Hearthstone is a virtual collectible card game with several game modes and a warm, comfy tavern theme. If you have your volume on, you’ll find yourself greeted as the main menu appears.
Your first option is traditional Hearthstone. In this, you pick one of the eleven character classes – each with a signature ability – to build a 30-card deck for, then compete one-on-one with another player. The first player starts with three cards in hand, the second starts with four, and they each get one opportunity to reshuffle some back into their deck and draw replacements. This is most often useful when the card costs a high amount of Mana, because players have one Mana on their first turn, two on their second, three on their third, etc. up to ten. Starting with an 8-cost card, then, isn’t immediately useful. The second player also gets The Coin, a free card which grants them one extra Mana Crystal on the turn that it’s played.
The goal of the game is fairly simple: each Hero starts with 30 Health, and through the use of minions, spells, and weapons (all played by spending Mana*), you’re trying to knock the other Hero’s Health to or below 0 before they can do the same to you. You start your turn by drawing a card, and the text on each explains its abilities. There’s also bolded text, which you can hover over for the definition; for example, Windfury means a character may attack twice each turn, and Taunt means enemies must defeat your Taunt minions before they can attack any of your other characters. Each minion has Attack and Health stats. There’s also a time limit, to each turn, but also to the game: once your deck runs out of cards, each time you should draw deals you an increasing amount of Fatigue damage instead.
Alongside all this, there are several maps (randomly chosen from), each of which has interactive features! They give the game that little bit of extra character I adore. Strategy? Yes. Firing a catapult while you wait for your opponent to take their turn? Also yes!
On the subject of waiting, this post turned out extremely long, so I’ve split it into three parts. For my commentary on the next game mode, Battlegrounds, come back next week!
*Except for the rare cards that cost Health instead.
