For 10% off your first purchase, go to www.squarespace.com/austinmcc... Hearthstone's recent drama with Shudderwock got me thinking: What Happens When You Break A Card Game? PATREON: / 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.
Normal Aleister Link Almiraj Link Gardna Invocation for Mechaba Invocation GY eff activate Nadir send Apkallone add Ecclesia Trigger Apkallone add Schism pitch Schism Special Ecclesia add Maximus banish Apkallone Special Macimus send Construct and Titaniklad Trigger Construct add back Schism Set Schism End Phase Trigger Titaniklad add Fleurdelis. That is the simplest combo around at the moment. I love Yu-Gi-Oh, I really do.
Paying more $70 for a card that eventually will get ban? Yeah we do that, it’s fun play overpowered decks that will get shit on by the ban list but we love it :) Yugioh it’s like that and always has been
It's not though it's just a different meta than it used to be, many old school players see what happens in a modern game and call it broken because it's faster. However Konami is pretty good at banning any cards that get too out of control and balancing new combos with ways to take them down, for example the very idea of "hand traps" was invented to allow someone to stop their opponent doing too much on turn one. It's easy as well to say "oh boy if you had X+Y+Z in your hand and Q in your graveyard you can beat someone turn one!" but the random nature of the game means that certain "broken" combos like that will only happen once out of like twenty games if you're lucky. which is no way to win competitively.
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.
League would have been a decent game if you could swear your head off the entire time, but having to sit there and smile at your idiot teammates and being forced to play when your mid-laner has fed theirs 13 kills, is what makes the game unplayable. That whole "controlling player behavior" is anti-american and should be considered a hate crime against humans.
It’s unfair that Brode got so much shit for that even though he had nothing to do with it and it was pretty balanced. It’s no wonder why he quit. Edit: Freeze and Exodia mage were so much more annoying anyways
I spent $100 on hearthstone 🤦, only for my cards to be rotated out after about a year 1/2. Yeah I guess that’s a pretty long time, but no way in hell I’m I paying that again just for the slight possibility of winning. It did feel nice getting that legendary though. I was having fun, and my deck wasn’t even top meta, although it still was meta unfortunately haha
I pre-ordered Warcraft 3: Reforged and deleted my Blizz account around the Blitzchung incident. When you're sick of something or someone, material things do not matter. @New Eden - that's the reason why I've never spent a single dime on Hearthstone. I've played the game since beta and I have always only crafted cards for around 3-4 decks per year and then disenchanted them next year to make new ones. Hearthstone just isn't worth the money. It never was.
I spent like 60€ on Hearthstone over the course of five years, mostly on adventures. Still having fun grinding the dust for more decks, playing mostly Wild.
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.
I think it would make more sense to change the card with that effect to say "cards duplicated in this way cannot use their battlecry". You can get another Shudderwock but it won't trigger the loop
@@mrh8142why it's turn 10 just make them time out of them going infinite doesn't end the game, like if u get infinite battle cries one of which causes damage I think u deserve to win the game the combo isn't that easy to set up
@Angel Alvarado but it does, yesterday salad deck is pure cancer before the banlist hit their power play, and orcust shite. now I still can put a fight against those deck with my tier 2 deck, witchcrafter.
When I first played tf2 I just thought im extremely bad. I was even kicked a couple times from games, because, as i thought I was so bad. Turns out I was decent, it was just bots changing their name to mine and then I got kicked. Very nice stuff.
@@Storiaron That has happened to me too, but sometimes my friends just call v otes on me for a joke and they go through. Who needs enemies when I have these guys?
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.
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.
I know this is a year old but I wanna respond anyway, my worry is...well go back to an old game you love and look up glitches or some bug that you can exploit for infinite items or something. You played it legit as a kid and enjoyed it, now you go back and you play a whole other way, over powering everything or just doing something you weren't intended to! But now look at the modern market, those glitches get patched out, sacrificed to make the experience good for everyone else. Honestly it takes a bit of magic from those games and makes em bland pieces to consume and then toss, especially if its a niche thats often filled.
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.
But that's the issue. It's fun to WATCH not fun to PLAY AGAINST. if these sorts of decks are too strong then the whole point of an intractable card game that you against another person is defeated. It becomes much more like Solitaire and people will more frequently ask themselves what the point of that game was.
@@deejayf69 Combo theory communities are very much a thing. The goal of the game becomes 'How can we, as a group, solve this puzzle and optimise our solution' which is still a perfectly valid question. It's certainly different to most people's approach to most card games, but that's not to say it's right or wrong. If people enjoy playing it, let them
@@deejayf69 nah, when we played MtG with friends, when you start infinite combo you just say "do this, do that, repeat to infinity, i won". Except there are counterspells, and when your opp says "do this, do..." You say, "wait, wait, wait a second. HERE, i must stop you. You say do this, right? I say MANA LEAK, or i say LIGHTNING BOLT, or maybe DISMISS, or opp needs a creature on a table to target and i say PATH TO EXILE. Any responses?" This is how you play against those types of decks and have fun
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.
that pissed me the fuck off the most fun part was being good at cutting one sided deals and beating people with the card they stupidly traded you, all these bitches just wanted to trade smh.
When I was in elementary schools we did used them to collect cards but we did our own version of a pokemon battle.... We just layed the cards in 1 line.
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.
If they want me to buy digital the code must be in a physical pack or I want cardboard cards that can be redeemed I play magic off and on and buy good cards when I do When I quit I sold them and either broke even or made a nice profit off the duals With digital you throw away your money When they stop support your game is gone I can teach my grandchildren magic if I just keep a few binders
@@sblack53 true but you need a full set first. I buy singles now and then when building a deck and so far everytime I got bored of MTG I made a masse proffit when selling. Singles almost always make me money.. packs are almost always a loss so I skip those unless it is a new release
I feel like WOTC feels a little remorse for elderaine and the past three sets have been pretty fairly balanced. So despite not playing standard I think standard 2022 will be pretty healthy.
