Blizzard's has announced that their currently closed beta trading card game Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft will be receiving its final balance update later today to a handful of cards ahead of moving into open beta.

The cards that will be impacted by the patch are Unleash the Hounds, Sylvanas Windrunner, Blood Imp, Defender of Argus, Pyroblast, Dark Iron Dwarf, Abusive Sergeant, Warsong Commander, Charge and Novice Engineer.

"Thank you so much for continuing to play, test, and give feedback on Hearthstone as the closed beta testing phase begins to draw to a close," community manager Takralus wrote on the official forum.

"We are monitoring card balance over time, and without your continued testing efforts, we wouldn’t have the necessary data we need in order to make changes to cards that may warrant them. This should be our last big set of balance changes; once we go live, we plan to make very few card changes, and only if they are absolutely necessary."

Blizzard has yet to reveal exactly when we can expect Hearthstone to go into open beta, though with the final patch arriving soon it seems the wait won't be for long. The open beta was originally scheduled for release around Christmas time last year, however that was delayed to add extra polish and squash some bugs.

Blizzard said it hoped these changes would "increase the variety of cards you will see at all levels of play" and confirmed that, as with previous updates to card values, it will be possible to disenchant expert cards affected by the changes at their original cost for a limited time after the patch.

For full patch notes including Blizzard's comments you can find them over here, and let us know in the comments below on what you think of the game so far, and of the newest update.