The Queue: Look, up there, in the sky! It’s Deathwing!

Yes, I know WoW has a new expansion and everyone is excited about it. Xal’atath is great, yadda yadda. Did you know that the Cataclysm expansion has just been released as well?! (For Hearthstone.)

This is The Queue, our daily Q&A column where we play other Blizzard games too! (But we also play a lot of WoW, and we are super excited about it as well, so you’ll get that too, of course.)

Let’s open with a Hearthstone question.

I don’t think it is, no — which is actually pretty common. For some reason the shiny new mechanic often fizzles right after release, for a multitude of reasons.

One is that as the meta is still settling, playing aggro is often very lucrative since there’s lots of people playing suboptimal decks that haven’t been properly fine-tuned yet. Mechanics like Herald require time, investment, longer games. So it takes some time for people to shift to more control-oriented approaches to deal with all the aggro, change the meta, and let new archetypes arise.

Another is that people already know the older, tried-and-true decks from previous expansions, and the new expansion can often make those decks stronger in unexpected ways. The greatest example is what we’re seeing right now with Imbue Druid — a deck I was playing before it was cool. Now it’s suddenly the hottest thing and everyone is playing it, because it’s become one of the top tier decks in the game — despite only ONE card being added to it, Felwood Treant, while at the same time, it actually LOST some of its strongest cards, like Sing-Along Buddy. It’s really weird! Maybe it’s just the fact that it’s a really well-optimized deck in an environment where people are still figuring things out.

So I agree that Herald feels underwhelming at the moment — I gave Onyxia DK a try and it sucked — but I’d wait just a little longer. Chances are the Hearthstone team won’t like seeing the cool new expansion feature get ignored by everyone, and will buff it.

As for what I’m playing, well, I’ve already been playing Imbue Druid for the past several months, it’s like second nature to me. So there’s no way I’ll ignore the chance to continue playing it now that it’s destroying everyone.

There’s a JRPG called Tokyo Mirage Sessions that is extremely silly, but actually features one of my favorite combat systems on any turn-based game I’ve ever played.

That game is a crossover between the Nintendo/Intelligent Systems franchise Fire Emblem and the SEGA/Atlus franchise Shin Megami Tensei (the mother franchise that spawned Persona), but while the game mechanics are very much Atlus/SMT, the story has little to do with either game. It takes place in modern Tokyo but rather than fighting invading demons or preparing to survive the apocalypse, you’ve got a lighthearted story featuring idols, concerts, a talent agency. The “Fire Emblem” part of it is mostly just “what if instead of summoning angels and demons, we summoned avatars inspired by Fire Emblem characters?” plus some very basic references to the lore.

Still, it’s a super fun game. As long as you don’t take it super seriously — which you shouldn’t, it’s just a videogame — you can actually have a great time exploring well-designed dungeons and taking part on battles where you can get your entire party to jump in and add their own “instrument” to a long “jam session” in a way that feels pretty fun.

1) I got Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night — which I’ve already beaten years ago (loved it) because it was 75% as part of a bundle with Child of Light, which I already owned (as you probably know, when that happens on Steam you just get the bundle discount, which means you’re purchasing just the one individual game for less than whatever discount the individual game has).

Why did I get a game I’ve already beaten? So I can play it again on the Steam Deck. It’s the perfect Steam Deck game. Plus, there are a bunch of extras (like playing as three secret characters) that I’ve never done before. For 75% off, that seems pretty reasonable to me.

2) I perused the sale and nothing jumped out. So no.

I hope they get a mention, just to turn them from “side characters with zero story or personality” into “a couple characters that have a little bit of meat and add a tinge of color to the world.

Maybe one of them will end up dating Salandria (I think they should all be around the same age range?) and trigger the end of the world! That would be fun.

I haven’t tried them all yet, but I really like Collegiate Calamity because it’s so short and so incredibly convenient to run. I can almost guarantee that whenever it’s bountiful, it’s the first one I’m running.

This has been The Queue. There’s a lot to do when it comes to Blizzard games right now — I didn’t even mention Diablo or Overwatch! — so I hope you have a great weekend of gaming, or whatever else you want to spend your time with.