ManaRocks: Season 1 Guide for Beginner

These decks can be freely made as soon as you start the game. They’re comprised of only the basic cards, and will help you progress through the lower ranks and gain an understanding of the game’s mechanics.

Budget Dragon’s Fang
The core strategy of this deck revolves around the “Dragon’s Fang” artefact card. By using it in combination with high attack minions like “Corpse Eater” and “Lilith’s Beast”, you’re able to do a high amount of surprise damage which can end the game quickly, especially if your opponent isn’t expecting it. “Shallow Grave” and “Sacrifice” allow you to get a lot of value out of your minions whilst also controlling the board. Some nice synergies include using “Shallow Grave” to bring back a “Phoenix” and using it to clear off a minion and triggering it’s burial effect, which spawns another minion to the board. Using “Sacrifice” on a minion that has been brought back with “Shallow Grave” allows you to mitigate it’s downside while also drawing cards. This is a midrange style deck which aims to end the game with burst damage from hand.

Other Notable Synergies:

• Shallow Grave & Shadow Viper (remove a minion for two mana)
• Shallow Grave & any burial minion (Free burial trigger)
• Lilith’s Beast & Gravecrawler (Summon an 8/8 and two 1/1’s)

Cheaper options for unowned rare cards:

• -2x Phoenix, +2x Giant Zombie
• -2x Lilith’s Beast, +1x Sonic Dragon & +1x Reckless Titan
• -2x Volcanic Dragon, +1x Reckless Titan & +1x Juggernaut
• -1x Fire Elemental, +1x Juggernaut or +1x Terrify

Budget Blue Mill
This deck focuses on extremely hard control & milling your opponent in order to achieve fatigue damage. Blue Mill is very different playstyle from any other kind of deck due to its heavy reliance on control spells & can take some getting used to. Use cards like “Sacrifice” to fill your enemy’s hand & continually force them to mill their Draw Phase or send their creatures to the graveyard instead of back to their hand. Stalling effectively is the key to this deck. It is extremely weak to rush & burn.

Other Notable Synergies:

• Dwarven Blacksmith (5/3 give +2 charges to target artifact) is ferocious with both Sorcery Vault (counter the next sorcery your opponent plays) & Grinder (mill 1 card from the top of target player’s deck).
• Shapeshifter (0/4 this creature becomes a copy of target creature) can be used on an enemy threat before using Transmute (transform a creature into a 1/1 ghost) or use it on a Dwarven Blacksmith (5/3 +2 give charges to target artifact) before using Vanish (return all creatures to their owners hands)
• Jari’s Hammer (deal damage to target hero equal to the amount of cards in their hand) comes in handy for finishing the game a turn or two early, as does Clear Mind when used after your enemy’s deck is already depleted.

Cheaper options for unowned rare cards:

• -2x Sorcery Vault, +2x Twin Soldiers
• -2x Grinder, +2x Two-Swords Champion
• -2x Shapeshifter, +2x Spectral Dragon
• -2x Vanish, +1x Terrify & +1x Disrupting Rod
  If you own neither of the artifacts,
• -2x Dwarven Blacksmith, +2x Preemptive Leader

Budget Aggro Wolves
This Aggro deck aims to swarm the board with low cost minions and overpower your opponent through board domination. It is however rather weak to board clears, such as “Doom”. So depending on your opponent, it sometimes make sense to try to bait your opponent’s removal with a smaller board before going all in. Once you’re able to establish a board of minions, this deck has the potential to do a lot of damage very quickly. Key cards include “Berserk” and “Tundra Wolf”. You’ll often be able to catch your opponent by surprise by buffing your minions with these cards.

Other Notable Synergies:

• Call Wolves and Berserk (Summon three 3/1 rush minions)
• Call Wolves and White Wolf (Summon three 2/1 rush minions)
• Lilith’s Beast and Whistle/Burial minions (Summon an 8/8 without sacrificing board presence)
• White Wolf and any Wolf creature card (cheap buff)

Cheaper options for unowned rare cards:

• -2x Lilith’s Beast, +2x Giant Zombie
• -2x Call Wolves, +2x Snow Leopard (also recommended: -1x Berserk, +1x Beast Commander)
  
• -2x Tundra Wolf, +2x Preeminent Leader
• -1x Pack Assault, +1x Precipitate Lancer
• -1x Ancestral Strength, +1x Twin Soldiers

Budget Burn
The general idea for this deck is to focus using spell & rush initiative to defeat enemy creatures & slowly tick away at the enemy hero. When playing this deck, it’s best to use your spell & rush cards proactively to achieve ends on the board, as opposed to unnecessarily placing creatures to defend yourself or unnecessarily burning face.

