First Impressions of Hearthstone

Seemingly in response to by victory over Garrosh Hellscream, I received my beta invite for Hearthstone today. I've played a fair amount of it. The overall impression I'm getting is that it's a lot of fun.

When I was very young, back in the mid 90's, I started playing Magic: The Gathering, which is generally considered the granddaddy of all collectable card games. I played this pretty much from third through sixth grade, but I later got into it in the online version in college.

Hearthstone certainly owes a lot to Magic in terms of overall design. You have an opponent you're trying to reduce to zero health, and you generally use an assortment of spells and minions to accomplish this.

Resources are simplified, as you'll simply get one additional mana crystal per turn, capping out, I believe, at 10. Each turn, you can use these crystals to play your cards or use your hero ability.

Your hero ability is basically something you can keep using once per turn if you have spare mana. The games I've played generally devolve into draw-then-play sorts of turns, so having this extra thing to do is quite nice. I suspect that strategically, card-advantage will play a big role in Hearthstone just as it does in Magic. I've loaded up my own Mage deck with tons of card-drawing to keep my options open.

The various classes are almost a substitute for the different colors of Magic. Each class has its own style, and while I'm sure people will come up with new ideas and strategies as time goes on, the kind of things you tend to get with each class create a recognizable pattern. For instance, Mages have tons of board-sweeping abilities and big bursts of damage, while Paladins have a lot of buff-cards that make your own minions more powerful.

Gameplay is fairly simple because there's not really any simultaneous action. You only play cards on your own turn. There's also basically nothing that goes out onto the playing field other than creatures, though sometimes these creatures have interesting effects. For instance, there's a "Raid Leader" card that will boost the attack power of all your other minions by one, or there are "battlecry" effects, where a creature will do something when they come into play, as well as being there to help you out.

Damage done to minions will persist indefinitely, so you can whittle down some of the tougher creatures with a bunch of attacks by weaker creatures. Generally, you can have your minions (and I realize I'm jumping back and forth between "minion" and "creature" here, as I'm not sure what the official term is) attack any other creature or the enemy hero. However, if there is an enemy creature with "taunt," it means you will have to attack that creature and not the others. If there are multiple taunt creatures, you get to choose between them.

You'll be able to play against pretty decent AI opponents, and if you really hate any kind of PvP gameplay, that's an option that's open for you. However, the good news for us PvP-phobes is that this is the least in-your-face kind of PvP there is. There's no chat window for someone to hurl slurs at you. Instead, you can simply use various emotes that your character can make. While I'm sure there will still be some jerks who will intentionally play as slowly as possible, overall I think this could be a pretty healthy environment, thanks to the careful sterilization of your interactions.

Lastly, yes, this is Free to Play, with all the hidden weirdness that comes with it, but really, it would be hard to conceive of a CCG that wasn't structured that way in the first place. You actually get a pretty decent selection of basic cards to begin with, and by leveling up your various heroes, you'll gain access to more of their class-specific cards. As I understand it, you can disenchant your unwanted cards to create materials to make specific ones, which actually means rare-hunting might be less of a pain here than it is in other CCGs. On the other hand, I expect that the best cards will require a very high material cost.

You will be able to earn gold coins by doing various things, like quests that pop up (I'm currently working on "Do 100 damage to enemy heroes," which should require four or five games.) I don't know if there will be some kind of curve that makes this less and less rewarding as time goes on, but my hope is that if you're ok with just getting one new pack after an evening of play, you'll be able to do so without spending cash.

Overall, I think this should prove to be a fun little side-game. It also has huge potential for depth. While it doesn't have the fundamental mechanical complexity of Magic (no Lands, no Artifact, Enchantments, Instants, or different colors,) it's got plenty of lore to draw from, and plenty of room to expand. I'd love to see Death Knight and Monk decks introduced (as well as any other new classes that might come to WoW.)