So you're new to card games, you enjoy playing Hearthstone and you want to get good at it, but you don't understand why you lose so much. This is the guide for you.
I'll explain some basic mechanics that most players take for granted, help you building your decks, help you improve your decision making, and overall, hopefully help you become a better player, and correctly evaluate your cards.
Step 1: Deckbuilding
Yes, netdecking is easy, you can grab someone else deck, some streamer that went 12-1 with it and then you find out, you suck at playing that deck, immediately blame your skills/luck and proceed to change way too many cards and make the deck worst or even delete the deck. This mentality is wrong, chances are, you're just playing in a different rank and the metagame at that rank is different, or, you don't understand the deck and make poor decisions.
Also, decks become more and more famous and people somewhat learn to play against them, people do research just like you do, sometimes they know your deck better then you do, that's why creating your own deck is imperative. It's exceptionally good to play a deck your opponent doesn't know already card by card.
When you create/play a deck, you have to keep in mind that you probably don't know the deck, even if the winning condition is pretty obvious, you don't know the match ups, what to mull for, when to play your hand or when to aggressively try to draw different cards, when to go to the face and when to keep board control, when to save your cards and what to save them for, knowing your deck's weaknesses and strengths is absolutely essential in Hearthstone. This can only be achieved in one way, play your deck A LOT, make sure it fits your meta, and then make changes accordingly, do not start changing decks after your first loss, get a good 10~20 games under your belt and only then try to understand why are you losing or as important, why are you winning?
Let me give you an example, I'm going to post a deck I created (the mechanics are pretty obvious). And explain how a deck can go terribly wrong even if the concept is amazing.
In his fourth turn, Priest plays Shadow Word: Death on your Void Terror, or silences it. He killed 4 of your cards with one his, he spent 3 mana while you spent 8... you understand how this is bad?
Another part of this deck is damaging yourself by aggressively using hero power, Flame Imp, Pit Lord, etc. so you can play your Molten Giants for free and a Defender of Argus in between. Two 9/9's with taunt and a 2/3? Yes please! Later you can set your life back to 15 with Lord Jaraxxus and everything will be fine right? Your giants will keep the enemy busy until turn 9.
Suddenly, it doesn't seem like a great idea now, does it? You're facing a deck that stalls you while pummeling your face with spells, and spells that hurt, 2x Pyroblast + 2x Fireball + 2x Frostbolt followed by 2x Ice Lance = 20+12+6+8 = 46 damage, way more than it takes to kill you, and guess what, you're helping him, oh and believe me, he will kill you faster than you kill him, 9 out of 10 times.
So, not saying that any of these decks are good or bad, or that you shouldn't take chances now and then, but knowing what you have and what you're facing is extremely, immensely, severely, utterly, indubitably important, it's that much of a big deal.
The correct play vs Priest would be to keep the Ancient Watcher alone at 4 attack and use Sunfury Protector in him later, Void Terror only the Nerubian Egg so you get a 3/5 (for 3 mana cost) and a 4/4 (sweet 4 attack spot vs Priest) while maintaining a great board presence, and not over-committing, do not play more cards than you have to, try to make the most value out of your cards, and one of the most conspicuous rules of card games, do not have only one win condition and do not place all your eggs in one basket. Having multiple mild threats is often, more significant than one big threat.
Now that you understand this, you need to realize what the Metagame is, and how do you fit in it:
Metagaming is any strategy, action or method used in a game which transcends a prescribed ruleset, uses external factors to affect the game, or goes beyond the supposed limits or environment set by the game. Another definition refers to the game universe outside of the game itself.
In simple terms, it is the use of out-of-game information or resources to affect one's in-game decisions.
Simply put, if everyone around your rank is playing Face Mage, Face Rogue, Face Warrior, face anything that takes no skill to play and quickly escalates newbie ranks. Son, you need to protect your damn face!
The value of The Coin in a Rogue deck is significantly better than, let's say a Warrior deck. In the same sense, the value of a Sludge Belcher is always high, but in a predominantly aggressive metagame, is invaluable. He's the Ysera of the metagame, he wins games by himself, he makes opponents beat themselves, he's the nightmare of Miracle Rogues. You get the picture.
This is why in a sense, making your own deck and having multiple decks that fit into different metagames, is usually important, Trump (a renown player in the Hearthstone community) was stuck between rank 5~2 with a deck he used with high success in Legendary, and wasn't being able to get to Legendary again, after Hafu (another renown streamer in the Hearthstone community) helped him build a Miracle Rogue, he immediately got to Legendary, sang a winning song and he was happy, as he was, so can you.
Understand that sometimes, it's not you, it's not your luck, or skill, you were just placing yourself in a situation where you were set up to lose. Playing a lot and against many archetypes is the only way to succeed, only then you will truly understand a deck, regardless if you made it or it's a netdeck. Do not be afraid to lose, or lose your rank, chances are, no one is seeing, no one cares, and if you succumb under pressure, just instantly Squelch the opponent as soon as you start the match.
Step 2: Understanding the importance of some mechanics.
Why is drawing cards so important? why does everyone value it so much? why do people play crap cards like Nourish, Tracking, Arcane Intellect, etc. I mean, they're so expensive, or have huge drawbacks, I mean, Tracking what the hell? You lose two cards to get access to one faster?!
The answer is simple, card advantage, or as some like to call it (incorrectly) "tempo".
2.1) Card advantage (often abbreviated CA) is a term used in collectible card game strategy to indicate one player having access to more cards than another player, usually by drawing more cards through in-game effects.[1] The concept was first discovered and described early in the evolution of Magic: The Gathering strategy. Many early decks relied on drawing more cards than their opponent and then using this advantage in order to play more cards and advance their position faster than their opponent. Today it is recognized as one of the most important indicators of who is ahead in a game and has been utilized in the development of strategy for nearly every collectible card game created.
