After a disappointing GvG, Blackrock Mountain is the much needed step in the right direction





Goblins, gnomes and bitter aftertastes

You can look at it from many angles but I stand firmly by the notion Goblins vs Gnomes was not a good expansion for Hearthstone. Granted, some classes were bathed in quality cards that engineered their resurgence: Paladins are currently the top winning class post the Undertaker nerf and Mage builds have never been so diverse.

Yet, with all the big promises and big hopes which came with the bounty of new cards, GvG to a large extent failed to bring Hearthstone – and especially its competitive aspect – to a more healthy state. Out of its 123 collectible cards, almost a third of it contained a random effect, adding even more volatility to a game that has randomness as one of its defining features. Players would lose games because their opponents would get a Finnicky Cloakfield to go with their Archmage Antonidas or get lucky on Boombot explosions or spawn the better Piloted Shredder chauffeur. It’s not like these dice-roll scenarios were avoidable also – Piloted Shredder and Dr Boom are such good cards that excluding them just to stay away from their inherent volatility does more harm than good.

We started playing with fingers crossed more often than we should in a card game.



To not sound like I’m just bashing on these two cards, let me provide you with a simple math. The Piloted Shredder deathrattle has 67 different outcomes. If you trade one Piloted Shredder into another, that’s 4489 different scenarios. Between them, the Boombots have 16 different combinations of damage if you treat them independently, and that’s just their effect. If you take the board state into account and start counting possible targets, the number of outcomes grows exponentially.

This isn’t the “healthy” and controllable RNG that cards like Sylvanas Windrunner provide, which forces you to plan your turn. This is the “I hope I don’t get the 1,49%-of-times-Doomsayer from my Shredder and lose the game immediately” or “This Boombot better not kill my Loatheb by itself” RNG that you cannot control and cannot play around. It’s not even a matter of being too strong, or too weak – it’s about playing with your fingers crossed more often than you should in a card game.

The hype for the new Mech tribal was also shortlived and players who’ve had experience playing Magic: The Gathering, especially during the times of the Affinity dominion, quickly turned their smiles upside down once Mechwarper was revealed. In fact, card game veterans like Brian Kibler, a MTG Pro Tour champion and one of the designers of the original WoW TCG, labelled it as the format-defining card and we didn’t have to wait long to agree with him.

In the end, the Mech tribals became self-piloted decks. On every turn you would play your best minion and look for Mechwarper spill-outs and the only demanding part of the playstyle was figuring out the most optimal combat math.

GvG didn't give us more deckbuilding options. It only gave us more auto-includes.



That playstyle would’ve been fine if it didn’t infect other decks as well but, alas, it did. With so many high-value minions introduced with Naxxramas and GvG, most of the minion-based decks became even more linear, a notion also supported by world champion James “Firebat” Kostesich in a recent interview. On T4, you’d play Piloted Shredder. On T5 there comes Loatheb or Sludge Belcher. On T7 you would play Dr Boom. This is not even a sequence tied to a particular class and in fact happens in the large majority of the matches. Shredder, Belcher, Boom. Shredder, Belcher, Boom. Over and over again till you start believing you can see the future.

Obviously, GvG is not the sole culprit in this case as some of these cards became staples with the release of Naxxramas but it was GvG’s job to give us more deckbuilding options. It didn’t – it only gave us more auto-includes. And that’s why you should be looking forward to Blackrock Mountain with the high expectations it deserves.

Taming volatility, one expansion at a time

All Blackrock Mountain cards have already been shown and I like what I’m seeing. Random cards have been ousted with the exception of five: Fireguard Destroyer, Flamewaker, Hungry Dragon, Resurrect and Nefarian.

Though RNG-infused, all these cards are already better than the Boombots or the piloted minions, as far as number of outcomes go. Fireguard Destroyer has only four variations. Resurrect can be controlled. Flamewaker sounds very Blastmage-y but the fact it triggers on spell cast makes it more controllable. The biggest card pool Nefarian can pull from is 24 (Mage) and I already see this being more of a tech card than a tournament staple, given its mana cost, stats and effect. In the end, Hungry Dragon is the most random card of all, and that’s still tactilely better than Piloted Shredder.

Randomness will never become extinct. What's important is to keep it away from competitive staples.



All that said, 84% of the cards in the new expansion are free of any randomness which is the way to design a card game that has developed a strong competitive aspect. If you examine similar games like Magic: The Gathering, you’ll also see how any volatility has long been exiled by the RnD department precisely because active competition plays a major part in the MTG culture. When you’re fighting for thousands of dollars, you’d rather place your chances on wits and not on chance.

This isn’t to say that all RNG will immediately disappear, but there’s a good chance that it’d get toned down. Players might consider swapping out Piloted Shredder for Hungry Dragon as their 4-drop because its mathematically less random. Dr Boom might also rotate out at least partially as cards like Chromaggus contest his finisher slot.

Obviously, more could be desired from this and future Hearthstone expansions but I don’t believe randomness in card effects will ever become extinct from this particular game. The important thing here is keeping it away from competitive staples as much as possible.

A tribal that's actually cool

I already covered why the Mech tribal is un-fun, but why are Dragons the opposite? Contrary to popular belief, it’s not because they are friggin’ Dragons, but rather how the tribal behaves.

By design, the Dragon subtype is split into two core parts: the actual Dragons and synergistic minions. In the first category we have straightforward cards like Nefarian or Chromaggus, and the latter consists of the likes of Blackwing Technician and Blackwing Corruptor.

Thus, instead of getting a straightforward tribal like Mech or Murlocs which essentially force you to play minions to get a buff, the Dragon tribal incentivizes you for not playing a minion or rather for revealing partial information to your opponent. This brings a whole new layer of strategizing to the game. On one hand, you’ll want that Blackwing Technician as 3/5 but on the other hand, do you want to convey the fact that there’s one or more Dragons in your hand?

For the first time ever, Blizzard are proactively thinking along the design lines of their own creation.



This might not sound like a big deal to the novice player, but on the highest tiers of competitive Hearthstone this will actually matter. The competitors who’ve mastered the game are experts at keeping track of cards – both played and kept in hand – as well as calculating odds. Information is their best friend and every bit of it counts. Communicating a Dragon in hand could mean jack shit to the average Rank 15 Johnny, but for the champions of this game this just decreased the odds of their opponent having Combination A, which means they are now more free to do Play B.

This very mechanic could also have a minor influence on the mulligan phase potentially. Even though Blackwing Technician might be the only synergy minion you will ever want to keep in your opening hand, it could make you think twice before throwing away your Azure Drake, something which would be a no-brainer otherwise.

Hearthstone, the way it should be

Finally, there's the second new mechanic that Blackrock Mountain introduces - cards which grow cheaper as minions die.

Whether the cards which employ this effect are strong or weak is beyond the point. What’s important here is to appreciate the arguably most Hearthstone-y mechanic to date. From the get-go, Hearthstone was designed around minion battles: creatures killing other creatures with spells cast in support. The fact that you can attack enemy minions directly is the very core of the game, its beating heart, and cards like Solemn Vigil or Volcanic Drake are the living embodiment of this idea.

Whether you’re playing mindless face decks or irritating frost Mages, you should stop and cherish what the dev team is doing here. Because for all their history of targeting combo builds and one-turn-kill mechanics, only now are Blizzard proactively thinking along the design lines of their own creation.