So it's been a long time since I've played Hearthstone. A long time. I played Naxxramas and pretty much stopped at that next expansion came out. Lately I've been itching to get back to it, but I'm not sure what the best way to go about that is. From what I've read it seems like getting back into things using old ass cards is the wrong way to go (and now impossible for Standard play, if I understand the Standard/Wild distinction right).

My question is: how should I secure some new cards? Should I get a few packs each from the more recent expansions? Get classic packs to fill out my aging collection? Put all my chips into that new Frozen Knight expansion and its packs? Help me out!

It really depends on what your Classic collection looks like, how much dust you have on hand, if you want to play Standard or Wild, how much money you want to spend, and what your expectations are. If you want to have more than one "Tier 1" meta deck then you could potentially be looking at spending hundreds to bring your collection current. If you just want to have fun and play in casual here and there or maybe have one solid aggro deck that you can ladder with, then that's a bit different and you can target certain packs, but you might still have to buy an Adventure or two. There's no easy answer, and it will probably be expensive.

Yeah, if you're going to buy packs, maybe focus on Un'Goro (the most recent expansion, came out earlier this year) or Knights of the Frozen Throne (the expansion that comes out in a few days). The expansions from before this year will be in Standard a little while longer, but will rotate out in about 9 months (March or April 2018 is roughly when they'll leave Standard). Un'Goro and Frozen Throne will at least be in Standard for a little over a year and a half (March or April 2019 is roughly when they'll leave).

Also it never hurts to buy more Classic packs if you're still missing some key cards from there.

Anyway, it takes times to grind out free packs to get back into things, or it takes some money, so I don't know where you stand with either of those options. You can just buy some random packs, see what you get, and try to make your own deck using one of the themes from the last couple expansions, using Dust to create any of the cards you're missing from previous expansions. If you don't want to just cobble together your own deck and instead use one of the leading decklists that perform well right now, then A) you're probably going to need a lot of extra Dust to create the specific cards for that decklist, and B) you may want to wait a few weeks because with the new expansion days away, maybe some of those decklists will change significantly and be more/less effective than they are right now once all the new cards are in the mix.

If you want to get back into the game, I suggest you start chipping away at those daily quests right away, with whatever deck you can muster right now, and see how you feel about things in a week or two. It's probably going to be a slow grind to get your Standard decks up to speed if you missed out on several expansions. There are some budget-ish decklists you could probably craft that are OK, like maybe a competent Midrange Hunter since that deck is almost entirely commons and rares, but many other decklists have a variety of cards from different expansions with all sorts of rarities.

It would cost a ludicrous amount to make more than a few viable decks. Generally speaking Un'Goro and Frozen Throne cards will last you longer in standard but making a good Wild deck (which can use your good buddy Sludge Belcher) will last you much longer than that.

Let's say a new player with no collection wanted to get into Hearthstone next week and have a good selection of cards available, maybe be able to make 2-3 different meta decks and actually be competitive on the ladder. How much do you think it would cost them? $300? $500? I can't even guess because I've slowly built up my Hearthstone collection over the years, but if I was a new player I wouldn't even know where to begin with this game.

If you just want a semi-viable deck to play ranked right now, you can probably get a budget token druid or some other aggro deck to start back up. Of course, if you want to play a specific deck/class, securing those cards will be a lot harder.

As for what to buy, if you're willing to spend some cash, I'd recommend the new player bundle as it gives a guaranteed classic class legendary and is good value (and as a control player, I love me some value.) Beyond that, Un'goro and KFT packs would last you the longest in standard before they'll be rotated out. Be sure to do the mission once the new expansion releases to get a free Deathknight hero and maybe build a deck around it. Or just craft Patches and play Pirate Warrior, it'll probably still be tier 1.

I know Hearthstone can be an expensive game, but expanding the collection is part of the game. If people want to sidestep that, they shouldn't be surprised when it costs a bunch.

It really depends on which 2-3 different meta decks you wanted to make. Midrange Hunter has only commons and rares and can cost 1200-2000 Dust (Hunter has so many decent Basic cards that you actually don't even have to craft all that many cards, especially since you'll pick up a lot of commons and rares needed if you just buy the packs from the right expansions). But something like Miracle Rogue with multiple legendaries and epics can run as high as 10K Dust (http://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/860707-legend-11-miracle-rogue-guide).

