True story: the highest rank I’ve ever gotten to in Hearthstone before is Rank 12. And you know what? That’s always been okay with me. I admire the people who can reach the higher ranks, and even get that elusive Legend card back, but I’d never aspired to be them. I’ve always played Hearthstone casually, just for fun, and outside of that one errant season I’ve never really climbed the ladder. Until now. With the start of the brand new year, and a brand new Standard mode, I thought it would be fun to see how high I, as casual player, can climb. I recognize that with the meta still in flux and the season being halfway over already, it’s probably not the *ideal* time for a ladder climb, but this is an experiment for fun, so let’s see where it takes us!
The Plan:
Start at Rank 20, with 0 stars. Play 10 games a day, for about a week. Try to win. See what happens!
Finding the Right Fit
It took me three full days to settle on a deck. Three days! That’s almost half my total time for this first test. You know what happened during those three days? I bounced back and forth between winning and losing and gained no ground. Three days in, and I was still right where I started. Next time, I’ll learn from my mistake and pick my deck out in advance.
Decks I tried:
Kibler's Toki & Arugal Elemental Mage
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Minion (23)
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Ability (6) | Playable Hero (1) |
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The very first deck I tried was based off this. I opened both Archmage Arugal (I can't be the only one who keeps accidentally calling him arugula right?) and Toki, Time-Tinker on the first day of the expansion so I wanted to try this deck out. But I only played a few games before switching. I will definitely pick this deck up again later as it was fun to play.
Tess Greymane Rogue
Next I tried a hurriedly built, ill thought out deck to try out Tess Greymane, who I also opened. Unsurprisingly, I did not have much success. However, since then I’ve encountered several Rogues playing something similar that I’ve just been calling Copy Rogue and they did a much better job of putting a deck together. If you're interested in giving it a try, here's one that looks like what I've been seeing:
Minion (18)
Ability (12)
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Quest Warrior/Odd Quest Warrior
Last year, I built a quest warrior deck that I really liked and played a lot. So for my next attempt, I used a standardized version of my old deck...and then when I realized that Baku the Mooneater would probably help a lot, made an odd only version. It saw some success but not a ton. I did encounter others versions of this idea while playing, so clearly I wasn’t the only one who thought this. In fact, I saw a lot more quest warrior then I did before this expansion released. Ultimately though, I tossed it aside in my continuing quest for the one deck to rule them all.
Quest Mage, but Not THAT Quest Mage
My penultimate attempt at finding the right deck was a standardized version of an old quest mage deck I'd built. It’s just a deck that happens to have the quest in it! It’s not THAT quest mage deck, I promise.
Lady Priest
I eventually settled on a priest deck that runs Lady in White. I like playing Priest — probably the class I played most last year. It finally got me some traction, but it definitely has its weaknesses. Since I'd seen it could win, and I had heard it's best to stick with one deck, this was the one I stuck with. The deck below has the same general idea (and now that I look at it, I think I need to try Wyrmguard in mine) :
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Minion (20)
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Ability (10)
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Lesson Learned: Pick a deck and stick to your guns. This was a hard one for me (despite the advice I’ve seen out there that sticking to the same deck is key) but I did it — once I found the right one, of course.
Beware the Tilt
In a ladder climb, if you are casual player like me, you are likely to go on a losing streak. Be mindful of diminishing returns, when you go on a losing streak you can start to feel frustrated and you just want to keep going to try and break the bad streak. Resist the urge, friends! At some point it just makes sense to step back, take a break, and come back to the climb later. You’ll play better when you are less frustrated, trust me (I had to learn this lesson the hard way). I mean it, ignore this at your own risk!
Lesson Learned: Cooler heads prevail. When you start going on a losing streak, and are feeling salty every game (c’est moi), it’s probably a good idea to take a break.
Knowing What You're Up Against
In all my matches, I only played against two druid decks. I know this is only one player's limited experience within the game, but still, definitely lower than we were seeing before the new year. The class I most often encountered by far was Hunter, often times with Baku Face Hunter decks and Spell Hunter decks. Some other fun facts from my encounters:
- There are a lot of aggro decks on the ladder right now. The aforementioned Hunter decks but also a lot of aggro paladin.
- Shudderwocks all over the place. I played 13 games against Shamans. Guess how many weren't Shudderwock decks? ONE. Never in my life have I been so happy to see a Murloc deck.
