General StrategyThere are 3 important parts to being successful in Arena.

1. General Game and Match-up Knowledge2. How to draft a deck in Arena3. How to play the deck in Arena

General Knowledge and Class Outlines are listed in General Knowledge.

How to Draft a Deck in Arena

So how do you know what cards are good and which cards to avoid? This is a topic that isn't so blackand white, but while there is a general consensus, the idea is that instead of just giving you a full listranking every card in the game (which is also opinion based), it's better to give you the tools to makethe decisions yourself so you can come up with your own judgements because often times there arevery difficult choices and a tier list doesn't take into effect what other cards you have in your deck.

What's important to remember is that some cards by themselves are pretty worthless or too situationalto be good unless you have a card that works well with it, making that card's value increase drastically.

Picks 1-10: First 10 Cards

When you start a brand new arena draft, the most important thing to remember is that you should bepicking cards that are either powerful spells for the class, spells that can clear the board or very goodminions, prioritizing higher cost minions over lower ones unless the lower cost ones have an effect. Forexample if you had this for your first choice:

1. Knife Juggler2. Azure Drake3. Sunwalker

This is a pretty difficult choice as all cards are pretty amazing regardless of what class you are. Theclass you picked should sway your decision here as to what the better choice is, but in general, you goby the best value card. How do you figure this out when all the cards are so good?

There are a few philosophies to go by to measure this:

Do you gain a card advantage when playing this card?

What this means is when you play the card, how many cards on average does the enemy need to use toget rid of it? Well between your choices: Knife Juggler: 2 health, usually 1 card. Azure Drake: 4 health,usually 1 big card, spell or 2 small cards. Sunwalker: 5 health and divine shield, usually 1-2 big cards or

3 small cards. How do we define a big card and a small card?

Easiest way is to make 2-3 attack for the average small minion (1-3 for a spell) and 4 attack for theaverage big minion (4-6 for a spell). This means means minions with more than 4 attack cost a lotmore or have some downside to them while minions with more than 4 health are very valuable and alsocost more than average.

Back to the main point, Sunwalker looks like the biggest value, however now we need to add the factthat Azure Drake also gives you 1 card making it pretty much on par with Sunwalker in terms of value.How then do you pick between the 2? This leads to our next philosophy:

In a Top Deck War situation, which card would you prefer to draw?

"Top Deck War" means when both players are out of cards and are literally forced to play whateverthey draw onto a basically empty board, both players hoping to get an edge on the other.

Between the 3 cards, you would easily eliminate Knife Juggler from the equation again. Azure Drakeand Sunwalker are both beefy cards that you should be happy to get in this situation. That means bothcards have similarly equal value in this circumstance as well, but the edge might have to go to theAzure Drake in most situations since getting 1 extra card can make the difference in snowballing aheador falling behind just enough to not be able to recover before dying. It's mostly down to preference, butthis question makes the choice a bit more clearer and easier to justify.

Is this card great alone or does it need another card to make it useful?

This is the last bit of thinking you need on a hard choice. When looking at it, these cards are all greaton their own, however they could be perceived to be much better if you had other cards.

Knife Juggler would obviously be better if you had lower cost minions, lots of 1, 2 or 3 mana minionsthat possible spawned more minions to trigger the Knife Juggler's ability.

Azure Drake becomes more precious when you have lots of spells in your deck since they all benefitfrom doing more damage.

Sunwalker actually doesn't make anything better, it's a solid standalone card. It's divine shield could beusefully stolen by a Blood Knight to buff itself, but that actually might make Sunwalker worse in a way.

So this question doesn't really apply to these choices as they are all great standalone cards, certainother cards do benefit from some of these cards, but there are some cards that pretty situational andthey do require some general cards to be good. Take this minion for example:

Ancient Watcher, 2 mana cost, 4/5 stats - card text: Can't Attack.

This card is disgustingly powerful with a huge downside. It only costs 2 mana and has incredible stats,

but it doesn't do anything by itself. However if you had a way to silence it or give it taunt, this card hasincredible value which far surpasses most other cards at this cost tier.

So when would it be right to pick up an Ancient Watcher? It's probably best to never pick AncientWatcher unless you had a few Ironbeak Owls, Spellbreakers (or a combination of them), SunfuryProtector or Defender of Argus. You would want a lot of ways to make use of Ancient Watcher or elseit's probably the worst card in the game and literally does nothing except sit there after taking 2 manafrom you. Some classes can take advantage of a giant rock like Druids have the ability to give theirminions taunts through spells and Warlocks have Shadowflame which takes the attack power of theminion and deals that damage to every enemy minion.

