Hearthpwn

I was just posting some help for a new player and it got me thinking: should new players buy the first wing of the two adventures rotating out of standard?

As far as I know, when adventures rotate out, the become unavailable for purchasing, but the cards can be crafted. There are two main arguments for new players buying old adventures:

- The can experience the PVE content. I had good times on some of those, and they can even have a educational effect on new players, especially some Heroic bosses (no, Karazan, I´m not talking about you). My knowledge is that the current policy is that content will not be available by any other means on the future, but I think Blizzard might rethink that some day.

- If they are ever interested on a big/full wild collection, it is cheaper to get those cards on the adventure than crafting. I had a blast playing Control's Egg Druid on wild last season, but I would never craft a couple of Echoing Oozes for it.

The main argument against is the waste of gold if the players happens to not play wild any time soon.

This will not be an issue in 2018, since everyone gets the free intro to Karazan (I believe rotation is a big factor on that design decision). The good think about LoE and BRM is that the first wing has some powerfull and cool cards (Reno, Djinni, Peddler, Scarab / Emperor, Grim Patron, Quick Shot, Gang Up).

What do you guys think?

Welcome to Heartstone, pal!

On the subject of learning material, I suggest to all newcomers Trump's series on the basics, if you have not watched yet. It shows some nice basic decks while teching important concepts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KjtRokhpvM&list=PLvEIxIeBRKSjprrvlbAcbVjzHsnH9PjDX

The first "goal" you can try to set to yourself is to defeat the Inkeeper on the expert level. There are a few "hidden" quests you get extra goodies, you can see al in: http://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Quest#General - This says you still get the legendary C´Thun and 2 Beaconers of Evil if you open an Old Gods pack, I am not 100% sure it is still on, but you should try to do it, even for a newby 100 G is not that much.

The first collection management tip I give you is: never desenchant any cards you do not own more than 2 of. You will feel tempted to do so if you get a legendary or epic you think is bad, but, on the long run, it will hurt your collection (pesonal experience: dusted a Far Sight I saw as a bad card, didn´t get to play some cool control shamman stuff).

The second think you should do is to get a free pack every week from Tavern Brawl. Even on the constructed ones, you should be able to win a game after a couple of losses.

The third is to maximize your gold from quests. You shoul always reroll 40g quests and avoid completing a 40g quest unless you already have 3 of those or is somthing inavoidable (eg 3 wins). I did some math, and I feel like you should also reroll the 50g, but that is more debatable: http://www.hearthpwn.com/forums/hearthstone-general/general-discussion/183442-quests-how-to-maximise-gold-earning

On the subject of debatable stuff, I just realized that it might be a good idea to save money to but the first wing of Blackrock Mountain and League of Explorers. Those expansions will rotate out and, if Blizzard keeps their policy, the adventures will not be available for newer players. It might be too hard to spend your hard-earned gold on cards that will soon rotate out, but if you have the first wing, you will be able to buy the others eventually and experience the PVE content, which I find nice. This will give you a more complete collection on the long run, but will hurt you bad on the beginning. Totally up to you to decide.

I didn´t play that much arena on my first year of Heartstone, but people say it is the fastest way of growing your collection. I won´t give you advices on that matter because I don´t know the average winrate of newbies on Arena and I don´t feel confortable telling you to do something that might cause you to have negative return on your 150G investment. Anyone can help with that?

If you decide to spend any real money on Heartstone, I would advise you to get the Welcome Bundle first, since it gives you a nice return on your money, with a lot of classic packs and a "free" classic legendary. Besides that, there are also pre-orders bonus when expansions release. Depending on where you live, there is some kind of Amazon Coin promotion, but I never managed to use it here in Brazil.

You should also try to add people to play agains (feel free to add me!) and to watch/help you on your plays. Debating plays is always good, especially with people more experienced than you.

The final advice is: hava fun. Heartstone is a card game, your main goal should be feeling good while playing. It is harsh on new people and very unforgiving, even more if you play Ranked Ladder, but you shouldn't forget you are playing it to have fun. Don´t become another salty guy angry for not reaching Rank 10 on your first month of play.

