Introduction
Hello guys, welcome to my second Hearthstone Players Guide. If you have read my first article then you have a good idea what this guide is going to be like. For everyone not familiar, let me start by saying its going to be a long ride with a mixture theoretical abstraction and practical examples. The focus of this guide is how to play turns two and three of an Arena game. With that said however, many of the points I make can be generalized to other turns of a game. And also, there is plenty of stuff that constructed players may find useful.
Intended Audience: This guide is aimed at intermediate and advanced players looking to ‘go infinite’ (i.e. average about 7 wins). While I sincerely hope beginners read this guide and learn a lot I fear that the content maybe a bit too difficult for such a reader. If I’m describing you and you wish to persevere don’t say I didn’t warn you!
Guide Contents: Let me quickly describe the journey we are going to take; I start the guide with an explanation as to why I think Turns two and three in Arena games are important enough to justify writing an entire article about them. After thats done I show you a method for systematically approaching these critical turns. After a little bit more theory I end the guide by providing you four detailed examples of how to approach turn two. These final examples are in a ‘pop-quiz format‘, which should give you a chance to practice using some of the ideas I detailed in previous sections. Once that’s done, all you have left to read is the comments section. On the topic of comments, please feel free to ask questions and don’t forget to tell me how awesome I am. 🙂
Anyway, lets get cracking!
Introductory Example
If you were to play the position in the picture what would you play here? Have a quick think about it.
This image is take from a game Adwtca played in his ‘Arena Coop‘ series (he also has written Arena guides published on this website). The duo instantly reach for the coin because they know that they want to play a 2-drop but then the critical question looms; What two drop do we play? recombobulator or shielded minibot?
The duo discussed the merits of each play; the advantage of playing the minibot first is that if you can trade into something (losing the divine shield) and then cast recombulator then the battlecry ought to generate a little bit of value (since most 2-drops are better than a 2/2).
But the position is a little bit more complicated than that; if the enemy Mage plays a 2/3 minion and then you try to transform the minibot you are likely to get a minion worse than a 2/2 with divine shield. Moreoever, their 2/3 can just trade into the 3/2 recombobulator.
Lets listen to their discussion (you can stop watching the clip after the Paladin plays avenge, which is at (1:13:28) ) :
I show you this clip because it should help you understand what this guide is all about. By the end of this guide I hope that each and every one of you will be capable of thinking about turns two and three in this much detail. If you are able to achieve this, then you will be one step closer toward becoming infinite.
**Update (22/01/15): You might be wondering the following question; Was Adwtca right to play the Recombobulator first? In the comments section, Mr.Shine and I discuss what we think the correct play is. Update (02/02/15): Adwtca has also chimed in. **
At the very end of the guide I have four examples that are like this one be sure to check them out. In the meantime however, we need to start the guide with some more basic introductory material. For example, I should probably try to explain why I feel turns two and three are of critical importance. This will be the next section.
Why Turns Two & Three?
If you have played Arena (especially since GvG) you will have probably realised that most games are won and lost based on who has board-control. There are a number of reasons for why this is the case, I’ll offer three reasons here:
(1) Arena has worse ‘Board-Clear’:
In Arena, it is generally the case that you are usually less able to clear an enemies board than you are in constructed.
For example, ‘Paladin Control’ (in constructed) is almost without rival when it comes to board clear; they can run combos like ‘equality+ wild pyromancer‘ which means that if they do start to fall behind they have an excellent chance to stabilise for a mere four-mana. Moreover, the Paladin can have two copies of each card (which makes the combo reliable). In Arena however, not only will you often fail to draft such a combo, even when you do draft it chances are you won’t draft enough copies of either card to yield consistent results.
Classes like Warrior usually do okay for board-clear in constructed, they just run one — sometimes two– copies of brawl. But in Arena, brawl — owing to its ‘epic’ status– is not a card you will often draft. In Arena, Warrior is usually forced to rely on neutral minions (e.g. abomination) to get the job done.
As for Priest, in constructed the usual trick to use circle of healing alongside auchenai soulpriest. In Arena however the problem is twofold; firstly, the soulpriest is a ‘rare’. Secondly, Circle is usually a bad card by itself, making it a questionable pick in most cases (for these reasons Priest most frequently relies on holy nova).
For Rogue, fan of knives doesn’t usually deal enough damage and vanish only solves the present problem for a turn. Therefore, this class would prefer for its AoE to come from blade flurry, which is a rare. Just like priest, Rogue now has to draft the relevant supporting cards (i.e. Weapon-damage stuff) or else he/she is left with an inferior arcane explosion.
