For those of you who played Hearthstone Season 1, you may remember small minions called Buddies that enhanced your hero power. As Season 2 approached, Blizzard started removing them. However, it looks like the Battlegrounds mode will give you a powerful Buddy if you’re lucky.
Hearthstone Season 2 will see the introduction of quests. These tasks will appear during gameplay, and you’ll receive a reward if you manage to complete them. Apparently, it’s in this new system in Battlegrounds where you can unlock a unique Buddy.
While Blizzard initially tried to keep this feature a secret, it seems the cat is already out of the bag. Or, the Buddy is already out of the shadows. In a recent confirmation, a community manager informed forum members that you can unlock a Golden Buddy as a special treat in Heartstone Season 2. You’ll need to complete a specific task, though.
One of the criteria is to use a hero that has the Buddy option available. Any heroes that appeared in Hearthstone Season 1 after the minion system ended won’t count. Also, you shouldn’t play as Queen Azshara or Sire Denathrius, as they don’t qualify.
If you have eight players in a match that qualifies for the criteria, there’s a 1% chance that everyone with receive a Hearthstone Golden Buddy. The quest you’ll need to undertake is called Partner in Crime.
It’s been a long time since we heard that Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft launched for iPad. Since then, many adventurers have been enjoying their adventures, especially with the new seasons. Every online game seems to be incorporating seasons lately, but we aren’t complaining. The more content we see, the more we enjoy these fantastic titles.
Hearthstone is a digital CCG (collectible card game) in which the objective is to drain your opponent’s health points to zero before he or she does the same to you. But you already know that; what you really want to know is how to get better. In comprehensive order, here are the exact steps to take to reach the rank you want—hopefully, you’ll get the coveted Legend card back in no time!
How to become a Hearthstone champion
Champion preparation and terminology
The first thing you should understand about Hearthstone is the way your deck synergy dictates how you play your game. Normally, this concept is generalized into six deck archetypes: aggro, midrange, control, tempo, combo, and zoo.
Once you understand your particular deck archetype, make sure to familiarize yourself with the others so that you can tailor your playstyle to best defeat your opponent’s deck. Naturally, knowing the “meta” or “trendy” Hearthstone decks at any given moment in time will further advance your playstyle, because you can anticipate the decks you will face and be more prepared to face them.
In addition to understanding your deck’s synergy, you should have a good grasp on the cards you have and their mana curve. Mana curve dictates the number of cards you have at each mana cost. As a general rule, this also dictates your deck archetype.
If a lot of your cards fall below the 4-5 mana mark, you likely have an aggro deck. If you have several 10-cost cards, you may have a control deck. If your cards are pretty well distributed throughout the mana curve, you may have a midrange and/or tempo deck.
Another key concept to understand in Hearthstone is trading, which refers to the advantage gained or lost through the exchange of minions. (Read: If a minion dies during your turn, you traded something to make it happen.)
The goal in Hearthstone is to make even trades in order to gain a competitive advantage. For example, if you kill a Stonetusk Boar with your own Stonetusk Boar, you traded evenly. Likewise, if you trade a River Crocolisk for a Bloodfen Raptor, you’ve also made an even trade, because the attack and health of each card kill each other without overpowering or underpowering the other minion. And, in any non-aggro deck, you’re going to want to make a lot of trades. Keeping the enemy board clear is a good way to win!
Champion card acquisition
You don’t need to buy anything to win at Hearthstone, but you will win faster if you have a large library of cards from which to make competitive decks.
I would highly recommend buying the “Welcome Pack” if you haven’t yet. It’s $5 and includes 10 classic packs and a guaranteed class-specific legendary.
If you want to spend money, don’t spend it randomly on packs hoping for Legendaries. First, make sure you’ve picked a class you like (for beginners, Warlock is a great and low-cost place to start, as is Hunter, Shaman, and Mage). Next, look up decklists for this particular class on hearthpwn.com and see which sets benefit your class the most (you can tell by the little symbols next to the card names which expansion the card is in).
