MTG Arena vs Hearthstone

[ldev]

magic is just outdated (fucking drawing mana when I need any card to play? or not drawing mana... the fuck..) and doesn't has many fun cards as it is limited by real world


also, not available on mobile

[Onikaroshi]

magic is just outdated (fucking drawing mana when I need any card to play? or not drawing mana... the fuck..) and doesn't has many fun cards as it is limited by real world


also, not available on mobile

It's still quite popular, regardless of being "outdated" (i for one enjoy it a lot more then HS), and it IS coming to mobile, they just wanted to get it together on PC first, much like HS.

[xenogear3]

Land is just a part of the game. It causes you to lose the game, but it also causes your opponent to lose the game too.
However, it makes the game SLOW and uninteresting. You draw an useless land, and you "LOSS" that turn.

As for the "the new X game will kill the old Y game", WoW has a very high cost barrier to entry.
Card games don't.

I am not surprise to see Hearthstone loss top spot before WoW does.

[camplify]

MTG arena is a lot funner than HS because HS is just too linear.

[Mysterymask]

Only issue with MTG Arena is there's no play a friend mode....

THAT to me is a really glaring issue with any multiplayer game

otherwise it's fine

[caractacus]

Only issue with MTG Arena is there's no play a friend mode....

THAT to me is a really glaring issue with any multiplayer game

otherwise it's fine

They have just implemented a play a friend mode as a lot of people were asking for it. I haven't tried it yet but it looks very basic, i'm sure it will be improved in the future.

[Mysterymask]

They have just implemented a play a friend mode as a lot of people were asking for it. I haven't tried it yet but it looks very basic, i'm sure it will be improved in the future.

well lesson learned log into game at least the day before bitching about something

[Ashgaan]

Both are amazing, i would play both (and i do).
Most modern day card games are based on MTG, it's just that MTG had very very bad ports, so it is not as well established in the digital space.

At the moment i play HS more and i invest money in it (usually buying the expansion bundles), in MTG:A i only bought the new player bundle (5$) as the value is very good. With the crystals i entered a sealed event and did some Drafts (draft = arena in HS BUT you keep the cards you draft). This means that you could create a bad deck for draft with the sole purpose of having the cards for your collection of constructed. After 2-3 weeks of casual play i was able to craft a mono red burn deck (aggro - much like mage burn in HS) which has a good win rate. Quests are fairly fast in MTG:A so for now i complete as much as time permits. As far as i know you don't get crystals from quests, but you can covert them from gold in some game modes (Draft for example)

HS is simpler, faster, mobile friendly with a some RNG involved.
MTG is 20x times more complex, with huge flexibility in win conditions, deck brewing and playstyle (maybe due the fact that MTG has aprox 30 years of existence). RNG is less and it usually revolves around lands and opening hand (but the later is general in almost all card games).

If i would have the same % of the standard collection in MTG i would play that more (on PC atleast). Again the possibilities in MTG are better, you want to play control ?? in HS if control is not Tier1, you will probably lose a lot, in MTG, especially in competitive games (BO3), you have bigger chances to make the archetype you like work (there is a Tier deck list in MTG as well, but not as exclusive as HS).
There are a lot of keywords that help the draw in MTG and also the land play, again it all depends of the deck/archetype you want to play. The interaction with the graveyard and exile piles is also to be considered.

The more you learn about the game, and the more cards you have, the more you will appreciate the competitive side, where, between games, you can drop some cards in favor of others (sidedeck), this allows you to have better winning chances against decks that usually obliterate your main deck.

PS: I really dislike Artifact, the amount of RNG in that game is disheartening, also the economy is not something i would go into anytime soon (and based on me not liking the game, i will never need to touch it).
PS2: i also tried faeria and shadowverse and although interesting they did not match HS nor MTG:A.


TL : DNR - Play both.

[Onikaroshi]

Well, tried out Arena the last couple days.

