What is card advantage?
Hearthstone is a tug of war game and card advantage is how long you can last in that game. Eventually, both sides will get tired out (run out of cards in their hand) and will have only their final reserves of energy (the one card that you draw each turn) but one side might be able to hold out longer by having built up card advantage earlier. Card advantage is where one player has more cards available than the other. This usually means they have more options and are less likely to run out of cards to play. Sometimes, this comes at the cost of tempo. For example, Arcane Intellect (three mana draw two cards) does nothing to advance your board position, but gains you one card advantage (since you spent one card to draw the two).
What is tempo?
If you think about Hearthstone as a tug of war game, tempo is the pace of that game. At any point, one player might be ‘tugging harder’ and have the rope on his side–in other words, the player with tempo has the board advantage. Tempo is getting an advantage from how well you use your mana relative to your opponent. A good example is a card like Backstab, which doesn’t do much as a card but also lets you use your mana for something else. An extreme example is using a card like Sap, which spends your two mana to temporarily remove an opponent’s minion which could cost significantly more than two mana to replay.
What is board control?
Board control is when you have a superior array of minions in play, compared to your opponent. It’s important since if you have it, you can dictate the way minions on the board interact. If you have a minion on the board and your opponent does not, you decide how anything your opponent plays is attacked. Board control is often worth it and is what decides games even more than player life totals.
What is value?
Value is the vague concept of “getting more for a card and/or play than you usually would.” A basic example is “My swipe killed three guys, that’s value!” or “My Cult Master has drawn three cards over the course of the game, value!”
What is more important–life or cards?
Cards. It’s one of the trademarks of becoming a better card player. Life is a resource to be used to gain card advantage and board control. Cards win you games, life is just a resource which happens to cause you to lose if you have 0 of it, but as long as you have 1, you’re golden!
How do I improve at Hearthstone?
Play, read strategy websites, Watch Hearthstone streams AND IMPORTANTLY think about what you would do during each turn, then compare it to what the streamer does.
What deck do you recommend for beginners?
A minion-centric deck, like Zoo, is good for learning trading and card advantage.
If Trump was a Hearthstone card, which one would he be?
If Trump was a card, he’d be violet teacher, spreading wisdom and letting his students fight the good fight. Value teachings!
Why doesn’t Trump use gold cards?
Trump wants all of his cards to look the same. If he had all the golden cards for a deck, he would use them instead.