It's not the first thread, but squinty has a better timezone.

Not sure if the viewpoint is entirely based on Hearthstone as a potential game, or what it currently is, so I did some of both.

• Draft is a more enjoyable format than Arena, even if it's more demanding to set up.
• The Colors of Magic feel more distinct from each other than the classes of Hearthstone, who have very few unique identities that we know of.
• The rules on Magic cards are consistent with what the card says, and the mechanics behind the game are actually accessible, instead of something you need to deduce through testing.
• Magic: the Gathering has a larger sample of cards, naturally because it has existed for a longer time. This gives more room for creativity.
• Magic: the Gathering can be played physically, and therefore be subject to custom rules, as opposed to Hearthstone being restrained by a digital client. For example, EDH.
• Hearthstone is heavily diluted by random effects, which while actually serves to increase the skill-cap of the game, have such high variance that they also reduce the impact player skill has on the game quite frequently. Lack of interactivity points in the game further reduces the options presented to a player, which would make me argue that Hearthstone is inferior as a competitive activity.
• It's a lot more difficult to implement proper checks to degenerate strategies in Hearthstone. I'm fully convinced that as the card pool expands, combo decks are just going to become disproportionately the best decks of the format, as there are almost no reliable way of stopping their interactions. This is further exacerbated by the devs reluctance to put discard effects in the game, because 'muh fun'.
• The artwork of Magic is more consistent, to the point of not actively contradicting established lore.
• Legendaries having a 1 card limitation actively discourages building decks that utilize them, because of consistency issues.
• The way the queue works in Hearthstone can lead to massive memory issues during games.
• Combat in Hearthstone makes it really difficult to recover from a board position without dedicated cards, making some games very lopsided. Priest ones especially, because of their hero power.
• Hero powers makes it difficult for that hero to be played in archetypes said hero power works poorly in, without compensating by making the cards for that archetype significantly better.
• Hearthstone has substantially less design space than Magic: the Gathering, from several factors: reduced number of card types, targeting limitations, isolated turns, linear mana costs, etc.

memory problems?

also, do these points contradict?

Deathrattle trigger resolution, primarily.


I wouldn't say so, but maybe. The Hearthstone devs are quite clearly trying to make Control Hunter and Aggro Priest work, in spite of their hero powers. I feel like there is a lot of overlap in what classes are capable of, and they only have a few distinguishing facets (and not in terms of whether they can play aggro or control). There clearly seems to be some theme behind how the classes operate, but I feel like the only ones that are disclosed is "mages get good spells" and "warlocks get bad cards", which is really vague. It seems more like the classes get cards according to what feels "thematically right", which is what lead to blue getting every slice of the pie in early Magic.

MtG is the better game by far.

But Hearthstone has the better online client by far.

mtg's mana system is stupid but probably better than hearthstones

one of the things i really like about hearthstone over mtg is that you use a greater percentage of the cards in your deck on average

also the distinction between artifacts and enchantments is weird and i don't like it

also combat in hearthstone might be better than combat in mtg, which i liked at first but seemed more and more awkward the more i learned about the game. Maybe i'll eventually become good enough at mtg that i can appreciate combat again.

also mtg's rules are so complicated that the only way you can correctly understand them is generally to have someone else who correctly understands them teach you. I've always thought that the majority of magic players probably don't have any idea how to actually play it.

Attacking one by one is awkward to me. I personally like Magic's system over Hearthstone.