First (meaningless) observation: I haven't gone first in a single game since installing. Kinda weird. Starting to freak me out.

Anyway, it's basically what I remember. A game that appears "complex" on the surface but is really just as - if often not even more - linear than Hearthstone most of the time. (Largely due to the combat system which is more interactive than Hearthstone for the defender but less so for the attacker)

And of course the overall economy of the game. What depth there is you can't even get into without rarer cards, so you're generally stuck with just trying to cobble together a cheap RDW version and hope for a good draw so you can burn your opponent down before they can really play the game. It wasn't interesting back when I played semi-professionally and it still isn't today.

Maybe I've just outgrown card games. I grew up on them and played the hell out of MtG in particular, but became more and more disillusioned with them the more I dove into analyzing choices and outcomes. As much as nostalgia wants to keep dragging me back into playing them, the reality just doesn't hold up.

I just think MTG lost a lot of flair in newer generations. And with something like Arena, deck building is a pain in the ass but is like the MAIN part of MTG

[Ausr]

Ranked mode in MTG Arena sucks more donkey dick than Hearthstone's ranked mode, especially for beginners.

[Kathranis]

I feel like MTGA is a fun game if you want to go in and just mess around with the starter decks they give you, since you'll mostly be playing against other starter decks.

The monetization around the game, at least so far, seems worse than Hearthstone. Feels like it'll be really expensive to build top tier decks, just like it is with paper cards, considering how many duplicates, rares, and mythic rares you need to fill out a high end 60-card deck.

I think the UI is a bit worse, though they've done a great job with the rules engine. For the most part it flows about as smoothly as you can expect a digital MTG to flow. The thing that HS really nails is giving everything a very tactile feel and a 3D look, despite being a card game. MTGA still kinda feels like you're just "sliding around jpegs" most of the time.

Anyway, it's not something I'm going to invest any money in. I poured all my free resources into a really fun Ixalan vampire deck, and it does okay at my current rank. I can switch around to starter decks and just have fun if I feel like playing Magic, but I'm not involved enough to want to try and build a bunch of different decks or climb to the top of the ladder.

And honestly, something that still feels really bad about Magic in general is mana screw and mana flood. Bad luck happens in HS, but even when bad luck happens in HS you still generally get a chance to at least do stuff, to execute some part of what your deck can do, and maybe you can turn it around. In MTG you have a certain percentage of games where you just can't play much of anything, and that always feels trashy.

[Kathranis]

Yeah, land is just...jeez, it's friggin' awful. I don't know how I put up with it when I played a lot, maybe I just didn't care about it as much. It's just so bad, though. So bad that I feel like if Magic were released today it would never fly with consumers.

And the worst part is that it's not just an issue of your opening draw where you can make a decision to mulligan based on the amount of lands or curve of your hand, it can just pop up at any time in the middle of a game and boom, you're drawing five land in a row and the game is just over.

As much as I've railed against Hearthstone and compared it unfavorably to the MtG that existed in my memory, I'm actually tempted to go back on that and say that Hearthstone might actually be the better card game overall. So many MtG mechanics are just THAT bad.

Ignoring the balance at any given point, I think the core mechanics of Hearthstone are incredibly well designed for an online TCG. The pace of the game, the natural curve from first turn to late game, hero powers, even they way it restricts all interactions to your own turn, is pretty much perfect for an online game. It often has the same feel as a game of speed chess; you execute your own strategy and respond to your opponent on your own turn, press the button, and then formulate and adjust your strategy as your opponent plays out their turn. It *feels* good.

There's a lot of good things about Magic, and the ability to respond on your opponent's turn, control your own defense, and potentially act at any moment are definitely some of them, but they don't inherently make it a better game. Especially when you strip away the physical aspects and make it a multiplayer PC game with rule automation.