One of my favorite infinites of all time in PTCG was Dialga GX in Expanded. For people who don't know, Pokemon GX have a GX attack that is essentially once per game. Keyword: essentially. In Cosmic Eclipse, the set introduced Misty and Lorelei, where if you discard cards from your hand, your Water Pokemon GX can use their GX attack again, which essentially can lead to an infinite if you do it turn after turn. So, Dialga GX's GX attack deals a bunch of damage, and, wait for it... LET'S YOU HAVE ANOTHER TURN. So make Dialga Water type with a Vaporeon, and if you're lucky (you have to flip a coin for M+L), you win the game. It is stupid and fun, and is obviously why Dialga is banned.
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.
Well thoughtout comment. I agree with this. Most of the time, one has to draw almost all of their deck, and additionally, it is not a 100 percent guarantee to win with Shudderwock, as you can Grumble before saronite chain gang.
I remember when I was a kid I had a white dragon deck with blue eyes and I gently put a face down monster and a trap card and ended my turn so my friend had a pendulum deck and he summoned 3 monsters of 3000 attack and that negated all the effects of my cards and still dealt piercing damage. It was frustrating. And what did we learn from that? if you don't win, appeal with them or buy the most appealing deck you find.
In master duel those pendulum decks are irritating. If I make it past the 5th then I typically win, but the game is “draw the exact right cards on the first turn or you lose because your opponent definitely did”
I mean you were playing what sounded like a goats era blue eyes deck so that is kind of on you Besides blue eyes has a piercing damage card with chaos max dragon plus it’s double piercing it’s bad and a noob trap but it’s there
There’s another game that’s been broken called cardfight vanguard with a. Deck type called Kagero. When certain cards are used it’s essentially a one hit k.o.
The simple fact he didn't mention Firewall Dragon even tho literally EVERYONE in the community wanted it banned when this video was released is mind boggling. Also, Pokemon allowed you to draw your entire deck turn 1 when base set was legal
Well it was more about what happens when card designers make a card that breaks a game. Since this was the newest time it happened that's why it was the main topic
One of the examples in the video, was a complete misunderstanding of how the card and how the game works, and like 30 seconds of research would show you that.
@@xrefed first of all, you dont have to pay 70 dollars to get that card. you can craft cards using dust, which you can get by just playing the game. it isn't pay to win, just pay to get things faster. second, you can also disenchant a card, usually for 1/4 of its dust (changes a bit for each rarity), but whenever blizzard nerfs a card, you are allowed to get full dust value when disenchanting it, which invalidates his arguments on the end of the video. the only true fact on this video is the fact that shudderwock was indeed kinda broken, but not as broken as a turn 1 lethal like the one in magic the gathering. basically everything else he says is just false
@@GabrielAraujo-uj9ng The casual player would have to know all these things for it to help. Heck I played TF two for over 1000 hours before I even knew there was a crafting system so I don’t blame the guy
I think it a fundamental flaw of all trading card games, that they will break eventually. The publisher always want to make new cards and they will always be (slightly) better than the last to encourage players to buy them. Over time not only get the cards stronger, they usually get more complex and since there are more and more cards overall, the numbers of interaction and combo-possibilities gets exponentially more complex. So sooner or later all trading card games would break, thats why we have ban/forbidden lists. For Yugioh in particular: It lacks a gatekeeping resource. In the past this resource was "time" as you needed to draw your card from you deck and you were limited in your summons per turn. Nowadays you deck is pretty much completly accessible at turn1, special summon is more common than normal summon and your GY, ExtraDeck and even your (face-up) banish stack are extensions of your hand. The thing that actually stops your FTKs are hand-traps in your opponents hand, which are more or less obligatory.
I mean, it's Blizzard so I wouldn't be totally surprised. I don't play card games, so I was relieved to hear in the comments that Hearthstone isn't as grim and predatory as he made it sound.
@Fluffynator that was when it was first released. Since then it was changed to what I mentioned. If you don't play the game, then do your research, so you know what you're talking about
Shudderwock was the greatest hearthstone card ever printed and I won't hear otherwise. I made a deck that filled people's decks with weasels and it was beautiful.
Reminds me of when magic the Gathering arena crashed because of the infinite polyraptor. In summary, there was a card called forerunner of the empire. When it was on the field, it could make any dinosaur take one damage. It could also send a dinosaur to the top of the deck, so you would draw it next turn The dinosaur polyraptor made a new version of itself when it was damaged. Someone would play forerunner, bring polyraptor to the top, draw and play it, make it take one, copy it, make the copy take one, make a copy, and infinitum
@@rhysofsneezingdragon1758 right, havnt played with dinos except colossal dreadmaw for a whilr also crashing arena is easy, more then 256 tokens and the game warns you
Also u forgot isolde and needlefiber. Im kinda suprised isolde is still legal and well needlefiber will still be alive till 2021 at least, at least i expect that out of konami.
@@geraldhng8774 you dont have to spend that much, actually hearthstone is free to play so you can get your deck free, it just takes longer. You also dont pay 60 dollars for a single card, you pay for a set amount of packs that contain different cards, some of which may change in the future but its your responsibility to take that into account while buying packs
@@mateuszbez516 sadly they didnt do that this week. All in all they neved cards i owned worth 3400 dust, but i didnt get anything. (same with other players i guess) So refund only happens if hall of fame is involved it seems.