Simply put, if your deck isn't at a direct disadvantage (as explained above, your deck might simply not be suitable), and you can draw your winning condition (a combo for instance) or reach your strongest cards faster, you will win. If you spend less cards and mana dealing with a threat than the opponent did removing it, you're gaining card advantage, some players even call the card advantage while playing out loud, some streamers do it often. Tracking might draw you the card you need, the specific card, for that specific situation, it can literally take two irrelevant cards (imagine 1 mana cost creature cards at turn 10) out of the way and save you two turns of drawing dead. This is called deck filtering.
Shiv is another example of cycling/filtering, you can shrink your deck for 2 mana cost and it deals 1 damage that can be enhanced by spell power. It literally cycles your deck faster so you can reach your combo faster, it combos with Gadgetzan Auctioneer for two cards. Bloodmage Thalnos not only can do the same, as you can use it for one more damage in a spell, while that doesn't seem much, if you have an Azure Drake and a Bloodmage Thalnos on the field, and you play two Deadly Poison over your hero power weapon and finish off with Blade Flurry, Guess what, that's 7 damage across the board, hero included!
Versatility is important, but in a long game, card advantage will win games, both in constructed and arena. Remember this for the rest of your Hearthstone days, how can I squeeze the most value out of my cards? Every play, right after you ask yourself "do I have lethal damage?"
The other common way (the most common) to create card advantage as explained above in the Void Terror vs Shadow Word: Death example, is to trade less cards, for more. If an opponent has to use 2/3 cards to deal with one of yours, you just won a 1/2 card advantage, this is a pretty basic logic, and some cards excel at this such as Harvest Golem, Sludge Belcher, Zombie Chow, Cairne Bloodhoof, Argent Commander (and other cards with innate Divine Shield), etc.
2.2) Short term thinking. Long term, win the game! Simple, right? but how do you get there? you have to make goals for every turn you play, play a big threat, remove a big threat, gain control of the board and play something, create a defense, deal 4 damage, create a contingency for X cards that you know he is going to play (which comes with knowing your opponent deck).
You need to know your deck inside out, what cards are left, understand what is your goal, you can't just play your deck without a reasoning or else you will be milled to death, run out of resources, draw dead, and be praying to RNG Gods more often than you wanted to, maybe you lack damage, maybe you lack card drawing, maybe you aren't getting to late game as much as you'd like, and that's where deck changes are made, but to make a correct evaluation of the situation, you need to practice, practice, practice.
A great way to understand important decision making is watching top players in their streams, they often explain why they make the moves they make, why they value some cards over others, or better yet, if you can, play with a coach or even friends, discuss the plays since players that don't feel pressure by being on the outside and have a third person view, notice things that the one who's playing doesn't.
In chess, it's common for grandmasters who are teaching their pupils, to force them to think for 5 minutes in the play they are going to make, after they already decided the play, this way they won't make mistakes by "over-analyzing" a situation, and try to think about all possible outcomes.
Another thing this prevents, and even the top players of Hearthstone do this, is making sure that you don't freaking mess up the order you are going to play the cards! I can't stress this enough, stop messing up the order you play the cards, if you're going to draw a card, wait for the draw before playing anything else, often the draw can be a better card than the one you were thinking about playing, you play creatures or use the Paladin/Shaman hero power before you play Knife Juggler, and these are only common, simple to explain mistakes, I've seen people lose games so many times because they rush their turns and don't think about all the possible outcomes, like playing a Leeroy Jenkins when Knife Juggler is on the other side of the field and proceed to get him shot twice. Plan your turns, think about what will happen in your mind, imagine the turn before you actually make the moves, and only when you're 100% sure of the order, play the cards, you have almost a minute to decide every single turn.
2.3) Being the aggressor, board presence and mana curve. Being the aggressor is playing Injured Blademaster + Circle of Healing combo on turn 2/3. A 4/7 is absolutely demolishing on turn 3, you might take the entire game to recover from it, and while you're dealing with that threat, the opponent is readying the next one.
This is achieved most of the times by having better allocation of resources in each turn, heavier threats on early turns, using all of your mana and not leave mana floating as in, spending only 3 mana on turn 4, Harvest Golem is great but if he plays a Chillwind Yeti in turn 4 and you play a Harvest Golem and leave one mana floating, all the advantage that card creates (by creating two threats at the cost of one and being hard to remove/waste of a silence) is pretty much gone.
That's why Mana Curve is so important, being able to maximize your damage and minimizing your opponent's, will maximize the value of your cards and quality of your turns, which often will eventually lead to a victory.
Some decks like Druid have cards like Innervate, Wild Growth, Nourish, and many other cards. They usually play their late game threats early in the game, or worst, they reach their end game much faster, so if you don't put early pressure and punish them for trying to ramp and accelerate their mana, you will be easy pray, an healthy and versatile Mana Curve is essential, that's why I cry when players Coin out a turn 2 card like Faerie Dragon, and play nothing / use hero power on turn 2.
Tempo and Mana Curve go hand to hand, if your opponent tries to create tempo by reducing his threats, punish him, if he doesn't play any threats, try to generate tempo yourself, evaluation of tempo is for example, when a Mage decides when to play his Ice Block and Arcane Intellect, it's not when he doesn't need the mana, that's idiotic, you always need the mana and if you don't you're playing the game wrong, you use it when you get punished the least for using those cards, period. If you have board advantage, and your opponent has to deal with your threat, then you don't need to apply more pressure and you cast those cards, you're setting up the late game at the cost of early game board presence, playing Arcane Intellect is literally creating Card Advantage since you use one card to draw 2, just like Thoughtsteal, just to name a few.
2.4) Random Number Generator and Luck. Yes, some love it, some hate it, but luck will always, always be involved in any good card game, Hearthstone is sure as hell, no exception. One card that I love is Mad Bomber, and sure, it can cause more harm than good, but it does indirect damage, it can create tempo, and it can shift the game, right there and then. Imagine that your opponent goes first, he plays Faerie Dragon (very common), you can play your normal 3/2 or 2/3 on turn 2 to answer it, the ball is in his side, now he can swing to your face with his dragon, and make you play catch up, or kill your card and play a new threat, rinse and repeat and you're playing catch up again. If you play Mad Bomber, and Mad Bomber hits Faerie Dragon twice, guess what just happened? You shifted the course of the game. In a worst case scenario, you take 3 damage to the face and earlier situation applies, that's RNG for you.