I think they both have strong cores, and I think if MTG were being designed in 2019 it would probably have a different resource system. Even something as simple as a seperate land stack that you can choose to draw from instead of your library, or some variant of that. I know back when I played in HS with paper cards, we had house mulligan rules to mitigate the issue.

Hearthstone's biggest problem is that it's feature-starved and after nearly five years, players are getting burned out. MTGA is something new for a lot of people, and some people may prefer its gameplay to Hearthstone's, but give it few years and it could very easily be in the same place HS is right now if they don't build out and expand the game features.

[Eroginous]

I've been playing for the past 3 days and it's great fun. However there are a few issues with MTG that are basically core game mechanics. The land system is fucking awful, lots of games lost to either not drawing enough or drawing too much and it's not like it's a deck building issue. Then any Blue archetype makes any one who has ever complained about "fun and interactive" decks on Hearthstone look like an idiot. Finally card quality is based for the most part on rarity, rarer cards in MTG are just more powerful, now I've heard that the match making system does have a deck power level feature but it doesn't feel great as a new player.

So whilst I'm enjoying it, it is giving me an appreciation for everything the HS designers did with the fundamentals of HS.

The 'land system' is a core aspect of the game. You have entire mechanics of some cards revolving around land and the pitfalls people experience with land can be eliminated by proper deck building in 99% of cases. The 1% are just bad draws and can be ignored because the presence of land in MTG is not inherently awful. Just when you don't put enough land in or shuffle in a way that clumps everything. Shuffling methods are important.

That's sorta what L5R did and it remains one of my favorite CCG's ever. Just a shame that it never caught on the same way MtG did.

There really isn't anything wrong with MTGs land system. There are plenty of things wrong with players and trying to build a deck without also making sure their mana base is ideal. If you're trying to run 16 lands in a 60 card deck and complaining of land screw, first step would be to add 7 lands and adjust for mana cost. You really can't play less than 23 and complain of problems.

But to be fair, Wow TCG (before HS) 'solved' this problem by allowing players to play any card from their deck face down as a resource card. Ignoring the simplicity of 'generic resource card' and face down cards already existing as a mechanic for morph, there really isn't anything better. The problems that come with HS resource system (1 mana per turn, max 10) are that there is basically no worthwhile game play to attach to it. Every card that affects mana crystals is basically optional and there really isn't any exploitative interaction to make building a deck around it worthwhile.

Mtg has infinite mana generators and the ability to play spells of any cost, while HS is capped at 10 mana. If something costs more than 10, it's not playable without other game rules reducing the cost to 10 or lower. This is something that might be a good limiter to prevent infinite loops in a game that has to play animations for everything, but as we've seen with certain card combinations, there is still room for infinite loops.

[Kronik85]

The 'land system' is a core aspect of the game. You have entire mechanics of some cards revolving around land and the pitfalls people experience with land can be eliminated by proper deck building in 99% of cases. The 1% are just bad draws and can be ignored because the presence of land in MTG is not inherently awful. Just when you don't put enough land in or shuffle in a way that clumps everything. Shuffling methods are important.

This is fundamentally wrong. Proper deck building does not prevent land screw and it's pretty common that one of the two people in a game will experience some kind of land screw, it is not a 1% issue lol. I've been watching hours of MTG:A on Twitch, it happens frequently.

It's a bad mechanic, it is however a core mechanic and something the game has built on in interesting ways.

[EternalBany]

Magic is better than HS the only problem is:

- you can get mana fucked badly
- Mulligan system
- Blue control decks are INSANE Op, but this is personal

[Eroginous]

This is fundamentally wrong. Proper deck building does not prevent land screw and it's pretty common that one of the two people in a game will experience some kind of land screw, it is not a 1% issue lol. I've been watching hours of MTG:A on Twitch, it happens frequently.

It's a bad mechanic, it is however a core mechanic and something the game has built on in interesting ways.

