China’s made a real-life Hearthstone set (and now we know why Blizzard hasn’t)

The latest Chinese knock-off to grace Wild West-style online retailer Taobao is something a few of us Blizzard fans had been dreaming of for a while—a real-life, physical Hearthstone set. The choice between getting a copy for myself or eating more than soup noodles for a week was clear, and so (after some help from two local Hearthstone enthusiasts) I’ve written up my impressions with the product for you below.

In retrospect, maybe a more varied diet might have been the better option.

(See: Netease CEO: China has the most Hearthstone players of any country)

A faithful replication… of one version

The set actually impressed me with how thorough an adaptation it was. Included were two sets of every class’ cards was included, four copies of every normal and legendary card, and more for those that can spawn in greater numbers (like the Unleash the Hounds’ eponymous doggies).

There were also numerous tokens to place on your minions to show status effects like Taunt, Silence, and Deathrattle; health and attack wheels, enough for each player to have seven minions on the board at once; tokens to count bonus spell damage; and a mechanic for drawing random cards like you’d need to for the Priest’s Mind Vision.

The only real disappointment was the lack of an actual coin to flip at the start (the game recommends rolling the included dice), though the Coin card itself was of course included.

I ordered the set when Curse of Naxxramas was still new, and so wasn’t surprised that the base version I’d got included none of those cards. In fact, given some mechanics present in Naxxramas’ new cards, the physical version would probably need a few more additions (some shenanigans with Baron Rivendare could require you to have four of Bane Bloodhoof, for instance). Other combinations of Death Rattle effects could become extremely cumbersome to resolve without the computer doing it for you.

But while the cards did seem a faithful replication of their pre-Naxx versions, that did bring up a perhaps-obvious flaw with the game: even without the Naxx cards, some of the cards that were included are no longer the same as their current in-game versions.

Frequent balance patches and tweaks assure that no physical version can ever stay relevant for long, at least not without liberal use of tippex or stickers to correct differences. Potentially, this is one of the reasons Blizzard itself (rarely shy from merchandising) has chosen not to release a physical version.

A much slower game