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Hearthstone's March of the Lich King expansion might be its biggest set ever

6K View2022-11-03

With twenty-one expansion sets and nearly a decade's worth of new modes, events, and other additions under its belt, one might expect Hearthstone to be nearing its end of life or at least just skating by on its dedicated fan base and not really growing. Perhaps that's why the team behind the game at Blizzard has come up with something massive for its just-revealed twenty-second add-on, March of the Lich King.

Revealed by Blizzard yesterday, March of the Lich King is an expansion set focusing, as the name suggests, on the Lich King, almost certainly the biggest and most memorable villain in the history of the Warcraft franchise. But as with the massive World of Warcraft expansion that centered on this baddie, 2008's Wrath of the Lich King, it will include the addition of a new class: the long-rumored Death Knight.

This already makes March of the Lich King a massive expansion, as new classes are very rare in Hearthstone. The game launched with nine playable classes, and a tenth, the Demon Hunter, was added in 2020's Ashes of Outland set. Since each new class must receive new cards with every expansion, they represent a large future investment from Blizzard even beyond the stress of adding them in the first place.

And then there's the fact that Death Knight kind of operates as three different classes, not just one. Death Knight class cards will feature a new element called "runes." When building a Death Knight deck, you'll need to select a match-up of three runes, which represent different playstyles, and many of their class cards will have a rune requirement.

To break this down a little further, the three rune types are as follows:

Blood: These cards are tanky in a way that's reminiscent of the Warrior class. They include board control spells such as Corpse Explosion, which can help clear away enemy minions, as well as high-health, high-impact minions of their own like Patchwerk, a seven-cost legendary with a battlecry that destroys a minion in your opponent's hand, deck, and battlefield.

Frost: Frost-bast cards lean more into the spell side of things, coming across as a blend between Mage's burst damage potential and Druid's mana manipulation. They also include a lot of freeze enemy minions, naturally, such as Frostywyrm's Fury, a seven-cost spell that deals five damage to a single target, summons a five-power, five-health Frostwyrm on your side of the board, and freezes the enemy's side of the board. That's a lot of value!

Unholy: Cards bearing Unholy runes focus on raising up the corpses you've accumulated throughout a game—no, literally, Corpses are a new resource that Death Knights will collect and spend as matches progress. Using these mechanics, Unholy-focused Death Knights can swarm their opponents with undead ghouls. I'm personally a huge fan of Lord Marrowgar, an eight-cost legendary minion who raises all corpses as one-power, one-health golems with rush, giving a +2/+2 boost for each one that won't fit on the board. Now that's what I call a BONE STORM!

It remains to be seen just how restrictive runes will be when it comes to deckbuilding, but it's hard to deny how ambitious this new class is right from the jump. To help accomplish that, Death Knights will also feature the biggest core set of any class—thirty-two cards in total. And on top of that, there will be an addition twenty-six-card set called Path of Arthas launching alongside March of the Lich King to help Death Knights catch up to the number of cards that other classes have access to.

So that's fifty-eight cards just for Death Knight before we even get into the new expansion properly.

In addition to everything mentioned so far, March of the Lich King will add 145 new cards across all eleven classes and neutral cards. So including all the Death Knight additions, that's over two hundred total new cards getting added to the game at once—far and away the biggest batch at one time since the game launched in 2004.

Those cards will include: the addition of the new Undead minion type, as well as the ability for minions in the game to now include multiple types; the return of Reborn, a card keyword used in 2019's Saviors of Uldum expansion and which will now be regularly used going forward, where a minion will resurrect with one health after being killed the first time; and a new card keyword called Manathirst, where spells or minions can be powered up if they're played while having access to a certain amount of mana.

Beyond new cards and mechanics, there are also some other changes being implemented to keep players engaged in the game. For one thing, they've added in a new event system that allows them to run timed events with their own quests and rewards similar to what a lot of mobile games offer. These kind of systems can be abused to push players to spend money, but they can also provide lots of nice bonuses and motivation for players to log in and play more regularly.

The game will also feature a new level of collectible card rarity beyond golden cards. In addition to golden cards, players will now be able to earn "Signature cards," of which there will be eighteen in the March of the Lich King set. Signature cards will not be craftable and can only be earned by opening packs, but they feature a clean new look that lets players see more of the card art, as pictured below.

All in all, there's a lot to be excited about here, and as someone who's been playing Hearthstone non-stop since it came out, I'm stoked to get my hands on the Death Knight and all these new cards. I won't have to wait too long either. Hearthstone: March of the Lich King goes live on December 6, with some of its features, such as the new event system, already in the game now.

💬 What do you think about all the additions to Hearthstone coming with March of the Lich King? Is it enough to keep you playing, or to get you back in if you've stopped? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

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