Hearthstone

[Ns1]

really HB, those comparisons are awesome. I haven't touched MTG in > 15 years but I easily understood all that.

 

[JTsyo]

I was having a discussion last night with my friend on the decks in this game and drawing comparison to MTG.

Paladin = white weeny deck mostly. Pumping out little 1/1 with some protection to chip away at the opponent. Then land a few big buffs to pop a weeny to something monstrous when the opponent can't counter it.
I rank this one of the better decks to play with once it gets going for all experience levels.

Mage = blue/red control damage deck. Control in this game is mainly minion denying or spell countering through secrets. Mage has the only actual counter spell in the game. Mage is all about pumping your spell dps up as best as possible and countering anything the opponent plays
One of the best decks out there to play from noobs to the experienced players.

Hunter = Green/red rush deck. Some DD dps and lots of little rush creatures with occasional big crush creatures. One of the best decks out there to play from noobs to experienced players

Warlock = Black sacrifice speed deck. Some countering, some DD dps, and big effects at the cost of the warlock. Sometimes it pays off and sometimes it doesn't. Due to randomness of the deck and specialization of combos required, it's not an easy deck to play with. For noobs one of the worst, and even for experienced players not all that great

Cleric = White/Black deck. It has protection/healing from white, and the ability to go DPS sacrifice of black with a little bit of the white weeny too although not as crazy as the paladin deck. It's an out live your opponent deck. Doesn't have much in the way of counters. It's harder for noobs to play but can do well enough with experienced players

Shaman = Blue/green/red semi creature dps heal counter deck. It basically tries to do too much with the cards available. Like warlock it also has a lot of randomness to it which can really help or hurt you. Not exactly the best for noobs to play and not great for experienced

Druid White/Green/Red healing/creature/dd rush deck. Similar to Shaman but more focus on healing and protection and weeny creature rush. Less on DD and randomness. Also has the worst card in the game with naturalize. It can be very fast for a rush deck like a hunter if not faster. But it also tries to do too much and one can get screwed over by trying to rely on too many little combos. It's not a very good noob deck, but better than shaman/warlock. It can be very powerful in the hands of an experienced player. When it crushes it crushes.

Rogue = Blue/black creature and creature counter deck. Some randomness to this deck with some small sacrifice, but nothing like the warlock deck. It has some dps potential, but not really any spike dps. It has some good countering potential though against minion cards. It's an okay noob deck and a decent experienced player deck.

So here how I would rank the decks on a noob friendly scale:
1. Hunter
2. Mage
3. Paladin
4. Cleric
5. Rogue
6. Druid
7. Shaman
8. Warlock

Here is how I would rank them for overall:
1. Mage
2. Hunter
3. Paladin
4. Druid
5. Cleric
6. Rogue
7. Shaman
8. Warlock



Although anyone can technically win with any deck, especially early on, because more cards in a deck are usually neutral cards. Decks are 30 cards with most low level decks only having about 10ish class based cards. Higher level decks have 15ish class based cards or so. So while a warlock deck I think is weaker at level 1 than a level 1 mage deck, a warlock deck can still beat a mage deck due to both mostly relying on neutral class cards.

How I've built and seen decks built:

1) Build for late game. The game isn't quick enough that it's rare someone is going to win by round 7 or earlier. Most games if not all will have both opponents reach 8 mana. Which means having your deck full of low casting cost cards is only going to hurt you in the end game as you run out of cards in 1 round and risk having your opponent countering everything you do in a single round with 1 or 2 cards. So the majority of your cards should be 3+ casting cost.

2) Look for combos if you have the cards. Some decks lend themselves really well to certain combos. Mage does well with spell damage combo cards. Hunter does well with beast minion combo cards. If you don't have the combos cards then go with cards that split threats or eliminate threats when played. Some have already been mentioned, but here are some of the great neutral cards everyone has: All the Summon extra minion Battle cry cards. You force your opponent to have to deal with multiple threats from 1 card. Which forces your opponent to opponent to use 2 actions to deal with 1 action from yourself. Sprinkle in taunters if you don't have combos that rely on them. Look for the bigger taunters with more health over the smaller ones.

3) Build your deck to gain an action advantage over the opponent. You want your opponent having to spend 2 or more actions to counter every one of your actions. You want your actions to counter multiple actions on your opponent. For example, spells like flamestrike, and consecrate wipe out multiple enemy minions with 1 spell. Save your single target minion wipers for the later big game minions that are harder to take down with 1 action otherwise.

