[billw55]

I got it to work! Going to blizzard's site and following the download link there did the trick. I don't see why that would be any different, but it was.

Played the tutorial and a couple solo games with the mage. About here I got the feeling that the default deck stunk, so I made my own which seemed much better. Still a raw beginner of course, but this seems like fun.

[Cyberyeti]

billw55, on 2015-July-06, 12:29, said:

I got it to work! Going to blizzard's site and following the download link there did the trick. I don't see why that would be any different, but it was.

Played the tutorial and a couple solo games with the mage. About here I got the feeling that the default deck stunk, so I made my own which seemed much better. Still a raw beginner of course, but this seems like fun.

Be prepared to lose a lot at the start. Be aware of how the matchmaking works:

Ranked - you will play people approximately the same rank
Casual - is based on your win/loss ratio, so at the start you'll play people with a 50/50 win/loss who will have better cards than you

Remember these "matchmaking ranks" apply to all your decks, so if you win 20 games with your good mage deck, then switch to a worse deck from another class, you will get pummelled (this happened to me and was incredibly frustrating).

[Antrax]

Yeah, one of the main issues with HS today is that it's so unwelcoming to new players. You have a small comfort bubble between ranks 25 to 20 because people can't drop down to these ranks once they go over them, so it's mostly new players with occasional returning players or someone who just opened a new account.

Once you get to rank 20 though, the game becomes really hard, especially early in the month. Every month, everyone's rank resets so top players and noobs inhabit the same ranks more or less, and have to claw each other to climb to the top. It's not so bad now but when August starts, steer clear.

Moreover, some people want to get 500 wins with a certain hero because it gives you an animated hero portrait, so to do this as fast as possible they do "farming" - repeatedly concede to keep themselves at a low rank, then beating up on people in that rank. So, you can expect to meet these wonderful, sporting players, most likely playing decks you cannot beat at your current skill level and card pool.

But we have casual, right? Except HS casual is anything but. In general, casual is actually harder than ranked, due to the issue Cyberyeti mentioned. Match-making is based on win % and not experience, rank or card pool size, and most people play casual to complete their daily quests, so they choose fast decks which are notoriously less fun to play against.

Arena has no skill-based match-making, it just pits you against someone with a similar amount of wins. Moreover, data mining shows that right now it's very difficult to succeed there.

So, should you give up and only play the AI? heck no. Every Wednesday there's a "Tavern Brawl" mode which is very casual. I'm not sure how match-making works there, but the three brawls we had so far were rather fast formats (so you get gold pretty quickly), they put players on equal footing (well... more or less) and most importantly, players seem to play them for fun (there are always try-hards, but in general they win once then stop playing). You get a pack for winning once during the four days a week it's available, and after that it'll be a good way to see all sorts of cards and learn the game a bit.
I would also suggest you get some friends. You can play with them, and you can watch them when you inevitably get the "Watch and Learn" quest, which gives you a free pack for watching a friend winning.

If you want me to add you, let me know. If you want some links for competitive decks for new players, likewise. Good cards are important, but strong players can carry all-basic decks very far. Good luck!

[Cyberyeti]

Antrax, on 2015-July-06, 21:40, said:

So, should you give up and only play the AI? heck no.

Games against the AI don't count for most of the daily quests, which is a more overpowering reason not to do that unless you simply want to unlock some basic cards by ranking up a hero.

Tavern brawl is only available Weds-Sun but is good, and some of the formats you play a fixed deck so your lack of cards won't hurt.

[Zelandakh]

Antrax, on 2015-July-06, 21:40, said:

Yeah, one of the main issues with HS today is that it's so unwelcoming to new players. You have a small comfort bubble between ranks 25 to 20 because people can't drop down to these ranks once they go over them, so it's mostly new players with occasional returning players or someone who just opened a new account.

I think you are overdoing this description a little. Any half-decent player should reach rank 20 with a starter deck and 15 with a couple of common/uncommon upgrades that will come along automatically from doing dailies. Yes Casual is tough but Ranked is just fine once you realize that your "Fast" deck is less about doing damage before they can set up defences and more about forcing them into unfavourable trades to secure some level of card advantage. Because this is the key to HS - get card advantage and you win. Once you realize this everything becomes simple.

