Poor Richard’s Guide for brand new Hearthstone players
Poor Richard’s Guide for brand new Hearthstone players
Stage 1 earning the free stuff!
Hearthstone is a free to play trading card game which can be played on the PC or on the I-pad. At first the game can seem a little overwhelming since there are 485 playable cards (and 30 from the first expansion Curse of Naxxramas). So allow me to help make your journey easy in a few steps!
Step 1: The tutorial!
Defeat the 6 Tutorial bosses they are very easy (Even the last one that cheats lol).
You will earn 12 new cards for your personal free collection as a reward for beating them all. So at this point your personal free card collection holds 96 free cards. You will get quests as you defeat the AI opponents but I suggest we unlock all our heroes first =).
Step 2: Crafting a deck that fits your style!
Now it is time to unlock the other 8 of your heroes for play by defeating the Enemy AI version of the hero you want to unlock. But first let’s go into our ‘collection’ and craft a deck capable of this feat! Here are three recommended decks that will get the job done.
AI Pubstomper
This deck focuses on having high quality minions out on every turn. Do not forget that you can enrage your own Gurubashi Berserker by pinging it with your hero power! This deck is recommended for people who enjoy controlling the board through powerful minions. Make sure you only drop Elven Archer’s when you can kill another minion (Not on turn 1) the same rule applies to Arcane Missiles.
AI Sniper
This deck gains board advantage by picking off 1 or 2 health minions. Also the added Kobold Geomancer will give your spells an extra oomph! Do not forget that you can enrage your own Gurubashi Berserker by pinging it with your hero power! This deck is recommended for people who enjoy controlling the board through minion abilities. Make sure you only drop Elven Archer’s when you can kill another minion (Not on turn 1) the same rule applies to Arcane Missiles.
AI Control
This deck uses heavy spell power minions to increase the power of your spells. This makes Arcane Explosion gain maximum value for wave clearing enemy minions. Do not forget that you can enrage your own Gurubashi Berserker by pinging it with your hero power! This deck is recommended for people who enjoy controlling the board through empowered spells. Make sure you only drop Elven Archer’s when you can kill another minion (Not on turn 1) the same rule applies to Arcane Missiles. Also this is a control Deck so make sure you hold a Kobold Geomancer in your hand (Do not play on turn 2) until you can get off a great spell like Arcane Explosion for maximum value (2 or 3 kills).
How to choose your starting hand (Mulligan)
If you go first you want to have 1, 2 and 3 mana drop creatures (or 2 creatures 1 spell up to you).
If you go second you want to have 2, 2, 3 and 4 mana drop creatures (or 3 creatures 1 spell up to you).
The reason for this is you have a card called the ‘coin’ it gives you one extra mana. So on turn one you can have a 2 mana card played, then on turn two you can play a second 2 mana cost minion!
Step 3: Leveling Tips (Fine tuning our free mage decks!)
Level 2
I suggest taking out Arcane Explosion from the “Pubstomper” and “Sniper” decks and replace it with your new card Frostbolt. In the “Control” deck replace Polymorph with Frostbolt.
Level 4
I suggest taking out Elven Archer from the “Control” deck and replacing it with Mirror Image.
Levels 6-7
No changes are suggested. By this time you have unlocked all Heroes congratulations! Additionally I am sure you noticed that you earned in game reward #1 100g for this achievement … very nice! Now we defeat the Expert AI. Why you ask? Because we will get in game reward #2 and #3 this way!
Level 8
I suggest taking out Stormwind Knight from the “Pubstomper” and “Sniper” decks and replace it with your new card Water Elemental. Leave the “Control” deck as is. Water Elemental plus Acidic Swamp Ooze will give you a huge advantage versus Hunter’s, Paladin’s, Rogue’s, Shaman’s and Warrior’s. The Water Elemental freezes them so they cannot attack with their Hero/Weapon. The Acidic Swamp Ooze will destroy their Hero’s equipped weapon so only play this card if they have a weapon equipped (Or in a live or die situation).
Level 10
By this point you are halfway through the Expert AI. Also you just earned in game reward #2 an Expert Pack of cards …. Sweeeeet. I suggest taking out Arcane Missiles from the “Pubstomper” and “Sniper” decks and replace it with your new card Flamestrike. You should also remove Dalaran Mage from the “Control” deck and replace it with Flamestrike. Congratulations you have unlocked all of the basic free cards for the mage!
Level 12
By this point you have defeated all the Expert AI heroes. You also earned 100g from the in game reward #3. Very good job! Also you are 100% done with AI heroes (Unless you get a 100g daily quest called Total Dominance. You can get all seven wins against the AI for a stress free easy gold gain!). So we have 200g and 1 Expert pack at this moment. But before we do anything lets unlock some more in game rewards! Now hit the play button and let’s play a casual game for another reward. There now that was easy wasn’t it? Now we have 2 Expert packs! Look a new quest lets go ahead and play 3 more casual games yippee! Look at that another 100g! Also we got another quest that is REALLY easy to complete as a mage. So let’s go ahead and complete that quest. The Beat down quest says to deal 100 damage to an enemy Hero? Mages deal TONS of damage. Now that that quest is over we have pocketed another 100g! Now it is time to move onto the Arena. You see we get 1 free arena run. Now I know not everyone enjoys the arena but it is important we complete this 1 run so we can get a super reward.
Arena first run advice
Building a good arena deck is not simple. This section is here just to give you some good starter advice. If you are lucky you will get to pick a mage as your hero and you will recognize the spells. But if you are unlucky just have a good time and try to follow these guidelines.
1) You want 20 minions: 2 1 mana cost, 4 2 mana cost, 4 3 mana cost, 4 4 mana cost, 2 5 mana cost, 2 6 man cost and 2 7 or higher mana cost. So pay attention to your minion’s mana cost and # as you pick.
2) You want 10 removal spells (or 4 weapons and 6 removal spells). Try not to pick any fancy or gimmicky spells. If you do not understand the spell feel free to skip it.
In Conclusion
Good job! You have now completed all of the easy earnable rewards. Rest assured that was a well spent 3 hours and I am sure you had tons of fun! You should now have 3 free Expert packs (Don’t open them yet!) and between 300-400 gold.
Supplemental Material
This is how the three level 10+ mage decks should look at this point.
End of Stage 1 earning the free stuff.
Next Article is “Stage 2 Poor Richard’s guide to earning the shiny stuff with every Hero!”
Article Written by
Billy Cribbs aka: Poor Richard & Pyrenees
Battle Tag (Pyrenees#1324 on the North America Server) I welcome all new friend requests!
About the Author
As a huge fan of Blizzard and Hearthstone I have been playing this fun game since closed Beta. I often watch the best pro’s play on Twitch Tv. I came up with the nickname “Poor Richard” because I see my favorite players buying/getting tons of expert packs but my budget constraints prevented me from opening 50 packs at once! So I made it my goal to learn how to earn all of the free gold and free packs from quest rewards. I also specialize in grinding out daily quests with every class. My favorite Legendary is “Hogger” (It is one of my few Legendaries). I also write in five different Genre’s for people on a website called Fiverr. The two most interesting stories I completed but did not know I was capable of doing: One was a time travel love story and the other was an autobiography about a war torn Kenya. Here is my link to Fiverr feel free to take a look chances are your personal story/book idea can become a reality!
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