

Hearth Stone: How many packs to get a full collection? - LinaLauneBaer
http://www.liquidhearth.com/forum/constructed-strategy/457873-how-many-packs-to-get-a-full-collection

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nicholassmith
I think it's actually impossible to get a full collection, unless you were
playing at a very specific time in the games development (one off cards for
certain events etc). But that looks like some solid work on it, people will
get lucky with certain RNG chances and spend less, and then there's the
grinding up to get the golden variants for the classes.

(It's just 'Hearthstone' by the way.)

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teej
It's possible to craft a regular version of the promo cards (this is noted in
the article) but not golden versions.

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nicholassmith
Yeah, which is why people going for total deck completion need to have been
playing for a while, so they can get those very specific cards. They could
always have another event where they're up for grabs though.

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naturalethic
I'm going to post a gripe here because it's been on my mind. When a player
drops a Naxramus card, I usually concede immediately. A player with those
cards will usually win against one without them anyway. Those cards cost $20
bucks or something to get. But thats not the reason I don't upgrade. The
reason is I don't want to have those cards and be matched up with someone who
doesn't have them. Players with nax cards should be matched with only other
players who have them. Blizzard has built in a disincentive for players like
me to buy their expansion.

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matchu
The same can be said for legendary cards, too: I don't have any of the great
legendaries like Cairne or Sylvanas or Ragnaros, so we could argue that I
shouldn't be matched against those people—but, when I _do_ go up against those
cards, I find that I have about the same win rate as against any other deck.
Probably _slightly_ lower, but not enough for me to really notice.

Some of the Naxx cards are definitely cool, but, like all the other cool
cards, none of them make or break the game. Sure, Sludge Belcher is the best
taunter in the game right now, but it's only slightly better than the Sen'jin
Shieldmasta, which is still a fantastic card and is still absolutely free.

Access to good cards is helpful, but nowhere near as important as strategy and
experience. Heck, go watch some of those free-to-play folks who start fresh
accounts, never pay money, and still rank waaay up. If you refuse to concede
when things look bad, you might be surprised by how well you do.

(Also, the Naxx single-player content is excellent. Even if you choose not the
use the rewards, Naxx itself might still be worth the price.)

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Jabbles
I played a little bit of Hearthstone, but didn't enjoy it. Simulating it,
though, was great fun :) And by "it", I mean the game of collecting the
cards...

My estimate is slightly lower ~350 packs, but I had to guess a lot of numbers.

[http://play.golang.org/p/-y-2Cv4Bvk](http://play.golang.org/p/-y-2Cv4Bvk)

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jere
I'm usually against the "why is this posted on HN" comments, so can someone
just clue me into why they personally find this so interesting? Is it the
effort put into the calculation or the revenue angle?

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sqrt17
Not the OP, but from the numbers you get a view on what playing a "free to
play" game to the end will cost you (600USD).

Which is about as jaw-dropping as what people spend on WoW and other pay-to-
play games to get to the end game.

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chc
Incidentally, I ran the numbers on League of Legends a while back, and it was
pretty close to the numbers in this article as well. I wonder if that's the
magic number for these "not pay-to-win _wink wink_ " type games.

(Even more incidentally, I am pretty sure you can get to WoW's end-game within
a couple of years of playing, so $150–$300 seems like a reasonable estimate of
that game's TCO.)

