Hi, guys. I am new to Hearthstone, but always loved card games as a child so think I’m gonna give it a shot. I do not plan on spending any money on the game, however. So I’m wondering how much of a disadvantage would I be at without buying any cards or anything?
At first you will be playing at the bottom of the pit with other new players as well, which might not cause extremely unbalanced games. As you move up and play other modes, this might change and will eventually get to a point your collection won’t be enough to beat some of these tier 1-2 decks around.
If you keep this mindset on not spending any money (which I applaud you for it), my suggestion is that you play the game for as long as you are having fun and once you start hitting the wall/being rolled by people with better cards, you just delete the game and do not look back on it.
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Free to play(F2P) Players will generally fall under the below category,
- Experience to CCG but new to HS
- Totally new to CCG and HS
The main challenge that F2P player faces, are all the aspects that are not covered via the in-game tutorials. e,g, dust/gold resource management
Experienced CCG players that are new to HS are able to adapt to the economics of the game and take full advantage of the F2P experience, with some adjustment to expectation.
For players totally new to CCG and HS, the F2P is still possible, IF they are willing to learn the game, AND spend enough time and effort on it, AND reasonable expectation.
(Warning: the learning curve is very steep)
For more details, you could have a quick look at guides at the new player section on the forum
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What are most recommended for purchase items in order for a newer player to be on par with more veteran players? In other words, so as not to be as disadvantaged, what should I buy?
Also, I wanna thank you two for your feedback. 
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Personally I do not recommend any purchases until the player is able to have a fundamental understanding of the game, and how(why) it is designed that way.
There are various examples of experience player that can play with very cheap decks to high rank (as F2P), and inexperience players whom spends a lot but fail to get full value from their purchase (and regrets thereafter).
Apologies as I deviated from your questions, but wishes you to start off with the right foot forward. and avoid any regrets.
This is a very long but good read for new players:
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playing this game without spending money… i dont recommend it. you will find that you will have to net deck the cheapest deck u can afford to craft. no variety.
if you dont want to netdeck expect to do a lot of losing, even at level 20 and certainly will not be getting more than a level or two past that.
i recommend spending 5$ on the welcome bundle. after that you should spend your gold to buy 10 packs from each expansion which will give u at least 1 legendary from each.
at that point you can try to craft something whichever u are closest to. dont disenchant cards unless they are duplicates or you dont care about gold cards.
unless u play all the time u will find it hard not to buy a preorder or the various bundles offered. they are both good u just have to be a little bit picky. gl
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Craft Whizbang or Zayle. Did it on my FTP account and having a lot of fun with WB, even more than my main account.
However, it will only be viable at levels 20 to 15.
At level 10 and above, except for level 5 where people are playing whacky decks due to the floor, it’s all netdeck full or paladin mech, secret mage, big priests and warlocks that cheat out minions through voidcallers, so Whizbang will never get there…
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Whatever you do, make sure to log in and complete your dailies everyday. Try to get in an extra 20 or 30 gold everyday as well. Doing that, with roughly 3 months between expansions(give or take 10-15 days), you will easily be able to afford around 80 packs for each expansion.
Eventually your collection will become current. You will get a decent chance to catch up when the bottom 3 expansions rotate out at the beginning of Each year(every April).
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As you climb the new player ranks, from 50 to 26, you are awarded 20 or so packs as well as other new player rewards.
If you want to make sure that you get off to a good start, you may want to start 2 accounts and pick the one with the best collection to build on.
Some players use an alt account to learn arena. Arena takes gold or $ to play, which reduces the gold you have available to buy packs. The rewards for being good at arena are the best way to accumulate gold/dust/packs. However, it takes a while to become good enough to be profitable. You could use the account you decide to discard as your account to learn arena (getting poor rewards for your gold) while building your collection in your main account.
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Keep playing till you’re decent at the game then you can spend dusts to make 1 decent deck. There are some cheaper decks out there that are at least tier 2. Also there is a guaranteed legendary in the first 10 packs of each expansion card pack you get, so buy packs of a expansion till you get a legendary then move on to another.
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I really appreciate all of the advice, guys, truly. 
I was thinking, I play WoW and can therefore buy WoW Tokens with in-game currency (gold). I can then exchange those tokens for balance on my Blizzard account and with that purchase cards for ‘free.’ Right? 
Play for free to see if you like the game, then if you are having fun by playing it, doesn’t matter if you win or lose. I play a lot of games and I suck in all of them.
If you’re planning on being F2P, you won’t be winning. Solo adventures can be fun though.
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Depends on what you mean by “disadvantaged”.
If you just care about winning matches, there are budget decks that work just fine for starting out like Zoolock. Do your dailies, complete events and you can scrape together a stronger deck in time.
If you want to play a wide variety of optimized meta decks, then it’s going to be expensive.
But that’s not saying anything. This is a constant for all long-running CCG’s.
Heya.
As a ftp player of 3 years experience. Get the starter pack as your only exp. it will take a while (couple of years) to build a competitive collection, and manage gold/dust effectively to achieve this. Above all, have fun and learn
you will have no fun at all for years until you get enough cards to make 1 or 2 decks
i’ve been playing for 5 years+ and i can barely keep up with the meta
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Yep. YEARS!
So if you were working on your card collection for a YEAR you gained ground on that YEAR.
Some will say they started a new account (a 2nd one) and crafted a deck from their f2p reward packs and gains and make legend in a month. disbelieve. You can play the game and be satisfied with your position (rank) trouncing in casual after you climb to level 26.
If you dust the wrong card and craft the wrong card you will be set back a month or more depending how much TIME you want to put into the game for that gold. Have funning trying to win 3 games as X if you dont have decent cards for that class.
Could try Mastering Arena. Try to get your gold their vs the Daily Grind.
The good news is that Arena and Solo Adventures don’t require any collection. And I’d say, 80% of the time, tavern brawl doesn’t either. Now that tavern brawl is available the entire week, grinding for gold and completing quests is easier. There is usually stronger classes in the tavern brawl that you can play if you are going for wins. And all classes are winnable when the TB provides you the deck, so quests where you need to play a certain class can be completed with TB as well, most times.
It greatly depends on how important climbing the ladder in your first few months is to you and whether you can enjoy playing classes and deck types that aren’t your preferred class. And how you handle losing. After all, the MMR in casual and TB tries to match you with opponents so that you will only win 50% of the time.
There is no doubt though, that paying for 50+ pack bundles, even once a year, does help with variety of decks and quality of decks.
What he’s trying to tell you is if you want to play HS as an F2P, you must first read a bunch of essays.
Just be patient and don’t disenchant your cards until you get a good grasp of a the game (few month to a year from now).
Once you reached rank 25, you can go to the shop and claim wild solo adventures, this will unlock wild mode.
Overtime, wild format is going to be the cheapest as it requires fewer new cards each expansion to keep decks from your favorite class fresh to play.