You need to be playing Hearthstone

Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft was somehow passing me by. The desktop version has been out for over a month now, but until it hit the iPad I had absolutely no inclination to jump in, even if it is a free-to-play game that costs me nothing to try out. 

That all changed last week.

Something about the bright colours and cool artwork appealed to me and I felt compelled to see what all the fuss was about. After a fair few hours it's safe to say I'm pretty much hooked, searching online forums and guides for ways to improve my performances, and wondering whether I have time for "just one more game".

I'm an absolute amateur when it comes to card games. Unlike most people I never played Magic: The Gathering, I simply never had the inclination to. The only card game I ever really got into was some Yu-Gi-Oh! one on the Gameboy Advance. That's all changed now.

The best thing about Hearthstone is how simple and easy it is for beginners like myself to get to grips with. You have a deck of cards containing different creatures and magic spells to use against your opponents before they kill you. Every card has a gem number attached to it, so you can only play the card once you have the right amount of gems. You get given more gems after every turn, so early on you're playing the weaker cards but by your eighth or ninth turn you can bring in the big boys for some explosive action.

There're also nine different Warcraft-themed classes - like Mage or Priest - that come with their own special ability and unique cards. Finding the right one for you is a matter of trial-and-error, but just testing out the different card variations is fun enough to keep you going.

And that's pretty much it. There's an entertaining tutorial with fantastic voice acting and great music to teach you the basics, then you can jump into games with real-life players from all around the world.

You'll probably lose the first few games but once you form your own little strategies and learn the best times to play certain cards you'll soon see that the hours are slowly ticking away from you.

The custom deck-building is where things can start to get really deep. I haven't been playing long enough to build up a deck that anyone would be jealous of yet, but this is where people will probably get really hooked. Being a free-to-play game, you have the option of using real-world money to purchase new card packs and be in with a chance of collecting more powerful items, but for now I haven't spent a penny and I really don't feel like I have to, either. The balance seems to be just right, where playing for free doesn't take away from the experience but there's just enough encouragement for me to spend some money if I feel I want a quick boost. 

The other great thing is that matches only last 15-20 minutes so you can dabble in a few before going off and doing something else. Hearthstone seems to have that mix of being easy to learn and hard to master, but it never stops being fun. Winning a war of attrition with an enemy player is so satisfying you'll almost certainly want to come back for more.