Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is an upcoming digital collectible card game from Blizzard Entertainment.
Hearthstone is a free to play game set in the Warcraft universe, supported by the purchase of booster packs.
There will be around 300 cards in the game to start, with more added later; booster packs can either be earned in-game or bought for $1/pack.
Each pack comes with five random cards, including at least one "rare".
Card crafting allows players to consolidate duplicate cards of various types. This feeds into the deck-building system, which is as automatic or micro-management heavy as you desire. You'll build your deck around your class, such as a rogue, both in terms of the kinds of skills and buffs you bring into battle, and the class-specific cards you're able to use. A medal ranking system categorizes duelists by skill, similar to Starcraft II.
Players can choose one of nine "heroes" which are similar to the classes in World of Warcraft.
There will be commons, rares, epics, and even legendary cards. It will be free-to-play with optional purchases for cards; there's also something called a crafting system, where you will be able to change your cards by disenchanting them into arcane dust which will let you build other cards.
The game is based around 1v1 matches and will operate through Blizzard's Battle.net.
There are currently no plans for cards to be traded between players.
Strategy relies on the balance of health and mana, the use of summons, and killing enemy minions with various cards and hero powers.
Hearthstone is coming to PC and Mac in addition to iPad, which will release later, though feature and networking parity remains to be seen. The current goal is to release Hearthstone in the same territories World of Warcraft is currently available.