As for Druid, well, even in constructed the class usually at board clear :).
The above paragraphs seemingly makes the case then that most classes struggle with board clear due to problems concerning card rarity (e.g. Warrior) and/or the difficulty is due to the requirement of drafting multiple cards to make the combos possible (e.g Rogue, Paladin). Worse still, for some classes (e.g. Priest), the combos require the drafting of otherwise bad cards!
But none of this is true of Mage! When a Mage drafts a few copies of flamestrike they don’t tend to have any problems clearing the enemies board. And thats exactly the point! Mage is widely regarded as the ‘Queen of Arena’ in large part due the power — and ‘common’ rarity– of the card ‘Flamestrike’.
Basically, a general lack of (effective) board clears in Arena typically means that overextending is less likely to be punished in Arena than it is to be punished in Constructed (except against Mage!). On a related point, in Arena Mage and Warlock (due to cards like shadowflame, hellfire) are typically the only classes that regularly deal more than 2 AoE damage (without Spell power). This often means that it is easy to play around a lot of Arena board clear (e.g. just drop 3-health minions). In constructed though, many decks can squeeze extra juice out of the cards (making them harder to play-around). Warrior, for example, can combine whirlwind or death’s bite and baron geddon for a total of 3 AoE damage. Priest can likewise squeeze more juice out of cards like Holy Nova by dropping a W.Pyromancer first.
(2) Arena decks typically have fewer ‘swing cards’ than constructed decks:
In constructed there are a number of cards (usually epics and Legendaries) that you can put in your deck to provide you with those critical swing turns. For example, you could always top deck the black knight to deal with the enemies 5/10 ancient of war. Such a swing can be devastating enough to bring you right back in the game. Whereas in Arena, it will be a very rare scenario to have the Knight in your deck. Moreover, you may not have even drafted a silence either! Thus, it is quite often the case that your only option is try to punch through a 5/10 brick wall!
Talking of big minions the counter (in constructed) is running a copy of big game hunter. But in Arena you can’t rely on this card since its an ‘epic’. As a consequence of this I usually find that massive minions, such as an 8/8 sea giant, are likely to live a turn or two longer in an Arena game than it typically would do in a constructed game. And even if it is taken down, chances are the Arena solution is less efficient than the Constructed solution (e.g BGH costs three-mana and puts a 4/2 on board. Whereas assassinate is two additional mana and doesn’t add anything to your side of the board).
Long story short, there are fewer ‘big swing’ turns in Arena. Moreover dealing with threats (such as an 8/8 giant) is often more difficult in Arena than it is in constructed, which therefore means once a threat(s) is/are on the board it is much harder to simultaneously counter and play ones own threats.
(3) Arena decks have less ‘identity’ than Constructed decks.
**By “identity” I simply mean that constructed decks typically follow a much tighter ‘theme’ (e.g. undertaker decks will often narrowly focus on getting deathrattles into the deck) than Arena decks.**
When was the last time you saw a Murloc deck in Arena? When was the last time you saw Freeze Mage in Arena? You typically won’t see either of these archetypes in Arena essentially for the same reason. Namely, the inherent randomness involved in drafting typically means that decks that try to do specific things (in this case swarm with Murlocs, or win with freeze mage) will often fail to achieve a critical mass of staple cards and/or will fail to draft key cards altogether.
The result is that it is hard to draft specialized decks with unique win conditions. Therefore, it is regrettably the case that that most decks default to being either ‘Aggro board-control‘ or ‘Mid-range/Control board-control‘ decks.
This difficulty is ultimately compounded by the drafting process. If you check out this draft it is funny to note just how many mind blast‘s ‘adwcta’ & ‘Mr. Shine’ were offered. If they could redo the draft completely (knowing what each future choice was going to be) there is a reasonable chance that they may have picked up every single mind blast offered and thereby create an insane ‘to the face deck‘ (there was even a few other choice cards like arcane golem on offer that could have complimented that tactic nicely). But the two Players (quite rightly, I should add) did not draft this deck. When the first mind blast comes up early in a Priest draft you have no idea if you are going to get enough copies of other key cards to make a face deck viable. And since Mind Blast is pretty weak in standard board-control decks the risk of the mind blast pick backfiring is pretty high. Only in hindsight can we definitively say that the face deck was viable.
In short; its rare to see specialized decks in Arena because you are unlikely to draft that much needed critical mass of key cards. Far sadder still, most of the time you won’t draft the first key card because of the risk of not getting the rest of the cards you need to — complete the strategy– is high.
