Hearthstone (2014)

It's actually quite simple, but since you've only recently begun to walk upright, it may take some time to explain." —Jace Beleren, to Garruk Wildspeaker

It seems fitting to use a quote from Magic: The Gathering as there are so many excellent ones. Hearthstone is MTG lite, but it would take some time to explain the rules, theme, feel, difficulty level and typical opponents. Well, we have time! This game is first and foremost FREE! That’s right, you can do everything in the game if you have…well…some time and patience. That’s a great selling point. People like free things. I’ll dedicate some time to talk about the overall theme. It’s a fantasy based, online, virtual card game produced by the video game powerhouse Blizzard. You can play competitively or casual. You don’t even need to play a real person if you don’t want. Playing the computer (innkeeper) is fun and valuable for tuning a deck. To begin, select a Hero to build a deck around.

Your Hero is basically your avatar, in a sense. They have hero power which you can use once a turn powered by energy. Every card (for the most part) needs energy to play. You start with one energy and gain another each of your turns to a maximum of 10 energy. Cards are either spells or minions. Spells interact with cards or Heroes. There is a wide array of spells. The Mage for instance (Jaina) has a lot of direct damage spells. Which means you can play something like a fireball spell which deals 6 damage to a Hero or minion. If a minion has Health of 6 or less, you can kill it with a fireball. Or you can target your opponent and deal 6 damage to them. Each player starts with 30 health.

Minions are the monsters of the game. You can play, for example a Bloodfen Raptor. This dude costs 2 energy. Attacks for 3 and has Health of 2. He can only take two damage before he dies. Minions need a turn to “wake up” unless they have abilities allowing them to attack right away.

There’s a basic, high level, overview of the game. There’s a lot more to it but it’s all easy enough to learn. Let’s talk about the client a little. Blizzard knocked it out of the park with this game. The menus are easy to navigate, pleasing to the eye, and simple. My favorite parts of the client are: Play, Solo Adventures, and Tavern Brawl.

Play is the menu for matches against online opponents. You can complete daily quests (which gives you gold or packs of cards) through this menu playing either Casual or Ranked. Casual is well….easier going, meaning you won’t always be paired against a challenging opponent. Ranked is for competitive play. You start off at rank 25, which means you’re a beginner. Blizzard did an excellent job with competitive play. You play and reach a certain rank. The next month (or season) you drop back to a new “starting” rank. Basically, from what I understand, you can only go up in rank from the Chicken 25 level.

Let’s talk about gold a bit. Gold is what fuels the game. You can complete solo adventures with 700 gold, which actually doesn’t take too long to save up, if you play frequently. Solo adventures are pretty easy, fun, and rewarding as you always get awesome cards. There are different rarities of cards as well. Common, rare, epic and legendary. Legendaries do not show up too often in packs, but you can win them in solo adventures. I have pulled two legendaries in packs in my two years of Hearthstone, but there are ways to get packs without “buying” them. If you feel like spending actual money on the game you can complete solo adventures quicker and gain cards sooner, but Blizzard does not reward the person who spends their hard earned cash any more than the bum, like me, who goes for the free ride. There are many ways to gain gold. I will save that for those who are interested. You can message me, or comment on this review. Tavern Brawl is a great way to score a pack or other prizes. It’s usually a pack though. The rules change every week for TB and you can either play the innkeeper or a real opponent. In addition to Play, Solo Adventure, and Tavern Brawl, you can challenge a friend. Most of the time you cannot earn gold through this Play option. But you can chat with your buddy while playing a game. Also you can spectate a friend’s game. Sometimes you can earn gold this way. With all that praise, this must be a perfect game…right? Well. I don’t think any game is perfect. I have two gripes.

1. The game is a little childish. Banter between the AI and your hero is pretty lame. I can picture an eight-year-old loving it. But I’m in my mid thirties, so…..it’s kinda dumb.
2. The Arena, is not a good use of gold in my opinion. It’s like drafting in Magic: The Gathering. For those not familiar, you choose cards from a random pool and build a deck. The Arena is a crappy version of MTG drafting. You must play all cards you take, building a theme deck is next to impossible because you are only shown three cards at a time, it costs 150 gold. I played a few times and had inconsistent results. Some Arena runs I had 4 wins, then lost the next 3 games. Others I got swept 0-3. Either way I couldn’t figure it out and just rather spend my gold on solo adventures which is a lot more rewarding and fun. In conclusion, there is a lot to love about this game. You can make friends with people all over the world, get your MTG fix, and game without dropping any cash. The game is actually quite simple and loads of fun!