Ready your horse and have your Lowly Squire tend to your armor because Blizzard has announced its new expansion for Hearthstone! The expansion, entitled “The Grand Tournament”, will take place after the Litch King is defeated by the champions of original Grand Tournament. After the first tournament’s success the leaders of the Grand Tournament decide to throw a new one. This new tournament will consist of races and tribes from all over World of Warcraft including murlocs and pirates. Some of the basic information about the set is as follows:
- 132 new cards will be available in the expansion.
- There will be an all new board for players to battle on.
- There is a new keyword entitled “inspire” which will be explained later in the article.
- Prices for packs of this new set will be the exact same as the other sets (100 in-game gold or $3.00).
- The set will available sometime in August.
- You may begin to preorder new packs starting next week (up to 50 packs may be preorderd).
- If you preorder packs you will receive a new cardback.
Those are the basics but lets get in get in depth with some of the news things that are coming to Hearthstone!
New Board!
Just like the different Hearthstone adventures this expansion will feature a new game board for players to compete on; equipped with new hidden cinematics. Some of these including receiving food from the vendor in the lower left hand corner and shooting arrows either at or around the target and dummy in the lower right hand corner. The most exciting addition is the idea that a crowd will either cheer for you when you are winning or boo for you when you are losing. It is yet unknown how the crowd will decide if you are winning or losing but maybe they will cheer when you have board control or when you 2 for 1 an opponent? Who knows!
New Keyword!
The new keyword that was spoiled is called “inspire” and it will appear on the bottom of the card much like deathrattle; as shown above. This new keyword is supposed to reflect the expansions theme of “heroes matter” and more specifically “hero powers matter”. With this in mind the “inspire” keyword is an ability that triggers when you use your hero power. The ability will read something along the lines of “inspire: x happens” or a more specific example would be “inspire: gain +1 attack”.
Spoilers!
Now the fun part begins; spoiler season is upon us! I’m quite unfamiliar with the way Hearthstone conducts it spoiler season as I was not playing the game when they came out with Goblins vs. Gnomes but I do know how magical spoiler season can be from my years playing Magic: The Gathering. So as you might have expected Blizzard showed off some new cards to the over 220,000 people tuning in for the announcement on Twitch. The cards mostly centered around the theme of “hero powers matter” but some of them focused on a tribal theme and the three different classes that were played during a three man tournament that took place on stream. Those classes were mage which “Trump” piloted, shaman which was used by “Amaz” , and hunter which “Firebat” used to take the tournament with. The decks that were used by these Hearthstone players were pre-constructed decks created by Blizzard that featured new cards. The showcasing of new cards are a thing that Magic does not use during spoiler season but really can excite the player base because they get to see new cards in action.
The New Cards Officially Spoiled!
My favorite of all the new cards spoiled is Frost Giant, not only flavor wise, but as a card that can be used to great effect in the competitive Hearthstone metagame. Warlock and even hunter might be able to use this card, because of their abuse of the hero power, but only time will tell if this card will see competitive play! You can find all the officially spoiled cards and anymore pertinent information here
