#kotft

[hearthcardart]

Shadowreaper Anduin -  Wayne Reynolds

suggested by kviazi-lisac

[buckybarnesss]

gotta love the brain rot

i have a consular that just finished kotft and just about to start iokath, a sentinel jedi knight is part way through rishi, a bounty hunter at illum. i have a sith warrior, scoundrel, sorcerer and trooper all at various stages of their class arcs

and my dumbass is like ‘let’s do the jedi knight story again so you can properly romance theron in it’

[aodhfyn]

Hearthstone: hero powers

While this blog has been all about league so far, that’s not indicative of the games I play--well, at the time of my other posts, it was mostly league. But I’ve been playing Hearthstone for more than two... three years now. Ever since a little before the league of explorers expansion, if I remember correctly. And before I played Hearthstone, I had played (1 game of) Magic the Gathering. Now I play Magic regularly. I’ve also played Shadow Verse and Eternal, as well as a number of inferior card games. 

Hero Powers, however, are unique to Hearthstone. While Shadow Verse has unique card interactions with its heroes, it doesn’t have a unique ability. However, what struck me about Hearthstone’s Hero Powers is how bland they are. Each power is a chance to be unique, and display some sort of character defining strength--and maybe even weakness. However, most of the abilities fall into two basic categories: deal damage, or heal. And their only weakness are usually their inflexibilities. I’ll demonstrate this by going through them and showing how they fall into those categories, and how they don’t. 

Warrior: heals himself. He gains armor, and since there isn’t a way to ignore armor in Hearthstone, this is essentially just a form of healing. I class this as A-tier healing, and F-grade utility, since it’s completely inflexible.

Shaman: More unique, however, loosely classed under healing. He produces a totem that usually has 0 attack and 2 health. Half of the totems are ‘aggressive’ but they are conditional. The other two either heal minions, or taunt, which is a damage protection ability. I class this as C-tier healing, C-tier damage, and B-tier utility.

Rogue: she gains a weapon. I class this as C-tier damage, C-tier utility.

Paladin: summons a minion. I class this as D-tier damage, and C-tier utility.

Hunter: he deals damage to the enemy hero. I class this as A-tier damage, and F-grade utility. 

Druid: he gains attack and armor. I class this as C-tier healing and C-tier damage.

Warlock: He’s quite unique, he deals damage to himself in order to draw a card. I class this as A-tier utility, A-tier theme, and F-grade healing.

Mage: she deals attack to a target. I class this as B-tier damage.

Priest: he heals a target. I class this as A-tier healing.

So, by my classification, the vast majority fall under the category of damage or healing, with only Warlock and Shaman branching out enough for me to mention. Furthermore, there’s a surprising amount of overlap between them, with Warrior essentially being a limited version of priest, Rogue of Druid, Paladin of Shaman, etc. This last expansion, they created the Hero card, which upgraded the Hero Power, and in some cases completely changed it. While this was a breath of fresh air, they were legendary--limited to one copy per deck, and very hard to get--limited to one class, and for the most part, functionally the same as the previous Hero Power. While some cards in the past changed hero powers, they were commonly considered joke cards, and exclusive to a single hero. (Excepting one that ‘upgraded’ your Hero Power--but it didn’t change its function.) However, in all this time, and despite some of their issues with Hero Powers--primarily Hunter and Warlock--they have never changed a Hero Power. While I don’t believe it’s necessary to change the default Hero Powers, I think easier access to more unique and interesting Hero Powers is (borderline) necessary, now that I’ve experienced just how absolutely amazing it can be to upgrade one. 

Specifically, I think it’s essential to allow some of the more restricted heroes access to some diversity of play--the Hero Power, in some ways more than class cards, defines the mobility of playstyle. Essentially: cards are at max two-per-deck. A Hero Power is once per turn. It has more impact than the cards in the long run. However, they’re all so bland, it almost doesn’t matter. In the state they’re in now, it’s almost as if no hero but Warlock and Shaman even have Hero Powers. (It’s not that bad, I’m exaggerating. It’s like there are two hero powers.) The Heroes I think need diversity in their Hero Power, and why, are as follows:

Warrior: he can’t do anything but ‘armor up’ meaning that all he can do when he has extra mana on a turn is use his hero power to survive a little more. However, the most successful playstyle on him is an aggressive one, in which he rarely needs to worry about his own health total. The difficulty this creates is that he then needs to have perfect mana every turn to maximize efficiency in an aggressive deck. This is fine, as a weakness to the character, but he is typically outclassed by Priest in this area. Or, more specifically, unlike Priest, who can heal his minions as well, or even the enemy for more pain, Warrior can only heal himself. Which makes him frustrating to play in situations wherein you want another hero power. An interesting solution could be to expand his power to ‘grant 2 maximum health to the target’. This would also have interesting synergies with other existing (most hall-of-famed) cards. (e.g. Reno Jackson and Hozen Healer.)