When I see threads like this and people who say land is a bad mechanic or unimportant... its like you don't understand the role it plays. I have never successfully piloted a deck where the mana base and the card distribution prior to matches didn't make a difference. When the game covers every possible strategy, including numerous ways to get more land directly from your deck or play with much fewer land (some decks have no land), you have the tools to mitigate the vast majority of land screw/bad draws. You can't just say 'land sux' and then only do the bare minimum of having land in your deck to make your deck run.

It's not something that every level of player is aware of, obviously. Part of the deckbuilding process is defining your mana base to be as consistent as it can possibly be. I mean, you're actively working to make your deck run as consistently as possible. You're not building it so that you just randomly get screwed out of being able to do anything. Like, they actively print the tools you need to make numerous deck ideas function consistenly.

The other thing you have to mind is your mana curve. If only a few of your cards are playable before turn 5, and you spend a lot of the time not having enough mana/getting bad draws, you should probably make sure the cards in your deck can be played sooner. Get mana ramping cards or pick more cards with lower mana costs. You want to have access to ~60% of your deck by turn 3 or 4. That's how you are going to remain consistent. You want a land distribution of roughtly 23 land 37 non land cards, for the average deck that doesn't tutor or manipulate its mana base.

Other options include things like dual lands, man lands, fetch lands, mana generators, and effects that amplify/filter mana. One of the easiest and less expensive decks to make (in just about any format) is a green deck with mana fixing/tutoring as the base, and stronger cards from other colors as a finisher. But you can't just say 'land is bad mechanic' and have any sort of an argument. This game was created by a dude who holds a doctorate in math. It's a numbers game and things like statistics and percentages matter a lot when it comes to deckbuilding. You're trying to create something with maximum synergy so that it performs a particular game winning strategy, despite being shuffled prior to play. That strategy can be any number of things and the older the format, the more possible interactions exist.

Suddenly, the game isn't about making your opponents health be zero. It's about making an infinite loop or winning in another, creative, counter meta fashion. Because MTG is a card game on paper first (I don't really acknowledge digital offerings as sound representations of the game) played on a table top, it follows a much more direct and intentional path to game play, where you are given the tools that might help you avoid the RNG nature of a shuffled deck as much as possible, without just letting you arrange your deck the precise way you want.

In effect, every card in the game is meant to break the fundamental rules of the game:

1. You may untap once per turn
2. You may draw a card once per turn
3. You may play a land card once per turn
4. You may attack once per turn

Notice how I left out punctiation. Each of these rules is open to being broken by any given card within the game. I can only play one land per turn, so to get to my 5 mana baddie out sooner, I'm going to play a BIrds of Paradise turn 1 and then a Harrow on turn 2, resulting in having access to all 5 colors mana (if I want) and having that mana open on turn 3, Just because I played a mana generator and a land tutor on my first 2 turns. Obviously, I used dated examples, but they still have current printings that do those things, maybe not as efficiently, but this is the core theme of green in every set. Getting mana fixed to the amount and colors you want.

Breaking these 4 rules, is how you win in MTG. Whan you can produce land at a faster rate than your opponent, when you can draw more cards, when you can untap things more than once, or attack more than once, you gain the upper hand quickly. Which is why these are the 4 fundamentals to keep in mind.

There are also fundamentals to deck building:

1. Play cards that synergize best. Putting cards with high mana costs in a deck doesn't work if you can't get to the turn/right amount/kind of mana you need to play it. Having the right mana base and the right mana curve for your deck is like putting the right oil in your car - it will make all the difference in how your deck runs.

2. Know how to shuffle. I don't mean deck stacking or cheating. I mean shuffle. A good shuffle is a 50/50 riffle that you do 5-7 times followed by a cut. This is accomplished through the used of quality sleeves and the even distribution of card types (to avoid clumping) prior to shuffling. Every judge and good player knows this is the difference between a deck that runs well the vast majority of the time and a deck that has higher rates of bad draws/land screw.

