I just started playing Hearthstone about a week ago so late to the party! I LOVE the arena and drafting. It was my favorite part of MTG and so of course it is my favorite part of Hearthstone. I figured we could have a thread with good tips and links to info that will help us all become better at this! I am averaging around 4 wins per draft now (close to 100 wins in arena already) so I would say some of this stuff for sure helps. I am sure Luke has some insight as well!

The best advice I can give is to draft for mana curve after the first 10 or 15 card picks.

This is a mid range man curve which gives you the best chance to always be casting something throughout the game.
4-6 Two mana costing minions
4-5 Three mana costing minions
5-6 Four mana costing minions
4-5 'heavy hitters'
8-10 non-minion cards and conditional minion cards

If you have happen to draft a faster curve, you want to try and have more card draw ability. Look to have 4 or 5 cards that AT LEAST replace themselves so your hand stays full. Playing 2 cards a turn from turn 5 on means you will be out of cards and top decking by turn 8. That means there is a good chance you lose board control because you have far less options.

Regardless of the special abilities of the minions, aim for cards that have higher stats. It helps a TON when trading in your favor with the opponents minions.

Depending on class, you want to always take the bigger cast cost minions first if you have a choice between 2-3 high quality cards on the same pick. There are a lot more vanilla but decent stat 2 and 3 mana minions than there are 5-7 mana drop minions.

4 mana minions are waaay more valuable than 2-3 drop minions. The good 4 drops (yeti, senjin, dark iron dwarf) trade 2 for 1 with most 2-3 mana minions and also trade 1 for 1 with a lot of 5 mana minions with not much help. They also help you catch up if you are behind on turns 2 and 3.

It is almost never the right option to use your spells on the other hero early hame. Use them to gain board advantage. Whenever I play a mage that shoots his missile at my face instead of waiting for me to get minions because they have extra mana left, I know I have a good chance to outplay them regardless of the decks we have.

Taunt is overrated! Usually you lose other stats for mana cost if the creature has taunt. Yes it is an important ability. Yes, it forces your opponent to deal with that creature. Just don't overvalue it.

Cards that are dependent on other cards like secrets, are not as good as you think. Yes they can sometimes be amazing. Often times, they are a dead card or not what you wanted to draw right then. If you have board control, you did not get it by playing a secret. You can maintain board control by playing one occasionally. You can do the same by playing minions after a trade, losing a couple, etc. You want your opponent to either deal with what you have on board or take damage/lose their minions.

The find opponent queue can help you! The longer it runs, the more wide the search criteria is on who you play. It tries to match you with someone close to the same win/loss first. After 15 seconds or so, it will open it up to others and continue to make the search wider until it finds someone. This means that you want to cancel and re-queue after 15 seconds or so unless you have 5+ wins. Once you have a good amount of wins with a deck, you want to stay in the queue so the search opens wider. You have a better chance of facing someone with a couple wins and losses versus that guy with 8 or 9+ wins then.


Ill post some more links and information later. Hope this helps and is not info everyone already knows!