There was a lot of hype in the days leading up to the launch of Hearthstone’s first expansion of 2022, so many expectations for a complete refresh of the game thanks to the rotation of three old expansions (Ashes of Outland, The Academy of Scholomance and Madness at the fair of Darkmoon) in the Wild format and for the new 135 cards of “Route to the submerged city”.
The main setting is the underwater city of Zin-Azshari, capital of the terrible Naga, blood elves corrupted by the Ancient God N’Zoth: the exponents of the serpentine race are among the protagonists of this new set, which in the hope of all would had to put aside the infamous “series of missions” introduced with the second expansion of 2021 “United in Stormwind” that have monopolized the meta so much in the last six months, a little too many to bear.
Along with the naga there are also colossal creatures inhabitants of the most hidden depths, visually fantastic cards whose illustration occupies several cards. In the minds of the developers they were meant to slow down the pace of the game but things did not go quite as they imagined. With Naga and Colossi, a host of robots, murlocs and… pirates have also returned to the game, as if the latter were missing.
After almost two weeks of assiduous playtesting, studying the meta and the best decks in circulation, today we are here to give you our opinion on this new Hearthstone expansion, starting from the analysis of the new game mechanics and the new creatures.
In “Submerged City” the ability of “dredging” has been introduced with which a minion or a spell goes to fathom three cards at the bottom of our deck, allowing us to choose the most suitable one to put on top of the deck and then to draw the next round. Then there are small additions on the theme: mana discounts, immediate draw, multiple draw, but always if certain conditions are met.
We found this skill very interesting for its strategic component: being able to make a decision in a card game is always welcome, as opposed to the random factor (RNG), and dredging gives us some control over what comes into our hand in the game. next round, allowing us to plan our strategy or simply find the right resource to solve a thorny situation.
Furthermore, it seems that the developers have decided to give a lot of importance to drawing cards, which in our opinion is actually a correct idea: having the opportunity to play many cards without running out of resources makes the game more fun, but abusing this mechanic. matches can be solved in a simple “who catches the most”. Dredging seems to us the right compromise between fishing and doing it in a controlled and not too fast way, so we promote this novelty with flying colors.
With the naga and the spells connected to them the developers have really indulged themselves! In the past we have had minions or spells that activated if a creature of the same race was already on the field (robots) or if it had been played the previous turn (elementals) or if we had it in hand (dragons). With the naga all these possibilities are valid depending on the card we are going to use, and we can assure you that they have created a bit of confusion for us.
More than once we have made a mistake in playing a creature, losing its special effect, and other times we have had to reread the text carefully in order not to fall into error. Not quite an optimal choice, especially for a card game that is increasingly moving towards the mobile market and whose games tend to be faster.
A little more articulated speech is that of the Colossi. These majestic minions with an average high cost promise on paper to be “win conditions” for control decks and theoretically it would have been so too; unfortunately, at least after these first few days, not everything went according to the developers’ plans.
The idea behind these creatures works and is correct, the cost and the abilities are balanced, but then why are they largely not being played? The reason is also the main flaw of this “Route to the submerged city” and is also linked to the discourse on moving the vehicle on which Hearthstone is played.
With most of the users now playing via their tablet or cellular, and the game times must necessarily be shortened or speeded up and this fact was declared by the developers themselves in the recent interview we proposed here. And so, along with cards and mechanics dedicated to those who love decks a little slower and more strategic, many aggressive and fast cards have been inserted, which allow you to close the game well before the Colossi can be played.
The only exceptions, coincidentally, are those giants with a slightly lower cost and that fit perfectly into aggressive decks. And so once again the protagonist of the meta is the Pirate Warrior, a deck that we have been seeing for two cycles now, flanked by the new Pirate Rogue, the immortal Face Hunter, a resurrected Demon Hunter and the robotic versions of the Wizard and the Paladin.
Fortunately the other two contenders in first place as the most performing decks are much slower decks, namely the Silence Priest and the Ramp Druid, but the proportion is decidedly unequal. All this without counting the OTK decks, the ones that win the game suddenly, in a single turn, without giving the opponent a chance to escape: fortunately compared to the last competitive season there are only a couple and difficult to execute.
It’s a real shame because, as we said, the ideas behind this first expansion of 2022 are beautiful and interesting but are undermined by too many simple and fast decks that kill all those more complex and imaginative strategies in the bud. We at Eurogamer on the one hand were satisfied, on the other we found ourselves with a bitter taste: pushing hard on the aggression pedal, in our opinion, a wide range of users (such as myself, ndSS), who he might even get discouraged.
Some balances have just been made to bring some balance back and time will tell if and how effective they will be. But the question we ask ourselves is why they didn’t think about it before.
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