[StevenG]

Zelandakh, on 2015-July-07, 06:58, said:

Because this is the key to HS - get card advantage and you win. Once you realize this everything becomes simple.

How do you get card advantage when they get dealt in the wrong order? Whenever my starting cards are all 4,5,6 I invariably lose (and it mostly seems to swap big cards for big cards at the start).
If they come out sensibly I win more than my share against similar standard decks.

(I started playing a week ago as a response to this thread. I've never played any game of this type before.)

[Zelandakh]

StevenG, on 2015-July-07, 07:45, said:

How do you get card advantage when they get dealt in the wrong order? Whenever my starting cards are all 4,5,6 I invariably lose

This is possible of course but the mana curve of a starter deck should be such that the chances of drawing 4-5-6 and mulliganing into another 4-5-6 draw are very low. Most likely you have simply created your deck with too steep of a mana curve. Remove a few of those large creatures and replace them with 2 or 3 drops. In a starter deck it is important to try to establish board control early as this is likely to be the only mechanism your deck has to trade favourably. Only decks with better cards can afford to completely ignore the early game and seize the board later.

[Antrax]

StevenG, on 2015-July-07, 07:45, said:

How do you get card advantage when they get dealt in the wrong order? Whenever my starting cards are all 4,5,6 I invariably lose (and it mostly seems to swap big cards for big cards at the start).

As you can imagine, this is about deck building. For instance, in the Arena it's recommended (especially for newer players) to have between 6 to 8 2 drops (cards you'd want to play by turn 2, so 1-drops count but something like novice engineer, which is a very weak turn 2 play, doesn't).

In constructed, depending on their strategy, decks don't necessarily follow this rule. However, good beginner decks do, since they're basically good arena decks.

Zelandakh, on 2015-July-07, 06:58, said:

I think you are overdoing this description a little. Any half-decent player should reach rank 20 with a starter deck and 15 with a couple of common/uncommon upgrades that will come along automatically from doing dailies.

What I write is based on the experiences people share on Reddit, as well as my own experiment playing on the US server (since I'm usually on EU). Rank 25-20 were all clearly new players. Then, it was mech mages (which was the go-to "win easy" deck at the time) with no compromises regarding cards (so, they had at least Antonidas) with occasional Wallet Warriors (clearly farming for golden portrait, sporting their 6 legendary + multiple epics decks). Those two decks were extremely difficult to beat with a basic-only deck, even at my skill level, which is probably above half decent.
So, a new player, which should not be very good at game and has access to a limited collection, will find it very difficult to win, which often means they'll quit in frustration soon after bursting the rank 20 bubble.

Also, thinking a CCG is all about card advantage is a natural step in the evolution of a player, but it's not really true. Try playing a very tempo-oriented deck (oil rogue or tempo mage come to mind) and you'll see the principle you cited doesn't hold.

[Zelandakh]

Antrax, on 2015-July-07, 21:36, said:

Also, thinking a CCG is all about card advantage is a natural step in the evolution of a player, but it's not really true. Try playing a very tempo-oriented deck (oil rogue or tempo mage come to mind) and you'll see the principle you cited doesn't hold.

This was quite disrespectful, don't you think? I have been playing CCGs for nearly 20 years, albeit not seriously. When I say HS is all about card advantage it is comparing it to its rivals. Naturally there are specific decks that work around it but for a starting player this is absolutely the best advice (by the time you are in a position to play in a different style you should understand the game well enough to work out the exceptions). In the same way as I would advise an MMDoC player not to worry much about card advantage and to concentrate more on the state of the board and positioning (because drawing is devalued in MMDoC). MtG is the most difficult - I would suggest a new player start with a Sligh deck to learn about tempo and to get a feel for threat removal versus face damage but I find it much more difficult to give a simple direction there...and that is reflected in the complexity of the game.

[Cyberyeti]

In fact one of the common decks atm is not about tempo at all in the standard way, face hunter is just play creatures but not too many, don't trade unless you have to even advantageous trades most of the time and hit face.