So that’s the three reasons why I think Arena typically ends up being all about board-control. The first two reasons suggest that an advantage on the board can quickly snowball into a win due to the difficulty involved in playing from behind. The third reason suggests that other sorts of decks will not often be drafted owing to the risks involved in making them. But all this analysis does not (as yet) explain why turns two and three are of critical importance. I’ll quickly offer two reasons in support of that claim:
(1) The Card rarities are not equally distributed across all mana costs:
If you search the entire roaster of Hearthstone cards you will find that there seems to be a link between mana cost and card rarity. If you look at the eight (or more)-mana minions for example, there are more legendaries than there are rares, commons and epics combined. And now if you look at the lower-end of curve you will see the opposite (i.e. very few legendary cards relative to the number of commons). Given that most of the time you will be drafting commons, it naturally follows that you will be offered more two or three-mana cards than you will be offered eight(or more)-mana cards. Ergo, due to card rarity, decks tend to be pushed toward the lower-end of the mana curve. Druid is one of the few classes you tend to see playing late-game minions; Why is that the case? Well, it probably has something to do with the fact that Druid has access to the biggest common-rarity minion in the game, ironbark protector. (innervate helps as well of course 🙂 )
Basically, if most Arena decks are going to be full of lower-cost cards, then it follows that there is going to be a lot of minion fighting early on as both players jockey for position.
It is worth pointing out however that this is not a general claim about Hearthstone, rather, it is merely a claim about all the cards released so far (for those of you reading in the very distant future; GvG is the current set). Future sets may address this issue.
(2) If Board Control ‘snowballs’ games, it makes sense to try and claim it for ourselves as soon as possible:
If you recall, the previous three points explaining the importance of board-control essentially made the point that once a Player falls behind it is often difficult to bounce back. This is because; (1) there is less and/or weaker board-clear, (2) fewer swing cards, and (3) its hard to build build a deck that doesn’t care about the board. It logically follows from these points then that having board-control makes us more likely to win the game. And since we want to gain control of the board before our opponent does, it makes sense for use to start the fight ‘as soon as‘ we possibly can.
Well, I say ‘as soon as possible’ but I tend to find turn-one unimportant. So by ‘as soon as’ I actually mean turn-two and turn-three. Why I don’t consider turn-one important shall be the contents of the next section.
What about Turn-One?
Okay, so the previous section tried to making the point that establishing board presence early in the game is often the key to victory. You can’t get much ‘earlier’ than turn one, so that begs the question; Why do I not consider turn one as important as turns two and three?
The answer is actually pretty simple; the overwhelming majority of one-drops suck. And in Arena, even some of good one-drops suck (e.g undertaker)! Here are three reasons why I feel this is the case:
(1) Hero Powers:
In Hearthstone, it is just all too easy to kill a Leper Gnome with your face. While you can take a decent chunk of damage doing so, the fact of the matter is that the card advantage gained usually makes it worthwhile. Meanwhile, killing your typical two-drop with Hero Power takes twice as much time, twice as much mana AND you will often take twice as much damage in the process. It is simply the case then that the 2-drops represent the first minions who must be combated with cards in order to be effectively defeated.
Moreover, suppose for a second that your Druid opponent has a terrible hand. In this case, he was going to play his/her Hero Power on turn-two regardless of what we did. If we skip turn-one this hero power ends hitting our face for a negligible amount of damage. Whereas if we play a one-drop then we make his/her use of hero power purposeful. In short, we inadvertently gave our opponent a good play (he/she now gets +1 card advantage, as opposed to getting a mere +1 face damage). Their hand may remain terrible for a while, but the fact is the +1 card advantage could end up being a game-winning advantage if he/she is somehow able to stabilise later on.
(2) Most one-drops have terrible abilities (for Arena):
Compared with decent two-drops, one-drops typically have terrible abilities (notable exception; northshire cleric), which therefore tends to make the one-drops less useful and less flexible. Compare, for example, the usefulness of acidic swamp ooze with bloodsail corsair. If the average weapon has two durability, then we think of Ooze’s ability as being twice as good in most situations (but thats okay since Ooze is twice the mana!).
(3) Lots of One-drops don’t want to be played on Turn-One .
This point is pretty simple. The are only a small handful of one-drops that are actually good turn-one plays. A Card like abusive sergeant is an okay Arena pick since the ability can be useful later on in the game, but to play it on turn one would be a sub-optimal use of the card (since the battlecry fails to trigger). young priestess is exactly the same. Personally I quite like drafting southsea deckhand in Rogue, but I hardly ever play it on turn one (I prefer to wait until I have a weapon equipped and/or I need to utilise the combo mechanic).
