Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft (based on lore from the Warcraft series) is an electronic trading card game from Blizzard Entertainment (the makers of StarCraft, Diablo, World of Warcraft, and more). The best way I could describe Hearthstone in a few short words would be Cards with RPG rules. Now, I know that may sound vague to many of you but this is the type of game I’ve been waiting years to see done in such an intuitive way. Blizzard has streamlined the entire game to feel natural to any player regardless of background experience, casual, hardcore, or various pre-existing preferences.

Players deploy a useful set of commands that are easy to access and flow fluidly throughout each battle. Communication has also become a normalcy in Blizzard games with full Battle.net support in addition to Raptr + Steam third party integration possible (via self-monitoring gameplay on these desktop applications / services). At the click of a mouse button players can greet each other with congratulations or mildly entertaining faux hostility, but the amount of times per moment players can do this has been limited to prevent from speech spamming. Players can also “Squelch” their opponents, effectively muting their selected catchphrases.

The design of the backgrounds and the art direction are done very well and there are even interactive objects built into each map. Each time you play, you select one of the Custom Decks of 30 cards that you’ll prepare as the game progresses. A Hero is part of each of these and is essentially its own class as well. For example Thrall who is Shaman class and is known for his past triumph of going from slave to Warchief of the Horde causing him to become an Azeroth legend.

Hero characters aren’t just for show or class / play-style though, they are also active units which can be equipped with weapons. The Doomhammer being one of the weapon cards that players can eventually acquire for Thrall being an example; but there are also weapons early on as well. If the Hero loses all of its health, the player is dead and has lost the match to their opponent. Some minion units can be placed on the battlefield and given ‘Taunt’ which essentially makes them bodyguards to the Hero unit.

No player will be allowed to attack the Hero head on until all ‘Taunt’ enabled players are eliminated, other than a few exceptions such as magic spells directly meant for the Hero character. Each Hero will also get their own specific class-based cards that aren’t available to other Heroes, and at the same time players can’t unlock a Hero until they’ve beaten one of its kind. There are also class-neutral cards which can be put into the Custom Decks players create alongside more rare and / or exclusive class-based cards.

At the start of each match players start off with just 1 Mana Crystal. Each card players use requires a different amount of Mana Crystals depending on how powerful it is. For example, players can rush an opponent with a bunch of low level cards that cost 1 or 2 Mana Crystals or they can have high level cards that use up 4 or 5 Mana Crystals and rare or very powerful cards will take up even more. Round Two starts with each player having 2 Mana Crystals each, Round Three starts with 3 Mana Crystals, and so on. So this means there is an early game / late game segment segregation to some extent.

There are also moves that can be made sometimes which require 0 Mana Crystals. Some cards are not units but instead buffs, spells, or other special functions and these typically range from 0 – 3 although there are some of these cards in pretty much every range. Players can equip weapons if they have the right cards / class as well, this will typically take 0 – 4 Mana Crystals but also varies based on the card / weapon at hand.

Some strategies that emerge which can be interesting include transforming enemy characters into harmless ones, attacking a Hero head-on with low level / early game units to get a quick win, or fortifying with high level / late game units and tons of buffs with great defense decisions on the fly. There are still more and more players joining this game every day. Starting a match only takes between 0 – 17 seconds on average and rarely goes over 60 seconds before you’re in a new match. Matches tend to last between 15 minutes and 25 minutes on average but can sometimes occasionally come in quicker or drag on longer.

Essentially players are putting cards on the board and can level them up with abilities and increased damage / health as the match goes on (granted, unless they are killed in action). In addition to the mechanics described above, players can also put up structures such as ‘Totems’ and there are some surprise abilities that are not revealed until specific events occur. For example, one secret ability interrupts a player attempting to attack your Hero and adds Armor to your Hero first, protecting them from some or all of the damage. This is to be used as a card at some point and the opponent will only know that a secret ability has been activated – they will not know which kind it was until the event trigger occurs.

In addition to playing online with gamers in the Casual matchmaking servers, players can also jump into a Ranked mode or go offline for Practice with artificial intelligence. There’s also an Arena which allows players to build decks based off of any card in the entire game. This requires in-game gold though which can also be spent on buying packs of cards. Buying a pack of cards on Hearthstone is a great experience. 5 cards are added to players database and can be placed into custom decks immediately afterwards. Best of all, players get seemingly endless opportunities to continue earning new packs of cards just by playing the game. Those who want to have cards quicker can also pay real life money to get them.

All together this game is simply one of the must fun and addictive card games I’ve ever played, something that the RPG community needed, and impressively polished as expected from a Blizzard Entertainment game. The incredible artwork on each card really gives life to each unit players have a chance at controlling from their deck. There is some serious balance to the point that even if players don’t have many “good cards” they can still pull off the impossible with great strategies if their opponent isn’t concentrating hard enough.

Little conveniences like Alt + Print Screen automatically generating screen shots on the desktop and the game’s cards using words that are quick and easy to understand making the magic and abilities system very natural feeling. If you haven’t yet, you need to give this game a play. Keep your eyes out for a Review when the final build has released. Currently this title is in an Open Beta stage so click the link below to play for free right now.

Play Hearthstone: Heroes Of Warcraft