Approachable, Fun, & Engaging
For the longest time, I've loved card games. I enjoy the constant evolving strategy, trading, player interaction, and competitiveness that makes victory all the sweeter after toiling for endless hours to collect cards, perfect your deck, and see the fruits of your labor trash your opponent in action. If you weren't training privately with buddies at a friends house, you had to trot down to the local comic / cards store to test your whits against the locals. If you were lucky, the shop near you had a big enough playing space that allowed for scheduled tournaments where players could compete for cards, league rank, or even money if you're into playing for keeps.
What's always kept me away from card games though is the stigma and problems that have been associated with my past experiences playing games like Magic: The Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh. At times, the rules are so deep, convoluted, and contradicting that after so many box sets / seasons have been released, you need a professional judge to manage any sanctioned match or tournament. In these situations, a new player or player with a more passive personality would often fall victim to the "Assertive Jackass" of the moment that believes their interpretation of the rules is always right and anything that contradicts their advantage gained from cheating is obviously wrong. If you've ever played Magic: The Gathering and have played with or against a blue deck, you know exactly what I mean.
The bottom line is that with most of these game shop's closing or consolidating, people just don't gather face-to-face like they used anymore to in order to play card games. Buying the packs are very expensive. Trading cards can be a hassle if you're not a subject matter expert, and building themed decks can be costly if you don't have enough opponents to test deck strategies before and after you purchase and construct custom decks. We're now in an age that unless you play online with a computer neutrally calculating all the rules in the game, there can never be true full accuracy in the application of the rules because people can make mistakes and vary in interpretations. The last piece that makes a good card game compelling is the universal appeal, approachability, and reasonable learning curve for new players. If things seem too complicated and intimidating to learn in terms of rules and strategy, players will never start playing to begin with. There needs to be a perfect balance between starting off, having fun, learning, and participating at a price that anyone can afford. In this case, Blizzard's free-to-play online card game Hearthstone appears to deliver on most fronts.
What Is Hearthstone?
Hearthstone is a combination of heroes, villains, minions, spells, abilities, tactics and lore rooted in the universe of the still popular MMORPG - World of Warcraft. Each player picks one of 9 hero classes such as: Warrior, Priest, Shaman, Rogue, Warlock, Paladin, Druid, Mage, and Hunter. Each player starts off with 30HP, and whoever can damage the other person's life to zero first wins the match.
Gameplay Modes:
For first time players starting out, it's strongly recommended that you pick a hero class and use practice mode. Each time a player completes a match against the computer in practice mode, they gain experience. Gain enough experience, and your character will level up. For the first 10 levels, players will unlock class specific cards that are necessary in order to be competitive against other players. Earning these cards are both necessary and free, but you need to put in about an hour for each class if you want to unlock all the basic cards.
(Tip: If you beat every character class on normal in practice mode, you'll unlock expert practice mode opponents and earn gold coins to buy cards.)
Once you've completed practice mode with a class, you're ready to start earning gold by competing against other players in casual and ranked mode.
How casual mode works is that you'll be randomly matched against any active opponent regardless of skill level to test your deck and skills. Every time you win a cumulative total of 3 matches, you'll earn 10 gold. For every 100 gold earned, you can be a 5-pack deck of virtually cards without having to spend cash.
In ranked mode, you start off at rank 25 at the beginning of each season. Normally, you're pitted against an opponent equal to your rank or +/- one rank. The goal is to get ranked first, and then you'll graduate to the next tier of ranks. Each time a match is won, you'll gain a star chip. Win several matches in a row, and you'll get a star chip bonus. If you lose a match, you normally lose 1 star chip. However, for the first tier of ranks, you cannot lose star chips for losing matches until you hit at least rank 20, and you're not allowed to fall below rank 20. Just like casual mode, if you win a cumulative total of 3 matches, you'll get 10 gold. There's also an opportunity to win more gold as you progress and win so many matches overall in either casual or ranked mode.
