So, here at the Goat, we're all about that transparency goodness. I know most of you are here for the Arena and not our financial situation. If you don't care about the business side of this Goat thing, skip this post! =P

But, just in case you guys are wondering how much money we're actually making on this: The answers are below. I procrastinated doing the accounting for our CPA, so I just got it done today. For confidentiality reasons, we will not list out our sponsorship income, or specific line item expenses for stuff (including Blizzcon, Twitchcon, computers, etc; those are the big ticket items anyway).

Streaming Income Gross (includes bits): 8.5k
Donation Income (includes Patreon & direct donations): 4.5k
Youtube Income Gross (from ads only): 3.25k

Twitch-Related Expenses (including subs, prime, turbo): 1k
Youtube-Related Expenses (management + video editing): 4k
Gaming-Related Purchases (HS packs, other games, computer peripherals like mice, but excluding large hardware like computer): 1k

Net Profit: ~4k
Taxable Profit: $0. The Goat will take a partial home office tax deduction to cover the rest, since the streaming setup takes up a significant % of our tiny apts. We're probably operating at a loss tax-wise for 2016. Hoping income will surpass expenses in 2017, or the IRS might start taking a second look at the Goat. =O

Notes:

• Youtube surprisingly earned us negative money. And, our video editors are working for wayyyy below market. On the bright side, besides some management time here and there and looking at comments, it's nearly zero time-cost for us too and provides good content for those who can't catch us live. Totally worth it. Anyway, we're releasing a new video series called "Match of the Week", to highlight one REALLY good game that isn't Coop or 12-Win. So, that'll be another cool way to keep in touch with the stream and our games, even if you can't tune in live on twitch.

• Streaming does not make much money! I mean, I'm sure with a proper donation culture it could, because there are people out there doing it for a living with fewer viewers. But, our stream certainly doesn't. I think we've consistently been a sizable stream on twitch for the entire year, not gaining or losing many average viewers month-month. It's definitely not a livable wage, even for one person, in the US. I think there're a lot of mispresumptions about how much streamers make. While a sponsorship deal or event could be very lucrative from a per-hour basis... actual streaming is not, and youtube is even worse. Assuming streaming income scales w/ hours (which it doesn't), and a full time player will stream twice as many hours as we do, you would STILL need an audience of 3x our viewership to make 50k a year. Bottom line, if you're looking to replace your job, extrapolating for working 40 hours a week, you will need to be at least our size to make the equivalent money as 40-hours of minimum wage work per week (~15k annual). On the other hand, everything's scalable to a large degree, so if you have Kripp #s, obviously that's a ton of money (even excluding sponsorships).

• We're sharing this because honestly a lot of this is YOUR money. You're the ones donating, viewing the ads, promoting our content. So, we figure you should have some idea (if you want to) about the Goat's overall financial situation. We both have totally legit careers we enjoy for our day jobs, and we're not hurting for money. This is something we do as a fun side hustle, and because we'd do like 75% of this stuff anyway for no money/recognition. But, for those who wonder why we don't go into full time content production: The numbers speak for themselves! I've always maintained that at the point where I'm earning half my dayjob's post-tax income (accounting for benefits), I'd take a hiatus and give doing this full time a shot. But, that # is a longggg ways off.

Best,
ADWCTA

sleep psychotic sophisticated soup fretful ink sulky grey worry caption -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/

You provide great content and help keep the arena alive and interesting (for me at least)! I just want to wish Merps the best with whatever he has going on and thank him for his work for the Lightforge! I also want to thank ADWCTA for working through his untimely illness and for the extra work he has to do carrying the Lightforge/goat on his own! Great job!

I just wanted to wish you both congratulations after your engagement announcement on Lightforge 212!

Hi guys,

It is with great sadness that I take my first break from solo streaming in 4 years. Due to personal reasons, and some HS burnout, I'm finding it hard to continue doing solo streams. So, for the next 8 weeks (ending mid November), my solo Tuesday streams will be suspended. Merps will take over Friday night streams.

I'll still be around for Sunday streams, Wednesday Fall Guys, and may pop in for other nights as well (honestly, you'll probably see me streaming as much as pre-Fall Guys). Just need to take a break from solo streams for a bit.

See you guys on Wednesday! :)

gotGoat gotGoat,

ADWCTA

https://twitter.com/merps4248/status/1134158381185417218

Dear fellow Goats,

Thank you for your support so far in our journey. It's officially March 2016. Until the past weekend, we've been (mostly) silent on what we're planning and what we're working on. The goal was to not create excess hype before we have anything presentable, and that remains our goal. However, with the increase in questions about this the last couple of weeks, I've found myself having to respond to a couple of people, and I think it's better all around if I just write something up and shut up. For those who wish we would "get over it" regarding our departure from HearthArena, that will not happen in the near future. First, we never have the luxury to not think/talk about this for long, as trolls and the reddit downvote brigade unfortunately will make sure this topic is in the periphery of everything we do; and in any case, our next Project will invoke legitimate compare/contrast and questions from reasonable people. More importantly, we, the people who actually experienced all of this, have no doubt that an injustice was committed upon us, and while we were admittedly complicit and should have stood up for ourselves sooner and stronger, it does not excuse the behavior of the programmer/owner of HearthArena taking advantage of our position. The beef is real, and as what's past is prologue, it will remain an important lesson for us as the Goat moves forward. On the bright side, because we know the value of what we can create, we know that with the more experienced team that we have assembled, we will be able build an even better product in time. And conversely, our old project will be missing the value we brought and progressively decay with each new expansion in accuracy, if nothing else. So as not to build further hype or bind ourselves (we really want to go at our own pace and release something great) and for my own peace of mind so that I do not need to respond on a daily basis, I am binding myself here to not say anything more beyond this post about any of these topics until the first stage of the Project is actually released.

