I am sure most people know this bit i am gonna say it anyways, there is probably only 1 out of every 10 games where ya really need that tech card and the rest of the time it is making your deck worse.
What i would love is for the game to go away from design of making people want to play a tech card like silence for egg or weapon tech for mage quest or pyromancer(rogue - fan of knives) to break a board of divine shields.
Maybe get rid of these wombo i win turns
Want to see less tech cards? Only way for that to happen is to remove all the crazy aggro, tempo, and combo. Of course removing tech also guts control
Not possible.
All that stuff exist as way to punish people that Go Overboard with deckbuilding and incentivize the construction of healthy decks by demmanding redundancy in deckbuilding.
Not good deck i or you think that are healthy but healthier in a more objective manner like not depend on a single interaction to Win the game for example.
In fact those techs are incredible overspecialized doing the worst of both worlds.
They make both people feel overpunished when they work AND drop the winrate of who use drastically.
Probably on design by someone who feel the same as you but failed drastically exactly because this is the wrong to see things.
As someone who play hearthstone. I want a taste of the opposite.
Cards that work against a bigger Variety of strategies but not punish then with a instant game loss but with a inconvenience that Will for certain hurt and maybe Win some games.
Like discovering a card in your opponent hand and shuffling back into his deck on a neutral card that isn’t overcosted on purpose.
I actually think tech cards at this point have become more of instant win cards or stay in the game cards, which is very problematic.
For example, a lot of decks have zero chance versus egg warrior without running librarian. If they draw librarian on curve their win rate goes from low 20s to high 50s or even 60s. Probably 40 percent jump in win rate in a matchup. Obviously many people will run librarian then to basically get nearly a free win that was always a loss, even if it means in 80 percent of games they will just be trading it.
This is a problem when the rock paper scissors balance design permeates every aspect of your game. Entire strategies circulate around one card (egg in the case above) instead of a robust set of cards. This is when your game gets super unstable. Tech cards offer the appearance of stabilizing some very lopsided matchups but they are not the path if you want a sane playing field. It’s more of masking a signal that your game is in dire straits.
For the same reason, some classes have access to tools that feel awful to play against, such as hex, or shadow word pain (?) the one that kills all minions greater than 5. These cards feel like ultra powerhouse tech cards in a meta where removal is nearly non existent whereas these are premium removal tools left in tact as carry over from previous metas.
Everything about this game and this meta looks to be half baked at best.
Well…
As long you are willing to recognise the problem is with egg decks and not the entire game that has to adapt to make the feelings of the egg deck player valid i can sign on that too.
We are past the point of have to make every damm deck a “valid and acceptable meta contender to exist”.
My problem is drawing them. Rustrot and them like to hang around in the back of my deck consistently
It feels like Blizzard has moved away from tech cards and meaningful counterplay in Hearthstone. There are very few ways now to respond to certain strategies, and when counters do exist, they’re extremely limited.
At the same time, the game is leaning more into big “firework” plays and explosive turns. That might be exciting, but without proper counters, it makes matches feel one-sided and harder to interact with.
In a CCG, you need a balance between strong plays and ways to answer them. Right now, it feels like the answers just aren’t there, and that’s a big reason why balance feels off.
And rustrot is probably why more weapons are getting DR effects
It will be a sad sad day if bat mask + egg of khelos ever becomes viable, if you thought the boar combo was bad..
What I’m saying is we should not be relying on tech cards as a crutch that masks a deep balance problem in the game.
Except that the problem is present not in game balancing but in deck structure and those are not the same.
When you allow players to build their decks around a single card It Will always happen. PerĂod.
No discussion. No “i think It should not happen”. No feelings allowed.
Because this is the most Basic level of logic.
One is not allowed to enjoy the game the same as the rest of the playerbase If they do this.
Not because i think It should not but because It is LITERALLY Impossible.
It is play stupid games and get stupid prizes in card game version.
People saying the tech cards are a issue are objectively wrong.
The only way to Deal with this is to nerf until It is no longer a deck so no one has to tech against it.
Decks using a single card as backbone should not exist in hearthstone. They make everyone experience worse including who plays.
No that’s called balance. You invented this term deck structure.
The key problem, and this is where I agree, is all the importance or win capability of the deck is all riding on one card.
The closest thing to egg that existed in hearthstone when it was relatively balanced, that had one card that was built around was cthun. That card entire decks were built around but that card got very special treatment.
There was removal of that card, but there was ways deliberately put in by the devs to bring that card back into play.
With egg it’s clear they put no thought into balancing it. It’s either unplayable or broken.
No. You Just found something that isn’t internet wannabe game designer buzzword.
There are different ways one player can choice to construct a deck and hearthstone design in part for simplicity ends allowing some that in different card games would either be non existent by design or have devs producing cards specifically to punish people who try and make said person life miserable.