4) Always have ways to get more cards. I've only ran out of cards from my deck in this game once and I still won even taking damage from not drawing for 2 rounds. If you run out of cards, chances are the opponent is about to die. Don't be afraid to cycle cards fast.


With those main points in mind, it is easy to see why I ranked the decks as I did. Those decks that are more efficient in actions usage, faster cycling, and build for late game tend to win more consistently in Hearthstone.

What are good cards for draws as paladin? Just the minions from neutral that draw cards?

 

[lupi]

Haven't played magic so don't know of any of the comparisons, but you're ranking of the classes seems a bit off.

Also if you'd tell me that I'm playing a person that has built a deck based on giving me extra draws, I'd do that and bet on myself every match.

 

[smackababy]

Haven't played magic so don't know of any of the comparisons, but you're ranking of the classes seems a bit off.

Also if you'd tell me that I'm playing a person that has built a deck based on giving me extra draws, I'd do that and bet on myself every match.

The burn decks (or draw decks, millstone, etc) work well in Magic because you can force them to discard resources and not have the ability to play cards. Plus, when you're out of cards, you lose. Hearthstone doesn't have either of those mechanics, so it is a lot harder to use that strategy. You are basically betting you can counter all their big cards and outlast the small ones until the draw penalty kills them.

 

[smackababy]

Since I've never gotten there...what exactly happens here? Does the "graveyard" get reshuffled or do you simply stop drawing?

Sorry, didn't see this before. What happens is you take increasing amount of hero damage each ghost draw. The first time, it's 1, and then 2, and then 4 I believe. I haven't ever gotten past the first two.

 

[Zak_]

the analogies were awesome, thanks.

Makes me miss being able to make combinations and use any cards together in a deck. Although, I imagine it makes it easier to balance to have the class specific cards, rather than just colors in MTG.

 

[darkewaffle]

I think the damage drawn when you have no cards is simply a 1 2 3 4 5... progression.

 

[lupi]

Still doesn't change that while it may have some use as a tactic in magic, building a deck for it in hearthstone will see you losing most of the time.

 

[HumblePie]

No it's a multiplier thing, I've hit it several times.


Still doesn't change that while it may have some use as a tactic in magic, building a deck for it in hearthstone will see you losing most of the time.

In magic you are building a deck to force the opponent to "lose" their deck so they can't draw anymore cards. In magic the gathering you have the following "areas" denoted for playing.

The "deck area" has the deck. It must be 60 cards minimum and has no maximum. Although going much above 60 tends to make the deck unwieldy in not only shuffling, but in getting the cards you want out of it. Hearthstone has a deck limit of 30 cards max and 20 cards min.

There is the "graveyard" area otherwise known as the discard pile. When creatures die from play they normally go here. When spells are cast and their effect is no longer around, they go here. When a player is force to draw past their hand limit the extra cards go here at the end of the turn.

There is the "hand" area. This is the players hand of cards. In MTG there is a size limit of 7 card by the end of any turn. Which means in MTG if you have more than 7 cards in your hand the extras must go to the graveyard. The player who owns the hand chooses which cards go and which ones stay normally. Heartstone has no hand limit. If I can get all 30 cards from my deck into my hand I can keep them there if I want to.

There is the "play field" area as well. This where creatures/minions are played down. this is basically the same from MTG and Hearthstone. Creatures are summoned from the hand to the play area in a "sleep" state normally and must wait 1 round before doing anything unless they have a special power that negates the normal play rule.


In MTG the rule is a player can no longer draw a card from their deck, IE if they had a 60 card deck and they have played all 60 cards, they automatically lose. This is why people in MTG play "millstone" decks. That was the original card that made those decks really viable. Every turn you could force the opponent to take the top two cards off their deck and put them directly to the discard pile. You could have 4 millstones in play at one time and force the opponent to remove 8 cards per round at a time. If you could force your opponent to draw more than 7 cards and they couldn't play the extra cards they were forced to discard those cards to the graveyard. That's how a "millstone" deck works in Magic The Gathering.

That doesn't work at all really in Hearthstone. Again, there is no hand size limit. If you run out of cards from your deck you are only going to take increasing amounts of damage per round until your hero or the opponents hero runs out of health. There are no cards in Hearthstone that force the opponent to remove cards from the deck and put them straight into the discard area. So the card "naturalize" is an utter rubbish card.

