You play free, on one screen, which depicts a virtual board. The objective is to kill your opponent’s hero, using spells and direct attacks, breaking down his defences, until his life points dwindle down to zero.

Games are head to head between two players, with a coin toss deciding who goes first.

Each player draws their starting hand, with the coin toss winner going first and drawing three cards to the loser’s four.

If the player doesn’t like their hand, they can re-roll any or all of them. They then draw a fourth card which will be the first ‘mana crystal’ – a form of ‘in-game’ payment used to summon cards which require a certain number of mana crystals to be played, such as health cards, attack cards, and mana cost cards.

It is through the careful use of these cards that you will beat your opponent.

There are four archetypes or deck types in Hearthstone, found across all metas:

• Aggro – Aggressive, quick attacks to try to kill your opponent asap, but prone to running out of steam if not successful early in the game
• Midrange – Like Aggro but have more stamina to apply pressure throughout the midgame
• Control – Run opponents down until they can take them out – the card equivalent of a tank in WoW
• Combo – Basically a winning combination of cards, similar to laying a winning hand in a traditional card game

You need to carefully build your decks in order to be successful, so it is a game of strategy and trying to outwit your opponent by creating new combinations and testing their effectiveness within the current meta.

Hearthstone Terminology

If you are new to Warcraft you might not be familiar with the terminology. Here’s a quick glossary of common terms to help you out.

• Card Advantage – Simply having more cards than your opponent
• Cast – perform a spell, usually by playing the corresponding card
• Dust – the cost of a card
• Equip – equipping a weapon
• Highlander – decks with no duplicates or cards which offset the penalty of no duplicate cards, named for the Highlander movie catchphrase “there can only be one”
• Mana – lifeforce or cultivated energy/power
• Meta – game strategies and deck types which are popular and may change with a patch update
• Mulligan – replacing cards or redrawing your hand
• Summon – adding a minion to the field by playing a minion card or summoning them from elsewhere
• Tech card – utility cards to counter specific strategies or decks
• Tempo – as it sounds, the pace of the game

Placing Bets on Hearthstone

Due to the head-to-head nature of the game, there aren’t quite as many types of bets you can place on Hearthstone as you can on some of the other popular esports.

The main types of Hearthstone bets are as follows:

Match Winner

Exactly as it sounds, the majority of bets placed on Hearthstone will be betting on the winner of an individual match.

Outright

However, for big competitions, such as the Hearthstone World Championship or Grandmasters tournaments, you can also bet on the overall winner of the competition, usually quite far in advance.

Best Sites to Bet on Hearthstone

As Hearthstone is so different from the other esports, not all esports bookmakers or sportsbook sites will offer markets on it.

However, its uniqueness is a big draw for some fans, and there are many sites which do offer dedicated Hearthstone markets.

Once you’ve found one you like the look of, do all the usual checks such as payment methods, welcome bonus etc to see if it suits your needs.

To help you out, we’ve compiled some of our picks for the best sites to bet on Hearthstone, below.

How to Place a Winning Bet on Hearthstone

When you are looking to place a winning bet on any kind of sporting event, there are a few key factors you need to take into consideration.

The same applies to esports, such as Hearthstone. With Hearthstone, it is the individual players you need brush up on, rather than the teams.

Here are a few factors to research:

• Each player’s current form
• Previous head to head results
• Patch updates which may alter the meta and, therefore, favour one player over another
• Any signs of upset or issues on player’s social media posts or in the industry news

Hearthstone Tournaments

As you might expect from what is essentially a card game, there is no shortage of Hearthstone tournaments where the best of the best can go head-to-head for glory and not inconsiderable riches.

The prize pool of the Hearthstone World Championship in 2020 is set to be $500,000.

Here’s a full list of the biggest international tournaments in the Hearthstone calendar:

• Hearthstone World Championship
• Grandmasters Asia-Pacific
• Grandmasters EMEA
• Grandmasters Americas
• Masters Tour

Best Hearthstone Teams

Unlike the majority of esports, Hearthstone is fundamentally a single-player experience, however, there are benefits associated with being part of a team, including a more stable income.

Teammates may also rub off on each other, with more established players motivating newer players to up their game and motivating each other to bring their A-game.

The top ten best-ranked Hearthstone teams in the world according to Go Su Gamers are as follows:

• T1
• Team Love u Lots
• Fogsail Freebooters
• StrifeCro/Kolento
• Orange/Freakeh
• Luminosity HS
• Team PogChamp
• Invictus Gaming HS
• Southsea Swashbucklers
• World Elite HS

History of Heartstone

First released in 2014 by Blizzard Entertainment, Hearthstone is a free-to-play online digital collectable card game which is part of Blizzard’s hugely popular Warcraft series.

Originally titled Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, the game builds on the existing lore of Warcraft, and sees two opponents go head to head in a battle of wits and strategy.

Hearthstone was released first for Microsoft Windows and macOS, and the iOS and Android followed a year later.

The game was something of an experiment, developed by a much smaller team than usual Blizzard projects but has shown to be a success for the company, generating almost US$40 million per month according to figures from 2017.

The readymade Warcraft fanbase embraced Hearthstone, and, in November 2018 Blizzard reportedly had more than 100 million active Hearthstone players.

Critics were also impressed, and Blizzard’s continued commitment to fixing bugs, and providing updates and expansions means fans stay loyal to the game and continue to make it ever more profitable for Blizzard.

The addition of new formats and updates help to keep the game fresh and, with Hamilton Chu, the former executive producer for Hearthstone, stated pledge that Blizzard would support the game for ten to twenty years. We can therefore assume Hearthstone will continue to thrive.

Hearthstone is now an esports game due largely to high-level tournaments such Blizzard’s official World Championship. Which offers a prize pool of up to US$1 million and is streamed across platforms such as Twitch, along with more conventional esports such as Dota 2 or League of Legends.