If you never redistribute your cards after your games, if you just grab and go, you will experience higher rates of bad draws/land screws. If you don't get as close to a perfect riffle as possible, you will significantly alter the positions of the cards in your deck, increasing the chances of things clumping and just not being available to you when you need it. You don't want all your low cost and land cards stacking in one spot in the deck because you just threw them there after each game. No amount of shuffling will undo that mess.

Here's why: The shuffling a program does is not based on a prior card order. It's true random. Meaning, when the program shuffles, it chooses the order of your deck based on the order an algorithym picked - which is bad for a game where you want your deck to do the same thing every time you play it (which is what you want in MTG).

When a paper deck is shuffled, the new card order is determined based on the method of shuffling and the previous card position. This means that an even a riffle shuffle (being the most efficient method) of 5-7 times is enough to sufficiently prevent someone from knowing the exact card order, but it is not enough to truly randomize anything. Even if we shuffle more than 5-7 times, the deck will always be pretty evenly distributed in a manner that can be played with success. Meaning you will have consistent draws, because it is not true random and never will be true random, even if you shuffle 100 times.

It appears random to you because you can't know the specific order. But if you knew the starting order, did any number of perfect riffle shuffles, you could actually determine the exact order of the cards based on the original position of each card and the number of times shuffled. A program could track and prove the concept fairly easy enough. In fact, if you play a 30 card deck, 4x each non land card, with a 37/23 split of one land type, you're looking at approx 13-14 unique cards. Which means you have a one in 13 or 14 chance to see each card you need on an opening draw, with odds getting better of seeing what you need as your deck shrinks and the game plays out.

That's why it's not true random. When you watch the best players of this game play, you will see them utilizing these methods of shuffling to ensure both players pilot their decks competitively. You won't see anyone makig a big deal about it, because the goal of shuffling (and the official rules) is not to achieve true RNG. Rather, it's to prevent you from knowing what is coming, which can be done with as few shuffles as 5-7. Which is why no one makes a big deal about RNG or shuffling in MTG.

And when I said you can eliminate all but 1% of land screw/bad draws with proper deck building and shuffling, that information was based on everything I've just said. Facts known to high level players that help them succeed at this game. Things that are often overlooked by the average/uninformed player, and often the reason why players get frustrated with the game to begin with.

It's like the player who puts a Darksteel Colossus into their deck with the intent on winning, only to have someone exile it with a 1 mana cost instant at the end of their turn, after they spent 15 turns trying to get it onto the field with 17 lands in their 85 card deck. You look at that example and either don't understand the issue with the economy of a poorly built deck, or you instantly understand the parameters causing the guy to have bad luck with his deck. No one cares about your Darksteel Colossus. It's not going to be your champion. Don't build your deck around such nonsense. Build your deck around a cohesive idea that utilizes a combination of cards to achieve a cumulative effect that in turns, wins you the game. You want your deck to run well regardless of what you draw.

Sligh is an example of one of the most efficient and effective deck builds MTG has ever seen. It isn't a supported archetype anymore (I don't think) because it revolves around cards that have low/alternative costs to make them playable early, making it possible to KO your opponent consistently by turn 3-4 before they have much time to respond, even with a deck built for it.

Sligh accomplishes this on a mana base of 12-16 land cards, with an overwhelming majority of the cards being at the 1 or 2 mana cost. This enables you to play most of your deck any time off one or two lands, even after mulliganing to 4 or 5 cards. The essence of the deck is essentially aggro burn, do as much face damage with one shot haste minions and big burn spells. Ball Lightning is a 3 cost 6/1 trample haste that will never see standard print again. It's efficiency is pretty unrivaled in any sligh deck that didnt get to play it. Turn 3, just come down for 6 damage and then another 6 more following it if you don't have an answer. Players in MTG have 20 health. That's 6-12 points of damage by a single minion by turn 3 or 4.

