It finally happened! I got into the Hearthstone closed beta and I've been playing the shit out of it. Anybody else in? We should play some time!
If you haven't played it or read anything about it, it's a pretty fast-paced TCG set in the Warcraft universe. Most games last five or ten minutes, each deck has thirty cards, and instead of land or stuff you have mana crystals that increment with each turn up to 10. Minions have the usual health and attack, but unlike MTG and such you can directly attack the enemy player or his minions, and health doesn't regenerate.
The biggest thing though is the class/hero mechanic. All the vanilla WoW classes (So no DKs or Monks, at least for now) are in the game, represented currently by one important Warcraft character of that class. Each class has a unique set of cards and a hero power that can be used each turn for two mana, plus there's a big pool of neutral cards that any class can use. As a result decks within a class generally have similar playstyles, though there's always some variation, and you usually have some idea what cards to expect when playing. I kind of see that as a mixed bag pro/con-wise, but overall I like it.
My favorites currently are Warlock, who burns himself with his life tap hero power for massive draw, and Priest, who methodically builds up advantage through his healing and buffing powers and his northshire clerics (who give you a free draw when a minion gets healed) to exhaust the enemy deck and then bust out the big minions for the win.
As far as I know there's currently no singles market or any kind of card economy between players, but you can buy booster packs for gold or real money (gold being gotten through playing the game, so far it's not /too/ bad, you can usually buy a booster pack or maybe two a day, and all the classes can put together reasonably viable decks just from the basic cards you get for free by leveling to 10), and you can also disenchant the cards you get from booster packs and spend the resulting arcane dust to create the cards you want, so unlike that Might and Magic card game you usually have more nuanced options for building than goodcards.dek
As far as I can tell the game's pretty well balanced, none of the classes are way out of line or useless, though the way the card economy works all the decks are a little samey early on. Chillwind Yeti, Acidic Swamp Ooze, Sen'jin Shieldmasta, etc. end up in like every deck.
Anybody else in the beta have some insights? I think I'm getting pretty okay at it.
EDIT: Oh, by far the best and most important mechanic: You can right click your hero portrait to play voice messages like in Left 4 Dead. Also like in Left 4 Dead, spamming them is hilarious.
I greet you, I greet you, I greet you, I greet you, I greet you, I greet you.