In card games like Hearthstone, information is incredibly important. How does your deck want to win? How does your opponent’s? What resources are they going to use to try and do so? Identifying each deck’s win condition, how they interact with one another, and how to play around their respective resources is crucial to attaining victory.
In card games like Hearthstone, information is incredibly important. How does your deck want to win? How does your opponent’s? What resources are they going to use to try and do so? Identifying each deck’s win condition, how they interact with one another, and how to play around their respective resources is crucial to attaining victory. The more information you can understand—and the more matchups you can understand it in—the easier you’ll find climbing up the ranked ladder.
When you load into a game, you have no idea what type of deck specifically your opponent is going to be using. Of course, once you get higher up the ladder, there will certainly be popular strong decks that reoccur, so sometimes you can have an expectation or assumption, but little more. As such, it will be necessary for you to figure out what your opponent’s deck is trying to do.
If the opponent spends their early turns trying to establish a board presence with low-cost minions with aggressive stats, then chances are they’re playing an aggressive deck that wants to kill you quickly. If they just use hero powers or try to draw cards, then they’re likely planning to play defensively. In the vast majority of games, it will become evident that one player will be aggressively on the front foot, and that one will be defensively on the back foot based on who establishes early board pressure. Knowing how to play from either game state is critical, so let’s take a look at both sides and how each can be managed ideally, while taking into account the resources the opponent will likely have.
As the aggressor, you are the player who is taking the initiative in regards to the game state. That is, you are investing in the present rather than the future—actively shifting the state of the game into your favor rather than attempting to gather resources or preparations for later in the game. This is often done through early manipulation of the board. Whoever controls the board generally controls the game state, as their minions will inflict damage turn-by-turn if left unanswered. This results in the need for the disadvantaged player to react to the pressure created by these minions lest they lose the game outright, hence being referred to as the defender. Their goal becomes attempting to stabilize the game state, withstanding the pressure until they can effectively turn the tide and seize control themself, at which point they will be in a greatly advantageous position due to having more (and often better) late-game resources available.
When you are the aggressor, there are many different types of cards that your opponent can attempt to use to stabilize the game state at hand. While every card in itself is unique, at the very least we can go over different types of defensive cards that you’ll likely encounter from opposing control or combo decks that try to survive until late in the game. Generally speaking, these cards can be lumped into three broad categories: taunt minions, healing effects, and removal. Let’s go over each one, from how they’re often used to how you can play around them!
Going in order, let’s start with taunt minions. These annoying, often beefy board-stuffers attempt to get in the way of your minions, providing a wall that most minions cannot bypass without wasting damage on it as an alternate target—weakening or even killing themselves in the process. Saving your own limited removal tools for these pesky walls will help you maximize the value of your minions and the damage over time that they can deal. Alternatively, using minions to do damage before the taunts come out, then using burn spells to deal damage that bypasses the taunts themselves to finish the opponent off can also be effective. Just make sure you have enough damage to kill the opponent past their minions, because once you decide to stop caring about the board, you will likely never regain control of it.
Moving on, healing cards seek to eliminate the damage already dealt, causing you to have to find ways to accumulate the damage again after already using up your resources. In this case, using minions to try and chip away at the opponent’s life total can force them to use their healing effects early. Try to pose a threat that requires them to heal to avoid death, while simultaneously not exhausting your most significant resources. If you have access to decent burst damage—whether through spells, minion effects, or charge minions—save it if you can afford to do so. In a matchup where you know the opponent can heal, using your burst damage too early risks wasting it, so save it for when you can absolutely guarantee lethal with one final swing!
Finally, removal cards destroy or otherwise eliminate the threatening minions you’ve established on the board, rendering the cards and mana you spent on them as wasted or inefficient to exhaust your damage potential. Playing around these is somewhat similar to the healing cards, but it applies to minions instead! If the opponent has strong single-target removal—that is, “destroy target minion” or similar effects—then there are two things you can do. Firstly, you can try to play a lot of lower-cost minions, rather than one large one, making the available targets for their removal much less valuable. If that is not an option, then try to bait out the removal with a minion that’s strong enough to pose a threat, but is not one of your most important resources. This way, you can save your biggest threats for after the removal has already been played, putting the opponent in a bind.
