Meta

Metagame or meta refers to the behavior of the player population as a whole. The English word meta means beyond/within itself. For example, metaphilosophy is philosophy about philosophy, or 'the investigation of the nature of philosophy.' In a similar fashion, metagame refers to the investigation of the nature of the game population. In the context of Hearthstone, metagame generally refers to the current trends of deck and class choices.

Metagaming is any strategy, action or method used in a game which transcends a prescribed ruleset, uses external factors to affect the game, or goes beyond the supposed limits or environment set by the game. Another definition refers to the game universe outside of the game itself. Metagaming differs from strategy in that metagaming is making decisions based upon out of game knowledge, whereas strategies are decisions made based upon in-game actions and knowledge. In simple terms, it is the use of out-of-game information or resources to affect one's in-game decisions.

Example: In the last month, Jack observed that 50% of his opponents on the ladder are hunters, most of which are of the aggro variety. Jack concludes that in order to climb the ladder faster, he should use a deck that has a favorable hunter matchup.

In this example, the metagame (behavior of player population as a whole) is that Face Hunters are very popular. This knowledge is an external fact that exists outside of the game rules of Hearthstone. By using this knowledge, Jack can improve his win rate by using a deck that beats Face Hunters since he is statistically more likely to queue into them on the ladder more than any other deck; the use of this strategy is called metagaming. Jack is 'gaming the game'.

Since metagaming in itself will affect the metagame over time (Face Hunters will win less often, and thus fewer people will play Face Hunters), new 'flavor of the month' decks evolve and the metagame is said to have changed. In Hearthstone, the metagame is always evolving as the popularity of various decks come and go. It changes extremely quickly whenever new cards are introduced and slows down after players have been given sufficient time to refine their decks. When the metagame barely changes from week to week, the metagame is said to have stabilized, or grown stale.

Traditionally in any card game after the metagame has stabilized, the metagame slowly evolves between the 3 major deck archetypes of Aggro, Control and Combo due to the "scissors paper stone" nature of the deck archetypes.

Metagaming can also be player-specific. In the Kinguin Pro League Hearthstone tournament, Brian Kibler brought multiple decks that contained 2 copies of Kezan Mystic because he observed that Firebat had played Secret-heavy decks over the prior few months in other tournaments. However, Kibler's metagaming was thwarted when Firebat played with decks that contained no Secrets.