How-to Best Expand Your Hearthstone Card Collection

If you are one of the many that are looking to expand their Hearthstone collection as quickly as possible, keep reading!

Introduction

As a collectible card game (or CCG), one of the biggest challenges players face is expanding their collection. Expanding your collection can be a daunting task with the hundreds of cards available, and you obviously need them for creating and playing any deck. I’m here to try and give new, free-to-play, and experienced players alike a more methodical approach to speed up the collecting process.

First off, for those of you that are new to the game, Standard is the most popular format for Hearthstone. It includes the last two years of content as well as the Classic and Basic sets. With Journey to Un’Goro we have kicked off the “Year of the Mammoth,” our current Standard rotation. This leaves us with five sets in total currently and one adventure.

• Basic
• Classic
• Whispers of the Old Gods (2016, Expansion)
• One Night in Karazhan (2016, Adventure)
• Mean Streets of Gadgetzan (2016, Expansion)
• Journey to Un’Goro (2017, Expansion)

We are expecting two more expansions later for the 2017 year, because Blizzard announced that they will no longer be releasing adventures which required a purchase. Next year, whatever the year is called, we will see the 2016 sets rotating into the Wild Format, where any cards are allowed from current and old sets.

The next thing to familiarize yourself with is the “pity timer.” The pity timer increases your odds of opening a legendary in a pack with each pack you open that does not contain one, eventually guaranteeing you a legendary within 40 packs. The pity timer is separate for each type of pack. We will take advantage of this to maximize the output from our packs to the best of our ability.

Methodology

Build a Classic Foundation

Now that we are familiar with the Standard format and the pity timer, we can get into the methodology for expanding your collection. For those who are new and currently trying to build a base for their collection, you will want to open Classic packs. This is simply because Classic cards will never go out of rotation unless Blizzard decides to send more cards to the Hall of Fame. For as long as you are playing Hearthstone, you can continue to play these cards! The Classic set legendary cards are very popular for the most part and many of them have seen play ever since their release such as Bloodmage Thalnos and Leeroy Jenkins. You can stop going for Classic cards once you have a good basis for a deck or two that you enjoy playing, such as Freeze Mage, Miracle Rogue, Zoo Warlock, Midrange/Face Hunter, etc.

You have probably received this advice on forums or other articles, but it is an important foundation to build and I felt it couldn’t go unmentioned. From here we can begin building your collection more quickly, which I think everyone can benefit from unless you spend hundreds of dollars (or whichever currency you use) on packs every expansion.

Reset your Pity Timers

With a basis built with your Classic cards, go ahead and keep opening Classic packs until you open a legendary, indicating you have reset your pity timer and that it has the lowest possible odds of you obtaining a legendary. Now you can move onto the next set and continue opening them until you are content with your collection from that set, then until you open a legendary (again, resetting your pity timer). I recommend opening the most recent set first and working your way backwards (i.e. Un’Goro, then Mean Streets, then Whispers).

This process takes advantage of your percent chance to open legendaries in your packs, eventually giving all packs the same odds of obtaining a legendary. With the same odds for each set to grant a legendary, it pretty well becomes your preference as to which packs you continue buying with your gold; but keep in mind, Journey to Un’Goro is a 2017 set and still has two years ahead of it, so this should have priority over 2016 sets.

Determining the Right Pack to Buy

By this point, you have probably spent a lot of time in Hearthstone collecting cards and opening packs. You may not be 100% sure which packs you want to open because they all have cards you want! For the rest of your days in Hearthstone, follow these steps to determining which packs are the most valuable.

1. Create a list of the cards you want from each set.
2. Note their rarity.
3. Count the number of cards of each rarity per set.
4. Calculate the value of that set.

Alternatively, you can use this Google Sheet to create your list and count your cards in the table provided, or just check it out as an example. Remember, common cards cost 40 dust to craft, rares 100, epics 400, and legendaries 1600. We look at the value of a pack in terms of how much dust it could potentially save us instead of crafting (hence the values of each rarity provided previously).

Personalizing Your Collection

The longer you play Hearthstone and the bigger your collection gets, you may find that there are cards that you just don’t use or others that you are sure you want. Moving forward, you will find what deck archetypes and classes you enjoy playing most. You should take a look at which cards are common within those archetypes, such as Leeroy Jenkins in aggro decks or Bloodmage Thalnos in more control oriented decks, and consider crafting them to make sure your collection actually allows for you to play the decks you want! Here are some good questions to ask yourself before you drop the dust.

• “Is my deck unplayable without this card?”
• “How many decks can/will I play with this card?”
• “How long do I have until this cards rotates out of Standard?”
• “How much do I think I will play this deck/card?”
• “Does this card make a significant difference to my deck’s performance?”

You should consider giving priority to cards that make appearances in multiple decks and from the Classic set. You can also check out our crafting guide for insight on the most popular legendaries, but this information also extends to cards of all rarities. Some notable cards to consider outside of legendaries might include Questing Adventurer, Doomsayer, Murloc Warleader, or Knife Juggler, to name a few!

Moving into the Next Expansion

Blizzard has announced that with the next expansion, players will no longer receive duplicate legendaries in packs. When that time comes, it is worth noting that you may want to hold onto any legendaries you open, regardless of whether they are of interested to you or not. This will stop your packs from containing those legendaries, furthermore increasing your odds of getting the cards you want from a pack. For more information on this, check out our coverage of the upcoming changes.