In a sea of decklists and tournament coverage reports, it’s easy to write off strategies and card choices as obvious and standard. For some, the decisions that lead to playing a card in a deck can be second nature. Often times, Johnny Newbie will find a net deck and not fully understand why a card is used, or if it’s even good.

Today, we sit down and chat with two of the game’s most active professional players for a more thoughtful look into the theory and application of a single card. This is Single Card Strategy.

I interviewed Tempo Storm’s Gaara and Liquid’s Savjz on the ins and outs of a popular Hunter card: Tracking.

But before we get into it, we need to answer a basic question: What is Tracking and what does it accomplish?

As a card, Tracking is a seemingly innocuous, cheap 1-mana card that allows you to look at the top three cards of your deck. You may then select one card to draw and put into your hand, while you discard the rest. What this means is that Tracking represents a one for one trade-off: you spend a card to get a card.

In an abstract sense, what this allows you to do is get one card deeper into your deck. Across a number of turns, assuming that both players draw the same number of cards naturally for each of their turns, being able to see more cards than your opponent gives you more options to win the game. In that case, is it more or less like a similar Hunter card, Flare, especially in a non-trap match-up?

All of the little decision points that surround this humble 1-mana card give players of different skill levels the power of choice; and choice, in any card game, is king. Let’s see what our pros think.



What is Tracking and how do you use it?

Gaara: Tracking is most of the time used to find the needed combo pieces, like Unleash the Hounds if you are already holding on to Starving Buzzard, minions which are playable on curve, or burst damage cards like Kill command to finish of your opponent.

Savjz: The mana cost is cheap and it thins the deck allowing you not only to get to the good stuff faster, but often it allows you to skip bad cards.

For the same mana, Flare and Tracking in a non-trap match-up allows you to smooth out your draws, while replacing itself. However, where Flare only gets you one card deep into your deck, Tracking lets you go three cards deeper. Where Flare only smoothens out your deck’s variance, Tracking acts almost like a search card. In fact, given the design philosophy of Blizzard, you cannot directly search your deck for a specific card. There are no other cards that allow you to look for as wide a range of answers that differ from game to game.

In other TCGs like Magic: The Gathering, cards like Preordain or Ponder are essential cards in various strategies as they not only represent a way to thin your deck, but often represent a cheap and efficient way to dictate the pace of the game through setting up future turns, or through finding important, match-up specific cards to break a game wide open.



Given that, when should you use Tracking? Do we fire it off turn one the same way we would fire off Flare turn one in a non-trap matchup?

Gaara: If you have a 2 drop in your hand and a 5 and 6 drop and no play on turn 3 and 4 , you use Tracking very often to find a playable minion for turn 3 or 4, since Hunter relies on winning the game early and can't compete with slow control decks in the very late game. When you bring down your opponent to a critical health stage (like 7 health) and your opponent manages to play big taunt creatures, you track to find a Kill command which you can combine with a low cost beast minion and the Hero power to finish off your opponent with direct damage to the face.

Savjz goes one step further. He says that you should fire off Tracking turn one in order to keep a Hunter’s aggression up through the match.

Savjz: If it's in the starting hand, I quite often tend to track for either a Haunted Creeper or Animal Companion to avoid a weak turn 2 or 3. If Houndmaster makes a lot of sense with the other cards, then that might be a good pick sometimes.

Savjz adds that for matchup specific cards like Savannah Highmane, firing off an early Tracking to pick them up four or five turns ahead of the earliest window you can cast them is an option, specifically if the matchup usually reaches the later stages of the game.

Savjz: You generally don't want a Savannah Highmane, but having it discarded is unacceptable in matchups like Warrior, so you might have to pick it anyway even if it's 5 turns away. If Starving Buzzard wasn't in same set of cards after you track, it doesn't feel too bad usually though.





Letting Tracking "mature"

But in a situation where you might not know how the match-up would play out, when would be the right time to fire off Tracking? Simply put, Tracking is a card that gets better the more information you gain.

