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When you play with a custom deck, you know every card that can show up, since you put each one of them in that deck. However, when you just pick a hero and play with his or her basic deck, you have anywhere between 10 and 20 basic cards that you can be sure of, depending on your progress with that hero, and the rest is made up from random other cards you own. Is there any way to find out which other cards are included? Are they all neutral, or can cards of your class occasionally fall in that mix? Are they picked randomly, or are there specific lists? Do different classes get different extra cards?

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  • @ChrisHateZ To unlock the other heroes, test them out abit before you actually build a deck on something you never played...
    – Lyrion
    Commented Jan 27, 2014 at 12:11
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    @Lyrion I still don't see the point. When you unlock a hero the best thing is to do a deck for him yourself. You just look at what his hero ability is, what his class cards are and it's easy to make a deck for a hero without trying out the crappy basic deck.
    – MaxBedlam
    Commented Jan 27, 2014 at 13:37
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    Do you really think it's a question of "why would I bother" if it's one of the first options of things to do in the game, and if it requires the fewest actions? I don't suppose I'm the only Hearthstone player who is lazy enough to use a basic deck :)
    – snetch
    Commented Jan 27, 2014 at 18:17
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    I use basic decks a lot when playing with friends. It evens the odds when one of us has played a lot more than the other and the custom decks are at totally different levels.
    – 3ventic
    Commented Jan 27, 2014 at 18:23
  • I went back and used the basic paladin deck for a while to try this out. I definately had both neutral and class cards in the mix, but its hard to say for sure whats in the deck without doing a lot of testing.
    – l I
    Commented Jan 28, 2014 at 14:23

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I did some research of my own instead of waiting for another answer. I played 4 games with my Level 5 Mage (leveling her up to level 8 in the process). In none of the games did I manage to use the whole deck, but I wrote down all the cards that I drew throughout all 4 games.

First, to confirm Resorath's answer, none of the Level 2, 4, and 6 cards of the Mage ever showed up in the deck, but the original 5 cards that the Mage starts with all showed up in at least 3 games out of 4. So I can conclude that none of the later Mage cards are included into the basic deck as you level up.

Second, exactly ten other cards showed up in 2 to 4 games each out of 4, while no other cards ever showed up. So, only 15 different cards ever showed up for the Mage, some twice, making up the deck of 30. That means, it's not random, and the cards are set in for each basic deck. Most likely, they are tailored to each class. (For the curious, for Mage they are: Murloc Raider, Bloodfen Raptor, Novice Engineer, River Crocolisk, Raid Leader, Wolfrider, Oasis Snapjaw, Sen'jin Shieldmasta, Nightblade, and Boulderfist Ogre, plus the original 5 Mage cards)

Both of those conclusions could be very good coincidences, but, eyeballing the probabilities of these coincidences, I firmly believe that those conclusions are correct.

So, I did not experiment with all 9 classes, but I found my answer: The basic decks were pre-made by the creators of the game, and they do not change as you level up. I guess the results for the other 8 can be found the same way.

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The basic deck attached to each character contains only free cards (neutral cards without gems) and the first 10 cards given to that class. These decks are always the same, and don't change when you receive additional basic class cards (while gaining levels) or open expert packs.

Their purpose is to provide a simple deck to start out with, or to play against someone who is just starting out.

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  • there are a lot of neutral cards without gems though, it can't possibly use all of them?
    – l I
    Commented Jan 28, 2014 at 17:43
  • @spartacus it doesn't. although I couldn't find the individual deck lists.
    – Resorath
    Commented Jan 28, 2014 at 17:48
  • yea, I couldn't either. I could be wrong but I think snetch wanted the card lists.
    – l I
    Commented Jan 28, 2014 at 17:58
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    @snetch I suspect its not random. I believe that each basic deck consists of the same as the gold basic cards that the hero will give you at higher levels.
    – l I
    Commented Jan 28, 2014 at 20:46
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    This is something that can be tested by playing the game until you run out of cards, twice. If the decks are identical it is fairly certain (p < 0.05) that all decks are identical. I'll make a note to try this later.
    – Resorath
    Commented Jan 28, 2014 at 20:49
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Resorath has answered the other stuff.

Do different classes get different extra cards?

Each class has a number of unique cards to that specific class. Example: Fireball and Pyroblast. These cards are unique to the mage class and there are many more cards the mage has that are unique to mages only.

A helpful site to review every card in the game, make decks, compare decks, view decks, etc... www.Hearthpwn.com

Additionally if you would rather review the cards in-game you can go into crafting mode. Cards you do not have will appear, but will be transparent, and unusable in your non-arena decks. This is helpful because you can still click them to review the card and see the cost in arcane dust or how much you will get if you already have the card and would like to disenchant it.

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