Playing Hearthstone

Hearthstone TCGHeartstone is Blizzard’s digital card game and foray into the Free to Play market.

I was lucky enough to randomly receive a beta invite, and I’ve been playing for many hours over the last week or so.

Hearthstone has two great things going for it:

  1. Extremely high production quality
  2. Warcraft

In typical Blizzard fashion, Hearthstone runs flawlessly, looks great, and wins over the imagination with awe-inspiring attention to detail in everything from the cards to field of play.  Appealing to the WoW fanboys and live streamers doesn’t hurt, either.

The game itself is fun.  Although a somewhat watered down version of Magic the Gathering, there’s enough depth to develop a deck and deploy a strategy.  Games are very quick, and all strategies tend to revolve around overwhelming your opponent with creatures.

Selling booster packs will make Blizzard a gazillion dollars.  Blizzard definitely captured the feel of opening a pack and discovering the cards by having players place the booster pack on the table and turn over the 5 cards you get one at a time.  You read that right: 5 cards.

Paying for booster packs will give an enormous advantage, exactly like it does in every TCG.  Making Hearthstone your hobby will be expensive, but if you’re a TCG junkie this one is well worth the investment.

  • What is the current price for the booster packs? I know that it is beta and will most likely change.

  • Roughly, 1.5$ or cheaper if you buy more packs at once.

    If you’re going to buy just a pack or two I’d say you pay to enter the arena instead. You get a pack that way in the end with chances to get more the more games you win in the arena. 2$ entry fee.

  • I’m hooked already. I’m a Hearthstone Junkie. I need rehab. When I first saw it I did not care if I was in beta or not. Now I am glad I am. I wish I had an option to talk with my enemy to talk strategy, trash or tell them how well they played their cards. Talking in bubble is something but just not enough. Blizzard hit a homerun.

  • It seems to be Hearthstone everywhere at the moment. Everwhere except my own PC that is 🙁

  • Hearthstone is not a watered down MTG. It’s WoWTCG-lite, the game which Blizzard officially killed last week (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/10734217/World_of_Warcraft_Trading_Card_Game_-8_23_2013) after Hearthstones first week of beta.

    Blizzard reused all the art and the mechanics from WoWTCG. The games play very similarly especially creature combat, which makes as a former WoWTCG player is obviously enjoyable. However, without a competitive tournament or trading, it doesn’t really make up for it in my mind.