World of Warcraft: Hearthstone is a card game that I was going to pass over because of all of the internet claims that it was too similar to Magic. I love TCGs, in fact I spend a significant amount of free time with card games, but I always get a little suspicious of systems that borrow too much from Magic The Gathering. Magic is perfect, and the standard by which others are measured, so I'm always skeptical when a new system tries to do it better.
Hearthstone is not Magic. It has found some rare system all it's own, and I am hopelessly addicted. You pick a class, Priest, Druid, Warrior, etc each with their own type of deck. Cards cost mana, ranging from 1 to 10, and on your first turn you have only a single mana to spend. Every turn your mana pool increases by 1. This is the cleverness behind Hearthstone, you can do more each turn as your mana grows, ensuring that no match plays too long. Have you ever been trapped in a Magic duel that lasts an hour? By the time your mana pool in Hearthstone reaches 10, you are throwing out game-ending creatures and trying to survive your opponent doing the same. At that level, with that much mana at the players' disposal, matches end quickly, and chaotically.
Hearthstone is brilliant, unique, and FREE. You can spend real money to unlock all of the single player quests immediately, allowing you to battle to unlock special cards sooner, but all of that can be done for free too, just by painstakingly earning coins to spend instead. Of course, my rule of thumb is to pay the free game if you like it. Heartstone is great, and even better than all of the positives that I mentioned, the game is narrated by a drunk dwarf! What could be more up my alley?
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