When Card Games Break

Hearthstone's recent drama with Shudderwock got me thinking: What Happens When You Break A Card Game?

[austinmcconnell]

As several Hearthstone players have correctly pointed out, I didn't quite explain some of Shudderwock's properties correctly/fully. While an "infinite loop" didn't occur precisely as I described, it was still possible with the combination of Grumble, Worldshaker, Saronite Chain Gang, and Murmuring Elemental. If you'd like to learn precisely how all of it worked, there are plenty of in-depth articles that can explain it (and the rest of the card game) in great detail. Feel free to Google something like "How The Shudderwock Combo Works". Don't listen to some filthy casual like me.

[mattiudean]

"Would you want to sit through a half hour game that you know you're going to lose?"
*League of Legends players laughing in the distance*

[jarekhartwell]

Magic turn 1: I play a forest and pass
Pokemon turn 1: play a pikachu pass
Hearthstone turn 1: pass
Yugioh: **INHALES**

[pr]

Dont worry, Yu-Gi-Oh is at least as broken today as then

[TheTrueGlaukos]

you know the saying "it's not a bug, it's a feature"? well I have to say that things like shudderwock are basically the most evil version of this. things like catapult turtle were likely an accident the first time around, but it's not exactly a secret that companies who make these games create cards like that on purpose. then they charge you a lot of money to get them, they sit for a few months while everyone saves up to buy this new card that is basically the best in the game and the only way to win in the current meta, then they act like they are responding to complaints about how broken the game is and they nerf the card. rinse and repeat until nobody can play the game like they used to and the only players left are the ones that love going up against people with basically the exact same deck and continually shell out money so they can be the first ones to climb to the top of the ranks by having the new card before anyone else.

[newuserable]

Current YuGiOh: What do you mean you guys reach turn 10?

[inflame]

MY JAWS THAT BITE!
MY CLAWS THAT CATCH!
MY TURN THAT LASTS THE ENTIRE MATCH!

[hhhsp]

I love when he says "Deal with it" when talking about card games

[Aguila]

That purple pip on the back of the Magic card broke me.

[Medbread]

Austin: "I spent over 70 dollars to get this card."

Also Austin: "I quit the game 2 days after, and have never played it since."

[vivisektion]

In my tabletop card game group, we have infinite combos a couple times a day, they're actually hilarious and fun to watch, basically what we do is explain how it's infinite, and explain that we win.

[GarrettPetersen]

Here's the change to Shutterwock that I would make to avoid the infinite loop: When it duplicates a battlecry that says "duplicate this card" it should duplicate the other card, not Shutterwock.

[ginorossi]

Well... Now we have The Demon Seed, so... I miss Shudderwock really much for that card. For the guys that don't play Hearthstone, The Demon Seed is a 1 mana card that always starts in your hand. Usually using a deck that goes around it makes you win at turn 5, an insane thing for the Hearthstone's standards.

[KingsleyIII]

I'm pretty sure most kids who collected Pokemon/Yu-Gi-Oh!/Magic The Gathering cards when I was in elementary/middle school only _collected_ the cards, and didn't know how to play the games.

[brokenearth]

I think that the ability for developers to react to and fix problems with their games as they arise after publishing is a really great thing, but it also promotes the idea that you don't actually have to finish the game before you send it out. Another thing that makes some games still so loved after all this time is that they have glitches and bugs that can be exploited for whatever reason, but that's not a thing with modern games because devs will remove glitches if they don't like them. It would just be nice to not wonder what your game is going to be.

[giocosovelasco]

"What happens when card games break?"

*_"I don't know, you broke them. You can't play them anymore."_*

[terryhidalgo]

As a casual scrub who's never made it past Rank 10 since Classic, a couple things:

1. It is possible to have a Shudderwock without dropping $60+ on packs through the dust mechanic (though it's still pricy as hell - 1600 dust doesn't just pop out of nowhere). I assume you just wanted to get the point across of Shudderwock being valuable enough to burn money on, but it's prudent to let people know this stuff.

2. When a Shudderwock is copied, the copy's Battlecry doesn't go off. You have to actually play the card for it to go off. (I assume you said it like this just to get the point across to people who don't play HS, but it's a nitpick that means enough when considering things such as mana costs and hand size.)

3. As you have addressed, Blizzard has exponentially raised the animation times on Shudderwock specifically to combat this problem. However, you're not completely locked into a never-ending cycle of animations - forfeiting (which you probably will have to do, since if Shudderwock goes off, it's probably too late) cancels all animations and immediately ends the game.

4. This video also kinda understates the fact that Shudderwock is a very late game card, as not only do you have to play it (turn 9 minimum), you must also get the full combo of Lifedrinker/Saronite/Grumble (which means drawing and playing one of each by themselves) and - this is a key thing people miss - getting the order of the Battlecries to line up as Saronite -> Grumble (this point is a bit moot with Murmuring, but it's important, because it's possible for the combo to actually fail in this case). In the time that you spend getting the combo ready, you need to also dodge and deal with all your opponent's threats (and this is the expansion when Baku Hunter became a thing - hello, turn 4 lethal - and Taunt Druid was unleashed - aka, more armor [bonus Life to non-HS players] than freaking Control Warrior).

Just some points that I felt should've been touched upon, if only for the sake of rounding out the video. Shudderwock, while it is annoying as hell and unfun when you're on the receiving end of it, isn't exactly the pinnacle of OTK lockout decks in Hearthstone (that would be Freeze/Quest Mage, Miracle and Quest Rogue, Patron Warrior, Deathrattle Hunter, Razakus Priest, and Cubelock, all of which got nerfed pretty hard).

Good video, hope to see more. :)

Oh yeah, almost forgot: M Y J A W S T H A T B I T E M Y C L A W S T H A T C A T C H

Edit: Made sure to note that all the unfun decks got nerfed hard, but forgot to mention that Cubelock is more manageable now, due to recent patch.

[LogogoFromKeron]

2018 Shudderwock: I can make this match last 30 minutes!
2019 Control Warrior: Huh, only 30 minutes?

[grotesquewombat]

I was about to leave the video and then I saw that it had 40k dislikes, tf? I'm legit so confused.

[alexbrangan]

When Magic started experiencing a slew of bans in Standard this year, I immediately thought back to this video, as thanks to the pandemic, Standard is now played exclusively on Magic Arena. And on Arena, your cards are not physical goods. They can't be traded or sold. They can't even be dusted like the ones in Hearthstone. The only compensation the devs give you is wild cards of equal rarity to the cards that were banned. But what about all the other rare cards that synergized with it that WEREN'T banned, and are now powerless? Players essentially have no choice but to start their collections over again.

It's not an unsolvable conundrum, but it lays bare the dubious economics underlying lootbox-style monetization of digital card games to those who may not have done the math beforehand, or were too invested in the game to care. It's the reason games like this are starting to draw the attention of lawmakers in some countries as they brush up against anti-gambling regulations.