Basically, of all the one-drops you (or your opponent) might draft very few are actually strong turn one plays and so therefore most of the time you are more likely to see a coined two-drop on turn one than an actual one-drop played on the first turn of the game. **Update 02/02/15: The fact that you can coin a two-drop in roughly half your games gives you yet another reason to not draft 1-drops in Arena.**
To sum up; most of the one drops currently in the game are rubbish. This means most people (who know what they are doing) won’t draft a lot of 1-drops (if any at all). Meanwhile, 2-drops are frequently drafted. The result of all of this is that most of the early-game fighting is done on turns two and three.
This is not to say all one-drops are bad however, there are a few that stand out above the rest. Broadly speaking they fall into a few different categories:
Category | Example Card(s) |
The ‘I-got-big-stats’ group. | zombie chow, flame imp |
The ‘who-cares-if-I-die?’ group. | webspinner, clockwork gnome |
The ‘Traders’ group. | worgen infiltrator |
The ‘My-card-text-is-actually-useful’ group. | northshire cleric, southsea deckhand |
The ‘Feed-Me!’ group. | mana wyrm |
The ‘I-can-survive-longer-than-a-single-turn’ group. | argent squire |
Although my categories are obviously tongue-in-cheek the table nonetheless lists pretty much every one-drop currently in the game worth drafting. Since this guide is not supposed to be about specifically telling you what cards you ought to draft, I won’t go into any more detail than I already have.
A quick note on Mulligans
And by ‘quick note’ I really mean that. In this guide I don’t really say much about Mulligans. In the next two sections (‘thinking about turn two’, ‘thinking about turn three’) I try to teach you what you need to think about on those turns. Well, you should also be thinking about that stuff during the mugilan too! Having an explosive turn two/three ultimately requires you to have the pre-requisite cards in hand. And obviously, one of the main ways to get those key cards in the hand is to make those keep/throw mulligan decisions wisely.
With the introduction now over, lets actually get to the meat of this guide.
Thinking about Turn Two
During turn two what should we be thinking about? Well, here’s a handy list of questions you need to ask yourself:
- What happens if they use Hero Power?
- What happens if they play a 3/2 minion?
- What happens if they play a 2/3 minion?
- What happens if they play a minion with some other stat distribution (e.g. a 1/3)
- What happens if they play a special minion? (I’ll define the term “special minion” in a moment)
- What spells, secrets, or weapons could they play?
- If there are already minions on the board, what attacks/trades can they make.
- If they have the coin, what could they do with it.
What class specific cards/strategies might they employ?(will not be covered in this guide).
You can see that I crossed the last item off the list. This is because this guide is not intended to be a “how to beat every class” guide. Rather this guide is meant to be generalised and not specific to any given meta. With this said, I will point out that when playing against a Paladin (especially at high wins) you ought to expect a turn-two shielded minibot. I shall say no more than that.
So we now know what we need to think about on turn-two; for every action (be it playing a card/hero power) you are thinking about playing you need to go through this list. Lets start with a simple example:
Imagine that your hand has two cards in it; loot hoarder and bloodfen raptor.
It is turn two and you are interested in figuring out the best play. So what do we do? Well, we simply go through the list of questions!
- If we play Loot Hoarder:
…and they respond with Hero power. If it is a Rogue/Mage/Druid then our minion dies. Usually, losing a minion this easily would be a bad thing (see section about one-drops), but as it so happens loot hoarder has a deathrattle that draws us a card. This means that our Opponent has not gained card advantage by killing Loot H. Ergo, against these classes, our position is okay Against other classes (such as Shaman, Priest, Warrior, warlock) we are in a good position (unless the shaman rolls the 1/1 totem) since these Hero Powers do not threaten Loot H .
…What if they respond not with Hero Power, but with a 3/2 minion? Well, this is fantastic news for us! Loot H will get good value. Killing a bigger minion with a smaller one is usually a good idea. Moreover, if the deathrattle resolves then we gain +1 card advantage over our opponent.
…What about a 2/3 minion? Well this is pretty bad, we technically don’t lose card advantage due to the Loot H’s deathrattle but in this case the 2/1 body achieved little.
…What about if they play a minion with some other stat distribution? Well it depends what the stats are but I’m sure given what I have already written above you can figure is out 🙂
…What about special minions? Lets ignore this question for now, I’ll explain it later.
…What about weapons, secrets and spells? Well to simplify the analysis we will say that frostbolt on Loot H is good for us since that generated card advantage (remember its not a 1:1 card trade because of the deathrattle!). A weapon hit is fairly neutral since we neither gained nor lost a card. and if they play a secret then we are probably trading 1:1 or possibly better.
