Oh god. Oh. God. I realized that by playing HearthStone and giving its backstory I inedvertently now have to give the backstory of ALL OF WARCRAFT! Well crap, that blows. Wait. No, I'm lazy here's the wiki: http://wowpedia.org/Portal:Warcraft_universe Have fun with that.
I will say when reading up on WoW I read and read for hours and that was only Pandaria. This game and all of Blizzards works have one thing in common and that is that they have insane amounts of lore. And I don't mean that just each character has his or her own page or ten of lore specifiaclly to them. I mean that the bush you pass at this one town that you never even notice once has more backstory and lore than every Call of Duty game that will ever be made. Of course that was an exaggeration but still, tons and tons of lore. It makes you understand why WoW players get mad when someone messes it up. This may seem like ramblings, and well it might be, but it is also very much reflected in HearthStone. The game is a Magic the Gathering style card game that tries to simplify some quite complicated systems and add its own unique ones. But for the simple reason that every card is a character or ability from WoW just goes to show how much effort went into this universe. I mean they could add as many cards as MtG and they might still have characters to make into new ones. Which means that this game can actually thrive and continue as a game without "running the well dry" It also means that each card reacts and acts like the character or ability would, meaning that in a slight way WoW players and lore fans can build decks or play with combos that use abilities from WoW to win. But because it is still a strategic card game, people who play MtG can transfer and use tactics that they learned. This makes the game very interesting to play.
While I've talked about the cards and scratched the surface of playing, I need to still give beginner strategies and the jost of how. Oh, grab something to eat, this'll take a while. (By the way the game plays similar to Magic so I will relate the two or at least try) The basics of the game in the lore of WoW is that two characters from WoW, sit down to have a friendly game of cards. Both players health bars are the characters life, and both characters have a deck and a certain number of cards in it. Each special class or character also has their own ability, it costs mana and can usually do some mediocre ability that can be interweaved with decks for powerful combos. Back to the basics, however is that one player can win by either taking the opponents health to zero, killing them doing so, or making the other character not have enough cards to draw, or one player can surrender to the other, still counting as a victory. The only other thing you have without cards is your mana, which I mentioned earlier. You start from one and gain one extra crystal each turn, for a soft cap of ten. Every card in the game has a mana value and costs that many to summon or use. And those are the basics. I will explain actual tactics but I have to start with the cards before tactics can be explained properly. There are four basic types of cards in the game: Minions(Creatures), Spells(Abilities), Weapons(IDK), and Secrets(Trap Cards). The first type of card, Minions, are perhaps the most basic so I'll start with them. A minion is a monster or any living creature that can attack and be killed. Each minion has a certain health number and attack number. The health number is the amount of damage it can take before it is destroyed an attack is how much damage it does either attacking a minion or being attacked (unless special circumstances apply) Minions, unless they have an ability, do not take priority over the player in combat, meaning as opposed to Magic you can attack the player directly when he has a minion out. Some minions have abilities, such as taking priority when you are attacked (like I said) or doing something when they die. These can be combined for strategies. The second type of card is Spells, which are abilities that can affect gameplay, such as instant damage or giving a minion an ability. Spells have no health and caneither be instants that last for one turn or an enchantement that lasts for a long time. Most spells also have a secondary requirement that is either assmued through what it does or expressly told. Some spells can't be used at certain times like when the secondary requirements aren't met and some cards react better under certain circumstances. The next card is Secrets, these are played "face down" where only you know what it does and most of them are tied to taking damage. A secret is in play until it is destroyed or used and when the requirements are met it activates. For example "When an enemy minion attacks one of yours, destroy both minions" These cards are very much meant to save you when you are losing or to assure your victory. They are especially effective in combos because combined with spells they can win the battle quite quickly. The final card type is Weapons, which to explain them I'll explain the mechanic that they utilize. Your character, as in the hero you play as/ your class, can attack. But, your hero doesn't naturally have an attack stat, just health. This means you have to use a spell to give them an attack stat that they can use to attack. There is a specific card, which is a weapon, that goves your hero an attack for a certainamount of uses. For example "3 attacks and it breaks, gives your hero 4 damage" These can be used in decks where you want your hero to deal insane amounts of damage. These are the card types, and while there are only four, there are subclasses and special exceptions that I will not explain for reasons (I am lazy).
Now that we've established the cards, I will try to to explain how to use them in a deck. So I'll try to explain the deck types and the ways to use cards in them. There are literally millions of decks you can make in HearthStone. So rather than explain that I will explain the four major groups that decks usually fall into. These groups are Rush, Counter, Control, and Combo. Rush decks mainly focus on high damage and trying to kill the enemy as fast as possible. The strategies and way to build your deck should revolve around low cost minions that have damage dealing abilities and spells that deal immediate damage. Counter decks mainly focus on high defense and countering attacks to last longer than your opponent or use their minions against them. The way to build and play this deck should revolve around using secrets and the ability Taunt to deal counter damage. By the way, Taunt makes a minion take priority in battle, meaning you can only attack that minion. Control decks are focused around controlling your opponent's hand and not letting them do anything. These are by far the most powerful decks, but at the same time the hardest to play in that they are complex. Control decks should be built and played to use spells and secrets and minions to do anything from put all of your opponent's minions back in their hand to spamming them with weak minions to stop them from playing anything. The final deck type is Combo, which focuses on combining card summons to either buff powerful minions or to deal massive damage. You can build and play the deck to do either of these, but it is nigh impossible to effectively do both. Just try using cards that will play off of each other.
So after a college essay of card game strats, time to cover the graphics! The graphics in this, like WoW, are very cartoonish and humorous, combined with the voice acting and music. The best part of the graphics experience is the explosions and animations as they are both fluid and dramatic, which brings attention to them and shows you what to look at. The graphics specs, even on my tiny laptop, is 1080p 60fps and looks good for a card game.
So as for my little "go buy this" dialogue, there is something I forgot to mention. That thing is simply the word FREE. This game is free up until you want to buy expansions or card packs but there are people out there who are in the top league and they haven't payed a cent. So yeah, If that isn't a reason to get this game or at least try it, I don't lnow what is. If you like card games and don't wanna spend 100$ for a good MtG deck, get HearthStone.
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