I remember the Black Lotus combo in MTG as well as Omanyte from Pokemon being banned for causing a hand to be shown all the time. Pokemon had others, too, like Sneasel's Beat Up, Blastoise Rain Dance, The mistranslation of Slow King in English cards vs the Japanese cards.
I remember when i was in highschool my friends and i would often play some casual games of MTG during our free periods at school (casual in that we didn't really care much about any of the meta strategies and would just play with whatever cards we happened to have). One day i decided to try going to the games club after school, and in literally the very first match my opponent wiped the floor with me in like 3 turns using a tailor-made Cascade deck. That was the last time i ever went to the games club after school.
The copies don't trigger their battlecries. That's like such a fundamentally huge detail that's so incredibly hard to miss that I'm honestly offended you made a video having missed this detail. Also, not as huge of an overlooked detail, but you actually *can* cue actions while shudderwock's animation is going. This isn't the case with some animations though, like brawl, but with shudderwock, it *is* the case. Also, if you don't want to sit through the animations waiting for you to lose, you don't have to, you can concede the moment shudderwock is played.
Ryan the simplest way to explain it is that battlecries only trigger if a minion is played from your hand. If it is played any other way, it usually called "summon" rather than "play". Summon doesn't trigger battlecries. So Chain Gangs ability is "summon a copy of itself". Thus any copies made will have buffs and any other card effects (like taunt), but will not trigger it's own battlecry. Otherwise you'd play one Chain Gang and fill the board. Playing Shudderwock is messy and chaotic...so I can understand why someone might think it'll work twice. But, fact is, it does not.
That just means it basically delays it a turn then as they go to your hand at the end of your turn and then you just play them all for one cost next turn (as per his strategy) basically achieving the same effect.
NaveTVG The way it works is that Grumble returns the copied Shudderwocks to your hand and makes them cost 1. Then the next turn you play all of those, which make more and return them to your hand. That way you play 10 Shudderwocks and potentially deal 60 damage while healing for 60 every turn.
the saronite battlecry makes a copy which does not cast its battlecry and the 7/7 elemental's battlecry returns the copy to your hand at the cost of 1, so the original shudder does not return the copies does
@@Sumiscloud it is. The fact that people are willing to play multiple garnets on their decks just to summon him is a solid proof of why. It wipes the field, has an omni negate, requires very specific removal options and thanks to Anaconda you can drop it extremely easily on turn 1. The only legal card that is worse is ZEXAL, wich literally forces you to loose your entire turn with no prior set-up (at least Yata Garasu required you to clear out the hand AND field, and possibly the graveyard as well), and I just a easy to drop on the field thanks to the stupid Numeron field spell.
As a regular Hearthstone player, I feel like this video isn't really providing the whole story on Shudderwock. Regardless of the misinformation at 7:03 (You need to individually play each Shudderwock for multiple effects of its Battlecry, Saronite Chain Gang alone will not do that), there is also the fact that even though this seemingly impossible to beat combo existed, it wasn't a very good deck when it first released. The combo simply was too slow to assemble for it to gain any leeway, and the deck was actually rarely played for quite a while. Of course that doesn't mean it wasn't frustrating to play against, but the card wasn't necessarily broken, it simply was unfun due to the nature of animations in Hearthstone. If the card didn't have any animations at the time, it would have been a completely fine card. Also, the "nerf" it then received didn't change how the card worked except for very fringe cases and for speeding up the animation speed. Nowadays Shudderwock decks are in a pretty healthy spot tbh. They have good and bad matchups, and while their power level may still need to be tuned, they don't come even close to breaking the game. There are cards and combos that can break a card game, and while Shudderwock may have appeared to do so, it still was a pretty balanced card for the game.
7:05 Thats... Thats not how Shudderwock works at all. The copies dont trigger their battleycry when summoned, only when cast from the hand. Plus, the order it triggers them in is random, meaning the Grumble one could go off before the Chain-Gang effect, making Murmuring Elemental necessary, as its what ensures that you get the 1 cost Shudderwock copies on your next turn without leaving it to chance.
True, it isn't, but how powerful it is isn't the point. The point is that it isn't fun to play against because there's no counter play other than killing them before Turn 10, and the animation times is just... NO.
actually it is, because it completely destroys other control decks and has been played at every tournament by every player since its release, it just has a poor winrate because people dont know how to use it
Got reminded by this video because of inscryption. A card called Pharaoh's Pets lets you sacrifice it to play blood cards infinitely. The Ouroboros, a blood card, gains 1 attack(inscryption calls it power, but it's the same thing) and 1 health every time it dies, and also returns to your hand(as in, not in your deck or just deleted for that match). The Necromancer revives a unit when it dies, and then that revived unit immediately dies. There's a training dummy in act 2 featuring an enemy who does no damage and can block your damage. There's also a hammer feature which lets you kill your cards. So basically, you set up your Necromancer(or two, if you want extra brokeness), Pet, and Ouroboros, and you can create a loop of buffing your Ouroboros infinitely, not to mention creating infinite copies of that OP Ouroboros in your hand. It's tough to pull the Shudderwock-esque full combo in normal fights, but even just having an infinitely powerful Ouroboros(as his buffed stats stay past the fight) is still incredibly stupidly overpowered.
Mitchell Olenchuk Card games without Player autonomy is the most backwards design concept ever. MTG, Yugioh and at one point even Pokémon all had or still have ways to interact with your opponent on THEIR turn. This allows both players to have an equal amount of autonomy allowing them to FEEL as if they can win. Now, current games like HS and the Pokémon TCG have no real forms of interactions with your opponent. You just have to sit and watch them do WHATEVER they want with 0 drawbacks.
