Hearthstone Common Deck Types

Hearthstone Common Deck Types by Hellaman

A lot of people don’t seem to know the concrete difference between all the types of decks and how to play them. So here is a small and quick guide to all the different types.

First off, the types i will be discussing are: Aggro, Tempo, Combo, Midrange, ramp and Control. These are the major decktypes. There are more (sub)types. But these are the most common and almost every deck can be put in one of these categories.

First off, One of the more common deck types The control deck.

In this deck the goal is the get the most value out of every card and win by establishing and keeping board control in the late game. Getting board control can take quite a while with these kind of decks because most of the time you don’t try to gain board control, but instead try to deny your opponent board control. A lot of times you heal yourself in the process. because they want the most value out of every card these decks are the slowest of all the decks. A lot of control decks also feature quite a few legendaries and are generally the most expensive. Notable examples of control decks are Control warrior, Control paladin and Control priest.

The second deck type is a variant on the control deck, The ramp deck

These decks are lot like control deck but with a key difference, they have ways to get really big minions on the board earlier than normal control decks. The key to these decks is to use these minions to overwhelm your opponent and protect your face because the minions have taunt or by taunting up the minions. These decks are control decks because just like control decks they need to board control to win. Notable examples are handlock and ramp druid. Handlocks use their hero power to lose health and gain cards. with these cards they can get cheap 8/8 minions and good twilight drakes. Ramp druids use wild growths and innervates to gain more mana crystals as his opponent and pushing out big minions early on.

The third type of deck is the the midrange deck.

These decks are a lot like control decks but they lack the late-game. Instead of having big late game minions to finish off your opponent, most of the decks have bursts. Most minions of these decks are less than 6 mana. The deck is designed to gain as much value in the mid-game as possible. After that, a lot of the midrange decks rely on 2-card combo’s or other bursts. Notable examples are Midrange Druid and Midrange Shaman. The Druid deck relies on the damage burst of savage roar, often together with force of nature for a guarenteed 14 damage burst. The Shaman relies on doomhammer with rockbiter or al’akir with rockbiter for 10 or 12 guarenteed damage. Needless to say, these decks have a good early- and mid-game and can finish of an opponent without bursts too.

The fourth deck to discuss is The combo deck.

These decks are generally hard to play and not recommended for the beginner. Combo decks rely on specific combos to win the game. These decks often have a lot of card draw to gain the specific cards as soon as possible. Notable examples are Freeze mage, Miracle rogue and Math warrior. The Freeze mage’s goal is to survive until the late-game. he does this by, well you know, freezing. All while drawing cards to get alexstrasza and archmage antonidas so he can get a lot of fireballs to kill his opponent who only has 15 health left. Math warrior uses cards that benefit from getting damage together with cards that do damage against everything to create combo’s. Like the warsong commander gives charge to a frothing berserker, who get 1 attack everytime a minion gets damaged. And you do damage a lot of minions a lot of times to give your frothing berserker an insane amount of attack and finish your opponent. Miracle rogue relies on comboing Gadgetzan Auctioneer with cheap mana-effecient spells. That way the rogue can get a lot of value and tempo, thus gaining board control and winning.

Finally, there are 2 quicker decks, the first one is The tempo deck.

The tempo deck’s goal is to flood the board with cheap minions and gain board control early on. A common misconception is that tempo decks are aggressive, but that is not the case. Tempo decks use their early board control to gain favorable trades and ‘snowball’ out of control. He does this because all the early minions force your opponent to react, often with things you can easily get rid of while keeping your board control. This way your board control can grow and you can finally go for your opponents face and kill him. Notable examples are Zoolock, hunter andDeathrattle priest. Decks that use Undertaker are often tempo decks.

The final deck to discuss is The aggro deck.

these decks are arguably the simplest decks out there. The goal of this deck is to do as much damage to the face of your opponent as possible. Not really caring about what your opponent does. Notable examples are Shockadin, Aggro warrior and facehunter.

Final thoughts:

I personally think that the basic decks are control decks, but some argue that they are midrange. I guess it depends on how you play it :). People please remember that this is a guide for deck types, not decklists. The decklists are there to give an idea of what i’m talking about. There are many more decks that are not listed and that is fine. Finally it is worth noting that some decks are a mixture of deck types. Crusher shaman for example is a control deck/combo deck hybrid, and thefishou mage is a tempo/aggro hybrid (if I’m correct, I’m not that familier with the decks).

I think that about covers everything. There are more subdecks and varients of every deck but that would be too much to cover here. especially control has a lot of subdecks. Like taunt decks, heal decks, mill decks and others.