You would want to pick up these cards first before even thinking about getting an Ancient Watcher asto not get unlucky and have this dead card in your deck. Same should go with any other card, build upfrom the most reliable card first and ignore the rest. This also means certain themes like Murlocsbecome very unreliable and while extremely strong if you can put a deck together, they only worktogether. If you are missing pieces, this makes your entire deck weaker as a whole so keep in mindconsistency with your first 10 cards while paying little attention to possible combos unless you getlucky and they are already coming to gether in your first few picks.

Picks 11-20: Halfway point

So you have a decent starting, the goal now is to kind of continue along that path, but fill out what'sneeded to create what is called a nice mana curve.

Your mana curve is important to just know how consistent your deck will be, which translates to howoften do you have a chance to use all your mana every turn to do something that can help you takecontrol. The best decks have a nice peak on either 2 or 4 mana and the mana curve lowers as you getaway from those points. Be aware that the mana curve displayed in the game counts all cards and youkind of only want to count minions so you have to do a little bit of mental math to see what your actualcurve looks like.

2 mana peak typically means you have a strong early game which is important because your early gameadvantage can lead to quick wins so typically you want your later minions to buff up those early gameminions to sustain your board presence.

A 4 mana peak typically means you will have a weak early game, but a very strong mid game. Thatmeans you would need some options to get you there and once you hit mid game, so against someonewith a 2 mana peak, while they make hold the advantage early, if they can't capitalize on it, the amountof quality minions you have will start to over run them so it's important for them to get a good startand win before you just stop them in their tracks and over power them.

With your mana curve in mind, you want to take into account getting minions for mana points you

don't have yet. When a choice is close, you tend to swing towards what you don't have on your curveinstead of picking it for it's absolute value. So basically unless something is extremely good compared,you want to maintain a good curve.

Picks 21-30: desperately filling in the gaps

While you might not be "desperate" per se, you really do want to make an iron clad rule to perfectingyour 2 or 4 mana peak and make sure you have a proper early game.

It doesn't matter how good your deck is if you can't survive the first few turns to drop your amazingminions so even if you have to pick up crappy 1 or 2 mana minions because you only have 2 or 3 ofthem and like 3 or 4 late game Legendaries, your deck will fail because you will die before your firstLegendary makes an impact on the board or the opponent has so much built up because you couldn'tstop or slow them down that when you do drop something big, they just take it out with ease.

Your early game is the absolute most important part of your deck in Arena so if by your 21st pick youdo not have an early game, it's time to pick up 3/2 Bloodfen Raptors over Azure Drakes and ArgentCommanders.

And as a final note, regardless of which mana curve you want, you never want to have more 5 and 6cost minions than 2, 3 or 4 cost minions, ever. If you have five 5 cost minions, you need equal or more(hopefully more) 2 and 3 cost minions (each, not combined) or you will find yourself having a lot ofproblems. This is to help you have as many consistent plays as possible every turn.

How to Play a Deck in Arena

So you built your deck and you're ready to dive into your first match. The first thing to remind yourselfis that this is a card game and as such, we are all susceptible to RNG. That means we all get lucky andwe all get unlucky and even the best decks can get the absolute worst draws and the worst decks can getthe perfect draws against those. We try to eliminate that through building a good deck with a goodmana curve so that our chances of starting with something good is higher.

Thankfully Blizzard also gives us another chance by doing what every card game does and that'sprovide us with the ability to mulligan our starting hand which basically means if we don't like what wesee, we can choose to return the cards we don't want for some random new ones.

A good thing to know is that any card you return to your deck does not have a chance of being givenback to you. It may be the next card you draw after your starting hand, but you will never get a card youselect to mulligan as one of your random new cards.

Mulligan

Going First often feels like a disadvantage a lot of the times, but if you have the right cards, going first

actually be the reason you win a lot of the times and officially, going first has a slightly higher win ratethan going second even though a lot of times it will feel like you have better options going second.

A strong first hand and first turn play requires you to have a turn 1 minion followed by a way to have aturn 2 minion while the opponent does not. So to accomplish this, there are a few common idealhands:

1. One 1 cost and 2 cost minion and a 1 or 2 cost spell.2. One 1 cost, 2 cost and 3 cost minion.3. Two 2 cost minions and a 1 or 2 cost spell.4. One 2 cost and 3 cost minion and a 1 or 2 cost spell.5. One 2 cost, 3 cost and 4 cost minion.

Anything else is not really ideal and will result in a difficult and slow start unless your opponent runsinto the same problem. Scenarios 1 and 2 are often the best because they allow you to have controlright away and a play or reaction for your next few turns. Scenario 3, 4 and 5 give up that first turnadvantage, but if you didn't have anything to play, it's the next best thing. As you can see, the goal is toensure your whatever plays you can for the first 2 or 3 turns.

