Let’s Talk Positioning

hightdetal

Published: Feb 19, 2017 01:07 pm

Introduction

Why I love positioning

Many people often complain that there is way too many randomness in Hearthstone and that as time goes and more cards with rng effects are printed it requires less and less skill to play. Positioning is a mechanic that directly raises the skill ceiling of the game without adjusting the skill floor too much. The beauty of it is that it doesn’t require any resources apart time spent deciding where you want to place your minions. Because it doesn’t require any resources apart time, there is no downside to positioning minions correctly. The players who decide to take time, think and decide where they want to play their minions should be rewarded, whilst the ones ignoring positioning and not using to their advantage should get punished for not thinking everything through. Overall positioning rewards the players who take time to consider everything and gives them a small advantage over those who don’t. Another great thing about positioning is that it doesn’t raise the skill floor too much. Positioning cards like Flametongue-totem aren’t too hard to understand for newer players. This means with leaving skill floor intact cards with positioning in mind directly raise skill ceiling of the game which is a great thing much needed in Hearthstone currently. That’s the main reason why positioning is such a great mechanic.

Current issues

The biggest problem currently in Hearthstone is that blizzard is ignoring the potential of positioning and what a great effect it can have for the game. Currently there are 14 cards that are affected by how players position their minions. The problem is that over the 8 expansions the game has had, blizzard only printed out 5 new cards in which positioning matters. This means we are getting less than 1 card per expansion with this mechanic in mind. In constructed play you are going to see even less cards where positioning matters because most of them are simply too weak. In the current meta you might encounter only 3-4 cards out of the 14. It’s natural that not all printed cards are going to see regular play, however with only 14 cards to choose from it’s easy to see that only number of these will see play in the meta. flametongue-totem, sunfury-protector and defender-of-argus have been popular for quite some time. Yet when was the last time you saw wee-spellstopper or magnataur-alpha. At best you might see these cards played in Arena, even though even in Arena they are a rare sight. Blizzard is missing out on a great way to reward the skillful players instead of the ones with better luck.

Positioning minions

There are 2 different reasons to position your minions. The first one is to position minions in a certain way because there are cards in your deck which have a better effect when the board is positioned correctly. Secondly you want to position your minions in a way to play around cards from your opponent which strength varies based on your positioning. The latter is a lot less popular since there are only 6 cards in the game with that sort of effect. On top of that most of the time the opponent is not going to have one of these since the chances are very low so most of the time you are going to be playing around cards that your opponent doesn’t have. Yet it’s not a bad idea to play around them as you don’t lose anything besides some time by doing so.

The most important factor, however, to take into account when positioning your minions is cards that you know for sure are in your deck. Because there is always a chance that you might draw them next turn and when you do, you want to have the board prepared. Since you know for sure that you have cards in your deck for which you need to prepare your board for, always prioritize positioning for the cards you know are in your deck or hand, rather the ones opponent may have. For example if you have a flametongue-totem in your hand, don’t play around cone-of-cold from your opponent as he may not even have it and it would just make Flametongue worse when you decide to play it eventually.

Positioning against enemy cards

Currently in the game there are 6 cards for which the enemy’s positioning is important(cone-of-cold, betrayal, explosive-shot,powershot, foe-reaper-4000 and magnataur-alpha). Out of these 6 both Foe Reaper 4000 and Magnaraur Alpha can be forgotten and you shouldn’t play around them at all. This is because in constructed there is almost no way you will ever see these unless opponent gets them through cards like unstable-portal. In arena you will almost never see these two either because of the rarities. This means you should never play around them as the time wasted isn’t worth the chance of opponent playing either of these two. Even if the opponent plays one of these 2 you will still have your turn to react. Therefore you should never consider them when deciding how to position your minions. That leaves us with 4 spells, 2 out of which are from Hunter. This makes it easier since now you only need to play around spells when facing one of the three classes. These spells are most often seen in Arena since they are good picks and 2 out of them are commons. In constructed they aren’t too popular (especially the Hunter ones), however they see play from time to time.

Before moving on there is a quick nuance to cover. That is minions with stealth and minions which can’t be targeted by spells. Even though there aren’t that many of them they play a huge role in positioning around opponent’s spells when you do have them. There is no one rule how to use them and each situation is different. Yet the general rule of thumb is to place that sort of minion in between others on the board. That way opponent won’t get full value from his spells. For example if you have a gilblin-stalker in the middle surrounded by 2 other minions, powershot will hit 2 minions instead of 3 that would have been hit if you were to put Gilblin on the right or the left edge. To avoid this never put minions with stealth or untargetable ones on the left most or on the right most positions of the board against Mage, Rogue or Hunter.