• It is an extreme risk to play “Living Totem” (2/8 +2 Sorcery Power) on one turn, & “Dwarven Catapult” (2 Damage to 4 random enemies) on the next, as this is your strongest combo. Although it has 8 health, it is very weak to blue & black’s hard removal & could cost you 4 damage as well as the creature.
• Save “Disintegrate” (6 damage to target) for high priority targets. Only use it to burn face when you are certain you can achieve lethal with what is in your hand.
• “Volcanic Shot” (1 dmg to 3 random enemies) and “Burn” (2 dmg to target) are better used for removal instead of a turn 1 burn.
• Rush creatures can be used for removal, but ideally they survive whatever they are attacking for the most value.
• When faced with a situation where you cannot clear all of your opponents creatures, focus on filling the board with bodies over trying to lower the health of what is left over.

Cheaper options for unowned rare cards:

• -2x Shadow Viper, +2x Acid Hound
• -1x Lava Burst, +1x Explode
• -2x Phoenix, +2x Ogre Leader
• -2x Living Totem, +2x Quagmire Sorcerer
• -2x Dwarven Catapult, +2x Throw Axe
• -2x Volcanic Dragon, +2x Reckless Titan

Currently there’s some back and forth as to “the best way” to level/get the cards. I think players approach a game a variety of ways & each person may want to have a different experience, so I’ll just give a short overview of the routes that are available.

The absolute quickest & most efficient way to level up / complete the collection is to grind 2v2 practice with 2 or 3 bots (white ally & 2 yellow enemies). This is because: repeated assured 5 min wins will always be faster than the time it takes to grind the ladder.

However, since the xp update, it takes the equivalent amount of time to grind the ladder and get all the cards from receiving copious amounts of xp every time you rank up. Due to the low playerbase, as long as you’re playing, you’ll be climbing.

If you decide to start the grind on the ladder, you will not be wasting any time gaining TP, which is kind of the whole point of the game right now.

However, if you decide to start the grind on practice pvps, you’ll gain the added benefit of saving all of your rank up xp boosts which will level you to 50 faster than if you only played PvP matches (which is really only worth the cosmetic items, anyways)

Don’t feel pressured to do it one way or another. In the beginning, you’ll probably want to play a few practice games or jump into queue just to get a feel for things. I like to think of it as a “speed up” option to get to those couple of cards you’re a couple hundred xp away from getting, or finish the last couple levels of your collection to get those precious mythics.

Here are some cards of every rarity that would be good in a deck vs practice bots:

In 1v1, the “owner” of a creature is the person who has the creature on their side of the field. For example:

• You use Mind Control to take possession of an enemy creature. If your enemy were to use Repeal, the creature would go to YOUR hand and NOT the enemies hand, even though it originated from their deck.

In 2v2, the “owner” of a creature is the person whose turn is next. To break this down:

• On your turn, you will have possession of everything on your side of the field. Enemy 1 (the enemy that goes first) will have possession of everything on the enemy side of the field.
• On Enemy 1’s turn, your ally will have possession of everything on your side of the field. Your enemy will have possession everything on the enemy side of the field.
• On ally’s turn, ally will have possession of everything on your side of the field. Enemy 2 will have possession of everything on the enemy side of the field.
• On Enemy 2’s turn, they will have possession of everything on the enemy side of the field. You will have possession of everything on your side of the field.

This is important to note for cards like Balance, Molten Rock & Ancient Strength, which interact with the ownership of creatures. Understand that these cards’ effects may trigger for your ally instead of yourself.

No, you do not get extra cards. When buying the Mana Pass you DO NOT get both tracks, you SWITCH tracks.

It is a skin for the black hero.

Currently there are 11 tiers. Wood, Stone, Bronze, Silver, and Gold each have 2 tiers respectfully. Diamond is the last tier. When you win a game, you gain Tier Points (TP). When you lose a game, you lose TP. TP gain/loss is calculated differently depending on the tier of your opponent. As you rank up, it will take more TP to reach the next rank. At Diamond, your TP can go up infinitely.

When you are made to draw a card when your deck is empty, you will take fatigue damage. The first time, you will take 1 damage, & for every card thereafter you will take double the previous damage you took. The second card would be 2 damage, the third 4, the fourth, 8, the fifth, 16, etc.

You may only have 9 cards in hand at 1 time. If your hand is full & you are made to draw a card, it will go to the graveyard instead. If your hand is full & a creature on your side of the field is made to go back to your hand, it will instead go to the graveyard.

Please make sure that your deck is made with the exact amount of colors asked for, no more and no less. Neutral cards are not considered to be a color.

The game is still in early access, so sometimes these things happen. Your first step should always be to restart the game. The next step & surefire quickest way to have your problem addressed is to hop into the Manarocks Discord #feedback channel & communicate your issue there.