This is why you need to believe, often your opponent will play weapons, often your opponent will play minions with taunt, and often, you will surely capitalize on it, and because you took a small risk of putting a card in the deck, you will now sow amazing rewards.
Your opponent plays a Ironbark Protector, worst even, he plays Gruul, and as the noob he is, he plays Mark of the Wild on Gruul, he now has a mean 9/9 with taunt that gets +1/+1 in each turn, yours and his, next time Gruul swings, he will be an 11/11! But uh oh, you have The Black Knight.
This might seem scenario picking but it's not, I've had dozens if not hundreds of games where the opponent giving a minion taunt, lost him the game, The Black Knight is commonly in tons of decks. He is known for capitalizing on people that have taunts to stop aggro decks and Miracle Rogues, know what threats your opponent has, if you're playing vs Priest and it's past turn 10, be careful playing a 9/10 cost card as he will probably use Mind Control on it.
If you're a Warlock, you're at 12 health vs a Mage and you're trying to decide if you should use your hero power or not, remember he can have Pyroblast in his hand, and more often than not, he will have it! Leave your games to chance as least as possible. If you got 3 creatures on the field, vs Mage, and he still hasn't played two Flamestrike, be careful and leave some creatures in your hand to repopulate the board if/when he uses Flamestrike. Plan ahead, know your enemy, do not leave the game to luck. But how does this apply to you? well, let me tell you a story.
People will play spells, often, and some people will play spell heavy decks, Freeze Mage comes to mind as number one person who gets attached to another object by an inclined plane, wrapped helically around an axis if you stop them from using spells, and hence I present to you, Miracle Rogue by, someone, irrelevant.
I played this deck for 10 games, won 6 lost 4. After analyzing, I decided to remove Loatheb and add Harrison Jones. But wouldn't adding situational cases to the deck lower the quality of the deck? I mean, Loatheb stops most decks for one turn.
Yes, he is amazing, but past turn 5, I actually want to start setting up my win condition, not roughly slowing down my opponent, Harrison Jones has won me so many games already. In Miracle Rogue, card drawing and getting your combo faster is imperative! One good Harrison Jones wins the game for you right there and then, I had a game vs a Shaman today where I was in dire straits, until he plays his Doomhammer to leave me at 3 health. I won a game I was about to concede, just because I had Harrison in my hand.
Accept luck, accept RNG, accept that you will make mistakes, and accept that your opponent will, force them to make them, and then, punish them for it.
2.5) Exceptions and counteracts. So now we understand that putting all eggs in one basket is bad, and generally speaking, buffs are bad, you're using a card, and then using another card or cards to buff the first one. The opponent in response might be able to to deal with that creature with only one card, and creating a small or severe Card Advantage for him, but mostly like everything else in the world, every rule has an exception.
Echoing Ooze + Blessing of Kings creates two 5/6's for two cards at the cost of 6 mana, they are somewhat, Chillwind Yeti on steroids with the exception that they can be silenced, but still, they are two instead of one, so this is technically, not a terrible way to spend your turn, although a bit gimmicky, but most combos are, it's like playing two 5/6's for 3 each, who can be silenced, but in the end, they're still two 5/6 for 3 each! Can't hate on that, however.. if the opponent has, let's say, a Counterspell or way worst, a Spellbender, it can backfire fast.
Same with Leeroy Jenkins and Cold Blood, this is a great finisher, 14 attack creature for 6 mana, given you use it at the right time, and realize this is a 3 (or more) card combo, so you might not be able to pull it off every time, but when you can, usually pays off.
Making these sort of combos is a bit more advanced since many times it might not pay off, and creature removal in higher ranks comes by the dozens, so you need to evaluate when an exception can be made, and when it's simply not worth keeping it in your deck.
2.6) Skill. "Well duh, skill is how good I am as a player". Correct, sadly, the way most people analyze skill is erroneous. Usually, your rank reflects how good you are as a player, usually, but this is not a mirror of how skilled you are, because eventually, if you don't improve yourself, you rank will, most definitely, drop. It's not getting to rank 1, it's maintaining and earning rank 1, it's not grabbing and overpowered netdeck, it's the ability to always perform good and make the least amount of mistakes regardless of the deck you are given.
I used to be paid money in League of Legends to get people in gold/diamond/challenger league depending on how much they paid me, and I felt bad by doing it, why? because I'd rather spend that time teaching them how to be better players and doing it themselves, because even if I get you to Challenger, eventually if that's not the rank you deserve to be as a player, you will fall, and fall, and fall, until you are at the rank you deserve, so eventually, when the deck you are using loses favor, you will drop down to what rank reflects your skill level.
Trust me when I say that your losses, will teach you more than your wins if you are paying attention, don't just lose and start playing the blame game, remove words such as luck, cheap, p2w and other diminishing words from your dictionary while reflecting on why you lost a game, understand why you lost, minimize the chances of it happening again, again, learn from your losses!
So keep in mind that if you feel that you're improving your gameplay, even while losing ranks, you're becoming a better player, and once your skill improves, so will your rank, season after season, you will get better and better, so remember that there are no shortcuts for success, if you want to be consistently good, improve yourself, not your deck.
"The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary".
3) Have Fun! Because if you don't, you will eventually quit, you won't enjoy your time in Hearthstone, and you will get an headache to boot. Take a break from Ranked sometimes, go play some funny decks in casual, go beat up on some bots or go try some ludicrous tactics on Naxxramas, hell, write a guide! Just make sure you enjoy your time in Hearthstone.
FINAL NOTES: This guide can/will be extended, so make sure you check back from time to time. Everything wrote in here is my opinion and understanding therefore of, so take it with a grain of salt. You can use this guide in your website without asking for my permission given you post a link back to this thread and give credit to hearthpwn.com and myself.
