March of the Lich King Expansion Announcement Stream Live Recap

A new Hearthstone expansion will be announced soon, and I’ll be recapping it live in this post. You’ll learn its name, theme, mechanics and cards as soon as they’re revealed.

The current rumors and hints lead to something related to Death Knights, with DK becoming a new class (the second one added to the base game after Demon Hunter). Whether it will turn out to be true or not, it’s probably going to be pretty interesting, since they aren’t doing reveal streams for regular expansions anymore (last one was – exactly – for Demon Hunter).

The stream goes live at 10 AM PT / 18:00 CET. You can watch it on the PlayHearthstone Twitch channel. Twitch drops will be active, you can get one Castle Nathria pack for watching it for 15 minutes!

Expansion Announcement Stream Recap

It’s live! Looks like Lich King is on the menu, boys.

• New Expansion is called “March of the Lich King”. It launches on December 6.
• New Class – Death Knight!
• Death Knight will be unlocked through solo adventure where you play as Arthas Menethil
• Death Knight’s Core Set will include 32 cards + there’s a new “Path of Arthas” set with 26 extra cards. The class will also have 10 cards from the new expansion, for a total of 68 starting cards. Path of Arthas won’t be free, the set will cost 1500 Runestones or 2000 Gold to purchase.
• Death Knight’s Hero Power is “Ghoul Charge”. You summon a 1/1 Ghoul with Charge that dies at the end of the turn for 2 man
  
• Death’s Knight class mechanic is “Corpses”. Whenever a minion dies, you add one to the counter. Many cards spend those corpses to pay the extra cost of some cards such as Army of the Dead.
• Death Knights use runes to specialize their decks – Blood, Frost and Unholy. During deck building, you can fit up to 3 runes. Using certain cards require you to have X runes of a certain type.
• For example, Corpse Explosion card requires two Blood Runes in your deck, you can’t use the card if you don’t have that many.
• March of the Lich King expansion adds a new minion type – Undead. Common synergy for them is “If a friendly Undead minion died last turn, do X”.
• Many older Hearthstone cards (such as Abominable Lieutenant, Bloodmage Thalnos or Tamsin Roame will get an Undead tag. But since lots of them would fit into two categories, Blizzard decided to add dual minion types. Now the discussions about whether Patches is a Pirate OR a Demon will end!
• Originally from the Saviors of Uldum mechanic, Reborn is back as an evergreen keyword.
• The expansion’s theme is Scourge (Undead) attacking Silvermoon city, the capital of Blood Elves. Half of the previous classes will align with the Scourge (Warlock, Priest, Shaman, Rogue, Druid), while the other half with Blood Elves (Mage, Hunter, Warrior, Demon Hunter, Paladin).
• New keyword – Manathirst. If you have (X) mana crystals, those cards will have an extra effect. You don’t have to pay them, you just need to have that many!
• “The Sunwell” is the first Hearthstone Neutral spell. And it will be FREE for all players when they log in today with Patch 24.6 installed.
• Signature Cards are a new type of collectible, showcasing the full art of the card and set’s theme. There are 18 cards like that in the new expansion. They are not craftable and you will find them in card packs.
• Signature Packs will replace Golden Packs for March of the Lich King. Those have a higher chance of opening the new collectibles & Legendaries.
• New event system is coming. Time-limited events have a separate menu in the UI, with a special rewards track just for the event, showcasing all the quests & rewards. Knights of Hallow’s End is starting now!
• Full Knights of the Frozen Throne expansion is back in Standard for limited time (until next expansion). It’s added to the Core Set so every player has access to it!

New Cards

Death Knight

Other Classes/Neutral