Hearthstone is about having action advantage over your opponent right now. That's the strategy that win 99% of all games. You need action advantage which is done through a number of means. I described them above in my previous posts. Playing a single card that counter multiple actions of the opponent. Playing a card that forces the opponent to use multiple actions to counter it. And last but not least, having more cards in hand to play than your opponent on any given round. If you have 5 cards in hand and your opponent has none, The playing field is even, and neither you or the opponent are close to having their hero die then the person with the 5 card advantage is more than likely going to win the game. Doesn't even matter what cards they have in their hand. Card advantage is THAT strong. Having more choices and actions per round than your opponent for every round there after will win the game unless the game is already close to being over.

I have on numerous occasions been down to 6 or less health while my opponent was 30 or higher do to armor. I still won those games because they were out of cards and had nothing in the field. I still had a full 5+ cards in my hand. I had options at that point to counter everything they could do at that point, which was typically only playing 1 card and using the hero power.

Which is why I ranked the decks in the order they are listed. Decks that allow for more flexibility to gain action advantage tend to win easier. Those top three are Hunter, Mage, and Paladin right now. The Warlock and Shaman suck because their randomness can actually give an action advantage to the opponent. When they get the action advantage those decks absolutely crush. There is no doubt on that. But those are gambling decks. You gamble every time you play the shaman or warlock deck and hope the hero power and gamble nature style of the class cards end up in your favor and not the opponents. Warlock is worse because the penalties for many of the cards can be very harsh compared to the shaman. The shaman, while not as penalty harsh as the warlock, tends to also have some of the weaker combos in the game since the card deck seems to be trying to do a jack of all trades and master of none crap. Which blizzard did to mimic how Shaman gameplay in WoW is.

That last sentence is the crux there. Blizzard is trying to mimic the "class" of decks to the playstyle of the classes a bit as they are represented in WoW. I just made them a bit more analogous to MTG since hearthstone is in essence still a card game. As such is plays out differently than WoW despite trying to pattern the decks of the WoW class playstyles.

 

[darkewaffle]

Hearthstone does have a hand limit, if you have 9 or more cards any subsequent cards you draw are automatically discarded. Might be 10, I forget exactly.

 

[smackababy]

Hearthstone does have a hand limit, if you have 9 or more cards any subsequent cards you draw are automatically discarded. Might be 10, I forget exactly.

There is a hand limit, but the advantage is you can play more cards than you can draw in a single turn. And, with no phases of a turn (laying card phase, attacking phase, etc), you can attack (sacrificing minions, if needed) to free up room to put cards into play. And even if you're forced into a situation where you can only attack the hero, you still have a huge advantage and should win.

 

[HumblePie]

There is a hand limit, but the advantage is you can play more cards than you can draw in a single turn. And, with no phases of a turn (laying card phase, attacking phase, etc), you can attack (sacrificing minions, if needed) to free up room to put cards into play. And even if you're forced into a situation where you can only attack the hero, you still have a huge advantage and should win.

Well, i haven't had to discard and had over 10... maybe the mana crystal card doesn't count towards hand limit?

*Edit*
But just looked up the rule for hand size limit here http://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Gameplay and it says 10 card hand limit. Which is pretty huge really. MTG is 7 cards normally.

 

[smackababy]

Well, i haven't had to discard and had over 10... maybe the mana crystal card doesn't count towards hand limit?

I am not sure. I know there is a limit (I've had to discard), but I don't know what it is.

 

[lupi]

Yes you get more than 10 and the card gets discarded when you draw. Also if you play a card that gives you mana when you are at 10 you get a card that will give you that mana.


As for the lock and shammy; Lock doesn't suck because their power is an increased draw rate and card draw is one of the largest per match abilities affected the game.

Shammy has many abilities that allow them to be played earlier than would otherwise be allowed by deferring some of the mana cost to the next turn. Or in later game allow an effectively larger number of cards to be played under the same premise.

 

[smackababy]

The thing with locks are that the hero ability takes life, thus is not "noob friendly". They see it as more of a negative than a positive. It takes a bit of experience to understand life doesn't really mean much until you get to a one turn kill state in 99% of matches.

