This document provides an overview of the key elements in Hearthstone, an online collectible card game. It discusses the top-level components like heroes, cards, decks, mana and hero powers. Cards can summon minions to the board or be weapons that a hero can equip. Minions have attack power and health and can engage in combat. The goal is to reduce the opponent's hero health to zero while defending your own hero.
#2: Hi, everyone! Thank you very much for coming! Im Victor, and today Ill be teaching you the basics of Hearthstone!
#3: This is what the game board looks like. Ill be spending the rest of the time explaining what everything here is.
#4: At the highest level, the game board is split between two players. Everything on the top half belongs to one player, and everything on bottom half belongs to the other player. When you play, youre always the bottom player.
#6: The hero is you, so when the hero dies, you lose the game. The heros health points are displayed on the bottom right, in front of an icon that looks like a blood drop. When that number gets to zero, the hero dies.
#7: Like in other card games, player hold some cards in their hands, and they take turns playing their cards.
#8: Each card does something immediately after it is played. Spell cards, like the one here, say what theyre going to do. Read the text, play the card, get the effect. Simple as that.
#9: I directed the fireball to damage the enemy hero. You can see that she took 6 damage. The health points went down from 30 to 24.
#10: If you look in my hand, the fireball disappeared after it did it job. In Hearthstone, cards are spent when you play them. So the basic idea is you play a card, it does what it says it does, and then it disappears.
#11: One thing that sets Hearthstone apart from other games that you might have played is that players draw cards from separate decks. When you play Hearthstone, you have to assemble your own deck, out of 30 cards. Blizzard makes money by selling you cards that you can use to build decks.
Today, Pros will put together the decks that the Noobs will use. So, if youre signed up to be a Noob, dont worry, weve got you covered!
#12: Mana acts like the games currency. Each turn, you get some mana, and you can spend the mana to play cards. You can see each cards mana cost in the blue bubble in the top-left corner.
#13: More expensive cards are generally more powerful. Heres an apples-to-apples comparison -- these two cards do exactly the same thing, but the 2-mana version does a lot less than the 7-mana version.
#14: Like corporate budgets, mana that you dont spend over a turn is lost. Hearthstones company is doing well, so your budget grows by 1 mana each turn. That means on turn 1, you have 1 mana to spend. On turn 2, you have 2 mana. On turn 3, you get 3 mana. So on, so forth.
#15: If you get to play second in Hearthstone, you receive a Coin. When you play it, it gives you one mana. If you look to the bottom right, the coin went away, and we got 3 mana after playing it. We had 2 mana before.
#16: Each hero comes with a special power, called the hero power.
#17: The hero power is like a free card. You dont have to put in your deck. Its always there for you, if you want to play it. Each turn, you can use your hero power once.
#18: In Hearthstone, you summon an army of minions, and have the minions fight for you.
#19: You generally summon a minion by playing a minion card.
#20: Each minion has 2 important numbers, that we call stats. The left number is the attack power, and the right number if health points. If you get confused, remember that the health points are shown in a red blood drop, just like on the heroes.
#21: Minions can attack once each turn. You can attack another minion, or the enemy hero. This gives them the potential to be really impactful. For example, a 2-damage minion that lives for 10 turns can potentially deal 20 damage. There is no card that can deal 20 damage!
#23: So, the most important thing that a minion does is attacking. Lets see how this works. When a minion attacks another minion, they both damage each other. Each minions attack damage is subtracted from the other minions health points.
The tricky bit here is that the numbers dont line up for subtraction. Instead, you have to visualize the red X Ive drawn above. In this case, both minions start out with 3 health, and receive 2 damage. After the attack, both minions have one health left.
#24: This example is a bit more interesting. The guy on the bottom only has an attack power of 2, so it looks weaker than the minion on the top that well attack. In fact, the top minion only has 2 health points, so it will get killed by this attack. The bottom minion does take more damage, but it has a lot of health, so it will survive.
#25: Last thing, heroes cannot defend themselves when they are attacked. When a minion attacks the enemy hero, the minion receives no damage!
#26: Some minions have special effects that we call auras. When you hover your mouse over a minion, you get to see its card. If the minion has an aura, it will be described on the card.
In this example, the lady makes all her owners spells cheaper. So, if youre thinking which enemy minion you should kill, you should probably prioritize her.
There are a lot of auras in Hearthstone. We dont have time to cover them. So, when you see a minion that you dont recognize on the board, hover over it, and read the aura. In your first hundred hours of Hearthstone, you can expect to see new cards. So, always be ready to read and adapt.
#27: Last, some minions also have special mechanics. There are quite a few mechanics, so we cant go over them in this tutorial. But, if you hover over a minions card, and it has a mechanic on it, the mechanic is described in a box next to the card.
For example, this guy on my side has something that we call taunt. You can see that on its card text. To the right of the card, theres an instruction box that says Taunt means enemies must attack this minion. In other words, while I have this guy on the board, the enemy minions have to attack it. They cant attack other minions I have, and they cant attack my hero.
Again, there are a lot of mechanics in Hearthstone. Be prepared to read, learn, adapt!
#28: The last thing in this tutorial is weapons. Hearthstone has weapon cards, like this one.
#29: When you play a weapon card, your hero gets a weapon. We say that you equip that weapon.
#30: Each weapon has two important stats. The weapons attack power is on the left. If you look closely at our hero, youll notice that it now has an attack power that matches the weapon. So, it totally looks like a minion now!
The stat on the right is the weapons durability. Each time you attack with the weapon, you lose one durability. When the durability gets to zero, you lose the weapon.
#31: When you have a weapon, your hero behaves exactly like a minion. You can attack an enemy, once a turn. The standard minion combat rules apply.
For example, when we attack this guy above, we deal 3 damage, so we kill it. It does 2 damage to us, so our life total gets from 30 to 28. And, since we attacked, our weapon loses 1 durability.
#32: In closing, here is a hint. If you ever get confused about what just happened, look at the games history! The bar on the left shows the most recent moves, and you can hover over them.
#33: For example, when we hover over this attack move, it shows us that our minion attacked an enemy minion. We killed it, and it dealt 3 damage to us.
#34: Thank you for paying attention to all of this! Do you have any questions I can answer now?