Next, make sure to play the Tavern Brawl whenever it pops up and win at least once. Free classic pack! Some other ways to earn free packs/cards are through quests, special events, achieving rank 20 in a season, reaching level 10 in each class, and arena. Arena is difficult for newbies, because deck building is really challenging when you’re first starting out and you don’t know the cards or the meta. However, if you’re good at arena, you can start a run for 150 gold and you can win packs, gold, golden cards, and dust worth far more than 150 gold.
Champions watch champions
One of the best ways to learn how to play is to watch champs play on Twitch and YouTube, as well as learning 1 on 1 at Fireside Gatherings.
On YouTube and Twitch, Strifecro and Trump are my favorite players when it comes to improving my game; Strifecro often explains his plays, and Trump’s YouTube channel has a training series on Hearthstone that is essential for new players, or just players who have yet to build the foundational Hearthstone knowledge. If you really need that foundation, check out the series here:
Also, make sure to watch the tournaments on Hearthstone’s Twitch as they happen. This will educate you on the meta, as well as how to play like a pro.
The best beginner decks for future champions
DisguisedToast, an incredible player and educator, has a page devoted exclusively to helping new players. The guides themselves are worth perusing; however, the star of this page is the zero-cost beginner decks for each class. So no matter which class you have chosen, you can start with these decks, buff them up with your Welcome Pack cards, and be well on your way to becoming a Hearthstone champion.
And don’t get discouraged if you’re not winning! You can win with these decks; you just have to know how to play them as well as play against the decks you’re bound to face up to Rank 20 (which should be your minimum goal in your first “season” or “month” playing Hearthstone). A lot of it is practice as well as trial and error. If you lose to an overwhelming amount of aggro decks, maybe your midrange deck isn’t cutting it. Play around with what you have, learn from the masters, and practice, practice, practice.
Hearthstone communities for future champions
If community is important to you as a player, make sure to join and attend local Fireside Gatherings. You’ll meet amazing people, learn about the game, and gain access to tournaments in the area, which is the ultimate goal for a champion.
Another way to be involved in the Hearthstone community is to make sure you are active online. The best group for Hearthstone players is actually on Facebook, in a group called “The Inn: Hearthstone Group.” You can get your questions answered here; most of the players are more than willing to lend a helping hand to newbies. And it’s a great place to make friends and build a supportive group of fellow players.
Is Hearthstone “pay to play?”
The short answer: mostly. However, compared to any other card game or eSport, Hearthstone is incredibly affordable. The good news is that you can still make it to the top if you practice every day and refuse to let the high-cost decks get to you. So many good decks are low cost, and you’ll be able to craft them without much time invested in the game.
Zoolock and most Hunter decks are a great place to start for free players. Once you have your Welcome Pack, try to stick with the class you have legendary cards for—or even just strong meta cards. From there, you can build wins, and consequently, gold, which you can invest in packs, which leads to dust, which leads to the cards you need… which leads to more wins.
Staying motivated
Staying motivated to become a champion when you keep losing or can’t afford a better deck is hard. It really is. The bottom line is, your passion for the game brought you here, and your passion for the game will keep you going. You can make it to Rank 20 with cheap decks, and if you play every day and complete the daily quests, you’ll reach your goal. It’s all a matter of dedication, persistence, and passion. Hearthstone is an incredibly rewarding game when you get involved in the community and set competitive goals for yourself.
Honestly, the game in and of itself is a reward. It’s fun, engaging, challenging and, as the saying goes, “Easy to learn, hard to master.” Hearthstone is a life-changing game. From Hearthstone, you’ll make incredible friends, flex your brain, and learn strategies and synergies that make you see things in a different way. Above all, Hearthstone is so much fun. It’s hard to play it without smiling.
A few final words
To recap:
Be sure to know the game inside and out. You want to know the terminology, deck types, and meta if you want to get to the higher
Study the craft of Hearthstone by watching the champions; learn what makes them the best of the best.
Focus on building your card collection in the early stages while knowing what you need to craft for your next-level deck. Study the best beginner decks to select the one you think will work best for you.