If you consider that 60 packs is $70 USD and this is the best conversion rate of money to packs (outside of 1-time preorders), and that once you have most of the commons and rares each pack amounts to 40 Dust (absolute minimum, the average is slightly higher because of the extra rares/epics/legendaries you sometimes open), then that $70 gets you minimum 2400 Dust. Assuming you're willing to dust epics and legendaries you don't intend to use, that Dust total probably approaches something more like 3000-3500 Dust? It really depends how cutthroat you want to get about dusting cards you have no immediate desire for. If you want to keep cards for your collection and only dust cards that you have extraneous copies of, it generally takes longer to accrue Dust, since you won't really start consistently gaining Dust until you have a near complete collection of the commons and rares from a given expansion.

But yeah, if you're looking to make one of the Rogue or Mage or Priest decklists that run as high as the 10K Dust range, you may very well have to buy that $70 card pack bundle 2 or 3 times to eventually have the Dust to craft the legendaries and epics you're missing (hopefully in the course of buying packs you get a fairly complete set of commons and rares and don't have to craft those). And that's just one deck we're talking about. Also I haven't bothered to factor in the cost of Adventures, which might matter if you really need Kharazan cards in your chosen decklist. Also, they really gutted the neutral cards in Classic with the loss of Azure Drake, Ragnaros, and Sylvanas from Standard, which were solid uses of Dust since they were often useful in multiple deck archetypes. Now there are far fewer neutral cards that are just good in multiple deck archetypes, so each different decklist you're aiming for will often be a self-contained list of cards with minimal crossover.

This is why for someone getting back into the game, I'd really recommend that they seek out the more budget decklists that you can get into a passable condition without needing to buy hundreds of packs. 2-3 budget decks that are all kinda aggro or midrange decklists of mostly commons and rares could be relatively inexpensive, but making 2-3 meta decks that cost 9k-12k Dust could easily run you $300+ depending on how lucky you get with opening epics and legendaries.

Also this topic should probably be in Hearthstone instead of General Discussion.

An important thing to note is that there was recently an adjustment to the way the legendary "pity timer" works. Your first 10 packs opened in a given expansion is guaranteed to contain one legendary card. I checked it out on the servers I don't really play on and it took between 2-5 packs to pop the timer each time. Even if you don't end up getting useful legendaries its still a significant source of dust for a relatively fresh account. Opening just enough packs of each expansion to nab the legendary would probably be the first longish term goal I would set.

Besides that someone else mentioned the welcome bundle, and if you intend to spend ANY money on the game, absolutely start there. It is comfortably the best value pack purchase you can make. One Night in Karazhan is currently the only "Adventure" based expansion eligible in the standard format, so if you're putting money down, that would be the next step after that.

Those will be your highest value routes to card acquisition. Even after all that though, you need to keep in mind you will NOT have a complete meta viable collection. Getting to that point will take either a lot of time, or a lot of money. If a meta viable collection isn't what you're shooting for though there's plenty of fun to be had just fucking around with whatever you happen to open, and my suggestions will leave you with plenty enough to do that much.

One last thing: since you left the Tavern Brawl format was introduced. Every Wednesday through Sunday a game mode with a unique set of rules becomes available, and your first win nets you a classic pack. 1 pack per week doesn't sound like much, but it adds up. Always play the Brawl.

Standard includes the classic set (most of your cards) and the last two seasons of expansions. Currently that means Whispers of the Old Gods, One Night in Karazhan (adventure), and Mean Streets of Gadgetzan from last year. This year began with Journey to Un'goro, and is now getting its second expansion Knights of the Frozen Throne. There will be a third expansion this year (probably around November) and then the first expansion of 2018 will come out. When that happens, the expansions that will then be two years old (Old Gods, Karazhan, Mean Streets) will rotate into Wild. Wild includes every card ever released, so playing there is very fun but can be difficult at the higher ranks since people have spent years formulating the best decks with the best cards ever released.

To build your collection, start by knocking out your daily quests. These can be completed by playing with friends now so if you're having trouble winning with your older decks play against a friend or create an account to play against and rack up some gold. Remember to always reroll 40 gold quests to try to get 50, 60, or better rewards. Arena is a bad place for you right now since you don't know the cards. If you use an arena tier list and are pretty good at the Arena playstyle you may wind up with good results there.

Classic and Un'goro packs are where you should start for now. Frozen Throne packs are exciting but since we don't know how the cards will perform it's currently very difficult to judge how useful those will be. I would steer clear of Old Gods and Mean Streets packs as most decks really only run a few cards from these expansions. Best place to start if you want to netdeck is to find a relatively cheap decklist on hearthpwn or disguisedtoast.com and build towards that. Many popular decks run tons of legendaries but the current hot shit, Token Druid & Jade Shaman, can both be built for around 4000-5000 dust and are extremely strong. The only thing to note is that Karazhan must be purchased with 2800 gold or $20, the cards can not be crafted until it rotates to wild. It's a fun adventure that's worth the money, in my opinion.

