Recently, after being off it for years, I started to get back into Hearthstone. Hearthstone is a fairly simple (yeah, yeah) digital card game with an active competitive scene. Although there are a few alternative ways to play as well as out-of-client tournaments, the “default” in-client way to play the game with your own cards (“constructed”) is called “Ranked”.

In ranked games, winning allows you to “climb the ladder” (that is, get to higher ranks in a 25-scale ladder ranking) while losing makes you lose ranks. Ladder rules seem simple at first, but are actually somewhat convoluted if you look at it in detail.

Playing ranked games is free — you can play as many games as you are willing to dedicate time to. On the other hand, climbing the ladder can actually be quite the grind. Leaving aside some of the more involved details of laddering for now, you will need a whopping 85 more wins than losses in a month to go from the lowest rank to the highest. This has led to a somewhat twisted incentive model, where many players opt to play aggressive decks, not because they like them or because these decks are inherently better, but because playing an aggressive deck allows them to get wins in quicker.

Initially, I wanted to know how much of a factor this really is. How much of an advantage is it to play a deck that wins or loses in 5 minutes rather than 15 or 20? This initial question has turned into a bit longer exploration of laddering in Hearthstone.