Editor’s Note: With the new Standard Format in 2016 for Hearthstone, we highly recommend going for cards in the Classic set and Whispers of the Old Gods (Standard Format). Here are budget guides, also from Sheng, to get you started!
- Budget Standard Standard C’Thun Druid
- Budget Standard Midrange Hunter
- Budget Standard C’Thun Mage
- Budget Standard  Aggro Paladin
- Budget Standard C’Thun Priest
- Budget Standard C’Thun Rogue
- Budget Standard Midrange Shaman
- Budget Standard Zoo WarlockÂ
- Budget Standard Combo Warrior
Introduction
Greetings, I’m Sheng, a Legend rank constructed and 7.5 win-average arena player. I run HearthstoneCoaching.com where our coaches have helped many students achieve the same.
If you are new to Hearthstone or just started your Hearthstone cards collection, this section is the perfect place for you to get started!
Note: Don’t forget to check out our New Player section – featuring Crafting/Disenchanting and Free to Play guides!
Technically these decks are all 0 dust to build, though you’ll need to purchase Naxxramas and Blackrock Mountain if you don’t have both already. In my opinion, it’s the best $50 a new player can put towards the game to start a collection.
While it’s unlikely that you’ll get much further than Rank 10 on the ladder with these upgraded decks, the goal of this series is to provide for newer players a way to kickstart their Hearthstone journey. You’ll find at the end of each guide that there’s a short section on how to upgrade your deck. You can make card substitutions to each of these decks as you open more Expert packs to make them stronger.
Note: Once you have a good amount of cards in your collection and ready to try more competitive decks, head on over to the Meta Deck Guides and take a look!
Basic Cards + Naxxramas + Blackrock Mountain Adventures
Here are Basic decks built to include cards from the Naxxramas and Blackrock Mountain Adventures!
Druid
Blackrock Mountain Druid is a control deck that focuses on using the unique mana acceleration spells available to Druid (Wild Growth and Innervate) to bring out large minions that opponents just can’t deal with.
If you’re the type of player who likes to bring out 8/8 Legendary Dragons on turn 5 or 6 to crush your opponent, then this may just be the deck for you.
Hunter
Blackrock Mountain Hunter is an aggro deck that focuses on using Hunter’s hero power to kill opponents by mid to late game. Before we weren’t able to build this kind of deck because there weren’t enough damage spells and Beasts to make it work, but with the inclusion of several cards from Blackrock Mountain such as Quick Shot and Core Rager, this style of play is much more viable.
While on the surface it seems that this deck doesn’t require much thought outside of dragging minions to your opponent’s face for lethal, much of the key to winning with this deck is about calculating how much damage you need for lethal in following turns and saving your spells and charge minions to deal a great deal of damage in one turn before your opponent expects it.
Mage
Blackrock Mountain Mage is a midrange deck that focuses on using cost-efficient minions and spells to control the board. While the goal of the deck isn’t to burst down your opponent as soon as possible, it’s important to distinguish your opponent’s game plan early to determine whether or not you should push for lethal sooner by ceasing to trade on the board, or to slow the game down.
In general this deck is quite versatile and has answers to aggressive decks with cost-efficient removal and unconditional removal against strong late game decks. Spells like Polymorph are one of the few cards in the game that can eliminate tough Legendary cards with amazing deathrattles.
Blackrock Mountain has made this deck, which I consider to be the strongest of out of all our decks in this series, even stronger than our Basic + Naxxramas version. Flamewaker is an mana efficient minion that covers our previous weakness at the 3 mana slot, and it has an amazing passive that synergizes with our many removal spells.
Additionally Emperor Thaurissan makes it even easier to piece together the damage necessary to burn your opponent down to 0 health. They’ll never expect the 15 damage from double Fireball and Frostbolt on turn 7.
Paladin
Dragons! With the release of Blackrock Mountain, Dragons have become a class, and thanks to the release of Dragon Consort, it’s absolutely viable to build a deck around these flying fire-breathers.
This decks plays very much like a midrange Paladin deck. The advantage from Dragon synergy comes from the the ability to play Blackwing Technician early as a 3/5, and to gain tempo over your opponent in late game, by playing two mid-game Dragons on the same turn thanks to Dragon Consort‘s battlecry.
