This was an eventful week for Hearthstone. At the start of the week we had the new expansions reveal along with six new cards, which can be found here. The rest of the week has involved a series of reveals and new content including new features, new hero skins, and many new cards.
The Features
On Monday we were given the new deck slots that we were promised during the reveal. The UI implementation was very lack-luster, with them simply adding a scroll bar in your collection and a second page in the Play list. Ben Brode confirmed on his stream that opposed to what he and the Blizzard team had been saying for years, it wasn’t a difficult change, the long delay on release was them debating whether or not to add it in the first place. They finally decided a definitive yes, and after that it was a simple implementation.
Along with this change came a couple other changes to the overall UI. The first is a little button above the Ranked or Casual selections which shows you whether you are in Wild or Standard mode. It is a clickable button, but at the moment it does nothing, and you are locked to Wild mode. This will obviously change when the set and Standard format are released.
The last new change is a nice little quality of life change. Now when you are in the Play screen where you select your deck, there is a button at the bottom that allows you to go directly to your collection. This is especially useful for adventure bosses, where you may want to make small changes to your deck without going through six additional screens. When you click out from your collection after accessing it in this way, you will return to the screen that you went there from, allowing for extremely easy access.
New Hero Skin
This week Blizzard released their fourth hero skin, Lady Liadrin, a Paladin replacement. Unlike the others, this one is free, with a condition. That condition is hitting level 20 in their other game, World of Warcraft. This can be done with a trial account completely free, so there is no need to spend any money. However, you must hit level 20 on a character after March 11, if you have characters level 100 before that they will not count for this promotion.
Many guides have come out giving new players guidance in how to hit level 20 as quickly as possible, as well as seeing as many Hearthstone characters as possible. You will likely spend around five hours leveling your character, at which point you will be awarded the skin when you log back into Hearthstone. You must level up your character on the same Blizzard account in order to unlock the skin.
The skin itself looks amazing. It’s a female Paladin skin, with the usual all new set of emotes (including a “Hello, Challenger” greetings). The best part about it is the fact that whenever she uses her hero power, a Silver Hand Recruit appears out of a ball of light. Unfortunately it is currently bugged with Justicar and will revert to Uther’s typical summon animation, but I’m sure this will be fixed down the line.
New Cards
The reveal last week included three corrupt cards as well as two cultist cards and C’Thun himself. Since then they have revealed two more C’Thun interactions, one more corrupt card, and an entirely new style of card interaction.
This card is probably the least exciting of the revealed cards this week. It’s a larger Muster for Battle with no weapon attachment. With Quartermaster leaving Standard, creating a board of Silver Hand Recruits isn’t nearly as scary as it used to be. Perhaps this card will lead into another Recruit buff in the future, or I doubt it will see much play. However, during the Value Town this week, Reynad seemed to think differently, saying that a board full of 1/1s is highly underrated, and that if your opponent uses a board clear spell to answer it, you’re quite happy. Perhaps the card has potential!
This card is interesting. It was clearly designed to counter Secret Paladin, however, the base stat line is so much worse than Kezan Mystic, and the effect is worse as well. During the reveal itself in the America’s Champion tournament, Reynad’s exact response upon seeing the card was “meh”, and I do believe that accurately represents it. It is an important card to have so that secret based decks like Freeze Mage never get too overpowered, but it’s not particularly exciting overall, especially considering that many cards that allow Secret Paladin to work are leaving Standard.
This card is really neat, and I look forward to seeing how it ends up working. It fills a needed seven drop slot, and barring straight removal, it creates a minion that is very difficult to remove without creating a bad situation for yourself. As pointed out, you simply cannot trade three 2 attack minions into it, because its effect will create a 2/2 with taunt while you are attempting to trade. It also works very well with self-damage cards like whirlwind.
This card is really interesting, especially considering the Bestial Wrath style of effect that makes it able to clear an entire board and attack face without dying, but in reality it’s an eight mana card that doesn’t do anything when it comes into play. Perhaps we’ll see it in new archetypes of Control Hunter, and it’s certainly not a weak card, but I believe the biggest impact this card has is a Ram Wrangler buff.
This card is amazing. It is a base yeti, which is a very good statline, with the potential to be a 4/10 very easily. It gives the potential to be a Twilight Drake but far less weak against silence effects. The only possible downside is whether or not Druid is the right class to play C’Thun in.
Another really good C’Thun interaction. This is a bigger, better, Shieldmaiden. Ten armour is a lot, and when looking at how often Antique Healbot has been played, an even stronger healing effect with a better stat-line is definitely worth the two extra mana. I will be shocked if this doesn’t see a lot of play.
This card is really cool. The zero mana card is something which is really good, because it can fill your curve at any point in the game. It’s strictly worse than Fireball or Frostbolt on the turns you can play each, but it has the potential to do 10 damage when you need it most. The ability to manipulate your mana to do damage is amazing and has a lot of potential.
This card is just as neat as the last, and considering Priest has had a lot of issues filling out their curve, this could be exactly the card they need going forward. It’s a great card for turns two or three if you need it against aggro (RNG permitting), but it’s also an amazing eight mana card to pull out some strong legendary minions, or just big beefy cards to fill out your deck in control matchups.