Arrogance never pays off and is almost always punished immediately – at least in Hearthstone. A streamer demonstrates this impressively.
As a card game, Hearthstone has a lot of random elements. While some players hate this amount of “RNG”, others totally enjoy it and have fun with the absurd things that can happen, which can turn the game in one direction or another.
What happened? The streamer ClarkHellscream played a match against another mage in Hearthstone. His defeat was actually sealed. His opponent had enough minions on the board to take out the streamer directly and claim victory. However, the enemy did not do that. Instead, he reduced Clark’s health to just 1 and held back on the rest of his actions – intentionally.
What was arrogant about it? In Hearthstone, there’s a lot that is considered “BM” or “Bad Manner” – essentially unsportsmanlike, arrogant, or annoying behavior. This can include spamming emotes or deliberately “not defeating” the opponent when one has the chance to do so. The thought behind this usually is: “Look, I don’t even need to defeat you this turn, the next turn will do it itself.”
Hero card Reno turns the game around: Both players swapped their heroes for “The Incredible Reno”. This is a card that also replaces the player’s hero power. At the beginning of each turn – even before drawing a card – Reno casts a random spell on a random target. This is a pretty chaotic and unpredictable trait.
However, it is exactly this that plays into ClarkHellscream’s hands. His Reno casts Soulrender on an enemy minion. This, in turn, shuffles 2 Soul Shards back into ClarkHellscream’s deck, which are also drawn immediately. Each Soul Shard heals him for 2 health points, making the resulting fatigue damage too little to kill Clark.
He looks astonished and asks: “Wait? Why did you let me do that?!”
Arrogance is punished immediately: The behavior of the opponent was thus directly punished. What started as a sure victory turned into a loss. Clark starts laughing, plays his own turn, and passes the round. Now his opponent suffers fatigue damage and loses the round – completely unnecessarily.
Streamer makes the same mistake: But ClarkHellscream is not free of blame either. After he survives the round through lucky chance, he ends his own turn without directly taking out his opponent as well.
This can be interpreted in two ways: Either as “an eye for an eye” and then similarly as clear BM behavior, or simply as a form of fairness in the sense of “You gave me a lucky shot, now I’ll give you one.”
The basic message should be clear: Don’t be too arrogant in Hearthstone – or any other game. In the end, it backfires, and you give away the match.
