You’re right – we can’t be sure. All we know is what the devs have said us.

For example, about the cards in your deck. Devs have confirmed that they do remain static until an effect that affects the deck gets played – such as shuffling cards into the deck. Then the order is randomized. But, from the player’s perspective, the cards are random anyway, so it doesn’t matter if the order is static or dynamic.

As for the other RNG, like mulligan etc. – the devs have also been asked about it, for example regarding the chance to draw the cards you’ve mulliganed. Lots of players believed that you had a higher chance to draw the cards you have mulliganed as one of the first draws, which of course isn’t true. The devs have confirmed that it’s not the case. They’ve also confirmed that there is no such a thing as matchup manipulation, e.g some players believed that after a longer win streak they will start facing bad matchups, or vice versa.

But I understand that you can’t really trust everything devs say, as they might hide some information. In case of Hearthstone, knowing those things is mostly about the sample size. Sites such as HSReplay gather hundreds of games every minute, including replays – cards that were mulliganed, drawn etc. For example, in the last 7 days, they’ve gathered over 9 MILLION games. If the RNG was altered in some way, it would stand out. Unless the alterations are in the margin of error, but that would be quite pointless.

Another reason why I don’t believe that it would be the case is the situation in which they would be found out. If some statistics, or anything, confirmed that the RNG is indeed altered, there would be a MASSIVE outrage, and lots and I mean lots of bad PR for the game, so I don’t think it’s worth it. They have other ways to lure the players and keep them playing, there’s no need to alter RNG in order to do that.

But you’re right that we will never be 100% sure how it really works. Maybe HSReplay is paid off to not share that data? Maybe players who discovered it are silenced? Okay, that sounds like a terrible conspiracy theory, so I will just stop there 🙂

Thank you!

Thanks!

Yeah, exactly. While not every cognitive bias affects HS players in particular, I still have lots of material. confirmation bias will probably be #2, but I was also thinking about hindsight bias and a few other things 🙂

That’s one of the only parts of HS I’ve been lucky with – Doomguard discards. It somehow always dodges my Bloodreaver Gul’dan and I’m grateful for that. It feels bad to get double punished – once by not drawing Skull or getting it destroyed, and second one with a bad discard.

But yes, when I face CubeLocks and they drop Doomguard, I see Gul’dan flying out of the hand way too often (which I don’t mind if I face them, but I still can’t help to feel bad).

Thank you! Yeah, the randomness in video games is a really interesting concept. Because despite what lots of HS players are saying, some randomness IS fun. What is unfun are the streaks of bad RNG, mostly, and that’s why devs often do those little tricks to make the game less frustrating. We can all say that “well, I don’t fall for those cognitive biases”, but it would be a lie. Even though I understand them and I write about them, my brain STILL feels that I should win the next roll if I lost the previous 2 or 3, and losing another one in a row feels even worse. That’s how we’re programmed and there isn’t much we can do about it. So I really applaud devs for doing something to make the experience better, even if we have to sacrifice the true randomness a little.

You’re right, matchup RNG is one of the worst RNG’s in HS and I don’t know why it’s not discussed too much. You can be playing perfectly fine, have an optimized deck without lots of RNG etc. and still lose most of your games just because you roll bad matchups. That is the reason why decks that works well across the board (some matchups are good, some are bad, but there are no terrible MUs) have the highest play rate – by removing one type of RNG you add consistency to the decks.

But the thing is, there isn’t much they can do here. Bans are a good concept in tournament environment, but they would be pretty much impossible to implement on the ladder. I think that the best way to somewhat counter matchup RNG would be side-boarding. Before each game starts (when you already know the class you play against, but you haven’t mulliganed yet), if you play ranked, you can switch a few cards in your deck for the ones you have in the sideboard. It wouldn’t suddenly turn bad matchups good and vice versa, but it would let players tech against some common bad matchups. The downside is that it would take extra 30 seconds or so at the start of every game, and when you play let’s say 200 games during a season, that really adds up.

Thank you!

