The year is 1993 and there is a new card game in town known as “Magic: The Gathering.” In MTG you have a collection of cards with their own stats and abilities. You play these cards using Mana which is like a battery that charges each specific cards abilities allowing them to unleash the full fury of their abilities.

Fast forward to a little over two decades later and in steps Hearthstone, a game developed by Blizzard entertainment that takes the beloved mechanics of MTG and brings it into the PC and mobile gaming platform in a way that only Blizzard knows how.

While MTG had to rely on unique characters for their card game the Blizzard team uses several cross over characters from their wildly popular Warcraft universe which makes the game almost instantly relatable to anybody who has ever played a Warcraft game or entered the World of Warcraft. From it’s introduction on March 11th 2014 the game was an instant hit for the PC gaming crowd but most recently the popular title has made it to the mobile gaming realm by hitting the Apple iPad and most recently the iPhone as well.

So let’s take a look at the wonderful world of Hearthstone on the iPhone!

Having first played Hearthstone on the PC I was pretty amazed at how similar the iPhone version was to that of a more powerful computer. While some differences were noted such as a static image of the Blizzard logo the game itself loaded with all of the same pizazz as its PC counterpart.

When you load to the main menu you are given your quests for the day. Some of these quests are as easy as “Win X games with Y class” while others are a little more challenging like “Play 30 minions that cost 2 or less.” If you are able to complete the tasks you will be rewarded a small sum of gold which we will learn more about a bit later.

If you have never played Hearthstone before you will first need to select a class to play and build a deck of cards for that class. Hearthstone comes with a deck builder helper in game that will recommend cards for you to use as you build your 30 card killing machine. While selecting your cards, it is important to have a good balance between defensive cards that can absorb a lot of damage and offensive cards that can attack with a heavy hit. This is in addition to spell cards or ability cards like Fireball which deals direct damage at a low cost or taunt cards which will give a friendly creature the ability to command an attack on them over other possible targets.

Once a character is chosen and a deck of cards have been built it is now time to choose how you will do battle! Hearthstone uses one of three game play modes. You can play in an online match against another player, a solo game where you will get special cards for defeating AI bosses and an Arena mode where you gain better rewards for not being defeated. While the online matches are free to play you will have to pony up for Arena and Solo games.Hearthstone takes real world money or the gold we learned about earlier to unlock these modes of play.

The iPhone version of Hearthstone, like the PC version is addicting and complex so be sure you have a full batery or charger near by as you will be involved with it for awhile before you are ready to call it quits.

Prepare yourself with these links and we will see you on the battlefield!

Deck building help – http://www.hearthhead.com/decks
Match videos – https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Hearthstone+matches
Guides and general info – http://www.icy-veins.com/hearthstone/