So I just downloaded it on my Mac after I updated to 10.8. I'm going to try the game out a bit, but I wanted to ask you guys; how "free to play" is it actually? Also, do your mobile versions use game center or battle.net? If it's battle.net then please add me to try some multiplayer. QPCloudy as always.

Edit: it's QPCloudy#1141

Yeah, so I spent hours playing this today with not much to do around the house. Anyone else want to throw their Blizz IDs up here and game? I need taught a lesson. I'm winning too much.

Provided you're willing to put the time in, completely free to play. I have 3 friends who haven't spent a dime on it and play regularly and have earned any number of Rare, Epic, and Legendary cards. You need to spend some time in Arena to be truly efficient about it, as that's where you'll get the most gold in order to buy packs and then dust the cards you don't want in order to craft the ones you want. But it's possible to go as far as you want without spending any money. It's just a matter of how much time you want to spend and/or whether you'll get frustrated playing constructed at not having access to some of the hotter cards for a while.

I haven't played a mobile version yet, but everything should be routing through Battle.net. I'm not aware of Blizzard games that don't. I'm Jackwraith#1816 there.

Just tried the first "battle". I can dig it.

It is absolutely free. My friend won a 400$ tournament without spending a penny. He then dumped most of the prize money into the game tho :(

Here's a good trick on how to extract the most value if you are planning on going 'free'. To go free, it will take you a very long time to get a competitive deck in constructed. Very long. So the trick is ARENA which is the booster draft mode and is a blast. But you also need to pay attention to your daily quests. Keep playing until you have at least 1 free open slot for a new quest. You generate one quest a day and you don't want to miss out. You can also 'reroll' a quest a day which is very important. You can pretty much reroll any 40-gold quest hoping that you get a 60 or better. Always reroll them if you dont think you can get them. I actually make my ARENA class picks based on the quests I have going. It will give extra variety and lots more gold.

My tag on it is BlackBarney I think. Friend me!

To compete with Duels of the Planeswalkers, Hearthstone's update this month will contain a single-player tiered Adventure mode where you play against tiers of AI players to unlock very powerful legendary cards for your collection. Not bad! It will cost 600 gold or real money to unlock. You can either save up your gold (very difficult until you get good) or just buy it. Up to you.


In order to access all the cards there is a crafting mechanism got DUST. You can grind out extra cards (you can only have 2 of each card in your deck or 1 legendary). So you can grind out your extra ones into dust. commons give 5 dust. A legendary costs 1600 dust to craft. If you aren't married to the idea of having GOLD cards (they are like foils in magic), you can grind them into dust for lots.

Also when a card gets nerfed, they temporarily give you FULL dust credit for it. You should ALWAYS dust those cards immediately because it is a zero-regret move since you can just craft it again later. This is where most of your dust will actually come from. My buddy had a foil legendary that got nerfed and he got 3200 dust! WOW! You can craft 32 rare cards with that!

When you say "nerfed" do you mean they get rid of the card or just cut its bailies waaaay down? I'm planning on staying with it a while. I had a TON of fun today. I wanted to try arena, but it told me I have to unlock every hero first :( I keep matching with people who are all using the same heroes so I'm not unlocking anything yet. I've only got a oral of 4 dudes available to me at the moment.

Add me instead. It didn't pull anything up when I searched for blackbarney.

So I fought the the master of pimps.

"Lawd, guide mah pimp hand….."

Since the beta started last year, they've nerfed a number of cards that were just dominating the metagame. Black Iron Dwarf, for example, is a 4/4 for 4 mana that gives a minion +2 attack this turn. It used to give +2 attack permanently, which meant that it was in every deck, almost without exception. Novice Engineer was the same way. It used to be a 1/2 and a draw for 2. Now it's a 1/1 and a draw for 2. Every deck played it because it had little vulnerability, as not many things do 2 damage. Thus, you either couldn't kill it with the hero powers that do direct damage (Rogue, Mage, Druid) or you had to use a card for a much larger creature (like Wrath or Lightning Bolt), which is inefficient. When they make changes, they offer a doubled dust price for the cards for a short time, so that people don't feel cheated out of the dust they might have spent to craft things. That's really only had impact a couple times when they've significantly nerfed Legendaries, like Tinkmaster Overspark

yeah, a nerf is when they lower the power of an existing card.

I forgot to give you the roadmap you should follow for a new player:

1) unlock all decks by beating each hero in PRACTICE mode. The Mage is the best choice for starters since it has tons of amazing cards for it right off the get-go.

