March of the Lich King is the third expansion of Year of the Hydra (2022). 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.
The expansion will add 145 new cards (with mini-set adding more at a later date – previous mini-sets had 35 new cards, but we don’t know how things will shape up with the release of Death Knight), as well as a variety of new mechanics and synergies. Learn everything you should know about it below!
Release Time
Let’s start with the most important – when does the new expansion launch? For years now, Hearthstone sets have had a simultaneous launch across the globe, so March of the Lich King should be out on every server at the same time. However, the time it launches for you depends on where you live – some countries from the Eastern Hemisphere will have it out on December 7 instead of the “official” December 6 release date because of time zone differences. Here are some examples:
- 10 AM Pacific Time on Tuesday (December 6)
- 1 PM Eastern Time on Tuesday (December 6)
- 7 PM Central European Time on Tuesday (December 6)
- 2 AM Korean Standard Time on Wednesday (December 7)
- 3 AM Australian Eastern Time on Wednesday (December 7)
Since the expansion was already pre-loaded a week ago, you won’t need to download a big patch when it launches. It also means that mobile release should happen exactly at the same time as PC. Just make sure to open the game early and download any patches if you haven’t been playing lately.
Freebies
When new expansion launches, players are usually greeted with some free stuff, like packs, free Legendaries etc. Here’s what we know so far about March of the Lich King:
- The Sunwell was given out as a free March of the Lich King Legendary in Patch 24.6. If you haven’t picked him up yet, just log in and he’ll be waiting for you in-game.
- Lor'themar Theron is unlocked on Level 1 of the new Rewards Track, which means that you will get it as soon as expansion releases.
- Death Knight Launch Event will start with the expansion’s release (access it by clicking on your Journal in the main menu). You will have 2 weeks to complete it, and you can get three different Signature Cards (two copies of each), a March of the Lich King card pack, and a special card back.
- Not exactly “free”, but if you plan to buy a Tavern Pass, you can get a Diamond version of Grand Magister Rommath on Level 2. While Tavern Pass is mostly about XP boosts and Cosmetics, the extra Legendary you get at the start is also a nice bonus.
- The first few levels of rewards track require almost no XP, so they are meant to be unlocked nearly instantly as you start playing. You will unlock three extra March of the Lich King packs over the first 9 levels, which you should easily be able to achieve on Day 1 (only 1550 XP is required to get there). You can get even further if you kept your Weekly and Daily Quests to get a jump start into the new rewards track.
New Class – Death Knight
Death Knight is the 11th Hearthstone Hero, joining the roster with the March of the Lich King expansion. The new class is unique in a multitude of ways, having its own mechanics and deck building rules.
Let’s start with deck building. Death Knight has access to three different runes – Blood, Frost and Unholy. Each deck has 3 Rune slots and you can use any combination of those (e.g. 2x Blood + 1x Frost, 3x Unholy, or maybe 1 of each). However, many of Death Knight cards have Rune requirements. For example, if you want to add Frostwyrm's Fury to your deck, you need 3x Frost Rune. Which means that you’re locked out of any cards requiring Blood or Unholy Runes. This will create an interesting deck building challenge – you can go all in on one Rune type, use 2+1 to still have access to some powerful cards, but a bigger pool, or maybe go for all 3 for maximum flexibility.
Another new Death Knight mechanic are Corpses. Each time a friendly minion dies, DK gets +1 on a Corpse counter. Some cards use those corpses to trigger extra effects, making them much more powerful. On the other hand, if you try to put too many Corpse cards, you might run out of, well, Corpses to use. Do keep in mind, though, that minions summoned from Corpses don’t leave Corpses anymore – that would be cheating!
Death Knight will start with whooping 68 cards – 32 added to the Core Set (available for free after finishing DK Prologue), 26 from the new Path of Arthas “set” (which you have to buy for 2000 Gold or 1500 Runestones), and 10 from the new expansion.
If you want to learn more about the class, check out Death Knight deep dive.
New Minion Type – Undead & Dual-Type Minions
Thematically, March of the Lich King adds a completely new minion type called “undead”. Players have been asking about it for ages, but there was always one problem – a lot of the cards that are Undead already have other tags (like Pirate or Beast), so it would be really awkward. It was solved by making it possible for cards to have two minion types! For example, Patches the Pirate will now be both a Demon and a Pirate, or Plaguemaw the Rotting will be both Quilboar and Undead.
But back to the Undead – just like many other minion types, they have their own synergy. This time it’s “If a friendly undead died after your last turn”. It means that in order for it to trigger, a friendly Undead minion had to die during your opponent’s turn OR during your current turn. It’s not hard to trigger later into the game, but it might be a bit tricky early, where most of the synergies seem to be focused so far (but I’m sure that will change).