- Druid and Warrior were the two least played classes I saw, in that order, with Mage and Rogue tying for third place.
- I saw a lot of decks, and different classes, playing both Baku the Mooneater and Genn Greymane.
This week, with the meta still being in flux and the expansion just being released, isn’t the best indicator of how most ladder climbs will go. I saw a lot of experimental decks as people were trying out their new cards, so it wasn’t always easy to pin down what they were going for. That being said, it wasn’t all a guessing game. The majority of decks I came up against I was able to quickly place into clear categories, if not outright ID the exact deck they were using. Below are some of the most common (or something very similar) decks I encountered:
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Minion (19)
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Ability (7)
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Weapon (4)
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Minion (17)
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Ability (8)
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Weapon (5)
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Minion (26)
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Ability (4)
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Priests were a little harder to pin down. I saw a lot of variety in the decks that were being played. However, the one above is my best guess at the Priest deck I saw the most often.
Lesson Learned: You will see a lot of the same decks on the ladder and you will probably come to dread seeing a particular class at the start of the match, regardless of the fact that you don’t know which deck they are running yet (looking at you, Shaman). Which brings me to…
The Shudderwock in the Room
By now, you all have surely heard about (or formed your own opinions about) Shudderwock. I will reserve judgement for now, as I suspect that could be the scope of an entire other article, but this deck did give me a spot of trouble.
I wasn’t seeing Shudderwock decks very often, one or two a day at most. Until day six came along. All of a sudden every other deck was one and it sent me on a losing streak that quickly spiraled out of control.
I know aggro decks can beat Shuddy pretty easily, but I’d also learned that the best way to climb the ladder was to stick to one deck, so I wasn't sure what to do. I beat them occasionally and until then, wasn’t seeing the deck very often so I didn’t think I should switch. My deck is slow, so it’s weak to the Shuddy combo. It definitely started to make me feel like I had to play an aggro deck in order to continue advancing, but since the week was almost up, I stuck it out. Luckily, the last day didn't have a single Shudderwock deck, but it may be something for me to consider moving forward.
Some Fun Moments
- When The Lich King gave me Death Grip and Death Grip pulled Shudderwock out of my opponent’s deck, rendering their Shuddy deck useless, in my very first (but unfortunately, not last) game against a Shudderwock Shaman.
- When Chameleos transformed into Sulfuras the turn after my opponent Warrior completed their quest.
- Immediately after making a comment about the distinct lack of Rogues (I hadn’t played one in two days and only two total so far) I played one…and then three more in a row! Speak of the devil, and the devil shall appear. Isn’t that how the saying goes?
- I played against a Hunter deck that used a card I hadn’t seen before, Toxmonger, to incredible effect. It was similar to, if not exactly, like this Disguised Toast deck:
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Minion (20)
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Ability (9)
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Playable Hero (1) |
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At the end of my first week trying to climb the ladder, I only reached Rank 18 (insert sad face emoji and crowd booing here). I ended up playing more than 10 games on all days except the last day, with an average of about 13 games a day. It felt like a lot, and I’m not sure if the average casual player has enough time to invest in that many games, so that may be something to adjust in the experiment going forward.
The biggest lesson I learned is that this is harder than I expected. I’m used to switching decks when the mood strikes, and crafting cards for fun more often than for their competitive value. So this has definitely been a big adjustment for me. I also feel like I have a lot to learn. At what point do you give up on a deck that has been losing? And how do you choose a better deck so that you have success on the next attempt? These are all things I’ll be working on as I continue.
What about you guys? For my fellow casual players, have you ever tried to climb the ladder before? Did you find success or fail miserably? What tips helped you the most? Is 10 games a day way too many, not enough, or right on point?
And for my seasoned ladder climbing readers, what’s the number one thing you keep in mind when starting a new season? What advice would you give a casual player? Let us know in the comments below and don’t forget to check back at the end of the month to see how I did at the season’s end!
Lady in White will never be good, though the decks running her look alright.
"casual" player that owns every card ever made...sounds like a legit experiment with conclusions that are applicable to the average casual player.
Again, "casual" doesn't mean free-to-play. It mean casual, as in occasionally playing.
"Again," noone said it didn't....My comment has to do with how many of the casual players splash out enough cash to own every card.
Crafting 7 legendaries "to have fun" is not something the average player ("casual" or not) does.
I saw multiple comments stating that casual doesn't mean free-to-play and this isn't the first article in which I saw it, but whatever, no one said it.
