The extremely popular mobile and desktop card game, Hearthstone is a rewarding strategy title that emphasizes smart plays and player knowledge to excel in the online community. Hearthstone features a variety of classic characters from the World of Warcraft titles and adds a tactical card playing experience for fans of the series and genre. The game is one of the most popular online card game experiences rivaling giants such as Magic the Gathering with its depth and card count. However, the game can be difficult for new players to excel at given its reliance on powerful, but rare cards.
Given Hearthstone's popularity, it attracts a large number of new players even in its 6th year of life. The game's multitude of cards and the relatively easy to understand rule set and systems make it a popular choice for those new to card games or life long fans of the genre. However, given the expensive reality of some of the best decks in the game, new players may find it hard to excel in the online community. This guide will help players discover viable decks strategies that are both cheap and easy to excel at.
Using the Silence Priest Deck in Hearthstone
The silence priest deck is rooted in the Priest class and revolves around the silence mechanic to excel. The deck is extremely cheap only costing around 14,000 dust to build and provides an excellent strategy once it is understood and mastered.
The deck excels against aggressive and control styles of play, revolving around cards which are essentially terrible minions but made powerful through the silence mechanic. This mechanic allows players to ignore a cards effect and in silence priests case an extremely powerful minion.
The deck revolves around minions such as Ancient Watcher and Arcane Watcher, who are unable to attack when first played. But when combined with cards featuring the silence mechanic, such as the Titular Silence, and other cards like Dalaran Librarian to silence their ability which prevents them from attacking. These effects make these high stat and seemingly underpowered cards into powerhouses that are a force to be reckoned with. Another powerful card is the unsleeping soul which silences and makes a copy of a given minion.
This deck will take some adjustment to but when mastered is a powerful and unique strategy that is viable in online spaces.
Using Zoo Warlock in Hearthstone
A classic deck strategy, Zoo Warlock is a cheap deck at around 21,000 dust to build that focuses on sacrificing life to summon demon minions and dominate the board space.
Zoo Warlock is a deck which is a solid choice to teach beginner's the mechanics of the game. Being as cheap as it is, it teaches players to utilize their class abilities effectively and how to control space on the board. In Zoo Warlock's case, it relies upon powerful demon cards which overwhelm an enemy and can be buffed with powerful cards.
Zoo Warlock's hero art, Life Tap allows players to draw more cards by paying some of their life points to do so. This allows Zoo Warlock to constantly add to his already powerful hand at the expense of his health. Zoo Warlock players are allowed to pay their life points due to the variety of cards in this deck that can flood the board space and overwhelms their opponent. Cards like Rafaam's Scheme or Fiendish Circle summon a variety of demon imp cards which can be buffed with the powerful Demon's Circle card. This allows the player a powerful wall to sit comfortably behind and a seemingly never-ending amount of strong demon cards at a player's disposal.
Using Murloc Shaman in Hearthstone
The Murloc Shaman deck can best be described as a bully style deck. It relies upon a hyper-aggressive play style that excels at overwhelming an enemy with a variety of powerful Murloc cards. This deck can easily be picked up and optimized within a few play sessions and excels at breaking your enemy with sheer aggression.
As mentioned this deck relies on maintaining a vast number of Murloc cards on the board at one time. Through sheer numbers, this deck can steamroll even the best players due to this hyper-aggressive play style. Cards such as Underbelly Angeler and Cold Light Seer allow for a player to maintain a healthy amount of Murloc's in their hands at a time. Their abilities revolve around adding more Murloc's to their hands after being played and can even buff the current Murloc's on the board already.
Cards like Soul of the Murloc maintain your card advantage even if your opponent clears your board and maintains your aggressive playstyle. All this to say that Murloc Shaman is a deck that if left unchecked can kill an opponent within 4 turns. Its ability to maintain card advantage is essential to a strong deck and for its relatively cheap cost, it is a truly viable strategy that can lead to some dominating victories over other players.
Be wary when using this deck due to its "glass cannon" nature. It is effective in building a strong and powerful offense but if wiped it is hard to build up that same level of oppressive control. Using some of the mentioned cards will soften the blow caused by a smart player, but it is still an "all or nothing" strategy. That being said the deck is hyper oppressive and most players will find it difficult to discover an opening that can capitalize on this weakness.
Play What You Like in Hearthstone
All the provided decks are strong and useful strategies for a new player. However, these are not decks that you have to follow. If you have a deck that you love to play and are attached to, then go for it. Whatever is meta or not should not define how you play the game. Simply play what you love and enjoy the hyper-competitive landscape of Hearthstone.
Heartstone is available now on Mobile Platforms and PC.