Hearthstone

I was desperate to get into the beta for Hearthstone when it first went out to Youtubers and streamers.  I'd been among those who found the idea of a digital Warcraft TCG profoundly uninteresting when it was first announced.  Then Blizzard did what Blizzard do, and took an idea that's been around for years, polished it, stripped it down to its core, and made it a pleasure to play.

Occasional bugs aside, Hearthstone is a masterclass in interface design.  From the bombastic pack-opening, to the ritual of hovering over cards before identifying them, hoping for that legendary glow, and then handling the cards themselves.  They feel like physical objects, which goes a long way towards offsetting the slightly odd feeling of collecting cards that don't really exist.

As time went on, and the metagame calcified, I got bored of seeing the same few decks, and ended up playing much less.  The Naxxramas adventure was great, and I enjoyed both the new cards and the puzzle-like heroic bosses.  However, many of the new cards made the strongest decks even stronger, and variations on the classic decks were everywhere.

The first expansion, Goblins and Gnomes, was released a couple of weeks back, and I've been playing ever since.  The new mech cards are fun and really sell the theme.  I think my favourite aspect of the new cards, though, is the increased randomness.  Piloted Shredders are showing up in almost every kind of deck, and bringing with them some rarely seen minions.  Unstable Portal can get you access to any legendary card in the game, and can lead to some ridiculous games.  I played a 25 minute mage vs. priest game, which I won on pretty much the last draw of the game.  The player sent me a friend request, and I accepted, ready to screenshot the latest rantings.  We ended up chatting for about 10 minutes, laughing about the twists and turns the game had taken.   So well done Blizzard, you've made Hearthstone fun again.