The last mode in the beta as of now is the Arena. The Arena is a very cool idea that combines on-the-fly deck building savvy found in booster tournaments mixed with random elements, and is further randomized by limiting players options to pick a character class. Normally, to enter the arena, a player has to play 150 gold. The first time you play, the game lets you play for free, so you understand the rules before you pay to play with your hard earned virtual currency.
How arena works is this. The computer randomly generates 3 of 9 character classes, and you pick one of those 3. Then you get a choice to pick one of 3 cards. Then, you keep selecting one card at a time until you have a deck totaling 30 cards. You are then randomly pitted against other players that are thrown into the same situation. Maybe one of you is playing a class you're good at. Maybe both of you are playing a class neither of you know at all. That's what makes it fun.
Before starting your first match, you have a level 1 treasure key. If you keep winning matches, your key will continuously be upgraded to a max level of 10. The better the key, the higher the chance to have to win gold in bulk, packs of cards (valued at 100g each), or other items. You're allowed to fight in as many matches as you want in order to build up your key until you lose a total of 3 matches. Once you've lost 3 matches or retire early, your key is automatically used to open the treasure chest, so you can loot your spoils.
Basic Rules:
The ability to play cards is based on a numeric value associated with mana crystals. At the beginning of the match, each player starts off with one. Instead of having to worry about playing mana cards to get mana like other games, each player automatically acquires 1 mana crystal each time on their next turn. This allows the player to play higher cost cards or cast a higher volume of smaller cost cards. Depending on the character class, there are strategic cards in the game that boost mana crystal gains, temporary mana crystal gains, and even one-time benefits in exchange for temporary setbacks for the following turn. In short, there is a risk / reward system built into mana crystal management, the cost that affects play style, and how you construct your decks.
Minion cards can be identified by having an attack number and health number at the bottom of the card. Depending on mana crystal cost, the numbers can vary greatly. Many of the minion cards will have added abilities that either enhance your hero, enhance said card, or support other cards already in play. There's a lot of different strategies available to manipulate / destroy characters in play, do direct damage, limit mobility, remove abilities, add abilities, affect stats, quick kill, return to hand, force to attack first, and many more.
Spell cards unique to each character class are also available to produce many of the same results found in character cards.
The other type of card played on the field is referred to as "Secret" cards. When played, these cards show up as a chip counter with a question mark over your character that serve as a type of face down trap card similar to Yu-Gi-Oh. Once the condition of the card has been met, it will trigger automatically, and the player doesn't have to worry about being spammed every turn about whether or not they want the secret to be used. The effects of these cards can range from adding armor to defend your character to direct damage, minion damage, minion manipulation, copying a summoned minion, healing, stat changes, and much more.
With all of these different types of cards to play, there's quite a few strategies you can incorporate as a player. Once you start to unlock more "All Classes" types of minions and support cards, your strategy options really start to open up. Cards are also color coded by rarity, so you know the importance of what you have. Non-color cards are class specific. White gem cards are commons. Blue are rares. Purples are epics, and orange are Legendary just like the gear you would find in World of Warcraft. Only by obtaining gold to buy packs of cards can you get more cards.
Grind to Win / Pay to Win?
In any free-to-play game, this question is the usually the deal breaker. In short, people will ask if it's possible to win and be competitive without spending money in exchange for spending more time. The answer in this case is yes. Here's why:
Each 5-card pack bought with virtual currency or money is the same. The player has the chance to get at least one rare or better card per back. Sometimes, I've seen up to 2 rares or better drop in one pack. You also have to remember that a high volume of the cards are class specific, and the rest of the cards fall into the "All Classes" category. This means that just because you spend a lot of money, it doesn't necessarily mean that you'll max out and collect all cards available needed to play your favorite class the way you want. Even if you did get all the epics and legendary cards in the world, the rarer cards also have a much higher casting cost, so if you play someone with a fast damage or good counter-minion deck, it's possible to beat anyone before their deck gets warmed up in a match.
