Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft footage pits Mage against Shaman, Shaman against Mage

Are you ready for your first proper bout of Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft footage? Oh. How about now? Great stuff. Blizzard's card-battling Warcraft spin-off looks pretty much how you'd expect a collectible card game to look, only with lots of fancy special effects and what seems to me to be a very tactile interface - an encouraging sign. There's a whole 9-minute match to digest here, between the Mage Jaina Proudmoore and the Shaman Thrall, with a shoutcasty man doing his thing over the top. When you're done, have a read of our recent preview , or sign up for the beta over yonder .

I won't spoil who wins, just like I never spoiled that it was Earth all along in the original Planet of the Apes, or that Bruce Willis was really a ghost in Hudson Hawk. But the match is obviously worth a look if you're a CCG fan, and you're wondering how Blizzard's effort compares with the likes of MTG: Duels of the Planeswalkers. It looks quite a bit more Warcrafty, in my expert opinion.

Tom Sykes

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.