Walkthroughs

Learn the basics of Hearthstone with our Starter Guide

Learn the basics of Hearthstone with our Starter Guide

How to build decks and win your first matches

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Hearthstone has always had a problem attracting new players. Although it's easy to learn the game itself, the structure of competetive play is less clear. Then there's the barrier of building up a collection from nothing.

As a result, Blizzard is keen to offer a helping hand to new players. And so are we, since it gives us more fresh victims to play against. So, with a slew of changes in the current release to encourage neophytes, it's a great time to start, and we're here to help.

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Tutor Groups

Before you're allowed to do anything interesting, you have to run through a series of tutotials to teach you the ropes.

In these you play one of the game's nine classes, the Mage, against AI opponents. They're not very interesting, but they're necessary. And you do earn a few free card packs for your trouble.

At the end, you'll get free access to what's called the "Basic" set of cards. These are the original starting cards for the game and you'll get them all for free.

Unfortunately, there's been a very slow but very real power creep over the years. As a result most of them are significantly underpowered compred to recent expansions.

Most of the best Basic cards are class-specific, meaning you can only use them in decks of that class. Again, unfortunately, you don't get these off the bat: you have to earn them. The good news is that you can do so for free, simply by playing games with each class, win or lose.

That, then, is your first order of business. Before you get stuck in though, there's a tempting offer you need to know about. You can buy a one-time welcome bundle from the store which gets you ten packs of a cards and a guaranteed Legendary - the rarest class of cards.

It costs £3.99/$4.99 which is a steal. If you've any interest in taking the game further, we suggest you buy it. Hearthstone's free to play model is very fair, and it may be the only money you ever need to spend on the game.

Building Bricks

Whether you choose to do so or not, before you can play you'll need to start building a deck. The easiest and most popular way to do so is by looking them up on the internet. If you search for zero-cost decks you'll get a wide selection that you can play with your Basic cards alone.

Most feature ones you haven't unlocked yet, so you'll need to pick some replacements. Plus you may have opened some cards that you're itching to play with. This is where the fun begins. At the highest level most players copy or tweak the most powerful archetypes. But at the bottom of the ladder, you're free to experiement.

The art of deck building is much more subtle than shoving in all the most powerful cards you've got. For example, let's take the Legendary dragon Malygos, one of the possible and most desirable cards you can get from that welcome bundle.

It gives all your spells +5 damage, but it costs 8 mana. If you play it, your opponent will try and remove it as soon as possible. So, ideally you want it in a deck with some 1 mana, low-damage spells. That way you can play two on the same turn as Malygos for maximum pain.

But wait, there's more. You might also want to hedge your bets and try to keep Malygos alive as long as possible. That means defending against minions and offensive spells.

Other alternatives, out of the reach of new players, are getting more mana crystals for a turn or copying Malygos or making it cheaper. And doing any of these things requires you have plenty of cards in your hand, which means you need card draw.

Taking all this into consideration you can see how you can begin to build a deck around Malygos. And if you look at the top level deck Malygos Druid, you'll see it has all these ingredients already in place.

But expensive decks like that are for the future. Right now, take a zero-cost deck as a starting point and think how the cards you've collected might fit into it. How the various cards and powers work together will come with experience, but do your best to plan in advance.

What if, for example, you've been lucky enough to find the ever-useful Knife Juggler in a pack? He's an easy inclusion in starter decks heavy with small minions, like those for Shaman, Paladin or Warlock. But he'll do poorly in minion-light classes such as Mage or Rogue.

Mode Mayhem

Once you've started to build some decks, you'll need to play them. As you do so you'll earn experience for that class which will gradaully unlock new cards. Once you've got rank ten in all nine classes, all the free content will be available. The question, then, is where best to play them to learn your new trade?

Hearthstone has two modes, Wild and Standard. If you're new to the game, don't go near Wild which allows all the cards published in the game. It's a confusing mess and it's not actually that much fun. Standard, which timeboxes the allowed card to the core sets and the last two years of expansions, is where you want to be.

Within each mode there are two ways to play, Ranked and Casual. The latter finds you a one-off match with no lasting reprecussions. Up until recently it was where players cut their teeth, but there was an issue. The matchmaking system was fairly primitive. So your opponents would likely include a lot of experienced players trialling new decks.

Ranked used to run from 25 up the dizzy heights of Legend. Now, though, new players have acccess to a new set of ranks, from 50 up to 26. Everyone in these ranks is going to be fairly fresh to Hearthstone. So playing here is a great way to get a fairer match.

Be careful though as you can't drop down these ranks in play. Make sure you're ready before you exit the starter ranks into the big(ger) time.

There's also a solo adventures mode. This won't earn you any experience toward unlocking cards. But its latest iteration, The Puzzle Lab from The Boomsday Project, is a real boon to new players. It tasks you with finding the optimal play in dozens of contrived situations. They might be artificial, but they're a great way of learning the basics of strategy.

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Matt Thrower
Matt Thrower
Matt is a freelance arranger of words concerning boardgames and video games. He's appeared on IGN, PC Gamer, Gamezebo, and others.