Hearthpwn

Quote from EveningWood >>

New players misjudge this card so much, it's actually one of the best hunter cards and would see play in ton of other aggro/tempo/midrange decks if it was somehow neutral. It stems from the fact that you generally don't need all 30 cards in your hunter decks to win so you're fine with discarding and the fact that they are mostly made of "non-essential" cards. Some clear examples of those are alley cat, kindly grandmother, rat pack, secrets (depending on the matchup), unleash the hounds (against control), infested wolf, golakka crawler, fiery bat, in other classes it's fire fly, n'zoth's first mate, southsea deckhand, bloodsail corsair... basically most early game and some situational cards. You usually don't want to draw those after like turn 5, you want to draw key cards like highmane, kill command, leeroy, call of the wild, tundra rhino, bonemare, hunter DK, etc.

Since the non-essential cards outnumber the essential cards in decks, it's not unlikely to have tracking give you a choice of 1 essential and 2 non-essential cards. Something like alley cat, highmane, rat pack, in which case you draw a card that you really want and discard 2 cards that are really not that useful past turn 4-5. That's pretty amazing for only 1 mana. Even if you get a choice of 2 essential cards, it's not always that big of a deal, you don't need all of them to win. Getting 3 essential cards is extremely unlikely and getting 3 non-essentials is still pretty good since you get rid of 3 bad draws.

TL;DR Discarding cards from your deck is statistically a good thing in most non-control decks. You want to get rid of your early game and increase the odds of drawing into mid/late game. The matchups almost never go into fatigue anyway.

Side-note: These statistics are exactly the reason why Gnomeferatu is fairly bad, in most matchups (that don't go into fatigue) you have a bigger chance to discard your opponent's non-essential card than an essential one so you're actually helping your opponent to draw into his bigger and more impactful stuff.

 Thank you for the explanation! I have never used this before, it sounded really bad.

I feel like I understand it much better now and I will give it a fair shot. :)

New players misjudge this card so much, it's actually one of the best hunter cards and would see play in ton of other aggro/tempo/midrange decks if it was somehow neutral. It stems from the fact that you generally don't need all 30 cards in your hunter decks to win so you're fine with discarding and the fact that they are mostly made of "non-essential" cards. Some clear examples of those are alley cat, kindly grandmother, rat pack, secrets (depending on the matchup), unleash the hounds (against control), infested wolf, golakka crawler, fiery bat, in other classes it's fire fly, n'zoth's first mate, southsea deckhand, bloodsail corsair... basically most early game and some situational cards. You usually don't want to draw those after like turn 5, you want to draw key cards like highmane, kill command, leeroy, call of the wild, tundra rhino, bonemare, hunter DK, etc.

Since the non-essential cards outnumber the essential cards in decks, it's not unlikely to have tracking give you a choice of 1 essential and 2 non-essential cards. Something like alley cat, highmane, rat pack, in which case you draw a card that you really want and discard 2 cards that are really not that useful past turn 4-5. That's pretty amazing for only 1 mana. Even if you get a choice of 2 essential cards, it's not always that big of a deal, you don't need all of them to win. Getting 3 essential cards is extremely unlikely and getting 3 non-essentials is still pretty good since you get rid of 3 bad draws.

TL;DR Discarding cards from your deck is statistically a good thing in most non-control decks. You want to get rid of your early game and increase the odds of drawing into mid/late game. The matchups almost never go into fatigue anyway.

Side-note: These statistics are exactly the reason why Gnomeferatu is fairly bad, in most matchups (that don't go into fatigue) you have a bigger chance to discard your opponent's non-essential card than an essential one so you're actually helping your opponent to draw into his bigger and more impactful stuff.

This is one of the best explanations of the card I've read. I'm pretty sure there are YouTube videos about it, but I just wanted a quick explanation, and thankfully Google directed me here. I've just begun to use Hunter more seriously for the first time and was wondering if I was using this card correctly. The side note about Gnomeferatu is also helpful, actually, and supports this interesting view of the card. Tracking, in the end, is an all-around great card, valuable in both the early and late stages of a match (I was wondering about this question and you answered very well). Thank you!

OKAY I have finally found its twin brother! 

At the Blizzcon championships today, I learned that if the opponent played Beneath the Grounds, you can end up discovering one of the Ambush! when playing Tracking, and it being discarded does not summon the Nerubian on the opponent's field. Interesting.

Discard 2 Call of the Wild and get 1 Wisp

Tracking: Burn 2 other cards to draw 1 and possibly loose key parts of your deck!

Most people seem to misunderstand, and therefore, misuse this card.. leading to gross underestimation of what it can do.  Tracking is not something you play just cause you have an extra 1 mana to burn.  E.g. People who play it on turn 1 are almost always making a mistake.  Tracking should be used as a way to dig for an answer so you can maintain tempo/control of the board, or finish your opponent.  I've used it countless times to dig for that Ironbeak Owl/Kill Command/Unleash the Hounds/Quick Shot/etc I needed to win the game before the opponent could recover.  When used that way, (properly), Tracking is quite powerful and usually worth running 1 of in a deck.

Why did Blizzard changed Ysera from "draw a Dream Card" to "add a Dream Card to your hand" as Chromaggus came out, but Tracking still says "draw one" and doesn't trigger Chromaggus.

I see the use of Tracking, but psychologically I've always disliked the idea of burning two cards to get a third. If I put a card in my deck it means I wanted to use it, not to discard it in favour of something else. If I want to draw a card, I can Flare instead.

tracking best card draw for 1 mana if you need to find an answer

This used to have a really nasty glitch associated with it until the last patch. Basically, if you were to use this with Wild Pyromancer and Acolyte of Pain on your side of the board, you could make it so that your opponent never got a turn again unless they disconnected and reconnected. Thankfully, that glitch is no more.

As for the card itself? Pretty good, I'd say. Compare with the MTG card Strategic Planning.