Area-of-effect (or AoE) removal is a bit trickier to handle. These types of effects seek to remove more than one minion at once, clearing the board entirely and taking away your offensive momentum with it. These cards can be particularly devastating to aggressive decks, but are often somewhat expensive, so they are a little bit easier to track. Keep an eye on your opponent’s cards to see if any go a long time without being used.
If your opponent’s deck has an AoE clear available, then they’ll likely keep it stashed in their hand until they can destroy a lot of minions with it to stabilize the game state as much as possible with one big swing. If you suspect the opponent is holding onto one of these large a.o.e clears, then play smaller, less-valuable minions, or use only one seriously threatening minion at once. Try to legitimately pressure the opponent with as little commitment as possible, so they feel the need to play their large removal effects on a smaller board. Once they’ve wasted their cards, unload your threats and go in for the kill. Just make sure they don’t have another clear waiting!
Occasionally, there will be games where both players’ decks want to play aggressively. In this type of scenario, whichever player manages to get a faster start to the game will often remain the aggressor. The other will fall back into playing defensively, attempting to avoid simply being outpaced when setting up their own advances. These games can vary wildly, and their game states often dynamically shift from one player to the other as both vie for control over the board. However, it is important to note that oftentimes, aggressive decks will not have access to as many of the resources listed above, instead relying on trading minions into each other favorably to fight for the board. As such, managing the board is critical to winning such a matchup, and the more dominantly you can secure control of it, the more likely your opponent will be unavailable to retaliate. Even if your deck wants to play aggressively in theory, make sure to identify when you need to make more defensive plays and trade on the board rather than pushing for damage to the opponent!
Shifting gears, when you are the defending player, the game plan predictably shifts. While the aggressive player attempts to overrun you, your goal becomes surviving until you can stabilize the game state and swing the momentum in your favor. Ideally, this would be done through getting a good early start with low-cost resources that can effectively answer your opponents’ threats, stemming the bleeding quickly and making stabilizing in the following terms much easier. However, not every deck can create such an ideal situation reliably. There will be times that the matchup simply does not allow for such an easy gameplan, or luck simply is not on your side. In this case, or if you don’t have access to many early resources to begin with, then you must allocate the resources you do have to outlast the opponent, ensuring the game does not fall out of hand.
As mentioned above, many different types of resources exist to help you try and stabilize, only this time you’re the one playing them! As such, the aggressor will be trying to make sure that you’re forced to waste your resources early, and for reduced value. Avoid falling into this trap; be greedy with your resources and force them to come to you. If you can, try to squeeze significant value out of repetitive usage of your hero power. If you have one that can affect the board directly (such as mage, rogue, or demon hunter), then try use it for removal, and if you have one that heals you (such as warrior or priest), try to milk value out of it to sustain yourself. The longer the game lasts without you facing lethal damage, the more likely you’ll get to a point where you can play threatening cards to stabilize or progress your deck’s win condition. Knowing this, the opponent will have no choice but to commit more resources towards attacking you, playing right into your removal. Devastate their board, take control of the game, and make sure to keep track of how many cards they have left so you don’t overextend!
Playing as the aggressor relies heavily on establishing a strong presence on the board with minions. As such, it goes without saying that when playing as the defender, an important part of stabilizing the game state is ensuring that the board does not get out of hand. How to do this depends on the deck you’re using, certainly, but there are a few general steps you can take accomplish this.
First of all, if you suspect that you will be playing against an aggressive deck from the start, you can adjust your mulligan strategy. Focus on looking for low-cost minions or defensive tools that can be played early on to help you avoid chip damage, making stabilizing through larger resources easier as the game progresses. In addition, look to plan ahead for how you will attempt to clear the board. If you have a card that deals a certain amount of damage to minions, then try to use hero powers or value trades with your own minions to set the opposing minions up to be destroyed by that specific amount of damage. If you have a card that would clear all minions on both sides off of the board, then don’t waste your own minions a turn in advance so you can gain a resource advantage.
