Team IHearthU: Hearthstone on a Budget

Team IHEARTHU: Twitter | Website

Sponsored by: Kinguin | Waypoint Media

Competitive play can be a very exciting aspect of Hearthstone. I am a very competitive player and I love this aspect of the game. The one daunting thing can be the cost of the cards you need to use certain decks. These decks, like Warrior Control are packed with many legendary cards which makes it hard to get started. Today I’m going to go over the budget player’s guide to competitive play and why you should look into playing tournaments.

I’ve been helping my nephew get into Hearthstone. He was always really excited by card games, and strategy games. He played a lot of chess and played Magic: the Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh, but didn’t have the best cards, so he never followed up with it. He also wanted to get into Hearthstone from when he found out about it. However, he thought the overall cost of the game would be a little troublesome at first but with my help and some arena grinding as well as a few discounted iTunes gift cards, he was able to build a 4 deck lineup for tournaments without using any non-Naxx legendaries and with only 4 epics across all 4 decks.

Down below, I will include a brief write up on those decks – but lets talk about a few things first. Hearthstone is a game where you will, at some point, want to compete but a lot of people don’t know how or where to compete, so I figured I’d help by including these links here.

First of all – let me show you where you can play in the weekly cups.

https://hsna.zotac-cup.com/en/cups/1963-zotac-hearthstone-na-cup-46 - This is the link to the latest Zotac cup. This is a weekly tournament that offers $100 to the winner every Saturday (6pm EST) and you play in a bo3 Last Hero Standing format. These tournaments are single elimination but they’re excellent practice and a great way to refine your skill.

https://play.eslgaming.com/hearthstone/north-america/ - Every Sunday, there’s another tournament. This one has a $500 prize pool spread out throughout the top 4. This is my favorite weekly tournament series and I play in them whenever I get the chance. The top 4 are invited to come back to the streamed tournament on Friday where the top 2 get to play in the Legendary Series on Saturday. The winner of the legendary series gets invited to a LAN event (all expenses paid) in Los Angeles and a shot at $20,000!

These two tournaments are where you’ll get started in competitive play, it’s where I and many other top players started competing.

If you’re just getting started though, I will go over the necessary stuff you should have for a tournament. You should have a variety of decks to give yourself some options. A good variety of inexpensive decks could be (and will be for this article) Druid, Mage, Hunter and Zoo. These decks are mostly commons, rares, cards from the Curse of Naxxramas expansion as well as some class cards with Druid being the only exception, having 4 epics. I kept this legendary-free excluding Naxxramas as I wanted to make it cheap enough that anyone who wants to get started can get started.

In open tournaments, you need a few different types of decks. They can have similar end goals but you need different decks so you have better or worse matchups against different stuff you’d expect to see in the field. For example, Druid and Mage have really strong matchups versus the control decks like Warrior and Priest whereas Hunter and Zoo have really strong matchups versus other aggro decks. Hunter and Zoo would also be your crutch cards in lots of matchups as well.

I am going to go over the 4 budget decks and why this lineup is ideal for anyone who’s looking to get started and into competitive play without spending very much money.

Let’s look over the decks real quick –

Hunter Deck Here

Hunter is a deck that is your bread and butter in a lot of matchups. This deck is very strong against Druid, Handlock, Rogue, Shaman and control decks like Warrior and Priest provided you get a good start. This deck is meant to be a crutch in a lot of matchups and help you win quickly versus decks with little to no heal or decks that have a hard time clearing multiple minions. This list got Rank 1 Legend on ladder this season so it’s strength has already been proven but feel free to modify it as needed.

Zoo Deck Here

Zoo is a deck that is very strong at dealing with aggressive decks like the new Aggro Mage and it’s strong at dealing with decks that can’t go card for card with your Hero Power. If you can amass a strong board while drawing extra cards every turn, it’s almost impossible for any deck to come back. Zoo has always been one of the strongest decks in all of Hearthstone and remains to be one. This deck will often be banned in tournaments using a ban-system but if you aren’t in one of those tournaments, this is likely to be one of the strongest decks you have available.

Mage Deck Here

Mech Mage is one of the newest archetypes to hit the game. Goblin Blastmage is an obscenely powerful card and the mech synergy is so incredibly powerful. This deck exploits the mech engine to the fullest by having access to Duplicate. If you can Duplicate a Mechwarper, you will be able to play out a huge board in one turn for almost free. A single tech copy of Mirror Entity gives you flexibility with your Kirin Tor Mage as well as a second secret to pick up off of Mad Scientist. Mirror Entity also gives you an insane tempo lead in certain matchups which is why I include the one copy. I only play one because they will play around the second one for the rest of the game which makes them have awkward turns.

Druid Deck Here

This new mech Druid is another deck that takes advantage of the early lead you can get from Mechwarper. This deck doesn’t play a large mech engine but it plays 2 Mechanical Yetis, 2 Spider Tanks and 2 Harvest Golems so you gain early tempo with Mechwarper. 1 Mech-Bear-Cat gets the include as a budget 6 drop that has the mech synergy and amazing stats for the mana. This deck is your backup plan against decks like Warrior or Priest that are strong against some of the other aggressive decks. Swipe also helps clear up Silver Hand Recruits which means you have an extra insurance plan against Paladin.

Why these 4 decks? Well – they have synergy with each other. What does that mean? It means your decks will work together well. For example, if you win with one – they’re forced to counter and the odds are good that you’ll have a direct counter right back. You have 2 answers for control decks and 2 answers for aggro decks meaning you should be covered in all aspects. In best of 3 formats, you’ve got decks that can handle a variety of situations and you have your matchups more or less covered.

Another reason for these 4 decks are that they give you a chance to expand your range. They are some aggressive decks as well as some midrange decks. They’ll help you learn different styles of play as you get better with them. They are also decks you can improve upon once you get more and more cards. Druid, for example, gets better by adding something like Dr. Boom or Ragnaros the Firelord, so it’s worth having decks that are competitive now but only get better with time. This should help incentivize you to play more, grind more arena and improve your decks!

Final Thoughts:

Hearthstone is a game that shouldn’t be limited to those with a lot of money and I know that for a fact these decks are competitive. These decks were tested against top decks and top players because I wanted to make sure I was providing something budget players could use and get to top ranks in both tournaments and on ladder. Until next time, IHU-Impact signing off.