It's honestly too much for all but the most control oriented decks to deal with, which is why other versions of Ball Lightning (Blistering Firecat) have been more expensive and usually splashed between colors to play. But Sligh also has Fireblast. A 6 cost instant that lets you sacrifice two mountains to play whenever you want.

So when you have someone in lethal range by turn 3 and just need that last 4 points, you sacrifice your mountains and Fireblast them for the win. The rest of the deck is just minions and spells that cost 1-2 and have haste or abilities to deal damage or have some sort of drawback to offset being strong for their cost (sort of like shamans and overload). It's really a brilliant strategy, and the perfect example of why land are necessary and good, for the game.

3. Play cards that manipulate your deck to a greater degree of success. Dropping a land, creature, and attacking until the opponent is dead, is a basic way to win the game. It's not the only way. It's also not the most exciting or fun way. After awhile, you have to start making your deck run better through the use of card advantage. Card advantage is what causes you to win in any card game involving complex rules and card relationships. Having access to more cards than your opponent is how you execute your deck strat sooner than your opponent, resulting in a win.

Sitting there like a chump, waiting for top decks (whether it's land or not) isn't exactly going to get you to top 8 in a PTQ or Regioinals. Starting your hand with nothing to play until turn 5... also not a great way to get ahead of the curve. So build your deck in a way that no matter what 7 cards you start with, you can plan the first 3 turns of the game, and no matter what comes after, is likely to fall into the plan.

This is where tutors and card draw comes in. One of the most recent MTG decks (from my era) to break the game, resulting in massive bans from both constructed and limited play, was Skullclamp Affinity. It was a 4 color deck utilizing the singular best cards from each color to help propel you to massive combo potential, able to kill your opponent thru life loss consistently (not just direct attack) by turn 3-4, in a standard environment.

With 8-12 lands. Of 4 different colors. And no Land search.

The basic premise of the deck is crafting a deck entirely of artifacts (60 artifact cards, even the lands count as artifacts) to maximize the synergy of artifacts and the affinity keyword (casting costs reduced by the number of artifacts in play). Exploiting this mechanic and the sheer number of available low cost artifacts, turned cards like Myr Enforcer (4/4 no abilities costs 7) from unplayable garbage to top teir commons. Or Frogmite, being the lower costed version at 2/2 for 4. Generic, junk creatures you are able to drop turn 1, 2 or 3 because you could play an artifact land, an Ornithopter, Mantle, and then hit the board running with low or free costed junk that is too efficient for those turns. Add on Arcbound Ravager and Disciple of the Vault, and you have a board full of things that can't be easily removed without paying a steep price, while also having an activated combo that results in sudden life loss, that can preempt anything they can possibly do in response. And if you don't have lethal thru life loss, you have a huge creature that requires specific removal types to be gotten rid of. That deck forced the environment to deck/counter deck. And every time a creature died with Skullclamp on it, you got to draw 2 cards. If you had two Skullclamps? You draw 4.

It's pretty easy to see how that becomes degenerate. If the game doesn't end by turn 3 or 4, you end up drawing huge chunks of your deck each turn and you can effectively eliminate RNG completely.

This is how the game MTG is designed to be played. Why MTGO is so cumbersome. Why attempts at MTG games in the past have always been extremely limited to specific sets and only offered minimal customization and card selection. Why this MTG game doesn't seem like it's going to do any better.

4. Eliminate card disadvantage. It's easy to understand why drawing cards is good for you. It's also relatively easy to begin identifying card advantage as more than just card draw, once you notice the relationships between the effect of having more cards, even when it doesn't come directly from draw itself.

The main difference between Hearthstone and MTG is the scope of how card advantage works. In MTG, you are given a vast assortment of tools split between 5 colors and then told you can break the 4 fundamental rules of the game with any given combination of them. The effects of breaking these rules tends to be cumulative in nature. If I played a land, then got a second land into play that turn, it's often not useful to me until the following turn, which is a way to limit exploitation of game mechanics.