Accept luck, accept RNG, accept that you will make mistakes, and accept that your opponent will, force them to make them, and then, punish them for it.
Thank you for taking the time to write this. I admit that a lot of times I struggle with just when to play certain cards or combos and in retrospect it always seems like I played them a turn to early or late. Looking forward to reading the rest!
Thank you for this guide. I am still a noob and have lots of learning to do. Guides like this are very helpful and helps me to set up a stronger approach to my game play. The buffing gruel approach is exactly something I would do.
Thank you for taking the time to write this. I admit that a lot of times I struggle with just when to play certain cards or combos and in retrospect it always seems like I played them a turn to early or late. Looking forward to reading the rest!
Been meaning to write this for a while now, but it's very time consuming and mentally as well.
With Tracking, you lose 1 card from your hand to draw 1 card from your deck into your hand. This is a 1:1 trade. It is filtering and card parity. Not card advantage, since after resolving the Tracking you do not have extra cards in hand compared to the beginning state.
OTOH, Arcane Intellect is card advantage, since you gain additional cards into hand (relative to your opponent).
Oh I know, I just explained some concepts inside other concepts, I knew I would create some confusion midways but as long as people understand the basics behind it, it's all good. Guess I'll try to be a bit more specific.
Also, I completely disagree with your rather ambiguous definition of "tempo". Here's my definition:
Tempo
A "tempo" strategy is interested primarily in making sure their clock is faster than the opponent's. In the case when the opponent had a faster clock, the tempo strategy is to disrupt that clock just enough to make the tempo player's clock a little bit faster than the opponent's. Tempo is not typically interested in card advantage, and not even interested in board control, unless the board state affects the clocks. Basically, tempo does not like to trade minions, it wants to hit the enemy's face in order to have a faster clock and have the opponent make that exact same minion trade, which is kind of the Hearthstone equivalent to "accepting a gambit". Basically, in order to understand what tempo is, you will need to understand the concepts of Racing and the clock first. These are not self-evident concepts to understand and apply for a TCG beginner.
Not my definition, it's in the website of WotC and socially accepted in, many TCG websites, I just applied it to Hearthstone, a deck that doesn't race, that wins long races doesn't generate tempo? Tempo is just creating control so that the opponent has to answer to your threats and not the other way around.
"Tempo is a term used in Magic: The Gathering to indicate the advantage gained when a player is able to play more or stronger cards in a shorter period of time due to efficient resource allocation.[1] A companion concept to card advantage, it is sometimes defined as the means by which a player gains additional options or decreases the options possessed by the opponent by means not directly pertaining to respective numbers of playable cards."
Thank you for this guide. I am still a noob and have lots of learning to do. Guides like this are very helpful and helps me to set up a stronger approach to my game play. The buffing gruel approach is exactly something I would do.
Glad you liked it.
Only experience will help you not make those mistakes, doesn't mean you have to do those mistakes yourself, you can learn from streamers, and you can learn from your opponents, just as long as you learn, if an opponent makes a mistake, don't laugh, capitalize and take notes so you don't do the same.
Thanks a lot, that guide helped me a lot! Without saying that i suddenly became a pro-gamer, i made my first game that i consider as a "controlled" play, knowing everything i did and why and thinking about what the opponent could play at which time and how to counter it, and mostly, what to play to minimize the chances to get countered or running out of answers, and it worked surprisingly well!
Great way you had to explain things with clarity and very helpful, thanks a lot and stay awesome bro!
Thanks a lot, that guide helped me a lot! Without saying that i suddenly became a pro-gamer, i made my first game that i consider as a "controlled" play, knowing everything i did and why and thinking about what the opponent could play at which time and how to counter it, and mostly, what to play to minimize the chances to get countered or running out of answers, and it worked surprisingly well!
Great way you had to explain things with clarity and very helpful, thanks a lot and stay awesome bro!
I'm glad you feel that way, specially knowing that it improved your game so drastically. ;)
Not my definition, it's in the website of WotC and socially accepted in, many TCG websites, I just applied it to Hearthstone, a deck that doesn't race, that wins long races doesn't generate tempo? Tempo is just creating control so that the opponent has to answer to your threats and not the other way around.
"Tempo is a term used in Magic: The Gathering to indicate the advantage gained when a player is able to play more or stronger cards in a shorter period of time due to efficient resource allocation.[1] A companion concept to card advantage, it is sometimes defined as the means by which a player gains additional options or decreases the options possessed by the opponent by means not directly pertaining to respective numbers of playable cards."
When I was creating my guide, I tried to google for a good definition of tempo, but could not find one, so I wrote my own definition for it. However, the definition you quoted is an excellent one, and I will use that in my terminology guide from this point onwards.
Tempo is a very tricky and difficult concept to explain and to use in a sentence without confusing some people.
I agree with you that having a tempo advantage means that the opponent has been forced to be responsive. However, IMO this does not necessarily mean that the tempo player is in control. In my definition, I used racing extensively because unless the damage race is involved, why would the opponent ever need to be responsive? Why is a turn 3 4/7 Injured Blademaster something that needs to be responded to? Because it is a powerful tool for the opponent to win the damage race in the long run. After all, the loser of the damage race is the loser of the game in Hearthstone, so pretty much every action made in the game is meant to affect the damage race, hence affect the tempo of the game. IMO.
"the advantage gained" is kind of aligned with "winning the race" "decreases the options possessed by the opponent" is kind of aligned with "disrupting the opponent's clock"
So I think I was "in the ballpark", but the quoted definition is just better worded and in a more general form than my feeble attempt.
Oh, I understand your point of view, and I agree with it, the problem is, you have a DEEP understanding of tempo hence you can deeply explain it, but if you word that to a beginning player, you're going to lose him in the first sentence, and that's why I gave examples instead.
"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough". That was my reasoning behind the lame explaining.
I don't want to use race because, health is just a resource, you need that resource to keep playing, but I don't want new players to misinterpret that and start thinking that having a 4/7 on turn 3 is good "because more damage early go face rawr!"