Going Second opens up a lot more variations and you have much more options however it alsomeans it's less important for you to have a 1 mana minion. Instead your ideal starting hands wouldlook more like:

1. One 1 cost, 2 cost, 3 cost and 4 cost minion.2. One 1 cost minion, two 3 cost minions and a 4 cost minion.3. One 1 cost and 2 cost minion and two 4 cost minions.4. Two 2 cost minions, a 3 cost and a 4 cost minion.5. One 2 cost, 3 cost, 4 cost and 5 cost minion.6. One 2 cost and 3 cost minion and two 5 cost minions.

Scenarios 1 and 5 don't really require the coin, but they also give you options to use the coin to makeother plays while already ensuring your plays for those turns making them quite good for startinghands. Scenarios 2 and 4 give you an immediate impact on the board and can actually put you ahead alot of times because you're getting stronger minions out early on your first or second turns. Scenario 3and 6 are the slowest, however there are consistent plays and your advantage is more towards the midgame which is also good if you have a strong 4 mana curve deck.

Turn 1 and 2

Outside of not having a play, sometimes you will find yourself in a situation where you cannot playanything or your opponent puts down a minion that will basically kill your higher cost minion. Theworst thing you can do is to skip both turn 1 and 2 without doing anything unless you have a Turn 3

play you're not just hoping will turn things around but are confident it will.

Passing on Turn 1 and 2 means the opponent can have 2 minions to your 0 and while you may havemore cards, they are winning on the board. Sometimes you will have to sacrifice your minions to keepthe board competitive so if you do not have any options that can allow you to kill anything on turn 3,you must put down a minion if you have one even if you know it will die just to slow the enemy'sprogress down.

turn 3

Turn 3 has a lot of cards with extra effects on them allowing you to turn the tables on an opponent withthe right card. At this point it's about control and 3 cost minions often make the difference where as 4cost minions are just big.

If you are losing at this point in terms of board control, you might have to sacrifice some card effectsjust to put a minion on the board because going into turn 4 with no minions vs more than 1 minionfrom your opponent usually means you're likely to lose because the strength of minions stop beinggradual and leap from 3 cost to 4 cost so even if you must struggle to keep things even.

Typically however it will be quite even at this point so if both of you have minions on the board, youwant to put down something with a high attack value to start getting ready to deal with 4 cost minionswhile at the same time put down a minion with enough health to not get killed by just 1 lower costminion. Sounds more complicated than it is, but it's important to continue to play larger minions eachturn instead of trying to play as many minions as possible unless you have 2 or 3x the amountcompared to the enemy and you are hoping they have no way to clear everything.

turn 4 and 5

Turn 4 and 5 are often grouped together because of the lack of good 5 cost minions. There are very fewgood ones and some are only good if you are a particular class.

Your giant minions normally come here and it's really important to emphasize dropping your largestminions here over being cost efficient. Dropping a 4 cost minion on turn 4 and turn 5 is often betterthan dropping a 4 cost minion on turn 4 and a combination of minions that add up to 5 mana on turn 5because minions from 4 cost and up typically have a lot more health allowing them to survive throughmid-game board removal spells that all deal around 2-3 damage which is what all 3 cost or lessminions have in terms of health.

The point of emphasizing this is that you will have a chance to drop large minions with a single minionlater on and as you get larger board removal spells coming out, if you happen to lose everything, those2 and 3 cost minions you have saved up in your hands are useful in repopulating the board to re-establish control again.

Another important element to understand at this point is because you could have a variety of minionson the board and if you are fighting for board control instead of just aggressively attacking the enemy'shero to death you will want to know when it's right to attack the hero or when you should deal damage.This is different depending on the class you're fighting against since they have different ways to clearan enemy's board, but in general if you cannot kill a minion, play cards to help with that next turn andattack the enemy's hero. You really don't want to deal damage to a minion without killing it because ofcards like Youthful or Ancient Brewmasters that allow an enemy just to attack you or kill something,return the minion to their hand and re-play them again like brand new. That kind of play typicallymeans you lost whatever damage you dealt to that minion which would have been better spentattacking the enemy hero.

There is an exception to that and that's against particular classes where they have the ability to deal acertain amount of damage across the board killing all minions who don't have enough health tosurvive. In those cases, you would rather trade the minion off to deal damage than to leave it around todie anyways without being too useful. This is circumstantial and will take time and experience to learn.

Turn 6 and on

Turn 6 to 10 don't really change much, you are at this point either desperately trying to finish theopponent off with an Aggro deck or trading minions for the best value possible while taking safeopportunities to attack whenever possible until one side wins. From here the strength of your late gamecomes into display and that's more or less dependent on the cards you drafted.

The only thing to always do before anything else is to pay attention to your health and the enemy'shealth. Always check to see if you can kill your opponent before you do anything every turn. Sometimesthe board distracts us from seeing our victory before it's too late and this occurs to even experiencedplayers so it's a good habit to always check.