One card decks are one of the later.
Basically that is a deck that is built around every other card in your deck supporting one Very powerfull central one as strategy.
The term deck structure is necessary because it can be done with any archtype. Imagine It as one layer lower than game balance and one of the reasons why a deck can be miserable to both players regardless of being well balanced or not.
They gonna be always miserable to play with and against.
What I’m saying is that structure is not pertinent here.
I gave two examples.
The structure as you call it is the same, both decks are built around one key card with nearly every other card a support card. I think on this we agree.
Egg warrior is terrible design because it’s balance is completely off, it either leads to a non competitive deck or non games. There is typically little counter play or the deck archetype is irrelevant.
Cthun meta was much better design. The entire Meta war designed to be built around one key card and imo and many players it was actually a lot of fun. There was tons of counterplay and fun to be had.
Same deck structure, different game balance.
The issue with most Tech cards is that they usually just make your deck worse overall even if you go against the deck you teched against. It is usually better just to go deeper in to doing your decks one thing so you get it done faster then it is to tech to slow your opponent from doing their decks thing. Hearthstone if very much a tempo driven game and will always be that way because of the game structure of only being able to act on your own turn apart from some niche mechanic like secrets. As such when wombo combos go off they are Knockout punches and there is little to no room to do much about it afterwards. So games boil down to a race to see who gets their K.O. first. Yet instead of embracing this people instead want to be invincible tanks to take all the K.O. punches and win by tiring out the opponent like Homer Simpson in that episode where he is a Boxer except your opponents aren’t bums like Homer fought when he win this way your opponents are like the pro Boxer that destroyed Homer.
And were c’thun decks are Fun?
They Just did not annoy people enough those are two different things.
Also at that time blizzard did not nerf things based on every random buzzword the playerbase throw on things.
Blizzard’s approach with Hearthstone seems designed to create a system where the majority of players feel satisfied with their rank and performance. By allowing players to reach milestones like Legend after relatively limited playtime, it can give the impression that they are highly skilled, even if the climb is heavily influenced by factors beyond pure decision-making.
A major concern is how much of the game is driven by randomness. Outcomes are often determined by variables such as card draw, Discover effects, turn order, and matchup counters. Decks built around multiple Discover mechanics or random generation further amplify this unpredictability, making many games feel decided by chance rather than strategy.
Because of this, it can start to feel like results are not entirely in the player’s control. There’s also a perception among some players that certain cards appear more frequently than others at key moments, which adds to the idea that outcomes may be subtly influenced behind the scenes.
Taken together, these elements can make it seem like skill plays a smaller role than expected, with controlled randomness becoming the dominant factor in determining who wins and who loss.
The Egg funny enough started off AS A TECH CARD. It was to punish the decks that kept sweeping the board and throwing around efficient random damage removal. They even included early board tempo to put it into hand and play on curve. Where they went wrong is they added Taunt to the summon. That allowed it to become a stabilizing tool and with Umbra and other copy effects a deck was born. It’s was also a lottery winner after so much removal being taken out made it that your opponents have to either play bad cards or be one of the select few that can safely ignore it.
Would any aggressive deck even pay it any mind if they knew it didn’t have taunt? No and that’s why it was bad against those decks until they slapped taunt on it. Now the card is being used as a deck type when the original intent was for it to never be one.
Revert the taunt buff and the card is a tech card again or random 3 drop you can get offered that isn’t very good. The other option is remove the tutor card but that’s not going to happen.
WE WANT IRONBEAK OWL
come on everybody, heads up for one and the only card we’ll ever need
Except maybe MC tech and a few others
But that would force players to think before executing their winning combo
And thinking is bad for engagement metrics
IMO, the problem with tech cards is the design of the tech cards themselves. They are usually set up to do just 1 thing. Destroy weapon only. Silence a minion. Destroy a location.
It’s really a non-creative way to provide disruption.
In reality, tech cards should be more about setting up traps/disruption before the enemy has a chance to do said thing.
A prime example of a perfect tech card (imo) is this card:
I don’t know why they just stopped being creative like this.
This was also a great card with this concept but they just missed the mark on it
Instead, they just print (destroy weapon, location) stuff.
They could make the game more exciting and more thoughtful with cards like these, but they choose not to.
The Warhammer 40k card game took the base of HS and explored it deeply, adding new mechanics like ranged and meele minions and the latter cannot attack flying units that in my opinion improve and complement it, such as the Genestealer cult units that can put minions in stealth, you don’t know which minion is whether a 1/1, a 10/10 or a trap because the image is blurred, and it doesn’t reveal itself until you attack, in addition, each faction has abilities that you can unlock that are the equivalent of the coin or go second, such as: " your next vehicle costs 2 less", leave one unit stunned for 1 turn etc., which its interesting because shows how can you approach the game from other perspectives.