Paladin: summoning a 1/1 dude is very weak at two mana. And it’s often a bad play, being directly countered by most other Hero Powers and not easily exploitable for any sort of substantial advantage. However, because of how much more interesting it is compared to most of the other Hero Powers, I don’t think it needs to be changed directly. Instead, I think it would be cool if some card read: “for the rest of the game, your Silver Hand Recruits [the 1/1 dudes] have 1 extra attack” or “for the rest of the game, your Silver Hand Recruits have taunt.” The reason I make this distinction is because Paladin’s Hero Power doesn’t suffer from a lack of identity--it suffers from a lack of power and usefulness.

Hunter: I think that Hunter’s Hero Power forces him to either play aggressively or resign himself to trying to get more usefulness from his cards. Which massively limits the design potential on Hunter cards. If they are too powerful, Hunter becomes too powerful aggressively, and if they aren’t, control Hunters are terrible. I think an early switch to a more utility-based Hero Power is necessary for control Hunters to exist. (And I really want them to exist--Deathstalking is so much fun.) I’d like to note that Hunter does indeed have a card from the last expansion that changes his hero power to a higher utility and control option, which I think is perfect. I don’t have it yet, but I plan on trying it. When I have, I may, or may not, change my opinion on that option. If I do, I’ll make a post. (My current suspicion is that it’s a spell that doesn’t do anything else, so it’s probably too slow on average. But control decks are usually slow. Like I said, I need to check it out.)

Other than those three, I think Rogue and Druid are both problematic in how similar they are, and how useless they are in certain situations, both being generally outclassed by Mage, whose power is just about always useful, and does essentially the same thing. However, I wouldn’t classify them as ‘urgent cases.’ And even so, I’d suggest changes/options for every hero, since it’d be crazy fun.

~Aodhfyn

[miatahmiatah-blog]

not really sure if anyone was hyped for this, but hey have these anyway

[gravityboom]

Knights Of The Frozen Throne Card Reveal Rap: Meat Wagon

[sapphic-sith]

WIP of something I hope to finish by….sometime. Because thanks to @anjastasia I will be doing another Vaylin and pet piece- but the pet will be from a different fandom.

Curse that sweet SWTOR/Pokemon AU post I read.

How does one hands?

[haoudragneel]

I badly need the alternate version of “Arthas, My Son” used in the Hearthstone: KotFT trailer.

It was so freaking beautiful. Julie Elven nailed that awesome intro.

[necroarchived]

hearthstone

Send me 🌟 and a topic and I’ll talk about what I like about it. - still accepting

     I like how chill and silly it is. Warcraft is a pretty dark and heavy game, so seeing it rendered into a lighthearted card game is nice to me. Blizzard did a really great job with the Knights of the Frozen Throne expansion, both the leadup and the actual content itself. I haven’t been so purely and happily excited about something the way I was for KotFT in a long time (although Kel‘Thuzad coming to HotS inspired similar excitement.) 

     The trailers are great, each and every one. Whipsers of the Old Gods is probably my favorite ‘cause I’m always on the lookout for little tidbits of nursery rhymes and fairy tales and that sort of thing in Warcraft, and the troll’s song kind of fits the bill. Although I don’t really suggest singing your child to sleep by crooning about N’Zoth.

[hearthcardart]

Spreading Plague - Alexander Alexandrov

[asclepeus-blog]

2 Weeks into KotFT: Impressions

Knights of the Frozen Throne was released August 10, 2017 and the skeleton structures of specific archetypes are beginning to grow. Let’s discuss them! But first, I’d like to talk about initial impressions upon card reveals.

Reveal Impression:

I noticed a large amount of mana-expensive, high value new cards. Namely, the Lich King, all the heroes, Rotgut, Abominable Bowman, Bone Drake, Eternal Servitude, Stitched Tracker, Hadronox, Obsidian Statue, Sindragosa, Snowfury Giant, Bolvar Fireblood etc, aswell as multiple control spells/tools such as; Dead Man’s Hand, Blood Razor, Toxic Arrow, Skulking Geist, Shadowblade, Fatespinner, Dark Conviction, Defile, Embrace Darkness, Devour Mind, Ultimate Infestation, Spreading Plague etc. The mere power level of these cards led me to believe Control/Midrange decks featuring these cards would be common.

There a few aggro cards included as well, but none that shine quite as brightly as the control cards. They include; Acheus Veteran, Brrrloc, Bearshark, Shadow Ascendant, Prince Keleseth,Righteous Protector, Phantom Freebooter, Sanguin Reveler, etc.

First Two Weeks Synopsis:

I’d like to get into individual decks and archetypes and how they changed with the release in a later post. For now, a summary.

