Deceptively simple in design but epically engaging, Hearthstone will be instantly accessible to players regardless of their familiarity with Warcraft or collectible card games. Whether players prefer to wield magic or arms in battle, strike from the shadows or head on—or have never given any of that much thought—they’ll be able to jump right in, create a deck, and get in on the card-slinging action.

In addition to honing their skills in practice matches against the computer and taking on their buddies via their Battle.net friends list, players can challenge each other in two competitive game modes. “Play Mode” features traditional head-to-head battles, with players facing off for a chance to increase their medal ranking and earn card packs along the way. And for a different type of challenge, players can enter “The Forge,” where they start each match by building a deck from a new set of cards, and then use that deck to duel other Forge participants. Aside from winning new cards, players will be able to round out their collections by purchasing new card packs or disenchanting some of their existing cards to craft the ones they’re missing.

With hundreds of cards to choose from, featuring a wide range of colorful Warcraft spells, weapons, and characters, players will have limitless possibilities for developing and fine-tuning their deck-building strategies.

The Arena is a game mode where players can build a 30-card deck from randomly offered cards and battle others for in-game rewards. It’s a mode that tests the skills of even the most passionate deck builders in the Hearthstone community. The Arena comes with its own unique strategies, exciting twists, and offers a fresh way to play Hearthstone with every game.

The team is always working on ways to improve this mode, and so that’s why today we announced changes coming to the Arena soon. Lead Systems Designer Kris Zierhut discusses these changes.

The Draft

• Each Arena pick will feature 3 cards of relatively equal power level, but different rarities. This means that the cards offered should all be strong choices, and it’s the player’s opportunity to select the one that is best for the deck they want to build.
• If the option to select a Legendary card comes up, they will still appear in their own picks separate from the other rarities. However, they will be 3 Legendaries of approximately equal power level.
• Picks 1, 10, 20, and 30 while building out a deck will continue to have a guaranteed Rare quality card or better among the options to choose from.
• The chance to see class cards, spells, and weapons as options will stay the same, but the chance to see cards of below average value will decrease.

New Cards

At BlizzCon last year, the Hearthstone team had attendees of a panel help determine 9 class cards that would be created just for the Arena. With 10.4, these cards will be temporarily added to the pool of cards that can come up as possible choices for building decks in this mode.

Overall, the goal with these changes is to give players more interesting decisions to make when drafting an Arena deck. Whether the goal is to choose cards for a particular synergy, strategy, or playstyle, we believe these changes will give players the ability to take ownership of their Arena decks.

When these changes go into effect, all cards that are currently not included in the Arena draft pool will still be excluded. In addition, other existing Arena rules that affect appearance rates will be unchanged. Lastly, the increased chance to see cards from the most recent expansion will be temporarily disabled.

For more information on these rules, you can check out the forum post here.