@@deejayf69 When you're in a match of League and every teammate is feeding by the first fifteen minutes so you call a surrender but no one else wants to, this is basically the situation you have to watch unfold as the only possible way to make a comeback is to hunker down and play defensively until you've farmed enough to become relevant again.
@@charlesquinton9127 well no the only thing you can do to comeback from a huge gold deficit in modern league of legends is to wait until your opponents make mistakes and wouldn't you know it that's usually what happens as most people aren't good at the game. So really you should stop ffing so much. This has been an issue with League for quite some time now
One of my favorite deck synergies in early Hearthstone involved Kel'Thuzad, Faceless Manipulator, and Reincarnate. Kel'thuzad has an active ability that resurrects any minion that dies while he's in play. Faceless Manipulator has a battlecry that lets it turn into a copy of any other minion on the field you own, even Legendary ones, and it will remain in that form until it's killed. Reincarnate causes a card to die and immediately resurrect with all effects applied to it reset. However, and this is the important part, Reincarnate still counts as a minion dying. So you would slap down Kel'thuzad, and then use Faceless to copy him. Then, you would use Reincarnate on one of them. This causes the one Kel'thuzad left standing to resurrect the one that died, and it doesn't care that Reincarnate spawns a second one already. This means you now have three Kel'thuzads. And unless the opponent can destroy all three on that single turn, things have now gone off the rails. Kel'thuzad's ability will go off individually for each Kel'thuzad, and they will in turn clone anything on your side of the board that dies by a factor of however many Kel'thuzads there are. Which, as established earlier, includes Kel'thuzad himself. This madness only stops if you physically cannot fit any more minions onto the board, and it does not take that long to reach that point, especially if you have cards that you can use to directly kill your own minions. Meaning that you now have a wall of 6/8 self-replicating skeleton men taking up your end of the field unless your opponent manages to kill all of them in one turn, something that takes either a very tricky one-turn play, using Deathwing's battlecry, or using the Twisting Nether spell.
The only thing card companies can do when their card game breaks, is to either fix the pack it was included in and nerf/remove that card and replace it. The only other thing that can happen is if the community agrees that that card cannot be played at all in competitive battles. The thing is opposite in online games. The company can easily just nerf the card Willy nilly. I have no idea what my point is here.
Or, with real cards, you can add it to the ban list and not allow it in tournaments. The community doesn't need to agree - if it's officially sanctioned, the refs won't let it be played and they won't let you have it in your deck.
7:00 actually it doesn't work like that. For a battlecry to be activated it has to be played from a player hand, thats why Grumble is part of the combo. The Saronite Chain Gang is just for board and more copies 1 mana in hand aftes using Grumble battlecry
A couple things I want to add. 1. When you open card packs, you can get duplicates of anything below Legendary rarity (the orange gem in the middle means Legendary), and if you get duplicates, or just cards you never plan on using, you can disenchant them for dust, which can slowly be collected to create the card you want to use. Also there are ways to slowly accumulate packs and gold to buy packs without paying, but it is EXTREMELY slow. 2. At least in the last year or so, any time they nerf a card, they refund it's dust value to the owner of the card, and let you keep the card too. Which means you can keep the card if you still want to use it, and also use that dust to craft a card of the same rarity, or multiple cards of less rarity. 3. Loved the video, and completely agree with it. Not disagreeing with you through these corrections, just wanted to clarify a couple things in case people get mad about something that Blizzard is quite good about trying to reduce the damage of. Your content is super consistent, and I have enjoyed every video I've seen from you since I found you.
Also, the battlecry does not trigger again when Shudderwock is copied on the board (from the chain gang effect), that is why grumble is so important, because the sequence only happens again when played from your hand. In the video he says whenever it is copying itself it will do the whole thing over again but that's not quite true. Not that this fact changes much but just slight misinformation.
I was going to make the same comment as you. Despite the errors on explaining Shudderwock's one turn kill setup and omitting the nerf dust refund, the video's message doesn't really change. He even could have brought up the standard rotation (which essentially banishes old cards to a low-regulated game mode) to really make his point. Great video as always.
Yeah you can tell that Austin is not the most hardcore gamer. Shudderwock is not a Tier 1 deck, has never been, just as almost all combo decks are. This is basically a noob rant packed into the high quality videos we are used to. :p
not rue, the rule is a bit more specific. the loop is only illegal if it is infinite and does not result in a change in game state. for example if you deal infinite damage to your opponent then its legal because there is a change in game state resulting in a loss of life points. if however all your loop does is just bring a monster back on the field only for it to go to the GY and then back on the field and nothing changes that would progress the game for example then its illegal. basically if your infinite combo does not directly result in you winning the game then its illegal. so if you are going to go infinite with your cards then it better win you the game without needing you opponent to surrender
Meanwhile in magic an automatic loop that can’t be broken ends in a game draw (effectively a reset). Edit: to be clear, someone being dead breaks a loop.
not only that, in MTG and other tabletop TCGs, banned/restricted cards often are more expensive, even though they cannot be used, so if you don't want it, you will likely get the money back from that card in the long run, especially if you wait a few years and keep the card mint.
Well, unfortunately, Exodia is just a 1000 ATK/1000 DEF monster with basically no effect once you summon it. The pieces have to be in your hand to activate it.
Exodia is not a monster. Exodia is 5 different cards that once they are in your hand you win the duel. There is no singular monster called exactly "Exodia". the closest is the head
The Shudderwock issue could be fixed by excluding itself or only allowing the effect once in a turn. This is what is done in most special summoning and other related effects in Yu-Gi-Oh.
