These days, brand new players can play or skip the three tutorial practice matches before unlocking the Apprentice Track. I think you still get a reward pack from the most recent expansion if you skip the tutorial, but be careful but DO NOT skip doing the Apprentice Track, because YOU WILL miss out on a lot of Rewards for not completing it. The option to skip Apprentice Track is there mostly for players who care about playing BGs only.
For an overview of the Apprentice Track, these older links still contain a lot of good information:
Apprentice Track:
https://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/hearthstone-revamped-apprentice-track-experience-guide-for-new-players-to-make-the-most-of-it/
https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/New_player_experience
The introduction and understanding of Catch-Up packs is important to getting the maximum benefits while completing the Apprentice Track & getting three more Catch-Up packs after completing the Apprentice Track from completing three follow up quests.
Anyways, it’s important to avoid collecting too many cards for the sets that Catch-Up packs give cards for, because the number of cards one gets from a Catch-Up pack is determined by how many cards one already owns from those sets. Catch-Up packs should be opened before any other kind of pack is opened or any other cards or decks are claimed, because the more cards you already own for a set, the fewer cards you will get from a catch-Up pack, which can range between 5-50 cards.
How Catch-Up Packs work:
Number of Cards: Each Catch-Up Pack includes 1-10 cards from each of the five included sets, for a total of 5-50 cards per pack. The number of cards you get from each set is based on the percentage of cards you’ve received* from that set:
- 25% or less of that set: 10 cards from that set
- 75% or more of that set: 1 card from that set
- Between 25% and 75% completion: scales with collection completion percentage
Rarity Distribution: At least 20% (rounded up) of the cards in each Catch-Up Pack will be a Rare or better. The overall rarity distribution for Catch-Up Packs is the same as normal packs.
Quality: All cards are normal quality (non-Golden).
First Legendary Guarantee: One Legendary in the first 50 cards from each expansion (yes, that means you get to capture five different Legendary offering bonuses in these packs).
A player will get access to two Catch Up packs packs while completing Apprentice Track along with a free deck. The completion of the track triggers a quest chain, which yields three more Catch Up packs. If a player carefully avoids opening too many packs until all the five Catch-Up packs are opened, they should get 50 cards from each pack, which I was able to do, for a total o 250 cards.
https://imgur.com/a/E9lJEoe
Tips:
1). There is a quest on the Apprentice Track to buy one pack, and there is another quest to open 5 packs. While working on finishing the Apprentice Track, it’s possible to open the 2 Catch-Up pack rewards, and three other pack rewards and still get 50 cards each from the next 3 Catch-Up pack rewards.
2). As soon as the game unlocks access to your card collection, a player should start altering their starter deck that they have been using to make it better.
3). If a player buys or gets one pack from an expansion, they can get the promo cards without having to open the pack just by
inspecting the unopened pack(s). Marin the Manager, Nexus-Prince Shaffar, and Bob the Bartender are all strong promo cards from the most recent sets, which can be added to a deck to make it better.
https://imgur.com/a/NMplJSY
As a player nears completion of the Apprentice Track, they will start facing real player accounts instead of the bad Blizzard bots.
Btw, you can tell if you are currently playing against a human player by opening up your friends list (you might need to add one friend to unlock this) by clicking on the human-like icon on the top left (for mobile players) of the screen to reveal under “recent” the name of a human opponent. If you are currently playing against a Blizzard bot, its name will not show up under recent. Look at the following screenshots to see what I mean. Woublek and BlueYeti are human accounts, so their names show up on the top of the “Friends List” as a “Recent” opponent while you are currently playing a match against them, but the name of official Blizzard bots do not. SilentStorm, SuperMage and MagicGnome are official in-game bots:
https://imgur.com/a/JGerSuP
I used following deck to play and to beat three human players before completing the track.
The official AI bots play terribly, mostly ignoring minions to attack the hero.
P USA ()
Class: Mage
Format: Standard
Year of the Pegasus
2x (1) Babbling Book
1x (1) Scarab Keychain
1x (1) Seabreeze Chalice
2x (2) Frostbolt
2x (2) Loot Hoarder
1x (2) Plated Beetle
1x (2) Tidepool Pupil
2x (2) Wandmaker
1x (2) Watcher of the Sun
1x (3) Nexus-Prince Shaffar
2x (3) Vulpera Scoundrel
1x (4) Fireball
2x (4) Sen’jin Shieldmasta
1x (4) Triplewick Trickster
2x (5) Night Elf Huntress
1x (6) Blizzard
1x (6) Bob the Bartender
1x (6) Gnomelia, S.A.F.E. Pilot
1x (7) Firelands Portal
1x (7) Flamestrike
1x (7) Marin the Manager
1x (7) Siamat
1x (8) Kalecgos
AAECAf0EEP2eBP6eBO/TBPHTBKPUBK3tBd/4BcufBuKmBsK+BoG/BrrBBujmBqvqBuHrBtuXBwemnwShoATEoASXpAWF5gbv5gbi6wYAAA==
To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone
Here are the highlights of what I got from my five Catch-Up packs:
https://imgur.com/a/5kF0unu
By the time I got done opening my 5 Catch-Up packs, my new collections had the following resources:
Set completion percent:
P (EU):
Festival: 15.5% complete
Titan: 15.8%
Badlands: 19.1%
Whizbang’s Workshop: 19.1%
Paradise: 17.0%
250 gold
1675 dust
22 unopened packs
11 craft-able or disenchant-able Legendary
cards.
P (Americas):
Festival: 16.1% complete
Titan: 15.8%
Badlands: 20.0%
Whizbang’s Workshop: 17.3%
Paradise: 15.5%
630 gold
1675 dust
31 unopened packs
13 craft-able or disenchant-able Legendary
cards.
I think the sweet spot for abandoning a newly made account for 90 days (to qualify for the Returning Player rewards) occurs after progressing on the current Reward Track to level 20 to get all the easy packs, a random Epic, and a random Legendary, which is what I just did to accumulate the following resources:
P (Asia):
Festival: 16.1% complete
Titan: 17.0%
Badlands: 20.0%
Whizbang’s Workshop: 17.3%
Paradise: 15.5%
275 gold (I bought a few packs and two Arena runs)
1715 dust
32 unopened packs
11 craft-able or disenchant-able Legendary
cards. (One remains unclaimed).
https://imgur.com/a/tmYmCH8
I will be back in 90 days or so in June to use this account to document the Returning Player rewards.