Never Too Old To Queue

By Whodack

I think it’s safe to say that your average Hearthstone player does not have memories of each of the Star Wars trilogies hitting the silver screen.  A majority of us likely saw the start of the Sequel Trilogy back in 2015.  And there’s still a good group of us who were conscious enough in 1999 to remember standing in line overnight for the release of The Phantom Menace.  But what would you guess is the percentage of current Hearthstone players who saw Star Wars, before it was renamed ‘A New Hope’, in theatres back in 1977?
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Cards on the table: I consider myself an older gamer.  I turned 40 last month, which means that I grew up in an era where the cell phone I got when I turned 16 had Snake as its only game.  It was my sophomore year of college that Facebook launched and you could only get in if you had a valid college email address.  And, I was already 29 in 2014 when Hearthstone launched its open beta. 

 I’ve known for the past decade that there are many gamers at or near my age playing Hearthstone – there’s plenty of streamers that are pretty close to me in age.   But, surely we in the late 30s/early 40s bracket are some of the oldest playing the game, right?  Most of us with kids are comfortable reaching ‘Dad Legend,’ Diamond 5, each month – but there are no Grandpas playing Hearthstone.  Right?

Jimphilos has entered the chat.

As it turns out, there is a member of our THL community who has been a staple of the Legacy and Hero formats for years and is 67 years old.  There is a member of our THL community who has three adult children and ‘a slew of grandkids’ who submits his decks week in and week out to slug it out with the rest of us.

And when I say ‘staple of Legacy and Hero’, I’m not inflating someone who plays here and there or is a casual sub.  Jimphilos has been in 20 seasons of Legacy, and 21 seasons of Hero.  He’s racked up 331 total matches between both formats. He was a part of the Season 18 Legacy Championship Team “Hot Zilfs Near You”, and he sealed the championship for the Zilfs winning Match 5 after the rest of his team deadlocked a 2-2 outcome in the first four matches.

Before being introduced to Hearthstone by his son, Jimphilos had already mastered one competitive card game. He was a long-time bridge enthusiast and earned the Life Master ranking by traveling to and having success in local, regional, and national tournaments. He enjoyed the strategy of the game and the collaboration that’s required to be successful in a game that you compete in pairs with a partner. But as he climbed the ranks he saw a side of the game that he didn’t care for: cutthroat tactics, lingering bitterness, and a win-at-all-costs mentality that overshadowed the joys of his game. Bridge at that level was all about stress instead of fun—an environment where the stakes felt enormous even though the prizes were often minimal.

A few years after he parted ways with competitive bridge, his son introduced him to Hearthstone.  His son played during the days of open beta, and Jim got involved a year or two later.  He enjoyed the new game, but he also enjoyed that there were local clubs that he started attending monthly to play the game with people and make new friends.  It was one of those friends who introduced Jimphilos to THL.  Jim met an early THL player, TheAnarchist, at a Hearthstone club near Charlotte, North Carolina.  Jim was immediately drawn to THL as it had the competitiveness that he was after, without the high stress environments that burned him out of his passion for bridge.

His son has since dropped Hearthstone, and TheAnarchist stopped playing after 6 seasons when he got married and started to raise his own family.  But Jim kept with THL because it fueled the fun he was having with Hearthstone.  “If it hadn’t been for THL, I probably wouldn’t still be playing.”  He’s over the grind: he’s hit legend enough times that he doesn’t feel the need to make the push every month.  He’s happy with ‘Dad Legend’ as he doesn’t want to stress about the ladder or rank.

He’s able to keep his interactions with Hearthstone stress-free.  He doesn’t struggle with tilt. But, the one thing he hates is Death Knight.  “It just pisses me off, and I don’t even want to play it because it pisses me off.”  He enjoys playing Demon Hunter, so it’s not a prejudice against the expansion classes.  He just hates playing against Death Knight and it doesn’t feel any better playing with Death Knight decks.  He’s got no sympathy for DK.

The big thing that he’s trying to work on as a THL competitor is to slow down his pace of play.  He does struggle with making decisions too quickly and not considering all his options before making a move.  He has little interest in letting the game become a source of anxiety like bridge so if he feels tension or he’s playing too fast, he’s quick to close the client and enjoy another hobby: golf.  It’s a great way to spend retirement: Playing Hearthstone in between rounds of golf.

Over and over again in our conversation, Jim reflected on how fortunate he feels to have discovered THL. The community, he says, is packed with wonderful men and women who support one another through both exciting wins and tough losses. He’s been part of many great teams, some measured by wins and some measured by the fun and camaraderie of the team.

 I ended my conversation with him asking two questions.  One question for the majority of our THL competitors, “What piece of advice would you tell your twenty-year-old self?”:

 “Keep being competitive in whatever you do, but also quit screwing around so much, don’t drink so much, and take life a little bit more seriously.”  Then adding “but, I wouldn’t have listened. So, that would’ve been pointless anyway.”

And, one question for me: “What piece of advice would you tell your forty-year-old self?”

 “Take care of the future, don’t worry about the present so much.  That too shall pass. [Laughs]  And, it gets better – retirement is a fun time.  If I had known it would be this much fun I would have prepared more for it.  Family is most important.”