There is no objective way to measure whether something in a game is fun or not. But in the context of competitive online gaming, where empowerment for one player sometimes translates into abject misery for another, itâs much more common to encounter a mechanic so demoralizing, so soul-crushingly boring, that you simply know in your heart that it is bad and should be done away with. Right now, in Hearthstone, that mechanic is Taunt.
As we speak, hordes of fellow Hearthstone fans are probably looking to pin me to a wall with the nearest sharp object after that sentence, so I need to address this up front: There is nothing wrong with Hearthstoneâs Taunt mechanic per se. Your character only has a certain amount of HP, of course, so having Taunt minions that will redirect and absorb damage from enemy minions is a necessary part of Hearthstoneâs design.
But are you seeing this shit?
Imagine if, in chess, there existed a piece called the Voidpawn that, when captured, would spawn three regular pawns behind it. Then, when you captured those pawns, another Voidpawn would rise up in its place, rendering it a Sisyphean task just to put the enemy in check.
Friends, that card exists in Hearthstone. Itâs called Voidlord, and itâs a 9-mana 3-attack 9-health minion with Taunt that spawns three more 1/3 Voidwalkers with Taunt when it dies. If you want to kill your opponent (which is literally the object of the game), not only do you have to get through this thick-ass purple dude, you have to kill its three demonic offspring on top of that.
Okay, but itâs 9 mana, you say. Itâs totally fair because your opponent has to give up an entire turn to play this thing. Well if youâve played Hearthstone in the last few months, you already know thatâs not actually how this card usually works. Using cards like Possessed Lackey and Skull of the Manâari, Warlocks are often able to summon the bastard as early as turn 5, then make copies of the damn thing using cards like Carnivorous Cube, Faceless Manipulator, and Prince Taldaram. Then once turn 10 rolls around, they resurrect it using the Death Knight card Bloodreaver Gulâdan.
I donât want to talk about whether this is fair or not. Iâm not part of the Blizzard balance team, and hordes of frustrated players have already complained that the ability to cheat out Voidlords early in the game is an inherently unfair mechanic. I donât want to talk about the fact that Taunt Druid, a new deck archetype that uses a card called Hadronox to revive walls of Taunt minions ad infinitum, has taken all the wrong lessons from Voidlord-based Warlocks to drag this perverted, gangrenous play style even further into the mainstream.
I donât want to talk about any of that.
Instead, I want to talk about how awful it feels to watch a wall of Taunt minions rise up from nowhere to shit all over your game plan. I want to talk about how, when youâre playing an aggressive deck with few board-clearing cards and the opponent slaps down a turn 6 Voidlord, you mouse over the Settings icon as an immediate instinct to concede but, being the Hardcore Serious player that you are, you decide to play the game out. And then I want to talk about how, five turns later, you lose miserably anyway.
I like to think Iâm a reasonable person. When I say that playing against Voidlords makes me want to toss my computer out the window, Iâm being facetious. Iâm saying it for dramatic effect.
But when I clash up against a wall of Taunts with all the force of a waterlogged Costco hot dog, I find that even after Iâve taken a second to gather my thoughts like a Real Adult, Iâm still a little miffed, man! Because you know what? I know I can run a Warlock deck. I know I can build a Taunt Druid. I know these cards are beatable if I play the right deck to counter them.
The thing is, when you play a competitive video game online, you enter into an unwritten contract that says youâre gonna lose around half of your games. Itâs just the way things are. A game should take this into account, and for the most part, Hearthstone doesnât make you feel too awful for losing. But there comes a point in most Taunty Voidlord-centric matchups where you can see exactly whatâs going to happenâthe entirety of your deck dying to a total of like 5 Warlock cardsâand all you can do is just sit there and try to smile through the pain until youâre dead.
Last time this happened to me, I came to the realization that I hadnât been listening to the âturn up 2018â playlist I usually play in the background to keep the mojo flowing and the mood light, which is especially significant when you consider that the playlist starts with Rae Sremmurdâs irresistibly sleek club banger âPowerglide.â Still, being too proud to concede, I opened up Spotify to get a mood going. I looked over at the three Voidlords facing me down in my Hearthstone window and for perhaps the first time in my life, I realized I wasnât feeling âPowerglide.â
I pulled up my âGoing to sleepâ playlist because I felt like listening to a song called âPristineâ by Snail Mail, which has in the past helped me through difficult times. And this, I think, sums up my biggest beef with the state of Taunt in Hearthstone: No game should ever put me in a mood where Iâm still capable of vibing out to Pristine by Snail Mail.
