Many people have questioned the role of randomness (commonly called RNG) in Hearthstone. NoxiousGLHF, in the video above, feels that we’re getting dangerously close to having too many random cards that are viable competitively. He makes a distinction between cards like Mindgames, which are tons of fun but uncompetitive, cards like Flamecannon, which has controllable randomness (control the creatures on the board, and you can control what it targets), cards like Animal Companion where the choices are easily enumerable and understood, and cards like Unstable Portal, Effigy, Piloted Shredder, or Spellslinger. These last ones are the “problem” cards, where the range of possibilities cannot be meaningfully enumerated (by either the player or the opponent), and the game can be won or lost as a result. For example, against a Hunter, you can plan for the 1 in 3 chance that he plays Animal Companion and gets Huffer (it’s always Huffer). Against a Mage, once Unstable Portal goes down, you have no idea if you should plan for a 0 mana wisp, or a 4 mana Dr Boom.
I partially agree with all of this. On the one hand, it’s great to see Blizzard embracing the digital-only nature of Hearthstone by making cards that would never work in a physical card game. Having cards that can pull their effect from the entire card pool and not just your deck is really cool, and additionally such cards will continue to work well even as new expansions arrive. On the other hand, some of these cards are dangerously good, and I think Blizzard will need to be careful going forward with what they add.
Source: NoxiousGLHF on Youtube
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