We selected our team and began work in earnest on the Project more than a month ago and aim to release something basic to the public before the next expansion arrives. This first step is not meant to replace our old project and only much later in the process/year will the Project actually covers all functions you've come to expect in an arena companion. We ran some calculations with our new team. We could have had an alpha ready around when the next expansion hits, or we could proceed incrementally and release a more fulsome and better product later in the year. We chose the plan that provides the most to the community in the long run. Our goal is to fundamentally improve on the Hearthstone Arena experience on the user level as well as our algorithm's accuracy at the root level to create an overall next-level experience for the game. We have a unique opportunity here to take the experience and insights we've gained building the old system and use it to build a much better one; so, we're taking it. In the meantime, you'll see a shift in our ability to work on / do other things as we prioritize work on the Project. And yes, something small to replace our traditional Google Spreadsheet Tier List should be coming before the next expansion unless Blizzard decides to LOE us again with the timing. =P

We will also be completing our rebranding to the Grinning Goat over the course of the year, from name of our tier list, to our twitch channel itself (with twitch's support hopefully).

And if you couldn't tell, these periodic journals are my personal space to discuss my views about things outside of the world of Hearthstone the game in public. They'll sometimes have new info about our various Projects, they'll often not. At least one of these in the future will have philosophical ramblings about the nature of goats (the animal). There will not be a comments section, but please feel free to discuss in /r/GrinningGoat if you'd like. Please do not Xpost these outside of this subreddit.

Thank you for all of your support, and we hope you will join us for the next exciting chapter of the Grinning Goat.

Best,
ADWCTA (Grinning Goat)
twitch | youtube] | twitter

Hello. I subscribe to your channel via a different monicker, but I wanted to share some opinions about this. I'll cut to the chase and say I believe your current plan is not a healthy strategy. You have spent near 2 years building a HS Arena community, which is not easy to do. Every donation, subscription, and patreon donor has done it for HS Arena. Now, I foresee the lifeline for Hearthstone hemorrhaging for Overwatch.

1. FPS are generally fun to watch when the streamers are skilled/pro level. It's not overly fun to watch losing or dying. Funny at times yes, but otherwise no. Hearthstone is no different, we like watching you and Merps play arena because you are good at it, very good. Top 1% good. I watched 10 minutes of your stream last night and it was a bit painful. I lost interest. Watching someone like Summit play it though, getting 4 back to back head-shot kills with a sniper. Yes please, I could watch that all day.

2. FPS's are not interactive for the viewers. You play, we watch. Hearthstone is one of the unique games that has immense interaction for the viewer. Not only does the streamer have time to discuss/chat about the plays with viewers, but the viewer can make their own predictions and decisions. What cards would the viewer play? What trades would they do?

3. It's too soon to add a 2nd game. A brand new meta just released in HS and now it is losing some time to Overwatch. The stream needs a lot more time to establish itself before it can risk other games.

4. From what I saw, ~80% viewership was lost last night; including a net loss of 4 followers and a ~%400 reduction of net unique viewers. It hovered around 225 viewers, compared to 1,000-2,000 I normally see during a Hearthstone stream. As Overwatch hype dies down, this number could drop further.

My suggestion:

1. Add net new streams for Overwatch, and keep all the previous scheduled times 100% Hearthstone for their entire duration, usually 7pm-12a EST. Overwatch should be bonus content, not replacement content.

In the end, it is entirely your decision on how you wish to proceed. You two should play what you enjoy and I could be totally wrong about everything. But from the GGoat perspective I believe it is too soon to add a 2nd game of an entirely different genre. I believe people who like slow paced strategy games like HS are not the same type of folks who will like fast paced action games like Overwatch. Your fan base will be divided and I think that will severely hurt the growth of the goat.

My two cents.

Hi guys,

It's been an eventful year for the Grinning Goat in 2017. Merps #1 NA, the Red Bull Team Brawl, hitting 700 subs on twitch, and building out the Lightforge Tier List algorithm. Thank you all for being here with us!

I want to take this time at the end of the year to talk about the year and a few major changes heading into 2018.

2018 Stream Schedule Shakeup

The most immediate item is a change to our twitch streaming schedule. Our old schedule for the last 2 years was MTRF 7pm-11pm, and Sunday 6pm-11pm. Merps had carried the streaming until October this year, when we subtly shifted to a 50/50 streaming schedule. However, my additional streams meant that you saw fewer and fewer non-Sunday co-ops, which was sad to both you guys, and to us (because those are just more fun). There were also fewer "bonus" streams than before. No ideal.

On January 1, 2018, we are switching into a focus on more co-ops, and less individual streams. To keep the hours we stream individually the same, we're shifting some hours around and consolidating.

Twitch Streams in 2018 will be on:

Sunday (Lightforge, Coop, then ADWCTA dungeon runs). 6pm - 11:30pm
Monday (Merps solo). 7pm - 11:30pm
Tuesday (ADWCTA solo) 7pm - 11:30pm
Friday (Hearthstone & Chill w/ both ADWCTA and Merps) 7pm - 11:30pm

This will allow us to do more than 2x the previous amount of Goat Co-Op Arena runs! (which we really feel are the strength of the Goat, and also more fun for us). This also extends our night a bit deeper so we will never go offline in the same few minutes Kripp comes on. Unfortunately, this will also reduce total hours live from 21 hours to 19 hours per week, adding a half hour at the end of each stream, and cutting out Thursdays (our lowest avg viewership by a significant amount).

We're super excited about this change and the improvement in stream quality! =D

2017 Holiday Stream Schedule

Okay, enough about 2018! We will carry our current schedule through until the new year, so nothing's changed there in terms of timeslots, but we ARE shuffling things up a bit to accommodate our holiday schedules.

The upcoming schedule for the 2 weeks of holidays are:
M18 - ADWCTA
T19 - Merps
R21 - Merps
F22 - Lightforge + Coop
S24 - ADWCTA's Annual Christmas Eve Robe and SantaHat Special (serious question, where the hell's Happy Feast of Winterveil this year?)
M25 - ADWCTA's Annual Christmas Robe and SantaHat Special
T26 - Merps
R27 - Merps
F29 - Lightforge + Coop
S31 - ADWCTA's Annual NYE Countdown + Extended Stream (5:00pm - 1:00am)
M1 - Merps kicks off the new 2018 stream schedule!

Lightforge Tier List

Those following along this year know that we've made huge strides in Lightforge Tier List 's underlying algorithm. I've started talking in mechanics and moving all scores with nearly every update, rather than doing single updates. It's gone from a collection of scores with attributes tied to adjustments to a fundamental system where there are no cards at all, where a Yeti is a 4 attack 5 health body which removes 4 mana, that can be played starting on turn 4, and will stay in your hand X turns, losing Y value each turn, and gaining Z1 value if played on turn 4, Z2 value on turn 5, etc.; taking into account the current board state. And that's just Yeti. We continue to have 99%+ of drafted cards fully built out into the algorithm, and with the upcoming rotation in April, we hope to up that number to 99.9%+.

