(Live now!) TITANS Expansion Launch Guide – Release Time, Freebies, New Mechanics & Decks, Signature Cards and More!

Update: The expansion is now live! Enjoy!

TITANS is the second expansion of Year of the Wolf (2023). Before the age of mortals, the titans came to the world. These massive beings used arcane magic and ancient technology to imprison the Old Gods and bring order to the nascent planet. They imbued their keepers with celestial powers to watch over the planet and help forge the many beings that would inhabit it. This is what myths are made of. This is TITANS!

The expansion will add 145 new cards (with a mini-set adding 38 more at a later date), as well as a variety of new mechanics and synergies. Learn everything you should know about it below!

Check out our TITANS expansion guide, which contains tons of information including a full list of cards.

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 TITANS 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 August 2 instead of the “official” August 1 release date because of time zone differences. Here are some examples:

• 10 AM Pacific Time on Tuesday (August 1)
• 1 PM Eastern Time on Tuesday (August 1)
• 7 PM Central European Time on Tuesday (August 1)
• 2 AM Korean Standard Time on Wednesday (August 2)
• 3 AM Australian Eastern Time on Wednesday (August 2)

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 TITANS:

• Most of the freebies this time were available before the expansion’s launch, through Twitch drops. Players could earn a ton of different packs, including some TITANS packs, over the last few weeks. We tried to cover all of them when possible.
• Prison of Yogg-Saron was given out as a free TITANS Legendary in Patch 26.6. If you haven’t picked it up yet, just log in and it’ll be waiting for you in-game.
• Ignis, the Eternal Flame is unlocked on Level 1 of the new Rewards Track, which means that you will get it as soon as the expansion releases.
• A new in-game event (Ulduar Grand Championship) will launch two days after the expansion, offering six card packs and a Death Knight cosmetic skin for free, as long as you finish the event Quests.
• Not exactly “free”, but if you plan to buy a Tavern Pass, you can get a Diamond version of Algalon the Observer 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 TITANS 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 into the rewards track if you kept your Weekly and Daily Quests to get a jump start on the new rewards track.

New Keyword/Mechanic – Titan

Titan is the “titular” mechanic of the expansion. Each class is getting a Legendary Titan Card with varying costs and effects. Their gimmick is that instead of attacking, when you click on them, you select one of the three abilities. You can do that on the turn you play them too. Once the ability is used, you can’t use it again. Once you use all three, the minion goes back to normal and you can attack with it like with any other. However, keep in mind that those will be the highest priority removal targets for your opponent, so it’s quite unlikely that they stick for multiple turns unless you somehow protect them.

On top of the abilities themselves, Titans also come with a special effect that triggers when you use those abilities. For example – Eonar, the Life-Binder will summon a 5/5 Taunt every time you select one. On the other hand, Norgannon‘s abilities start pretty weak, but every time you select one, the others double in power. Yes – that means 20 damage burn if he sticks around for 2 turns after you play him.

The Titan mechanic looks pretty interesting. I bet that some effects will be quite strong, but they’re balanced by the fact that until you use all three (and it’s unlikely that your opponent will let you do that), they essentially have “Can’t Attack” printed on them.

As Titans are very important figures in the Warcraft lore, Blizzard will also publish lore blog posts about them soon! We’ll link them here once they’re out.

New Keyword/Mechanic – Forge

The second new mechanic is Forge, and this has more “evergreen” potential (not saying that it will become one, but it’s definitely more generic and would fit into different expansions). It looks like they enjoyed “dragging into deck” mechanic of Tradeable and decided to reuse it.

Most of the Forge cards have a pretty average base, but they can get upgraded. When you drag a Forge card from your hand into your deck, you pay 2 mana to upgrade it into its “Forged” version. Upgrades come with all sorts of varieties, usually somehow synergizing with the base effect. And in a pinch, you can always just play the base version.

What I like about it is the flexibility. For example – let’s look at Cyclopian Crusher. It’s clearly not a Constructed card and more of a mechanic presentation (those usually work quite well in Arena and I bet that this will be the same). You can use the card as a 3 mana 3/3 with Rush, or a 5 mana 6/5 with Rush. But the best part is that you don’t have to play it the turn you upgrade it. Let’s stay that you have missed a 2-drop – instead of Hero Powering, you can spend 2 mana to upgrade the card and play a 6/5 with Rush on Turn 3. That’s a viable option. Similarly, with Embrace of Nature, if you have a nice curve, you can just play it on T1 and draw a card. But if you run some high-cost, powerful Choose One cards, it might be worth it to combine both effects together. Even something as simple as Nourish works much, much better with its effects combined – and we might get more powerful Choose One cards this expansion.

New Signature Cards

Last week, Blizzard gave some content creators TITANS Signature Cards to reveal on social media (we revealed Thorim!) and the reception was amazing. People clearly love them, and I think for the first time they’re actually excited about Signature cards. In case you haven’t seen them, we’ve gathered all of the TITANS Signature Cards in this post. And here are some top rated examples:

New Rewards Track

The rewards track, first introduced in Darkmoon Faire, is getting another refresh. When TITANS expansion 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. Both the free rewards track and the Tavern Pass look 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). 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 (this way you’ll get 20% extra XP), 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 the long run.

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, TITANS decks include cards from up to the Festival of Legends). 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 of them 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 an updated list of TITANS’ free decks here.

New TITANS 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 dozen of them in the first 24 hours.

We have a post compiling all of our TITANS decks here! We’ll start posting new decks shortly after the set launches. We’ll also publish them on our social media, so if you follow us, you should have a pretty constant stream of new decks to play.