The game was a huge success at the time of its release, winning the 2014 Game Award for Best Portable Game. More than a hundred million players have tried this monument of online gaming.
On the eSports scene, Blizzard organises several Hearthstone tournaments where the best players in the world can compete. The very strategic and cerebral side of the game makes it a unique player among other successful games in the eSports world.
Hearthstone is a free online card game. The game exploits the Warcraft universe and is published and developed by Blizzard Entertainment. The game was released in 2014 and is available on PC, Mac, tablet and smartphone.
The HearthStone Championship Tour (HCT), which takes place once a year, is the world championship of the game. Participation in certain tournaments and the game’s ladder selects the top 64 players from each region, who then compete in the regional finals. The grand finale takes place in January during BlizzCon, Blizzard’s big convention, and sees the top 16 players in the world compete. In 2019, Casper Notto under the alias Hunterace became champion and pocketed $250,000.
The Hearthstone Global Games (HGG) is a large tournament between countries. For each nation, the best representative is named captain, and all players can vote to select the other 3 competitors who will form a team. With a pool phase followed by knockout matches, the HGG awards the best nation of the year on Hearthstone.
How a game is played
The player begins by sectioning a hero and a deck of 30 cards. Decks can be customised, and getting them right is of paramount importance. Players then compete in one of the five game modes available. The visual rendering of the battles is reminiscent of board games.
Each hero starts the game with 30 life points, and also has magic points (mana), which increase by one point per round and can reach a maximum of 10 points.
These mana points are needed to use the hero’s powers and cards. Depending on his class, the hero has access to different powers to bring variety to the confrontations.
The cards are divided into three main types. Minions are creatures that are summoned to the battlefield. Weapons are necessary for the hero to attack and have a limited number of uses. Finally, spells are various special actions, these cards can heal, draw a card, and a whole host of other possibilities to spice up the game.
The game ends in defeat when a hero has lost all his life points.
Game modes
Game mode is the classic mode that allows you to use a custom pack of cards to play against other players in ranked or friendly matches.
Adventures is the mode that allows you to play against opponents managed by the game. It offers a training part and an adventure part, which will allow you to follow a scripted story and win many cards while playing against the computer.
Arena is a mode where the player creates his game and faces several opponents in a row until reaching 3 defeats, or 12 victories.
Battlefield allows 8 players to compete against each other so that only one winner is left in the end.
Bras de fer forces players to respect certain constraints during the creation of the deck, before the two players confront each other.
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