Assuming you bought most of the cosmetics, upgrades and passes.
There’s the expansion releases at I believe 79.99 and 49.99
Mercenaries are 49.99 a piece with… 3-4 in the shop.
Tavern pass is 29.99.
Battlegrounds pass can be purchased with gold, but otherwise I believe it’s 14.99?
Someone will have to correct me on the costs, I’m on my phone so it’s hard to switch between the forums and the shop. What would you spend on Hearthstone in total for the complete purchase of the shop?
Does it compare to other TCGs like Magic? Not including the card sets, how much does it cost to play other game modes in different TCGs if you wanted to invest?
This is personal experience, as an extremely casual MTG player, so my experience moght not be the same as some seasoned players.
To play casually in a tcg like Magic or Pokemon you could just buy some starter decks for like 20$. To be able to build your own deck, you would want to invest in booster packs, which if you want a good amount of options , for an extremely casual deck builder who already has a small collection, might be 30-60$. per set. For competitive though, 1 deck can cost you 250-300$. So in general, hearthstone(the card game part of it) is cheaper, but the counterargument is that you don’t get any kind of physical object in Hearthstone, and blizzard could shut the game down whenever they want, which is a valid point.
So in summary, I believe Hearthstone is a lot cheaper, but doesn’t give you anything physical.
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I’ve played a few and they can vary, some are much cheaper than other but you’re looking at around $80 - $120 to build a competitive deck from scratch for most TCGs, the difference being that with TCGs you own the cards, you can buy the exact ones you want, physically, they’re yours, they can limit and errata cards but they try their best not to as people don’t like spending money building a deck they can’t use but even if they do that you can still use the card as is in non-competitive settings.
Hearthstone forces nerfs and buffs onto everyone at once and will barely compensate you with this constant up and down but costs just as much if not more. You don’t physically have cards with you and you can’t outright buy cards, you have to open packs and pray or fail enough you can destroy your collection to craft the cards. Hearthstone’s model by default encourages you to not value the cards you own.
The fact hearthstone costs about the same if not more as a physical TCG despite all this leaves a bad taste in my mouth which is why I’m a strict f2p player.
Objectively speaking it is cheaper than any paper card game, cheaper that other Giants of the industry even in the digital enviroment too.
But you can find better prices in card games like LOR or shadowverse that aren’t as sucessful but are far from dead.
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Does Magic often create new game modes within their non-physical networks that have a price tag over 20$?
I haven’t played MtG:Arena but I’m assuming they have a few game modes.
Couldn’t tell you, I only play the physical game. I wouldn’t even call Battlegrounds and Mercenaries different gamemodes, I would flat out call them separate games using the same app.
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THIS ISN’T A TRADING CARD GAME. THIS IS A VIDEO GAME, LABELED A TRADING CARD GAME, SO YOU THINK IT IS OK TO SPEND TOO MUCH MONEY ON A VIDEO GAME.
/tenchar
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A lot of factors to put in rather than just the $ amount. Like with MTG you are actually going out with friends or going to local shops to play. You can then in turn trade/sell them.
But HS you are just buying flashy lights and to sit in a room clicking a mouse.
MTGA sometimes does things similar to Tavern Brawl.
They have 3 regular modes. Standard/Historic Constructed, Brawl Constructed, and Draft.
Brawl is a modified rules, slower format.