Blizzard’s competitive online card-dueling game Hearthstone got a little closer to full release today as is entered Open Beta in North America. Blizzard announced the news via its official site that the game’s Closed Beta phase finally ended today.

Anyone can now download the client and start playing the game for free – and any cards they amass won’t be deleted either, so any progress made here is progress made for good.

Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is a 1v1 card battling game in which players reduce the health-bar of their direct opponent using all manner of cards with creatures, spells and effects to lay the proverbial smack-down. Hearthstone is set in the Warcraft universe and contains tons of references to both World of Warcraft and the Warcraft 3 series, so fans of Blizzard’s fantasy franchise should definitely check it out.

Hearthstone is available now in Open Beta as a free-to-play title in North America, but Blizzard says it has plans to go live with Open Betas in “the next few days” in other regions, which presumably means Europe.

What do you think? Will you be downloading the game? Let us know in the comments below.