New & Returning Keywords/Mechanics – Manathirst & Reborn
Reborn mechanic was originally introduced back in the Saviors of Uldum expansion (August 2019). After that, it only appeared once in Galakrond’s Awakening (which utilized mechanics from previous expansions). However, since it fits the new expansion’s theme and the new class so well, Blizzard decided to turn it evergreen. From now on, Reborn will appear on cards in (probably) every expansion.
But that’s not all, as the expansion gets a brand new keyword – Manathirst. Card with Manathirst (X) will only activate its extra effect if you have X Mana Crystals. It doesn’t mean that you have to spend them – you only need to have that much. The mechanic is mostly used on cheap cards that are meant to be useful in early game, while also getting a nice power boost later in the game.
New Rewards Track
The rewards track, first introduced in Darkmoon Faire, is getting another refresh. When March of the Lich King launches, all players will get reset to Level 1 and will work their way up through the track again. If you were playing the game last expansion, then you pretty much know everything you need to know, since the rewards track looks exactly the same content-wise (of course, the exact packs, cards etc. you get are different, but they come in the same amounts and rarities). Tavern Pass is slightly different, but overall comparable. We no longer get Battlegrounds cosmetics, but have a few Signature Cards instead. And in case you’re new to the game or returning after a long break, you can learn more about the track and find a full list of rewards in this post.
Your daily & weekly Quests will NOT reset when the new expansion launches. It’s not a bad idea to save them for after the launch to give you a nice boost through the early levels of the rewards track. The only situations in which I’d recommend finishing all your Quests under the old rewards track is if you have Tavern Pass right now, but you don’t plan to buy a new one after launch, or you haven’t finished the previous rewards track and you’re close to leveling for some good rewards. In the second case, if you want to min-max, try to hit a new level on your current rewards track and stop there because any “excess” XP won’t carry over. Ultimately this is not a big deal and no matter what you do, you should come up with a similar amount of rewards in a long run.
Arena Rotation
New expansions also come with new Arena rotations. Here’s a full list of sets that will be available in Arena once Castle Nathria launches:
- Core
- Curse of Naxxramus
- Mean Streets of Gadgetzan
- Knights of the Frozen Throne
- The Witchwood
- United in Stormwind
- March of the Lich King
- Path of Arthas
If you have no active Arena run, start one now! If you have an active run, DO NOT FINISH IT! Preferably play until two losses and stay there. When rotation happens, your run will get forcefully retired, but you will get a free Arena Ticket as compensation. Keep in mind, however, that Arena entries usually close a few hours (or even longer) before the expansion’s launch, so be sure to create one as soon as you can. If you’re already seeing the error, I’m afraid that it’s too late.
New & Returning Players Experience
If you are a new player, or haven’t been playing the game in a while (120+ days to be exact), you might be happy to hear that there are some extra goodies waiting for you once you log in. You get two things – an extra Quest Chain with some nice rewards and a free Standard deck of your choice. Those free decks are updated every expansion, but notably DO NOT include any cards from the latest set (so, for example, March of the Lich King decks include cards from up to the Murder at Castle Nathria). However, they are a nice start and can serve you early into the new set before you can open enough packs or craft something else.
An extra feature added recently is that you no longer have to pick your free deck right away. You get access to all 6 for a week, and only after that week passes you have to decide to keep one. It means that you have enough time to test all of them and see which one fits you the best.
You can find a full list of decks here. As to which one you should pick – Hunter, Warlock and Warrior are all solid picks right now – either Tier 1 or high Tier 2. Rogue, Druid and Mage are low Tier 2 or high Tier 3, so a bit weaker, but still playable. That said, it’s hard to say how the meta will shape up after the new expansion. Maybe some of them will be upgradeable with new MotLK cards and stay in the meta, while others might fall off. If we’re going purely by their Dust value, though, Rogue is probably the best pick.
New March of the Lich King Decks
Don’t know what decks to try out when the expansion launches? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. Once the expansion launches, we’ll spend the first few days mostly adding new decks from streamers & pro players. We usually start adding new decks roughly an hour into the expansion and post a few dozens of them in the first 24 hours.
Here’s our deck roundup for March of the Lich King. For now we have a bunch of theorycraftings, but we’ll start adding actual decks soon! Also, be sure to follow us on social media, because we’ll be posting all the new decks there.
Dear Stonekeep,
it seems there is some kind of problem with standard and class decks:
https://www.pcgamer.com/blizzard-disables-standard-hearthstone-packs-because-they-were-dishing-out-new-signature-cards-like-candy/