So I decided to get involved with Hearthstone and have been messing around with it since I found out there was an Android version I could play on my Nexus. I play on both PC and tablet but every time I've gone to play against other players I've been getting destroyed. Of the thirty or so matches I've had so far, I have won one and that was because the other player quit early on. I could really do with some tips. I'm still going through getting some of the basic cards for each class and I'm using the deck builder tool when building my deck. But I'm still facing against players that are absolutely destroying me.

I'm reading a fair share of guides and whatnot from the web but I'd love to have some tips from the Giant Bomb community for a new player. Not being able to win any matches so far as meant that daily quests go uncompleted. One other thing, are the solo adventures worth investing in once I get the hang of all this? Curious to know what they're like.

Thanks in advance. :D

So the big thing with HS after you get the basics down is that 95-99% of players netdeck so you have to figure out decks that beat the 3 or 4 decks on the ladder at any given moment. As far as what barebones basic decks do the best, probably Paladin, Druid, and maybe Mage; you could probably get around a 45% win rate with any of these with a handful of rares. For whatever reason I just can't get into HS anymore (might have something to do with every player taking 2 minutes to do the most basic things while playing carbon copy decks) outside of arena so Blackrock is a no go for me aside from getting the obligatory Thaurissaun, however I feel Naxx was the best content in the game and still has numerous playable/excellent cards to get there (the Blackrock cards seem to be underwhelming for the most part).

I'm in the same boat you are but I've had much better luck it seems. First, make sure you get all the basic cards for your hero. That way you at least have a clear way of beating an opponent even if that way depends a little on luck.Second, focus on getting good with 1-2 heroes. I'm not saying that getting good with all of them is not a good idea but jumping back and forth is not going to help you. After that, keep playing and learn why you lost. I don't have a winning record by any means but I know I lose because sometimes I focus too much on spells and not bringing out my minions. I tend to win more games with my mage than my priest but I really want to get good with those two before I move on to my Shaman.

The first couple days I got into the beta of Hearthstone, literally all I did was play the computer as all of the 9 classes until I unlocked all of the basic cards for each class. I just don't think the starting pool of cards they give you is particularly good, especially if you don't have a basic toolbox of spells and class-specific minions to work with. So if you're getting frustrated, stop doing PvP for the next few days until you hit lvl 20 with all the classes, at the very least.

The Naxxramas adventure and Blackrock Mountain adventure are both pretty good, though I think the cards you get from Naxxramas are MUCH more worth owning than then ones from Blackrock. In your position though, I would just buy tons and tons of regular card packs for the first couple months. There are a ton of common cards (Dire Wolf Alpha, Ironbeak Owl, Loot Hoarder, Harvest Golem, Spellbreaker) and rare cards (Knife Juggler, Defender of Argus, Azure Drake, Argent Commander, Sunwalker) that are just basic workhouse cards you'll want to have available to make a decent deck (I didn't even mention any of the various necessary common and uncommon class cards you'll need; for example, a Shaman deck without Lightning Storm is near worthless).

Don't even bother with buying Goblins vs. Gnomes packs for a good long while. They're supplemental cards, but the regular cards from the original, classic set are much more important. Also a lot of GvG is just stupid garbage, unless you really want to make a Mage Mech deck.

If you have the coins (or want to buy) them spend some time in the arena. The arena is really deckbuilding 101 as you have to use the cards they give you. It allows you to see cards and abilities that work well together and experiment with them. Even when you lose you will probably see your opponent employing some good synergy with the cards they chose. Other than that I have just a few general CCG tips that are good in most games.

1. Don't get attached to minions: There are going to be lots of cases where sacrificing one of your minions is the best play. A mistake a lot of new players make in games like this (or Magic etc.) is that they put too much stock into creatures, especially the physically stronger ones. While this doesn't mean you shouldn't try to keep them alive you definitely want to survey the situation and decide if its worth wasting a healing/protection spell on them or taking damage instead of blocking.

2. Use the coin: I made this mistake a lot early on. The benefit of the coin is magnified earlier and you can create a quick advantage by playing a 3 cost card on turn 2. Of course this isn't a hard and fast rule and their are benefits to the coin but holding it so you can play that 8 mana card in your hand on turn 7 isn't always wise, especially if you don't get to turn 7.

3. Just because you can play doesn't mean you should: Again another common mistake for new players is to burn all their mana every turn. Again this is really about assessing the situation. You may have a spell that can kill your opponent's 1/4 minion but its probably best to save it as you would really miss it when he plays his 6/4.

