Aside from more than a few jokes about how silly playing Hearthstone (Free) in real life would be, there hasn’t been a whole lot of effort to bring the game to a physical form, until now. Games In Asia went hands on with the Chinese knockoff that apes absolutely everything from pre-Naxxramas Hearthstone. Aside from lacking new cards and subsequent balance tweaks Blizzard has made since the release of Hearthstone, the main takeaway is that playing Hearthstone when your iPad/Mac/PC isn’t managing most things for you takes forever.

Games In Asia mentions turns which would take 30 seconds in game take upwards of five minutes as you employ the use of endless amounts of tokens and counters to keep track of all the mechanics which are just automatic in your game. Additionally, there’s the somewhat obvious drawback of just how much longer deck building takes when you need to sort through physical cards versus typing the first few letters of the cards you’re looking for then dragging it to the right.

Regardless, it’s still pretty cool that this kind of thing exists. It reminds me of college friends desperately trying to play Warhammer using coins and other tokens over expensive models. The difference here is that Hearthstone is totally free to play, making the physical version seem sort of crazy for anything beyond novelty value.

[via Games In Asia]