The best defeats in Hearthstone

Hearthstone, Blizzard's online CCG, is a phenomenon. It's the first CCG to really and truly embrace the possibilities offered by the virtual space. Blizzard have consistently created mechanics and effects that would either be difficult or impossible to achieve in a physical card game and solve some of the issues that plague Magic the Gathering's computer adaptations. It's a sleek game of fast decision making with only 75 seconds to take you turn and no direct interaction with the other player when it's their turn. This limited interactivity really ramps up the tension, especially towards the end of the game. It's a great game, easy to learn, hard to master with a high skill ceiling. It's also free to play so if you like that sort of thing there's no harm in giving it a spin to see if you like it. It also, and I can't stress this feature enough, has very limited ways to communicate with your opponent. You can even silence them if you don't want them to be able to communicate at all. You can't reach through the screen and slap them in their stupid face but I remain optimistic that this will be added in a future patch.

I stopped playing Hearthstone for a while due to anxiety issues but I got sucked back in yesterday by the hype around the new expansion, The Grand Tournament. It got me playing Hearthstone's super casual Tavern Brawl mode, where literally anything can happen and the rules change on a week to week basis. After that I played some games on ladder with my current favorite Warlock deck. I was going through the motions a little bit, it's a deck I know reasonably well, and having not played  most of the month I was languishing in the depths of the ladder and playing mostly newer players with less extensive collections. I cued up into a Warlock mirror match and got my backside utterly handed to me.

I know it doesn't look it but this is thrilling

I thought I knew most of the main archetypes of the Warlock deck but this was a new one. It played a little like a handlock (a deck that builds up a big hand in order to discount or buff certain cards) with whole bunch of dragon synergies added. It ran a bunch of really big dragons to close out the game. After being schooled I immediately went to look at some decklists on the internet and spent the rest of the afternoon trying to learn how to play the deck with some success.

I don't know of any other game where I can feel better about being beaten. I've played some Heroes of the Storm (Blizzard's answer to the MOBA) and being beaten there feels like reading the warning on a cigarette packet. I've played a limited amount of online shooters and being beaten feels in these usually feels like being beaten by a feral child who has learned to communicate only in racial slurs and headshots. I've been beaten at poker which somehow always leaves me with the sense that a man with a city in his name is going to break my legs and steal my television because I got in too deep.

In Hearthstone every defeat teaches me something. Usually it teaches me that I suck and should go back to playing Zelda: A Link to the Past for the fifth time. On rare occasions it teaches me that there's an entirely new way to build a deck and I should totally give it a try. It's possible that my ability to face defeat with a shrug and a smile is due to the large numbers of sedative drugs in my system. At this point I feel like I could greet Michael Gove with a a mere grimace of despair rather than the usual mixture of project vomit and screams so I'm obviously very chilled right now. Still, I do feel that defeat has less of a sting in Hearthstone compared to other PVP games. Check it out and see if you agree. If you want to play with me and put my laid back attitude to the test you can hit me up on twitter @hjdoom and I promise faithfully not to put rabid weasels through your letter box if you win.

Don't forget that I also have a book out on kindle. It's called This is not a Lovesong. It's a horrible, horrible book about horrible, horrible people and you can buy a copy here. I also have a facebook page which you are encouraged to like. Think about it, what's the worst that could happen?