[Note: The power of the Lich King has proved so immense that our servers got frozen as a result of a deadly strike. We've been working to restore the intended functionality ever since. You might've seen the site announcement and the bulk of our coverage temporarily taking place elsewhere. The intent is to catch up throughout the following few days, while jumping into additional news as they happen; big thanks to anyone sticking around to relive the hype with us!]
And so it happened, all expectations being met. Those who did not believe before have no choice but to take heed of March of the Lich King, Hearthstone's next expansion scheduled to release on December 6 with 145 new collectible cards. This is by far the biggest card set to date, perhaps even the most ambitious one in its grand scope. Hearthstone as we know it is not going to be quite the same afterwards.
If you are interested, the pre-purchase bundles (Standard and Mega) for March of the Lich King are already available, and for the first time ever, will also remain accessible for one extra week following the launch of the expansion. You can wait and see how much appeal the new cards will hold!
Quote From Blizzard The Lich King returns to Hearthstone, leading his Undead army and the new Death Knight class in an all-out assault on the elven city of Silvermoon! The Blood Elves won’t go down easily; they are as thirsty for combat as they are for the magic of the Sunwell that they draw power from. As the Corpses pile up, the Death Knights’ army swells, and so begins the March of the Lich King.
Here is everything we know about the third and final expansion for the Year of the Hydra:
New Death Knight Class
It is finally here, either to answer or crush the hopes of the large part of the Hearthstone community, which has now got their wishes granted. The new Death Knight class is bound to feel very unique in its own right.
- This is the second time Hearthstone adds a new class to the game, following the arrival of Demon Hunter with Ashes of Outland in April 2020.
- We will go up to 11 classes come December; that's a lot of decklists to keep up with!
- Hero Power: Ghoul Charge (2 Mana cost) - Summon a 1/1 Ghoul with Charge. It dies at the end of the turn.
- Class Mechanic: Corpses - Whenever a friendly minion dies, the Death Knight gains a Corpse. This special resource can be used to reinforce some of the other class cards.
- Special Deckbuilding Mechanic: Runes - Certain Death Knight cards are marked with Rune symbols. Red for Blood, Green for Unholy, Blue for Frost (this is a callback to World of Warcraft and the class' talent specializations there).
- Runes affect deckbuilding in turn - by choosing certain combinations (3 of one Rune, or 2+1, etc.), certain powerful cards will become available, while others will have to be excluded from the deck.
- Some Death Knight cards will not have any Rune restrictions.
- There will be a total of 68 Death Knight cards at the start: including the free 32-card Core Set pack unlocked through a dedicated Prologue solo adventure (similar to how Demon Hunter had its Initiate Set introduced back then).
- Path of Arthas Set will also be available upon launch, with 26 Death Knight class cards. Purchasable for either 2000 Gold or 1500 Runestones. Featured cards can also be manually crafted.
Death Knight Cards
This is a combination of March of the Lich King, Path of Arthas, and Core sets. You can see the Runes featured on most of the cards, right under their Mana cost.
All Other New Cards Revealed
Reveals will resume on November 7 and last until November 27. Here are all the other cards that have been shown so far (Sunwell is already available in the game as our free Legendary of the expansion):
New Minion Types - Undead and Dual-Type
Enter Undead as the new minion type, one that's been long awaited! You might've noticed a few examples among the new cards above. There are currently 226 cards (38 for Standard) listed in Blizzard Library that fit into this category. Do mind, these changes are not available in-game until Patch 25.0 delivers expansion-specific content.
Quote From Blizzard The Lich King commands the Undead Scourge, and these unholy masses will be Hearthstone’s next new minion type: Undead! In March of the Lich King, Undead minions will appear in Neutral and in the classes that have aligned with the Lich King. Many cards synergize with Undead, triggering bonus effects “if a friendly Undead died after your last turn,” meaning either on your opponent’s last turn, or earlier on your current turn.
But that's not all! We've already had Dual-Class cards, now it's time for Dual-Type minions! Imagine all the upcoming synergies.
Quote From Blizzard In March of the Lich King, some minions will have two minion types! For Undead minions, this might be a second type to represent what they were before they became Undead. These will be retroactive additions, with both Undead and second minion types being added to many older minions as well as those in this expansion.
New and Returning Keywords
You might've noticed one mysterious new keyword among the cards above, and one that's very familiar to players who remember Saviors of Uldum.
Manathirst
- Cards with Manathirst unlock a more powerful version once you reach a certain amount of Mana Crystals. We've seen similar mechanics before.
- Once activated, you don't actually need to spend the amount of Mana that's required to enable Manathirst (the cards use their own cost); it's all about getting there on the designated turn or through Ramp mechanics.
Reborn
- Reborn returns as the new-old evergreen keyword that's going to appear in many future sets from now on!