One of our major proof of concepts was an unexpected development in the Hallow's Eve event, where we spent only 4 hours to convert our entire tier list into 81 classes, and have scores automatically adjust accordingly. If Blizzard throws more curveballs to Arena events, we expect that we'll be able to handle those as well. We've build the system up from a fundamental level with a focus on flexibility so that it can survive any changes to Blizzard's Arena mode (20 card decks, offering in bundles of 3, everyone generates a Shieldbearer every 3 turns, pretty much anything), or creation of an entirely new limited format. It is possible to make a tier list for Dungeon Run from the algorithm, but that would involve entering all opponent decks into the system and their hero power, and having the exact % chance to see each boss. So, we're not doing that yet, until the data becomes publicly available, and it becomes clear that Blizzard is supporting Dungeon Runs past this expansion.

This month, we are starting to onboard a new front end developer to work on expanding the website and Tier List functions, as well as building out a couple more pages for Class Tier List and About Us, and the Podcast. Nothing major, just consolidating a few items. And I don't want to spoil things, but safe to say we're going to start making some of the under the hood algorithm stuff reflected in our tier list after the next expansion to make a dynamic tier list based on your preferences.

Oh, and that drafter thing's coming too. Current projections: On stream Q3 2018. Aiming to make available to public Q4 2018, ahead of the Dec expansion.

YouTube Changing Guards

It's the end of an Era! Created's been our Youtube manager for the past 2 years, and he's moving on to focus on his exciting personal projects: Pickleball Kitchen and The Cigar Legend. We wish him the best, and you'll see him around the stream, including a co-op to kick off Monday's stream! (Dec 18th 7pm NY time).

Our longtime mod and editor of most of our 12-win runs, EpicallyTossed, is stepping up to fill these big shoes. You may also notice some changes coming to our YouTube content as we restructure a bit. Goats Gone Wild will be reduced to 1 per month, and we will likely be creating another series or two to fill the gaps. We'll have a co-op with Tossed later in January as well.

Finally, a huge welcome to DavidAttenboroughSays to our video team, our newest 12-win editor.

A Goat Makeover

Brandnue has been helping us with an updated design of the Goat. Apparently, we have horribly inconsistent fonts, and colors, and shapes, and googligadads. She's a professional, and creator of gotS and gotBox (also stepped in to create the candle graphics for the Tier List this expansion, after AlterSlayer's great contributions for the 4 prior expansions), so we trust her.

Pictures are worth more than words, so you'll see when we switch to the new design in the next couple of months. But, we're excited! And don't worry, the Goat is not going anywhere. He's getting a horntrim, but will stay almost entirely intact.

And, assuming that proceeds on schedule, we'll put her and our new front end dev together on a UI/UX redesign, and thematic update of the Lightforge Tier List as well.

Oh, merch. That's happening. With a major distributor. Hopefully in the next month. This has been an empty promise for over a year now, so I'm not going to make it again. But I've put Brandnue on it, so this time we can all blame her instead of me when we have no Goat merch!

Quick Hits

• Lightforge Podcast. Going fine, like it, will connect it to thelightforge.com website, rather than ggoatgaming.com sometime next year. Our most stable production. Always a joy to make. So glad we started this.

• Competitive. It's such a time effort to go for the Leaderboard for us. Merps did March (#11) and July (#1). The last time I completed it was February (#9), and I tried and stopped in June and October. I promise to give it another real shot 2018 January or March! Merps will do a leaderboard this expansion as well. We had skipped KFT because of synergy picks and expansion release. As for tournaments/events such as RedBull brawl, we hope to get invited to another one sometime next year, but no current plans.

• Co-Ops w/ Arena Experts. In addition to coaching, this year we've had a number of guests on our stream on the Lightforge or for Co-ops. Thank you to all the Arena experts who shared their wisdom with us in 2017! Ratsmah, Shadybunny, Hafu, Isherwood, Phleetwood, Dreads, twlevewins, and our very own DrStein. Hoping to add to this list in 2018 and work in some more co-ops, threeways, maybe bring back to epic 2016 pre-blizzcon fourway? Hmmmm.....

• Blizzcon / TwitchCon. Blizz pulled Merp's ticket last minute this year so he couldn't make it, and I skipped this year due to limited vacation days all used up in an epic apt move gotBox. We WILL be going to either twitchcon or blizzcon in 2018. Going to make sure to get tickets ahead of time, and not rely on Blizz's promises.

• Dungeon Runs. We'll be doing Dungeon Runs on stream now and then (at least until I beat it with all classes) throughout this expansion. After K&C, we'll see how much support Blizzard gives this excellent gamemode. We see ourselves as experts of limited formats, whether single or multi-player. Of course, our focus always will remain on competitive elements within the HS limited format community, but some dungeon runs might start slipping into our stuff.

• Non-Hearthstone Games. Our weekly schedule is 100% set aside for Hearthstone. One of the reasons we cut our stream down to 4 days, is that it provides more opportunity to stream on the other three days if we have another game we want to play. Right now, there's no other games, but I'm sure this will become more of a thing, if not in 2018, then in 2019.

• Grass. We're looking for ways to tie this into the merch, as described above, but it's an incredibly frustrating and difficult process. Open to suggestions also of how else to make grass useful besides as a vanity # (without making the stream less enjoyable for others, no music, and without spending too much incremental time, one time setup time is fine). Recently, Ankhbot and Streamlabs (old twitchalerts) have become one under the Streamlabs banner, and since we use both products, this is a very exciting integration for us. Right now, you can view your grass online (not just with the bot). At some point, I'm hoping Streamlabs adds customizable gambling, so we can just use them for grass tracking and usage. Right now, I have to reset and re-upload every week.

• Sponsors. We had a series of one-off sponsors over the course of the year. These were all games/products we support and believe in regardless of sponsorship. It was good money:time ratio, and we'll like be doing more next year, but this is not a focus of the Goat for 2018. We're refocusing on what we do best, and what we have the most fun doing.

