Despite what the global success of the likes of Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh and Magic The Gathering would attest to i.e. that owning your own custom fleet of monsters with which to battle is just downright awesome - there's been fairly few games outside these core titles that explore that idea. Enter Hearthstone, a beautifully accessible and stupidly fun little title from Blizzard that takes the aforementioned turn-based template from Magic: The Gathering and fills it with perfectly-rendered animation, a colour palette that pops and flickers with every move and an overall presentation that makes losing countless hours perfecting your deck an absolute joy. Heroes of Warcraft's combat stems from a deck-vs-deck showdowns where all manner of stat-crunching, creature-buffs and spells are hurled at your opponent, yet all at the behest of a mana cost - of which you'll receive one more per turn. How do you best spend your points when they must be divvied up amongst a hand full of creatures and spells, as well as your own Hero Power? With online battle modes and a really great tutorial and single player making you think this way every turn, you'll have plenty time to figure that out. And the best part? It's actually free. The way Blizzard have set up progression in the game is through only charging for additional card packs to bolster your deck, rather than forcing them on you or keeping the main parts of the game behind a paywall - but that's if you even want to shell out at all being you unlock a ton of cards just through playing anyway, making this fantastic value for time and money all round.