- The first time a Reborn minion dies, it is resummoned with 1 Health remaining.
New Signature Cards and Packs
Enter new tier of cosmetic quality for cards (Diamond versions were apparently not the end): Signature. Available with the launch of the new expansion.
Quote From Blizzard Signature is a new cosmetic quality that cards can have (like Golden or Diamond), with stylized full-art images, starting in Patch 25.0. For March of the Lich King, the Signature cards will all feature an icy sepia style, evoking the Lich King’s powers over Frost and the Undead. The art style of Signature cards within each expansion will match their respective expansion’s style and the card frame for future Signature cards might also change from time to time. That means Signature cards from future sets will look different from these ones, to evoke different tones and styles.Signature cards can’t be crafted or disenchanted; they can only be opened in packs or earned through special means. There are a total of 18 Signature cards coming with the launch of March of the Lich King, including 15 Legendary cards. Two of the Legendary cards will be available on the Tavern Pass, and the three non-Legendary cards will be earnable for free as part of an event with expansion launch. After the launch of March of the Lich King, the other 13 Legendary Signature cards can be opened in Standard Packs, class packs, March of the Lich King Packs, and new March of the Lich King Signature Golden Packs. Signature Golden Packs are like current Golden Packs, but they have a chance to include Signature cards instead of only Golden cards, and they have much better overall odds of opening a Legendary card!*
The March of the Lich King Pre-Purchase Mega Bundle includes 2 random March of the Lich King Signature Legendary cards and 5 March of the Lich King Signature Golden Packs! Signature Golden Packs will also replace Golden Packs in the in-game Shop for all future expansions, starting with March of the Lich King.
* See full odds and disclosures on the disclosure site.
This is becoming somewhat complicated, but if you have a Collector's soul... the reveal stream has given us a preview of how such cards are going to look like for March of the Lich King. Quite impressive, at least for anyone appreciative of 'cooler' colors.
Cinematic Trailer
Announcement Video
The full reveal stream, as it happened.
![All The Great Dark Beyond Card Reveals for October 23 - Day 13 [Finished]](the-great-dark-beyond-day-13.webp)
Comments
How did they even connect Lich King with Silvermoon/Blood elves in one expansion? It seems they didn't have enough material and merged 2 expansions in one at the last minute?
Normally Lich King could be better associated with Northrend or Plaguelands!!??
Is entire campagin in it in wc3;, where Arthas kills and raises sylvannas as a banshee, destroys their city. Wipes out 90% of their population, murders their king, defiles their source of power (the sunwell) by ressurecting Kel'thuzad as a Lich.
Its reason theyre even called blood elves instead of high elves they used to, due loosing their 90% of their population there from Arthas and his scourge rampage.
Theyre prolly as a race the most impacted by the scourge, lordareons kingdom was destroyed but mulltiple of the human kingdoms survived.
Thanks for the detailed reply, didn't remember this from TBC, has been too many years! Now it makes more sense!
It actually all goes back to the story of Warcraft 3 campaign, where Arthas invaded Silvermoon and killed/turned Sylvanas into a Banshee. The rest, as they say, is history. Although technically he wasn't a full-fledged Lich King at that point, just Hearthstone likes to play fast and loose with the lore.
Wild-only player crying in the corner
The thing im curious about is what signature cards will have as compansation should the cards be nerfed,Since they are obtainable through packs and preorder bundles. we know from drekthar that they do need to give shit back if one gets nerfed. question is do they value signature cards in the same vein as golden cards. if so im not nearly as bummed about losing the 2 golden legendaries from megabundle.
They do look really bad though, id rather have the normal version to be honest.
Um, everyone who owned a Diamond Drekthar got 3000 gold when they nerfed him, which is exactly how much they spend to get him
yeah...everyone that bought him got "shit" back.
I see what you mean, but I also see how it could be misread. :P
Damn that initial reveal stream was information overload, like Team 5 are Shamans or something 😅
I think out of all the information we received (Ofc I'm hyped for the DK class), I'm most interested in the dual type minions coz that will enable a whole new world of deck build and archetypes never even thought of.
Also, what's gonna happen to The Lich King seeing as Arthas is now a playable hero? (Will never forget opening a golden version from packs!)
The lich king card art dint change at all, onyl thing that changed was the cards being called lich king cards instead of detah knight cards (same for arfus)
Which is good, changing the art wouldve been dumb and uneeded
Illidan was same look and same as the base hero, and was in at time classic set before Core was a thing.
The lich king is not the same thing as Death Knight arthas, lich king is fusion Ner'zhul and Arthas, plus its a wild only card (and changign art for a 1month temporalry wouldve been veyr dumb thing to do, espciallly since it be wild onyl again once the class comes out)
I like that analogy, feeling very overloaded indeed.