I personally buy the $50 for 50 pack pre-order each expansion, and then use gold I saved up to buy more packs. I generally am able to save around 3000 gold (and that's without doing my dailies every day, I forget often) so I open around 80 packs on release day. This means I spend $150 each year on Hearthstone, which is a lot, but that's because I like to play a lot of different decks and gravitate towards control decks that require lots of legendaries. If you're more focused on building one competitive deck or just messing around, 20-30+ packs from gold should do you fine. Knights is also the first expansion released during the new pack rules, where the first 10 packs you buy of each set net you a guaranteed legendary and you can no longer receive duplicate legendaries. This also means you should start by buying packs of each expansion until you get your first legendary to maximize your dust potential.

Edit: forgot to mention you also get a free C'thun legendary upon opening your first Whispers of the Old Gods pack, so do that asap as well.

@bisonhero:Thanks, I went ahead and moved it. I didn't even notice.

@mike: It depends on the deck; but I think the general goal for a new player is to make enough decks so they can do every daily within a reasonable amount of time. Which is probably around 3000-4000 dust per class on average, I think dust is still 1 to 1 with gold so that's something like $150-200 (for every class combined) just to do dailies. However casual wild and low ranked wild has actually started to be that haven for dumb decks because of the murloc/overload/etc. dailies, so you can do better there even with the bare minimum and you can also play with friends to do almost every daily; so there are workarounds. Of course if you're a new player and want to be, say rank 5 at the end of the season then that might cost a whole lot more. Another thing to consider for free to play is even if you're a good infinite or near infinite arena player every one of those runs takes like 1.75-2.25 hours and you'll usually get like 20 gold back plus ~200 dust from the pack(s) and cards; it's a pretty insane grind unless you've been playing HS for years and years.

@dogbox: You should definitely craft Lich King ASAP, card's basically just a better Ysera which puts him on Ragnaros/Sylvanas power level; maybe not quite N'Zoth/old Yogg with appropriate synergy, but as far as a card you can just slap in almost every deck it's pretty high up the pantheon.

@fredchuckdave: Yeah man...the Lich King seems like the must-craft card of this set at least from what I've seen so far. I'm a bit of a tough spot because I only am going to be able to buy about 50 packs with gold and only have about 3,000 dust saved, so I'm going to wait and see what I get and how things shake out this week before crafting anything. Also...Black Knight meta incoming?

@mike: I'm going to try Kazakus/Raza priest again since it did pretty well at the start of Un'Goro; Black Knight's actually a solid idea (plus I already have it); good call. Even the most obvious cancer aggro deck (Paladin) is going to run taunt, and I feel like that deck is probably going to shit on Pirate Warrior.

There is always Arena so if you do quests to earn 150 gold (which is very easy and quick) you can play that which allows you to use all cards available in Arena. The better you get the better rewards you earn(dust, gold and packs and specific cards) I like Arena because you don't have to worry about having all the cards to compete. And the better you get, it's becomes free because of the gold you win.

The legendary economy got even worse with Un'goro as there are now 2 class legendaries for every class. Many of them aren't played but if you want to try a few Hero card decks you could wind up needing to craft a lot of legendaries.

Went from Rank 23 to Rank 10 (~10-15 game win streak up to 14, 20-10ish after that) with Kazakus/Raza/Shadow Anduin Priest today, pretty fun. Raza + Shadow is kind of a guaranteed win in almost every possible situation. I've thoughtstolen the Hunter Hero, Shaman Hero, and Warrior Hero and won using the card; good for checking out emotes; also Mage and Warlock but never had a situation where it merited playing them. Most difficult games were at rank 22 ironically against another Highlander Priest (first match) and I think control warlock (two expensive decks). No Pirate Warriors all day; did quite well against the attempted cancer aggro decks and just well in general. I think Jade is a 50/50 depending on if the Jade player overuses his hand (and if you draw your mass death), though Kazakus, LK, and Deathwing Dragonlord can win the Jade matches as well. The Jade match is actually pretty thoughtful even for the Jade player which is kind of shocking. Still get irrationally angry when I lose to a bad player, but it hasn't been happening very often and seems like the deck does well in practically every matchup; refined control Warlock, aggro/token Druid, and aggro Paladin will eventually be scary but doesn't seem like the netdeckers are there yet. Frostmourne is hilarious when you get it with a non weapon class.

Watching Kripp get unlucky with a semi-similar deck at around the same rank is quite therapeutic; though I don't think that deck is good in anything but control vs control and is probably worse vs Jade and Control Warlock.