all the animations of the Shudderwock were played out. Interaction looks different. But at least you can finally watch all the anime series that have been piling up for weeks in peace. That has its merits too.
At least: Blizzard wants to discuss this issue next week and plan changes.
The New Rush Hunter
That Hunters are predestined to always go “face” is really nothing new. Thanks to new cards like “Baku the Moonslicer”, which upgrades the Hunter’s hero power right from the start (now deals 3 damage), the fun of dying begins already in turn two.
As if that wasn’t silly enough, there are cards like the Mechano-Egg, which doubles the damage of the hero power (6 damage to the face – yay!). With the Duskwood Spirit, the fun reaches its peak and the Hunter probably does too. Because then two shots (12 damage to the face – fantastic!) come in.
I can hardly express my fun in words.
Paladin Deck with Recruit Flood
Similarly “cancerous”, to stay in the tone of Reddit, is the “new” buff Paladin. He swears to flood the board quickly with Silver Hand recruits. Also here a heartfelt “Thank you!” to Baku the Moonslicer.
Afterwards, the recruits are buffed, and an army of 3/3 minions overwhelms the opponent. Anyone who intends to simply destroy all Silver Hand recruits immediately faces an impossible task. Because with the Sword of the Wilds, the Green Hell, and the hero power, the board is filled again after each turn.
The aforementioned decks are just examples. There are many more decks that basically don’t care what the opponent is doing – the Cube Warlock is also high up there, but to deal with that will kill my nerves for the month of April.
I have absolutely no idea what Blizzard was thinking here. The only option seems to be to resort to one of these decks myself and join the madness.
I can only hope that the Hearthstone community comes up with more creative ideas in the next weeks and months, enabling more fun decks and a more active “back and forth”. Until then, I will probably stay in the Arena.
This “I play my cards down and don’t care what the opponent does” meta is definitely devoid of fun.
How do you see it?
