Hearthstone's Twist is coming back with a vengeance in June, with a major shakeup: premade decks, unique Hero Powers, and Passive effects for each of the 19 initially-available Heroes! Heroes are unlocked based on your particular collection - for example, you can only play as Arfus if you own it - but some of them are Core cards and thus freely accessible to everyone.
Whizbang's Heroes will carry on into July, with nine more Heroes to unlock and play with! After that, it seems Twist will go silent once more before the return of Wonders and Caverns of Time.
To get the full scoop on Whizbang's Heroes, you can read the full quote below:
Quote From Blizzard Twist returns soon for a massive new season: Whizbang’s Heroes! Jump right into the fun with one of 19 new Heroes, each with a pre-made deck and a unique Hero Power and Passive effect. It all starts when the next season begins on June 1!
What Makes a Hero?
In Whizbang’s Heroes, simply pick your Hero and play! Each Hero has three main characteristics: a pre-built deck, a unique Hero Power, and a corresponding Passive effect. Heroes can also have different life totals. The pre-built Hero decks don’t have to follow the normal deck construction rules of Hearthstone: some decks are different sizes, most decks feature a mix of cards across different classes, and many decks have no duplicates, for more varied play. Each Hero’s Hero Power and Passive effect are designed to match that character’s flavor and deck mechanics. Our goal is for each Hero to feel like a new class.
Unlocking Heroes
The June Twist season will kick off with 19 available Heroes:
- Illidan Stormrage*
- Al’Akir the Windlord*
- Arch-Villain Rafaam*
- Leeroy Jenkins*
- Kael’Thas Sunstrider**
- C’Thun**
- Nozdormu
- The Lich King
- Xyrella
- Patches the Pirate
- Sir Finley Mrrgglton
- King Krush
- Forest Warden Omu
- Dr. Boom
- Zul’jin
- N’Zoth, the Corruptor
- Brann Bronzebeard
- Guff Runetotem
- Arfus
Each Hero is unlocked while you have their corresponding Legendary in your collection. The specific card that unlocks each Hero is the card that matches the name of that Hero (with the exception of Illidan Stormrage, unlocked by Metamorphosis in Core).
If you already have the card in your collection when the season starts, the Hero will automatically be unlocked when the season begins. If you want to unlock a particular Hero you haven’t unlocked yet, you can go directly to that card in the collection from the Twist Hero selection screen to craft it. Getting the relevant cards through other means, like packs, will also unlock those Heroes.
*These heroes are unlocked by cards in Core, so they will be automatically unlocked for all players at the start of the season.
**These two cards were free login rewards for older expansions. If not already unlocked, C’Thun is automatically unlocked by having a Whispers of the Old Gods pack and going to the pack opening screen and Kael’thas is automatically unlocked by having an Ashes of Outland pack and going to the pack opening screen.
Checking the Details
Since each Hero’s deck is pre-built, you can access all the fun straight from the play screen! Swap over to Twist Mode from the Hearthstone screen to bring up all the Hero selections—whether or not they're unlocked yet. From there, you can mouse over a Hero to see their unlock criteria. You can also select the Hero to see their Hero Power, Passive effect, life total, and decklist.
Heroic Style
The baseline quality of the cards in your Hero’s deck will match the quality of that unlock card in your Collection (Normal, Golden, Diamond, or Signature). So, if you have a Golden version of an unlock card, your entire deck will be Golden. If you have a higher quality (Diamond or Signature), any cards that can match that quality will match it and the rest will default to Golden. Individual cards in those decks can go above that baseline Quality of your deck if you have a higher Quality version of those particular cards in your Collection. For purposes of this deck construction rule, Signature is considered a higher Quality than Diamond.
Twist Plans Through the End of the Year
One of our main goals with Twist is to provide a space to try new things that we wouldn’t necessarily try in Ranked Standard. We try things, we break things, we learn lessons, and then we do it all again.
One of the things we’re trying with this Twist season is messing with balance cadence for the mode. Whizbang’s Heroes have variable Healths that we can quickly adjust, so we plan to make weekly Hero Health adjustments to respond to meta developments. The hope is that these weekly updates will help address the issue we’ve seen in the past where Twist seasons didn’t line up well with our patch schedule. We’ll still be taking a look at adjusting all other things (like Hero Powers, Passive Effects, and decklists) in our normal scheduled balance patches.
After the June season, we’ll be bringing Whizbang’s Heroes back for the July season—with nine additional new Heroes to try!
After the July season, Twist will be dark again for a while. We sometimes see players asking why there are seasons when Twist isn’t available. By design, Twist isn’t an “always on” Mode like most of the other Modes in Hearthstone; it’s more like an extended event. We want Twist to feel fun and fresh, rather something that quickly fades to background noise. We’ll do repeats or updates when we think they fit into that overall goal, but not as the default.
For instance, later in the year, we’ll be revisiting Wonders and the Caverns of Time set for two seasons. We’re hoping that bringing back Wonders and Caverns of Time will give players another chance to try out the cards from that set, or to enjoy them for the first time if they missed out on last year’s fun.
Once those two seasons have wrapped, Twist will be dark again through the end of the year. We’ll give you more updates on upcoming Twist seasons closer to when they go live. For now, we hope you enjoy Whizbang’s Heroes. The fun starts on June 1—we'll see you there!
What do you think of Whizbang's Heroes? What about the news that they'll be revisiting Wonders and Caverns of Time? Let us know in the comments below!
Comments
There's some significant good news in here:
1) The current plan is frequent tweaks to hero health, so that one class doesn't dominate the meta.
2) I don't even have to give up a dozen deckslots to play Twist in June and July.
Count me in.
As someone who likes Twist, the details laid out regarding the rest of the year don't make me too excited for the mode. June and July could be fun, but if all we get after that is two more months of Wonders... *sigh*
If that's the case, they should at the very least add Knights of the Frozen Throne and then Kobolds & Catacombs in the second month of it. They could also pre-emptively ban more cards to try and restrict power levels like they did for the Caverns quest when adding Un'Goro to Wonders. That's honestly what I'd love Twist to be. Have some special months like June and July, then during the other months you can just do things similar to the Brawl Block tavern brawls. And come up with more variations on the blocks, then rotate through those while occasionally creating new blocks.
That said, the months that Twist has been down I've automatically been getting the D5 chest once I hit five wins on the season because my Twist rank has been locked there ever since the last live season ended. So for months where I'm feeling lazy I already know I can get at least that chest with minimal effort.
Agreed. Was hoping Twist would have more Brawl Block seasons where they'd mix up the expansions randomly but alas, my dissapointment continues. Will definitely give Whizzbang Heroes a try but it doesn't really excite me that much