The March of the Lich King is the latest Hearthstone expansion. The cinematic is quite impressive!
The next expansion of Hearthstone has been revealed and is likely to appeal to a wide audience. After the Demon Hunter was added as a new class to the card game, the Death Knight follows with “March of the Lich King”. But Blizzard has much more in store – the latest expansion brings plenty of fresh ideas and improvements.
The cinematic showcases a rather impressive battle between the blood elf Lady Liadrin and the Lich King Arthas, dueling at the top of Icecrown while using various spells from Hearthstone. For instance, Liadrin sends her Silver Hand recruits to their doom, while Arthas unleashes ghouls and casts numerous frost spells with Frostmourne.
It’s clear that the trailer visually resembles “Arcane”. Instead of the usual “2D cinematics”, Blizzard employed a similar animation technique for this trailer as was used in the LoL series Arcane, which corresponds to a noticeably higher quality.
What can the Death Knight do? The Death Knight, naturally represented by Arthas as the Lich King, is the latest class in Hearthstone. His hero power is “Ghoul Rush” – which summons a 1/1 ghoul with Charge that dies at the end of the turn.
Death is a crucial theme for the Death Knight because with each minion that dies on the Death Knight’s side, a new corpse is created. This is a special resource for the Death Knight, which he can use to summon an army of ghouls or deal damage to all minions via corpse explosion – the more corpses, the greater the damage.
Death Knights also have a “Rune” mechanic with special deck-building rules. You must choose a combination of 3 runes (Frost, Unholy, Blood) when creating the deck, which then restricts which cards you can play. There are particularly powerful Death Knight cards that require 3 Blood runes – but then you cannot play cards that use Unholy or Frost. Careful planning is extremely important here.
New Minion Type “Undead”: Since a Death Knight relies on a lot of zombies, there is also the new minion type “Undead”. Many of the new cards belong to this minion type, and many old cards are retroactively given this type.
Especially interesting: Some cards could even have multiple types at the same time in the future! For example, there is “Invincible”, Arthas’ former horse, which is both a beast and an undead. This allows for many new synergies and exciting combinations of cards that were not possible before.
New Keyword “Mana Thirst”: Another new keyword belongs to the blood elves, who are making their entrance into Hearthstone with March of the Lich King and can be found on many blood elf cards. Cards with Mana Thirst typically have 2 effects. A relatively weak one and an alternative, significantly stronger one when the player has at least a certain amount of mana.
The spell “Arcane Bolt” deals about 2 damage for 1 mana. However, if the mage already has 8 mana, Arcane Bolt instead deals 3 damage for 1 mana.
What is the story of the expansion? As usual, the storyline of Hearthstone is to be viewed somewhat detached from the actual Warcraft cosmos, as it is often parodied or portrayed “alternatively”. This is also the case in “March of the Lich King”. For Arthas is back and is marching once again towards Silvermoon with his undead scourge to exterminate the blood elves and reach the Sunwell. The blood elves are (surprisingly) not too keen on this and stand against the undead once more.
Therefore, most of the 145 new cards are either inspired by the undead scourge or the blood elves.
Free Legendary Card if you log in now
If you log in to Hearthstone now, you can already snag a first legendary card for free and use it immediately. “The Sunwell” is the first legendary neutral spell available in Hearthstone. The card has a massive random factor but can significantly influence the course of a game.
The card costs a hefty 9 mana, but the actual costs when played are likely to be lower, as the card text states:
Fill your hand with random spells. This card costs (1) less for each other card in your hand.
The fewer spells you can draw from the Sunwell, the lower the costs will be.
When is the release of the new Hearthstone expansion? “March of the Lich King” launches on December 6, 2022. As usual, it is already possible to purchase some pre-order packs in advance to secure plenty of card packs and solid starting cards for the new Death Knight class.
What do you think of the trailer, the Death Knight, and the first new cards? Cool, exciting ideas? Or rather inappropriate and annoying?