The first think I´d do is to make your collection public in Heartpwnd, for people to be able to help you further.

It seems that you are going for a Miracle Rogue style of deck. It is one of my favorites playstiles since I oppened a Edwin VanCleef in a pack. It is a strongbut hard to play deck. You should be able to reach 10 as is, but it won´t be easy, specially in the begining of the season.

Some cards seem to have less sinergy with your deck:

- Does Lotus Agents gives you good cards consistently? Is a card that I find too slow, can be killed by 2 or 3 drops.

- Daring reporter is a 4/4 for 4 if the opponent kills it on his turn. Since you have no forced draw mechanics (Coldlight Oracle), I´d argue that even a Yeti can be better in most games, even if the Reporter can shine once every few games.

- Does Arcanosmith help you protect more important minnions? I can see the benefit of having a Taunt and another body for Cold Blood on the following turn, but there may be other options.

I can´t see your collection, but some cards I would go for during this season. Have in mind that I don´t think you shoul craft them, since you should keep most of your dust:

- Cold Blood and Conceal. Having 2 of each is very good for miracle-style rogues.

- Red Mana Wyrm: common, can fit the same spot as Questing Adventurer, as well as being a little harder to kill (can survive on an empty board on 5 even if not stealth sometimes) and growing faster (2 attack/spell).

- Arcane Giants: you have at least the 1st and 2nd wings of Karazan. If you intend on acquiring the others, the hight number of spells on the deck can make your giants really cheap and add another threat on the board, besides the Teacher and Questings.

I intend to run a more refined Rogue list this season, feel free to add me to talk.

OP's post was, indeed, clickbaity and misleading, but that is no excuse for ofenses.

Lest break your point down:

a) You (as most, me included) assume Kazakus' potions are evelly distributed. That is a fair assumption.

b) There is a 64% chance of being offeredan especific effect for 1 mana potions and 58% for 5 and 10.

c) For the 5 and 10, there is 70% chance of getting at least one of AoE and Transform. Keep in mind that transform might not be what you are looking for on 5, since its not an Area effect.

Given the statistics alone, most people that need an AoE should get at least one effect. I see two problems with the OP:

i. there might be Selection Bias, which means you only remember the times Kazakus didn´t deliver and forget the times you got the exact perfect potion. After you begin to suspect the "nerf", there comes the Confirmation Bias, which makes you pay attention only to the instances in which Kazakus does what you expect (act "rigged").

ii. Personal experience is not a good way to do science. There are both the Biases problems, as well as most likelly a too small of a sample size. What I would reccomend as an experience is to collect data from a couple of streammers who play a lot of Kazakus, in real games, and compare the options offered w/ a couple of variables (class played, board state, # of minnions dead, quality of minnions dead, etc), to see if the distribution is random or if any variables affect it. The alternative is to play a friend, each cast 100 kazakus and compare the results. That is a less robust experiment, but it will most likelly show that the potions are, indeed, random, and you are only on a streak of bad luck.

To answer that question, it would be usefull to know how many cards you have missing from each kind of pack, which decks you like or would like to play and what cards are you missing from them.

That said, as a rule of thumb, if you have a mostly incomplete collection, a Classic pack should do you more good on the long run, since they (at least for now) will be forever playable in Standard.

The case for MSoG packs is that there are some really strong commons and rares, and they have more than an year of play before rotating to Wild.

If you enjoy Wild, on the other hand, you should buy packs which will rotate out the soonner and will not be available. I personally think Old Gods are stronger than Grand Tournament.

Anyway you decide to go, there are two things to keep in mind: There is a 40-pack pitty timefor legendaries in each pack type, so if you bought packs of any expansion before, you should keep on that expansion untill you hit a legendary, because even if its one you dont want to use, its a lot of dust. Besides that, the chance of any specific Epic or Legendary is pretty low across the board, so you should focus on getting all the commons and most of the rares in any given expansion trough packs, and craft any specific epic or legendary you want to play.

I was just listening to Kliber's design insights (link). I agree with him in a number of topics, and people are discussing the video on another topic (link), but I'd like to discuss something he almost said, but left out.

