BMoor

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BMoor on Hearthstone
Magic: The Gathering Vs. Hearthstone
February 9, 2016

            Greetings! My name is B'Moor, and some of you may remember me from my old Deck Garage articles on Pojo's Magic: the Gathering site. Others of you may not remember me, because it's been quite a long time since I've actually written one. The reasons for my long absence are myriad, but the basic story is that troubles in my personal life made it too hard for me to keep up with Magic: the Gathering closely enough to feel comfortable presenting myself as a source of advice on it.

            Much of this was due to financial insecurity-- it's no secret that Magic: the Gathering is not a cheap game to play if you want to be competitive to any degree. During that time, I instead chose to fulfill my card-slinging itch with the new, high-tech game on the block, Hearthstone. Based heavily on the lore and general aesthetic of World of Warcraft, another game I once played back when money was less of an issue, Hearthstone does a good job of capturing the general feel of WoW while employing mechanics similar enough to Magic that skill in one game can easily transfer over to the other.

            The transition process isn't entirely seamless, however. While some concepts are clearly the same with different terminology (Charge and Haste are the exact same ability), others have subtle mechanical differences (Overload is like Echo, but without the option of refusing to pay), others are similar in idea but differ in execution (Windfury and Double Strike both mean “deal attack damage twice”, but work differently) and other concepts don't transfer over at all. (Hearthstone has no “graveyard”, while Magic has no “weapons”). So, as my triumphant return to Pojo, I decided to write this article, to discuss the differences between these two games, the Original CCG and the Outbreak Digital Hit, to act as a guide to Hearthstone for Magic players, and a guide to Magic for Hearthstone players. Hopefully I can convince a few players of each game to try out the other and perhaps win a few converts for both sides!

            Magic has lands; Hearthstone has mana crystals.

            This is more than just a different game terminology. Magic: the Gathering invented the idea of using a resource that you built up over the course of the game to “pay” for the cards you play, thus restricting the speed of the game and allowing big, game-changing cards and small, weaker cards to coexist and be balanced against each other. Their solution for doing so was with “lands”, cards that you are only allowed to play one of per turn,and that generate mana with which to cast spells. Most relevantly to this discussion, lands are cards in your deck alongside your spells, and this means that you have to draw the right amount of them. Too few, and you end up unable to play your cards. Too many, and you're drawing cards you no longer have any use for. Various cards,strategies, and deck archetypes have emerged over the years that revolve around mitigating this problem, or inflicting it on your opponent, or even exacerbating it as a trade-off for raw power. However, “mana screw” and “mana flood” remain the two most reviled ways to lose a game of Magic, as they require no skill on the part of your opponent and can never truly be avoided altogether.

            Hearthstone, javing been created over a decade later, had all this work laid out for them upon creation and decided that mana should not be dependant on card draws. In Hearthstone, you gain one mana crystal per turn as surely as you draw a card each turn, up to a maximum of 10. There are no cards that cost more than 10 without a built-in cost-reducer effect. There are also currently no ways to reduce the amount of mana crystals your opponent has, although there are a few ways to give yourself AND your opponent more of them. Both games have mostly restricted this ability to one type of cards-- Green cards in Magic, and Druid cards in Hearthstone, though exceptions exist. Which brinsg em to my next point...

            Magic has colors of mana; Hearthstone has classes and hero powers.

            Magic: the Gathering, famously, has five colors of mana. Each color represents a different naturally-occurring ecosphere, the idea that “lands” produce mana, and thus a creature's natural habitat or a mage's birthplace would dictate what sort of mana it was aligned to. Over time, each color has come to represent its own general philosophy as in-depth and as hotly-debated as the Dungeons & Dragons alignment system, suggesting that certain climatic regions can magically influence the personalities of its inhabitants. (I'm green/blue and Lawful Neutral.) Gameplay-wise, this means that to cast, say, Green spells, you need to have Forests in your deck. To cast Blue spells, you need Islands. You can mix and match colors, in various proportions, and there are even multicolored spells, but doing so requires a precise mix of lands in your deck and thus raises the aforementioned mana issues.  

            Hearthstone, built on the Warcraft mythology, is having precisely none of this. Mana is mana, and it fuels spells. In lieu of Magic's five-color system, Hearthstone has nine classes corresponding to the nine playable classes in vanilla WoW. Which spells you can or can't cast depends on your class. You must choose a class as part of deck construction, and you may use only cards of your chosen class or neutral cards. There are, however, ways for cards you didn't put in your deck to end up in your hand, and if this happens then you can cast them normally without worrying about having the right type of mana. The Priest class is the one that most specializes in this type of effect, having “mind control magic” effects in WoW. Rogues are catching up to them in this respect though, thanks to being the class most likely to outright steal things.

            Your class isn't just your available card pool either, it also gives you a “hero power”. A hero power, in Magic terms, is an activated ability that costs 2 mana and may be used once each turn. Each class's power is different, and many of that class's cards complement or interact with the hero power in a way that helps to dictate what that class's general strategies are. The Hunter's power, for example, deals 2 damage directly to the enemy. This damage can't be blocked or prevented and the Hunter has access to it every turn, so hunter decks tend to be aggro-oriented. The Mage's power, by contrast, only deals 1 damage, but can be aimed at the opponent directly or at his or her minions. Mages aren't as good at pure aggro as hunters, but they are much better at spot removal and board control.

            Magic is made of physical cards; Hearthstone's “cards” are digital constructs thereof.

