"I AM POWER INCARNATE!" says the mighty Deathwing as you drop him from your hand and watch in complete satisfaction as your opponent's cards all crumble into dust, leaving only Deathwing remaining. You strike your opponent with Deathwing the next turn to win the game, and you do truly feel like power incarnate.

  Welcome to Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, a fantastically fun and wacky game brought to us by Blizzard, the creators of ever famous franchises such as World of Warcraft, Diablo, and Starcraft. Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is set in the World of Warcraft universe, paying homage to the lore of the Warcraft world through the names and abilities of the cards within Hearthstone. However, even if you aren't a fan of the popular MMO, you can still very much enjoy Hearthstone.
 

Hearthstone is a CCG (collectible card game) that has roots in the TCG (trading card game) Magic: The Gathering. While many similarities are there between Magic and Hearthstone, the differences are what make Hearthstone truly shine. As any player of Magic can attest, Magic, being a physical card game, has hundreds of rules and card interactions that a player must memorize if they want to succeed within a game scenario. This isn't the case with Hearthstone. Hearthstone is an online game as opposed to a physical one, meaning that every interaction between cards are handled by the operating system. This allows for little to no player error, aside from the occasional misclick. This reduces frustration that experienced players may have when trying to explain a card interaction to a newer player, because they no longer have to as the system takes care of it for them.
 

Another fantastic feature of Hearthstone is it's three game modes. There is ranked and unranked play for players who love to construct their own decks and battle them against other players who have done the same, there is Arena Mode in which you take part in a random draft in which you select your unique hero (there are nine playable heroes within the game, each of which have different, unique class cards that can only be played by that hero) and draft a thirty card deck, which you then battle against other players for prizes that increase with the amount of wins that you achieve. The third mode is a single player mode, where you can battle the AI innkeeper or, if you are feeling daring, take on the different wings of the adventure mode Curse of Naxxramas.  All of these modes offer very different and unique situations that may not pop up in the other modes. As such  different skill sets are required for each mode, adding to the fun that much more.
 

I could go on and on about the positives and the amazing gameplay features that Hearthstone offers, but as this is a video game review, I feel inclined to voice at least a few problems that the game developers could do with fixing.
 

Among some bugs that hurt the gameplay and some "OP" (overpowered) cards that Blizzard could do with changing, the one glaring problem with the game is the simple lack of modes. While the three modes that the game has are very fun and engaging, they can get old after playing the game for months as I have. There are rumors of a new game mode to be released in April that would shake things up and make the game a bit fresher for the older players, which would be very welcome.
 

All in all, I cannot praise Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft enough. It is a game that keeps players engaged and having fun. The feeling of opening a new pack to get cards, or beating an opponent to rank up is a grand one. As a free to play game, one cannot get any better than Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft.