WoW TCG Fundamentals, Lesson 1

Hello all, and welcome to the first installment of WoW TCG Fundamentals, in which I teach you enough to hold your own in the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game.

Important note: If you see a term you do not recognize, keep reading. It may become apparent to you or it may be explained explicitly further on in the post.

This is Lesson One: Of Heroes, Health and Hordies

Please direct your attention to the following image.

This is Aleyah Dawnborn, a Hero. Some notes about heroes before I go into detail:

• A hero does not count as part of a deck; it is considered seperate.
• A deck is built around a specific hero or heroes following the deckbuilding rules (more on these later).
• The hero associated with a given deck begins in-play, face-up (with the text showing, as shown above). Heroes, unlike other cards, are double-sided- the face-down side of a card is simply the art, expanded.
• When your hero dies, you lose the game.

Now, to expand upon Heroes, please direct your attention to the following version of Aleyah’s card:

Circled in Red: The Hero’s Faction. Factions that exist so far are Alliance, Horde, or Demon. As a general rule, the deckbuilding rules state that cards marked with the Alliance icon can only be in a deck with an Alliance hero leading it. Similarly, cards marked with the Horde icon can only be in a Horde-hero-led deck. Demon heroes follow their own rules (these are printed individually on the hero cards). There are also Neutral cards which can go in both Horde- and Alliance-led decks.

Circled in Yellow: The hero’s Name. Self-explanatory!

Circled in Green: The hero’s Class. Much like Faction restrictions, there are cards that have Class icons on them. A card with a Warrior icon but not a Paladin icon, for example, could not be legally included in a deck led by Aleyah (A card with both a Warrior and Paladin icon- plate armor, for example- would be fine).

Circled in Light Blue: The Hero’s “Type Line”.

• Upper-left: Denotes that this card is a hero, and its race (“Blood Elf”) and other information about it, such as its class (“Paladin”).
• Lower-left: The hero’s talent spec (“Holy”). Certain cards may say, for example, “Requires Holy Hero”. This would mean the word “Holy” would have to appear in the hero’s type line for that card to be included in a deck led by the hero.
• Right side, upper and lower: The hero’s Professions. Certain cards may require that a hero have a given profession to be included in a deck.

Dark Blue: The hero’s Powers. I haven’t taught you the exact mechanics of this yet but, essentially, this is an unusually-powerful ability that can be used to swing the game in your advantage- but only once per game, as part of the cost is to flip the card facedown (and that power does not appear on the face-down side).

Finally, Purple: The hero’s Health. When your hero has damage on it equal to or higher than its Health, it dies (and you lose the game). It is important to note that this is not WoW-online-style “You have this much health and it disappears as you take damage”. It lists a maximum capacity, not a starting value that is reduced over time- this seems trivial but is, in fact, an important distinction later.

Thanks for tuning in! If I’m doing my job right, you now know the basics of heroes, and have some inkling about building decks (and what can, and cannot, go in a deck led by a given hero). Tune in next week for Lesson 2: Exhaustion, Energy and Something Ex Nihilo.