It doesn't include itself. You already have better earnest and intuition than the video essayist lol. Shudderwock's battlecry happens because it is 'played from hand'. Actually all battlecries happen because, when a card is 'played from hand'. So imagine Shudderwock causes any such random battlecries that happen when he hits the board, in a kind of affirmative manner; they never included him afaik, and actually the devs had to edit the card so it'd include battlecries of cards released after Shudderwock after player outcry. People got more Shudderwocks in one game by copying the card in literal ways unlike could happen in any other card game ie mtg. In retrospect it was clever, but you'd never say that at the time, in almost any sense lol. Everyone wanted to do the combo. This video essayist characterizes his mistake as being wrong on technical details but literally proved that he didn't even appreciate the card game for what it was if he experienced enough bustass ingame. Each card he mentions in the top comment is another card conflated without mention with Shudderwock, so a _whole_ _combo..._ just to say 'tHE PrOBleM wItH SHuDdeRwOCk' lmao. This game has infinite netdeckers, and dude couldn't furrow his brow and observe the single loss it takes to realize wtf Shudderwock did. Blizzard is ass but this game was a clever mess sometimes, this dude was just the highest-production-value-dadgamer you never want partaking in your hobby lmao. Straight up a baby&bathwater-dumping-ass philistine.
So many things wrong on this video... 5:00 - You don't need to spend that much money to get a Legendary. You can just use Arcane Dust to get it. You get Arcane Dust by discarding cards you don't want. Then you can spend that Dust to create any card you want. (Of course, the cost of creating a card is more expensive than what you would get by discarding it. But I won't get too deep into the explanation or the values and costs of each rarity.) So, in the worst case scenario, if you were to buy packs, and discard every single card, and you only received cards with the least possible value (a.k.a. 1 rare and 4 commons per pack) you would have the Dust to get a legendary of your choice in 40 packs. Oh, and a Bonus: you can play this game for free. I'm a free-to-play player and I crafted a Shudderwock after the release. And I have a deck with him. It's not that hard. 7:00 - The copy's battlecry DOES NOT trigger. Battlecry is a mechanic that activates as the card is PLAYED from your hand. Not when it's SUMMONED in any other way. The copies' battlecries DO trigger if they are sent back to hand and played accordingly, which is the whole point of the deck (Saronite Chain Gang + Grumble, Worldshaker). But for that you need mana, or you need to wait for the next turn to play 10 Shudderwocks (each one costing 1 because of Grumble). The turn you play it you can only play 2 Shudderwocks: the first one costing 9 mana and a second one costing 1. 11:15 - Whenever Blizzard nerfs a card, they give you full refund for that card in Arcane Dust. Remember when I said you spend more Dust creating a card than you would get discarding it? For a few weeks after the nerf, anyone that discards the nerfed card will get the full value. That means if you spent Dust creating said card, you get that Dust back, and if you opened it randomly in a Booster, you get to choose any other card of the same rarity for you to create. It's like a Magic Card was banned and Wizards of the Coast said: "If you give us this card that costs 15 dollars, we give you 15 dollars to buy any other cards you want". However, this, unfortunately, didn't happen with Shudderwock, because the changes shown at 10:49 weren't considered nerfs by Blizzard, since they didn't change the power level of the card in any way, they just sped up the animation. (I would disagree and say the new maximum of 20 Battlecries was a nerf. But I'm saying how Blizzard saw it.) If it was indeed a nerf by Blizzard's eyes, we would have received full refund as usual.
Actually more expensive.. in hearthstone its basically 1$ for a card pack, in any other card game its about $3 for a card pack.. hearthstone is actually very cheep not to mention can be free to play and still successful
In my gradeschool we had no lunchroom. We played outside in the concrete. There were minor yugioh battles all over the kid's yard, but there was one shadowy, quiet corner where six kids regularly played MtG, wordlessly, and usually with a silent audience of awestruck kids ringing them. I only ever saw those six kids during recess playing Magic. It felt like a drug cartel or something.
@@maxsnowdude2034 the combo did happen but it's edited and he incorrectly described it, the part about spending 60$ or more cuts out important information like the fact that you can craft cards by turning the bad cards info magic dust, and after a card gets nerfed you get a full refund of it and can craft any card of the same rarity. For the combo itself he claims that when a card gets summoned it triggers it's battlecry, but that's completely untrue. It only triggers the battlecry when you play it directly from your hand, so the saronite chain gang battlecry doesn't repeat the shudderwock battlecry infinitely. Also the deck itself was extreme weak, required tons of setup, took 2 turns late game, and was easily countered. It was more of a meme than an actual deck. And again you can concede and cancel all animations, so the "wait for 30 minutes for it to finish" is blatantly false.
@@bluebullet7 everyone that plays yugioh must be already know what the effects is. But in the anime, any character that used that card always explains the effects... Again and again.
I mean, not only is this not how the combo works, its not even the most aggregious deck thats been made, making it too 10 mana is shocking what with rush meta always going for turn 4 wins since the third expansion.
As an MTG player who plays casual, infinite combos are a delicate balance. The best way i see them played are in long format games like commander where the combo is but one of several win cons, and you have little chance of getting the combo out without direct card searching. But i have seen people play a deck by first announcing the win con is an infinite combo and they just want to see it happen. "I worked it out math-wise, I want to see it irl", which people will often agree to do because why the hell not. But whenever someone puts down an infinite combo, there's no tension. Often it happens before people have gotten their own win cons out. So you put down your Exquisite Blood alongside your Sanguine Bond and say "I win, I got the combo.". Someone looks over and says "huh, yep that's the combo.", and then starts gathering up their cards. There's no real sense of triumph because you didn't *win*, you have engendered a situation where it is impossible for anyone else to win. It just sits there on the table like a dead rat and then you play a deck that people can actually fight against and compete with.