…What about minions already on the board? What about the coin? Well, to keep this introductory example as simple as possible lets assume that we play Loot H on an empty board and the coin has already been used.
Okay, that gives us a broad overview as to what might happen if we play Loot H. It is worth pointing out however, I only evaluated Loot H in terms of card advantage. There are other assessments I could have made, for example, instead of examining Loot H’s + Opponents Response in terms of card advantage I could also have evaluated the resulting positions in terms of ‘board-control’, ‘tempo’, ‘mana-efficiency’, and so on. I have not done so here mostly because introductory examples are not supposed to overwhelm you with material! But with that said, I do want to highlight that if we evaluate Loot H by other metrics then our evaluations as what is a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ outcome is may change.
For example, I claimed that if we play Loot H and they respond with a secret we get a 1:1 trade or better. And this claim is broadly true; if we use Loot H to attack into a noble sacrifice then it is the case that we get +1 card advantage. But, it is also simultaneously the case that our opponent has dealt with Loot H mana-efficiently (i.e. they spent 1 mana to kill a 2 mana minion). And when we deal with threats mana-efficiently that often entails a tempo advantage that can be converted into some some other lead (e.g. board-control). To demonstrate that point; If our opponent has two mana and they can deal with our minion at the cost of one mana (i.e.noble sacrifice) then that leaves one mana remaining to play their own threat at the same time, such as a leper gnome. And this position is a very dynamic one; we end up ahead in terms of card advantage but at the cost of being behind tempo and board control.
But I digress! Lets now look at what happens if we play Bloodfin Raptor:
- We play Bloodfen Raptor:
…and they respond with Hero Power. No class in the game has a Hero Power that can take out a 3/2 in a single strike, but some classes (e.g. Mage, Rogue, etc) are capable of taking it out in two strikes. Against these classes, Blood R is good. Against classes that can’t even threaten a two strike kill (e.g. Priest, Warrior) then this is a fantastic outcome.
…What if they respond not with Hero Power, but with a 3/2 minion? Well in this case we have the option of a simple 1:1 trade. An even exchange.
…What about a 2/3 minion? Just as above, this is likely to lead to an even exchange.
…What about other stat distributions? Well it depends what they are but I’m sure given the above to lines you can figure is out 🙂
…What about weapons, secrets and spells? A 2+ attack weapon with 1+ durability is bad for us since in this case our opponent is likely to generate card advantage (on the next swing). Against secrets we will typically get a 1:1 trade (only in rare circumstances will we do better/worse than that), this is also the case with most single target removal spells as well.
So by comparing these two plays we now know when Loot H is better than Blood R and vice versa. Since we should always assume smart opponents, we now know that if we play Loot H our opponent is more likely to play a 2/3 minion (or Hero power) than he/she is to play a 3/2 minion. So that gives you some insight as to what you need to be thinking about on turn two, lets now move our attention to turn three.
Thinking about Turn Three
What do you need to think about on turn three? Well basically you ask the same questions as you did in the above section, but this time you adjust your expectations accordingly. So, for example, instead of asking yourself how you are going to respond to a 2/3 or 3/2 minion, the question becomes; “how do I respond to a 3/3, 3/4, or 4/3 minion?”
Ideally, you should be thinking about turn three when you played turn two. For example, if you play a 2/3 on turn three and your opponent responds with a 3/3 he/she threatens to win the trade. You should have seen this line of play before dropping the 2/3. And if you did see such a line then–if possible– you should have also prepared the counter (e.g. a fiery war axe).
I cannot stress this enough; the ability to play two-to-three turns ahead can yield a significant advantage in Arena (and in constructed, for that matter). The rest of this guide is heavily focused on this idea; I’ll will introduce this idea at the ‘theory level‘ first but the four in-depth examples at the end of this guide should give you a better practical understanding as to how we can ‘link’ turns two and three (and beyond) together. But before that there are few more introductory points one must make. For starters, I have yet to define what a ‘Special minion‘ is. Lets do that now…
What is a “Special Minion” ?
**note that while I talk about “Special minions” there is absolutely no reason why this idea couldn’t also be applied to spells, secrets, weapons, etc **
So what is a special minion? Basically, it is a minion that usually has an ability that, when played, drastically alters the ‘flow of combat‘. So, we are looking at minions that can change the combat math, and/or whose abilities can punish unwary players. This definition is a bit vague, so let me give you a (non-exhaustive) list of ‘special minions’, and hopefully by thinking about what this minions have in common will help you to understand the sorts of minions I am talking about:
dire wolf alpha | flametongue totem | raging worgen | |
shielded minibot | aldor peacekeeper | abusive sergeant | |
blood knight | ironbeak owl | mad bomber | |
shattered sun cleric | explosive sheep | shrinkmeister |
I’m sure plenty of you reading this have stories about one or two of these minions being dropped onto the board to devastating effect. And thats basically the theme that unites the members of this list! If you (or your opponent) are unprepared for minions like these then the game can very quickly quickly snowball out of control. Let’s try to understand this snowballing effect by thinking about a few simple examples:
Simple Example #1:
- I play Loot Hoarder:
…The response is a 2/3
….I play Raging Worgen
In this situation I initially got caught out, our opponent did the smart thing by playing a 2/3 against a 2/1 minion. I used this exact example earlier in the guide (see ‘thinking about turn two’ section). But this time we are looking just one move deeper; the follow up play (on turn three) is to drop a 3/3 with a powerful ability. Two attack is not sufficient to kill the Worgen, moreover at 3 health my opponent is also unable to suicide the 2/3 into Loot H. So in this case, either our opponent can deal that additional point of damage somehow, or he will find himself fighting against an enraged Worgen.
Simple Example #2:
- I play Loot Hoarder:
…The response is mad bomber. (The bombs kill Loot H).
This example is very simple indeed, we play a weak 2/1 and the opponent responds with a minions whose battlecry has a chance to outright kill our minion (RNG permitting). In such cases as this, the side that played Mad Bomber can end up significantly ahead in terms of card advantage, and/or tempo, and/or board-control.
Simple Example #3:
- I play a haunted creeper
…they play a 3/2.
…I play a dire wolf alpha. (I now use creeper kill their 3/2).
In this example, I have killed a 3/2 because the dire wolf buffed the creeper with an additional point of attack. Moreover, those new 1/1 spiders are also going to get buffed. Meaning that I am likely to get even more value than I normally would from those minions (e.g. next turn we could trade two 1/1 spiders for a 4 health minion)
Let me share with you a quick video clip. Its a priest mirror match in Arena, and my deck is amazing — without a doubt the best Priest draft I’ve ever had. The deck is so good grandma could have gone 12 wins with it. Its a bit of a pity that I played the deck then, since I only went 2-3. 🙁 🙁 🙁 But anyway, in the clip you will get to see how special minions (in this case its questing adventurer), with just a little help from supporting cards can just snowball the game. If you are at work (or are a young child who has never heard ‘naughty words’ before) probably best to skip the clip and watch it later. During the game I was more Salty than a really salty thing.
http://youtu.be/oG2pxi7XFKg?t=5s
So hopefully these examples has made it clear to you that ‘special minions’ are powerful. So powerful in fact, failure to play around them can result in devastating losses in board-control, tempo, life, card advantage, etc. The next two sections look at how we play around such devastating cards.
Picking your Poison
Let’s refer back to simple example #3 from the above section. To save you from scrolling back up, I will reprint it here:
Simple Example #3:
- I play a haunted creeper
…they play a 3/2
…I play a dire wolf alpha and kill their 3/2.
We know that this is a terrible line for the second player, Given this, we can ask ourselves a very simple question; was it better for Player 2 to play a 2/3 minion instead? The (unfortunate) answer to that question is; “no, not necessarily”. To see why, all one has to do is tweak the example a little bit:
Simple Example #4:
- I play a haunted creeper
…they play a 2/3
…I play a abusive sergeant and kill their 2/3.
In this example all I did was change the ‘special minion’ (from the ‘Wolf’ to ‘Sergeant’) and poor old Player Two is still in a bad spot. The point I am making here is that it is rarely possible to play around every possible card your opponent may have. A lot of the time you just have to ‘pick your poison‘, so to speak.
So the lesson here is that special minions are powerful and we should try to play around them, but that is far easier said than done; being strong against one sort of attack often comes at the cost of being weak to another. So, what can we do? Well, here is two simple ideas:
(1) Play around cards based on (a) how devastating they are and (b) how likely it is that your opponent drafted/kept them during their mulligan.
Here are a few considerations:
(*) Warrior and Mage tend to draft raging worgen a bit more frequently than other classes. (*) flamestrike is more likely than blizzard due to card rarity (‘common’ vs ‘rare’). (*) Since abusive sergeant is a one-drop (and one drops suck), its more likely the opponent drafted dire wolf alpha than the former card. (*) Since dire wolf alpha buffs the 1/1’s that pop out of the spider, this is more devastating than the abusive play.Notice here that the last two bullet points suggest that not only is dire wolf more likely, but that it is also the more devastating play. Thus, when deciding whether to play the 3/2 or the 2/3 we now have a theoretical framework to base our decision on. The theory claims that — in the situations where we must choose– it is better to make ourselves strong against good–and probable– play instead of making ourselves strong against the weak(er)– and less likely– play. In this specific case, we ought to drop the 2/3 and hope for the best.