One thing i haven't seen listed yet is after you start playing people, play ranked games. I have way better luck finding people who aren't netdecking (or who aren't good at it) in ranked at lower ranks. The unranked matches all seem to be people practicing their netdecks

Yeah, GvG cards are essential for me since I basically only play mech mage these days. Mechwarper, Annoyotron, Goblin Blastmage and Dr. Boom are cards I straight up couldn't live without.

The cards from Naxx and the full basic set are enough to make some good low level decks for doing quests to buy packs with though. Supplement that with classic packs and you shouldn't need to go out of your way for GvG packs until you're deep in.

Also when you hit level 10 with all the classes you get some gold, and again when you beat all the AI classes on expert, so make sure to do that!

I would give the same advice. Especially since you are finding playing against people so difficult. This was the exact same thing i did, got into matches vs the CPU until all of them were lvl 10 at least. It will give you a much better understanding of the very basics of the game and more comfortable with it's mechanics. I really don't see much point in guides so early on, it's a fairly easy game to just get into by yourself. Doing this will also give you a decent enough boost of coins to buy some initial packs, much more then trying to complete quests early on.
These days I really don't play much ranked at all, just enough to get the card backs, I mostly just play arena from time to time when the mood strikes me and the PvE stuff. The ranked matches are a bit stale on the top end with a lot of same optimized decks being used.

The solo adventures are worth it in my opinion. I had more fun playing them than I do playing ranked lately. Ranked is only fun when new cards come out and people are still figuring out the changing meta. Any other time its just a bunch of people using that one deck they saw go to the finals in that one tournament. It gets to a point where you can basically call out your opponents moves turn by turn because every class uses the same damn deck unless they don't own all the cards or haven't had the luck to draw the card in time.

If you're serious about getting better then you absolutely need to understand the concept of aggro vs. control. Look it up, read it, live it. Whenever you build your own deck or face an opponents deck you need to know which category that deck falls into. If you can't answer that question then you need to go back to the books and learn. When you know what category you fall into and what category your opponent falls into then you will be able to take the appropriate steps to making the right moves. Whether or not you should clear the board, go for face, etc. Those things are things you answer by understanding the games classes and knowing whether they are playing that class as aggro or control. Mid range is another possibility as well which is just as it sounds, in between.

I know you said you already looked at guides, but just in case they weren't very helpful, here's some video guides by a guy named Bog Otter that I found really good and led me to around a 75% win rate for my first week or so.

Basic Strategy - The first 2 videos on card advantage and minion evaluation in particular to start: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMgOinWh2Y7GFZ6Llg9XhMnyXz39pnEOV

Basic Deck Guides - He shows good starting decks with each class and explains in detail why he's making the choices he does. You don't necessarily need to copy these decks so much as learn the decision making process in building them: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMgOinWh2Y7Hkr_Mgz5bKx27aeISuIYZK

Wow, didn't expect such an awesome response. Thanks a lot for the tips, I welcome more.

Just get used to play agains the top 4 or 5 netdecks and uninspired mage direct damage decks. And cherish the moments you actually get to play agains some original deck-idea. I guess the problem is that there are overall very few cards in the game, so other than in Magic there are a very finite ammount of decks that give you a good victory chance. I don't care about my rank so I usually quit out of games once I realize I am playing against the same decks again.

First of all, watch the youtube series 'Trump teachings'. It's a series about the fundamental concepts of the game like board control, trading and card advantage and gives you an extremely solid foundation for every class.

Second of all - arena is much, much, much more valuable for learning the basic principles of HS than ranked. For the first few weeks I would advise you to attempt to clear the daily quests (once you get the basics mentioned in the 'teachings' series it is very doable to finish them while playing ranked at low levels, even with the basic cards) and use all of your gold to play arena.

Why arena, you ask? Well there are a couple of points.

First of all: the 'they just have a better deck' excuse doesn't fly. You might have a bad draft once in a while, sure, but mathematically speaking you are on the same grounds here, and playing arena is a pure skill test. From my experience I can confirm that it really is the case.

Second of all: you get to play with a myriad of cool cards that you simply can't afford to craft/don't have in constructed play. This eliminates the stagnation you experience when you have to play the same deck over and over and over again because you don't have enough powerful staple cards.

Third of all: arena really is about the most fundamental concepts of Hearthstone, where you don't have to worry about the metagame (what decks are being played out there) to be competitive. Smart trades, card advantage, tempo, playing on curve are all necessary to win. Most of the times you only have to blame your misplays on losing. This is not always the case in constructed since often times your deck will just straight out lose to another one because its weak to it - kind of like glorified rock-paper-scissors.

