I’ve been reporting on life through Hearthstone. Care to read my heartfelt field report on life, told through cards?
Hearthstone as Literature:
Do you like Hearthstone? It offers extremely high-level strategy and tactics that can be enjoyed in relatively short sessions. Since you’re reading this article, you might be a Hearthstone fan. Or maybe not. Either way, thank you for being somewhere in the world.
In Hearthstone, Aggro beats Combo, Combo beats Control, and Control beats Aggro. This rock-paper-scissors relationship is fundamental.
This resembles life.
Many men approach passion with an Aggro mentality.
Women, on the other hand, are more like Combo, requiring multiple elements: cleanliness, intelligence with humor, security—essentially a complex “context” that’s harder to understand.
This means communication can easily be misaligned by design, so discussing how to handle this with your partner can deepen your relationship of trust.
It’s amazing how this game’s balance can explain literature’s eternal themes.
These archetypes are metaphors, not absolutes. Many men build intricate combos, and many women rush the face.
Let’s Compare Nations:
Singapore has the strength of a Midrange Paladin that doesn’t make mistakes.
America is the type that wins with 1 HP remaining and seizes game initiative through innovation. Like the legend of a Berserker, it’s incredibly powerful. Plus, it has the world’s top companies and research institutions.
China, with its different political system, provides a solid Control style that secures the public sphere.
With its large population creating a hyper-competitive society, it’s also Aggro. As a result, Combo effects happen constantly by probability, making it very strong.
What decks do you think the EU, India, Australia, Rwanda, and Brazil are? There’s no correct answer. It’s fun to hear each person’s analysis. Please leave a comment.
What About Japan?:
- Japan has human resources educated in the baby boomer generation
- Korean War special procurement boom
- Bulwark against the Cold War
- Lifetime employment, with wives supporting like secretaries as full-time homemakers
→ Enabling stable long working hours
Politicians and bureaucrats failed to understand how to operate neoliberalism with these human and welfare resources, destroying public services, which now need rebuilding.
So Japan feels like a deck with only 26 cards, unable to participate properly. This comes before strategy and tactics. Yet GDP remains high because there’s no redistribution.
In this metaphor, the public realm—like mana—is the shared capital we compete with. Hearthstone suggests that “the public realm is capital for competition.”
I encourage you to ask ChatGPT, Claude 3.7 Sonnet, Gemini, Perplexity, or DeepSeek—whatever AI you prefer—for more details.
Do you want an AI version of the “religious wars” like Emacs versus Vi? I wonder how I’d be classified, thinking nano is convenient.
What About the Actual Game?:
- Maintain initiative through tempo
- Secure advantages at lower costs than your opponent
- Using all your mana is ideal, but making this your goal will lead to defeat
- Read your enemy’s actions
- If they want tempo but don’t act, they’re lacking mana or cards (deck with poor card luck response) or they’re preparing to destroy your cards all at once
- Fast Aggro can defeat multiplicative Combos but loses by being depleted by Control
- Control can make Aggro self-destruct but can’t beat the compound violence of Combo
- Each class has characteristics
- Midrange Paladin is a jack of all trades, so advantageous in average situations but can’t win against opponents who know how to specialize. Optimal for beginners to understand Hearthstone
- Demon Hunter is ultra-aggressive, buffing minions and entering the frontlines personally, with minions gaining attack power from its charisma. Games end quickly, making it good for Aggro and for beginners to gain experience through rapid PDCA cycles ← I’m here now
- Ultimately, it’s a game about hitting the hero’s face
- Some people stack 20+ armor
- Whether you have 30 HP or 1, you can win, so let them hit you if you can endure while wearing them down
- Destroy taunts
- Also destroy per-turn buffs
- Many minions control the board
- Strong minions transformed by buffs can deal massive damage, so eliminate them early
- Except for these exceptions, ignore minions and aim for the face
- Some enemies heal. Armor and healing are about HP, so wear them down a lot with costs lower than enemy actions
Other Thoughts:
- Knowing when to give up is important
- If you don’t have a reason to persist and learn, it’s valuable to recognize when you can’t recover and concede
- Crisis management
- Instant kill with three taunt cards at cost 7
- Your main force becomes a frog
- Your main force gets copied
- Don’t cry when these things happen
- Exponential functions
- Sometimes mana can be pseudo-reduced and increased like scripture, so both sides’ resources may differ
I started trying to get better at Hearthstone but realized that understanding just the basic moves is enough to use it as a metaphor, so I’m laughing at the thought that I don’t need to put effort into getting good at the game.
Hearthstone is deep. In life too, there are days when you “get turned into a frog” or have your plans crushed, but let’s enjoy it. Whether we win or lose, we can think this much about it.
To borrow Blaise Pascal’s words, we may be thinking reeds, but we can fight in Hearthstone. Even if we are reeds, we are no longer powerless.