Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft Closed Beta review

My brother has gotten himself a game key for Blizzard's new card-based and warcraft-based game, Hearthstone and considering that he's a 'super busy' student, I've had the honour of getting the key from him... lol. 

It was a pretty good game - quite challenging and then there's the element of luck [getting a good hand of cards. The deck you can edit but not the cards you're dealed with], especially I get to see plenty of warcraft characters and lore incorporated into the game, though, being the kind of gamer that I am, I don't really like this sort of games (collecting cards? Booooring xD). Nevertheless, it had occupied half a day of my time.

The developers have a sense of humour lol.

The gameplay is very well developed IMHO but it does rely quite a lot on luck. I think this is the same for all card-based game - if you're dealed a good hand, you have a higher chance of winning; and vice versa. It's mainly a multiplayer game - you play PvP with other players with your card deck or by arena mode where the deck given to you is random - but there is also a single player part where you have to defeat each class's heros to gain that particular class's set of special skills cards.

Find a strategy that suit your style of play.  

In terms of general strategy, I would say that, 

• firstly, you'll need to annihilate the opponents's minions as soon as possible; 
• secondly, ensure that ALL the cards in your deck have extra powers/skills (like can summon minion/charge/able to taunt/able to heal) - I, in particular, like cards that can summon minions, can freeze and have taunt; 
• thirdly, make sure your deck have plenty of tanks (cards with characters that can taunt) to negate the damage on your main hero/heroin - trust me, they help A LOT!; 
• lastly, plan ahead with the mana crystals. Try to use as much of them as possible and leave none to waste - however, sometimes, it's best to avoid attacking using your tank since he's there for a reason, that is to take the damage. So, it's sometimes best to just leave that card alone and in the next round, let the opponent destroy it - let them waste their dps's turn instead. :) 

What about healer cards you may think. Well, for me, most of the time, I don't really need them since they can only heal once (when they are played onto the board) and they heal very little. Oh and also, you should use your class's unique spell - they do help a lot. Especially when you ran out of cards to use. 

Most of the time, different boards will be used for different class (also depending the faction of the class that you're up against). 

Here's another type of board :)

Like I've said, what makes this game interesting is the luck element. You'll never know which cards you may be dealed. Even though you may have the best deck in the whole world, the cards that you get may not be favourable to you. For arena, it'll even more challenging as you won't even get to use your own deck - you'll get a random deck lol.

From the various features in the game that I've noticed, I believe this will be a Free-to-Play (F2P) game with some/ a lot (from the other reviews that I've read) Pay-to-Win (P2W) features... lol. I believe this is the first step taken by Blizzard to test out the F2P waters and who knows? Perhaps one day WoW will  become F2P, like Rift did. By then, I'll definitely play retail WoW (I've played in private servers and they all have the Donate/Vote (endlessly)-to-Win sort of features lol.. not that I mind - I just avoid the donors in PvP or get a whole group of people to gang up on him :P).

Anyway, it's a game worth trying out if it is really released as F2P later, but for non-card-based gamers, it might not appeal to them as much as... let's say Rift or WoW :P