I liked your terminology guide, specially because you quote, critical points of TCG, I mean, everything that Mike Flores says about a TCG is usually the word of God, and explaining stuff as "Who's the beatdown?" is something that I plan on explaining futurely, among other stuff.
Yeah, I made a few changes to avoid using over-complicated terms, maybe I make a Hearthstone 102 eventually? Only the future knows... not really... maybe... it's classified. ;)
I think I have to eventually, there's too many players going for the face when they should trade, and vice versa, and losing games because of it.
Tempo just means that you dictate the pace of the game, and the terms in which it's played, a control deck can force an aggro deck to trade, instead of mindlessly aiming for the face, having your opponent having to respond to your plays and not the other way around, is controlling the Tempo of the game.
So you're new to card games, you enjoy playing Hearthstone and you want to get good at it, but you don't understand why you lose so much. This is the guide for you.
I'll explain some basic mechanics that most players take for granted, help you building your decks, help you improve your decision making, and overall, hopefully help you become a better player, and correctly evaluate your cards.
Step 1: Deckbuilding
Yes, netdecking is easy, you can grab someone else deck, some streamer that went 12-1 with it and then you find out, you suck at playing that deck, immediately blame your skills/luck and proceed to change way too many cards and make the deck worst or even delete the deck. This mentality is wrong, chances are, you're just playing in a different rank and the metagame at that rank is different, or, you don't understand the deck and make poor decisions.
Also, decks become more and more famous and people somewhat learn to play against them, people do research just like you do, sometimes they know your deck better then you do, that's why creating your own deck is imperative. It's exceptionally good to play a deck your opponent doesn't know already card by card.
When you create/play a deck, you have to keep in mind that you probably don't know the deck, even if the winning condition is pretty obvious, you don't know the match ups, what to mull for, when to play your hand or when to aggressively try to draw different cards, when to go to the face and when to keep board control, when to save your cards and what to save them for, knowing your deck's weaknesses and strengths is absolutely essential in Hearthstone. This can only be achieved in one way, play your deck A LOT, make sure it fits your meta, and then make changes accordingly, do not start changing decks after your first loss, get a good 10~20 games under your belt and only then try to understand why are you losing or as important, why are you winning?
Let me give you an example, I'm going to post a deck I created (the mechanics are pretty obvious). And explain how a deck can go terribly wrong even if the concept is amazing.
Your starting hand is a Void Terror, Nerubian Egg, Ancient Watcher, Faceless Manipulator and The Coin. You're playing vs a Priest.
Turn 1: The Coin + Ancient Watcher.
Turn 2: Nerubian Egg.
Turn 3: Void Terror in between your creatures, you get a 7/10 Void Terror and a 4/4 Nerubian on turn 3! Amazing right? Priest is now playing catch up.
In his fourth turn, Priest plays Shadow Word: Death on your Void Terror, or silences it. He killed 4 of your cards with one his, he spent 3 mana while you spent 8... you understand how this is bad?
Another part of this deck is damaging yourself by aggressively using hero power, Flame Imp, Pit Lord, etc. so you can play your Molten Giants for free and a Defender of Argus in between. Two 9/9's with taunt and a 2/3? Yes please! Later you can set your life back to 15 with Lord Jaraxxus and everything will be fine right? Your giants will keep the enemy busy until turn 9.
Now imagine you're facing this deck:
Suddenly, it doesn't seem like a great idea now, does it? You're facing a deck that stalls you while pummeling your face with spells, and spells that hurt, 2x Pyroblast + 2x Fireball + 2x Frostbolt followed by 2x Ice Lance = 20+12+6+8 = 46 damage, way more than it takes to kill you, and guess what, you're helping him, oh and believe me, he will kill you faster than you kill him, 9 out of 10 times.
So, not saying that any of these decks are good or bad, or that you shouldn't take chances now and then, but knowing what you have and what you're facing is extremely, immensely, severely, utterly, indubitably important, it's that much of a big deal.
The correct play vs Priest would be to keep the Ancient Watcher alone at 4 attack and use Sunfury Protector in him later, Void Terror only the Nerubian Egg so you get a 3/5 (for 3 mana cost) and a 4/4 (sweet 4 attack spot vs Priest) while maintaining a great board presence, and not over-committing, do not play more cards than you have to, try to make the most value out of your cards, and one of the most conspicuous rules of card games, do not have only one win condition and do not place all your eggs in one basket. Having multiple mild threats is often, more significant than one big threat.
Now that you understand this, you need to realize what the Metagame is, and how do you fit in it:
Simply put, if everyone around your rank is playing Face Mage, Face Rogue, Face Warrior, face anything that takes no skill to play and quickly escalates newbie ranks. Son, you need to protect your damn face!
The value of The Coin in a Rogue deck is significantly better than, let's say a Warrior deck. In the same sense, the value of a Sludge Belcher is always high, but in a predominantly aggressive metagame, is invaluable. He's the Ysera of the metagame, he wins games by himself, he makes opponents beat themselves, he's the nightmare of Miracle Rogues. You get the picture.
This is why in a sense, making your own deck and having multiple decks that fit into different metagames, is usually important, Trump (a renown player in the Hearthstone community) was stuck between rank 5~2 with a deck he used with high success in Legendary, and wasn't being able to get to Legendary again, after Hafu (another renown streamer in the Hearthstone community) helped him build a Miracle Rogue, he immediately got to Legendary, sang a winning song and he was happy, as he was, so can you.
Understand that sometimes, it's not you, it's not your luck, or skill, you were just placing yourself in a situation where you were set up to lose. Playing a lot and against many archetypes is the only way to succeed, only then you will truly understand a deck, regardless if you made it or it's a netdeck. Do not be afraid to lose, or lose your rank, chances are, no one is seeing, no one cares, and if you succumb under pressure, just instantly Squelch the opponent as soon as you start the match.
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Step 2: Understanding the importance of some mechanics.
Why is drawing cards so important? why does everyone value it so much? why do people play crap cards like Nourish, Tracking, Arcane Intellect, etc. I mean, they're so expensive, or have huge drawbacks, I mean, Tracking what the hell? You lose two cards to get access to one faster?!
