Resources in Hearthstone: A Primer

 

Author - Mike Tyminski On: Twitter

There are a wide variety of resources that players in Hearthstone can use to ride to victory. Knowing how these resources are used is one of the key routes that a player can use to leverage a close matchup into his or her favor. This week, we’re gonna take a look at the basics of those resources using some common decks from the ladder in order to better illustrate these principles.

There are four major resources every hero has access to: cards, crystals, life, and a hero Power. However, the way these resources are prioritized are not the same among many of the top decks on the ladder.

Cards: Card advantage is central to strategy in any CCG, and is countless words have been spilled on the topic (a more in-depth read on the topic can be found here). But for those unfamiliar to the topic the research can be quite daunting. Quite simply, card advantage is the idea that whoever has access to more cards has access to more options and will often have an edge in a game.

So how does one gain card advantage? One way is through drawing large numbers of cards — this method is often employed in decks like Zoo, Handlock, and Miracle Rogue, but elements of this tactic are also found in some of the most aggressive decks in the game that shy away from a typical card advantage model like the newest wave of Aggro Paladins with Divine Favor and the various hunter builds that use the Unleash The Hounds + Starving Buzzard combo.

However, there’s also a second way to achieve card advantage: through favorable trades. This is often the domain of control decks where sweepers tend to be king - a Consecration, Starfire, or Lightning Storm that nails multiple minions is often very advantageous to the player casting those spells. Similarly, minions that take multiple cards to take out or have a spell-like ability,battlecry,deathrattle, (whether it’s a divine shield minion, a Harvest Golem, or even something as innocuous as a Northshire Cleric) etc., create card advantage through incremental advantages. Weapons can also act as a source of card advantage, since they often tend to take out multiple minions. These trades are often viewed through the lens of a ratio, for example a card like Multi-Shot is often a 2-for-1 because two of their cards are destroyed for one of yours. Meanwhile, taking out an opponent’s Ancient of War is almost always an unfavorable trade, often putting you in a 1-for-2 or even 1-for-3 situation.

Crystals (Mana): If card advantage was the only thing that reigned supreme, then the meta would be dominated by decks like Warrior Control that play only the biggest cards with the most impact. However, this is not the world we live in, and curve considerations will affect every deck in the environment.

It’s often the midrange and aggro decks that try to run the most mana efficient cards possible. For example, Zoo decks often run cards like Flame Imp and Soulfire, extremely cost efficient cards at the expense of life and cards respectively. Many Shaman decks deal with this sort of tempo in a more sideways fashion, as overload allows them to trade mana later for mana now, splitting the cost of some very powerful cards over two turns.

A third way that decks try to find mana efficiency through ramping and cost reduction. Many Mage decks take advantage of a card like Sorcerer’s Apprentice to reduce the cost of their game breaking freeze spells, while Innervate is a Druid staple and Wild Growth has seen a resurgence in popularity over the last few weeks. Leveraging your mana crystals in the most efficient way possible is the best way to control the pace of the game, either letting you play your better spells sooner or denying your opponent the ability to play theirs.

Health: Your health plays a surprisingly large role as a resource in Hearthstone. Almost every top tier deck has to consider both current and future health when making a number of routine game decisions, whether it’s weapon use in the classes whose decks contain them (as often those decks use their early weapons as a means of board control), Gul’dan’s hero power, or a control decks health management in order to survive to the late game. The end result is that while a Miracle Rogue deck might more aggressively use its kill spells to buy time, a deck like Handlock might hemorrhage life points in order to speed out its Molten Giant and Mountain Giant.

What makes life different than mana and cards, however, is that not all life points are created equal. Most of the time, your life points between 20 and 30 are going to be worth less than your last few life points, as it is considerably more difficult for your opponent to end the game when you’re at 25 than when you’re at 3. As a result, it’s ok to burn early life for board position or card advantage, and coming from the other side using Arcane Missiles or Lightning Bolt to take an opponent from 30 to 27 is ill-advised.

There are decks in the meta that look to exploit this discrepancy in value. Face Hunter, for example, trades bulk, mana efficiency, card advantage and defense in the name of burning down your life total as fast as possible. Similarly, many decks can find ways to burst you down from moderately high life totals (Token Druid comes to mind), forcing inefficiencies in otherwise smooth decks that have to keep their life totals above a certain cut point (usually around 18-20) in order to avoid certain death from the hands of a two card combo.

Hero Power: The fourth and final “resource” is one that typically is not thought of as a resource, but will often swing matchups: your hero power. On a basic level, your hero power is a mana sink, but many decks often are built around these powers. Both top tier Warlock decks, Zoo and Handlock, make extensive use of the Gul’dan hero power: Life Tap. Zoo achieves this by using the power to provide a steady stream of threats, while handlock uses Life Tap to fuel absurdly large Twilight Drakes and absurdly cheap giants.

Similarly, Face Hunter leans on the fact that the Hunter’s hero power is a basically infinite reserve of Arcane Shots to the dome. This in turn allows the deck to race in almost any circumstance and when combined with the Hunter’s healthy suite of burn spells can burst down an opponent at bargain basement prices. Similarly, the Control Warrior’s armor boosting ability synergizes with many of the class’s best cards, setting up massive totals on Shield Slam, making weapon trades and Baron Geddon hurt a little less, and buying the deck extra life points to get to the point where its cards grossly outclasses its opponents.

Other times a hero power provides utility. One of the reasons a class like Mage is often picked in Arena is because of the hero power’s ability to pick off smaller minions or make less equitable trades more favorable for the Mage player.

While direct resource destruction is non-existent in Hearthstone (and that’s probably for the best), the next step is to figure out how to make sure the matchup is fought on your turf. For example, I’m more likely to run out a card at something below full value (for example, Shattered Sun Cleric) against a deck where I know that a high life total on turn 6 will drastically reduce your chance of winning than against a deck where I’m going to want to grind it out and focus on having the last threat standing. Similarly, against the deck with less burst potential I might hold back that Consecration or Swipe for just a little more card advantage than I would against a deck that can punish me for waiting that extra turn.

I hope that you found this discussion of resources helpful to improving your game; I plan on doing some more basics articles in the future, so feel free to comment below and let me know what you think and what you’d like to see in the future!