Also, he can be a casual player and craft 7 legendaries if he wants. I'm free-to-play, do not own all the cards, but I do end up crafting high-legend meta decks just to know how they play. I might not have to anymore with the deck borrowing thing in friendly challenges, I'll see. Obviously, there aren't many free-to-play players that can do that, but here I am.
That being said, I don't find it so weird if someone splashes some cash and gets close to what I can do. Therefore, I don't understand your comment.
My original comment was pretty much saying this:
~The experience shared by the author sounds nice, but its an example of having fun in hs while using a tactic (crafting 5+ decks with 7+ Legendaries) that is not viable for a staggering amount of players trying to figure out what deck is the best for them.
I never suggested that he should be limited to more or less than 7 legendaries. Nor did i have an issue with him crafting exactly 7.
I do not think there's any tactic viable to the majority, since everyone is limited to whatever they get in their packs. You CAN dust your garbage to get better cards, but you need to be smart about it and craft what is good with your other cards. The best tactic is basically play more arena and get good to get more stuff out of your time, so you get more resources to craft whatever you want.
Great post, entertaining to read and well thought out!
I really like the spirit of this experiment, I would be very interested in hearing updates on your progress in the future. I think 10 games sounds good, that should give you enough games over a week to make meaningful conclusions as well as improve your game play. Card games can be very tilting, so stepping away when you feel that salt creeping in is key to a good climb.
Finding a deck that you are comfortable with is also very important to climbing, stringing those winstreaks together will really speed up the ride to rank 5. People will disagree with me on this, but I feel that you should almost never concede even if the game seems lost, people disconnect, misplay, and even just get really unlucky. Happy climbing and best of luck.
10 games a day sounds like a solid plan if you stick to this methodology.
Many players will tell you that achieving legend, or even rank 5, is just all about the number of games you play. That is completely untrue.. The only relevance that # of games has to do with achieving the rank you want is the minimum number needed.
Playing when youre winning and logging off when youre losing is a recipe for success. Playing when youre tilted or getting bad matchups does nothing but waste your time and effort. Slow and steady wins the race, and you will find that you can achieve the rank youre going for VERY quickly when you use this methodology.
Just stick to even or odd pally and randomly play cards and you will sooner or later hit rank 5. No joke.
I'm usually caught up in a lot of school work so I don't get to play as often. Last time I tried was during the holiday season with the Aluneth tempo mage, I couldn't get beyond rank 12 :/ but that was probably because there were a lot more control warlocks on those ranks back then. I stuck to the don't switch decks rule, but maybe I should've in this case
Aluneth mage actually have a good matchup to control warlock https://hsreplay.net/archetypes/11/tempo-mage#tab=matchups
I generally go to 15, maybe a third of the time to 10. Been to 9 twice and that is as far as i've been. In any case, I have been playing as usual, doing my quests every day, etc, and I have yet to see a single shudderwock.
Now I feel better about having reached rank 5 in April for the first time
noob .
So respectless, rank 12 is also no achievement to me, but just saying "noob" is pretty low.
Semi casual player here been playing since naxxramas, usually for me it's rank 5 each month then arena for the rest of month, climbed to legend once, one thing I have to admit is that going from Rank 5 to legend is very time consuming, I climbed to legend back in the days where control warrior (money warrior) were at his prime, it had one strictly favored meta deck back then which was freeze mage, pretty much all you had to do is armor up and u win, and also T7 hunter was pretty popular too and it was easy match up as well, so at least at that time I knew by playing control warrior I have two favorable match up already, then I will simply study my deck and make sure I know the weakness of the deck against other decks, such as hand lock was pretty popular as well then I know I had to save an execute or shield slam early game. or against shaman then I need to save a brawl ,etc.
For current meta I think its sorta like rock paper scissor, each of the tier 1 deck has its favored or not favored deck, then you "should" stick with a deck you like/comfortable with, then stick with it and study it, know your match up well, I know some people prefer the argo rush decks for fast turnaround, but for me I think having to think about the game and play the deck that you know inside out and win, it just feels better than a robotic rush deck.
My highest was Rank 2 when the ladder did not have the stops at every 5 ranks. Mostly I have only gotten to Rank 5 and then lost my way back to rank 10.
Dedication and the willingness to give up on b**ching about p2p when it's really f2p. Keys to winning on ladder lol
Just play an aggro deck untill rank 10 at least... Playing control on low ranks is frustrating.