2) beat all EXPERT computer players in PRACTICE mode. This will give you a nice bonus of gold. You have to keep track yourself which you've beaten so far because the game will not tell you.

3) time for Arena! Your first time will be free. After that it's 150 gold a shot.

4) if you play constructed, play ranked, you'll find it easier at first. Lots of really good players are so far along in the ranked ladder, that they play CASUAL in order to unlock quests easier. This means new players will have an easier time playing in Ranked. If you get up to rank 20 (easy to do) before the end of the month, you unlock a new pretty card back

Black Barney wrote:
Thanks for the tip! Yeah, I was wondering why in the evening I started seeing so many legendaries in casual/matchmaking. I'll try ranked this evening. Jackwraith helped me unlock the rest of the heroes I needed. Now I am going to started playing to gear my decks and whatnot.

Any Arena drafting tips? Oh, and do we keep all drafted cards like you would in a magic draft?

How do you get other card backs?

I think it'd be cool to get a small F:AT tourney ladder going some time.

You don't keep all the drafted cards. They're just there for that Arena run, but you can stop the run and come back to it at any time.

Drafting tips: Arena is about creatures, even moreso than constructed with the current relatively small card pool. There will be less removal, based on the nature of drafting, so it's not a bad idea to take several fatties as they'll often be around longer. HOWEVAH, keep an eye on your mana curve (which the game helpfully displays while you're drafting.) If you already have a tons of 4s and no 3s, it might be better to take a lesser 3 in order to make sure that you can maximize mana every turn. Secrets are generally poor in draft as it's more difficult to control the circumstances of when they go off. Legendaries tend to follow the constructed model (i.e. no one plays Gruul, but everyone would play Cairne Bloodhoof.)

You get new card back by reaching rank 20 in constructed play each season/month. This month is the Naxxramas back. You can't lose stars below rank 20, s getting there isn't a really tall task.

Awesome. Can't wait to get home and try some Arena and ranked. I've already been given an allotment of time by my wife for gameplay, lol.

That was fun last night! Can't wait to play again.

I'm GameTekGuy #1675.

My first ranked match was soooo close. I go seriously lucky.

You can make a decent Mage deck at this point in RANKED. Try that but focus your efforts on first beating everyone in PRACTICE mode on regular and then expert.

In ARENA, you'll get cards to upgrade your decks. YOu should keep doing ARENA until you run out of gold and then go to RANKED until you make level 20 and then back to ARENA, baby.

Drafting tips? Mage and Paladin are much better choices than the rest. If you get offered one of those, pick them.

You want to make the best choices available all the time and then eventually looking to your curve and combos after you've drafted several cards.

As a quick example, here are some AMAZING commons you should be drafting:

- Chillwind Yeti, this guy is a total beast for 4 mana
- Dark Iron Dwarf, same. Even tho he's been nerfed, who cares, he's still amazing
- Harvest Golem - my buddy Dom who won a big tournament has this as one of his favourite cards. It's unreal in terms of value.
- Shattered Sun Cleric, much like the Dark Iron Dwarf, it's amazing how easily these guys let you trade up
- Acidic Swamp Ooze - even without the ability, it's still above average. With the ability, you can really hurt Paladins, Rogues and Warriors
- Silver Hand Knight - love this guy
- Venture Co Mercenary - great cost, easy to use properly
- Scarlet Crusader - awful against Mage, great against everybody else
- Boulderfist Ogre (see earlier suggestions on what makes a good draft card)
- Gnomist Inventor - great
- Earthern Ring Farseer - love it
- Sen'jin Shieldmasta
- Cult Master (so easy to abuse)
- Stormwind Champion
- Worgen Infiltrator (maybe my favourite 1 drop)

And those are just neutral commons! Mastering picking those is important since most of your picks are in and around them. Sometimes some of the classes have their own commons that will get thrown in there and some of them are MUCH better than those (Paladin's Truesilver Champion and Consecreation) but many are FAR worse (Eye for an Eye)

So I've been playing this again over the last week or so, after the Naxxrammas thing came out.

It's fun way to waste time, but like every collectible game (even for in-game ducats) I just hate the 'open your wallet, sucker' feel.

I suppose I should get better at drafting, because that seems to be the quick way up. I can put together a passable constructed deck of almost anything, it seems, but then I'll just get blown away every other game by someone whose deck is full of awesome stuff they built/opened. My draft is still pretty iffy, but I put together a mostly decent one today.

Part of my issue is that I can't decide which classes I do or don't want to play in constructed, so I haven't burned a classes cards to craft the other stuff I want.