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Saturday, November 23, 2013

A little Hearthstone to get things rolling

Dusting off my old blog I never did anything with and shaking out the cobwebs to talk about my experiences in Hearthstone, so I figured starting simple would be a good idea. So how about one of the counter intuitive things I've had to learn to do: Eating damage to clear a minion with my weapon (or druid hero power).
The typical line of thinking myself and a lot of other players I’ve fought against everywhere from unranked, to arenas, to diamond ranked play, is to avoid eating the counter attack damage and simply kill the offending minion with one of our own the next turn. On the surface that plan is completely reasonable, you damage the enemy champion (or just save durability on your weapon), you avoid taking the minion’s damage in return, and you can deal with it next turn with one of your minions. Your HP stays high, the other player’s HP drops, therefor you come out ahead in the exchange, it all makes sense on the surface level.
The problem comes from the fact that you have no control over your opponent’s turn. Leaving that minion up prevents the damage to you once but also allows plenty of opportunity to keep that minion alive and repeatedly dealing its damage. Without a full deck list for your opponent there’s no way to guarantee that your opponent does not have a buff or taunt or heal up his sleeve to prevent you eliminating that minion on your next turn.  I cannot count the number of times I’ve lost from allowing a minion to live in order to avoid a few points of damage, only to have that minion survive all game dealing its damage to me over and over. The mistake is only thinking of the damage a minion can deal as a onetime event, instead of its potential to deal that damage every turn.
So remember, if it won’t bring you dangerously low on HP (assume around 20hp means you’re safe to take the counter attack damage from almost any minion), take the damage and remove that minion from the board. It would have saved several games for me and it just might save a few for you too! 

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