Build your community, and you’ll make not only experienced resources to talk to, but friends for life.
Make sure to keep your head in the game.
Hearthstone can get spendy if you make it spendy, but it doesn’t have to be that way if you focus on your daily quests. Investing in a Welcome Pack is more than enough of an expense to get started.
Don’t lose hope if things are going sour; there are always improvements to be made in your deck or the way that you play. Trial and error is your best friend in this game—keep at it!
Follow these tips, and you’re well on your way to becoming a Hearthstone champion. Good luck, and fare thee well, adventurer!
Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is now available worldwide for iPad, following its soft-launch at the start of April in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. It’s free to download and play, and there are optional premium features.
Hearthstone takes characters and lore from World of Warcraft, and turns it into a card battling game like Magic: The Gathering. The difference with Blizzard’s game is its accessibility. Anyone can get into Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, and it’s just as addictive as casual games like Candy Crush Saga and so on. Don’t be fooled into thinking this is a simple game, though, as once you’ve learned the ropes it can get pretty complicated, but Blizzard have got the learning curve just about right.
A multiplayer battle game, Blizzard has also announced a forthcoming single player campaign. The first part will be free, and the following four will be premium, with cards you win there being instantly usable in the full game too. There is still no exact date for the single player ‘Curse of Naxxramas‘ campaign.
Download Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft for iPad, PC and Mac.
At the PAX East show in Boston, Blizzard Entertainment announced the forthcoming single player campaign for Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, Curse of Naxxramas.
Curse of Naxxramas: A Hearthstone Adventure will be released on PC, Mac and iPad simultaneously, but Blizzard isn¡t giving away a release date yet. The adventure will consist of five wings, opening over a five week period. The first part, The Arachnid Quarter, will be free to all players, and the subsequent wings can be purchased with real money, or in-game gold.
The campaign will reward players with 30 new cards that you can collect and use in your deck as normal. Defeating bosses will earn you new cards, as will completing each wing of the adventure.
Curse of Naxxramas will get its own game board you’ll play on while in the single player adventure, that will have all new interactive corners for you to explore.
Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is a card trading game for Windows and Mac, set in the World of Warcraft. Yesterday, Blizzard Entertainment announced the release of Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft for iPad.
Much like Rovio did with Angry Birds Go!, the free-to-play game, is being soft launched in Australia, New Zealand and Canada first. This allows the developers to get feedback from users in smaller markets, so they can fine tune the game before it rolls out globally. It will also come out on Android, iPhone, and Windows tablets soon.
Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is a game where you collect digital cards, which you use to fight in turn based battles. Blizzard have to be congratulated for making the game surprisingly easy to get into – other card trading games like Magic: The Gathering and Mojang’s Scrolls are tougher for players new to the genre.
Blizzard did not announce when Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is being released globally. In a press release, Mike Morhaime, CEO and co-founder of Blizzard said that ‘Instead of calling those folks up individually, we figured we might as well let everyone know that the global iPad rollout for Hearthstone has begun, and pretty soon it’ll be available everywhere.’
Blizzard’s trading card game, Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, is now in open beta in North America, though the company promises to bring the open beta to other regions “within the next few days.” The game was first announced at PAX East in March 2012 and entered a closed beta in August. Now anyone can give Hearthstone a try by downloading the game here.
“Please be aware that if smoke starts curling out of our servers due to unexpectedly high demand to play Hearthstone, we may have to temporarily disable open beta account activations for a time until we’re ready to take on more players.”
Blizzard says it’s done wiping the game so players can permanently amass a collection of cards to challenge their friends. The company also notes that if there is too much interest in the open beta and their servers become flooded with new users, it will temporarily suspend open beta invites until the company is ready to receive more players. “Please be aware that if smoke starts curling out of our servers due to unexpectedly high demand to play Hearthstone, we may have to temporarily disable open beta account activations for a time until we’re ready to take on more players,” writes Blizzard in a blog post.
The company has also announced its intention to bring the game to Android and iPhone later this year, which shouldn’t be much of a problem since the game’s system requirements are relatively low for the PC and Mac.