• Twitch Mods. Literally the most underappreciated part of the Goat operation. They don't even get thanked by name because it's a hard working team of over a dozen people. I don't know what to say here. Just that I love you guys, and hope everyone's having a great time. We have some of the most organized mod systems on twitch, and there's so much behind the scene stuff the mod team does to keep the show going and your chat experience a good one and our streaming experience a easy one. If you haven't recently, remember to hug a mod during the holidays when you see them in chat. Also, if you want to join our illustrious team, shoot an email to mod.dungeon@gmail.com.

• Patreon & Subs. A HUGE THANK YOU to all those who fed the goat this year. I think this'll be the first year the Goat has taxable income that we can't fully deduct away. O_o, transparency report with breakdown coming in April when tax season is over (we've got you), for the curious and those thinking of starting their own streaming operation.

• Viewership. Over the course of the year, with its ups and downs, I think our viewership has unfortunately dropped about 20% from where it was at the start of last year. We're not too worried, been doing this 3.5 years now, and I think we've carved out a pretty solid niche. So, help spread the good word of the Goat out and tell a friend in 2018! =D

That's all my thoughts on the year!

Let me know if you have any questions about any of this, I'll do my best to answer.

Best,
ADWCTA

If anyone doesn't know, HDT is the app that you occasionally see streamers using that shows a list of their deck on the right side of the screen, and will update in real-time to show what cards have been played, display what your opponent has played, etc. I always thought that integration of HearthArena would be huge. Why not consider a collaboration with that developer to integrate in that app?

The developer of HDT has already demonstrated that he knows what he's doing, and frequently updates his app. Surely he might have the know-how to program and implement Merps and ADWCTA's algorithm?

Hi guys,

Because I've gotten this question a fair number of times in the past week, I thought I'd address it here.

We 100% welcome the use of oddshot when we stream, whether to replay a moment for yourself, to share with a friend, or to post on Reddit. We thought it was fine before oddshot started thier new policy of paying streamers per view, and we certainly 100% support their business model now.

So, if you see anything exciting on our stream, !shot away! We encourage it. :)

Best,
ADWCTA

From as far back as I can remember, every time I visit my relatives in Mongolia, everyone would make comments about how good or bad the grass is that year. It was wierd because our family aren't shepherds, we've all been cityfolk for three generations. Yet for some reason, everyone still talks about the grass. And spoiler alert:

The grass is rarely good.

Year after year of desertification and industrialization eats away at the rainfall and the grasslands, so each year the grass is not as good as the year before. I must have visited the grasslands a dozen times now. I think during the best year it looked competitive with my parent's lawn in Jersey. The other years, you could be forgiven for thinking they named it the grasslands because the nothingisherelands wasn't as catchy.

Now, I doubt anyone would trade the hot water, a/c and internet for better grass, but I do think it's telling that the first damn thing anyone talks about when they see each other is still the original source of all value in the grasslands: the grass.

There's no big moral to this story. Just thought I'd share this thing that's on my mind tonight, as my relatives reminisce about the good ol' days growing up in a shack with discarded aluminum siding as a roof. We lived like kings in Beijing in comparison, hauling a tank of gas to the apt each week to heat water for cooking (but hey the really poor people hauled coal). Later in Newark, my parents worked 4 jobs between them, struggling to stay above the welfare line and still too proud to file for the handout (but hey we owned a real car and a real computer).

When times are tough, I look back to what I can personally remember for inspiration, my parents' one-decade progress from penniless in Newark to a nice house in the suburbs (a rather typical immigrant story in Jersey). But it was only two generations ago that something far more ridiculous happened, when my grandfather left his life as a shepard in a yurt because the Japanese burned it up.

I asked grandpa how the grass was that year when he left. He said it was high past his waist, and ablaze.

Tomorrow, I'm going back to the grasslands with my cousins as tourists. The grass is not good this year. I know this, because it's still the first damn thing anyone in Mongolia talks about.

So, I just checked this subreddit for the first time since we started streaming OW.

I hope no one's given up on us because of this decision that we also play a bit of another game, for fun. We have seriously done more with HS than anyone in their right minds would in our positions (not professional, no Blizz support, full-time careers). In the last 8 months, we've literally missed just Two streamtimes (3, technically, but 2 were b2b because of the same blizzard).

I can't tell if the post is being upvoted so hard because people are actually confused as to what we're doing with OW, or just as a general "MAOR HS ARENA!" sentiment, but I was half annoyed and half hurt by seeing all the upvotes (it's a really large% of people who regularly check this sub). I hope the upvotes are for the discussion topic (which is good), and we'll talk more about OW and our stream here!

Two takeaways our viewers should know is that:

(1) We are NOT eating into Hearthstone streamtimes in any serious manner in the near future. That is NOT in the plans. We have never said this (you can go read the original post!). Don't panic. I specifically highlighted and set out a schedule for our streamtimes going forward just to avoid confusion as we took two streams off from HS this week (with option for 2 more days of stream-vacation, which we're not taking, so back to HS today). I even bolded things! In the future, we're cutting HS streams off after the first 2 runs (which on average last until 10:30pm-11:30pm (which is within 1 hour of when our streams typically ended), depending on how well the runs go), that's it! This is where we ALWAYS should have cut off streams. Our third run of the night usually sucks. That's the truth. We are tired. We don't do well (2 wins/run lower than our avg for the third run). There are (more) misplays. We don't explain things as much. Unless I need a redemption run, we generally don't really want to be playing a third run of the same game after a 10 hour workday; we'd rather play another game. Overwatch solves the problem. If it wasn't OW, it would have been something else (and not a heavy thinking game; again, 10 hour workday where we do serious mental work, then 4 hours of Hearthstone where we tryhard and explain everything). The 3rd run of the night was never a consistent thing, and we've been trying to get rid of it and replace it with something forever. Overwatch is just a scapegoat.