Things that are wrong with this video: 1. Hearthstone is not a TCG. You can not trade in this game! 2. Shudderwock never broke the game, you could just concede when the animation began and the game was over. 3. You dont have to buy 70$ Packs to get the card lol Just play the game, get some gold and dust and craft the card for free. 4. The battlecry will not activate when it's copied. Only if you play a card from your hand the battlecry will activate.
adding to your list 5. 6/6 is not a good stat line for a late game minion. 6. On release, shudderwock shaman had a 45% w/r. Even now has only a 49% w/r. 7. IN YOUR OPINION the combo wasn't fun to play. Just because you didn't have the patients to watch it doesn't mean other people wouldn't find it fun.
Counter point: Anyone who knows Shudderwock well enough doesn't need this video, and anyone who doesn't probably won't pick up Hearthstone after watching him uninstall it.
+Josh Brown Yes, but what's the point in lying about how it works? If we know that he's willing to lie in order to make something worse than it actually is, how do we know he doesn't do that with all his videos?
As a pokemon player I am just done with the competitive meta as I only play expanded. The pokemon company/Nintendo has made broken cards only looking at the possible combos in standard but not in expanded. This creates broken combos like the island challenge amulet hand lock deck or the scoop up net shaymin decks. It just seems that the company is not paying any attention to the cards they make. They then just ban the cards and people who have bought those expensive cards like shaymin ex are now losing money because those cards are never going to be able to be played anymore it's just do stupid.
Likewise, generally every nerf in HS generally results in the dust value of that card being refunded to players who own that card. Without removing that card from their account; you didn't touch on dust when saying the shudderwock card was $60 which is missleading.
Idk, i don't want to tell you how to do your job but in this instance it seems like you should have had a pal check your script before finishing this video.
at 7:00 , he states that the copy from chain gang also cast the battlecries, but it doesnt. The combo actual has a 50% chance of failing. The real idea of the combo is you want chain gang to trigger, then Grumble. (the order in which the battlecries trigger is random) so if Grumble triggers first then chain gang, the combo failed and now you have a shitty control deck. You could do what he did in the video and play Grumble after Shutterwock, but if the other player has are crowd control and kills the shutterwocks before your next turn, you also failed the combo.
Smilin’ Prophet But that's not actually what's happening. The copies actually don't do anything when they first enter the battlefield, because they battlecries only activate when a minion comes into play from your hand. Your first shudderwock typically does 6 damage, summons 1-2 copies of itself, then returns it and the copies to your hand. The thing is that the NEXT shudderwock you play will repeat the battlecry of the last one, and so on. In the video he's just showing the 2nd or 3rd shudderwock he played.
When shudderwock duplicates itself using Saronite Chain Gang' battlecry it will NOT trigger it's battlecry again because Chain Gang also doesnt activate it's battlecry over and over again when it gets duplicated.
Also the deck wasn't even competitive before it was nerfed. It was literally a meme deck 2 weeks after the expansion came out. Cool concept for a video, but at least be real about the situation.
@@koatam NOT TRUE! the battecry effects were in a random order, in order to combat this mutiple ccopy effects were sometimes used, and it was recommended to play BOTH saronites in order to reduce the odds of getting grumble first.
A consumer should never adjust expectations. If anything, consumers have an ethical obligation to be overly demanding and unreasonable so as to artificially force companies to provide the best service possible.
I'm sure someone has corrected this already, but just in case: The copies Shudderwock summons don't trigger any aditional effect, as they don't activate their battlecries.
Battlecry is only triggered when you PLAY the card, not when it's summoned by any other means. If that were the case, then the original minion would also do this. It would summon a copy of itself, then the copy would trigger it's battlecry and summon a copy of itself and so on. That's not the case.
Austin's explanation of Shudderwock's OTK combo is worded incorrectly. What he should have said was:"... Next, the chain gang battle cry activates, making a new Shudderwock. Then Gumble's battle cry activates, putting that new Shudderwock into your hand for just 1 mana. Now you can play Shudderwock infinitely, up to 10 times per turn. Each time you do, you deal 6 damage to your opponent, and heal for 6 damage. So, on the turn after the first Shudderwock, you will be able to deal 60 damage and heal for 60 HP by playing those 1 mana Shudderwocks 10 times. This is where it gets out of hand, as the animations take up a ton of time..." The way he explains in the video suggests that the new copy of Shudderwock would play their battle cry as soon as they got summoned, which is not the case.
+Zunde Esteed But that's not Shudderwocks effect that's Shudderwocks battlecry which doesn't trigger on summon but only when played. The fact that Chain Gang doesnt make infinite copies of itself is proof of this.
This happens in magic, quite a bit. Infinite combos exist because they're so many different cards that synergize with each other. Mind you, most them are only played in commander or EDH which is 100 card decks, so it can be quite difficult to pull them off. In modern which is 60 car there was a turn one win deck, but one of the pieces was banned I believe.
also worth noting is in commander/EDH you can only have one copy of each card, and thats most of why drawing combo pieces is so hard (as opposed to most formats which let you have 4 of each) also in mtg you can go "ok so i do this then this then repeat infinitely" and if your opponents can't stop you, everyone usually just agrees you won and you can do something else or have a rematch, so no matter what end of the combo you're on its wayy more fun
20+ years ago playing MTG I distinctly recall 2 separate times when I got a card combination in my hand that caused me to bust out laughing as I realized the possibilities. I think in each case WotC eventually ruined it by outlawing x = 0.
hey austin i like your videos a lot but there are a lot of things i think you should have fact checked in this video. shudderwock was described incorrectly, and you declined to mention how blizzard refunds nerfed cards. it feels like you ripped on hearthstone unnecessarily without enough research. idk maybe i'm just too defensive about a game i've spent way too much money on :/
Kinda a hard video for me to get through. Spoilers, Shudderwok is not a broken card in the game. It's a competitive deck, but isn't extraordinarily powerful or unbeatbable. A lot of the times it can't kill the enemy in one turn, and the animation was sped up. Oh, and by the way THERE ARE COMBOS IN THIS GAME THAT KILL YOU IN ONE TURN! Velen Priest, Antonidas Mage, Malygos Druid. These also have long animations for the enemy as well. Then there are slower, more aggravating and consistent decks that way worse, like Taunt Druid, which uses a non-interactive combo to fill the board with huge valuable minions, after spending the whole time after sitting behind taunts and building up armor, and then they do it again! And again!