Quest System / Earning Gold Daily:
To offset the grind for gold coins, Blizzard has instituted a quest system that allows players to earn gold in 40 coin chunks. Similar to daily questions in World of Warcraft, a new quest will be added to the players quest log per day. The player can save up to 3 of these quests, so this means that if you log in at once every 3 days, you can complete all your quests and max out your free gold gains in the fastest time with minimal grinding. Examples of quests could be to just win a few matches with any character class or class specific victories. Other examples are: summoning so many cards of a certain mana crystal value, doing so many points of damage, killing so many of an opponents minions, etc.
The quest system gives players just enough of a risk / reward system that gives players the motivation to get new cards for free every 1-2 days just from playing a few matches. Without excessive grinding, a player could take 3 days off, complete all the quests in one day, and then have about just enough gold needed to compete in an arena match if they wanted to.
Crafting, Disenchanting, & Offsetting Pay to Win Even Further:
To offset the grind and need for collecting cards, Blizzard has a crafting system in place that allows you to hand pick which cards you can destroy in order to acquire arcane dust resources. This dust can then be used to pick and choose which cards you specifically want to buy while selecting from the entire library of cards in existence at any time! Epics and legendary cards are exceedingly expensive to buy this way, so unless you have equivalent levels of cards to destroy, it'll be very difficult to gain enough arcane dust to buy what you want.
Fortunately, this destroy / buy system is exactly what a new player can use to build a really strong deck by picking out most of the common cards and some rares needed to be immediately competitive. I strongly recommend picking 1-3 classes that you like. Then, you can go through your card library in crafting mode to destroy any rare or higher class cards to get a bulk of arcane dust. Use this dust to load up on the spells and minions you need to suit your play style.
Also, it's critically important to know that no person can use more than 2 of any card in their deck. Fortunately, Blizzard has put in a smart disenchant system that allows you to auto-disenchant any excessive cards you've acquired over 2 for extra arcane dust. Fortunately, this system doesn't allows you to accidentally destroy the 2 card max that you would at least want to keep.
Absence of Trading - Necessity or Limitation?
A lot of people supposedly decry Hearthstone for not having a trading system, but I think it was a smart move for Blizzard. The purpose of building a card game is to get players to focus on having fun playing the game minus all the other BS. If trading had been allowed, it would have to be policed. People would be ripping each other off in trades. Spammers would be begging for free cards / hurling obscenities / selling virtual merchandise, and the community would have degenerated into yet another greed-based cluster ^*%&. Whether or not Blizzard has plans to implement this feature in some limited capacity in the future is unknown. At this time, they seem to be strictly focused on ironing out bugs and solidifying game play mechanics as they should be.
That's Nice, But Is It Fun?
The short answer is yes. The mechanics are solid. The game has room for growth. There's plenty of strategies that can be implemented, but not to the extent of a Magic: The Gathering....yet. Personally, I've cumulatively leveled my characters a total of 145 times. I've played a few hundred matches, collected many cards, and played for at least 60+ hours without spending a dime. I've failed to find a fraction of enjoyment out of many other games I've spent $60 on at retail, and this game is free. Take that however you want.
Room for Improvement:
Although Hearthstone is a great game, it's still far from perfect. The main reason for this is a lack of play modes. Personally, I would love for them to use the arena / booster pack / random deck pic system in a one-on-one random matches or in a one game elimination 8-man tournament mode. I'd like to see best of 3 or 5 match play. I'd like to see basic tournament variations that just allow people to interact in larger groups in general. At the moment, there isn't a way to interact with your opponents other than using a series of canned sayings from your character. I get that Blizzard doesn't want people to get offended or scared away, but if there's zero interaction outside of the match itself, it's difficult to find motivation to play when you can't make friends or establish worthy rivalries.
Overall:
Hearthstone is an excellent free-to-play card game out there with enough solid fundamentals to support engaging strategic game play. Pay to Win has been minimized and balanced by the ability of free-to-play players to earn rewards, complete quests for free currency, recycle unwanted cards, and build competitive decks with a low barrier of entry in terms of time. The game mode options are limited, and the social aspect is nearly non-existent. However, if you're looking for a good card game to dive into for the first time, I strongly believe that at the worst you'll be pleasantly surprised and entertained.
Thank you for reading my review! Please feel free to weigh in with your thoughts and opinions in the comment section below.
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