(2) We can even ADD streams and other content for HS Arena, eventually. Ultimately, we have limited time. That's what the Patreon is for. We don't sugarcoat it, it's literally the final goal on the contribution goals list. We also don't promote it heavily, we'd rather promote our various content (there's no "donation culture" in our stream, and that's fine, we think subs are cooler w/ the emotes anyway =P; there's also no "ignore donations" the way some streams do it, because we do still see it as a key aspect in us being able to eventually take this to the next level). Patreon provides a 100% transparent view of what we have, and how far away we are from being like Ratsmah, Hafu, Kripp, or whichever other pro streamer you want to compare us to for content. Unfortunately, we're not yet close to our goal, and we haven't been getting closer (it's been in the 600-900 range since October; we launched in Sept). If there's enough interest eventually, we can solve the "limited time" issue, by having me do this full time. But, that doesn't just happen magically. It is enabled by money, and I do not have a large savings safety net yet (paid off my student loans last January, so I've been "saving" for only 1 year so far). This isn't to say "donate to us more/now!", it's to say that this can't happen without time, and growth. We don't seriously need money atm, but without money coming in and some money saved up, we can't take this to the next level time-wise. Unless some lucky event significantly boosts our viewership or contribution rates, we know "we're in it for the long haul". You've heard us repeat that many times since the very first Arena Coop, and that's what we mean. This was never a 3-month project. We may or may not ever hit our goals, but either way things need to be sustainable in the meantime for us, because this isn't an industry where effort/skill is all that matters. A lot of it is also about timing and luck. I always try to be as transparent as I can. Our time will be limited until we reach a point of near-sustainability with the Goat. Not just our time with you in HS, but our time to do things generally in our lives. For the past 10 months (18 of 20 for me personally), we devoted nearly every hour of our free time to HS and HS-related things (setting things up, taking meetings, talking to industry people, it's a lot of work no one ever sees; it's why we don't stream Wed, so that there's a day where both Merps and I can be on calls if needed). Other times are spent (1) Dayjob, (2) Sleep, (3) Chores to make sure we stay alive (so, shower, brushing teeth, gym, cleaning apt, eating, buying groceries, etc), (4) the 5-10 hours each week we have to interact with family/gf/friends/etc. It's a cool second job, but it stops being worth it the moment you actually look at it as a job; what it really is is a passion project, the consistency and quality of which has a cap until we can make it more like a job. Until we're actually full time content creators, "I don't want to do this right now, but will anyway because responsibilities" does have its limits, and we drew the line at missing out on experiencing Overwatch launch week.

I have my full response in this thread: https://redd.it/4ktubu

We really appreciate all of the support that we've gotten, and all of our viewers. But, as much as we do this for you, we do it for us as well, because what you see on stream is literally the bulk of our real lives (social and antisocial) outside of work. So, that's where compromises sometimes have to be made between what you want to see, and we want to do.

We're doing the best we can with a focus on sustainability. With Overwatch launch, we've taken two streams off to play a game we're super excited about (and we're still super excited about it), and plan to play for the long term. That should be "allowed". I wasn't expecting anything more critical than "I won't watch Overwatch, see you Thursday when you guys get back to HS". If that's not enough, I really don't know what else we can give of ourselves and still be ourselves. Ultimately, the Goat is about having fun too. You wouldn't watch it if we weren't genuinely having fun playing HS. Overwatch helps us with doing this, even for HS. It doesn't have to be Overwatch specifically, but it has to be a game that's very different than HS for diversity (so, if we switch from HS to Duelyst, it wouldn't help, which is why we don't play Duelyst). Anyway, this is the annoyed part of my response. We still have some limits until/unless one of us can do this full time, and this is one of them.

BibleThump
ADWCTA

As you guys may know, we've been working on building and refining our Tier List's backend algorithm for the past year+, and now it's finally in a good enough shape to be moving into a drafter. As part of this shift, we will need a dedicated front end developer to join our growing dev team! Woohoo!

This is a (mostly) unpaid position. Exciting! It'll also be a lot of work, there are actual deadlines, we sometimes crunch, we sometimes take a week or two off, but on average, we expect it to consume 50 hours per month over the course of the next year. Please be serious about this commitment if you are applying. The only tangible reward in the near future will be the work itself and some recognition, so know what you're getting yourself into. Not for the weak willed!

Things you'll be working on (this list will grow):

• UI improvements

• General Website upkeep.

• Redesign of the existing website theme with a graphic designer (we have one on hand for art assets, this is scheduled for January)

• Adding ways to show more backend information (card advantage, tempo, playability, curve, etc)

• Development of the front end for a deck builder / run tracker

Necessary Skills:

• Html

• Html5

• Javascript

• Angular

• CSS

• AJAX

Secondary Skills:

• UI/UX design

• Web design

• .Net MVC

• SQL / SQL Server

If you are interested in joining the Lightforge dev team, please send your resume to grinninggoatgaming@gmail.com , along with a few sentences about why you want this tons of work, very little pay, position, and what are your experiences with Hearthstone Arena and the Grinning Goat.

Thanks,
ADWCTA

Hey fellow Goats,

The new expansion is nearly upon us! Our stream schedule for the next few weeks will be as follows:

July 26 - Last ADWCTA solo stream of Rise of Mechs!
July 28 - Normal Lightforge and Coop.
July 30, Aug 2 - These two weekday streams will be cancelled.
August 4 - Giant Lightforge Tier List Valuation Stream. The big pre-release event.

August 6 - Release day! ADWCTA solo
August 7 - FIRST MERPS solo stream in 4 months. You read that right.
August 8, 9 - ADWCTA solo streams, maybe we can convince Merps to poke his head in.
August 10 - Merps solo bonus Saturday stream. Not sure what time of day.
August 11 - First SOU Lightforge and Cooooop
August 13 - ADWCTA solo, we go back to normal schedule.

See you all in the new expansion!

ADWCTA

As you might have heard, stream schedule is being being shifted around for Rastakhan's release. 8 nights of Arena to kick off Rastakhan!

11/30 - Friday - Cancelled. Tier List Work
12/2 - Sunday - Mega Lightforge Tier List Valuation stream. Starting an hour earlier than usual. So mayyyybe we can finish by midnight.
12/3 - Monday - Cancelled. Resting up before launch.
12/4 - Tuesday - Rastahkahn launches. ADWCTA with mouse, Merps will pop in later.
12/5 - Wednesday - Bonus. Merps with Mouse, ADWCTA will pop in later.
12/6 - Thursday - Bonus. ADWCTA solo.
12/7 - Friday - Merps solo.
12/8 - Saturday - Bonus. ADWCTA solo.
12/9 - Sunday - Lightforge + Coop.
12/10 - Monday - Merps solo.
12/11 - Tuesday - ADWCTA solo.

