The Beginning
I don’t even remember where I first heard about Hearthstone from. It was almost two years ago, right after it went into open Beta. I made a Battle.net account for it, played a couple of games and quickly got bored. You see, I had never played Magic: the Gathering, Warcraft or World of Warcraft, and I still haven’t to this day. Hearthstone was a blend of games and concepts that were totally foreign to me, so I kinda dropped it.
In autumn of 2014 I picked it up again as I noticed the game was out of Beta, and this time I got hooked for a couple of months. I climbed with each hero to level 10, played a ton against the computer and grinded the quests. I learned the mechanics, the basic concepts, aaand I got bored of the game once more.
This brings us to spring of last year. A good friend of mine started playing, and I noticed that Hearthstone was now available for Android phones (just tablets at the time, hooray for .apk files!), which was a game changer for me. I’d been looking for a truly cross-platform game for months, and this was finally it. So that’s when I started playing Hearthstone seriously… kind of.
The Casual Days
So from March-April until December I played a lot of Hearthstone. Two friends of mine and I would bury our faces in our phones and just try out decks, try funky combos and just generally suck at the game. Even though I spent a lot of time actually playing, it was kind of like you listen to music: you’re doing it, but you’re not quite focused on it.
I played a lot of Mage, after getting introduced to Flamestrike and thinking it was the best card in the game. It can basically clean off a board full of minions, woah! Looking back on it, that was the only reason I chose mage, and I made a point of only playing it for months on end. As soon as better cards dropped, I swapped them with something in the existing deck. It would become something totally unrecognizable, and totally lacking a general purpose:
During this whole time, my highest achievement in Ranked was level 18, which I’d reached maybe two or three times, for just a couple of matches. Most of the times, I was lucky that you couldn’t fall further than level 20 once you’d reached it. So I went to the Hearthpwn forums and asked for help. The community was incredible, recommended a few decks, a few dos and dont’s, and some resources to help me learn how to play better – Trump was extremely helpful here.
So I decided to stop playing like this was Angry Birds: either stop playing altogether, or get better at it. I set out to reach Legend in one year – no cheat decks (like the secret Paladin is now), no boosting, just improving my skills to the point where I can reach Legend month after month.
The Legendary Chicken
Seeing that my last couple of adventures with Hearthstone ended with my dropping it, I wanted something to keep my motivation going. I was thinking of starting a “fun facts” type site, had it all set up, when I figured I might as well document my progress and what I learn along the way. Thus, the Legendary Chicken was born.
The site was initially only supposed to be about my progress and what I do, but quickly other people joined in and I started getting some feedback from them as well. We’ve grown to a… tiny community, and I’m motivated to learn new cool stuff that I can post there. I learned a ton of decks from Hearthstone Players, and I credit them for helping me recognize the type of deck my opponent is running, and how I can adapt to it. Well, at least try to.
So far, it’s going well. I’m running a different deck each month and January was dedicated to the Egg Druid, which got me all the way to level 9… so far! If it sounds interesting, I highly recommend it:
Basically, this deck relies on a ton of small sticky minions like Dragon Egg, Nerubian Egg (hence the egg part), Echoing Ooze or Haunted Creeper, and buffs them with Power of the Wild, Mark of the Wild or Savage Roar. It creates a burst of damage which kills your opponent at around turn 6 or 7, but if you don’t do it by then… you’re pretty much in trouble.
The Road Ahead
Since I started my official path to improvement around a month ago I feel like I’ve made a ton of progress. And I discovered that the Hearthstone community is above awesome, it’s filled with some of the friendliest, coolest people I’ve met online. All you need to do is reach out to them.
You can find me around here, since I have a feeling it’s not my last foray into Hearthstone Players, or on Legendary Chicken, where we all aim to improve. 🙂
