Grunker pls. It doesn't take that long to adjust to this game's mechanics. When I began playing, I used to make all sorts of bad decisions based on my intuition, developed by playing control decks in MtG for many years. But it really isn't difficult to figure out the kinds of general rules of thumb that apply in most situations, like your "trade when you can control the circumstances" thing.
But beyond that, you can only really make long-term decisions in a game with limited information by understanding the possibility space of what is unknown to you. Bringing up the classic "Who's the Beatdown?" article is all nice and well, but that article specifically talked about constructed, and for a very good reason. Even in a booster draft, you at least have an idea what other players can have in their decks. But in Hearthstone Arena, there's literally nothing. How am I supposed to know who's the beatdown? If I get a well-balanced deck as Mage, and draw an aggressive hand against a Hunter, should I play with the assumption that I'm the beatdown, or he is? What if we're both at 3-0? What if we're both at 6-0?
There's no real answer to this question, maybe there's a guideline at best, but without knowing what the opponent
can have in his hand, no strategic decision can be made beyond the ones which are literally forced on you by the opponent. If he opens up with aggression you can't match, you play defensively, which is the only thing you can do. Otherwise, how do you decide whether you should try to build tempo or card advantage?
I'll give you a real life example from yesterday. I was playing Rogue, intentionally drafted an aggressive deck with a lot of 2 and 3 drops, two deadly poisons, two perdition blades, a bunch of cheap removal, including two betrayals. I also had Onyxia and Baron Geddon in terms of board-turning stuff I could stall for. So, I play against this pally, we're both 8-1. It goes like this: I got first, he does nothing on his turn, and then on my second turn, my hand is as follows: Ooze, Deadly Poison, Harvest Golem, Spell Breaker, Backstab. What do you think is the better play? Just dropping the ooze and proceeding with golem and spell breaker on the subsequent turns, or saving the ooze for the inevitable truesilver champion, and instead using the hero power, setting up for a deadly poison later if necessary?
I honestly don't know. It depends on who's the beatdown, except there's no way to know. I ended up playing the Ooze and winning through pressure, but my opponent didn't have the truesilver champion. Maybe in general it's better to save it?
I generally reflect on every lost game, trying to figure out if there was a way for me to win. And in most cases there really wasn't, or maybe there was a way to survive two more turns if I did something extremely counterintuitive. I either lose due to very obvious errors I make because I usually don't pay attention when playing Hearthstone, or as a simple consequence of the cards both me and my opponent drew through the course of the game.
For the record, I average a little over 5 wins currently, and I feel like the problem lies in my deckbuilding, that I still think of mana curves as they were in MtG. Edit: And I think I also mulligan really poorly.
