Warstorm Hints for the Beginning Player: A Guide to Starting Play and Collecting Cards in Facebook Warstorm

With the big move of the Warstorm game from Warstorm.com to Facebook, many new players from Facebook are discovering the joys of this fast-paced Magic: The Gathering—influenced online strategy game. This article gives Warstorm hints and tips for the beginning player.

Warstorm Hints for the Beginner: Finishing the tutorials

Every player should finish the Facebook Warstorm tutorials. The tutorials will teach beginners how to play the game, and, perhaps more importantly, the different abilities of each card and how these abilities interact with each other. These interactions form the basis for combos and squad concepts, which in turn spell the difference between a mediocre squad and a killer squad.

For example, Poison is an annoying ability to deal with, but as the tutorial shows, most poisonous creatures have only an attack rating of 1, so they can easily be neutralized with a few units that have the Block ability.

The tutorials will let you master the basics of the card abilities, which will form the basis for the advanced combos. And, of course, the tutorials will provide many low-level, yet useful, cards.

Card Collection Hints: Building up your card collection

At the start, you will have only have cards from the Human and Elf factions. With the little money that you earn, you will be able to afford only afford Novice card packs, which contain Human and Elf factions. You may be itching to try the other factions, but create a couple of squads with good combos first. This will enable you to win consistently against the daily challenges and earn larger amounts of silver.

When you are making enough money consistently, a good Warstorm hint is to start buying the Expert packs. These contain cards from the other factions, so you can begin to build Orc, Demon, and Undead squads. They also contain much sought-after Epic, Legendary, and Fabled cards (which have lower ready cost than their more common counterparts).

You can also try buying individual cards from the Shop tab in Facebook Warstorm, but at this point, most of them will be too expensive for your current silver “income.” Collecting cards through packs is a better option for now.

Squad Construction Hints: Buying Faction Packs

After selecting a favorite faction to build up, a good course of action is to purchase Faction Packs instead of the Expert ones—this ensures that all acquired cards are for the specific faction. For example, buying the Elf Faction pack will result in getting 6 Elf cards (with the same rarity distribution as Expert packs), which will help the novice player who is trying to strengthen his Elven forces.

Squad Construction Hints: Buying Pre-Built Squads

Another excellent Warstorm hint is to purchase the Pre-Built Squads. Although a bit expensive, buying the Pre-Built Squads enables you to get some of the rare and powerful cards for your chosen faction with 100-percent certainty—helpful especially for players who are in a hurry to get their first Dragon units.

Here are recommendations on which Pre-Built Squads are worth their price:

Coldshock (Human) – Includes Varu Blackbone (a hero with Zap 3), Estian Battlemage, Estian Battle Cleric, 2 White Hatchlings, and the spells Zap and Battle Preparations. At a price of 15000 silver, this squad is worth it, especially if you are building up your Human forces.

Deadly Arrows (Elf) – Includes Aradaan Silverhair (a hero with Command: Archers and Archery), Icebow Archers, 2 Cultists of Ardaan, and the artifacts Aseti Book of Fire and Gruesome Blade. Even at a price of 15000 silver, this squad is not worth getting, since the cards are easily found in Expert packs (except for Aradaan Silverhair).

Big Stomp (Orc) – Includes Grymish the Mad (a hero with Command: Infantry), 2 Enraged Yetis, Captive Snow Troll, 2 Red Tide Berserkers, and the spell Battle Preparations. This squad is not worth its price of 30000 silver, since the cards can be gathered without much difficulty through packs.

Undying Death (Undead) – Includes Ririk, Dark Champion (a hero with Regenerate 2), 2 Dirty Rotten Zombies, 2 Diseased Wolves, the spell Zap, and the artifact Treasure Chest. Except for Treasure Chest, these cards are easily acquired through packs; thus, they are not worth spending 30,000 silver on.

Maximum Heal (Elf) – Includes Enyi on the Brink (a hero with Heal 3, Pay Life), 2 Shield Riders, 2 Faithful Healers, and the spells Beacon of Light and Choking Cloud. The squad is worth every penny of its 40,000-silver price, because Shield Riders are among the best Elf units in the game, and you get two of them. Also, the spells are excellent, and the Faithful Healers can only be gotten through the Mercenaries Expansion pack (which costs Warstorm cash, i.e. real money).

Raging Dragons (Demon) – Includes Raganash (a Dragon hero with Firebreath 3 and Flying), 2 Red Dragons, 2 Red Drakes, and 2 Red Hatchlings. The cards can be acquired via Expert and Faction packs, but most players will be itching to get their first Dragon cards (easily the most powerful creatures in the game), so this the most popular Pre-Built Squad purchase.