Hearthstone's What's Next panel is up next for BlizzCon! Here's everything we've learned.
This article is receiving live updates. Refresh the page for new content as it is revealed.
Card Reveals
New Azerite Mine Treasure
Showdown in the Badlands
- Everyone is getting a signature copy of Slagmaw, the Slumbering if you went to BlizzCon or bought the BlizzCon Collection.
Battlegrounds Duos
- Battlegrounds Duos lets you play with a buddy against three other teams.
- You can play together to win together.
- Duos won't be launching until next year and is still in development.
- You each get to pick your own hero.
- You have your own board, tavern tier, and gold.
- Your health total is shared and starts at 30. Armor is the combined armor from your heroes.
- There's a portal you can click on to see your friend's board.
- One person's board spawns in first. When they lose all their minions, the next person's minions spawn in.
- If one person handles both opponents, the second person's board spawns in to deal extra damage.
- The person who has their hero icon first on the board has their board play first.
- You can use the portal to send cards to each other.
- Passing a minion costs 1 gold each time you do it.
- There are heroes that are specific to Duos, like Cho and Gall.
- They must be played as a pair.
- There are new duo-exclusive minions that can interact with your team.
- Check the gallery below to see new minions!
- The Nameless One hero copies your teammate's hero power.
- Duos has a pings system, emote to communicate with your partner. You can ping minions or the buttons on the UI.
Catch-Up Packs
- Everyone is getting two Catch-Up Packs for free.
- If you bought the BlizzCon Collection you get three Catch-Up Packs.
- Badlands pre-orders will also get Catch-Up Packs.
- The packs can be multi-opened so you can collect hundreds or thousands of cards all at once.
- Learn more about them in our dedicated article.
Watch The Video
You can catch a video of the full panel below.
BlizzCon 2023 on Out of Games
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Comments
Duos looks sweet!
Now did they mention if Catch-up packs will update dynamically with set releases and rotations? Or will there be a different "Year of..." pack, likely with the most recent one only available for sale?
They do not update: the first pack is specifically a "Showdown in the Badlands Catch-up Pack", and are a snapshot of Standard as it will be on the 14th. Presumably in the future they'll release a new Catch-up Pack that contains a different collection of sets.
Duos looks pretty damn cool. If I understand correctly, there's no random matchups, you always play with a friend. I guess that means you will have the in game text chat available, but I'm sure just about everyone will be on a Discord voice call. I can imagine the ping system will be very useful either way.
Mes'Adune is a card that will probably enable some really broken combo years (or maybe even months) from now. Until then though, I quite like this design. In fact, I just really like how creative Team 5 have gotten over the years.
If you recruit or somehow indirectly put Slagmaw on the board, will he still go dormant?
It should, yes. That's how it's worked for previous dormant minions, like the Imprisoned Antaen.
That seems fair but ruins a diabolical plan I considered.
If no one else has the courage to mention this, I will: Reno had the foresight to sew a mustache onto his duster, so that, even when his face was covered, none were deprived of his glorious facial hair. Truly a man of the people.
Ooooh boy, Reno, Lone Ranger is gonna create a lot of reddit threads 😅 the fact he can remove Sargeras's portal is massive coz that's the main staying power of control warlock atm.
Probably need to watch the livestream but do we have clarification on what "split in two halves" means for Mes'Adune the Fractured and what Velarok Windblade's true form looks like?
velarok's true form is a 3/6 dragon with charge, and discover a card from another class, it cost 3 less.
Mesadune's battlecry splits the minion into two minions, which means stats, costs etc. So your rag is now two copies of 4 mana 4/4 that deals 8 damage at the end of the turn.
Thanks for the info!
Neat cards. Reno looks great and the others look fun. I'll have to see how they actually work but still exciting. I'm not a battle grounds guy but Duo sounds silly to watch!
I fail to see how Reno isn't, like, 10-Mana: his Mage iteration poofed all minions while this is enemy-only, can remove anything (even dormant stuff), plus it can box out the opponent from getting back on the board in a compelling way. Yeah it requires a condition, but still - an obvious auto-include for Highlander decks, and possibly even besides (like Zephrys the Great before him).
Reno, Lone Ranger apparently also removes all immune, and uninteractables like portals etc.
Ive a suspicious feeling like its gonna get reworked at some point, because at present moment Im not really sure its gonna see play exclusively in highlander only. Looks really like you can just play this card in practically all decks, because at the rate of draw in hearthstone nowadays, and the fact that you'll likely only play this at the very end means theres a good chance you would have already drawn all your dupes anyway.
Funnily enough, its best application is in druid. You can already draw fast enough to invalidate the condition, and ramping invalidates the supposed cost. Shades of Kazakusan and yogg, probably gonna get nerfed at some point because of this.
Its a good counter to Warlock so no I don't think it will get reworked.
I don't really get why they didn't save the expansion announcement until today. Sure, they would have to release the expansion a couple weeks later, but the HS side of the Blizzcon would have been a lot more exciting. Plus announcing a expansion without releasing a cinematic at the same time just feels weird.
Some decent Battlegrounds Duos info, and card reveals, but other than that, not much else.
Question: Why is Reno (the one that heals you to full hp) and Brann in the standard card pool in the deck maker?
Are they coming back this expansion or is there a reason you or someone else kept them there?
Its not an issue I was just confused by it, I thought they were returning to standard when I saw it.
That is a very good question. They are seemingly flagged as Year of the Wolf cards but they definitely are not. I'll check our data, thanks.