Hearthstone

[Enoch]

Hi guys I have just started playing on my tablet and I am a little lost on the best way to progress.

I have done a few arena runs, so I have some of the new expansions cards and I have completed the first wing of naxxramus. Is the only way to get the original set cards now crafting or just buying packs?

Is it best to keep unlocking more wings or just do some more arena runs to unlock more cards?

Oh and attached is the mage deck I have knocked together. Any advice on improving would be very much appreciated.
   

[Dantski]

Hi guys I have just started playing on my tablet and I am a little lost on the best way to progress.

I have done a few arena runs, so I have some of the new expansions cards and I have completed the first wing of naxxramus. Is the only way to get the original set cards now crafting or just buying packs?

Is it best to keep unlocking more wings or just do some more arena runs to unlock more cards?

Oh and attached is the mage deck I have knocked together. Any advice on improving would be very much appreciated.

Yes the only way for you right now to get the original cards is to do those 2 things. When your class level gets really high and you have all the golden basic cards for your class you can unlock golden neutral cards as well although I don't know if this still applies if you don't have a regular version of the card. I think it would be a nice feature if you could choose which type of card packs you could receive from arena runs and its possible it'll be this way in the future.

As for unlocking more Naxxramus wings, if you're not making much gold in Arena's then it'll take some time to get the gold needed to buy all the wings (I think it took me a month or so when I stopped playing arena to save gold). You'll have to decide for yourself whether you want those cards sooner or later, since its your choice on what kind of decks you'll put together. Getting Undertaker unlocked is obviously a big deal if you want to play a deathrattle deck.

Looking at your mage deck, I'd get rid of the arcane missiles since they're too unreliable to consistently kill a target, also you'll want to replace the ironfur grizzly when you have a better 3 cost minion available. Harvest Golem is a solid alternative or possibly earthern ring farseer to help heal minions or yourself. As for the rest, you'll probably have slightly longer games by replacing a boulderfist ogre with maexxna but you're not necessarily wrong to choose one over the other. Also consider cutting one acidic swamp ooze for an ogre since you can probably afford less minions costing 2 mana.

[pindicator]

Is anybody else having a significantly tougher time with arena lately? I used to regularly get between 7-9 wins. Now I'm lucky to get more than 3

[Dantski]

Is anybody else having a significantly tougher time with arena lately? I used to regularly get between 7-9 wins. Now I'm lucky to get more than 3

Its just how it goes sometimes, drafted an incredibly good warlock deck yesterday (Fel Reaver/Ogre/Mal'Ganis/Deathwing) and steamrolled 2 people and had a really long game vs a Priest to go 3-0. After that I had the impossible game vs a Mage who went turn 1 Wyrm into turn 2 Sorc Apprentice, then coin frostbolt. Next turn he frostbolted a 2nd creature of mine and also played a secret. That tempo is virtually impossible to compete with and I was dead by turn 6. After another seemingly unwinnable game I then had 2 games which went marginally my opponents way before dropping Deathwing to wipe his board and win the games. The 3rd loss felt like another game where my opponent had strong minions and tempo right from turn 1.

My above arena run was probably the first time I've had such a solid curve consistently in an arena run but still felt behind. Getting a good turn 1 minion out is such a big deal, it probably didn't help that my bomber never hit my opponents 1 HP minion on turn 2 but given my deck and my good tempo every game I was extremely disappointed to only go 5-3.

[pindicator]

Yeah, it just feels that your scenario used to be the outlier and now it feels more like the norm.

[Azoth]

Hi guys I have just started playing on my tablet and I am a little lost on the best way to progress.

I have done a few arena runs, so I have some of the new expansions cards and I have completed the first wing of naxxramus. Is the only way to get the original set cards now crafting or just buying packs?

Is it best to keep unlocking more wings or just do some more arena runs to unlock more cards?

Oh and attached is the mage deck I have knocked together. Any advice on improving would be very much appreciated.

Hey, Enoch. I started playing Hearthstone in August and I remember the many months I spent with just the basic cards, not really knowing the best way to move forward. And I still don't have that big a card collection - I can't put together a control deck to save my life! So I'm not the most experienced of players, but this I what I would suggest.

