After a teaser was posted over the weekend, Blizzard has unveiled the newest Hearthstone expansion - Murder at Castle Nathria! The new expansion releases on August 2, 2022.
Here's everything that we know so far about the new expansion.
- Login today and get Prince Renathal for free!
- "Your deck size and starting Health are 40." Whoa.
- After Patch 24.6, Prince Renathal will be granted upon opening your first Murder at Castle Nathria card pack instead of upon logging in.
- As expected, there are two bundles available for purchase right now:
- Mega Bundle: 80 Packs, 5 Golden Packs, 2 Golden Legendaries, Warrior Hero, Card Back, 10 Merc Packs, BG Board
- Bundle: 60 Packs, 2 Legendaries, Card Back
- Murder at Castle Nathria has 135 new cards.
- You can follow the card reveal schedule on our dedicated page.
New Cards Revealed
Only a few cards have been revealed so far, but we've got the theme set for the expansion!
What Do the New Keywords Do?
You probably need some context for the new cards above. No worries, we've got you covered:
Infuse
- These cards absorb anima when friendly minions die.
- After the specified number of minions die while the card is still in your hand, the card transforms into a more powerful version.
Location (Card Type)
- Pay the initial cost to place the card onto the field.
- Every turn, you can activate the ability of your location card, for free.
- Activating the location card uses 1 durability and has a 1-turn cooldown.
- Every class has their own location card.
Comments
Funfact: "murder mystery" was the original theme for the witchwood expansion, which started out with the title "murder at the gilnean express". They also briefely described a "investigate" keyword, which seems to be the base for Murloc Holmes. They later dropped that theme because during designing this expansion they constantly found themself more interested in the gilnean woods and monsters around the train. So I'm interested in finding out how they made the theme work for this expansion.
At 0:46 in the trailer you can see RAFAAAAAM THE SUPREME ARCHAEOLOGIST!!! I'm already hyped to see Rafaam return, lets hope his new card will be good! Though i'm really wondering why Rafaam is in the shadowlands, considering it's basically WoWs afterlife...? Pretty sure he didn't die in Galakronds awakening. (League of explorers won ending) Also considering Sire Denetrius invited his enemies, i'm kinda wondering why Rafaam is one of Denetrius enemies.
Oh and Kel'Thuzad at 0:45, which means probably a new Kel'Thuzad card, not that surprising considering Kel'thuzad was already in shadowlands.
Either way those were the only characters i really recognise. (Never really played Wow, but i do like watching some non-shadowlands lore videos every so often. So i'm probably overlooking some recognisable characters.)
Oh and i'm already predicting that Dentrius didnt actually die, he probably framed his death and framed others for his own enjoyment. Also Prince Ranathal will be in almost every deck i use, cant wait for 40 cards reno decks, and 45 card only-legendaries decks.
I'd have to play it again, but I think you could interpret it as Rafaam dying in the LoE version of GA, though it was left ambiguous.
Of the other characters, I'm guessing the blue guy is Pelagos.
The orc female might be Draka (Thrall's mum), who could easily be the rogue legendary if so (see Maldraxxus cinematic).
The others we haven't accounted for look like typical Shadowlands folk, though I have no idea what to make of the person in the top hat. I'm sure someone who plays WoW could enlighten us.
That depents on which version of the Story you played. The E.V.I.L version ends with Rafaam killing Galakrond after realizing that life is worthless if everything gets destroyed, meanwhile the Explorers version endet with them defeating Rafaam and Galakrond.
Prince Ranathal is already my favorite card. Time for a super greedy highlander 40 card deck with every copy/bounce card in the game.
The twist is that he killed himself and framed everyone else for fun.
The announcement video was top tier!
Evolve shaman is back again, I mean, some people love but this is the mechanic that I most hate in hearthstone history. And if this Prince Renatal become meta, probably I will drop the game for good
Everyone will be using no penalty Renathal, no matter what deck.
If only it was for control.
I think you're underestimating just how bad having a 40 card deck is for most archetypes. Aggro wants to play the highest quality cards possible, and combo wants to get their specific combo cards in hand as quickly as possible. A 40 card deck makes that harder, and the extra 10 health just isn't worth the trade-off. Control is probably the only archetype that would consider running this card, since the 10 health is more valuable and a bigger deck is potentially an upside.
No penalty? It's established wisdom that you want the smallest possible deck in card games to improve consistency. For most decks, adding 10 cards just means you are less likely to have the best 30 when you want them.
The amount of cheating out in Wild will be no penalty.
Only penalty I see is that the deck will be less consistent.