Now that we officially know Hearthstone‘s (Free) latest expansion, Whispers of the Old Gods, is coming out April 26th and we know all the lovely nerfs, everyone should start preparing for the upcoming shift to Standard and Wild modes, a shift that should drastically change the game. If you’ve been trying to figure out how you should prepare for the upcoming changes, well, you’ve come to the right place. Here are a few things you should keep in mind for the upcoming changes and ways in which you can make the change work to your favor as much as possible. This list is, of course, not exhaustive, but it should set you on the right path and prepare you for the big upcoming changes. So, without further ado, let’s proceed.

The first major decision you have to consider is whether you’re going to primarily be a Wild or a Standard player, since that decision can influence the way you go about preparing for the upcoming changes. If you’re planning on sticking with Wild, don’t go out buying Goblins Vs Gnomes packs or even any of the Curse of Naxxramas Wings, unless you want to play through the adventure. If you do want to have fun beating Naxx, make sure you buy at least the first Wing before Standard hits. By buying at least one wing, you’ll be able to play the whole Adventure and get those cards even after Standard hits.

While neither GvG nor Naxx will be available for purchase after Standard hits, Blizzard has confirmed that you’ll be able to craft any of those cards, including Adventure cards that you couldn’t previously craft. Yes, that will be more expensive than buying packs, but if you go ahead and buy several GvG packs and then decide to play Standard instead, there goes all that gold. At the same time, don’t go disenchanting any cards until you see how the Wild meta looks like; cards you might consider useless now might end up getting a second lease of life when WoG hits.

Speaking of disenchanting cards, if you are going to play Standard primarily, make sure you don’t disenchant any cards right now, especially cards from the Classic set. The reason to hold on to those Classic cards is that after Standard hits, all of the nerfed cards (like Ancient of Lore, Force of Nature, etc) will give you back their full dust value if you decide to disenchant them, four times more than what you’ll get if you went ahead and disenchanted them now. Also, what I’ve said about Wild is true for Standard too; you simply can’t know which cards will be strong once the meta shifts, so you might end up disenchanting cards that end up being part of very strong decks post-Standard. If you feel like gambling, you could go ahead and buy Standard packs hoping you’ll find those cards that will get nerfed, but the chances of that happening aren’t great.

Similarly, don’t craft any cards right now, no matter how attractive a card might look because a Legendary that looks mighty strong now either in Wild or Standard might end up being replaced by another Legendary that does that job much better in the new meta. If you are the crafting kind, there are two ways you can go about crafting any card during the early days of Standard: either wait until the meta settles and then decide what deck you want to build, or if you see a very dominant card/deck in the early days, it might be worth crafting that one powerful card that makes the deck and use that to dominate before players figure out how to counter it.

And, lastly, buy the 50-pack Whispers of the Old Gods pre-order before April 26th if you want to have the latest toys to play with. Getting those packs for a dollar a pack is a pretty good deal, and if you’re lucky enough to find some of those strong cards on day one, you’ll be one step ahead of many other players. For the first time in Hearthstone history, Blizzard guarantees that all players will get the Legendary C’Thun along with the Beckoner of Evil in one of the three free WoG packs every player will get when the expansion hits. What that means is that you already have the basis for (possibly) a pretty strong deck, so buying those 50 packs might help you build a strong C’Thun deck early on.

So, that’s all for now. Standard isn’t too far off now, so make sure you don’t do any silly things like enchanting the wrong cards or disenchanting the right ones, buying the wrong packs, or preparing for the wrong format. Other than that, we’ll keep an eye out for any other good advice for the early days of Standard and we’ll keep you up to date as always. Till then, see you either on Standard or Wild (or both).