Interaction with opponent limited to simple pre-made phrases, so you don't have to see how many 1337 gamers had their way with you or your mother. Or deal with the spam about free decks, new hacks etc.
The Hearthstone team is always looking at their data and community reaction towards cards and the state of the game, and they have made many card and game changes/updates to balance and improve the game for all players.
Yes it's free to play, but it's designed to easily continue to play and have fun without having to feel like you HAVE to pay. At the same time, after playing a while you'll probably want to.
Hearthstone has a friendly learning curve that makes picking it up and getting started easy for people who don't want to spend a lot of time learning rules and tricks.
Available on mobile and on PC. This makes a great commute companion (provided you have internet) as well as a game that is easily picked up where you last left off no matter the device being used at the time.
You can take advantage of weekly brawl events that give you a certain set of cards (so no need to pay to stay competitive). It keeps the game fresh, fun and fairly "casual".
There's no significant first-turn or second-turn advantage in Hearthstone. The player going second gets an extra card from his deck as well as "The Coin", a card that gives one extra mana crystal for one turn. This subverts the advantage that would be gained otherwise by the player going first.
There is a bit of a grind in earning new cards, so for those that do not want to spend the large amount of time needed to earn quality cards they will need to be purchased, which can get expensive.
The game is free to play but all cards in the game can be earned with free play, there is no need to purchase cards if one does not want to. Though it can speed up being able to build a better desk.
The card pool has grown to a very decent size, spread across Neutral, two factions (Human/Shadow) and seven classes (Warrior, Mage, Hunter, Priest, Rogue, Wulven and Elemental). Each of the 32 heroes belongs to a faction/class combination, where they can use Neutral cards and cards from the faction or class. This gives each hero access to approximately 250 cards, which allows for great variety of decks.
Each turn the player has the option of sacrificing a card. These sacrificed cards have the ability to add up so that mid to late game they earn the player the ability to spend more power per turn.
Many TCGs often have unbalanced decks where one specific deck can trump most others, with devs being slow to correct this. Shadow Era does not have this issue as the devs spend a great amount of time making sure all the deck combinations have good balance.
In all modes, all your cards are legal. No cards are rotated out of Standard play and the developer has said they have no intention to bring in rotation ever.
Aside from a handful of cards from the original set that had "at random" on them, the developers have gone out of their way to bring more control into the hands of players. Effects will specify they damage "the ally with the lowest health", for example, and on a tie there is a Standard Resolution Order (the ally closer to the hero takes priority), so always know which one will be affected. Sometimes on other games you might think the RNG is skewed/faked, but that can't happen in Shadow Era. This means the main element of randomness and luck is the shuffle of the deck, which is how a card game should be.
Whatever platform you register on, you can grow and access your collection and decks on any of the platforms, so you can use whichever you prefer at the time.
There are already 120 missions to play through with dialogue, telling the story from the very beginning, for 10 Human heroes and 2 Shadow heroes (at the time of writing). Over time, more dialogue is being added to other missions for the remaining 6 Human heroes and 14 Shadow heroes, and then more maps with more missions will be added in future. The campaign mode is completely free and gives generous rewards for playing.
New to Shadow Era? Curious about how the top players in the ladder have their position? Simply click on their profile in the ladder ranking and it will show you their statistics and an option to view their last 30 games played. This way you have a better understanding of strategy utilized by top players.
Main developer, Gondorian, is often commenting on questions in the Official forums as well as interacting with our player community on the Telegram messenger app.
A variety of player and developer organized tournaments, with prizes rewarded by devs, in both competitive and casual formats provides opportunities for players of all skill levels. It all culminates in the annual World Championship, a brilliant display of skill and deck building.
Shadow era tests its players by having them decide which cards to sacrifice in order to gain resources (mana) one time at the start of each turn. No easy buildup of resources (mana) here. You want to make plays, you have to plan it out strategically.
I want to help people find this awesome game through millions marketing investments of other card games(seems like they have more donate money in marketing).
So lets play Interesting intellectual games, not games of luck and money.
All gameplay based on mindgames with your opponent.
If you can trick your opponent - you win. Deck can impact your game - but you will always have variant to win, there are always some win condition that you can realize.