But if you were expecting this guide to be full of simply little rules you can unthinkingly follow in you games I am now going to disappoint you. The above analysis suggests that the 2/3 is better since it nicely plays around a dire wolf. But here’s the catch; 3/2 minions counter most 3-drops, whereas 2/3’s don’t. Allow me to illustrate:
Simple Example #5:
- I play a haunted creeper
…they play a 2/3
…I play a 3/3 minion.
So in this time we are not looking at special minions and are instead asking ourselves what happens if we simply play a decent body on curve. The 2/3 in this case can’t trade with the creeper nor with the 3/3 so the minion ends up stranded with nothing to do. If Player Two had played a 3/2 instead then they would have a decent trade to make. What we are learning then, is no matter what we play there is a counter.
But anyway, lets move unto practical tip number two:
(2) Concentrate on attack; while we cannot possibly know for certain what our opponent is holding onto, we do know our own hands and decks. So, if we have special minions in hand its probably a good idea to play in such a way that maximises the chances of getting good value from our own stuff (as opposed playing in fear of what our opponent may do).
So now we move onward to the next section, which is about trying to exploit the propensities of our opponents.
The ‘counter-counter effect’
Suppose for a second that you are playing a game in constructed as a Warlock. Its your turn and you play cairne bloodhoof. You then life tap and draw a mortal coil. Is it weird for me to say that having Cairne in play “buffs” this card? Indeed, why would that be the case, there is after all, no obvious connection/synergy between these two cards. In what sense then, is coil ‘buffed’ by the Cairne?
Before answering that question, let me start by explaining the power of cards is never static. Rather, the power of all cards are in constant flux; the value of any given card rises and falls on a annual basis (‘set releases‘), on a daily basis (‘the meta‘), on a ‘per game’ basis (i.e. ‘class match-ups‘), and also on a ‘turn-by-turn’ basis (e.g. the value of having a hex in hand is low when there are poor targets, decent when there is a good target and excellent when there is a good target AND you can use your remaining mana to good effect).
I could also say that ancient of lore and big game hunter ‘buff’ each other. How so? Well, the ability to drop BGH and kill a big target nicely mitigates one of the weakness of playing lore (i.e. that Lore’s small body makes him an anti-tempo play). Basically, the two cards seem to ‘compliment‘ each other, and this is all I really mean when I say ‘buff’.
But lets go back to my Cairne example. The answer to my question cannot be found by simply studying the cards in a vacuum. Rather, to understand we have to broaden our minds and think about the big picture. To put you out of your misery, the point is that when we we find themselves confronting Cairne plenty of us would quite like to silence it. And in the current meta one of the most popular silence cards is ironbeak owl. And what do we notice about the owl? Well, its one health makes it a pretty good target for mortal coil. If the meta was to suddenly change and everyone replaced Owls with spellbreaker‘s then it would no longer be true to say “Cairne ‘buffs’ coil”. But in this case, all what has happened is ‘the buff’ Cairne gives has simply relocated to other cards such as darkbomb. In short; Coil counters the counter to Cairne Bloodhoof.
How do you guys feel about a pop quiz?
Question 1: Suppose you are playing (in Constructed) as a Druid with the black knight in hand. The enemy Warlock is at 15 life and has 10 mana. On his turn, the Warlock decided to play dread infernal. My question to you is; ‘how does this demon (in this particular situation) ‘buff’ black knight?‘ Have a think about it.
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Here is my famous (patent pending) dotted line technology that stops you from seeing the answer accidentally!
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last chance to stop scrolling!
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Answer: Okay, so in order to solve this puzzle you had to figure out that it has almost nothing to do with the minion itself and everything to do with the Warlocks life total. He was at 15 before playing the demon and at 14 after (14 being of course the magic number vs Druid). Thus, the Warlock brings himself in range of force of nature + savage roar combo. In general, there are only three defences against the combo; the first is loatheb (which we can rule out since the Warlock only has 4 mana left), the second defence is heal, and the third defence is to Taunt up. The third of which plays directly into the Knight’s hands. Assuming the Warlock is smart, before he played the demon he ought to have known about this possibility; ergo, he is likely to follow up with a taunt (or heal) with the remaining four mana (that or, the Warlock has decided to ignore the possibility of combo and ‘play for the win’ instead ).
