Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft

The next Hearthstone expansion was announced at BlizzCon earlier this month. Titled Rastakhan's Rumble, it'll add another 135 new cards to the game, a new Shaman hero called King Rastakhan, and a new single-player mode called Rumble Run.The theme this time around is on the Troll tribe - a long-awaited direction for the game, and one that also ties in quite neatly with events from…

A new expansion - The Boomsday Project - is about to hit Hearthstone. There'll be the usual mixture of new cards, new card types, and a fresh twist on the single-player content that's become a staple of the game over the last year or so.As for the theme, Mechs are coming back to Hearthstone in a big way. If you cast your mind back to…

Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft [official site] is in a bit of an interesting spot right now. It feels like a lot of its regular players are starting to, dare I say it, get bored of this arm of Blizzard’s money-printing machine. But today, as part Blizzard’s tenth annual Californian BlizzCon convention, the game saw Mean Streets of Gadgetzan – its fourth expansion – officially unveiled.

The last week was supposed to be a real funky one for Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft [official site], with the launch of One Night in Karazhan. This is the latest add-on to the online card game, bringing four new weekly wings of tailored solo boss fights along with the 45 new cards which is what everyone (apart from you, inevitably) is not so secretly more…

These days, you're just not a proper RPG unless you've got a fancy card-game spin-off either in or out of world. Gwent. Hearthstone. Arcomage. Triple Triad. Legends of Norrath. Pokemon CCG. Now The Elder Scrolls is throwing its adventurer's cap into the ring with The Elder Scrolls: Legends, as announced aeons ago, but only just going into closed beta. Quite a gold-rush, especially given that…

2014 saw the release of three or four interesting and excellent card games, but it was Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft that most captured our attention and drew us back for match after match. Alec: I've shied away from multiplayer in the last couple of years. Partly it's self-consciousness, and partly because the constant background sound of bloodcurdling screaming* whenever my microphone was turned on didn't…

Hearthstone's Goblins vs Gnomes expansion is finally out, meaning there are more than 120 new Warcrafty cards in the game with which to bolster your deck potential. Or, y'know, more cards which you think have bolstered your deck potential but it turns out you've accidentally done something which makes you explode yourself with the power of overthinking and hubris.

That's a nice-looking Hearthstone deck you've got there. What's that, a wolf, yeah? Cool, cool. And some dogs? A load of forest friends hanging out? Great, great, lovely. Here's a thought: why not replace them with bombs and robots? Those are cool. All the cool kids do robots now.The free-to-play card game's technowizarding expansion Goblins vs. Gnomes will launch next week, Blizzard have announced. I…

Beware, Hearthstone bot users. Well, beware-ish. Blizzard have followed up their forum post from August about botting being a violation of the Hearthstone terms of service and have banned several thousand Hearthstone accounts until 2015."As we’ve stated, fair play is at the core of the Hearthstone experience, and cheating and botting will not be tolerated," said Blizzard via an official blog post by community manager,…

I'm pretty new to Hearthstone, Blizzard's none-more-slick digital card game. I've just about clawed past the point where I'm randomly spamming stuff and hoping for the best, and now have a custom deck I'm continually tweaking and a few solid wins under my belt. Now I'm no longer facing total greenhorns, it's a different game. I'm losing a lot. This doesn't particularly depress me, as…

As we enter the third year of the Valve-Blizzard-Riot war for all of the money, everywhere, ever, the latest offensive from the mega-juggernaut weather system has arrived. While the above picture is supposedly a marketing image, I choose to believe it's a photograph of Mike Morhaime offering up this morsel to those who'd broken the Hearthstone habit. Curse of Naxxramas is the first expansion to…

There are many ways to go about legitimizing a sport. Cleaning up your broadcast, treating players well and ensuring they have good post-pro-career options, maybe referring to players by real names instead of handles like "Balls," etc. I would say, then, that the Finnish Assembly eSports Tournament was on The Wrong Track. They decided to prohibit women from competing against men in games like Hearthstone and…

The wonder and terror of collectible card games is that they evolve and expand over time to continue demanding your time and money and attention and love and it's just too much and I can't deal with it, as I may have mentioned earlier today. Blizzard are hooked into this cruel cycle with Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, and today announced the first major addition to…

Every time Hearthstone launches the first thing you see is a box. The camera lingers on the bevelled edges of the lid, gaining height before tilting to settle on a top-down view. The inset stone glows with restive energy, clunks backwards and spins – in a surprise twist, the lid doesn't flip open but splits vertically. Hearthstone's roots are in the real-world, and a big…

Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is a tremendously dull name for a game, but let's unpick this. The game is the hearthstone, the bottom of a fireplace. The players are the kindling, being rapidly consumed in that fiery furnace. The closed beta is the flames, locked in place so only those lucky enough to have a key can enter.Only now the fire is spreading. North America…

Are all of your friends in Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft's closed beta? Have they replaced the you-shaped hole in their lives with shiny virtual trading cards? Well, for one, you should probably get new friends. Yours sound a bit, um, terrible. But, if you reeeeally want to join them in their quest for gold and glory and more trading cards, I'm afraid I have a bit of…

“Ho ho ho, it's good ta see ya again,” says Hearthstone as I load it up for the hundredth time. “Save it you Scottish dwarf,” I think, “And SHOW ME THE MONEY.” Call me a Venture Co. Mercenary, but after a month or so immersed in the collectible card game's beta I've eyes for Gold and Gold alone. Blizzard's in-game currency is a fickle mistress,…

First impressions: Hearthstone: Heroes Of Warcraft is an impressively crap name.Fantasy games with terrible titles have a long and noble history, but Blizzard's Warcraft collectible card game boasts a particularly wonderful example. The classical NOUN COLON SOMETHING AND/OF SOMETHING structure is adhered to, but this is an almost gleefully bad noun. You have to go some to find a word they could have used that…

In an attempt to make sure that no-one else is allowed to have money ever again, Blizzard announced free to play online CCG Hearthstone back in March. Using characters and lore from the rather popular World of WarCraft, the plan was for a late summer beta with a same-year release, the first part of which has now come to fruition. Momentarily available only in North…

You're probably thinking, "Action? Hah. The closest card games have ever gotten to action was the grisly paper cut massacre of 1912." But actually, Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft keeps quite a brisk, effects-packed pace. Ice and fire sing down from on high (or at least slightly above the coffee table), and monster slabs snap, crackle, and pop en route to shattering to the winds. Turns,…