Shamans are particularly weak for players that can't forecast what their plays would be for the next turn with overload. I have played quite a few that did something on one turn and had to completely pass the next because they had zero plays due to overload. New players aren't going to be good at planning their plays around potentially lower mana the next turn.

 

[ewdotson]

Right, some of the warlock's class-specific cards are pretty janky, but their hero power is quite nice. Any MTG vet should understand the value of card advantage. And you don't have to play with succubi.

 

[HumblePie]

Yes you get more than 10 and the card gets discarded when you draw. Also if you play a card that gives you mana when you are at 10 you get a card that will give you that mana.


As for the lock and shammy; Lock doesn't suck because their power is an increased draw rate and card draw is one of the largest per match abilities affected the game.

Shammy has many abilities that allow them to be played earlier than would otherwise be allowed by deferring some of the mana cost to the next turn. Or in later game allow an effectively larger number of cards to be played under the same premise.

Lock has card rate draw for a hero power, but at a cost to hero health. This is like giving your opponent a free action for the action of playing another card which may or may not be an equal action to the health lost. Which is what I was pointing out for the gambling nature of the warlock. Also, many of the cards from the warlock all come with a downside for a slight increase in power. Like having to randomly discard your own cards as well having cards that take hero life from the warlock to be used. Take the succubus for example a nice big 4/3 minion for low casting cost of 2 mana. However, the downside is the fact that randomly makes the warlock discard a random card. The warlock has to counter that by spending 2 life to gain a different random card. The succubus is indeed powerful and can be used on the first turn if going second. The problem is the succubus only has 3 health which makes it a fairly easy creature to counter early on. Most decks have low casting cost spells that usually deal 3 damage or kill low health minions in early turns. Which means that the succubus is more than likely going to be countered by 1 card by an opponent. Which allows the opponent more action efficiency. For 1 card, they counter not only the succubus summoning action, but they gain the action of possibly making the warlock lose a good card for a non existent succubus, and take damage for a a possible less than useful card for the current gameplay situation.

The warlock's randomness is it's Achilles heel. It's a massive one. While the hero power is great in gaining more cards. The loss of cards from other warlock cards balances that, without really balancing the loss of life being done to the warlock. The warlock is suppose to make up for that with really big creatures that you hope will smack the opponent around before being knocked off the battle field. But the problem is minions typically don't last more than a round or two. Which is more randomness reliance for the warlock.

So while the warlock looks good in theory, randomness reliance makes the class deck overall suck balls. As I said, you can get a really good lucky setup with the warlock and just CRUSH. But the opposite happens just as often and you'll get crushed. You'll be crushed even if the opponent had a shitty hand and deck setup even. I've seen that happen as well. That's why it's the worse overall deck in the game based on the current gameplay mechanics and card availability. Like I said I was a big MTG player for a long time and a master MTG player. I won some pretty damn huge big tournies for cash/cards in the past. I'm pretty damn good at figuring out game play and deck options and weighing the pros/cons to various play styles. The warlock deck blows chunks.

As for the shaman deck, again it is about rushing big stuff for paying it off later.... which the gamble is the opponent can't counter those big cards too easy. The shaman really doesn't do well on counters himself, and the randomness of his totem power can be annoying. Again, he's too reliant on a bit too much randomness in gameplay to win with getting the right totems or certain card effects to go off. The shaman also lacks really good card combo synergy unlike other decks. Since his main focus is random totem effects and overload big hit effects. The deck isn't exactly meant for action efficiency either. No blanket power effects and low card draw rate. It's not really a good overall deck for those reasons.

 

[ewdotson]

Erm, how did you feel about necropotency back in the day? Life for card draw is generally a pretty good play.

And seriously. There's no reason a warlock player has to play a demon-heavy deck. For example, while these tend to go away at higher ranks, but one of the more popular warlock decks is actually murloc-based. Cheap, synergistic critters combined with card draw can get pretty ugly pretty quickly.

 

[lupi]

Yes, which would make them near the end of the list for a newb scale, but they are much higher if doing an overall ranking.

 

[Chiropteran]

The problem is, even if people play it, the entire foundation of the deck is terrible. In MTG, you lose when you have nothing left to draw. It becomes harder to use cards, as the costs are associated with mana you may not have.

In Hearthstone, you still get turns after you "blank draw". And, as long as you're playing cards, you have a full hand of everything. There is only a limit of 10 mana. If you have 4 2 mana cards, you have play 4. Even if you lose them the next turn, you still get your next drawn card AND have multiple options to play.