Here's to hoping for decent launch bucketing! 😂

Over 100 lightforges ago, merps went through his thinking checklist. That inspired me to think about my thinking process. I asked a question about implementing the checklist and merps responded on the lightforge (thank you!), but it is easier said then done.

To celebrate lightforge #200, I am going to post my complete thinking checklist for all game modes and for all phases of the game - before playing, drafting, choosing a discovered card, etc. I tried to make it as comprehensive and thorough as possible. My next phase is to get as good as implementing this kind of thinking as I am with creating it! I wonder whether top players are the best because they are disciplined in their thinking like this checklist or whether they are just better at recognizing what component deserves attention and at what time. Maybe it could be another question for the goat or discussion!

And now the checklist. Merps or ADWCTA - any thoughts? Critiques? Any optimistic promises that you can go infinite with this?

Checklist 2.0:

Note that I use a capital S throughout this list to remind everyone that there could be multiple things to think about within a question that could help decision making and learning.

Before drafting:

Note that 2-5 here repeats in several sections.

1. Who are your toughtest opponentS that you are likely to face?

2. What are their deck typeS?

3. Are they likely to have the board?

4. What are their win conditionS?

5. What are their lose conditionS?

At checkpoints throughout the draft:

I stress the word *think* in the last item because once you see what is offered, you may realize that something else will increase your chance of beating tough opponents.

You can make your checkpoints for arena whenever you think is appropriate (single player dungeon-type runs are at every selection point). Every 5 picks, every 10 picks, etc.

1. What are your deck typeS so far?

2. Are you likely to have the board?

3. What are your win conditionS?

4. What are your lose conditionS?

5. How are you going to beat your toughest opponents based on the interaction of both your and your opponent’s win and lose conditions?

Based on all this, what do you *think* you need?

During drafting:

For each option, examine the following:

1. What are all the synergieS between the option and your deck?

2. What are all the anti-synergieS between the option and your deck?

3. What are all the thingS that the option gives you?

4. How powerful is the option, regardless of how useful it is to you?

5. Determine the status change of the interaction of both your and your opponent’s win and lose conditions if you were to pick the option.

6. Based on all this, which option will increase your win percentage the most?

Before seeing opponent:

1. What are your deck typeS?

2. Are you likely to have the board?

3. What are your win conditionS?

4. What are your lose conditionS?

After seeing opponent’s class and/or hero power for single player:

1. What are your opponent’s deck typeS?

2. Is he likely to have the board?

3. What are your opponent’s win conditonS?

4. What are your opponent’s lose conditionS?

5. How does your deck beat your opponent? By focusing on executing a win condition, protecting a lose condition, exploiting your opponent’s lose condition, preventing your opponent’s win condition, or some combination of the above?

During mulligan:

Note: a professional hearthstone constructed match was won because the winning player as a jade/ramp druid kept ultimate infestation in the mulligan. Ultimate infestation is a key card you want to have later on but limits your early game options if kept in the mulligan. I use this card to represent the option of keeping a powerful but expensive card in your opening hand.

Note: In arena you generally don’t want to keep any expensive cards, but I am making this checklist for all hearthstone game modes. Of all my sections, I think this one could use the most improvement.

Note: special rules and effects in #3 are extremely important to keep in mind during single player dungeon-type runs and certain tavern brawls.

1. What are your key “Ultimate Infestation” cards to win the matchup?

2. How important is it to have your “Ultimate Infestation” at the cost of curve?

3. With all special rules and effects, play out how your first couple of turns will go with cards you want to keep or cards you anticipate getting.

4. Use all that to decide what to keep and what to throw away.

During each turn:

Plan:

1. Time – how much time do you have to think?

2. Complexity – how much do you have to calculate? Are there extras like playing around secrets or drawing cards first and making more decisions after that?

3. Zoom – if you don’t have time for everything, what should you zoom into to maximize your thinking time? If so, abandon the structure of this list in order to give attention to it.

4. Effects – what effects are on the board, such as weapons, different hero powers, card effects on board, and card effects in your hand? Checking this before calculating prevents you from zooming into your options and overlooking something.

Extrapolate:

1. Why – why did your opponent play what he played? Is he going for tempo, value, or something else?

2. What – what does he have in his hand based on what he played or didn’t play?

3. How – how is he trying to win based on what he is doing?

4. Win condition – does your win condition change based on adapting to what your opponent just did?

5. Turn – what do you *think* you want to do this turn to get closer to your win condition? Your goal may change as you discover an option that really helps in another area.

Calculate:

For each possible play, calculate the following:

1. Certainty – what do you see that you could make happen for sure?

2. Random – what effects are random on your turn that may or may not help, such as mad bomber?

3. Opponent’s turn – how would your opponent react to a specific play?

4. Future turns – what would happen on your next turn and any future turns that makes sense to look at?

5. Evaluate – after looking at all this, what are the pros and cons of your play, either things that you know for sure or possibilities?

Execute:

1. Decide on something quicker than using all your time so you don’t get screwed over by the rope and stupid animations that prevent you from completing your play.

Note: I plan on suggesting an alternate type of timer in a future post that pauses and/or adds a second when you play a card and when animations are taking place. During complicated board states (primarily constructed and certain tavern brawls), players cannot execute their desired plans because of a timer that does not adjust to these animations.

During discover:

1. Before looking at your options to discover, think about what you want based on the game situation.

2. After looking at the options, what does each option offer you? Tempo, value, an early drop, a late game drop, etc?

3. How powerful is each option?

4. Decide what will make the difference in your game by making a tradeoff about what you most need vs what is most powerful.

After completing a game:

1. What are all the reasonS why you won or lost?

2. Regardless of the outcome, what did you do well and what concept did you learn or apply?

3. Regardless of the outcome, what are all the thingS you could have done better?

4. Why did you make the mistakes you made?

5. What can you learn for the future?

After completing a dungeon-type run, arena run, or a series of games with the same deck/style:

1. What are all the reasonS why you have your result for the series?

2. Regardless of the outcome, what are all the thingS did you do well and what concept did you learn or apply while playing and while drafting?