And we can always pretend it's somebody else under that helm! What if Bolvar, Fireblood just regrew some hair (don't change my Lich King into some ugly Satyr, Blizzard).
Generally I'm pretty hyped about this: big shake up seems fun. New mechanics. Interesting deckbuilding constraint (and opportunity)
Two things don't work for me though:
1: I don't like the look of the signature legendaries. Losing the card's colour in favour of an expansion-themed tint looks kinda lame to me.
2: the different drop rate on the Signature Golden Packs for legendaries really bothers me. I understand that there won't be a lot of people pumping cash in to get a full golden set, and that it's not targeted at all people, but it seems kinda shady. Making the odds so much better in those packs really pushes people to get those, which doesn't sit right with me.
But overall, pretty minor complaints. Really hyped for this one.
That was my feeling as well re: Signature cards. It took me an embarrasingly long amount of time to realize that Invincible is the same Neutral card that's already been revealed. For class cards, there is a small colored section indicating where it belongs, below the card type tag. But it's not easy to tell at a glance.
oh my god we're actually alive, hooray!
Glad to see this site doing well again. I chime to out of cards for every Hearthstone news.
As for the Death Knight class, it seems like a jack of all trades but is limited by the rune system. My initial thought is that I dislike the rune system because it heavily limits deckbuilding, and deckbuilding is by far my favorite aspect of Hearthstone. But the more I think about it, the more I feel like it's actually the opposite. The limitations that the rune system put on deckbuilding actually encourage experimentation way more than other classes. It's going to be very fun for me to go through all of the different combinations of runes and see which one is going to be the most efficient at achieving certain deck goals.
The rune system is supposed to be the tradeoff for printing cards that are over their mana value with cards like Horn of Winter, Vampiric Blood, Frost Strike etc. And on top of that, it's also a neat balancing mechanic for cards. If a certain runed card has a broken synergy with another runed card, they can just tune the rune value of the cards instead of just changing the numbers.
I'm very excited for the Death Knight class, very possible that it's going to be my favorite class.
Just expect the 3 rune cards to be overpowered compared to other class, for good reason. But then again, Lord Marrowgar doesn't look that overpowered to me. Similar effect to Kel'Thuzad, the Inevitable and that legendary isn't seeing much play.
Thank you (and everyone else who's expressed such notions), that's very uplifting to hear. As far as unexpected 'SNAFUs' go, this might've been the most painful one. Hopefully given a day or two more everything will be smoothed out, and we will be all caught up (and then some).
I do agree about Death Knight, it does seem like the most layered additon to the game yet. Will definitely give creative deckbuilders something to think about! I'm actually somewhat amazed they went there, not being afraid it might be too complex for their new or casual players (this is almost not an 'extra deck slots' joke).
Its rather unfortunate to suffer an attack during such a major event, one that only ever happens once perhaps every two years.
But nevertheless, its nice to know there's somewhere I can go just to see all the revealed cards, rather than scrolling reddit's deep pits.
Im a little skeptical about the rune system, because it doesn't really encourage diverse deckbuilding, more like streamlining certain cards towards certain decks. Like how certain cards like overseer frigidara would only ever be in frost decks even if it can easily be in other rune decks. And if you're going to play a frost deck, you'll always have frostwrym's fury in it, why wouldn't it? Even the archetype is more or less determined by design; you'll never really play an aggro frost deck, even if frostwyrm's fury is perfectly legitimate an addition into any aggro deck.
What the rune system does allow, is an easier time for devs to create and balance decks while having very powerful effects like vampiric blood. But only time will tell if this system ends up a success story for future classes to emulate.
As for the path of arthas set...my wallet doesn't like it. I feel stuff like these should be part of core, or at least obtainable via packs/dust. Events post microsoft takeover is starting to stink, and I hope hearthstone doesn't get any more expensive as it is.
Signature cards though, are as cool as they are completely optional. That's fine for me. But I do pity those omega whales who now have to drop god knows how much more to get all 18 of those things every expansion.
The Path cards are craftable and the bundle can be gotten for 2000 gold (like a miniset). From Playhearthstone "Death Knight Deep Dive" article.
For my 2cents here, I love everything about the Rune system. It's another deckbuilding puzzle to play with and also gives the devs another number to tweak in balance. Instead of raising the mana cost, they make that op card 2 frost runes instead of one, ect. We'll see how well it works in practice though because judging the system fully before that isn't thorough enough. However, if it does as well as it looks, I'd love to see it in other classes.
As for the Day one Mini-set, I'm actually for it because it focuses on the new class. I feel Demon Hunters lacked some tools early on. Not that Dh was weak but if there was an extra set for them back then, maybe their big demon cards would have had more of a foundation at launch.