WoW Resources

Let's assume that you've decided to go with an aggro deck, and you're looking through your card library to decide which cards you'll use. Zy'lah Manslayer looks like a pretty good card, since she's both a decent threat and a surprisingly good answer. However, upon further inspection you realize that the earliest you can start using her is on turn eight, which is fairly late in the game. If your strategy relies on powerful but costly cards, then you won't be able to execute your strategy until you've built up your resource row. Meanwhile, your opponent could be using weaker allies like Windseer Tarus or Vaerik Proudhoof in combination with buffs like Mark of the Wild or the payment power of Elder Moorf to quickly and mercilessly decimate your health.

There are many factors that decide the outcome of a match – experience, luck, planning, skill, just to name a few – but the single most important game-deciding factors are oftentimes a deck's card efficiency and speed. The faster you can execute your strategy, the better. And to execute your strategy, you need resources. So, the faster you generate resources and/or the more efficiently you use the resources at your disposal, the better your chances to successfully complete your strategy.

Resources can take many different shapes. Your most important resource is your hero's health, since once your hero has lost all health, you lose the game. Then there are the cards in your resource row. Without these cards, you can play neither threats nor answers; basically, you can't play without these resources. Having more resources than your opponent means that you can execute your strategy sooner, while being able to attack your opponent's resource row means that you can effectively turn the more expensive cards in his deck into "dead cards." A rogue deck with Lobotomize and The Cruel Hand of Timmy can be a fearsome thing to behold.

However, there are other resources besides your health and your resource row that need to be considered. Your hand, for example, is an important resource. The more cards you have in your hand, the more tactical flexibility you have. At first glance, playing two Lightning Bolts instead of one Starfire might seem like a good idea, since you get more damage for the same amount of resources. But on closer inspection, the cost for Lightning Bolt is "3 resource points, and a card," whereas the cost for Starfire is simply "6 resource points." By playing two Lightning Bolts, you do more damage, but you pay the difference with a decrease in your tactical flexibility.

You always have the option of playing a card face down in your resource row, but you'll want to avoid this situation as much as possible unless the card you're playing will be of more use to you as a resource (for example, playing Pugg in the later stages of a match might not be the best move, especially if you already have a few allies in play). Roughly speaking, your deck should have enough quests to allow you to make progress on every turn. Also, when choosing quests to fill up the resource slots in your deck, try to think about how each quest will tie into your strategy. For example, if your deck's strategy relies on equipment, Sunken Treasure is your friend, or if you need specific ally cards, include Chasing A-Me 01. Other times, extracting specific cards with quests like Big Game Hunter or Kibler's Exotic Pets can be a good way to advance your strategy.

Some quests like The Defias Brotherhood let you draw additional cards, which – you probably guessed it – is actually a form of resource acceleration. Being able to restock your hand more quickly is a good thing, but the other important consideration is the number of cards you've seen in a match. If you have seen more cards than your opponent it probably means you've had access to a larger part of your deck, which again means that you more than likely have a statistical advantage in terms of having drawn strategy-critical cards. The sooner you can establish a draw advantage, the better. The concept of draw advantage also leads us to the next topic we'll be discussing in this article – card advantage and card impact.