Blizzard released the new expansion for its ever-popular card game Hearthstone yesterday. With Rastakhan’s Rumble, only a few months remain before the next big rotation that will see Journey to Ungoro, Knights of the Frozen Throne and Kobolds and Catacombs rotate out of standard. 135 new cards, a new game mode, a new keyword… There’s a lot to look at.
There it is! After two months of waiting, Hearthstone players can finally elaborate new decks and new strategies with the new cards from the December extension, Rastakhan’s Rumble. The most invested players didn’t miss on the chance to grab the organiser of the event, King Rastakhan himself, who could be purchased until yesterday along 50 card packs in the pre-release bundle.
So, what’s new? First off, a new game mode, called Rumble’s Run, will appear in the game in precisely eight days. A lot of mystery still surrounds the Run, but a lot of players are expecting an adventure, similar to the Dungeon Run of Kobold and Catacombs, the Monster Hunt of The Witchwood and the Puzzle Lab for The Boomsday Project. What keeps every player waiting is the potential reward, even though it may end up being a card back, similarly to the game modes mentioned previously.
Secondly, the expansion brought a new keyword on its cards: Overkill. A card with Overkill activates its effect when it deals more than enough damage to destroy a minion. Blizzard made an interesting choice, exploiting a concept that exists since the game’s launch, but which has never been taken advantage of.
It is noteworthy to mention that Hearthstone remains a popular game: it recently silenced its detractors by announcing the 100 million players gap. Over the last few years, game developers saw the potential in the card game model, but as of today, none succeeded in keeping up with Hearthstone, even though each game represented a new opportunity for Blizzard’s detractors to claim how Hearthstone was dead and how their game was the future. Among those games, Shadowverse, a Japanese version of Hearthstone targeting mainly anime fans; Gwent, the card game that resulted from The Witcher; Krosmaga, inspired by the Dofus universe; and the most recent one, Artifact.
Overall, this expansion looks to be yet another success from Blizzard and certainly keeps the players optimistic regarding what will come in 2019.
