Always wanting to make its games more accessible, Blizzard Entertainment Inc has announced that it is introducing Deck Recipes to Hearthstone to give players a head start in building their own decks.

The new feature, which seems to be aimed at new and intermediate players, will offer a selection of three pre-built decks for each class that will allow players to spend less time scouring the internet for deck lists and more time actually playing the game (the scouring can come later after they have lost 10 games in a row).

According to Blizzard, the new recipes will come in two flavors: Classic, which are standard decks that use only cards that are freely available to all players, and Themed, which offer slightly more complicated and interesting deck combinations for more experienced players with larger card collections.

Here are a few examples Blizzard offered for the new themed decks (descriptions via Battle.net):

• Rogue’s Empowered Spells recipe – This deck focuses mostly on card draw and spell damage, anchored by the mighty essence of magic himself, Malygos.
• Hunter’s Deathtrap recipe – A control-based deck that focuses on board control and the use of Trap spells
• Shaman’s Murlocs Unleashed recipe – An aggressive deck that focuses on buffing synergies, and our favorite fishy friends.

Blizzard has said that if a player is missing any cards required for some of the themed decks, a new card suggestion tool will offer advice on alternate choices to replace the missing cards.

Unfortunately, the image Blizzard chose as an example of its card suggestion tool (above) offers some laughably bad advice, as neither of the suggested replacements for Bloodmage Thalnos (a 2-mana cost legendary with +1 spell damage) are even remotely equivalent aside from also costing two mana. In addition, one of the two suggested cards, Haunted Creeper, is from the Curse of Naxxramas expansion, which will soon no longer be a legal card in the new Standard game format.

Then again, Blizzard is known for occasionally trolling its fans, so the image could (hopefully) be meant as a joke. This seems even more likely given the fact that Blizzard specifically stated in its announcement that “all of our Deck Recipes are Standard-friendly.”

Blizzard did not offer a timeframe for when Deck Recipes will be coming to the game, but the studio has said that it will be making a special Hearthstone announcement this weekend at the Hearthstone Winter Championships, so more information may be revealed then.

Image courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment Inc