There's a lot of value in the second wing of Naxxramas, especially as you've already unlocked the first. Sludge Belchers and Loatheb are solid cards that can fit in most any deck. Webspinner is also quite nice, especially now that it can cough up Gazrilla, Malorne, and the like. And Duplicate is an interesting alternative to Arcane Intellect for your Mage deck. So I'd grab the 2nd wing and then hold off on unlocking more, unless like me you enjoy the single player campaign. (I started saving up gold as soon as the expansion was announced.) As for wings 3 and 4: Spectral Knights aren't worth the cost of ~7 packs, I think, and Undertakers aren't as critical as they were before GvG. Feugen/Stalagg can be a win condition, but they're too slow for most decks, and Mad Scientists require 2-3 secrets to be worthwhile.

I would keep doing arena runs. When I first started, I was averaging 3 wins, which was just enough to break even with buying packs directly, while being a whole lot more fun. I wouldn't worry about the fact that arena only gives out GvG packs. The average GvG card is flat out better than the average 'classic' card, I think, and there's a lot more combo potential. You can put together a decent mech deck for just about any class, and it'll only take about a dozen GvG packs to have the cards to do so. There is a spreadsheet that calculates which pack (classic or GvG) will give you the most value based on your existing cards, and I use it, but it doesn't account for card strength, just value in dust: http://toucharcade.com/2014/12/12/hearth...readsheet/.

As for your deck, I'd take out Arcane Missiles and Ironfur Grizzly for 2 Shattered Sun Clerics, replace Maexxna with a second Boulderfist Ogre (I've found it to be better on average) and, at the risk of overloading on 4-drops, strongly consider trying to squeeze in 2 Chillwind Yetis somewhere. Haunted Creeper and Antique Healbot are possible cuts, if they don't seem to be doing enough in your games. Actually, Trump has a great introductory series discussing basic game concepts (which you might not need) AND showcasing a decent deck for every class built with only basic cards. Here's his first video (conveniently about the Mage): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVNvpeQG...DX&index=2. His decklists might be a good place to start when you move on to other classes.

Oh, and if you're on the NA server, feel free to add me: Suryavarman#1459. (I was playing Civ4 just before I opened the account, hence the name.)

[uberfish]

Re: Enoch

try working towards something like this if you want to stick with this style of midrange deck:

1 - mana wyrm x2
2 - sorcerer's apprentice x2, snow chugger x2, unstable portal, frost bolt x2
3 - arcane intellect x2, spider tank, ogre brute x2
4 - chillwind yeti x2, water elemental x2, fireball x2, polymorph x2
5 - azure drake x2, sludge belcher x2
6 - boulderfist ogre x2
7 - flamestrike x2

replaced cards:

Arcane missiles, flamecannon, maexxna, bomb lobber - the deck was overloaded on removal
Ironfur grizzly - it's a weak card but you probably knew that already
Acidic swamp ooze - there's already 4 creatures that freeze people which interfere with their weapon use
Haunted creeper - a good card if the deck has synergy with the 1/1 tokens, but we don't
Shieldmaster - the 4 slot is really crowded up in mage, and Sludge belcher is an upgraded version of this

if you're interested in playing constructed, mech mage, zoo and midrange hunter are all pretty cheap decks to assemble.

[Enoch]

Thank you Dantski, Azoth and Uberfish for the tips. I think I will unlock the next wing as was suggested. I was looking at sludge Belcher, as it has been annoying to play against.

I've tweaked the deck based on everyone's suggestions and it is already doing better. Just got to keep practising and developing the collection. Unfortunately I think I'm on the EU server, I signed up on my old battle net account and it has my location as great Britain. I didn't realise they had different servers that don't talk to each other.

[Gustaran]

Unfortunately I think I'm on the EU server, I signed up on my old battle net account and it has my location as great Britain. I didn't realise they had different servers that don't talk to each other.

The different servers are not so much the problem (you can switch easily in the battle.net software) but whoever at Blizzard had the idea of not unlocking your card collection in other regions is just greedy.

We could do so much cool stuff like RB-tournaments, but since so many people here are on the US server it doesn't really make a lot of sense for people on the EU server. And the bigger the number of available cards grows, the more diffcult it becomes to play in more than one region.

[uberfish]

surely there should be enough of us on EU server to do something though