The answer is simple, card advantage, or as some like to call it (incorrectly) "tempo".
2.1) Card advantage (often abbreviated CA) is a term used in collectible card game strategy to indicate one player having access to more cards than another player, usually by drawing more cards through in-game effects.[1] The concept was first discovered and described early in the evolution of Magic: The Gathering strategy. Many early decks relied on drawing more cards than their opponent and then using this advantage in order to play more cards and advance their position faster than their opponent. Today it is recognized as one of the most important indicators of who is ahead in a game and has been utilized in the development of strategy for nearly every collectible card game created.
You can read more about it: here
Simply put, if your deck isn't at a direct disadvantage (as explained above, your deck might simply not be suitable), and you can draw your winning condition (a combo for instance) or reach your strongest cards faster, you will win. If you spend less cards and mana dealing with a threat than the opponent did removing it, you're gaining card advantage, some players even call the card advantage while playing out loud, some streamers do it often. Tracking might draw you the card you need, the specific card, for that specific situation, it can literally take two irrelevant cards (imagine 1 mana cost creature cards at turn 10) out of the way and save you two turns of drawing dead. This is called deck filtering.
Shiv is another example of cycling/filtering, you can shrink your deck for 2 mana cost and it deals 1 damage that can be enhanced by spell power. It literally cycles your deck faster so you can reach your combo faster, it combos with Gadgetzan Auctioneer for two cards. Bloodmage Thalnos not only can do the same, as you can use it for one more damage in a spell, while that doesn't seem much, if you have an Azure Drake and a Bloodmage Thalnos on the field, and you play two Deadly Poison over your hero power weapon and finish off with Blade Flurry, Guess what, that's 7 damage across the board, hero included!
Versatility is important, but in a long game, card advantage will win games, both in constructed and arena. Remember this for the rest of your Hearthstone days, how can I squeeze the most value out of my cards? Every play, right after you ask yourself "do I have lethal damage?"
The other common way (the most common) to create card advantage as explained above in the Void Terror vs Shadow Word: Death example, is to trade less cards, for more. If an opponent has to use 2/3 cards to deal with one of yours, you just won a 1/2 card advantage, this is a pretty basic logic, and some cards excel at this such as Harvest Golem, Sludge Belcher, Zombie Chow, Cairne Bloodhoof, Argent Commander (and other cards with innate Divine Shield), etc.
2.2) Short term thinking. Long term, win the game! Simple, right? but how do you get there? you have to make goals for every turn you play, play a big threat, remove a big threat, gain control of the board and play something, create a defense, deal 4 damage, create a contingency for X cards that you know he is going to play (which comes with knowing your opponent deck).
You need to know your deck inside out, what cards are left, understand what is your goal, you can't just play your deck without a reasoning or else you will be milled to death, run out of resources, draw dead, and be praying to RNG Gods more often than you wanted to, maybe you lack damage, maybe you lack card drawing, maybe you aren't getting to late game as much as you'd like, and that's where deck changes are made, but to make a correct evaluation of the situation, you need to practice, practice, practice.
A great way to understand important decision making is watching top players in their streams, they often explain why they make the moves they make, why they value some cards over others, or better yet, if you can, play with a coach or even friends, discuss the plays since players that don't feel pressure by being on the outside and have a third person view, notice things that the one who's playing doesn't.
In chess, it's common for grandmasters who are teaching their pupils, to force them to think for 5 minutes in the play they are going to make, after they already decided the play, this way they won't make mistakes by "over-analyzing" a situation, and try to think about all possible outcomes.
Another thing this prevents, and even the top players of Hearthstone do this, is making sure that you don't freaking mess up the order you are going to play the cards! I can't stress this enough, stop messing up the order you play the cards, if you're going to draw a card, wait for the draw before playing anything else, often the draw can be a better card than the one you were thinking about playing, you play creatures or use the Paladin/Shaman hero power before you play Knife Juggler, and these are only common, simple to explain mistakes, I've seen people lose games so many times because they rush their turns and don't think about all the possible outcomes, like playing a Leeroy Jenkins when Knife Juggler is on the other side of the field and proceed to get him shot twice. Plan your turns, think about what will happen in your mind, imagine the turn before you actually make the moves, and only when you're 100% sure of the order, play the cards, you have almost a minute to decide every single turn.
2.3) Being the aggressor, board presence and mana curve. Being the aggressor is playing Injured Blademaster + Circle of Healing combo on turn 2/3. A 4/7 is absolutely demolishing on turn 3, you might take the entire game to recover from it, and while you're dealing with that threat, the opponent is readying the next one.
This is achieved most of the times by having better allocation of resources in each turn, heavier threats on early turns, using all of your mana and not leave mana floating as in, spending only 3 mana on turn 4, Harvest Golem is great but if he plays a Chillwind Yeti in turn 4 and you play a Harvest Golem and leave one mana floating, all the advantage that card creates (by creating two threats at the cost of one and being hard to remove/waste of a silence) is pretty much gone.
That's why Mana Curve is so important, being able to maximize your damage and minimizing your opponent's, will maximize the value of your cards and quality of your turns, which often will eventually lead to a victory.
Some decks like Druid have cards like Innervate, Wild Growth, Nourish, and many other cards. They usually play their late game threats early in the game, or worst, they reach their end game much faster, so if you don't put early pressure and punish them for trying to ramp and accelerate their mana, you will be easy pray, an healthy and versatile Mana Curve is essential, that's why I cry when players Coin out a turn 2 card like Faerie Dragon, and play nothing / use hero power on turn 2.
Tempo and Mana Curve go hand to hand, if your opponent tries to create tempo by reducing his threats, punish him, if he doesn't play any threats, try to generate tempo yourself, evaluation of tempo is for example, when a Mage decides when to play his Ice Block and Arcane Intellect, it's not when he doesn't need the mana, that's idiotic, you always need the mana and if you don't you're playing the game wrong, you use it when you get punished the least for using those cards, period. If you have board advantage, and your opponent has to deal with your threat, then you don't need to apply more pressure and you cast those cards, you're setting up the late game at the cost of early game board presence, playing Arcane Intellect is literally creating Card Advantage since you use one card to draw 2, just like Thoughtsteal, just to name a few.