Yes, but in Magic you had 60+ card decks, and even if you had a millstone running from turn 3 onward you would be milling only 2 cards + the draw each turn, and take 18+ turns to deck your opponent. No viable deck had any problems at all winning in 15 turns. Mill as a viable strategy didn't ever occur in vanilla MTG, it wasn't until dozens of expansions were released. It only worked as a gimmick of a deck that you might play with friends, but not in a serious tourney.

In hearthstone, you have only 30 cards in a deck, and card drawing cards are actually a lot more common in hearthstone then they ever were in vanilla magic. I have seen many games go to empty libraries. A millstone style deck might not be in the top 10%, but it's a lot more viable in hearthstone than it was in early MTG.

 

[JTsyo]

Any links to a guide on arena draw? Currently I'm 3-9 in arena. 2-6 in ranked and above 50% in casual. I just do casual now since I just want wins for quests.

Ran across this site for help draft cards.

 

[Chiropteran]

What?? Millstone decks were viable from the get go with braingeyser from the get go. It was more viable with a few expansions, but it was viable from Alpha.

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=109694 wrecked millstone decks, not that anyone really played them.

I never heard of any mill decks placing in tourneys until turbofog, which was a fairly recent development. Was there some serious millstone deck that was winning major touneys that I missed?

 

[lupi]

Sounds like your rating is heavily influenced by your personal taste for the class vice what most players actually think.

Yes if you played a lock or shammy with a random deck or tried to make a deck out of the basic cards, it's not going to be pretty. But once you've got all the basics and have started collecting others, they both make powerful chars.

 

[ewdotson]

Honestly, I think the general consensus is that shaman are fairly weak right now, but I still don't think that HumblePie is exactly hanging around in legendary. Quite aside from anything else, he'd have druids *much* higher if he were. In fairness, genuinely good druid decks are generally awfully pricey, so he probably just hasn't run into them.

 

[HumblePie]

Erm, how did you feel about necropotency back in the day? Life for card draw is generally a pretty good play.

And seriously. There's no reason a warlock player has to play a demon-heavy deck. For example, while these tend to go away at higher ranks, but one of the more popular warlock decks is actually murloc-based. Cheap, synergistic critters combined with card draw can get pretty ugly pretty quickly.

I mentioned that previously in my write up about any deck. That one can stay with heavy neutral cards. Which a "neutral" deck can be very powerful. I was trying to show relations to MTG for the class cards that would build a heavy class deck, and how those decks play out and fare in the current gameplay setup of hearthstone. In my opinion the warlock deck is the worst deck in the game based off the current available warlock class cards. Most of them have big drawback side effects that hurt the warlock for a possible gain that may be counters. Which doesn't lend those cards to being very action efficient at all.

Also, many high level shaman decks go with the murloc heavy neutral deck. Which is probably a better deck compared to the warlock murloc heavy deck due to the shaman being able to really throw out some good buffs to the all murlocs on the field easier and more often than the warlock. But murlocs and totems are easy little creatures to knock down for more other decks. Shamans only have 1 board wiping spell card with Lightning storm for a counter. Everything else is single target and not always as good as other decks. Again, with overload, the random nature of that ability can make it awesome or poop depending upon how the opponent plays. Overload allows a shaman to play more or bigger cards in one round BUT at the expense of doing less or even nothing the next round. You are hoping that what you do the round you over extend is not going to be all countered by the opponent when they go next. If it is, you could massively screwed and leave yourself open for a round of actions by the opponent. Again, the class cards do not exactly have good action efficiency. I have mentioned that this is the number 1 key to winning games in Hearthstone. ACTION EFFICIENCY. The decks that more action efficient will win more often. Period. There is no debate in this topic as it is a fact of the current game mechanics. Just because you've seen a warlock of shaman deck crush all the other decks out there doesn't change the basic mechanics to the class cards + hero power with those decks nor the shortfalls of the decks. They can win. No one is stating that. They are just statistically less likely to win than other decks.

Shaman and warlock has the worst potential action efficiency of all decks. Action efficiency = more wins. Thus they are the worst decks in the game. I could go through a card by card analysis and go over many of the popular deck for all the classes but it would just be a waste in time in the end to show what I've already stated.