Fun Ways to Play Hearthstone with Friends

Hi all, TacoRocco here with another article for you guys. I believe too many people try to focus their attention on building “the best deck” or trying to be “the best player in the world” and seem to forget to have fun in Hearthstone. Well, today I am sharing some ideas with you guys for fun ways to play with friends. If any of you have your own ideas of fun, different ways to play Hearthstone, feel free to share them in the comments below!

Suicide Game

This is probably my favorite way to play Hearthstone with friends because it is so vastly different than how Hearthstone is normally played. As the title suggests, your goal is to lose before your friend does. Some tips for playing this way are to make a deck based around dealing damage to yourself, overdrawing your deck, or losing in other ways. You can also add in cards that slow down your friend’s progression by healing them or adding cards in their deck. Note: Hitting the concede button does not count as an official way to lose in a suicide game.

You can play with any rules you want, but I generally like to say that 2 card insta-losses are not allowed because it takes away from the fun of trying to race your friend by making your loss instant if you get the two cards needed. Some examples of this are:

• Lord Jaraxxus + Sacrificial Pact
• Auchenai Soulpriest + Reno Jackson
• Unlicensed Apothecary + Forbidden Ritual or any card that can summon 6 additional minions

Here are some deck ideas that you can use for your suicide games. I also have a short description of each deck to give you an idea of the goal of each deck:

Pack Draft

This is another fun one that I used to do with friends back when I used to play games such as Yu-Gi-Oh! and CardFight!! Vanguard. The idea is simple, you both buy X number of packs and then build a deck or decks out of the cards you got from those packs. This is the most fun if you don’t have a large collection of cards because it is a great way for you to get new cards as well. I recommend that you purchase at least 20 packs for this type of game, however 40 packs is probably ideal as you might not pull enough neutral cards or cards for a certain class in order to build a deck.

The best time to do a “pack draft” game is when a new set comes out, especially if you do not have the extra money to buy the extra packs just for a few games of Hearthstone. With the new changes coming to Hearthstone packs soon, this is a great opportunity to do this type of game as you will open far less duplicate cards than in past expansions!

30/35 Legendary

This is undoubtedly the most expensive of all of my suggestions, but it can be fun to do, especially if you are a long time player that has a lot of cards hoarded up. Both you and your friend build a deck with ONLY Legendary rarity cards, also known as a “30 Legendary deck”. You can also try the “35 Legendary” variant by including Prince Malchezaar, which adds an additional 5 Legendary cards to your deck.

You may have seen players such as Kripparrian using a 30+ Legendary deck on ladder for fun, and they really are pretty fun to mess around with. The concept behind playing this sort of deck for fun is that 30+ Legendary cards in one deck is, well, a very terrible idea. Legendary minions are meant to give an extra boost of power to a deck and are often expensive and have little to no synergy with other Legendary minions. If both you and your friend are playing with this type of deck, they will be much more evenly matched, allowing you to play a ridiculous (and expensive) game of Hearthstone.

Some recommendations when building your 30/35 Legendary card deck

• Include a card such as Reno Jackson, Kazakus, etc. since you can only have 1 copy of each Legendary in your deck.
• Add a Quest card to your deck to give your deck a bit of synergy. Quests are also great because they are one of the few 1-cost Legendary cards in the game. The only quests you should consider using are: Warrior, Druid or Priest. Those are the only classes with Quests that can be completed with only Legendary minions.
• Make sure to include low-cost Legendary minions to your deck. You will need cards to play early.
• If you or your friend do not have enough Legendary cards to create a full 30 Legendary card deck, consider doing something like “only Epic and Legendary rarity”.

Pauper

The term for this type of game comes from Magic: The Gathering. A pauper deck in Magic: The Gathering refers to a deck with cards of only common rarity. Applying this concept to Hearthstone, this is essentially the opposite of the previously suggested “30/35 Legendary” idea. You and your friend create decks made with only Basic or Common rarity cards. This type of game is great for new players or if you have friends that do not have many cards and don’t want to make it feel unfair that you have such stronger cards than them. This is also a great way to test out your deck building skills!

If you want to learn more about Pauper, check out the Pauper Subreddit!

Create a Deck Using Suggest a Card

If you like playing arena, then you might like playing this way with friends. Hearthstone has a feature known as “Deck Helper” or “Suggest a Card” which is meant to help players finish a deck if they still need to add a few cards to the deck and do not know what to add. When you click this option, it gives you 3 card choices based on the cards you drafted in your deck. What you will want to do is click this option before adding any cards to your deck and build a deck out of the cards that it suggests to you, just like an arena draft!

Here are a few ideas for variants that you and your friend can also try:

• Pick the highest rarity cards offered
• Pick the left cards offered
• Pick the highest cost cards offered

There are even more variants that you can try, so maybe you and your friend can think of other fun ways to do this type of draft!

Conclusion

Thanks for reading my article about fun ways to play Hearthstone with friends! If you enjoyed any of these ideas, feel free to try them with friends! If any of you have other fun ideas to try with friends, post your idea in the comments below.

Also, feel free to check out my stream, I occasionally play Hearthstone, but I’m always up for a Hearthstone conversation: Twitch.tv/tacorocco_. I also like to play with my viewers sometimes, and would love to play one of these modes with you if you were interested!

If you are looking for people to play with, make sure to check out HSTD’s Discord!  That’s all for now guys, thanks again for reading!