Hearthstone Comes To Life With Chinese Knock-Off Set

Bootleg Chinese World of Warcraft merchandise is nothing new, though the latest example of blatant copyright infringement isn't as grandiose as the illegal WoW theme park that opened up a couple of years ago.

Some enterprising Chinese folks have cooked up a real-life Hearthstone TCG, which comes complete with two copies of every class card and four copies of every other card (both pre-Naxx), lots of tokens, play mat, and health and attack wheels. The set sells for about $50 USD.

But how does it play? According to the reviewer -- and this should be no surprise -- the real game is optimized for the online realm and some elements are rather cumbersome in real life. While he says that it does have a way to handle random elements, like the priest's Mind Vision, "What would be a thirty-second turn in the digital game took up the better part of five minutes here." Also, as any card-flipper knows, making a deck out of real cards takes a good while longer than it does in the digital realm.

All in all, it seems unlikely that we'll ever see a physical Hearthstone set made in the West. The game's just not designed to work that way. Still, it's nice to dream, no?