I had just enough time to play one match in Hearthstone. I have a habit of playing video games really late at night/crazy early in the morning. My concern was I would start playing and fall asleep at the computer.
What I decided to do was go into Practice Mode and see if I could unlock another deck. That way, if I fell asleep, I wouldn’t be making another player frustrated as he or she waited for me to take my turn. Here is how I unlocked the Hunter Deck and the Warrior Deck.
The Hunter Deck is personified by Rexxar. I decided to use the Mage Deck, which is personified by Jaina Proudmore. The Mage Deck is the default deck that you automatically start with when you first play Hearthstone. Therefore, it is the deck I am most familiar with. It also has the highest level out of all the decks I’ve managed to unlock.
Jaina vs. Rexxar!
I was playing in Practice Mode, so my opponent was “The Innkeeper”. It would also be possible to unlock the Hunter Deck in Play Mode if I wanted to wait around until I got randomly matched with a player who was using it. With limited time to play, the Practice Mode seemed like the most efficient way to go.
In the Hearthstone tutorial, players have to defeat several different non-player characters (NPCs). Each NPC is using a different type of deck. The purpose is to give the new player time to learn the Mage Deck and to get a taste of what it is like to fight against other types of decks.
One of the NPCs is Hemet Nesingwary. He uses the Hunter Deck. In the tutorial, the game suggests that you focus on attacking his minions. The Hunter Deck includes lots of minions. If you ignore the minions, you can find yourself overpowered by them very quickly. (I learned that the hard way, and lost, more than once, to Hemet Nesingwary before defeating him in the tutorial).
The best advice I can give you about how to unlock the Hunter Deck (which is personified by Rexxar) is to focus on taking out the minions. Don’t let the AI/Player who is using the Hunter Deck get a bunch of them on the board, or you will lose. Keep knocking them down and taking them out as much as you can. That is what worked for me. I defeated Rexxar in one try.
VICTORY!
I have now, officially, unlocked the Hunter Deck.
That leaves just one more deck to unlock.
It took a break from Hearthstone for a while. Then, the new Naxxramus stuff got my attention and made me want to log in once again.
This was when I noticed that I had one more deck left to unlock. It took me more than five attempts to beat (and unlock) the Warrior deck in practice mode (playing against the A.I. instead of a human player). My goal was to keep trying until I won. These screenshots were taken on July 23, 2014.
I picked Practice Mode and “Normal” this time. It seemed like a good idea to unlock the Warrior deck, the last deck I needed to unlock, before jumping into the new content. I selected my Mage deck, personified by Jaina Proudmoore because it was the one I have played the most, knew the best, and had the most experience with.
I think I was defeated at least five times while trying to unlock the Warrior deck. It wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped it would be. Instead of giving up, I decided to just keep trying until I won. Part of Hearthstone truly is “the luck of the draw”. Eventually, I’d end up with a better hand than the A.I.
The Warrior deck is personified by Garrosh. The best advice I can give you about how to defeat this deck (other than to just keep trying) is to hit him directly, as many times as you can, before he gets a bunch of minions on the board.
He has some cards in his deck that automatically add a second minion once they are played. I also noticed some cards that had Taunt on them (which means you have to hit them first – instead of other minions or Garrosh himself).
Rather than post an entire play-by-play of the match, I will focus on a couple of things I did that seemed to be very effective.
Garrosh had killed off all of my minions, and loaded up the board with minions of his own. I got really lucky with the next card I drew. It was Arcane Explosion – Deal 1 damage to all enemy minions. Of course, I used it right away!
BOOM!
I continued to split my focus between taking out his minions and hitting him directly every time I could. The Warrior deck can use its Armor Up ability to give Garrosh more health points. I learned it is a good idea to pay attention to that and try and chip away at it as much as possible.
Here is what the board looked like shortly before the end of this match. Garrosh put a bunch of minions on the board, some of which could spawn other minions. I only had two minions on the board. None of his minions had Taunt, and that meant I could use my minions to hit Garrosh directly.
VICTORY!
I earned the Ready To Go! Achievement – Unlock every Hero.
Warrior deck unlocked!
In this last screenshot, you can see that I have unlocked all 9 decks. All the spots are filled in and I can use any deck I want to. At the bottom, there is another message:
The Innkeeper: You’ve unlocked expert level opponents, but they won’t go easy on you!