Kliber mentioned how arena discorages trying to get synergistic decks, because you might just end up with a terrible or even unplayable card (in his exemple, an early Ancient Watcher, with no silence or taunt enabler). What do you guys think about the possibility of having a 35 card draft, from which you choose 30 cards in the end?

That would off course have an impact on average deck level, since people could just draft the 35 "heartarena-best" cards and choose the 30 "curvestone-best" amongst them, but at least it could encourage people to try to get that one or two dragons, or that Auctioneer, try to get some synergy on the dack and, if that does not pay out, you just don't take the "worst" card for you final deck.

Another more complicated option could even be a "sidebord" option, with 1 or 2 minutes pre-game to switch between the 5 extras and your deck. That would make situational cards less "dead". You could opt-out your Eather of Secrets against a druid, and put it back on if your next game is against a Paladin. I don't think this is a good idea, since it would make arena games take longer, specially for less experienced players who would not know how to properlly use a sideboard, but I'd like to hear what you think about it. (also, it would cost more development time...).

It depende on how long since last legendary. If its more than 10, 15 packs, I would buy until pitty time gives you some legendary.

After that, I woudnt buy more packs, due to small chance of new cards.

You can Read more on: http://www.hearthpwn.com/forums/hearthstone-general/general-discussion/183561-you-plan-to-grind-gold-for-new-expansion-mayby?page=2#c41

There are 64 quest, and the average gold return is almost 51,56, therefore, rerolling a 50 g quest should, on average, give you and extra 1,56 gold. There are a few thinks that should be considered on a personal basis:

1) If you do your quests dailly, you could argue that you have a slight higher average rerol value, since you have free slots and can try to rerol again on the next day if you get a crappy 40. If you do this, your first quest of the next day will increase in value to 51,74 (outstanding 0,18 gold), since quests cannot be repeated.

2) If you play more than 3 games a day every day, you have the risk of rolling an unskipable 40 quest, such as Win 3 games or Deal 100 damage. Depending on the number of games and deck, you could also say that Destroy 40 mininons, Play 40 spells, 30 cheap minnions or 20  big minnions are also unskippable.

Therefore, a rerol on a 50 Gold will have a 24,6% (16 out of 65) of chance to give you extra Gold, and the expected benefit for that quests is the sum of expected values (Gold-50)/65, or 5,23 gold.

A "unskippable" 40G quest looses you 10 gold, and the chance of getting any of them is 1 in 65. The expected loss is 10/65 times the number of quests you are not able to skipp due to your particular playstile, amount of games a day and decks available. For this loss to surpass the 5,23 expected gold gain of the "high value" quests, you should have 5,23/(10/65) = 29. Since there are not that many 40G quests, my conclusion, contrary to what I have been doing, is that you should ALWAYS rerol 50G if you have the slots to do so. Of course that does not take into account personal risk aversion, its up to you , but, if quests are really random, you will get more gold on the long run reroling them.

For reference, the quests I used. Feel free to check my math, specially because if I am correct, I should be rerroling those 50s!

That is only true If the average includes the amount of quests in each gold return and If the distribution is fully Random. I have never seen a list w/ the new quests to know how many 40s, 60s and 100s.

The main difference I see is Pirates synergise with weapons, which have double synergy with aggro decks: they both trade well life for board control and have a higher damage output per mana compared to spells, alongside 2 or 3 turns.

Murlocs have stronger synergies, but only with other murlocs, and its really hard to keep Minions on the field.

Patches is a great News addition to Pirates, since it makes it easyer to have a pirate on latter turns by letting you cast 2 guys on 1, but aggro pirate was a thing before. See Trumps F2P in Old Gods If you dont belive me.

Battletag: Arturvf89#1577

Region: NA

Trade only: yes

I think a good pararel with Magic that Hearthstone applyes in near perfection is the use of Keywords.

Being a digital cardgame, the popup charts help with keeping it "clean" and simple.

Some special cards with too unic effects can be longer than that, but I think most well designer cards can fit in 4 lines of English.