~SE++

• Arena is a more enjoyable format than Draft, and is far more convenient to set up, to boot.
• Hearthstone classes feel more distinct from each other than the five Colors, which, thanks to MaRo's obsession with split/multicolor/hybrid stuff, had their identities warped beyond all recognition.
• The rules on Magic cards are soul-crushing to read through. I say that as a DCI judge and IRL lawyer.
• Magic: the Gathering has a larger sample of cards, naturally because it has existed for a longer time. This gives less room for creativity, since much of the good stuff has already been done before.
• Magic: the Gathering cards can be played physically, and therefore be subject to thefts, tearing, water damage and general deterioration. On the plus side, it makes cheating easier.
• Hearthstone has a plethora of random effects, but none of them can compare to good old Magic manascrew/manaflood. The winrates of top players in HS are significantly higher than among top Magic pros indicates that the impact of player skill in the former is greater.
• It's a lot less necessary to implement proper checks to degenerate strategies in Hearthstone. Unlike Magic, HS has yet to feature turn 0-2 kills. This is due to the fact that at least some of the pieces in HS combos are minions and weapons (and therefore subject to removal, silence and taunts) rather than sorceries and instants.
• The artwork of Magic is more consistent, to the point of including gratuitous T&A in every set regardless of whether it makes sense.
• Legendaries having a 1 card limitation reduces the Pay2Win factor when compared to forcing players to acquire 4x mythic playsets to remain competitive.
• Combat in Hearthstone is more interactive despite being turn-based. Most of the game consists of minions fighting each other, instead of a race to stick a hexproof evasive gamewinner through cheap full board clears.
• Hearthstone has approximately the same amount of design space as Magic: the Gathering, with an advantage when it comes to showy "marquee" cards due to its digital nature.

warrior had its OTK combo nerfed at some point because it was going off too fast i think

Yeah, but that was (a) in beta and (b) a turn NINE combo.

Was it Jon Finkel who once said that a four mana card has to win you the game outright to be worthy of including in a deck?

Hearthstone:
- Is Cheaper
- Has the Dust and Crafting System
- Can be played realistically for 100% free at the highest level (tons of people do it)
- Has the best online client by far
- Has a better mana system
- Hard limits what you can put in different decks using the class system (which is a major balance plus to be honest)
- Has a much higher number of "good" decks (I think we would say 15-20 decks are usually viable enough to reach legend at any one point in time)
- Has less variance due to smaller deck size

MTG:
- is slower paced
- lets you do things during your opponent's turn
- has been around for 10x as long
- is much more expensive to play at a high level and continue to do so
- has rotating formats
- Draft is better than arena

I prefer Hearthstone, but part of that is it's cheaper and I like the pacing, deck size, and mana systems a heck of a lot better than what happens in MTG. The only thing I miss is things like Lightning Bolt and Wrath of Gods, but to be honest that would ruin Hearthstone if they put too many things like that in.

if it was turn 9 then i doubt they nerfed it for being too fast, it may have been my mistake.

idk what the difference between beta and live is

i'm told by febb that you can play magic for free at the highest level if you borrow decks from people

???

Hearthstone is expensive man. Yes, you can earn the cards for free with enough time, but you can also have just worked a minimum wage job and have earned more money. Not to mention there is no secondary market for Hearthstone cards.

I wouldn't call Hearthstone more or less expensive than Magic. Both are pretty expensive hobbies, and you shouldn't really bring up price as a pro or a con to either game.

Mtg has depth, hearthstone has ease of play. Thread over.

People working high end jobs 8 hours a day play hearthstone casually and have a competitive collection for zero money.

You can't do that in MTG.

In addition, MTG doesn't let you take 360 islands and trade them in for an Emrakul or Jace the wallet slayer either.

Hearthstone has a crazy amount of depth and math behind it. Whatever deck we lack is because MTG has been around for 10x as long.

don't confuse complexity with depth

it is true that mowing your neighbours lawns for an hour and then using the money to buy hearthstone packs will build your collection faster than logging on to do dailies every three days and buying packs that way.

Yes. However, MTG doesn't give you 100 - 300+ free packs a year for playing the game the amount you were going to anyways. <- If you are playing Hearthstone, you get a crazy amount of **** for free.

MTG lets you do things on your opponent's turn, and it lets you interact with your graveyard. Other than that, the only extra depth it has is due to mechanics bloat because of its age. However Hearthstone has a lot of things like Confessor Paletress and Ram Wrangler that couldn't possibly work in MTG, and in a lot of cases the rng adds its own level of depth and complexity that MTG lacks.

MtG has activated abilities, non-creature permanents, the stack (and the ability to actually put things on the stack in response to other things), etc. etc.

Hearthstone is indeed light in complexity compared to MtG.

Hearthstone has a stack. People just generally don't pay attention to it because we don't have instants. This makes it the most common source of misplays after a certain skill barrier is surpassed.