I am in the exact same boat as michaeljb:
I just started Hearthstone this morning, I'm possibly interested in this but don't know how long it will take me to get up to speed, or if I'll have the time to participate. How long will signups be open for this?
However, I will not be able to participate in the tournament or anything as I am taking a hiatus from civilization for the next couple months. It seems like a pretty fun game, my only complaint is that it is not a level playing field for newbies. I was playing this one game where I was completely demolishing this guy, then he goes and switches out his hero for some weird demon thing, starts spawning 6/6 demons every turn along with having all sorts of other cool cards that I don't have, and barely beats me. (I would have had him on the next turn but he got a lucky action card [magic, potion, spell, whatever its called] and is able to get past my taunt and beat out my hero.)
I have basically only played with the hero that you start with, and I just have a couple questions. One, what would you all say is a good balance between the highcost/low cost cards. Second, how much does the hero really matter? There are some cards that every race plays with, then some are race-specific. Is there a certain race that I should look into next?
Anyway, I got down to level 19 before just getting bumped back to 20, and I thought I would post here to let you all know that creating a new board for hearthstone here got one more player into it. There goes some more of my time. Thanks a bunch.