Card draw and tutors follow a similar design. You will often spend a lot of mana to get some cards from your deck, in a trade to have a stronger following turn. This is a cumulative effect. Most everything in the game is the result of lots of small things working together over a number of turns to establish a cumulative effect. Even combo decks work over many turns to assemble a combo thru deck manipulation (which is something we just don't have in hearthstone).

Everything in MTG is a determined effect that culminates in a series of bigger determined effects. You want as little RNG as possible. You want to decide everything your deck does, so if the only RNG you have is a riffle shuffle of an increasingly dwindling number of cards, that's is the most ideal situation from a strategy perspective. This is also known as eliminating card disadvantage. By streamlining your deck for competitive play, making it into a purring engine that roars when you step on the gas, you eliminate the very thing that is bad for you: cards sitting in your hand or coming from your deck, which aren't useful, and then sit in your hand unplayed. In MTG, extra copies of minions are called token creatures. They only exist on the play board. They stop existing as soon as they die or move to another zone of play.

This prevents them from sitting in your hand, creating hand disadvantage. When you tutor, it's to get a card from your deck. A specific card. This works to get you exactly what you need to make your next move, which is actually useful.

Conversely, Hearthstone works to add as much RNG as possible, under the banner of 'it's okey to have overpowered garbage happen sometimes, as long as it's not consistent between games.' So when you look for a card from your deck, it's randomly chosen by the game to be less powerful more often. You use Sense Demons, as an example, unless you have exactly two demons in your deck, you're going to get something that might not be good for you, when you get it.

This creates card disadvantage. A card that not only might hurt your strat to be played right now, but a card that can't be played to advance your strat without costing you the game, just sitting in your hand, taking up a limited card slot. The same happens with cards that choose random targets. If you need an answer to a threat on your opponents board, the worst thing you can do is let a spell pick randomly which threat to get rid of. That's like tossing a coin to decide who wins after 5 rounds of boxing between heavyweights. They just spent all this time and energy fighting to win, and you decide who wins with a coin flip? It's not fun, and it turns a useful card into a dead card.

When they added effects allowing you to play cards from other classes, it felt bad compared to MTG, where you can just play whatever colors you want together, so long as you have land in your deck to support it and cards to manipulate it. It would be like putting mage cards into my druid deck, intentionally, before the game. We can't do that. We have neutral cards. Which are always minions. Which always dilutes the power of a class.

Which always causes imbalances in the meta as a powerful neutral minion shows up in nearly every single competitive deck. If we were to classify decks according to colors, like in MTG, it would be Neutral Mage deck or Neutral Druid deck, as in a deck comprising of lots of the same neutral minions and then very specific class cards to support them. It would be very unfun. Which is why decks like that don't exist in MTG. Unless you have a reason to put a neutral minion in your deck, ie, it enables something you aren't capable of from class cards, you should not be using neutral cards. It's counter intuitive to the design of each class (to be separate, different).

While some classes don't have much in the way of unique deck ideas on their own, requiring the use of certain neutral cards to create deck ideas, other classes have tons of cards to facilitate unique and worthwhile deck ideas. None of my decks use neutral cards, I play mage, druid, shaman, and warlock. With a little bit of rogue here and there (rogue has some neutral cards, but only to enable specific combos).

The main issue here is that any sort of card advantage is coming from a place of RNG, as in you could get something that helps or doesn't help at all, in the vast majority of cases. And while it might be fun to see Shudderwock or Yogg Saron go off the first time, unless you can figure out a sustainable game winning effect to play before that, it's not competitive. Just annoying. I've watched a shudderwock shaman do nothing for 3 turns in a row, after playing shudderwock, simply because the order it chose kept retuning everything to his hand as the last chosen battlecry.