2.4) Random Number Generator and Luck. Yes, some love it, some hate it, but luck will always, always be involved in any good card game, Hearthstone is sure as hell, no exception. One card that I love is Mad Bomber, and sure, it can cause more harm than good, but it does indirect damage, it can create tempo, and it can shift the game, right there and then. Imagine that your opponent goes first, he plays Faerie Dragon (very common), you can play your normal 3/2 or 2/3 on turn 2 to answer it, the ball is in his side, now he can swing to your face with his dragon, and make you play catch up, or kill your card and play a new threat, rinse and repeat and you're playing catch up again. If you play Mad Bomber, and Mad Bomber hits Faerie Dragon twice, guess what just happened? You shifted the course of the game. In a worst case scenario, you take 3 damage to the face and earlier situation applies, that's RNG for you.
This is why you need to believe, often your opponent will play weapons, often your opponent will play minions with taunt, and often, you will surely capitalize on it, and because you took a small risk of putting a card in the deck, you will now sow amazing rewards.
Your opponent plays a Ironbark Protector, worst even, he plays Gruul, and as the noob he is, he plays Mark of the Wild on Gruul, he now has a mean 9/9 with taunt that gets +1/+1 in each turn, yours and his, next time Gruul swings, he will be an 11/11! But uh oh, you have The Black Knight.
This might seem scenario picking but it's not, I've had dozens if not hundreds of games where the opponent giving a minion taunt, lost him the game, The Black Knight is commonly in tons of decks. He is known for capitalizing on people that have taunts to stop aggro decks and Miracle Rogues, know what threats your opponent has, if you're playing vs Priest and it's past turn 10, be careful playing a 9/10 cost card as he will probably use Mind Control on it.
If you're a Warlock, you're at 12 health vs a Mage and you're trying to decide if you should use your hero power or not, remember he can have Pyroblast in his hand, and more often than not, he will have it! Leave your games to chance as least as possible. If you got 3 creatures on the field, vs Mage, and he still hasn't played two Flamestrike, be careful and leave some creatures in your hand to repopulate the board if/when he uses Flamestrike. Plan ahead, know your enemy, do not leave the game to luck. But how does this apply to you? well, let me tell you a story.
People will play spells, often, and some people will play spell heavy decks, Freeze Mage comes to mind as number one person who gets attached to another object by an inclined plane, wrapped helically around an axis if you stop them from using spells, and hence I present to you, Miracle Rogue by, someone, irrelevant.
I played this deck for 10 games, won 6 lost 4. After analyzing, I decided to remove Loatheb and add Harrison Jones. But wouldn't adding situational cases to the deck lower the quality of the deck? I mean, Loatheb stops most decks for one turn.
Yes, he is amazing, but past turn 5, I actually want to start setting up my win condition, not roughly slowing down my opponent, Harrison Jones has won me so many games already. In Miracle Rogue, card drawing and getting your combo faster is imperative! One good Harrison Jones wins the game for you right there and then, I had a game vs a Shaman today where I was in dire straits, until he plays his Doomhammer to leave me at 3 health. I won a game I was about to concede, just because I had Harrison in my hand.
Accept luck, accept RNG, accept that you will make mistakes, and accept that your opponent will, force them to make them, and then, punish them for it.
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2.5) Exceptions and counteracts. So now we understand that putting all eggs in one basket is bad, and generally speaking, buffs are bad, you're using a card, and then using another card or cards to buff the first one. The opponent in response might be able to to deal with that creature with only one card, and creating a small or severe Card Advantage for him, but mostly like everything else in the world, every rule has an exception.
Echoing Ooze + Blessing of Kings creates two 5/6's for two cards at the cost of 6 mana, they are somewhat, Chillwind Yeti on steroids with the exception that they can be silenced, but still, they are two instead of one, so this is technically, not a terrible way to spend your turn, although a bit gimmicky, but most combos are, it's like playing two 5/6's for 3 each, who can be silenced, but in the end, they're still two 5/6 for 3 each! Can't hate on that, however.. if the opponent has, let's say, a Counterspell or way worst, a Spellbender, it can backfire fast.
Same with Leeroy Jenkins and Cold Blood, this is a great finisher, 14 attack creature for 6 mana, given you use it at the right time, and realize this is a 3 (or more) card combo, so you might not be able to pull it off every time, but when you can, usually pays off.
Making these sort of combos is a bit more advanced since many times it might not pay off, and creature removal in higher ranks comes by the dozens, so you need to evaluate when an exception can be made, and when it's simply not worth keeping it in your deck.
2.6) Skill. "Well duh, skill is how good I am as a player". Correct, sadly, the way most people analyze skill is erroneous. Usually, your rank reflects how good you are as a player, usually, but this is not a mirror of how skilled you are, because eventually, if you don't improve yourself, you rank will, most definitely, drop. It's not getting to rank 1, it's maintaining and earning rank 1, it's not grabbing and overpowered netdeck, it's the ability to always perform good and make the least amount of mistakes regardless of the deck you are given.
I used to be paid money in League of Legends to get people in gold/diamond/challenger league depending on how much they paid me, and I felt bad by doing it, why? because I'd rather spend that time teaching them how to be better players and doing it themselves, because even if I get you to Challenger, eventually if that's not the rank you deserve to be as a player, you will fall, and fall, and fall, until you are at the rank you deserve, so eventually, when the deck you are using loses favor, you will drop down to what rank reflects your skill level.
Trust me when I say that your losses, will teach you more than your wins if you are paying attention, don't just lose and start playing the blame game, remove words such as luck, cheap, p2w and other diminishing words from your dictionary while reflecting on why you lost a game, understand why you lost, minimize the chances of it happening again, again, learn from your losses!