Its not that its unbalanced, its just extremely unfun to play against and made Hearthstone a slog. Other unfun cards have been changed before, so it makes sense that Shudderwock would
Been happening like this since the old days. After the power 9 got restricted, cards like Berserk, Wheel of Fortune, Fork, Balance, and so many others got restricted. Then errata became a thing and the cards didn’t do what they said on the card anymore... Imagine paying $75 in 1994 for a Chaos Orb and then seeing it get banned next week?
"Imagine trying to implement this kind of mechanic into a tabletop game of Magic" Wizards of the Coast: Behold our newest game mode, Alchemy! MWAHAHAHAHAHAH!
can we stop calling hearthstone a trading card game and call it a collectible card game instead? unless they've added a feature i have not yet seen, we are not able to trade cards
both actually mean the same thing, but back in the day, I believe wizards patented the phrase, trading card game, so that other companies couldnt use it for their card games, so they started saying collectable card game instead, but the two phrases are literally the same thing
According to Wikipedia, the terms are interchangeable: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectible_card_game It seems there's never been a term invented to specify a TCG-type game in which you can't actually trade.
When a card gets changed you are able to disenchant it for it's craft rarity value. While this system is not perfect it allows you to craft a new legendary if you want.
Dylan B | No. It is $30 to get a good amount of card packs. Those card packs give you 5 cards and therefore 5 chances at unpacking a legendary card. Duplicates can also be disenchanted for dust in order to craft specific cards that you want.
That's still not mentioning that you can get packs by just playing, if you play long enough, you'll always be able to get enough dust to craft the card you want, that's what I did in a couple of weeks
They also do alot of events like the time event (cant remember proper name) and the fire festival event which is on now giving people double gopd for all quests. I got 500gold in the space of an hour.
Since the good old shudderwock days, the game has been breaking every couple of months with a new crazy unbeatable combo. There have been consistent one turn kills on turn 5. And today, in January 2022, it's a miracle to have a game longer than turn 7-8, especially in wild, without even having a special one turn kill
The pokemon card game has "shiftry donk" which utilizes the arena card forest of giant plants to repeatedly use Next Destinies Shiftry's ability to remove all of your opponent's pokemon from the game turn 1
Copy of Shudderwock won't activate it's battlecry. In order to do the battlecry, you have to play the card exactly from your hand, not by the effect from another card.
The guy clearly do not understand that, to differ from MTG and Yugioh Battlecry is only when YOU play the card from your hand. I can see why the misconceptions as being MTG and Yugioh has cards that basically sounds like Battlecry, giving, when they are summoned/enter the field, do this or that. But Hearthstone has a very good restriction of only when you play it from your hand. Which makes broken cards in other games normal in Hearthstone. Clearly this guy doesn't play hearthstone a lot and has completely misunderstood it. But I honestly, feel like it is more of a troll if he had played the flipping combo himself, he ought to have already found out that it doesn't work the way he say it to be. So I kind of feel like, this guy was joking around, making a complete troll move.
7:05 That's not how it works. The copy won't create another copy. This combo works because you can have 10 copys of Shudderwock next turn, dealing 30 (or 60) damage to your opponent. I like this video and agree with most of said things but this mistake is pretty big.
I played Magic during the Revised era. I remember hearing about the infamous combo from Alpha that would be a first turn win. But it took like 5 specific cards in your 7 card hand, so it was very rare. Still, they banned it. It is part of why Wizards of the Coast doesn't allow old cards in tournaments.
The problem with card games summed up: Players: "¡This game is too slow! ¡Matches last forever!" Developer: *Makes game faster by increasing power level* Players: ¡This game is too random! Early draws are all that matters.
7:05 Nope, the new shudderwocks battle cry only when you play it. Therefore it doesn't repeat then but rather after grumble puts the copy in your hand at one mana allowing you to replay it and get several more 1 cost shudderwocks. The most shudderwocks you can play in a turn is capped at 10.
no that's not the point, he explained battlecrys correctly up to the 7:00 mark. Here he explains that when creating a copy of itself, the copys Battlecry triggers aswell. That however is not the case because a battlecry only triggers when a card is played from your hand, not when it is summoned by another effect.
Merloss No the game describes battlecries right, it's Austin, he's in way over his head in this one, either that or he misinterpreted the entire game for the sake of making a clickbaity video that falsely represents everything he talks about.
@Gandalf no, while he does show us how he plays the combo, he doesnt show us everything that is happening, instead he only shows us small portions of it, so you cant fully see how everything plays out. Basically the combo plays around getting a copy of shudderwock back to your hand wich then costs 1 mana, so that you can play 10x shudderwock on the next turn and 10 times 3 (life drinker effect) or even 10 times 6 is enough to otk your opponent. That being said the combo has a chance to go horribly wrong if your grumble effect (return the minions at the cost of 1) is triggered before shudderwock creates a copy of it self. The only way to guarantee that that is going to happen is by playing the murmuring elemental before playing shudderwock. I hope that helps if you still have questions feel free to ask me :D
In some ways this is kinda inevitable. Right, if you release new cards all the time, with many completely new effects, unless there's some inherently ultra-safe ruleset for what a valid card effect can be that's followed very strictly, you will have unintended combos and some will be way too strong or create a dupe or something. It's simply not practical to, when inventing a new card, look at how it could be used with any possible permutation if existing cards. Not just how it could be used with one other card but 2 or 3 or 10. Each being an exponential jump in search space.