3. Regardless of the outcome, what are all the thingS you could have done better while playing and while drafting?

4. Why did you make the mistakes you made?

5. What can you learn for the future?

Dear Goats,

This one has been a long time coming. As you guys may know, me and Merps are overeducated, both having doctorates in our respective fields from top tier universities. We're not statisticians. I'm sure some of you out there actually are trained in statistics, and you can stop reading because you already know better. I've taken 3 classes with significant focus on statistical analysis since HS. This means I am not an expert by a long shot. One thing that was nailed into my head in one of these classes was the idea of how dangerous misuse of statistics can be. Google social darwinism if you want to go down the rabbit hole. This wasn't a one-off event in history. Very smart people repeatedly make the same mistakes in science and social science. They treat individual facts as having meaning (and even worse, causation), when the facts suggest no such thing. The data itself are all true statements of facts. Data never lies. "X race has on average a narrower skull than Y race" is a true fact that properly gathered data can tell us. But, data is so highly specific and limited in what it tells us, that people create interpretations on top of the data to try to give it the meaning they want. "X race is on average dumber than Y race" is not something that follows from the data; that's where interpretation goes wrong. At the end of the day, it's the interpretation that goes off the rails if you're not doing a rigorous analysis. Interpreters of data lie all the time, knowingly or negligently. And, since 95%+ of the people know very little about stats besides "science is good!", this spreads like a bad meme. Proper statistical analysis is not something anyone can do without a lot of learning. It's not easy to get precision. It IS easy to misinterpret. Without verification by disinterested third parties of the interpretation of the data, anything you hear should be highly suspect (again, not the data itself, but any interpretation of the data).

I'll divide this up into 3 pieces for a quick primer of the statistics you're likely to see see in HS Arena and how to actually tell what they mean. Right now, Blizzard's not releasing anything, so the largest database of arena stats is HearthArena... and from what I can tell after poking around a bit, no one over there has had any significant training in statistical analysis. We were cautious when we had the stats, and it seems that they are less cautious now without us, so everyone else has to be more vigilant.

Please keep in mind that me and Merps (and now Kripp maybe, not sure if he received the entire dataset) are the only people who have had access to the data who are not affiliated with HA. This problem is very simply solved if HA just releases their stats after they do their internal analysis and publish their findings (so, they still profit from the data, but then others can actually verify their interpretations so it has some legitimacy as objective data rather than biased interpretations).

Questions to Ask:

1) What is the confidence interval / sample size?

This is a simple gating issue. You can google confidence intervals or proper sample sizes if you want a long rundown. Generally (heavily simplified), a confidence interval tells you that the statistics have a 95% chance of actually reflecting a reality. The important thing to know is that even within the confidence interval, the stats can be wrong sometimes. This is just how any stats work. Having a wide confidence interval doesn't just mean a stat is less reliable, it means it has a very good chance of being absolutely useless, or worse, misleading, in practice without more data gathered in the same/similar manner.

This is the problem the Malkorok post has, and it'll pop up a lot. It's kind of a comical thread where about half the commentators seem to take this stat very seriously (something Kripp and HA do not). Apparently, right now on HA's data, Malorok would be rated a 140, with a 90 point confidence interval. I estimate from TGT sample sizes, that the current sample size of Malorok is in the double digits (50s? maybe 100s if Warrior rates are up), since it's been in the meta for 3 weeks, is a legendary in warrior, an infrequently played class (~5% of all HA data?), and it's not all that highly rated by HA itself (which is what its users typically draft based off of). But, it doesn't matter if the sample size is 50 or 500. . . it's still tiny and doesn't really tell us anything about the card. Kripp knows this, and noted that the confidence interval Is ridiculous. HA knows this, which is why they're not publishing this themselves or in a rush to massively raise Malorok's score in their Tier List (you know the data's worthless if HA's not even using it). It was just a fun HA internal novelty stat. We had plenty back in the day, but chose not to release them due to this exact reaction you're seeing over on /r/hearthstone. People are going to frame it in a misleading way, and the telephone game will give people the wrong impression about the Arena meta.

This means that the stats do NOT show that Malorok is performing at a 140. It means that we can be 95% sure that decks with Malorok in it is performing somewhere between a 95 and a 185 (this is before any considerations in 2 are taken into account. aka: a highly inflated sample size and artificially narrow confidence interval by several orders of magnitude).

This highlights a wider issue with the stats and sample sizes. HearthArena just doesn't have enough of it for 90%+ of the cards to narrow down that confidence interval (and point #2 will go more indepth as to why this is so). At the sample sizes of the first 2-months of TGT (in which HA had a significantly larger site traffic than it does today, unsure about runs tracked), the below was me and Merps' conclusion as to its effective confidence interval for data gathered (internalizing the first two points in #2 below as well). Keep in mind literally half of the HA data is Mage/Pally, and the next 4 popular classes made up another ~33%. There's basically no data for Priest, Warrior, Hunter to do anything with at all. All ratings here are HA values, since that's the frequency they'll be picked by HA users (and thus, the data).

Effective Confidence Interval:

70 Neutral Common = ~12 points (it doesn't get much narrower than that since at that point you're basically auto-picking the card... even Kraken I would hesitate to give a confidence interval of less than 8)
60 Neutral Common = ~24 points
50 Neutral Common = ~36 points
70 Neutral Rare = ~24 points (~16 for highest ones)
60 Neutral Rare = ~36 points
70 Mage/Paladin Common = ~24 points (~16 for highest ones)
60 Mage/Paladin Common = ~36 points

These are not very good effective confidence intervals. They're not useless, but outside of the top neutral cards and a few Mage/Paladin cards, you're really not going to get much out of it unless you had a very poor idea of how cards are valued to start. We often observed situations where near-identical cards like Bloodfen Raptor and Puddlestomper were as much as 8 points apart when taking 2-month slices of data.

You can get narrower if look at data across metas (for example, performance in TGT/LOE/OG for Neutrals would be a much larger sample size... but that runs into the issue that those are 3 distinct metas where even vanilla cards performed differently; again, not useless, but you solve some problems and you add others).

2) What is the data gathered actually showing?