            This seems like stating the obvious, but the implications can be quite surprising for someone who is used to one game just getting comfortable with the other. For example, Magic distinguishes between a card's “controller” (the person whose side of the board it is on) and its “owner” (the person who showed up at the table with it in his deck) and has always had an unspoken rule that if a card moves to any zone other than “in play”, it moves to the zone of its owner. The “ante” rule from Magic's infancy was discontinued for this exact reason-- having your opponent shuffle that chase rare you spent $20 on into his own library and then “forget” to give it back after the game is a recipe for trouble. Since Hearthstone cards are kept track of via a database, there's no reason to enforce such a rule. Your opponent can put copies of your cards into his own deck, and after the game is over, the server remembers both your deck lists so you always have all your own cards. This also means that you can easily maintain multiple decks containing the same cards without having to own multiple play sets, or take apart one deck whenever you want to play the other.

            Hearthstone cards can also generate other cards: cards that exist in the database but are “uncollectible” and thus aren't in your deck and never exist outside of a game. Magic can do a similar trick with “tokens”, but has long established that tokens only exist if they're in play-- once they would be moved to any other zone, they no longer exist. Tokens in Magic must also have all their rules text described on the card that generated them, limiting their potential for complexity due to word count and legibility issues. Hearthstone can simply refer to any card in the game by name, because the database knows what the card's stats are even if neither player does.

            Having the game be run on a computer also means that the computer is responsible for the rules of the game. It knows how all possible card combinations interact, and it knows how they work. There are no judges, and no punishment system for rule infractions at official events, because you can't actually “break” the rules-- however the server interprets your inputs is the “correct” interpretation. You also, however, can never ask a judge at an event about a rules question if it comes up during a game. All you can do is play based on how you believe the rules work, and if you’re wrong, well, too bad. You can't take back moves in Hearthstone, not even in Casual play.

            Magic has a complex layered system by which players can interact with each other's moves; Hearthstone has discreet turns of one minute each.

            Part of what makes Magic so strategically in-depth (and so intimidating for new players) is the high level of interactivity. You can respond to everything your opponent does through instants and activated abilities, and you frequently have important tactical decisions to make on your opponent's turn due to combat tricks and the like. Those who have played Magic Online will tell you that this is the primary problem with it: waiting for your opponent to manually pass priority for each step and after each spell makes every turn crawl at a snail's pace compared to live Magic, where you can just play at conversational speed and tell your opponent to stop when you have a response.

            The people who created Hearthstone were well aware of this issue, so Hearthstone does not expect (or allow) your opponent to have any input during your turn. This means that each player's turn can be capped at one minute to prevent slow play. If you run out of time during your turn, you will be penalized with progressively less time next turn, down to a minimum of 10 seconds. Your timer will reset once you make a play, though-- the penalty is primarily to stop players from going AFK.

            Hearthstone made the right decision not attempting to recreate Magic's stack and constant back-and-forth pace of play, as trying to emulate it would undoubtedly bog down the players' experience and earn Hearthstone the reputation of being a worse Magic knock-off. Doing so has also forced Hearthstone to diverge from Magic on two important points: the combat phase, and the ability to react to opponents' plays.

             In Magic, your creatures all attack in one wave, aimed at your opponent, and your opponent may then assign blockers. In Hearthstone, each minion attacks independently, and the attacker gets to choose the target.

            This consideration has probably made the most difference between how the two games play out. In Magic, the more creatures on the board, the harder it is to launch a successful attack, even if our creatures seem to be better on average, simply because the defender can choose who blocks what and can even “gang block” with two or more creatures to take out a bigger creature. Magic even has a keyword ability-- menace-- that requires a defender to do this to a creature bearing it. Hearthstone, by contrast, favors the attacker in such a situation, as each minion can be aimed at the target of the attacker's choice. Instead of a defender “gang-blocking”, the attacker can “gang up” on a larger minion to take it out, but doing so allows the victim to deal its full attack power back to each assailant. The ability to choose targets also means that minions can also double as minion removal. If a minion has a strong ability, a Hearthstone player must take more active measures to protect it from both kill spells and attacking minions. One way to do this is with the Taunt mechanic, which requires attackers to attack a target with Taunt before being allowed to attack non-Taunt targets. Your opponent's own life total never has Taunt, so it is also favored as a way to keep yourself alive.

            Magic has creatures, artifacts, enchantments, instants, sorceries, lands, and planeswalkers. Hearthstone has minion, spells, weapons, and your Hero Power.

            Since you can't play spells during your opponent’s turn in Hearthstone, there is no need to differentiate between different types of spells the way Magic does. The closest Hearthstone has are “secrets”, which function much like Trap Cards in Yu-Gi-Oh: your opponent can see that you played one, but not which one, and they wait for a certain action on your opponent's turn to trigger them. Hearthstone also doesn't need lands the way Magic does, nor does it have room on the battlefield for non-minion entities. Things that Magic would represent as an artifact or enchantment are instead represented as a spell with a permanent effect on a minion, a 0-power minion (much like Walls in Magic are), or a weapon. Weapons give Hearthstone a functionality that Magic does not: they allow YOU to attack a minion or your opponent yourself instead of leaving your minions the task. Weapons have a set number of uses and typically can be used once per turn. This lets you kill an enemy minion to clear the way for your own board, at the cost of taking some damage, or to simply push more damage at the opponent through. Your weapon is not active during your opponent's turn, however, so it does not allow you to damage or kill anything that chooses to attack you.

            These are the most obvious differences to players of one game who are just trying out the other, but the more subtle differences give the two games very different strategic identities and make them two very different experiences. It is my hope that by writing this article, I have given players of both games a new way to look at their favorite of the two, and perhaps given players of each game a reason to give the other a try.

            It is also my hope that this won't be just a temporary return for me to Pojo, and that I'll be able to offer my insights on both games to an interested audience in the future! Until then, here's wishing you all the luck of the draw!

~B'Moor