Opening Moves: Win Conditions

Welcome to Opening Moves week! Across all Blizzard esports, we’re celebrating the start of new competitive years—and the start of new matches in those esports. Each day this week, you’ll find a new short story on every Blizzard esport about elements of the earliest portions of a competitive match. Let’s dive right in! For Day 1 of Opening Moves week in Hearthstone, we’re starting right from the beginning with the first thing you have to do to get a game underway—namely, building a competitive deck. The first step in building a great deck is identifying your win condition. Do you want to win the game on the board by playing multiple minions and closing it out with Savage Roar or Bloodlust? Maybe you’ve crafted a crazy combo that requires multiple pieces—perhaps pairing Malygos with some damage spells? Or what about simply surviving your opponent, wearing them down with removal and eventually running them out of resources? Choosing a Win Condition "You basically have to decide what you want to do with your deck. You can be defensive or aggressive, or you can be mid-range; then, depending on that, you pick a class, and the class you pick also helps decide your archetype." Nicolas "TicTac" Gillet Choosing a win condition can often be difficult, because some win conditions aren’t immediately apparent. If you look back at the deck lists for the HCT World Championship, you’ll find things like Aggro Druid using Savage Roar, but you’ll also find complex interactions to facilitate Cube Warlock (which uses Carnivorous Cube and Dark Pact to create additional copies of Doomguard or Voidlord) or Highlander Priest (which looks to put together Prophet Velen, Mind Blast, and Holy Smite after having played both Raza the Chained and Shadowreaper Anduin—which is a lot of combo requirements!). There are also decks that don’t run any apparent win condition cards at all and simply look to win by taking favorable trades, like Tempo Rogue. As you improve as a player, you’ll move from the more obvious win condition cards (C’thun, minions with Charge, spells that you can kill your opponent directly with, etc.) toward some of these more complicated combinations. You may also find that your win condition requires some support to pull off—so join us tomorrow for Day 2, where we’ll evaluate how to round out a deck after you’ve picked your win condition!