Thanks, Julian! 😀

Law of large numbers is something slightly different. It just means that you will sometimes have good streaks, sometimes have bad streaks (so you’re still vulnerable to gambler’s fallacy), but after the sample size grows immensely, the “luck” will eventually even out and get closer and closer to the average.

I will probably tackle it in one of the future articles – because it ultimately means that HS isn’t just “RNG fest” like a lot of people like to call it, and it actually requires skill. After you play a lot, your luck will even out, but the thing that carries you forward is your skill.

But thanks, I’m glad that you enjoyed it!

New expansions are announced roughly a month before they come out, so with a mid-August release date, it should get announced around mid-July, in more or less two months. We will post about it as soon as we find out anything, but at this point we would be just guessing.

The Witchwood came out a little more than a month ago, and we have a nerf patch coming very soon. There’s still plenty to do with this expansion!

Me too, The Witchwood had very low impact on the meta in general, so I hope that more of the WW cards / strategies will become playable.

Thank you!

Expansions come out roughly every 4 months – one in April, one in August and one in December. So mid-August (roughly 3 months from now) is the best guess right now.

No matter if you look at Vicious Syndicate or HSReplay.net (both sites are gathering THOUSANDS of games), you will see that Murloc Paladin is the second best deck on the ladder, right after Even Paladin. Vicious Syndicate shows that it’s even better than Even Paladin at lower ranks.

The deck is clearly too strong, even though it’s slightly underplayed (people jumped on Even build mostly because it’s something new) and just upping the cost of CtA to 5 won’t change that. It’s hard to say whether it will be just strong, or broken, but it will definitely be near the top of the tier list. But you don’t have to believe me – you will see in a while.

The problem is that if you don’t do anything for the first 4 turns, you’re probably dead against most of the decks.

I think that Even Paladin MIGHT still be playable without CtA, but will there be a point? It’s a bit like Midrange Paladin right now. You can play it, and it does work, but no one plays it, because Even Paladin does the same thing, but better.

It might be the other way around after the CtA nerf – it will probably be just better to play the regular Paladin, because it will do the same thing, but better. But it’s hard to say. I COULD see Even Paladin going for more Dude synergies instead, with Lighftused Stegodon filling the gap a bit.

Dragon Paladin is a cool idea, but I don’t think it will happen yet, especially not in the Even version. There is only a single Dragon synergy (Gargoyle) and not many activators… The best “Midrange” activators – Amalgam & Scalebane – are both odd-costed. Dragon Paladin would probably need another good Dragon synergy before seeing play.

Velen is not good in Wild Highlander Priest, especially after the Raza nerfs – you can’t really combo him with anything. Spawn of Shadows does the job instead.

And yes, you can take out the Eater of Secrets. It’s a tech card, so it really depends on the decks you face. I’d imagine that the author was running into lots of Secret Mages and/or Paladins, so he decided to run it. If you don’t play against decks running Secrets, then get rid of it and add another tech instead. Ooze/Harrison is something that pretty much always works, so that’s not a bad idea. I’m not very familiar with the current Wild meta, so I can’t really say how good it is right now.

I don’t understand the question. Yes, those cards do work. It’s mostly an off-meta deck after the nerf to Raza, but as it turns out, it’s not as bad as some people thought.

With Spawn of Shadows, it’s still easy to burst your opponent down to 20+ damage even after the changes.

As much as I agree that Tarim should get some kind of nerf, why would Rin get nerfed? It’s a pretty niche card which is good only in a few matchups. Plus it has a really interesting counterplay. It’s one of the last cards I’d nerf.

Of course it will! After the nerf happens, you will be able to disenchant the card for 1.6k Dust.

Sometimes just playing Doomguard from your deck is the right answer. Losing two random cards is often not a big deal. But it really depends on the matchup and the situation. For example – do you NEED those Doomguards to win the game? If you do, go ahead and play them, there is nothing else you can do. Or let’s say that you stare at a 5/5 minion that will put you on a quick clock if you don’t kill it – also play that Doomguard and pray that you don’t discard anything valuable.

To be fair, the only discard that REALLY hurts is Bloodreaver Gul’dan. As long as you don’t discard it, you still have a way to win the game.