Fourth of all: since HS was released for mobile, arena has become drastically easier. There has been a dramatic influx of new, inexperience players (you being one of them) - use it to your advantage! I find it is much less demanding to get past 4-5 wins, since many of the players still make really stupid mistakes and pick really bad cards. 7+ wins is the sweet spot since you then get back the gold you've spent on the arena key PLUS a pack and some gold/dust, meaning that you can perpetually play arena if you are good enough.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly: how much you enjoy arena is a good estimate of how much you will enjoy playing constructed once you have good enough cards. If you really enjoy it, it might even be the case that you simply will not want to play constructed. If you hate it then it's a good indication that you will hate constructed even more, since your lack of enjoyment will be amplified by people having better cards than you.

That's the most valuable advice I can give you. I've been playing Hearthstone since the open beta and for the first six months or so I just played arena with sporadic constructed matches. Once I was confident to get out there I bought some packs and the first solo adventure and I have been greatly enjoying playing the game ever since. I can safely tell you that without having played arena a lot I would just keep playing boring, regurgitated decks, with no creative input or strategy involved, making Hearthstone basically glorified solitaire.

Always have two chillwind yetis lol

Do dailys, play as much arena as you can and watch a bunch of videos as you go. It shouldn't take too long to build up enough cards to start making some better decks, at this point you are more likely to face Dr. Boom and a bunch of other dumb cards than come up against an interesting opponent that puts up a battle, it really is hard to win with the basic cards.

Also the expansions are worth it if you intend to carry on playing, they will give you good cards and plenty of practice with random situations which make you think about how to use the cards in different ways.

Or just play face hunter.

@imsh_pl said:

I call bullshit on this section, but otherwise I think you make some good points about what Arena can teach you. I just don't think it predicts what you say it does. For example, I'm a deck builder at heart, and I enjoy coming up with and tinkering with decks that have some fun interaction in them, even if I know they're way too gimmicky to work very often, but it's fun when they work 30% of the time. Arena just bums me out, because there is no greater plan to draft decks; you just draft as many Chillwind Yetis and Fireballs and [insert-high-value-card-here] as you can, most picks are super obvious since a lot of cards at every rarity are terribad, so the only fun part is trying to play your random mid-range deck as efficiently as possible so you eke out some wins. I've never liked drafting in Magic, I don't like Arena in Hearthstone, but I like messing around with dumb casual decks in Magic, and I like messing around with my unreliable gimmick decks in Hearthstone.

Also my other problem with Arena now is it only gives GvG packs, and fuck that.

@bisonhero: Well Arena gives gold too and that's basically the only epeen measurement left in the game unless you get to legend without netdecking. Also it depends on the class, there certainly are classes that are all "draft this OP card" but other classes not so much. Rogue is particularly interesting.

@fredchuckdave said:

I, uhhhh, think you must live in a very particular bubble if you think gold is mostly an "epeen measurement" to Hearthstone players. Gold is a means to get more cards, which people would like to have more of so that they may build decks not restricted to the small starting pool of cards.

I...I feel bad for you if your default assumption is that people would use their current gold amount/total gold accumulated to look down on people for some reason.

Vaguely related but does Blizz ever do sales on the dungeons? I am sure as hell not spending 35 usd on each one.

@hayt said:

So like, super duper no on that one. Or maybe they'll start doing it in a year or two if Hearthstone player numbers really start tanking, but I wouldn't hold your breath.

I also don't think the single player adventures ("dungeons") are worth the money, so my recommendation is to just grind out the gold and get them that way. Or if you'd rather buy packs or play Arena, at least grind out the gold for Naxxramas? You can safely skip the cards in Blackrock Mountain unless you REALLY want to play a Dragon Paladin deck, but the bosses feel maybe slightly better designed in Blackrock Mountain compared to Naxxramas, if that means anything to you.

@bisonhero: It's not to look down on people, just a comparative measure of skill between arena players, the only one that exists. Nothing wrong with sizing yourself up to Hafu, Guardsman Bob, Kripp or whomever. Once you have a certain number of cards packs become pretty meaningless.

Gold is also a buffer for arena players, the more gold you have the more bad luck you can have and still keep playing; so for example I have 5000 gold right now so I can have around 55-60 bad (i.e. less than 7) arena runs in a row before I have to worry about grinding out gold in constructed.

The single biggest mistake I made early on was recklessly disenchanting stuff. I'd say, if you're really planning on playing HS for a while and you want to eventually get good and build up a competitive collection, then don't disenchant anything for now.

If you go into Crafting Mode there's a button in the lower right corner labeled, "Disenchant Extra Cards." You can't put more than 2 copies of a card into a deck so this button disenchants those extra cards you don't need.

I disenchanted 2 of the best legendaries in the game(Alexstrasza and Black Knight) within the first few months of playing to craft crappy cards that I never use and know now are total garbage.(Pit lords and Felguards)

@fredchuckdave said:

How was talking about gold as an e-peen measurement ever relevant to this thread, if you're only talking about it in relation to streamers no one in this thread cares about?