Cone of Cold

cone-of-cold can have a devastating effect if you don’t position your board correctly to play around it, however it is quite easy to do so. Simply always keep the most threatening minions on the right and left edges of the board. This way when you have 4 or more minions the opponent won’t be able to freeze your 2 most threatening minions at the same time. The biggest threats to the opponent usually are minions with biggest stats, windfury or powerful abilities when the minion attacks (lotus-illusionist for example). So in short when playing against Mage,figure out which minions are most threatening to your opponent and keep them on the right and left edge of the board.

Betrayal

betrayal is a bit similar to Cone of Cold in the way you want to play around it. To position around Betrayal put minions with highest attack stat on the left most and right most spaces on the board. The goal here is to make sure minions with highest attack can’t attack more than 1 friendly minion when Betrayal is used on them. Of course this won’t always be the best placement and it depends from situation, however it’s a good practice to put highest attack minions on the edges when you don’t want to spend too much thinking about Betrayal. This way to play around Betrayal isn’t perfect but it’s good enough to make sure Betrayal doesn’t generate too much value for your opponent.

Explosive Shot/Powershot

I’ve put both explosive-shot and powershot in the same category because they are both quite similar and you won’t know which one opponent might have. In reality, however Powershot is much more likely to appear compared to Explosive Shot. This is because it’s a better card in compared to Explosive Shot and most people would put 2 copies of Powershot before including any Explosive Shots. Playing around Powershot and Explosive Shot is quite easy. Simply keep minions with lowest health on the right most and left most positions on the board. This way the opponent won’t be able to hit them both at the same time. This is especially true if you have 2 minions with 2 health or less. If you had 2 minions with 2 health on the opposite edges of the board opponent’s Powershot won’t be able to kil both of them reducing it’s impact.

To summarize playing around opponent’s cards with correct positioning here’s a checklist to make remembering easier:

When playing against Mage, keep the most threatening minions on the opposite edges of the board
When playing against a Rogue, keep minions with the highest attack on the opposite edges of the board.
When playing against a Hunter, keep minions with the lowest health on the opposite edges of the board.

Positioning for your cards

Now we get to the most important part of positioning – preparing your board for the cards you have in your deck or hand. Of course to position your board correctly you need to know what cards you have in your deck that you need to prepare the board for beforehand. When you know which cards you need to position your board for, the goal is to have the best possible board positioning for when the card comes into play. Even if you don’t have the card in hand, every turn there is a chance you draw it and last thing you want is to be unprepared and have it’s effect be mediocre when it could have swung the game in your favor. Therefore you want to position your minions in a way that would the best if you were to draw the card for which board position matters.

A quick reminder before going forward. Keep in mind that spells that summon minions always spawn them on the right most side of the board. For example feral-spirit will always spawn the wolves on the right most side of your board. The same goes when a minion is summoned from your deck (the best example being patches-the-pirate). Lastly when you use a hero power that summons a minion (totemic-call and reinforce) it also goes to the right most position on the board. This is important to take into account when positioning minions. For example if you have a single flametongue-totem on the board and you want to play small-time-buccaneer this turn. You have 2 options where to put it. You can either place it to the right of the Flametongue or to the left. The correct way would be to place Buccaneer to the left of Flametongue so that when patches-the-pirate is spawned to the right most side he would get the buff. If you were to put Buccaneer to the right of Flametongue Patches would be summoned on on the right of Buccaneer and wouldn’t get the buff from Flametongue.

Ancient Mage

ancient-mage is a very rare sight in Hearthstone and everyone has already forgot him. In constructed you will basically never see him and in Arena it’s a rare and a bad pick on top of that. It won’t matter how you position your minions when you have Ancient Mage in deck since it doesn’t matter too much what minion it hits. Therefore if Ancient Mage is the only card in your deck that requires positioning don’t even bother with it. Nonetheless for sake of completeness the way to prepare your board for Ancient Mage is simple – keep minions with the biggest stats (preferably high health) next to each other so the spell damage buff has a higher chance to stick on board.

Wee Spellstopper

wee-spellstopper is similar to Ancient Mage as in the fact that it’s very rare to have it in your deck. In arena it’s even rarer than Ancient Mage as it’s an epic. Yet it’s effect is a lot stronger than of Ancient Mage. Preparing the board for Wee Spellstopper is easy – always keep 2 most valuable minions you want to stay alive next to each other. Valuable most of the time mean the minions with the biggest stats, however you will often want to protect minions with strong abilities such as burgly-bully. On top of that it’s often a good idea to put Wee Spellstopper in between minions with low health so that they can’t get killed by opponent’s hero power.