Naturally, to make space for all these new Dragon cards, we’ve had to remove a few of my favorite cards from our old version of the deck, and Sen’jin Shieldmasta and Sludge Belcher are no longer in the deck. Because of this, you’ll want to be extra-vigilent when it comes to playing against aggro decks, and may even want to consider holding onto Consecration early.
Priest
Blackrock Mountain Priest is a great midrange deck that focuses on utilizing cheap removal and efficient minions to beat opponents on the board. Later in the game, a card draw engine powered by Northshire Cleric can give you card advantage and help you put games out of reach.
Priest’s primary weakness has always been a slow early game, as his hero often does very little to help you early on. Thus, we’ve included many early game minions in this deck to help you meet or exceed your opponent’s tempo early, so you can win with your hero power’s value in the late game.
Rogue
In general, our Blackrock Mountain Tempo Rogue deck hasn’t changed much since Naxxramas. This is partly because Blackrock Mountain really didn’t include too many new cards that synergized well with our existing deck. While Rogue’s Dark Iron Skulker class card isn’t terrible, it isn’t good enough to replace Loatheb or Sludge Belcher at the somewhat crowded 5 mana slot, and there isn’t much that synergizes with Gang Up.
So, following the tried and true method of if it ain’t broken don’t fix it, I’ve only made three changes in this deck, and I think they make this deck a bit stronger overall. You can check out the Blackrock Mountain Improvements sections to see which.
Shaman
After reviewing feedback from my Naxxramas Shaman deck, I’ve come to realize that much of what was enjoyed from the Basic version of my Shaman deck was lost after I transitioned the deck into more of a midrange playstyle instead of relying on the synergy between tokens, Bloodlust, and Frostwolf Warlord.
Little else is more satisfying than playing a 9/9 Frostwolf Warlord on turn 5, or doing 20+ damage on a single turn with Bloodlust. Thus, I’ve gone back to a more combo-heavy synergistic build, which has similar drawbacks to the original Basic Shaman deck. So long as you can survive early game removal and don’t encounter too much board clear, this deck is certain to overwhelm opponents.
Warlock
Thanks to Imp Gang Boss, Blackrock Mountain Midrange Warlock actually has a pretty decent early game. We’ve gone away from the gimmick of utilizing Ogre Magi for the small spell-power bonus. Instead this deck focuses more on having strong minions at all points in the game, with the efficient removal spells to protect them.
Careful planning is necessary to pilot this deck correctly, as the order in which you play your cards like Soulfire and Hellfire are critical.
Warrior
If there’s any deck I’m most excited about in this series, it’s this one. Blackrock Mountain has brought about a single card, Grim Patron, which finally makes a cheap combo warrior deck viable! Of all of our decks, this one is probably the most unique because you can flood the board with 3/Xs on a single turn.
A situation like this is often how you can win games with this deck. Whenever you have the sweet combo of Warsong Commander and Grim Patron on the board, it only takes one Whirlwind to set off an almost infinite line of charge minions.
While this can be very strong when you have the right combination of cards in the mid to late game, the trick is to survive a relatively weaker early game in order to get to a point in the game where you can piece your Warsong Commander, Grim Patron, and Whirlwind combo together.
Narrowing That Gap
Deck construction was one of the hardest things for me to learn when I first picked up this game, so I hope this will help you newer players bridge that gap faster than I did. As always, I’d love to answer your questions on this thread or on the guides themselves. Enjoy!
Editor’s Note: Be sure to check out the New Players section, other Beginner and Budget Decks, and our most popular section – Monthly Top Meta Decks.
Coaching Lessons
If you’re interested in reaching Legend rank, or earning unlimited gold from arena, my team at HearthstoneCoaching.com would love to help! We’ve provided over a thousand hours of excellent coaching to students around the world. 
Want to Become Better at Other Games?
I also run RankOneCoaching.com, where our top coaches will develop a personal plan for you to achieve your dreams in other games. Personal lessons are an in-depth experience and most students improve significantly after just one full session!
