Hearthstone’s Heroes of StarCraft mini-set is a huge event for Blizzard fans, marking the first time that the developers’ sci-fi RTS has interacted with the Warcraft CCG in its ten-year history. This is also the largest companion mini-set ever released in Hearthstone, with 49 new cards to play with, including four Hero cards.
While the Hearthstone team has interacted with other Blizzard products in the past, such as adding Warcraft Rumble cards to the core set and an Overwatch card back as part of the Origins Edition of the game, there has never been a crossover of this scale, and especially not with a sci-fi IP. I got the chance to chat to senior game designers, Leo Robles Gonzalez and Aleco Pors, about the experience of bringing this mini-set to life.
Understandably, given both games’ storied histories and shared parent company, I wanted to know why now, rather than earlier in Hearthstone’s life, was the perfect time to finally launch a StarCraft collaboration. Sure, it makes sense to close out Hearthstone’s tenth-anniversary celebrations with a bang, but I wondered if perhaps there was something more behind the decision. After all, Blizzard’s other massive IP, Diablo, has already appeared in the mobile card game several times before, so why not the heroes of StarCraft?
Gonzalez said that initially, the collaboration was going to be purely cosmetic and launch alongside Hearthstone’s Great Dark Beyond expansion, as the Warcraft-themed card battler’s first true foray into space. However, “there’s just so many people and so much passion for anything and everything StarCraft-related” on the Hearthstone team, that they made the decision to create a fully-fledged mini-set.
The unique draw of the Heroes of StarCraft mini-set is that it splits Hearthstone’s 11 hero classes into the three major factions from the sci-fi real-time strategy game – Terran, Protoss, and Zerg. A lot of thought went into how to divide the different classes into their respective factions, encompassing gameplay, existing mechanics, and most importantly, maintaining the “fantasy” of the StarCraft universe.
Gonzalez explained, “The general idea was ‘fantasy first’ across the entire mini-set, like the core thing is, we want this to feel super StarCraft-y. We want to do that whole universe justice. We want to make sure that people who like StarCraft know that we do too.” But, in order to do that, the team had to figure out the general playstyles of each of the factions. In simple terms, Zerg is aggressive and fast, Protoss is slower and relies on late-game high-impact cards, and Terran incorporates Starships, the new mechanic from The Great Dark Beyond.
“I think the Starship thing was the biggest opportunity, but at the same time, the biggest wrench in the whole thing,” Gonzalez continued. “We wanted to give classes that didn’t have Starships in the main set an opportunity to have it in this mini-set, so that immediately ruled out around half of the classes to be Terran.” Gonzalez continued.
If, like some Hearthstone fans out there (namely my partner), you’re wondering how Rogue ended up in Protoss instead of Zerg, it’s because of a very iconic stealthy Protoss unit – the Dark Templar. Pors said, “Stealth is also the key feature of a Dark Templar, so where does that really slot into the Hearthstone class pie? It felt like Rogue was really the clear contender there. And then we tried to find a way where we could build it out so that the Templars and the Archons all work within some of the other things that Rogue had going on to make that stand out.”
Heroes of StarCraft is the first time that we’re seeing multi-class Hero cards in Hearthstone, which must have presented unique balancing challenges for the team. Pors confirmed that the team took a “StarCraft-first” approach when designing Artanis, Jim Raynor, and Kerrigan, leaning into the fantasy of what these heroes represent in the RTS first and then branching that across their shared classes.
He continued, “I think at the end of the day, these Hero cards get to feel relatively unique because they’re really keying into these StarCraft-specific mechanics, and that lets us open up the design space a little bit more than if it was just a Hero card that could be played as a one-of-30 style card. These StarCraft cards make this tight little package within each other. They’re very synergistic.”
Gonzalez added, “The multi-class cards are definitely meant to be the basis for all the decks – they’re all meant to be the bread and butter of the faction. I think the Hero cards operate in a very unique space where they act as a staple, but also they’re really flashy and cool, so they just feel great to play in basically all the decks.” One thing that was incredibly clear from chatting with both of these game designers was the sheer excitement and enthusiasm that they both share for the game and the Heroes of StarCraft mini-set overall.
Scale-wise, Hearthstone and StarCraft can’t get much further apart. StarCraft’s combat takes place over giant intergalactic battlefields, whereas in Hearthstone, you’re sitting down at a table in the tavern to play a game of cards. I was intrigued to find out how the team went about translating the sci-fi sense of awe onto a game board, and Gonzalez said that a lot of it comes down to the art of the cards themselves.
“I think one thing that I’m pretty proud of is we tried to represent common and powerful use cases for specific units and abilities from StarCraft through the art of some cards. So you’ll see, like, x unit versus y unit that you see every single time you play Zerg versus Protoss. We tried to get those moments in the card art and even in the actual effects of the cards themselves.” Pors added that small details like the cards’ flavor text and voiceovers also add to the sense of scale, as do the cards’ stats. For example, Zerglings are one-one units because they’re just little guys!
Of course, this mini-set is incredibly exciting for StarCraft fans, but what about people like me, who sometimes dabble in Hearthstone but have never touched StarCraft? “I love talking about this,” Gonzalez told me. “This is almost like a love letter to StarCraft fans, but at the end of the day, this is still in Hearthstone. We don’t want to just totally leave our Hearthstone fans, especially those who don’t know StarCraft, out to dry, right?
“What I hope is the biggest appeal for players that don’t know a lot about StarCraft is these are all really new, really fun decks that you can play, and every class gets something new. Because this mini-set has that narrative lens on top of it, as well as 11 more cards than a normal mini-set, there’s just so much new to do here.”
Pors mentioned that he initially wanted to implement StarCraft positional play into the mini-set, but this was one of the mechanics that got left on the cutting room floor because it wasn’t doing “what it needed to do from a Hearthstone design perspective.” Although so much of the design process for Heroes of StarCraft leaned on making sure the cards felt StarCraft-y enough, the existing feel and playstyle of Hearthstone remains at its core.
Finally, I asked both Pors and Gonzalez what their favorite part of the mini-set is, and they both immediately said the Protoss cards, so make sure you try them out in your Hearthstone decks when the mini-set launches globally today.