Hearthstone deck building guide for newbies

With the Season 3 beta well underway, I’ve decided to take a crack at playing Hearthstone. I had the awful experience of not winning a single match on the first day, to the point where I asked myself if I should just stick to playing Flappy Bird and wave the white flag of surrender.

But I chose to keep playing. After some careful thought, a wee bit of soul-searching and tons of matches against other people, I ended up creating this five-step Hearthstone deck-building guide to help other newbies like myself make a proper competitive deck. Keep in mind that this is not a definitive guide on Heartstone deck building. The aim here is to help you in your early Hearthstone matches.

Step #1: Figure out the deck profile that suits you

Sun Tzu says that if you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. This also applies to your Hearthstone deck. Before you can win those battles, you need to figure out the deck profile that suits your playstyle.

If you’re the type of player that loves to be aggressive, beatdown decks are for you. Beatdown Decks are filled with cards that can pull off multiple attacks in each turn, throw down a crap-ton of damage and overwhelm opponents by sheer amount of units.

If you’re the type of player who wants to take things slow and prefers to mess with your opponent, control decks are the way to go. Control deck users are able to control the pace of the match as they see fit. In Hearthstone, control decks have a wide variety of spells and unit abilities that disrupt your opponent’s attack rhythm.

Once you figure out the deck profile that fits your playstyle, you can now proceed to Step #2.

Step #2: Know the heroes

Under the deck profiles are sub-categories called deck classes. At present, Hearthstone has nine different deck classes to choose from, with each deck class represented by a hero from the World of Warcraft universe. Each hero has his/her own special skill that defines them.

Some skills call for units into the field, while others use spells that deal direct damage to the hero or to units. These classes however, still fall under the beatdown or control deck profiles because their core mechanic either allows them to deal damage or control the game’s pace.

I’ve prepared a list below that provides a brief summary of the nine heroes and classifies them into the beatdown or control deck profiles.