Fireside Card Back Requirements

Blizzard introduced Fireside Gatherings for Hearthstone along with a card back reward. There are people who are keen on getting the card back, but are either unable, or unwilling to join a Fireside Gathering. According to Blizzard, there are 3 criteria to obtaining the card back:

1) 3 people on the same subnet
2) 3 matches played against another player on the same subnet
3) played against friends or players near me

Besides these criteria, some other requirements I've heard are having to unlock all heroes, having to win against the expert decks, having to play your free arena run and so on. So I decided to try and get my card back on own and test out these ideas even though some people probably already have the answers.

I set up 3 accounts:
1) my main on a desktop - all heroes unlocked, all expert decks beat, arena played, lvl 18
2) on a laptop - all heroes unlocked and that's all
3) on an ipad 2 - only tutorial completed and so only has the mage hero

3 games were played out fully between accounts 1 and 2, without conceding and both accounts got the card back. 3 more games were played out fully between accounts 2 and 3, again, not conceding and account 3 got the card back as well. Needless to say, all 3 accounts were logged on throughout (the ipad was set to not turn off the screen).

And so we conclude, only completing the tutorial is required to get the card back besides the criteria Blizzard announced, that is (I'm not sure if you can play against a friend without clearing the tutorial but if it's possible, maybe just starting an account is fine?).

There are still a lot of little things about this game that might confuse or amuse a new player. It does make for an interesting experience though so if you happen to have the tiniest interest in collectible card games in the vein of Magic: The Gathering, you might want to give it a go.

Just to share a fun game I had today.it I played a warlock against a paladin. He had a large minion out which I promptly played Corruption on, which basically marks a minion for destruction at the end of his turn. Knowing his minion will die when he ends his turn, he played a Faceless Manipulator and makes a copy of it (the Faceless transform into another copy of any minion you target) and proceeds to buff up the copy. I was about to tell him 'well played' when he hit end turn and both copies of the minion die after which he promptly left the game. Turns out the Faceless Manipulator copies everything, even buffs and enchantments. It was a funny experience and I'm glad I learnt it by seeing it happen to my opponent and not having it happen to me.