These are simply a few examples, but what’s most important to note is that as long as you have resources available to you to help defend yourself, play around those resources so that you can clear the board more effectively. If you spend all of your mana to try and clear the board but cannot do so completely, then your opponent will still be able to pressure your life total while re-developing onto the board unanswered. Contesting the board early and playing around the resources at your disposal to keep the game close will help ensure that the game state doesn’t get out of hand.
Another factor to consider when playing defensively is that as the game progresses, your opponent will seek to end the game by setting up lethal damage. Depending on their deck, they will attempt this through setting up minions on the board that must be answered and utilizing cards that do burst damage—that is, damage that can be inflicted unanswered from cards in one’s hand, whether that means damage from spells or charge minions. We already discussed keeping the board in check, but playing around burst damage can be a bit tricky. This is largely in part due to the fact that you can’t actively see what cards are in your opponent’s hand, so it can be difficult to decipher how much burst damage they can inflict on any given turn.
Despite the difficulty of tracking your opponent’s resources, what works to your advantage is that many different classes have specific cards that they can utilize as burst damage, such as mage’s Fireball and Pyroblast, or hunter’s Kill Command. Having an idea of the cards such as these that the opponent’s class has access to can help give you an idea as to what life total can be considered safe to play around. For example, when playing against mage, knowing that Pyroblast does ten damage tells you that once your life total reaches ten or lower, you are liable to get killed by it, should your opponent have access to it. Therefore, working to keep yourself above ten life can help prevent you from losing to that card specifically. The same concept can be applied to many different cards throughout every format, so make sure to keep an eye out for popular cards that do burst damage. That way, you can work out what life totals you need to work around when playing against aggressive decks of each class!
Finally, a major weakness of many aggressive decks is that they often have very few defensive options to begin with. As such, when pressured these decks tend to have to use their burst damage cards as makeshift removal tools to deal with excessive board pressure. Being forced to do this heavily drains their ability to find lethal damage, making the threat of being finished off by them from higher life totals much lower. It can often be difficult to successfully pressure an aggressive deck in this way, but if you can manage it the reward is quite significant.
Similarly to games where both players have aggressive decks, there will be times when both players have incredibly slow decks that want to play defensively. Even though most games progress through one player taking the initiative, these somewhat uncommon examples differ in that neither player really establishes themself as the early aggressor. Playing in a game like this is an odd situation; it’s almost like a slow game of tug-of-war. Both players will try to establish threats on the board to chip away at the opponent’s life total and force out removal to waste away at each other’s resources over time, until one side finally runs out or can’t draw enough cards to keep up. In some cases, this can last all the way until both decks run completely out of cards and hit fatigue, meaning the winner is decided by who kept enough resources to outlast the constantly increasing fatigue damage at the end of their turn.
In this type of matchup, board presence isn’t quite as impactful, as both decks have plenty of removal. At the same time though, chip damage can help you force the opponent to use their resources a bit more quickly, so don’t completely ignore the board either if you need to play cards to avoid burning them from filling your hand up too much. Focus on maintaining your resources while slowly exhausting theirs. In all likelihood, both decks will have a lot of late-game big threats, so making sure that yours stick around longer is paramount to gaining the upper hand. Play patiently, keep track of your opponent’s cards, and make a mental note of any cards that may have been randomly generated from various effects, as these can catch you off guard if you aren’t careful. Finally, if you can’t deal enough damage yourself, then make sure they can’t kill you and try to avoid drawing more cards than the opponent. Stall the game and win through fatigue damage!
When push comes to shove, Hearthstone is a very diverse game with a library of cards that rotates very often. The types of decks that are considered powerful, as well as the classes and cards through which they function well, often change just as frequently. While it’s incredibly difficult to memorize every single card and every single matchup, having an idea of how to identify the ways in which a given matchup will progress is a valuable tool to help guide your hand towards optimal plays. Even still, matchups won’t go the same way every time, and there will be cards that people add to their decks that you don’t expect. There will occasionally be a game where one player draws very well or poorly, flipping the matchup on its head. As such, learning not only how specific matchups and resources work, but also how different decks and cards can be utilized aggressively and defensively when necessary is pivotal to enduring games where things don’t work out as planned. How well you adapt and analyze will go a long way as you play more and more games, so stay flexible, stay informed, and use your knowledge to outmaneuver your opponents and climb up that ladder!
