So sometime in Phase 2 (I assume around the time of expansion 2 of the year of the phoenix) we will be getting a new game mode that uses your card collection. Which comes to the question "What the **** could it be?"
From what I've heard I feel like it's not going to be "Hearthstone but X" like how Arena is "Hearthstone but the deck drafting is weird" For sure there's probably going to be some constants like having a board and a hand, but from what we've seen from battlegrounds mana may not be there and it's rather possible that the mana pool could act very differently. Heck maybe our heroes don't even have health and the win condition isn't "Smack your enemy in the face enough that they stop moving".
Some other considerations would be what cards are available. I'm not just talking about what expansions are allowed although that is important in itself whether it's a standard mode, wild mode, or a mode that shifts expansions in and out like Arena. I'm talking about whether or not minions, spells, weapons, and/or hero cards are allowed. "Uses your collection" doesn't mean it'll use the entire collection, I could easily imagine a few game modes where Weapons or Spells could be tricky to implement... or a game mode where you only use spells.
Finally one thing I feel that would be an objective would be "Make an environment where cards that aren't played very often have another shot." It's kind of like how we say "It's good for the Arena" where we see a card that is generically strong, but with very low synergy strength. Like if the cost/mana system were different would some of these cards be better?
Now with some concerns done I'll do a few examples of gamemodes I can think of.
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2v2 hearthstone:
I remember some people talking about 2v2 hearthstone and I figured I'd just bring up what I thought of it. Fundamentally flawed for what Blizzard probably wants from a new game mode. All of hearthstone's modes are essentially JUST you against someone, everyone, or an A.I. Sure you can play against a friend or queue with a friend in battlegrounds but Hearthstone wasn't really made with friends being a very large part of the game. Sure friends can help, build community, and help point out some things but they aren't necessary and never really were. Then comes 2v2 hearthstone which has two main possibilities. You can queue with friends which instantly makes it so if you want to play the mode competitively you HAVE to play with someone else with a meta deck with synergy, or you can only randomly queue in which case the game is determined even less by your own skill and what deck you made, but how the deck you and your ally has synergizing with one another. Meaning it would be a queue with friends game mode which would inherently make it very niche by design. Plus it's just "Hearthstone but with 2 times the players."
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Deckbuilding:
So we kinda sorta have a deckbuilding mode with things like Dungeon Run, Monster Hunt, etc. Although that's just deckbuilding in "Slay the Spire" format and the game itself is played more or less the same. This would probably be more similar to the tavern brawl where you are given a deck with a bunch of coins, chickens, and spare parts and slowly build a deck from discovered cards.
The basics of a standard deckbuilder is "Both players start with a "bad" deck", "Both players obtain cards to make their deck better", and usually "cards in player's hands don't have a cost" although the last one can have modifiers like you can only play one card of a specific type in a turn or something.
The bad deck each player starts with could be a starter deck that comes pre-built into a class, a generic bad deck, or a "bad deck" you build. In the last example there could be restrictions like "Only X or less mana cards allowed" or maybe it's just the cards you can obtain are rather overpowered by regular hearthstone standards.
I'd imagine both players obtaining cards would work by going to a "Bob's Tavern" sort of deal. The turn order would go (Player gets a few seconds to buy stuff from Bob)->(Turn Starts)->(Draw Card)->(Play Turn)->(End Turn)->(End of Turn effects happen)->(Next player starts buying stuff from Bob). What would we be buying cards with? Probably gold which could either refresh every turn or we could have some way of generating gold.
"Cards in player's hands don't have a cost" in my mind could potentially go hand in hand with gold generation. The idea being for minions when the minion dies the enemy player gains the minion's cost worth of gold. For weapons when the weapon breaks the other player gains the cost worth of gold, and for spells the instant you cast the spell the opponent gets the cost of the spell worth of gold. It could even lead the goal of the game to buying a "Win the game" card from Bob and then either immediately winning or having to draw the card first.
What I have said here are just some potential systems for what a potential deckbuilder mode could look like, and if one actually existed these are probably not going to be the exact system used. However I think there could be room for a deckbuilding game mode in hearthstone.
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Poker:
No idea how well an actual Poker mode would go down, but here is one interpretation I've got.
Both players make decks that are probably like 5-15 cards big depending on how much variation Blizzard would want. Both decks get mixed up and then both players are dealt 5 cards from the same deck. Both players ante up 1 coin, and then after getting their cards have to bet 0-all of the coins they have and the other player has to see the bet or raise. Then the players are allowed to mulligan the cards in their hand to the discard simultaneously. Both players would be able to see what was mulliganed and then a second round of betting occurs.
After all betting has occurred both players play their cards and at the end of a timer or something the game is determined via a battlegrounds auto-battler. The winner takes all the coins and then the next match takes place with the cards used only ever being shuffled back into the deck if the deck has ran out of cards.
And that was my interpretation of 5-card draw in hearthstone. Where the trick is to figure out what your opponent put in the deck, and what your opponent probably has in their hand. No idea how you'd do something like Texas Hold'em though
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Mecha'thun! (get rid of your hand):
Essentially a mode where the goal of the game is to get rid of all the cards in your hand. Dealing damage to the enemy's face would make them draw cards based on the amount of damage they've taken. When a card is played, milled, or discarded they get put back into the deck.
My only big issue with the mode probably being so many cards would have to be banned including probably all of the 0 cost cards in the game. Plus all sorts of other tweaks to try to make sure the meta isn't just vomit out 1 cost cards to win the game.
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So these were just a few ideas I've had on this subject. Anyone else have any other ideas for potential game modes they would like in hearthstone?