I wouldn´t start with Druid, if I were you. Druid has some interesting archetipes, including C'thun, Jade/Miracle and Malygos, but none of those are playable without core expansive cards. The main advantage of Druid is to ramp and mana-cheat, but without some big epics and legends, you will be ramping towards an Ironbark Protector, which is only OK.

If you decide to go with Druid anyways, Cenarious benefits from token-generation, such as Living Roots (common, TGT), Power of the Wild (common, Classic), Violet Teacher (rare, Classic).

There are some powerfull Druid tools that are rotating out next year, such as [card]Raven Idol/card] (LoE, last wing), which you would miss right now but may not be worth the effort to get, even tough Explorers has four (Finley, Bran, Elise and Reno) very nice legendariesthat will be missed in Standard.

It might be a good idea to sync your collecion here so that people can advice you on what to build.

Hi, Haardsteen, I´ll try to help here.

I played as a F2P from April 2014 until the Old Gods, and then purshased both Old Gods and Gadgetzan pre-releases (have also all adventures bought in gold). I have lots of fun with Heartstone, especially after the rotation, since I have access  to more diverse cardbase and decks.

When I started, mechs were all the rage, and I soon built a MechMage, with which I played some months, reaching up to rank 10, if I remember correctly. I would advice you to find a deck that has three main carachteristics:

- you enjoy playing, since in the begining you will not have the cardbase to change decks every other game

- is cheap or has a cheap core, so that you wont have to ivnest much in it

- is relativelly competitive, so that you can win, climb the ladder to better rewards, get gold and have more fun

Most people will advice you not to craft any commons and rares, and that makes mathematical sense, since you are likelly to get those from packs soon. That said, I do not regreat the dust "lost" when I oppened duplicate Azure Drakes or Mechwarpers, because having a strong cheap deck made the game more fun for me on the first months and got me better rewards and gold.

When I (and all somewhat experienced players) started, the "Welcome Bundle" was not a thing. If you plan on pouring any cash on Heartstone, you should do that first, since the class legendary you get may dictate wich class you will have more resources on the begining.

As far as decks go, I think the pirate stuff is the way to go in terms of cheap and efficient. You can go a long way without crafting Patches or any epics. If you want to learn more about the concept, Trump had a F2P road to legend during the launch of the Old Gods with a pirate warior. I lacks some (important) Gadgetzan cards,but the concept is the same: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvEIxIeBRKSiM5SWHIU3FY-MKqhZOvrOR.

Another option is the always-reliable Zoolock, since its core is based the Warlock hero power, not any particular card, and you can use all the cheap and efficient minnions you got, replacing them for more "optmized" ones as you go. This deck tought me a great deal about board control, efficient trades, playing around board clears, risk taking w/ taps, etc.

The more important is to play and have fun. If you want any other tips, you can add me and we can play some games. Arturvf89#1577

Got beat by a Dirty Rat playing a N'Zoth Rogue, due to excelent play by my opponent playing the rat on T9, playing around me having the old god on my hand. It looks like a great card, which requires a lot of experience and a bit of luck to play correctly.

I don't see the discard mechanics as inherrently bad, they have a nice spot, specially in control decks, in other card games, such as MGT, where there are "discard random", "discard from deck" and even "look at hand, choose and discard" cards. I agree that those are different games, in MGT you have ways of interacting with the opponent on their turn, block creatures, etc, but the way I see, the rant is more of "I don´t know this mechanich and don´t know how to play with/around it" than "it´s a bad mechanic".

I think we should be more open to new mechanics (even the new pirate stuff summoned from the deck, maybe...), especially on the first days of the expansion. You will get screwed by thinks you don´t expect, but he way I see, thats part of the geratness of card games, trying to use all the different mechanics to their best.

To try to make my point, I'll bring Frodan's Bog Creeper Shmman, from a official championship. The guy used some sleeping mechanics to wipe some 3-0s againts top competitors, due to the fact that nobody expected him to play those cards. It was a deck that isn't great or even consistent on some points of the metagame, but Frodan was rewarded for the hability to read the game and play accordinlly. (link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0CUqi-OfwU)