Hearthstone officially launches for iPad

The iPad edition of Blizzard's digital collectible card game Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft has officially launched in Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

Australia, New Zealand and Canada are the first countries to get access to the iPad edition of Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft as it finally makes its debut on the touchscreen platform — where the game's interface fits like magic.

The game is still free to download and play, with extra card packs available via in-app purchase. Your decks are tied to your Battle.net account, so you can simply log in and start playing where you left off on the PC or Mac version, with all the features of the full game available across the board, including the Hearthsteed, ranked play, Golden Heroes and special edition card backs.

"Hearthstone's player base has already grown to more than 10 million registered accounts following the official Windows and Mac release, but we saw that a few people online were holding out for the iPad version," said Blizzard CEO and co-founder Mike Morhaime.

"Instead of calling those folks up individually, we figured we might as well let everyone know that the global iPad rollout for Hearthstone has begun, and pretty soon it'll be available everywhere. The game is a natural fit for tablets — we encourage everyone to check it out on their couch, in their backyard, in a coffee shop... or anywhere else they take their iPads."

At this point, the game is not available for iPhone, but it is on the way, as well as Android devices and Windows 8 tablets, later this year. As with the Mac and PC versions of the game, it can only be played when connected to the internet, so for Wi-Fi-only devices, it won't be available on the bus — but it will make tooling around while watching the telly a lot more comfortable.

Scoop it up for every generation of iPad from the iPad 2 (including the Mini) now from the iTunes app store, and stay tuned for our full review. As for a full global release, Blizzard could only say "soon" — but, given it's already launched, we'd say that's actual soon as opposed to Blizzard's version of soon.