Hearthstone Holds Live Fireside Duels

by JR Cook - 11 years ago     show comments

The Hearthstone team at Blizzard put together a pretty fun event this week on Twitch.TV. In the past they have released some videos of what they are calling Fireside Duels which have just shown some game play with Ben Brode shout-casting the matches. In the past we’ve seen such deck match ups as Paladin Vs. Warrior, Mage Vs. Shaman, and Warlock Vs. Druid.

This time however, the matches were live streamed on Twitch.TV with Ben Brode playing while Eric Dodds watches on and helps provide commentary on what plays they should made in the situation of the game they are in. The entire live stream lasted about an hour and can be watched in it’s entirety here:  http://www.twitch.tv/playhearthstone

There were 4 different match ups played during the live stream and we have all of the game play currently up on Youtube for your viewing pleasure.

The first matchup pinned the Priest deck against the Druid deck and this was our first look at the Preist deck in the Fireside Duels. One of the things I found really interesting in this is explaining how players health is calculated and how the player who goes second gets a little bit of a health buff for being at a disadvantage of possibly getting damaged first.

The second match up was the Rogue deck vs. the Druid deck. The Rogue deck is another deck we have not seen yet and in this one you get to kind of see how the combo mechanic works that the Rogue deck is known for.

The third deck has another class deck we haven’t seen before with the Hunter deck vs. the Shaman deck and is the first time we get to see the Stranglethorn board. The part that interested me about this duel is it goes to show how much of an advantage you might have with knowing what the cards do, what they cost, and when people play them in relation to the secret cards. Basically they put down a secret card right off the bat with the hunter deck that it seemed their opponent knew exactly what they were doing. Wasn’t really much of a secret when the opponent was able to maneuver around it and gave them a pretty big advantage in this duel.

The final deck played was a rematch from an earlier Fireside Duel with the Warrior deck vs. Paladin deck. This game went a lot longer than the first 3 and while I don’t want to spoil too much, the most interesting part of this match up is you get to learn what happens to the game when you run out of cards in your deck. It’s a pretty different mechanic than most games where you just lose.

I have to say, after watching all of these and the past Fireside Duels I simply can not wait for this game to hit beta this summer and eventually release later this year. If you would like to see past Fireside Duels we have covered make sure you use our Fireside Duels tag to see them all listed.