[WesleyC]

StevenG, on 2015-July-07, 07:45, said:

How do you get card advantage when they get dealt in the wrong order? Whenever my starting cards are all 4,5,6 I invariably lose (and it mostly seems to swap big cards for big cards at the start).

If you're mulliganing into such bad starting hands often then you're probably not playing enough cheap cards.

In an normal arena/starter deck I usually aim for something like:

1: 3
2: 8
3: 5
4: 5
5: 4
6+: 5

[WesleyC]

<repeat post>

[WesleyC]

Zelandakh, on 2015-July-08, 03:21, said:

This was quite disrespectful, don't you think? I have been playing CCGs for nearly 20 years, albeit not seriously. When I say HS is all about card advantage it is comparing it to its rivals. Naturally there are specific decks that work around it but for a starting player this is absolutely the best advice (by the time you are in a position to play in a different style you should understand the game well enough to work out the exceptions). In the same way as I would advise an MMDoC player not to worry much about card advantage and to concentrate more on the state of the board and positioning (because drawing is devalued in MMDoC). MtG is the most difficult - I would suggest a new player start with a Sligh deck to learn about tempo and to get a feel for threat removal versus face damage but I find it much more difficult to give a simple direction there...and that is reflected in the complexity of the game.

I'm not sure how you could find this comment disrespectful. Antrax corrected you as politely as he possibly could!

To be more blunt, card advantage is of minor importance in Hearthstone compared to most of the other games you've mentioned. If I was offering one concept to a new player it would be "board control" which is by far the most important/defining idea in Hearthstone given that every creature comes pre-built with "attack anywhere".

FWIW, I played a lot of MMDoC and I really enjoyed the way that board positioning became a key idea. I gave up playing after ubisoft managed to stall development for 12 months.

[Zelandakh]

WesleyC, on 2015-July-08, 07:05, said:

To be more blunt, card advantage is of minor importance in Hearthstone compared to most of the other games you've mentioned. If I was offering one concept to a new player it would be "board control" which is by far the most important/defining idea in Hearthstone given that every creature comes pre-built with "attack anywhere".

This makes no sense to me. The main benefit of board control is to gain card advantage, through advantageous trades and to eliminate the opponent's counters.

[hrothgar]

Haven't played Hearthstone in a year or so, but back in the day it was pretty easy to build a competitive Zoo deck pretty quickly.

Look at some of the low cost Warlock and Hunter decks and use these to fund more expensive options.

[billw55]

Does "card advantage" mean having more cards in play, in hand, in deck, or ... ?

[Fluffy]

billw55, on 2015-July-08, 08:12, said:

Does "card advantage" mean having more cards in play, in hand, in deck, or ... ?

In total between play and hand

[Zelandakh]

It can also mean having better cards for the state of the game. So trading a 2/1 for a 3/2 is a form of card advantage even though it is a 1 for 1.

[Antrax]

Zelandakh, on 2015-July-08, 03:21, said:

This was quite disrespectful, don't you think?

Well, I'm sorry. I still disagree with that blanket statement though, and in HS in particular it may lead a player down a greedy path. For instance, playing my beloved grinder mage and going second against a hunter dropping a turn 1 leper gnome, I'll coin out a mad scientist rather than coining out ping, even though the latter gives immediate card advantage whereas the former loses the coin for a 1:1 trade (the secret is 50% to be duplicate and thus irrelevant for the first couple of turns, and 50% to be ice barrier, which is again a card which loses card advantage).

You can look at everything through a card advantage lens (I think at the time, Zvi Moshowitz tried to force his model so that aggro decks win through the card advantage gained from the cards their opponent didn't have time to play before dying), but I don't think it really helps to think of things this way. The fact Handlock isn't the dominant deck (and is countered easily when is, and not by aggro) should be enough evidence that even HS is more complex than that.

[Cyberyeti]

Btw the current tavern brawl is well suited to mage decks with mainly common and/or basic cards. I'm currently 5-0 with a deck where the only epic cards in it (2 spellbenders) are decidedly optional and precious few rares (5).