Everyone dies in Hearthstone's Knights of the Frozen Throne
Journey back to Icecrown Citadel with 135 new player cards in the new expansion for Blizzard's digital card game.
Don your parkas and prepare your ice puns, because the next Hearthstone expansion is taking you to back to Icecrown in Knights of the Frozen Throne. The expansion was announced on developer Blizzard's livestream from the Hearthstone World Championships in Shanghai earlier today.
Blizzard's wildly popular digital card game first set foot in the frigid northern wastes with The Grand Tournament card set in 2015, but rather than focusing on the noble ren-faire crusaders and their medieval times fun and games, this expansion focuses at the nefarious undead denizens of the Lich King.
The previous expansion, Journey to Un'Goro, was released earlier in 2017 and introduced new Quest cards that offered powerful cards in return for meeting certain objectives within a match against an opponent. The new hotness this time around is in nine legendary Hero cards -- one for each hero class in Hearthstone -- that transform your Mages, Priests, Druids and other heroes into Death Knights and grant them modified abilities. Fingers crossed the hero-transforming cards are more Jaraxxus and less Majordomo. Too soon?
The other big new mechanic is "Lifesteal," which is exactly what it sounds like. Deal damage, heal yourself for that much.
One of the new Hero cards.
The expansion itself will contain 135 cards and new single-player content. Knights of the Frozen Throne's series of free PVE missions pit players against the Lich King and his minions. That's eight bosses across a prologue and two separate wings of the Lich King's citadel. One of those tasty new legendaries will be awarded to players upon finishing the prologue mission, too. The new cards will be playable in Hearthstone's Standard and Wild competitive play modes. You can read more about that here.
The new expansion is due out in August 2017 with the next set of spoilers coming July 24. As with the previous expansions, you can pick up a discounted bundle of 50 randomized packs and a unique card back if you preorder. Personally, I'm hoping that Shatter is finally worth playing.
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