Blizzard’s main announcement at Blizzcon for constructed Hearthstone players was Catch-Up Packs. These new packs can include as many as 50 cards each! That’s a lot of cards for a single pack. However, the mechanics behind catch-up packs are complex, and not all players will benefit from them equally. For an active player, a single Catch-Up Pack often includes only 5 cards, and none of them can be Golden, either.
In this article, I will take a look at everything you need to know about Catch-Up Packs and whether they are something you should get or not.
How Valuable Is a Catch-Up Pack?
The first thing to note is that the number of cards in a Catch-Up pack will change depending on how much of each expansion you have collected. This follows the usual duplicate protection rules, so if you have owned cards from the expansion and disenchanted them, they will still count as owned when determining your collection size for Catch-Up Packs.
Showdown in the Badlands Catch-Up Packs include cards from the previous five expansions: Voyage to the Sunken City, Murder at Castle Nathria, March of the Lich King, Festival of Legends, and TITANS. Note that there are no Badlands cards in them, those are only in the new packs! For each expansion, you will get cards depending on how much of the expansion you have collected. If you have less than 25% of the expansion, you will get 10 cards. If you have 75% of the expansion or more, you will get 1 card. Between those two, the number of cards you get will change linearly.
How much is 75% of an expansion? Let’s take TITANS as an example. There are 183 cards in TITANS: 69 Commons, 55 Rares, 28 Epics, and 31 Legendary cards. The 75% figure includes all playable copies, so the expansion has 138 Commons, 110 Rares, 56 Epics, and 31 Legendary cards. That’s 335 cards, so 75% of that is 252 cards. 248 of the cards are Commons and Rares. So, 75% of an expansion is all Commons and Rares, and not much else. 75% of an expansion is actually only around 25% of its dust value. If you have been active in the game, you will have 75% of expansions, even if you only own a couple of Legendary cards from each.
Because Catch-Up Packs do not include any Golden cards, the expected dust value of a Catch-Up Pack is only 85.59 Dust as compared to 115.69 Dust for a regular pack, if you own 75% of each expansion the Pack includes. Roughly, four Catch-Up Packs equals three regular packs.
The best-case scenario is wildly different. Then, Catch-Up Packs have 50 cards each, and even though there are no Golden cards, a full Catch-Up Pack is still worth 855.9 Dust – more than seven regular packs!
Between those two extremes, the value of Catch-Up Packs goes down linearly, with each added percent of collection reducing the dust value by 15.4 dust. A Catch-Up Pack is equal value to a regular pack when you own 73% of each expansion, so 245 cards.
How Many Catch-Up Packs Do I Need to Come Back to Hearthstone?
What does it mean to come back to Hearthstone? The way Catch-Up Packs have been designed, you can get quite a lot of Common and Rare cards from them fairly easily. You will get only a few Epic or Legendary cards. Will you play budget decks without the most powerful win conditions? Or how much are you willing to invest on top of the Catch-Up Packs?
At Blizzcon, Blizzard showcased the opening of 20 Catch-Up Packs, from which they received 798 cards. That’s 160 cards per expansion. For a new or returning player, that will still leave them missing 20 Commons and 78 Rares per expansion. Add another 5 Catch-Up Packs, and you will have full playsets of all the Common cards. You will also have under 10 Epic cards and around 2-3 Legendary cards from each expansion.
What does it take to build a Hearthstone meta deck? Let’s take a look at some of the most commonly played decks right now:
- Aggro Paladin: 3 Legendary cards, 2 Epic cards, 9 Rare cards, 8 Common cards (not including Core or free)
- Rainbow Mage: 4 Legendary cards, 7 Epic cards, 10 Rare cards, 8 Common cards
- Undead Priest: 3 Legendary cards, 2 Epic cards, 6 Rare cards, 10 Common cards
- Big Rogue: 5 Legendary cards, 2 Epic cards, 6 Rare cards, 12 Common cards
- Enrage Warrior: 3 Legendary cards, 4 Epic cards, 6 Rare cards, 14 Common cards
After opening 25 Catch-Up Packs, you will need another 2000 to 8500 dust to build any of these decks, depending on how lucky you get with your pulls. Yes, theoretically you could pull all the cards for one of these decks from those packs, but realistically you will get 0-2 Legendary cards for any of them, with an average closer to 0 than 1.
And that’s what you should aim at when starting your journey with Hearthstone or coming back after a long break (so if you have zero cards from the included expansions) – 25 catch-up packs. If you already own some cards from those expansions, you want to open less than that, depending on your collection. If you already have a 75% completed collection from those expansions, you most likely shouldn’t buy any catch-up packs, just open the ones you got for free.
Are Catch-Up Packs Any Good for Active Players?
Catch-Up Packs have one thing going for them for active players: guaranteed Legendary cards. Much like the guaranteed Legendary cards within the first 10 packs of a new expansion, Catch-Up Packs will give you a guaranteed Legendary within the first 50 cards you open from them for each expansion. So, if you get 50 Catch-Up Packs, you will get at least 5 Legendary cards!
Taking this guaranteed Legendary promise into account, the expected dust value of Catch-Up Packs increases until you have received the guaranteed Legendary cards. But by how much? We do not know the exact formula Blizzard uses to give the guaranteed Legendary cards at the start. If those are the only Legendary cards you get from your first 50 packs, their average dust value is 100.78, still below regular packs. You’d need 7 Legendary cards from 50 Catch-Up Packs for them to match 50 regular packs on average. If the guaranteed Legendary cards appear early enough, Catch-Up Packs may just be worth it for active players up to that point.
As it happens, the pre-order bundles include some Catch-Up Packs and there will be more available from a login reward and an event, so you will get to try them out and see if you can manage to pull some of those early Legendary cards.
How Can I Get Catch-Up Packs?
Blizzard has stated that there will be bundles where Catch-Up Packs are offered. While we do not know their prices yet, the information in this article can be used to compare them to other bundles that are offered in the store.
The confirmed sources of Catch-Up Packs:
- 20 in the Badlands Mega bundle
- 10 in the Badlands regular bundle
- 2 as a login reward after Badlands releases.
- 5 from an in-game event from November 20 to December 5
- 3 from the Blizzcon Collection, if you bought that
- 5 for new players and 3 for returning players (live now with patch 28.0)
- Upcoming bundle offers, including some for gold!
So, everyone will get seven Catch-Up Packs for free if they complete the upcoming in-game event, and you can buy more for in-game gold if the price is right.
Catch-Up Packs In Brief
To sum up all of the above, here are the key details about Catch-Up Packs:
- You should open any Catch-Up Packs you get as soon as possible (they include cards from specific expansions and become worse as you get more cards)
- No Golden cards
- One Catch-Up Pack is worth more than seven regular packs for a new or returning player (7.4x value)
- Four Catch-Up Packs are worth three regular packs for an active player (0.74x value)
- You will most likely not be able to build meta decks from Catch-Up Packs alone
can the catch-up pack be bought with gold?
Great analysis! As usual this is a great improvement, but far late. xD
“As usual this is a great improvement, but far late.”
History of Hearthstone in a single sentence :p