My thoughts on Hearthstone, and Magic: The Gathering

Thanks to the recently released "Journey to Un'Goro" expansion in Hearthstone, I've found myself playing Hearthstone nearly every single day, a game that I previously stopped playing many months back. I have been playing on and off since the game was released back in 2014, however the previous expansion, "Mean Streets of Gadgetzan" made me quit playing due to my dislike and inability to deal with the new mechanics. 

Since I had been playing the game inconsistently over the years, as well as my unwillingness to pay money for card packs or Solo Adventures, I was always a few expansions behind, and missing many essential cards. I wouldn't say the game is "pay to win" since you can easily get cards and enough dust to craft the cards you need by doing the daily quests, it is however much easier to get those cards by paying money. 

Whenever a new expansion comes out, everyone rushes to buy new packs, craft the new cards and try out the new mechanics. However, for a casual player like me, I do not have the gold to buy packs, or dust to craft cards. Thus I am stuck with mostly old cards playing against the fancy new decks that people have made. For example, when "Whispers of the Old Gods" released, I found it extremely difficult to compete against  a "Face Hunter", or a "C'thun Druid" deck without the addition of the new cards. So after a few days of playing, I just decided to call it quits after I was unable to reach a rank higher than 19 with any of the decks I crafted and proceeded to become one of the countless gamers out there calling it "pay to win".

The greatest card ever printed in Magic

It wasn't until September 30th that I decided to play a new card game, and that was Magic: The Gathering (which so happened to be the day "Kaladesh" set was released. Funny how I went from playing a free game "pay to win", to a game that is literally pay to win (since you have to buy the cards in the first place). Back then, I was just sitting around looking for jobs and had a lot of extra time on my hands, so I decided to start doing something to pass the time and play magic with some friends from college. In hindsight, getting into magic probably wasn't the best idea for someone who didn't have a job at the time, but oh well.

My friends made me a standard and commander deck, and taught me the rules of the game and I was instantly hooked. The amount of variation and mechanics in the game was astounding to someone coming from only playing Hearthstone. Next thing I know, I'm buying card packs, participating in leagues, drafts, and small tournaments at my Local Game Shop (LGS). I pretty much just stopped playing Hearthstone entirely until the release of "Journey to Un'Goro".

As I got more and more into playing Magic with friends, and people at my LGS, I found myself wanting to be able to just pick up and play it without making the effort to meet  LGS, and hopefully find someone playing the format I want to play in. This made me look into "Magic Duels", the free online Magic game for Steam. After logging in and playing a few rounds, I found that there was much left to be desired. I was hoping for a similar level of quality and polish as Blizzard puts into Hearthstone, yet that was not the case. I found a a decent online version of Magic, that seemed more aimed at attracting new players and teaching them how the game is played, rather than a full fledged digital Magic: The Gathering game.

An in-game shot of Magic Online

After bringing these concerns to some of my more veteran Magic playing friends, they suggested I try out "Magic Online", as most people play that instead of "Magic Duels".

I did a quick search for it, and found that you had to pay a fee of $10 for the game, but they would give you a base set of starter cards to begin with. I found that "reasonable enough" and purchased it.

After starting it up, I was disappointed to be honest. After hearing about how "everyone plays Magic Online" I figured the game must be well made then, but instead I found it quite mediocre The game runs fine, and there are plenty of players and events going on at all times, but I just can't get myself to even play the game because it just looks so bad compared to Magic Duels and Hearthstone.

I'm not one to solely focus on visuals when deciding to play a game, but when the game has a poorly designed interface that makes it difficult to learn how to properly play the game, I am not going to play the game. And to top it all off, the only way to acquire new cards or play in events is by paying with a credit card. As someone who has already spent a good amount of money on the physical cards, I do not want to spend even more to play with virtual cards. It's quite shocking that Wizards of the Coast are doing this to be honest.

The Pokemon Trading Card game, which is also made by Wizards, gives you a voucher in every pack of cards which can be redeemed for a pack of cards for their digital card game. Why is Wizards not doing this for Magic? I, and I imagine many others, would be much more inclined to play Magic Online if the same model was implemented. Another strange this is that Magic Duels does have an in-game currency system similar to Hearthstone. I guess Wizards is just greedy and know people will pay for it either way.


While I do very much enjoy playing Magic, it does have its downsides. The expensive nature of the game compared to Hearthstone, the stale Meta that has been prevalent in the past few months, as well as the amount of learning required to fully grasp the game often times shuns new players away. However, I do believe that if you are able to find a LGS with friendly patrons and casual events it is a ton of fun despite the money sink it can be.

The main thing that I enjoy about Magic over Hearthstone is that there are several different formats in Magic. There is Standard, Modern, Commander, Legacy, Draft, and Cube to name a few. This provides me with several different options when I wish to play Magic, whereas in Hearthstone there is only Standard, Arena, Tavern Brawl, and Wild. While Tavern Brawl is mainly just for fun, I find Arena to be based too much on luck when drafting cards, and I find Standard simply not enjoyable due to the strict meta dictating which decks succeed or fail (same as Magic too). I don't even dare play Wild. Based on what my friends say, Wild "is just a shitshow".

An in-game shot of Hearthstone

Despite all my concerns, I still happened to find myself playing Hearthstone. I asked myself a few days ago, why? Why do I keep coming back to playing Hearthstone despite my disdain for it? The answer that I found was that it is simply just a damn well designed game.

I am not talking about the cards per say. I am talking about the game as a whole. The user interface is intuitive, the in-game rewards (which could be better) incentivize players to log-in every day, and its easy to just pick up and play a game or two on your computer, phone or tablet. And that's not even considering the game's art, which is amazing by the way.

Most of all, players are able to disenchant extra cards they have opened for "dust", allowing you to craft any cards that you are missing. This is the main reason that got me back into playing Hearthstone. I had dozens of cards that had rotated out of Standard over the years, and with no desire to play Wild at all, I disenchanted them all. After spending a tedious 30 minutes or so, I had accumulated nearly 14k dust, allowing me to craft any cards that I was missing or wanted. I am now finally be able to compete (to a certain degree) with many of the popular decks that are out right now. I can't beat Quest Rogue though, that deck is just completely broken.

I truly do hope that Wizards of the Coast are not completely incompetent (the recent banned & restricted update suggests otherwise though) and realize the amount of money they are missing out on from not having a high quality digital Magic game. The amount of money that Blizzard makes from Hearthstone is absolutely incredible. There is no reason why Wizards should not be trying to cash in, but one can only hope.

Edit: WIZARDS ACTUALLY DID IT! MAGIC ARENA HYPE TRAIN CHOO CHOO!