One of my favorite things to do in Hearthstone is play the different recipe decks that Blizzard has designed. Yes, maybe I’m a bit crazy. These are decks that Blizzard creates with the purpose of guiding new players. If you’re new to the game, or just getting into the ladder, you might not know what deck to create. Last week we took a look at the different tools on the internet for metagame analysis. Today we’re going to look at Blizzard’s recipe decks.
The recipe decks are not free. They all require a non-zero amount of dust to craft and almost every onTe requires a Legendary creature. Each class has three different recipes. The first is the Classic recipe which only uses cards from the Basic and Expert expansions. These are probably the best place for a new player to start, especially one who might get the Welcome Bundle (if it ever becomes available).
Every single Classic recipe requires a Legendary creature from the Expert expansion. Druid and Hunter need Ragnaros. Mage needs Archmage Antonidas, Paladin needs Tirion Fordring, Priest needs Sylvanas Windrunner, Rogue needs Edwin VanCleef, Shaman needs Al’Akir the Windlord, Warlock needs Leeroy Jenkins, and Warrior needs Grommash Hellscream. It’s interesting to note that Druid, Hunter, and Warlock require a neutral Legend, so the Welcome Bundle won’t help you there.
Even if you don’t have the Legendary creature requirement, these decks are good and they should be good enough to make it through the first few rungs of the ladder, accomplish daily gold quests, and generally enjoy entry-level competitive Hearthstone. They also give you a pretty good idea of the basic function of each class. The Druid deck ramps into powerful creatures quickly. Mage relies on spells. Warrior plays control. They’re all good for learning.
The other two recipe decks for each class utilize the cards from the expansion sets. One recipe relies heavily on The Grand Tournament, Blackrock Mountain, and the League of Explorers. The third recipe relies heavily on Whispers of the Old Gods. If you’re new to the game, I recommend avoiding the middle recipes. They’re not bad decks. But, the way Standard works means they won’t be playable in a few months. You’ll want to focus on Whispers of the Old Gods.
The Whispers of the Old Gods recipes are a lot of fun to play. With plenty of practice and some metagame tweaking you should be able to climb higher up the ladder with these decks, but they’ll be more costly than the Classic decks. Let’s go through them quickly.
Druid: The Ancient Gods
This deck is similar to the Classic recipe in that you want to use Innervate and Wild Growth to ramp into powerful creatures. However, instead of ramping into things like Chillwind Yeti and Ragnaros, we’re going to ramp into Dark Arakkoa, Doomacller, and C’Thun. A decent number of the Old Gods recipes will use C’Thun and Twin Emperor Vek’lor as a means to end the game in the late stages.
Hunter: Whispers of Death
Hunter’s trademark mid-range game-play is capitalized in this deck by N’Zoth, the Corruptor. Cards like Savannah Highmane, Infested Wolf, and Huge Toad become even more deadly when they return to play. A combination of traps, weapons, and Kill Command should let you control the board long enough to get to N’Zoth. This is a pricey deck to build as it asks for Princess Huhuran, Sylvanas, and N’Zoth. If you like the mid-range style, start saving for N’Zoth.
Mage: Madness and Magic
Obviously the Mage deck is built around Yogg-Saron, Hope’s End and also features Archmage Antonidas. This deck actually plays out a lot like the Classic Mage recipe, but with a bunch of cards from Whispers of the Old Gods like Forbidden Flame, Servant of Yogg-Saron, and of course Yogg himself. If you really want the full Old Gods experience, Yogg-Saron is the way to go. Just ask the pros.
Paladin: Shield’s Up!
This deck is annoying to play against so if you like to be annoying, build this deck! Steward of Darkshire really shines in this Divine Shield build which will frustrate opponents with cards like Equality and Seal of Champions. This deck uses Tirion and Fjola as Legendary minions, so it shouldn’t be too pricey to put together if you already have the Paladin Classic deck available.
Priest: C’Thun’s Clutch
This is another C’Thun deck (obviously) and my favorite Old Gods recipe. Priest has a lot of C’Thun synergy, which makes sense flavor-wise as the holy Anduin becomes corrupted by the effects of C’Thun’s presence. Hooded Acolyte and Twilight Darkmender will do a lot of work to both get you to C’Thun and also make him finish the game when he hits the battlefield.
Rogue: Echoes of Death
Rogue gets to play a N’Zoth deck similar to Hunter. Instead of Princess Huhuran we get Xaril, Poisoned Mind. Tomb Pillager and Undercity Huckster also play nicely with N’Zoth but Unearthed Raptor is and Twilight Summoner will give your opponent fits. This is another mid-range style of deck, so if you have N’Zoth you can put together Hunter and Rogue.
Shaman: Minion Evolution
Now for something completely different! Master of Evolution and Evolve lead to a crazy style of deck where you build as big an army as you can and then upgrade all of your creatures into (hopefully) stronger ones! This deck is full of low-cost minions and makes great use of the Shaman hero power. Nothing in the deck costs more than six mana, so feel free to overload to your hear’s content. Lightning Storm and Elemental Destruction will keep you in the game long enough to evolve for the win.
Warlock: Ancient Hordes
This is a variation of the normal Warlock Zoo decks that rely on Forbidden Ritual’s synergy with Knife Juggler and Darkshire Councilman. There’s nothing else terribly complicated about this deck. It’s competitive enough to get you into the middle rungs of the Standard ladder just on the strength of explosive synergies in the early game.
Warrior: Serve the Old Gods
Our final recipe is also the third and final C’Thun recipe. This deck is 100% Warrior Control with Armorsmiths, Ravaging Ghouls, Ancient Shieldbearers and Doomcaller getting you all the help you need to win with C’Thun. And of course, don’t forget your trusty Fiery War Axe! This deck is very popular if you can’t build Dragon Warrior and should also get you to the middle rungs of the ladder once you master the control strategy.
If you’ve played One Night in Karazhan then you should also look to upgrade these recipes to include those cards! That’s the beauty of these decks. Once you’ve identified the backbone of the strategy you can build it to your liking.
Rich has been playing Hearthstone on and off since the closed beta and has a golden E.T.C. to prove it. He enjoys playing Zoolock on the ladder and wishes he could figure out how to get more than five wins in the Arena. He’s really looking forward to playing Silence-Aggro Priest once Karazhan is live.