When comparing Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft vs Faeria, the Slant community recommends Faeria for most people. In the question“What are the best digital Collectible Card Games on PC?” Faeria is ranked 6th while Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is ranked 16th. The most important reason people chose Faeria is:
Insane amount of PvE. There are games vs AI opponents, puzzles, a solo arena mode... and all of them provide gold or straight up packs as rewards.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Active community
It has a lot of players due to Blizzard's fanbase which means finding multiplayer matches is not all that difficult.
Pro Polished overall aesthetic
Possibly the most polished user Interface of digital CCGs. Unified and fun art style and flavor text.
Pro Great even for casual players
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.
Pro Multi-platform
Available on PC and on mobile. Makes a great commute companion (provided you have internet).
Pro Familiar characters from Warcraft 3 and World of warcraft
The characters used in Hearthstone are all from the lore of the Warcraft series, making for a familiar universe for fans of the series.
Pro Brawl events, that don't require you to follow "the meta"
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".
Pro Entertaining Voice Acting
The voice work really adds to the game and makes it entertaining to play.
Pro Card Balances and Game Updates Often
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.
Pro You won't be cursed at in the chat.
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.
Pro Near-perfect balance between going first or second
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.
Pro Free to play that doesn't exploit
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.
Pro Great if you don't take it too seriously
HS is meant to be fun, lighthearted, and generally casual. It requires a lot of time and money investment if you wish to play seriously.
Pro PvE Content
Insane amount of PvE. There are games vs AI opponents, puzzles, a solo arena mode... and all of them provide gold or straight up packs as rewards.
Pro Unique gameplay
There are many unique mechanics in Faeria. If you don't know about them, look them up on YouTube. If anything should convince you to try this game, it's this.
Pro Easy to learn - hard to master
This is #1 requirement for successful competitive game and Faeria did this part very well. PvE content will help you understand how the game works and then it will be up to you have far you can get. You'll often have to think forward while facing multiple good options during your turn and RNG will not win you any games.
Pro Almost no RNG
RNG in Faeria is heavily reduced. It's still there like in every CCG but it won't win you any games.
For example there are no cards that deal from 5 to 8 damage.
Pro Beautiful art
Not only the cards but the Menu, HUD and board background are simply gorgeous.
Pro Very good balance
Of course, there are cards that are bad no matter how used, but most of them are in very good spot right now. There are cards that can be used in almost every deck, and there are cards that can be used only in specialized decks, but that doesn't mean that these cards are bad. Also, Legendary cards are not better than cards of lower rarity. Same goes for epic and rare. Legendary cards are often simply unique in what they do.
Pro Relatively fast progression
Compared to most other ccgs, Faeria allows you to build your collection significantly faster than most other card games. Recently after Faeria's official release the dev's improved the rate at which you gain cards as well.
Pro Available in 12 languages
English
French
German
Spanish
Portuguese
Russian
Portuguese-Brazil
Italian
Czech
Japanese
Korean
Traditional Chinese
Pro Creative deckbuilding
There are no classes or factions. It's not that simple but you can basically build your deck from any card you own.
Pro Frequent updates
Even after release, the game receives balance changes and new content quite often.
Pro Amazing community
The community in Faeria is one of the best there is. The reason for that is probably official Discord server, Hub and amazing devs.
Pro Multiplatform
Available on Windows, Linux, Mac OS, Android, iOS and possibly more to come. It has announced that it is coming to consoles as well, Switch included.
Pro Has it's own deck sharing website
The devs made a website called The Hub where you can share your deck and guides.
Pro e-Sports
Every month there is an official tournament with 3000$ prize.
Pro Great dev team
The dev team has listened to feedback so often and looks to improve the game constantly.
Cons
Con Huge Money Sink
Although you can "technically" play for free, Hearthstone is very stingy on rewards. To get the limit of 100 paltry coins free a day, you have to win 30 games vs mostly players who have much better cards than you. It can take a new player 6 to 8(or more) hours to accomplish this. And after all this you get a pack of 5 cards that are often completely worthless to any viable deck. It's possible to get cards like "Angry Chicken"(worthless card) as the "Rare" card several times. You can also get a bunch of cards you already have a lot of.
Con Many mechanics based on random numbers
Random effects in the game use a random number generator, which causes an uncertainty of all outcomes. This causes one or both players to be frustrated because they can lose an already won game despite playing to the best of their ability.
Con The reward system is not significant enough
Hearthstone's reward system is very lackluster, providing little to nothing of significance to the casual or excessive player. There will be times when you feel heavily rewarded by the game, but these times are few and far between and if you are driven by rewards you will likely lose attraction to this game quickly.
Con Lacking a lot of depth found in better TCGs
Con Crafting is expensive
In lieu of trading cards, this game uses a disenchanting/crafting system to handle duplicate copies in your collection and being able to obtain the cards you want. Many cards disenchant for paltry amounts, and the best cards cost lots of "dust" to be able to play with.
Con Luck is more rewarding than skill.
When you lose a game in Hearthstone you don't learn anything because you generally can't play around most of the cards, most of the cards have random effects you have no control over it whatsoever.
Con Additional "Cards" must be paid for if not earned by continuously playing
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.
Con Dependent on Battle.net infrastructure, not playable offline
The game requires a connection with Battle.net servers from the developers, and thus can't be played offline.
Con Ridiculously bloated
Over 4 GB data installed on ones device. Which is quite a lot of room, something many might not have to spare.
Con No trading with other players
Con The discover mechanic alone ruined this game
Luck tends to be more important than skill: there are numerous RNG-based cards in this game. Players that care about skill are better of playing other games, like Magic.
Con Simplistic and unintuitive card design
Very little mechanical depth, most of the complexity is based on random numbers.
Con Sometimes unfair matchmaking
Sometimes players will be matched up with people who clearly have been playing longer.
Con Poor port
Plays much better on PC. Sluggish and crashes often on mobile, sometimes connections can be difficult to make as well.
Con Chinese money > Freedom of speech
Blizzard WILL sell your soul to the chinese overlords for a couple sheckels. DO NOT play this game if you care about freedom of any kind. There are many other CCG out there. Have some dignity and principles.
Con Mechanic of "storing mana" between turns leads to too burst-y gameplay
Con Starting hand size is very small
Games can sometimes be decided almost entirely by starting hand where you only get 3 cards as games can be over very quickly and you will see very few cards.
Con Can be addictive.
This game has so many different archetypes of decks, that a creative deck builder will lose themselves in the possibilities.
Con Heavily dependent on RNG
Con Static environments
The game features beautiful worlds but there is next to no animations bringing them to life.