Basically, the point is that Black Knights value is in constant flux; its value is high when probability of a taunt being played is high, and the value is low when the probability our opponent playing a taunt is low. It is worth noting however, that ‘the buff’ only works because the Warlock expects the druid to have combo. If the Warlock doesn’t feel obliged to taunt up then black knight fails to get the buff. In short; Black Knight counters the counter to Force + Roar combo.
While this latter sort of combo is less applicable in Arena (because people are less likely to play around such combo’s), I thought that it was a bit too interesting to leave out of the guide. 🙂 And in any case, the concept does have some application in Arena; a simple example is that most players fear flamestrike, and as such they may try to play around that card possibly by playing big (i.e. 5+ health) minions on turns 5/6/7 to pre-empt the strike. Such a choice however, ‘buffs’ cards like fireball and polymorph (note also that this is a good example of ‘picking poisons‘ too; small minion = death by flamestrike, big minion = death by fireball). In short; Fireball counters the counter to Flamestrike.
So I think the above gives you a solid understanding of what I mean when I say the counter-counter effect. Lets now get back to talking about the key focus of the guide (turns two & three in arena), and see if we can use this idea to improve our play.
Let’s recall a previous example:
Simple Example #1:
- I play Loot Hoarder
…The response is a 2/3
…I play Raging Worgen
So in this example, the second player tries to exploit our Loot H play by dropping a 2/3. To which we counter by playing a special 3/3 minion (in practice though, any 3/3 is a good response to a 2/3). To use the terminology of the above paragraphs; an enemy 2/3 on the board essentially ‘buffs’ all your minions capable of trading with it, and ‘nerfs’ all of those that cannot trade efficiently.
Lets now look at this example from the second players perspective. Imagine that their hand consists of three cards: (1) vanilla 3/2, (2) vanilla 2/3 and (3) 3-attack weapon.
When Player One played Loot H the obvious response was to play the 2/3 (since the 3/2 merely trades). And now Player Two (being the clever cookie that he is) realises that there is a risk that Player One may just respond with his own 3/3 minion, but he notes that he can counter that play via his weapon and so he is happy to go down this line of play. Basically, the 2/1 is countered by a 2/3, the 2/3 is countered by the 3/3, and the 3/3 is countered by the weapon. And thats the counter-counter effect in action!
So okay, lets change the example slightly, lets suppose that Player Two’s weapon has two (not three, as it is above) attack. What happens now? Well, in this situation you still might opt for the above line of play, realising that you can trade your 2/3 and a weapon hit for the 3/3. But, this is not that efficient, and so instead you might prefer to use the weapon on turn two against the Loot H, and if they respond with by playing a 3/3 on curve you can drop the 3/2 to try and trade-up.
While some of you may find this reasoning a bit tricky, it is not rocket science. The ‘counter-counter effect’ is simply a style of thinking whereby you anticipate your opponents most likely response to your moves. And then armed with that prediction you try to think of ways to counter-that-counter. It will of course not always be possible, and sometimes your opponent will do something completely unexpected. But nonetheless, this concept can be pretty useful.
…But the Rope is Burning!
So at this point in the guide you may start to be questioning the practical use of what I am teaching. After all, I have spoken about so much for so long it may not be clear to you how it possible to think about all this stuff in a real game; surely if we were to ask every question I posed in the ‘thinking about turn two’ section above for every play we had wouldn’t the rope just burn out before we could calculate all of the possibilities?
The short answer to that question is yes; trying to think of everything is one sure-fire way to run out of time. The solution to this problem is, in essence, to learn to think less.
There is a wealth of scientific literature that suggests that gaining proficiency at tasks usually means you expend less energy, not more. In other words, over time your brain develops a rather sophisticated auto-pilot for dealing with the task(s) at hand. This ‘auto-pilot’ usually goes by another name; ‘intuition‘. The next few paragraphs are going to talk about Chess (specifically intuition in chess), but don’t worry, you don’t need to be a good Chess player in order to understand the comparison/analogy I am going to make.
Here is a chess article written about Magnus Carlsen (the current reigning World Chess Champion) and its all about intuition. The author looks at Carlsen’s ability to simply understand a complex chess position. When Asked why he picks a certain moves over another the World Champion does not respond with reams of analysis, rather he tends to trust his instincts. To quote a passage from the article (note: for those not familiar with the practices of academia, comments in square brackets [] in the passage below are my own. I’ve added them to help you better understand what you are reading):
Published: Jan 19, 2015 07:59 pm