I’ve just done a little update to our site to include “Herc’s Mercs: The Bigger They Come” on  our list of novellas, and I’ve got a separate page for it set up on our series list as well. I also updated the reviews page.

This weekend, I’ve got a lull that will allow me to (finally!) finish the Herc’s Mercs 2 edits, so I think we’ll be submitting that next week. We don’t have anything coming out in May, but we do have a short story coming out from Dreamspinner Press in June! We’re participating in the Daily Dose again this year, and our entry, “Changing the Things You Can”, will be available on June 1.

In other, non-writing related news, I’ve gotten really into playing Blizzard’s new online card game, Hearthstone. I’ve played Blizzard games for well over ten years, starting with the original Warcraft games, and I’ve played World of Warcraft since launch in 2004. I’m also playing Diablo III pretty regularly since the new expansion came out last month. But really, it’s Hearthstone that’s got me sucked in right now.

I’ve never been particularly interested in card games before. I never got into Magic or anything like that, but Hearthstone is proving to be a lot more fun than I expected! I haven’t really built a killer deck yet, but I’ve been having fun with my priest deck lately. I played it some last week because one of the daily quests was to win two games with either a priest or paladin deck.

I ended up in a game against a hunter that was going pretty bad for me. I was down to about five HP while he** was still hovering around 20 (you start with 30). His mistake was starting to toss the “well played” emote*** at me prematurely because he obviously thought he was going to smash my face in, especially when he brought out a Gruul that gets +1 health and +1 attack at the end of every turn.

The problem? I was at ten mana and had a mind control card in my hand (which costs ten mana). I mind controlled his Gruul away from him and whittled his health down to 14. He played a card with “taunt”, which means it acts like a shield; you can’t hit the player until that card is out of the way. At that point, I was still at 5 HP against his 14, and he started “well played”-ing me again because (I assume) he thought I wouldn’t be able to get through the taunt card and get to him before he got to me.

The problem? I had #2 of 2 mind control cards in my hand and the Gruul had gotten its +1/+1 up to where it had 14 attack. So I mind controlled his taunt card over to me and beat him with his own Gruul. (No, I didn’t get to keep it permanently.)

I think the moral of this story is not to be a dick and start “well played”-ing your opponent until you’ve actually won the game. Also, luck of the draw, man. Luck of the draw. That was my most epic win, even beating out the game where my opponent and I got each other down to 1 HP and I only won because they ran out of moves and it was my turn.

** I say “he” because the hunter avatar is a male character from Warcraft; I don’t know the actual gender of the player.

*** You’d think this would be a good thing, but I’ve read on the Blizzard forums where players are actually using the emote to be dicks and mock their opponent before demolishing them.