Fun fact about the Catapult Turtle/Magical Scientist First Turn Kill. This is only one of the very few overwhelmingly broken strategies in early Yugioh. Yata-Lock is a strategy where you summon the monster Chaos Emperor Dragon with the card Sangan (or Witch of the Black Forest) on the field. Emperor Dragon will send all cards in the hands and on the field to the graveyards. This effect will then trigger Sangan, allowing you to add Yata-Garasu to your hand, which you can summon and poke your opponent, which prevents them from drawing cards after it attacks, essentially leaving them with nothing until they lose. Another one is Royal Magical Library FTK/Exodia is an interesting but convoluted strategy where you equip the Spell Card Butterfly Dagger - Elma to Gearfried the Iron Knight, which will cause Gearfried to automatically destroy it. Then, Elma will add itself back to hand to let you equip it again. If you have Royal Magical Library on field, you can gain a counter every time you activate a Spell and then remove 3 counters to draw a card, but since Elma gives you infinite Spell activations, that equals infinite draws, which guarantees you to find the 5 Exodia Pieces and win immediately.
You're wrong about Hearthstone. 1 - You don't need to get lucky to get the card you want, you can disenchant some cards you don't want for dust and use that dust to "buy" the card you want 2 - The Shudderwock copy from Saronite Chain Gang doesn't activate it's battlecry, since battlecries only happen when the creature is played from your hand, not when it's summoned by card effects. 3 - Shudderwock's battlecries happen in a random order, so you showed the wrong combo. You needed to show that the combo also needs Murmuring Elemental and it has to have its cost reduced by Fire Plume Harbinger, so you can play Murmuring and Shudderwock in the same turn, guaranteeing the combo. 4 - You didn't mention that when Blizzard nerfs a card, they make it so you can disenchant it for full dust value, which means you can pretty much trade it for a card of equivalent rarity. I haven't played Hearthstone in a very long time, but I've kept up with it. You really misrepresented the game.
Marco Mata the last 3 points you have are correct but if you don't want to spend money on the game you ABSOLUTELY have to get lucky. I've spent 0 dollars on the game since release and I've only ever made 2 complete meta decks. It takes a God damn year to craft any legendary and most meta decks run at between 3 and 6 of them.
Marco Mata not to mention compare shudderwock decks to other decks. The most popular shudderwock deck has a 49.06% winrate, can be inconsistent, and games take really long. While the most popular odd paladin deck has a 55.46% winrate, is consistent, and games can finish often before the mana cap is hit.
I played it for a few years and there's a lot of bad stuff about that game and can't speak for it now, but it wasn't exactly pay to win. The only thing you needed to do is to do the quests and then play one Arena game/day. Not get tempted to buy packs wherever you get the enough gold. Once you get skilled at the game you can easily get 60 packs a month without spending anything; which is enough to construct one competitive deck - so you can build new deck every month; after a six months you have quite a large catalog of cards which is usually the speed a new expansion gets released. Granted you need to play 2-3 hours a day, but if you want to "win" you're going to need to play that much regardless you pay for it or not.
Can’t say the same for yugioh duel links, have never spent a real dime and Iv got a decent win streak considering the people I’m up against who probably have spent out, suppose with card games however there’s more chance involved with a shuffled deck 🤔
I know it doesn't seem that way from this misleading video,but its actually quite easy to get shudderwock without spending a single dime,I got in a couple of weeks by crafting
I personally think that some games NEED to have a "classic" mode like WoW kinda has, like I would love to play Classic League of Legends even tough some mechanics and some combinations were totally broken, balancing things out does not bring the happiness that those times brought, that atmosphere, that era, the "Broken" was fun, and even further we have to question ourselves like how much more of the game people didn't explore back in that time, how many combinations, how many other stuff that could beat the old "Broken", I honestly don't see why other games don't do the "Classic" thing aswell as far as heavy "patched" games are concerned like LoL for example. Or games that are old or simply offline and always had that "Play always the same way" thing are the only games that really will be "Classic" forever because they are made that way. Even though most of our "Nostalgia" is purely driven by the circumstances we were into and not the game itself I think what I just said up there is definitely something to look for. Awesome video that made me say all of that and I actually never played any card game and literally played like 3 matches of Hearthstone and said "too complex bro not gonna happen" lol
I am sorry, but you are wrong. Battlecry doesn't trigger when shudderwock summons a copy of himself. So, the first time shudderwock played, there will be just 1 life drinker battlecry. However, its when shudderwock played second time we get double battlecry - from original lifedrinker and from the first shudderwock. You are right in the regard that every consequent shudderwock effect will be greater, and overwhelm the ooponent at the end. Hovewer, it didnt break the game. It turned to be not not the best deck, not even among top tier ones.
Alexander Kolchev you are wrong too. Shudderwock doesn't duplicate shudderwock battlecry. Either murmiring elemental was played or multiple bounced shudderwocks bounced a turn before were played.
Theres a similar combo in Mtg. Its not an infinite combo but i had a deck that used Norin the Wary and some other cards to esentially create as much health, damage to targets, and creature tokens as i needed. Never really used it to win and would usually secede to my friends but i always wondered how high i could take my hp.
