WOWTCG - I've been sucked into a card game - Aaaaaahhhhh

After many years of avoiding card games like Magic and the Wow (World of Warcraft for anyone living under a rock in a cave) card game I've finally caved in and bought a couple of decks for the Wow game. I've played Warhammer Invasion for a couple of years but its different in that you know what you're getting in a pack of cards, there aren't any boosters to gamble with. Now I've been sucked into the WoW game and I find myself buying 4 booster packs on amazon before work.....

In game terms the WoW card game isn't that hard to pick up. I'd say Invasion is much more complex; you have 3 zones which gives a possible 3 different roles for each card and there's buildings, units, heros, legends.... it all gets quite complicated. But in the WoW game you only pickup 1 card per turn, so thats simpler, your money is based on 1 per card rather than hammers etc, so thats simpler, there aren't any zones, you just kill the hero, so thats simpler too. Admittedly there's still tactics, attachments, weapons, armour and a plethora of other things too but its still easier to pick up than Invasion.

I should probably point out that I used to play the actual WoW on the computer. A lot. A hell of a lot. So I'm very familiar with the names of everything and all the in jokes like "LEEEERRROOOYY JEEEENNNKKINS!!!!". My sister still plays WoW a fair bit too. I hate to sound a bit cliché but I got a girlfriend and suddenly wow seemed less important. My girlfriend has shown some interest in the WoW card game when I was at a local tournament, so that have given me a fair bit of impetus to explore it.

For my first 2 decks I bought the Sylvanas Windrunner (hunter) for me and Jaina Proudmore (Mage) for my girlfriend. In each pack was a free booster pack with a bunch of random cards. There was a couple of hero cards, a shaman and one that I found quite weird for a hero, Iso'rath, a giant tentacle beast in the ground with a giant mouth. He's a bit like a Sarlacc from Star Wars but bigger, I think he uses mind control to make stuff work for him if I remember correctly from the computer game. There was also a loot card for a pet cat in the computer game, I gave it to my sister.

The game plays quite simply. You and your opponent start with 7 cards. You can put down cards as either face down money/resource cards or for their proper use. Quest cards get put down as esource cards too and you can pay resources to flip them over and complete the quest. Your other cards are allies, that you put in your ally zone for attacking etc, abilities (like tactics in Invasion) and equipment that you attach to your hero, like weapons or armour.

Its a fun game thats quite easy to pick up and probably hard and possibly expensive to master. I have 1 gripe about it though, why do I have to pay resources for my hero to attack?? It annoys me that I pay 1 resource to do one point of damage when I can pay for an ally that attacks for free! Nevermind, I'm sure someone will explain why its good at some point. Now I just want my 4 new booster packs to turn up, hooked on plastic crack and card crack now :(