Hearthstone Battlegrounds and Elden Ring

Hearthstone Battlegrounds

I recently started playing Hearthstone again after taking a long break since its early beta days (circa 2015?). I started when I was visiting my family in California for the Christmas break and only had my laptop (mac) with no games installed. I figured, why not play some solo hearthstone just to pass the time. I had no interest in playing standard constructed games as my past experience revealed it to be a pay-to-win scam, where having the best cards and the best “meta” decks would ensure success. I hated this model as I had already spent enough money on cards that were no longer in rotation and I wasn’t about to go down the rabbit hole again.

Instead, I decided to try Arena. This game mode is one I was already familiar with and involves drafting a deck one card at a time (out of 3 options) and competing against other players. 3 losses and you’re out, with a maximum of 12 wins in a run. The more wins, the better your prizes. If you win enough games, you actually get enough prizes to compensate the entry cost for the arena run, which is 150 in-game gold, or $2 USD. This model closely resembles other forms of gambling and I was quickly caught in the cycle of drafting, cranking through games, losing, and then re-rolling a new deck. However, I was not winning enough to cover my entry fees so I was slowly bleeding 2 dollars at a time to blizzard. The fun part is drafting, of course, but I discovered there were a new set of 3rd party overlay tools which use AI and other extensions to augment the gameplay experience. See HearthArena and Hearthstone Deck Tracker for some prominent examples. I’m undecided about how to feel about these tools. On the one hand, the software engineer loves that people have invested the time and effort to build these tools, as well as track match data and share those findings with the public. On the other hand, having your deck constructed for you basically takes all the fun out of Arena.

Now that Arena was losing its appeal, I needed something else. I had seen Battlegrounds on the main menu and the daily quests had been hinting that I should give this a shot. I ran through the tutorial and while I found it interesting, I didn’t quite get the appeal. I played a few games and quickly found myself getting beat pretty badly. My unfamiliarity with the available cards/minions meant I had to read the card description, slowing down my game play, and also meant I had no concept of what strategies existed simply because I didn’t know what available cards and abilities existed. And so, I visited this page. But before I go any further, let me quickly rewind and give you the complete view of BGs.

The complete view

Hearthstone battlegrounds is what’s known as an “auto-battler”. The game has 8 players with each player choosing a hero at the start. The hero has a unique “hero power” (HP) and buddy (minion) which often define their strategies and composition. There are currently 8 tribes of minions available but any given game will only feature 5 tribes. The game largely consists of two-phase turns. In the first phase, known as the “recruiting” phase, the player is offered some minions/cards that they can buy from the all-powerful and merciful Bob. Bob is a bartender and the humble keeper of this tavern and his RNG does contribute to the success/failure of players.

Recruiting Phase

Each player has a tavern tier, essentially a level, which determines the minions that Bob’s offers. The tavern tiers range from 1 to 6 and are denoted by stars, with 1-star units being generally the weakest and 6-star units being generally the best and strongest. The minions that Bob offers will range from 1 up to your tavern tier with no bias. How this works is that there is a pool of minions, with each minion having a certain number of copies up based on the tavern tier. See the wiki for more detailed information that I’ll be glossing over. Basically, the higher tier minions have less copies so once you buy one, that’s one less in the pool for everyone else. This pool is what Bob samples from and offers to you. If you don’t like it, you can refresh the tavern and “roll” a new set of minions. During this phase, you can buy minions - all minions cost 3 gold, and sell minions - all minions sell for 1 gold. Some minions will have battlecries which buff your other minions, or your “board” in general. Other minions will have deathrattles which do nothing during this phase. Buffs to your units in the recruiting phase are permanent. This is a hugely important concept. The board can hold a maximum of 7 units.

Combat Phase

The next phase is known as the combat phase. You will be randomly matched up against one other player - another RNG element. Your boards will then attack one another with each player’s left most unit attacking a random enemy unit, and then the opponent doing the same. Players alternate and repeat until one player has no more minions on board. The player to attack first is the one with more minions, in the case of a tie, it becomes a coin toss. All attacks are random but minions with taunt will be attacked first. Pretty straight forward so far.

The losing player takes damage equal to the other player’s tavern tier, plus the tavern tiers of all the surviving minions on their side. Each player starts with 40 life and heroes are balanced by giving the weaker performing heroes more armor.

So now that we’ve covered the basics, let me tell you why the game is so damn amazing. The RNG elements are incredibly addicting and Bob’s RNG can lead to incredibly powerful boards, or quick 8th place finishes. Opponent RNG is also a huge factor and facing the wrong player at the wrong time can end your game. Lastly, the auto-battle RNG is probably biggest of all but can at least be influenced by board positioning and the use of taunts.

I managed to improve by first reading up on all the available units, and then studying some viable strategies for each tribe, as well as menagerie strategies which incorporate all available, or multiple tribes. This was a really fun process for me as I love strategy games which have a seemingly endless supply of available strategies. Sure, the top-level metagame can get boring but I’m not really a top-level player, nor do I care about the MMR or ranking. I’m just a dad, trying to have fun, so whatever build I find fun is a viable build for me. My MMR maxed out at 7600 and at that point, it was really repetitive grinding out the same boring heroes and strategies to try to place top 4 (Top 4 usually gets you positive MMR gains).

So I guess now we can talk about Elden Ring?

Elden Ring

Where do I even start with this one… I’ve been a huge FromSoft fan since I first discovered Dark Souls about 6 years ago. Since then, I’ve played all 3 Souls games, but not Demon Soul’s, Sekiro, or Bloodbourne, mostly because I don’t have the requisite consoles. Nevertheless, I am familiar with their work and a huge fan. I enjoy the difficulty, depth, and complexity of the games, as well as the stellar world-building level creation. The combat is also incredibly nuanced and the satisfaction from mastering a boss fight is amazing. I’m not going into a full-fledged review of the game and I haven’t even beaten it yet, but it has been a delight to play and experience.

What Elden Ring did was take their familiar formula and wrap it into an open world game. What more could I ask for. The game has delivered on all my expectations and exceeded my wildest dreams. Despite not having the latest graphics card, the game provides absolutely stunning visuals and landscapes which words simply don’t do justice. I’ve highlighted some of my favorite screenshots below but a quick google search will uncover much more.

Play it Your Way

Much is made about how to play FromSoft games with the hardcore devout follower’s of the “git gud” mentality stating the game must be played melee with no summons or cheese. This is just stupid. When I was younger and had more time, I relished in the blind playthrough of Dark Souls, slamming my head into bosses until I had memorized all their moves and tells, but at this age, and with my limited time, I just want to experience the content, and not miss anything. As a result, I have been playing and using this map and the wiki to make sure I am getting the most of my time in the Lands Between. It is so easy to miss side quests and NPC interactions that I would feel incomplete if I finished the game and then looked back only to realize I had missed so much of it. Instead, I’d prefer my first playthrough to be exhaustive and experience all the FromSoft has to offer, with subsequent playthroughs focusing more on builds and a much smaller set of items to collect, as well as more direct routes through the game. All the additional caves and catacombs they’ve added serve as good filler and offer a good way to level up in preparation of bosses and legacy dungeons, but they ultimately are filler and will probably be skipped on subsequent playthroughs unless they contain an item that is critical to my build.

In conclusion, Elden Ring is amazing and you should buy and play it. I’m going to go play some right now…