Void Terror

void-terror can be seen in both arena and constructed from time to time so it’s worth knowing how to position for it. There are many ways you will want to position your Void Terror and it varies from turn to turn. Most of the time with Void Terror you will want to eat the minions with low health so that your board is more resistant to board clears. On top of that you will never want to eat cards with good effects like stormwind-champion, cult-master or other cards which bring good value by staying on the board. keep these important minions on the left side on the board. Then it’s recommended to sort the rest of the minions by how big their stats are in descending order from left to right. This way you will able to chose how much you want to invest into Void Terror and how big should it be.

Grimestreet Protector

grimestreet-protector is the latest released card with positioning aspect in mind. Even though it doesn’t see much constructed play, in Arena Grimestreet Protector has a lot of potential and can be drafted from time to time. To make sure you get the most value from Protector you need to have your board prepared for when you draw him. Usually but not always the best targets for divine shield are minions with high attack and low health. Cards like worgen-greaser are perfect for divine shield when you want to get rid of a big minion from opponent. You’ll have to decide which are the best minions to divine shield and keep them next to each other so that Grimestreet Protector can divine shield both of them at the same time. You may not always want to divine shield the biggest minion. It can be a good idea to shield a minion which can get a lot of value if it sticks on the board (kodorider for example). In the end it’s different for each situation what minions have the most potential when shielded.

Defender of Argus/Sunfury Protector

Both defender-of-argus and sunfury-protector are quite similar so I’ve put them in the same category. It’s quite obvious that the purpose of taunts is to either protect your face or other minions from dying. Therefore it makes sense that you want your taunts to have as much stats as possible. This means for Sunfury and Defender of Argus the best way to prepare for them in terms of taunt only (ignoring buff of Defender of Argus, more on that later) is to keep 2 minions with highest stats right next to each other. It’s a good practice to keep them on the left most side of the board so that way if you only have 1 minion that you want to taunt you can safely put Sunfury or Defender on the left most position so that it would only taunt the minion you want. Otherwise if the minion you want to give taunt to is stuck somewhere in the middle, you will have no choice but to taunt another minion which might be against your plan.

When it comes to Defender of Argus, you have to take the +1/+1 buff into consideration too. Even though it’s hard to give a general rule as it varies to much, most of the time the buff from Argus has 2 purposes. Firstly often times you will want to buff a minion with Argus so that it can trade into enemy’s minion. Secondly Defender of Argus is useful when you want to buff a minion so it doesn’t die. For example if you have a minion with 1 health it’s a good idea to buff it up with Defender so it doesn’t die to enemy’s hero power. These 2 are the most common uses of the buff. Keep them in mind when deciding which minions you will want to buff so you know how to properly position in advance.

Dire wolf Alpha/ Flametongue Totem

Both direwolf-alpha and flametongue-totem have the same effect just to a different extent. Both of these cards can be really powerful if the board is set up properly. Flametongue always sees a good amount of play both in constructed and in the Arena. The best way to position for Flametongue or Dire wolf is to put minions in a descending order in terms of stats. On the left you want to have your biggest minions, whilst on the right you want to have smallest minions. The goal is to put Flametongue somewhere on the left side of the board. Then the idea is to start trading the minions to the right of the Totem. Attack oppoent’s minion with buffed minion to the right of the Flametongue, then it dies, next minion on the right slides right next to Flametongue, gets the buff and is able to attack with the buff. Repeat this until you run out of minions to the right side of the Flametongue. To the left of Flametongue should be minions that you don’t want to trade in like brann-bronzebeard, taunts or minions with lots of health which won’t die easily. When playing Shaman remember that totems summon from hero power always come out on the right most position on the board.

To summarize here is a small list to help remember everything easier:

Wee Spellstopper – keep 2 most valuable minions next to each other.
Void Terror – Arrange minions in descending order in terms of stats from left to right.
Grimestreet Protector – Keep 2 minions with high attack low health next to each other.
Defender of Argus/Sunfury Protector – Keep 2 minions with biggest stats next to eachother.
Flamtongue Totem/Dire wolf Alpha – Arrange minions in descending order in terms of stats from left to right.

Closing

That’s all for today. I would love to discuss hear your thoughts on the subject in the comments below. Do you think Blizzard should print more positional cards? Do you think cards like these have a good influence on Hearthstone? Are cards like these confusing for new players? Thanks for reading.

Until next time.

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