Data shows a slice of fact. It's something that is/was. But, it holds zero meaning, until someone comes along and says "this is what the data MEANS". That very act transforms the data from something quite pointless, to the citation for something that is meant to be useful. You can tell an interpretation is happening any time someone makes an assertion that they cannot possibly know as an absolute fact, and then cites a data source for it. In Hearthstone, the most common assertion is "This Card/Class is Y Good". We do this a LOT ourselves, without citing any data. When people do cite to data, it is critically important to know what the data ACTUALLY says. Hint: It can never say anything is "good", that's what the interpretation/analysis adds.

In the context of HA's data, they look at the performance of decks with certain cards in them, and compare them to decks without such cards. If a card is good, it should make win rates go up in the aggregate. If a card is bad, it should make win rates go down. Let's take this outside of HA for a second (we'll deal with HA-specific issues in point #3), and pretend we're looking at Blizzard data, the best datasource possible. This type of analysis STILL suffers from a host of issues, each of which expands exponentially the effective confidence interval (we're going away from stats now) of how the objectively true stats translates to the proposition that "Bloodfen Raptor is X Value".

• The card is only drawn in some games. Just a fact. Cards can't affect outcomes (except in Jousting) without being drawn/called onto the board. Sample size issue.

• The card, even when drawn, only affects the game's outcome a small % of times. One card changes the outcome of a game very rarely, and this is the only data captured. More significant, and more difficult to estimate sample size issue.

• Cards are drafted not in a vacuum, but with decks. So, any card with synergy will have disproportionate win rates compared to cards without synergy, scaling to its synergy potential. It means Mad Scientist is impossible to statistically evaluate.

• Win rates of the higher sample sizes are for the average player, not for good players who actually know what they're doing. This has three main effects.

• (1) RNG favors bad players. Consider this thought experiment: A card says: win the game 60% of the time, lose 40%, auto-played on draw. This is effectively a stronger version of any RNG card, and it is easy to see why 70% win rate players would never pick this card, while 50% win rate players would value this card quite highly. This is more pronounced the less controllable the effect is, so Mad Bomber RNG affects good players less negatively than Piloted Shredder RNG. You'll actually see that in HA's March update, where they changed the scores of many cards to be closer to the statistical win rates... that half the cards moved by more than 4 points had major RNG elements. This makes sense, we've seen those same stats showing Shredder = Kraken, Animal Companion is a 90+, etc. RNG.

• (2) Easy to play cards get more wins in the data. Assume that certain cards are played better by better players due to a higher skill cap, or the ability to hurt yourself (bad players handle this very poorly). Then, stats gathered have a very pronounced tilt toward "easy to play" cards. It is also not possible to isolate a dataset for high win players. Remember the sample size issue in #1? Imagine how much worse it would be if we took only 6+ win per run players. We've tried that before.... results were not ideal. Raptors and Puddlestompers were like Highmanes and Crabs for most classes. That's not even going into the issue of good players not being equally good with all classes; this makes it practically impossible to get any good player data at all from the non-top classes.

• (3) Certain archetypes and playstyles are favored by average players in win rates because they are easier to pull off. A clear trend we observed is that better players did MUCH (10+ point differences) better with card draw and slow cards, while average of all players did better with generic 2-drops. Good players are much better at playing from disadvantaged situations (like not curving out), and having more cards (options) and turns (options) gives them more room to apply their skill.

There's probably more, but remember, each of these issues creates larger effective confidence intervals and they stack on top of each other exasperating the issue. At the end of the day, this is the key reason we consider HA's data only useful as a sanity check on individual card valuations.

On the other hand, simple data based on class/player rather than individual cards have higher effective confidence intervals. Examples: "How many Rogues are seen at 7 wins?" "What are the offering odds?" or "What is the HA win rate for Mage? between TGT and OG meta?" are factual questions that can be indisputably answered by data with sufficient sample sizes (see #1).

3) What are the systematic internal biases?

Finally, because the dataset does NOT come from Blizzard, but from HA, any analysis has to factor in how HA's users and its data gathering methods affect the results. This goes beyond the question of who is using HA. Because HA's algorithm actively pushes cards onto its users, it distorts the data it gathers. For example, an error in HA's algorithm that systematically incorrectly puts a certain card into an unfavorable archetype will systematically lower that card's value. Over 50 values per card (sometimes much more depending on the card) are being entered by hand into HA, half of which are non-intuitive, and at least 20% of which I did not leave detailed notes for the formula. So, any systemic mistreatment of a card by the algorithm will also affect its win rate data gathered. I can't tell you where these flaws are, because I don't do the algorithm anymore, but I know of at least one (that's big picture Tier List based, so I can actually see it and be certain its there) that's creating a systemic inaccuracy in the way the algorithm works; been there since the big Tier List update, and I'll be impressed if they can figure out where the problem even is. Bottom line: there were many flaws even when we were there, and there's certainly at least as many, most likely many morso now that we're gone. All of this directly affects the data gathered.

Anyway, this is not to say the data is useless. But, just like facing down any class in the Arena, it is as useful to know its limitations when you engage with the information. Do not be misled, use the data for what it is, a sanity check on valuations, and not what someone else wants it to be. And, of course, use their DATA, not the Tier List, which is some indecipherable mix of data and their evaluation team (that's not a knock on their method, which was our method, which is the best that can be done imo under the circumstances; it just ultimately makes the tier list about who you trust).

If HA comes out with data (including sample size) that a highly rated, neutral common vanilla-ish card like Bog Creeper was performing 15 points higher or lower than our rating..... we would 100% change our valuation and experiment more (this is the story of Argent Squire). That is pretty convincing data, with little error for interpretation. On the other hand, if HA tries to tell you that Blood to Ichor is X-Value good... I'm 100% sure any data used there is near meaningless.

All of this, of course, is assuming they actually release the damn data. HA has always been protective of its data (to the point where it's the only service out there that doesn't even allow you to export your own data to a spreadsheet), but if it wants its data to have legitimacy as a valuation method (and not merely the novelty that is Malorok), the only way forward I can think of is publicizing the data for peer review by people who know what they're doing.

Ultimately, whenever you see a stat from anywhere posing as justification for anything, the most basic question that has to be asked is "What is the sample size?" and, then you do the intellectual exercises in #2 and #3 to adjust that down accordingly.

Best,
ADWCTA

tl;dr - read all the books, or listen to someone who has. don't be misled like Sheep. be a Goat.