After a long time in it’s beta stage, Blizzard has finally released it’s new online card game Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft.

Hearthstone is a free online strategy based card game that’s easy to learn and addictive to play.  The game uses elements from Blizzard’s best-selling game, World of Warcraft, to provide fun flavor.  Hearthstone is very similar to most card games; games are between two opponents each with one Hero with 30 hit points and a 30 card deck.  Players get to build their own deck from cards and one of nine heroes they can unlock in the game.  Each hero resembles a class from the game World of Warcraft, such as, Rogue, Warrior, Priest, Paladin, Warlock, Hunter, Druid, Shaman, and Mage, with each hero having their own special ability.

Games are fast paced and are usually over in 10 minutes.  Hearthstone is unique in that players can have their minions or creatures the player spawns, and attack the enemy hero directly even if the opponent has minions on the battlefield.  There are certain minions that have a special ability, taunt, which forces enemy minions to target that specific one before attacking any others.  Just those two features allows for the game to have a very flexible play style where decks that may put a lot of minions out will no longer have an advantage over a deck that has one minion out with taunt; forcing the minion heavy player to try and get rid of the one minions while the player with one minion is free to attack the other player directly.

Overall Hearthstone is a very fun and competitive game.  It has a very flexible style of play that caters to the large World of Warcraft and Starcraft community that Blizzard has created.  Players rely on luck of the draw and multiple strategies in a deck in order to succeed, and Blizzard has definitely made this game fun for the casual or hardcore player.