You're just derailing the thread with totally off-topic, non sequitur opinions about how end-game players with hundreds of hours logged view gold, and bringing up completely unrelated Hearthstone streamers that you somehow expect new players to care about.

Again, thanks for such a great response. You've provided some real helpful places to learn more about HS from. Appreciate it.

Well you were right about ranked, I'm already finding matches to be much more balanced. Whilst I'm still rank 25 I've had two matches and won both, one of which was especially awesome due to the fact I was down to 4HP to his 20HP. But he/she pretty much shot all their cards to the point that he/she had nothing to play with in their deck and I still had six cards or so, basically they were a sitting duck. A little lucky I guess but it still felt damn good to get that win. I guess considering I'm playing with similar levelled players it makes sense to have a better balance in matches, I didn't realise casual had no real level based matchmaking. Is there anything else I should know about ranking? Is it season based or whatnot, is there any other benefits to doing well in ranking?

Thanks again. :D

@machofantastico: In the Ranked mode they demote everybody on the 1st of every month, which is the start of a new season. So it's kinda madness for a couple days while everybody ranks up again. You don't get demoted all the way, but you basically lose your rank and only carry over a smaller number of stars. Like, a rank 14 would become a rank 20.

Also, if you make it to rank 20 or higher each month/season, you get a different card backing. Conveniently, you can't ever lose progress in ranks 25-21 (in that range you can only gain stars, not lose them), so getting to rank 20 each month is achievable if you play a handful of games.

@machofantastico: You should screenshot the deck you're using so we can see what you're working with.

This is the deck I tried out in ranked, though I have to admit I was heavily inspired by Trump Teachings Mage deck. I don't really want to copy decks (especially now I've just earned enough for a new pack and some new cards) but I was curious to see how it performed.

Arena was brought up and the rewards were not discussed succintly, gold is a very important aspect of the equation otherwise it wouldn't be a viable way to play the game. You're projecting quite a bit here, I'm sure there's got to be at least 3 or 4 people in this thread that care about streamers, particularly considering there's a link to Trump's videos in the thread.

@machofantastico: Definitely put in those Sorcerer's Apprentices in place of the Bloodfen Raptors. They're just strictly better. Quick tip: Sorcerer's Apprentices do stack and CAN make spells go to zero. So if you have those in your hand plus Arcane Missiles make sure to play the Apprentice first.

Not sure if you've gotten any GVG packs from arena but Spider Tank should be a good replacement for Razorfen Hunter. Also, Piloted Shredder(also from GVG packs) is a good replacement for Chillwind Yeti. Don't bother crafting them if you don't have them. They're both commons and you'll eventually get them in a pack.

Yeah watching hearthstone streamers can be helpful as well Trump, Kripp, Amaz, Hafu. They're all good to watch so you can see some more advanced play. Also you'll learn which cards are highly valued right now.

I think the solo adventures are good to go for. You're guaranteed new cards and some of them are quite good. Plus they're fun and you can't get those cards in packs. I'd say they can wait until you have most of the commons and rares in the game.

When you get enough dust to craft some legendaries I'd craft Ragnaros, Sylvanas, dr boom and the top legendary of your favourite class. I've only been able to make Rag but he is SUPER helpful. He's kind of like having an 8/8 charge minion that doesn't have to trade.

One big thing about this game and probably every ccg is knowing all the cards and when they can be played. That will help you a lot when you've done that but that will just come from playing more. EX: turn 7 against a mage don't put a lot of stuff down because they might have flamestrike. Or turn 10 against a priest, he might have a mind control so don't put anything super powerful down, if you can help it.

Then also later on knowing the metas is helpful. Right now Big Game Hunter is a must have for most decks because people are putting down a lot of stuff with 7 attack. Handlock, face hunter, and mech mage are the most popular decks right now.

Some cards that are great to start crafting: antique healbot, Big Game Hunter, annoy-o-tron, knife juggler, wild pyromancer(great for pally), Azure drake, Sludge belcher(amazing taunt), molten giant.

@izzygraze said:

I'd advise against crafting commons. You go through so many packs and most of the time they're 4 commons 1 rare. Eventually you just have all the common cards naturally. You really want to save dust for when you need a single legendary or a couple of epics to finish a deck you're building.

I think it's also a common beginner's mistake to randomly craft plain good cards without the decks to put them into. For instance, Healbot is great but right now it's not really what he needs. It's not going to help him with his board control Mage or his eventual Zoo/Face Hunter decks.

I think the strategy most beginners use is: play arena/do daily quests, open packs, build a cheap deck like Zoo or Face Hunter based on what you've opened so far, use those while working towards building a higher cost deck, continue from there.