Texas Hold'em might be one of the world's most popular card games, but you can't hex your opponent. More's the pity.

Collectible Card Games (CCGs) are everywhere these days, from your iPad to your console to your PC. Now it's time for Blizzard's contribution with Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft.

Not too long ago, I mused about the growth of collectible card games. They're everywhere now, and for good reason. CCGs, for instance, suit mobile gaming perfectly. They take little time out of a person's day, can be easily viewed on a small screen, have low hardware requirements but still contain enough strategy and combinations to entertain over the long term.

Blizzard are big fans of CCGs too, and with games like Magic: The Gathering enjoying a resurgence of late, it's a good time to get into the industry. So that's what the major PC developer has done with Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, an upcoming free-to-play title soon for the PC, Macintosh and the iPad later on.

The concept is fairly simple. Each player chooses one of nine heroes from the Warcraft universe: the Druid, Mage, Warrior, Priest, Warlock, Shaman, Rogue, Paladin and Hunter. You then combine 30 class-specific and neutral cards to combine a deck, and then you face off against an opponent.

It's an incredibly simple game to understand, and the crisp, vibrant card art explains everything you need to know. Every card falls under one of three types - spells, weapons and minions (creatures) - and each card costs a certain amount of mana to play.

You start off with a single mana crystal on the first turn and you gain one extra every turn. A few cards grant you additional mana for a single turn, but generally a match plays out in a fairly stable, consistent manner. Each player has 30 life, and their selected hero has a special ability that can be used once per turn. The hero abilities I saw were fairly mediocre, which is good; the focus on a CCG should be on the deckbuilding experience and the quality of a player's deck.

Building a deck has never been easier too, thanks to the incredibly easy UI. You can build a deck in three ways: combine 30 cards completely of your own volition, select some of the cards and then have the game make recommendations for you, or just let the game make an entire deck from scratch.

At any point, you can view a mana curve of your deck, which is an absolutely essential guide to building 30 cards that work together properly. Maintaining a proper curve means, in theory, you'll be able to play a spell every single turn since you'll have the right amount of mana to do so.

After the other journalists began using the automated functions, I noticed that the curve always seemed a little off in the mid-range: there'd be a healthy amount of cheap cards and a reasonable amount at the top end, but only around two or three cards around the four and five-mana slots. The game is still in an alpha stage, however, so it's understandable that some bugs will need to be ironed out.

Nevertheless, the function is great for fans of Blizzard games who haven't tried out a CCG before. Hearthstone integrates into your battle.net account, and while there's no talk of being able to integrate fully into other games at this stage, you can freely challenge other players to a Hearthstone duel while they're playing other games.

The game itself is designed to be quick and enjoyable. Like many mobile CCG titles, cards can only be played on your turn. While this reduces the amount of potential interactions, and the depth to some degree, it makes Hearthstone games simpler to understand and much faster.

Balancing out that decision is the wide variety of heroes on offer. Taken from various races in the Warcraft universe, each hero's ability - and their cards - reflect the personality of that hero. Priests, for instance, have a lot of healing and control-like abilities. Warriors do a lot of direct damage, while mages have a lot of firepower in the form of spells.

Decks don't have to be attuned to a particular hero either. It's entirely possible to build an all-Merloc or all-Pirate deck, with minions that buff other minions of the same type. You can play a slow, controlling game if you like, focusing on board wipes such as mass silence (a card that invalidates the abilities and card text of anything on the board).

The great advantage is that if you want to play the more powerful cards, you'll always be able to do so since you get one mana per turn. That's a great concession for newer players who crack open a powerful card but never find themselves in a situation to cast it.

Gaining cards, of course, is the main objective of Hearthstone. Booster packs can be earned through the game by completing daily quests and other achievements. You can purchase boosters from Blizzard for what I understand will be around US$1 each. Boosters have five cards, of which at least one is guaranteed to be a rare or higher (cards being ranked, from lowest to highest, as commons, rares, epics and legendary).

If you don't draw the cards you want, you can also use the game's crafting system to effectively scrap less important cards to make new ones. Disenchanting cards gives you Arcane Dust, depending on the rarity of the card scrapped, which you can then use to make any card you want.

To stop the game from becoming too money oriented (like Magic: The Gathering), Blizzard has restricted players to one legendary card and two of any other card in your deck of 30. This can make synergies a little problematic, since you have to account for a much higher degree of permutations in your first few turns, but it will assuage the "buy to win" fears many players have with CCGs.

Hearthstone is a fun, simple CCG that should be a blast to play when it comes out soon (and I've been told soon in the normal sense of the word, not Blizzard's traditional definition of soon). Players can sign up for the closed beta through battle.net right now, with the beta expected to go live later this year.

Alex Walker is the regular gaming columnist for ABC Tech + Games. You can follow him on Twitter at @thedippaeffect.