It was funny because he couldn't get anything to have an attack phase, despite having a ton really big shudderwocks hitting the board each of his turns. RNG is bad for competition. Which is why coin flips are reserved for seeing who goes first and who gets ball, and not part of the competition afterward. In fact, RNG cards exist in MTG, as sort of a way to poke fun at the game or lighten the mood a little, but no one plays them competitively. Pick a top 8 list in any recorded MTG event, strip apart the deck lists, and here's what you won't find: RNG cards.

What you WILL find, is a deck with an effective, efficient mana base and mana curve, with tools to help manipulate the library for one or more tools needed to ensure the deck works properly with the greatest chance for success. In every single list. You won't find big random dumb creatures that seem invincible if only you could get them on the board. You won't find decks with a jumbled mess of cards that don't really mesh well together, with an inconsistent mana base and mana curve.

Because those decks aren't competitive...

So yes. Proper deck building and shuffling goes a long way to preventing land screw/bad draws. Whether you believe it or not.

[Eroginous]

I don't understand why you keep replying to comments about the design of the mechanic with, "BUT HERE'S HOW YOU BUILD A DECK!!!" No one is asking about that or having a problem with that.

The discussion is about the mechanic itself. Yes it's a part of this game. No you can't remove it. Yes we can comment on how it's not particularly fun or engaging and hasn't aged well at all.

Discussing the way a mechanic relates to the rest of the game is how you understand why a mechanic is good and/or necessary. Furthermore, I was responding to a specific post about deck building and land screw//bad draws, which is what why you are saying land is bad, to begin with. If you are unable to understand the role land plays in the game, aren't able to understand how that role is different from deck to deck, then you don't have the experience or skill needed to participate in a meaningful discussion.

Because meaningful discussions can only be had if you're willing to engage on parameters that are important to the relevance of the discussion. Such as, what land does in the game and the potential strategy it adds. Following the advice of my post would solve your land issues in all but 1% of the cases (which is more than likely an acceptable rate of land screw or bad draws for anyone). Which would change your perspective of land, completely. Changing it from this negative thing you barely understand, but seems terrible for the game, into something you actually enjoy about the game.

But if you just came here to complain about land in MTG, because you agree with the thread topic and hate land, you're really not adding anything to the discussion, in the first place.

[Wyattbw09]

Meh, land flooding or screwing happens in Magic, but alreast it happens up front. Hearthstone has become the game of auto win cards. Losing, no problem play Bloodreaver Gul’Dan and you usually auto win the game. Same for Janina. Playing a control style deck? Oh look you got matched up aginst one of the many OTK decks. You have a 100% chance of losing because you can’t control them before they get their OTK combo.

Magic has some wacky combos for sure, but it’s a sixty card deck and MUCH harder to collect all the pieces for a single top tier deck never mind multiple ones. In Hearthstone collecting ALL the cards is not particularly difficult and putting together multiple top tier decks is not difficult.

[Ausr]

Meh, land flooding or screwing happens in Magic, but alreast it happens up front. Hearthstone has become the game of auto win cards. Losing, no problem play Bloodreaver Gul’Dan and you usually auto win the game. Same for Janina. Playing a control style deck? Oh look you got matched up aginst one of the many OTK decks. You have a 100% chance of losing because you can’t control them before they get their OTK combo.

Magic has some wacky combos for sure, but it’s a sixty card deck and MUCH harder to collect all the pieces for a single top tier deck never mind multiple ones. In Hearthstone collecting ALL the cards is not particularly difficult and putting together multiple top tier decks is not difficult.

Hearthstone became too RNG for me and by that, I mean, a LOT of the things you do or want to do is completely out of your control. Least in MtG, I can control what may or may not happen to me or to you if I have the tools in hand.

[Thirza]

I wanted to say MTG is better but then I think about turn 1 vintage wins where you have to mulligan for a force of will in hand or lose the game to storm'd goblins.

It is better to say that MTG, when it is good, is a whole hell of a lot better in every way.