hearthstone

Positive Uplifting Battlegrounds

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I have a PUBG winrate of 0.000. By the unique logic of PUBG maths this puts me in the top 7% of players, rated by winrate. Probably along with all the other 93% schmucks who have yet to earn a single fowlflavoured dinner.

In Hearthstone I have – or rather had – a winrate of probably slightly above 0.5, i.e. averaging a win and a bit for every loss. Although the odds are much more in your favour in a game of Hearthstone (1:1) than in a game of PUBG (1:99) this is still a much better performance.

And yet: While I have yet to savour chicken, PUBG leaves me with a much better taste in my mouth than Hearthstone. In Hearthstone losses linger, while wins evaporate. In PUBG on the other hand, the positive experiences are accentuated.

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In defense of Captain Blackheart’s Treasure

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I just got my 30th win in this week’s Hearthstone tavern brawl, a repeat of Captain Blackheart’s Treasure. That’s a lot of games in a game mode that is widely derided as being mere box opening, i.e. RNG for RNG’s sake. So why bother with it to that extent? Is my curiosity for the insides of boxes really that insatiable?

The easy explanation is of course that everybody likes to win and my win rate in this week’s tavern brawl has been ridiculous, tending towards 80%. Which is easily explained by three im-not-a-genius factors, i.e. 1) like in Arena, mage is by far and away the queen of this format but most people use the brawl to clear out dailies for other classes, 2) unconstructed brawls tend to attract more beginners, 3) I played so much that I began to know what cards I could expect to choose from.

However, I think there’s more to it than that. Captain Blackheart’s Treasure requires tactics and forethought but adds – at least for a while – more fun and creativity to the mix.

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Playing Around Touchy-Feely Stuff or How to Apply Hearthstone Lessons IRL

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The dating app conversation started well enough: He said I looked good (I’d paid a good photographer), I said he looked good (he did, from most angles), and soon we were talking about meeting up. More photos were exchanged to mutual satisfaction.

The he told me he was a virgin and asked me if that changed anything. I told him it didn’t and wrote a minor treatise on how I thought it was kind of endearing and we didn’t have to force anything he wasn’t comfortable with and I’d be perfectly fine with just making out if that was the extent of it. Okay, so it was like seven or eight lines but in dating app land that _is_ a treatise. No response and next day I couldn’t see his profile anymore. Missing, presumed blocked.

I didn’t write anything inappropriate or offensive or downright bad. And I’m not even sure it was anything I said that made him block me. Maybe it’s just the modus operandi of someone who’s not out and still a virgin. Cold feet, delete, block, erase. Start over again in a couple of days.

The reason this is on a games blog is because I realised that the only reproach I had for myself felt so much like that sinking feeling of having filled a board with 2-3s as you hand turn 7 over to a mage. You don’t know if your opponent has it but you should probably not play into it. I had overcommitted to the board and this was the dating equivalent of a flamestrike.

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C’thun Cockup

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The centrepiece of the Old Gods expansion for Hearthstone, C’thun, looks like equal parts Vagina Dentata and One-Eyed Meat Monster (note the goo-spitting attack). Does that mean that someone at Blizzard thinks the ultimate horror is a ghastly genitalia (gender?) mixup?

Of course, getting your C’thun out sounds rude regardless of sex.

Strangestone or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love PvP

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I’ve just finished a match in Hearthstone. I played using someone else’s deck and someone else’s tactics but that’s another matter (though if you are going to netdeck, the basic decks and strategies from Icy Veins are really well thought out and even better explained). The point is that I played against another human being and it wasn’t a big deal.

And why should it be? Thousands of people can say the same any second of the day. The reason I’m making a fuss is that before Hearthstone the only game I had any serious PvP experience in was WordFeud and that’s so unthreatening that my mother plays it. You see, PvP as a concept is incredibly intimidating to me and I don’t think I’m the only one.

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