Artifact Constructed Tips From Best Players

by Snowhoneyash

This guide is mainly focused on constructed but many points are applicable to draft too.

General Tips

• Identify what is your opponent’s win condition and whether you have a favourable matchup. Know the different deck archetypes and device your best plan to disrupt their win condition. RG Ramp? Do your utmost best to stop them ramping as early as possible.Mono Blue? Deal as much damage to their towers as possible before they reach mana 6 and take over with their powerful removal. Once they reach mana 6 try your best to kill all their heroes in one turn so that they can’t respawn the next turn.
• Always have a plan for every single card in your hand, do not be lazy and only think about what to do when it comes to your turn.
• Initiative is of utmost importance in Artifact as it allows you to use your removal before your opponent does, but you do not need it all the time. Plan your turn ahead and if you have to play a card such as annihilation, bolt of damocles, berserker call, you must keep initiative.
• Which is also the reason why initiative stealing cards are so good, make sure you don’t waste those initiative cards! I find having 3 initiative cards in a deck strikes a nice balance. It may be even useful to purposely keep at least 1 hero in every lane even if the lane is won to ensure that you can steal initiative before the next lane.
• If you have a card such as Red Mist Pillager, Thunderhide Alpha or even Demagicking Maul, only play it when your opponent has used up his mana.
• Baiting your opponent is a high level tactic that CAN work, such as if your opponent plays agahnim sceptum and you wait till he finished his first round of mana before you smash the defense.
• Learn how to do mental calculations accurately and quickly. Unfortunately Artifact has a lot of maths involved when calculating if you are able to do lethal damage to the tower.
• Do NOT let the timer reach less than 1 min, you WILL make a lot of mistakes when pressured for time. Hearing the Red Lady counting down to your inevitable defeat will more than double your blood pressure.

Mono Blue Specific Tips

• Save annihilation to get more value late game if you won’t lose by not using it.
• Against Mono Blue, you never want to put more than 2 heroes in any lane as long as there is the risk of annihilation and you do not have initiative. Try to mirror the deployment of Mono Blue (e.g. if they have 2 heroes in 1 lane, put 2 heroes of yours in that lane too so it would be costly for them to annihilate)
• Try to kill all their heroes in one turn so that they have 0 or only 1 hero left the next turn, do NOT use your removal on them early, it serves absolutely no purpose (Luna is an exception depending on your win condition).

Please share any more tips which you have and I will add it to this post, Artifact has amazing gameplay and the community is just absolutely awesome. If you feel that there is nothing to grind for, join one of the tournaments and you will get to know other like-minded people who still love Artifact.