Savjz: In my opinion, if you don't know whether your opponent is playing aggro or control, it might be right to skip. In that case I would usually still play it to smoothen next turns as much as possible. If it's in the starting hand but the hand looks already amazing, or you have a Webspinner, you might want to hold on to it for a bit. Tracking is hardly ever bad. I guess if you have a strong play and choose to track instead, then that would be bad. Ending a turn with one mana open and a tracking in hand is very rarely a mistake.

Gaara, however, disagrees. For the German pro, the risks of losing a key card in any matchup because of an errant Tracking is simply too much.

Gaara: Tracking is rarely used on turn one, since you can discard important combo pieces. If you immediately use it, the risk is high that you get Unleash the Hounds and Starving Buzzard in the same track, so most of the time you wait till you have already one piece of the combo and then use tracking to get the remaining card. If you don't have UTH and Buzzard available to draw cards and your opponent plays a big threat, Tracking is often times used to find a hard removal card like Hunter's mark or Deadly shot to remove that big threat as quickly as possible.

When it comes to choosing which card to pick up when presented with three cards, both Gaara and Savjz advise that knowing what are important in match-ups and having an idea of the metagame inside and out lets you make better decisions when you track.

Savjz: There are no strict guidelines for that but generally go for the card which will be useful earlier (i.e. grab the animal companion over a more powerful card if turn 3 is hero power). Also, if you track later on and you know that your last copy of a certain card will be discarded if you don't pick it, you might have to go ahead and pick it. An example of this is Savannah Highmane. It is a weird exception to everything as the card is just so powerful against all controls. It causes me most anger when I have the option between a good card for the next turn, and a Highmane for late game. If the matchup is Hunter versus a controlling deck, I would just pick up the Highmane.

Gaara: Against super fast decks like Zoo, you won’t have the extra mana in later turns. This similarly happens in the Hunter mirror matches as well. Basically in any game that won’t last long like against any aggro deck or against miracle (since you don’t need hounds or buzzard against miracle), there is no problem discarding cards so firing off an early Tracking to pick the card that will let you stabilize early -- even if you have to discard other good cards -- is ok. It’s a risk which is why I almost never use tracking turn one. You also always mulligan it for later.





When NOT to use Tracking?

So we figured out how and when to use the card, but when do you not use it? When is a bad time to track?



Tracking’s discard clause is much more unforgiving in Hearthstone compared to other TCGs. Where other trading card games have the luxury of using similar cards to place unpicked cards at the bottom of your deck, cards you do not choose after you track are discarded. In TCGs that allow for up to four copies of a single card, this isn't quite as big a problem but with Hearthstone’s two copy per card limit (and one copy per legendary), the drawback is very real.





I got 99 problems

Gaara: You do NOT use Tracking when using it increases the chance of you losing the game. That is most of the time the case in dragged out matches against control decks like Priest, Warrior or Druid control. Discarding cards like Savannah Highmane, Eaglehorn bow or [card]Hunter’s Mark[/card] might lose you the game in the very late game, so sometimes its better to not play tracking at all.

So to recap: As a card, Tracking represents a one-for-one tradeoff; you use a card to gain a card. But where similar cards only get you one card deeper into your deck, Tracking lets you see even more cards, allowing you to get the important or necessary cards in a given scenario or matchup. It’s often correct to let Tracking “mature”. Gaining more information before you use it can make the difference in a game.



Finally, you do not use Tracking when the number of outs of relevant cards you have in the matchup have a high percentage of being discarded. As a simple example: if you need two cards to win a match, and only three cards are left in your deck, then it would be correct not to use Tracking anymore. Instead, draw cards naturally to draw one piece of the puzzle before searching for the last card.

That’s it for the first installment of Single Card Strategy! How do YOU use Tracking? Did you agree/disagree with our pros? Let us know in the comments!