The joke that China is capable of copying anything appears to have been taken to its logical end with reports of a physical version of Blizzard’s Hearthstone card game appearing. While one might expect cheap knockoff cards sold without any idea of what the game is about, these bootleggers have put a lot of effort into their work; and if the story by Games In Asia is anything to go by, is actually a fun novelty experience.
China’s version of Hearthstone comes with a complete playset of all cards; and enough neutral cards for two players to share. It also has a printed paper play area and cardstock life trackers (that tabletop gamers may suspect looks like it was stolen from the BloodBowl Team Manager game). Everything has also been translated into Chinese, while the art is obviously stolen directly from the online game.
Games In Asia claims that the physical version of the game is extremely difficult to manage due to the number of different status effects that go on, and the order in which they resolve requiring players to keep track of what is going on. Considering that Hearthstone is actually one of the easiest card games to understand and get into, it is more likely that they author of the article lacks experience with tabletop games; although it is probably true that playing the game with cards probably takes longer than the real thing.
[Source: Games In Asia]