So keep in mind that if you feel that you're improving your gameplay, even while losing ranks, you're becoming a better player, and once your skill improves, so will your rank, season after season, you will get better and better, so remember that there are no shortcuts for success, if you want to be consistently good, improve yourself, not your deck.
"The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary".
3) Have Fun! Because if you don't, you will eventually quit, you won't enjoy your time in Hearthstone, and you will get an headache to boot. Take a break from Ranked sometimes, go play some funny decks in casual, go beat up on some bots or go try some ludicrous tactics on Naxxramas, hell, write a guide! Just make sure you enjoy your time in Hearthstone.
FINAL NOTES: This guide can/will be extended, so make sure you check back from time to time. Everything wrote in here is my opinion and understanding therefore of, so take it with a grain of salt. You can use this guide in your website without asking for my permission given you post a link back to this thread and give credit to hearthpwn.com and myself.
Hearthstone 101 Guide: Everything you need to know to become an expert!
Achieve Legendary rank with F2P Mage Deck by Trump
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You need to use becoming in the title otherwise post reserved for a more robust comment once i read through it all
Great article! Really important stuff in here.
Kinda tired of typing, taking a toll in my eyes, will resume later or finish up tomorrow.
Hearthstone 101 Guide: Everything you need to know to become an expert!
Achieve Legendary rank with F2P Mage Deck by Trump
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This
good guide. you say treat a bunch of times where i think you mean to say threat? no?
Awesome guide man. A ton of info that can really help players just getting a feel for the game.
Caution: Steep Incline (Ramp Druid)
Thank you for taking the time to write this. I admit that a lot of times I struggle with just when to play certain cards or combos and in retrospect it always seems like I played them a turn to early or late. Looking forward to reading the rest!
After reading it for a while I started to assume he had a French accent. :P
Thank you for this guide. I am still a noob and have lots of learning to do. Guides like this are very helpful and helps me to set up a stronger approach to my game play. The buffing gruel approach is exactly something I would do.
Oops... can you tell my mother language is not English? xP
Been meaning to write this for a while now, but it's very time consuming and mentally as well.
:(
Oh I know, I just explained some concepts inside other concepts, I knew I would create some confusion midways but as long as people understand the basics behind it, it's all good. Guess I'll try to be a bit more specific.
Not my definition, it's in the website of WotC and socially accepted in, many TCG websites, I just applied it to Hearthstone, a deck that doesn't race, that wins long races doesn't generate tempo? Tempo is just creating control so that the opponent has to answer to your threats and not the other way around.
"Tempo is a term used in Magic: The Gathering to indicate the advantage gained when a player is able to play more or stronger cards in a shorter period of time due to efficient resource allocation.[1] A companion concept to card advantage, it is sometimes defined as the means by which a player gains additional options or decreases the options possessed by the opponent by means not directly pertaining to respective numbers of playable cards."
Glad you liked it.
Only experience will help you not make those mistakes, doesn't mean you have to do those mistakes yourself, you can learn from streamers, and you can learn from your opponents, just as long as you learn, if an opponent makes a mistake, don't laugh, capitalize and take notes so you don't do the same.
Hearthstone 101 Guide: Everything you need to know to become an expert!
Achieve Legendary rank with F2P Mage Deck by Trump
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Thanks a lot, that guide helped me a lot! Without saying that i suddenly became a pro-gamer, i made my first game that i consider as a "controlled" play, knowing everything i did and why and thinking about what the opponent could play at which time and how to counter it, and mostly, what to play to minimize the chances to get countered or running out of answers, and it worked surprisingly well!
Great way you had to explain things with clarity and very helpful, thanks a lot and stay awesome bro!
I'm glad you feel that way, specially knowing that it improved your game so drastically. ;)
Hearthstone 101 Guide: Everything you need to know to become an expert!
Achieve Legendary rank with F2P Mage Deck by Trump
Achieve Legendary rank with F2P Shaman Deck by Trump
Yeah, derped there xD
Hearthstone 101 Guide: Everything you need to know to become an expert!
Achieve Legendary rank with F2P Mage Deck by Trump
Achieve Legendary rank with F2P Shaman Deck by Trump
Oh, I understand your point of view, and I agree with it, the problem is, you have a DEEP understanding of tempo hence you can deeply explain it, but if you word that to a beginning player, you're going to lose him in the first sentence, and that's why I gave examples instead.
"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough". That was my reasoning behind the lame explaining.
I don't want to use race because, health is just a resource, you need that resource to keep playing, but I don't want new players to misinterpret that and start thinking that having a 4/7 on turn 3 is good "because more damage early go face rawr!"
I liked your terminology guide, specially because you quote, critical points of TCG, I mean, everything that Mike Flores says about a TCG is usually the word of God, and explaining stuff as "Who's the beatdown?" is something that I plan on explaining futurely, among other stuff.
Hearthstone 101 Guide: Everything you need to know to become an expert!
Achieve Legendary rank with F2P Mage Deck by Trump
Achieve Legendary rank with F2P Shaman Deck by Trump
Yeah, I made a few changes to avoid using over-complicated terms, maybe I make a Hearthstone 102 eventually? Only the future knows... not really... maybe... it's classified. ;)
I think I have to eventually, there's too many players going for the face when they should trade, and vice versa, and losing games because of it.
Hearthstone 101 Guide: Everything you need to know to become an expert!
Achieve Legendary rank with F2P Mage Deck by Trump
Achieve Legendary rank with F2P Shaman Deck by Trump
In sum, this ^
Tempo just means that you dictate the pace of the game, and the terms in which it's played, a control deck can force an aggro deck to trade, instead of mindlessly aiming for the face, having your opponent having to respond to your plays and not the other way around, is controlling the Tempo of the game.
Hearthstone 101 Guide: Everything you need to know to become an expert!
Achieve Legendary rank with F2P Mage Deck by Trump
Achieve Legendary rank with F2P Shaman Deck by Trump
This is getting really interesting. May be I should do my own little guide too. But I hate writing essays >.<.