By Aimilios Leftheriotis

Starting

Hearthstone: “Heroes of Warcraft” is a free-to-play, collectible card game (CCG). It entered the close beta state in August 2013 and the open beta state in January 2014.

“Hearthstone” is a game made by Blizzard, a gaming company which is famous for their well-known games “World of Warcraft”, “Diablo” and “Starcraft”.

How to play

Each game of “Hearthstone” is a 1v1 battle between 2 people or even between a person and a computer programme.  “Hearthstone” is a turn-based game where each player in their turn can play spells, use their hero power, play weapons or summon minions. The purpose of the game is to deal a total of 30-damage to the opponent hero and win the game this way.

Cards and Heroes

Cards are the main substance of “Hearthstone”, representing the abilities, characters and effects which each player is able to make use of, during the match. Each player has a deck which has strictly 30 cards. All the cards are based on characters and spells of the game “World of Warcraft”. Each player can choose one between 9 different Heroes, while each hero has different cards to choose and a unique hero power.

Playmodes

3 main game modes are available to play in “Hearthstone”.

• In Practice mode, players can play against a selection of computer opponents. Players can learn the basics of the game against “basic” opponents that only use basic cards in their decks, or can play against “expert” opponents that use a larger pool of cards.
• Play mode matches players against other human players of similar skill, in random matches. Players can choose to play Casual “friendly” games, or take part in Ranked play, earning special medals to reflect their skill and standing within the community. Ranked play features a 26-tier rank system, with wins allowing the player to progress to higher ranks, and losses causing them to descend in rank. The highest rank is called Legend.
• Arena mode, which costs in-game earned gold or money to play, has the player drafting a deck by choosing between 3 cards until they have picked 30. Players then use their drafted deck to do battle in a series of games against other Arena players. Each Arena run lasts until the player has reached three losses or twelve wins, at which point they are granted a number of rewards determined by the total number of games won. While constructed decks have limits on the number of copies of the same card, Arena decks have no such limits.