Introduction
Hello, this is Mark or Trebin in most other games. I am still fairly new to Hearthstone but I love how challenging it is and how much there is to learn. In this article and series of articles I am going to describe my journey in hearthstone. I am a mix between paid and free to play. I do buy decks if I get impatient and I have purchased all of the Adventures with cash. I picked up the game late and started several months ago. I wanted to start a series for those of us who can’t put in a ton of hours to get tons of gold and start crafting. I want to reach a high rank, 5 is my goal right now as I feel that is the most achievable with my current time allowance. I am married with 3 kids and #4 is on the way, I am an IT professional that works in cybersecurity software testing. My daily commute is about 2 hours (half of which I will be in a vanpool not driving). I train for bodybuilding and weightlifting which takes up a lot of my time as well. Hopefully I represent a lot of the demographics that may be playing the game and may be interested in learning to how to play. I have done fairly well thus far and have had a lot of fun. Honestly so far I am enjoying the tavern brawl a lot and not so much arena.
Side note: winning 1 tavern brawl each week wins you a pack of classic cards to open.
I am still very much learning the game, I have done ok so far and hope to have you follow along and help me on my journey! If you want to play on battle.net let me know! I am sure I can learn some things from you.
Current Ranking’s
I have reached rank 16 with a mix of secret paladin, face hunter and patron warrior (pre and post nerf). I honestly didn’t know what I was doing for the first 5 or so ranks and the more I played the more I started to realize that there was a lot more to this game. That is when I started using the google machine to find articles on how to play. I started doing research and found this site, I immediately paid for the premium as I want to get inside a good players head and learn everything I can. That is where I learned the terminology and exactly what a deck is. I watched a lot of videos on youtube (Trump, Sheng, etc). After watching a lot of deck’s and having been a Warcraft player for a long time the patron warrior intrigued me. I liked the strategy behind it and the fact that you can destroy someone in one or two turns once you set it up. I worked on buying decks, playing expansions (Naxx and Blackrock) and building the patron deck.
After playing the patron deck for a while I learned that I was having a hard time focusing on just one deck and wanted to learn more. I think it is just that analytical part of me that drives me to research things to an absurd level. Just realize that you do lose in this game, sometimes a lot,  and it is a part of it. I thought possibly having another deck to use would help curb my frustrations and boredom and allow me to figure out my playstyle and what I like. I ended up choosing the Secret Paladin, it was fairly easy to grasp and run with. I liked the idea behind it and the cards were easy to get since I had most of them already, so that is what I went with. This deck was pretty insane, I actually went to rank 16 from 20 in just one sitting in a couple hours. The synergy of the deck was great and it seemed like RN Geesus was on my side. At this point I was really getting in to the game and moving forward. I was offered a new job and had to prepare for that and move several states east and try to settle in (hasn’t been easy).
Executive Summary
So if you are a noob, beginner, frustrated long timer then follow along and learn with me. At first there may not be a lot of deckbuilding or theorycrafting but  iam hoping to dive in to these realms as I learn to play. I did not play magic or any other TCG before this so almost everything is brand new to me. I will be writing follow up articles on the deck’s I am currently playing, how I am using them and the guides on the site I am reading to help better understand how to play this game. I really want to focus in December and track my progress. My goal is to reach Rank 5 soon and I am pretty excited to start down this path. We will see what this takes and I can plan on trying for legend. You can even chime in on the comment section and help me pick one and we will go from there. You can’t hurt my feelings, if something I say is wrong or if you want to add something let me know. We can all learn together, I know there are a lot of people out there just dying to get better at this game (me included).
Learning to Play the Game
Here is a good article on Icy Vein’s with terminology: http://www.icy-veins.com/hearthstone/glossary-of-terms
Choosing a Deck: This is important and if you are a previous or current WoW player you probably had a main that you loved and is near and dear to your heart. Find that character and look here: https://hearthstoneplayers.com/basic-starter-decks-guides/ and then go to the new player section and start to play: https://hearthstoneplayers.com/welcome-new-players/
My Strategy:
Once you have chosen a deck I would just play ranked, at least until you start losing stars. I learned a lot in the first 5 ranks from 25 – 20 and depending on the deck I did ok. One of the funniest stories I have is taking a break from the move and loving patron warrior before I took the break. I came back to the game, not reading the updates like I should and lost probably 10 games in a row. I was frustrated; this was the deck I understood. By turn 8 I was ready to set up my patron warriors and unleash hell on the enemy. I just couldn’t get it right, come to find out…Warsong Commander was nerfed and that pretty much took the life out of this deck. Lesson here is to always stay on top of the updates and make sure you know the changes. Now I have to research the new patron warrior and see how it plays. I do need to craft grommosh-hellscreamso that is on my to do list (I did quite well without it).
Read the new patron warrior guide: https://hearthstoneplayers.com/history-grim-patron-warrior-current-status/
I am going to use the secret paladin which is a combo of cards from various decklists that I have read. I am not sure it matches them all 100% but I do have 2 separate secret paladin decks I play to just make sure I am using the right cards and not leaving any gaps.
Decks, Packs, Money and Time Invested
So far I have purchased all of the Naxx and Blackrock expansions and even the new League of Explorers.  I have not played through heroic as I haven’t had to use any of the cards yet and the heroic bosses are extremely tough. I was more addicted to ranking up then trying heroic, I will not have internet next week at the new house so maybe I can work on beating heroic. I am not sure how many cards I have bought but probably 50-75 bucks worth so far. I bought all over the place depending on my mood so my collection is all over the place. I found that I mostly use dust to finish building out decks. I do not have a lot of legendaries  at this point. The only one I have crafted so far is dr-boom. I have had to craft various common, rare and epic cards to complete decks. Sometimes I do find it fun to try and replace a card in a deck and fit something else in it.
My mindset on games changed after reading a book recommended on this site, Playing to Win. It is an amazing read that I highly recommend and really makes you find your playstyle and mindset. I have always believed that I will do what it takes to win without cheating. If it is playing a deck people hate or view as easy mode then so be it. When it gets changed or nerfed I will move on and find a new deck. I know a lot of decks are considered cheating and people refuse to play them but winning is winning and it is within the rules so you are just leaving yourself without another tool to progress in the game.
If you are still reading I appreciate it, I will be updating with my play time and matches and current rank. I will also keep track of money spent, packs earned, packs bought, packs opened and any other pertinent information. If you want to add me on battle.net feel free, we can even play a few matches (I am sure you can show me something). Jump on in and meet the noob!
Off Topic – Security
I just wanted to remind everyone to pay attention to their account with Blizzard and make sure it is secure. I found out the hard way that even with an authenticator a dedicated individual can still take over your account. I spent about 45 minutes with a GM the other night. I tried to log on to play and it had me logged out. I tried to login with my email, password, authenticator and it didn’t work. I tried to reset it until it locked me out. I was pretty frustrated and dind’t even consider being hacked since I have an authenticator.
The GM does some research, verifies my birthdate and then tells me that my account was hacked. Surprised…I asked how and he told me that it appears someone created a fake id and sent a picture of it to the GM to change my birthdate, remove my authenticator and gain access to my account. They also used a stolen credit card to try and buy things which is what was flagged on my account and how they were able to come up with the conclusion it was fraudulent.
In the end they put notes on my account and even have that I am a 6’5″ white dude. He said they will require a selfie with the ID and my face (still easy to beat w/ a color fake but….).