Control seems to be the a very prevalent archetype and for good reason, though it is a fallacy to assume a deck isn’t aggro because of it. You should still keep anti aggro cards against paladin, warlock, hunter, druid, shaman, and warrior as the old aggro decks are still played with very minor changes in my opinion (most noteworthy one would be the shaman hero). If you do not keep these cards and it is aggro, it’s usually a guaranteed loss. Conversely if it’s control and you have anti aggro cards in hand you still have a very good chance. The opponent is also likely to keep anti aggro cards. 

Control Warrior, Control Priest, Control Druid, Control Paladin, Control Rouge, Control Warlock, Control Hunter, and Control Mage are all very common - all featuring their new hero card. Specifically Priest, Druid, Warlock, and Paladin are the most common in my experience. If they get their hero off early enough, these are often uphill battles. Mindbreaker is a tech card that may stem the bleeding once they use their hero card though i have yet to try it and it does not seem that good. I’ll note that I have had success with Control/Midrange Shaman and it seems to have gotten even better with Avalanche and voodoo hexxer. However, I have seen literally none on ranked besides the deck I am playing since KotFT came out.

In order to combat what seems to be a control heavy meta, the natural conclusion is aggro. And it seems relatively effective. I have had good success with warloack aggro, but all the aggro decks are reasonably effective. However, you do really need to win quickly as the control decks’ late game is excellent against aggro with high health taunt minions and healing. Another meta combative method is to play a Control deck that simply has more threats than the opponent. The problem here is that makes u significantly weaker against the aggro decks and I’d like to reiterate that they are still around in abundance despite their power level not really growing in KotFT, in my opinion.

As a final note, The Black Knight kills The Lich King and basically all control decks are running said knight. I would recommend it to a Control/Midrange player that needs help against him or spikeridged steed that also as fair matchups against mage and rogue aswell as aggro - where The Black Knight’s Battlecry has no effect. Weapon Removal is also reasonbale. The paladin and warrior heroes both equip very powerful weapons as well as Frostmourne from the Lich KIng. However, Medivh has really dropped out of play and that was one of the reasons weapon removal was so necessary. Thank you for spending your time reading this :)

[1-800-busy-signal]

>plays hearthstone back when GvG was new >fun game, but ladder is trash >rank 20 is somehow an ELO hell of smurfs with netdecks >gets fed up >comes back when KotFT is new >ladder is somehow worse

[dudeswundertower]

Just curious what sadist designed the KotFT adventure, because actually fuck them

[godsofsassgard-blog]

Knights of the Frozen Throne

Welcome back! As you guys may or may not know, the Knights of the Frozen Throne expansion for Hearthstone has been around for just over a week now and I've had a chance to play. So hopefully in this post I'll be able to share some new and exciting things you may not have known!

So to get started, the Knights of the Frozen Throne is the 6th addon for Hearthstone that Blizzard have released. It's a follow on from the original story, and features a story mode that's purely offline for new comers to understand the lore of Hearthstone better. I have to admit I don't fully understand the lore of hearthstone myself, I find it quite difficult to understand all of the parts. It might not help I usually play Hearthstone at night when I'm tired, maybe I should stop doing that.

I've also been looking online for some helpful resources, to make this post a master guide for you to use. The only good example I could find is here which will give you a nice introduction to Knights of the Frozen Throne or KotFT for short. I recommend this expansion for even casual players, it's a nice addon of the story and along with the story mode, which I hope will have more featurea added on with later expansions, is really great in my opinion. I felt as though Hearthstone was becoming quite repetitive, and it's like most games that is hard to build on top of once it's come established due to people becoming familiar with the way it's already working.

As you may know too, there are 136 new cards introduced in the game. You can get some free packs from tutorial island as well if you preordered the expansion. I didn't recieve any in game notices about this, so it's worth following the free pack offer up if you did preorder. You can find this by speaking to an NPC standing next to the gate at tutorial island, and after a short conversation you can recieve the packs. I am led to believe you will be guaranteed 5 legendary cards out of the 50 packs, however this is unconfirmed. I plan to use my free packs in a few days when I have some free time, so I will confirm then if this is true.

[esportsgg]

reynad - Reynad and Eloise Hearthstone Card Reveal: Nerubian Unraveler [KotFT]

[photoboy9000-blog]

i really think that KotFT is going to be one of the worst expansions for the game. I think Blizzard is really misguided with a lot of the cards but this is going to be an expansion that makes the December one even better. I just think it will make the meta almost Gadgetzan bad.

[boberta]

Malf in the KotFT comics is 100% unholy spec. He’s shown with a bunch of undead minions and causing a plague, both things Unholy DKs do. Which is awesome. Unholy spec druids are probably the coolest mashup I could think of for things coming out of the warcraft lore, I was really hoping that’s the direction the team went for HS, and they didn’t disappoint!!