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If you've never played a card game before, or just aren't very good at them, building your deck can be the most intimidating process in the world. For its popular, new-player-friendly digital card game Hearthstone, Blizzard has relied on a mechanic where the game can suggest or even auto-create decks for you, but...well, they're usually not very good.
Now a better method is on the way.
As announced in a post on the official Hearthstone blog, the game will soon receive a new system called deck recipes. Within a player's card collection manager, they'll be able to choose from three different deck recipes for each of the game's nine classes — 27 recipes in total. Blizzard says one of those three recipes will be "classic," consisting of cards found only in the Basic and Classic sets, while the other two will be themed and can feature cards from other sets as well.
Blizzard provides three examples of deck recipes that will be available. The rogue's empowered spells recipe is more commonly known to players as the Malygos rogue deck; it's a collection of cards built on giving your rogue a huge boost to spellpower, allowing them to do a ton of burst damage in a single turn or two. The hunter's deathtrap recipe will focus on using the classes powerful secret cards. And finally, the shaman murlocs unleashed recipe will be all about flooding the board with murloc minions.
Deck recipes will clearly show how many cards from the recipe you currently own. For cards you are missing, the game will suggest other cards in your collection that could serve as a replacement (as pictured above).
Blizzard also notes that all deck recipes will be in the controversial new standard format, which will be introduced to the game with the next expansion. As the cards allowed in that format change, deck recipes will be updated and rotated.
The blog post does not provide a timetable for the release of deck recipes. Blizzard is planning a "special Hearthstone announcement" this Friday, March 11, which many believe will include news on the game's next expansion. We'll be covering that news as it hits, so stay tuned. In the mean time, you can check out our best (and absolute worst) Hearthstone decks in the videos on our YouTube playlist.