Hearthstone strategies: advanced tips for seasoned card battlers - At its most fundamental, Hearthstone is simple arithmetic. Understanding this is the key difference between casual and competitive players. Once this concept clicks in your mind, you’ll be on your way to getting the most from Hearthstone’s many diverse strategies.
The key to Hearthstone, and most card games, really, is board control. The key to board control is ensuring the other player uses up more resources removing your cards than you use removing theirs.
For instance, let’s say you pull the underestimated Chillwind Yeti (a 4/5 minion for four mana). Your opponent plays an Acidic Swamp Ooze and a Novice Engineer. On your next turn, you could swing with the Yeti to remove the Ooze or the Novice, or you could take four points off your opponent’s hero.
By attacking the hero, you ensure your opponent loses at least some of their most valuable resource and keep your Yeti healthy for their next turn. This forces them to either drop one of only a few expensive removal spells, or use both of their minions to attack while still leaving yours on the board.
No matter what happens, the math is working against them. This is Hearthstone’s arithmetic at play, and every hero in the game is designed to perform these same equations in different ways. On that note, these Advanted tips will boost your card-playing power.
Hold it! Is this the first time you’re playing Hearthstone? If so, read our Beginner’s Tips.
Selecting Your Hero
Each Hearthstone hero plays differently from the rest, assuming you select the right cards. Which class is right for you depends on how you want to play. Here’s a basic breakdown of each character with their strengths, weaknesses and unique abilities to help you decide where to spend your early matches.
Mage
Mages are the first class introduced to new players during the tutorial, and as such, are one of the more popular heroes in online play. That might also be thanks to their incredibly powerful removal spells, like Flamestrike and Fireball.
Their hero ability is Fireblast, which can deal one damage to any hero or minion — even their own. Despite their powerful spells, Mages lack interesting, class-specific minions. They must rely instead on more basic neutral minions that offer increased spell damage to maintain board presence. This makes them a solid choice when entering The Arena, where high synergy is less of a concern.
Best if you like: fire-and-forget tactics, board clearance.
Shaman
Shamans take the randomized nature of card games a step further than most.
Their hero ability, for instance, summons one of four totems at random. These can provide extra spell damage, taunt, a 1/1 minion or the ability to heal every friendly minion at the end of your turn. Spells like Lightning Storm and Forked Lightning provide excellent board control, for random damage or against random minions, respectively.
This class also has the majority of cards with Windfury, which grants a minion the ability to attack twice in a single turn. Overload, meanwhile, is specific to Shamans and locks up mana crystals on your next turn, rather than right away. The benefit to cards with overload is that they usually have very small initial mana costs for very strong abilities.
A Shaman’s strength is directly tied to board control. The totems summoned with the c hero ability, in addition to special totem cards, can turn a useful minion into a deadly one in a single turn. However, if you can shut down a Shaman’s board control early on, it’s very difficult for them to transition into the late-game.
Best if you like: board control, delayed payment, lots of minion effects.
Paladin
Like Druids, Paladins are very well-rounded. Unlike Druids, they rely heavily on minions and hoping the opponent will do what you want them to do, rather than doing things directly.
This is because Paladins are highly defensive heroes. They have more instances of the Divine Shield keyword, which absorbs the first instance of damage dealt to a minion without harming it. Used with strong Taunt minions, this can force the enemy to burn powerful spells or creatures on relatively weak opponents.
This class also has the Reinforce hero ability, which summons a 1/1 minion to the field. Because of this, Paladins never lack for at least some board presence and damage ability. This is especially devious with a Paladin’s high number of buff spells like Blessing of Kings.
Best if you like: always having minions, buff spells.
Warrior
Warriors behave much like their World of Warcraft namesakes. Their hero ability gives the player two armor, which unlike health, has no upper limit. Coupled with heroes and spells that also reinforce armor, it can be very tough to whittle a Warrior player’s hit points down in a battle of attrition.
This class also uses some of the most powerful weapons in the game — cards that give the hero damage-dealing potential — which allows them to become some of the most formidable creatures in the game without hardly summoning any minions. And unlike Mages, they don’t lack for powerful minions of their own. Generally, they rely on overwhelming numbers and abilities like charge to attack immediately when they’re played, rather than high power and health.
The Warrior’s weakness lies in its rigidity. This class has no fancy tricks and very little in the way of area-of-effect spells. What you see is what you get.
Best if you like: incredible staying power, not relying on minions.
Priest
A Priest’s hero ability should tell you that they mimic their WoW counterparts, much like Warriors. For two mana, they can heal any unit of two damage (but only up to their maximum health). This can keep them and their minions in the game much longer than they otherwise should, and are thus incredibly hard to rush.
Their weakness lies in another of their strengths. Priests have many spells to buff the maximum health of their minions. By using these on a Lightspawn, or casting the Inner Fire spell, minions can translate this health into attack and become some of the most powerful creatures in the game. This kind of synergy must be used wisely, however. This strategy uses a great deal of resources, and an opponent can make it all for naught with a single copy of Assassinate, Polymorph, Hex or any other number of powerful removal spells.
Best if you like: healthy minions, staying power, removal spells.
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