Hearthstone: the year of the Griffin arrives

Hearthstone

Last weekend the Blizzconline was held, the online version of Blizzcon that this year celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of the Californian software house. As expected, there were numerous announcements regarding the Blizzard games and among these the news regarding Hearthstone stood out.

Now it's official, the new year will be decided at the Grifone and, as always, the next expansion, "Forged in the Savannahs" has been announced. But all the attention of the players and the media was catalyzed by the most important rotation of cards ever seen in the game: all the cards of the "basic" and "classic" set, the cards that everyone starts playing with and that are present in the game. clients for 6 years now, will switch to the "wild" format.

They will be replaced by 235 cards that will form the "main" set, which will accompany us throughout the year of the griffin and then will be replaced too. A radical change that will virtually "rock" Hearthstone every year!

The new cards will be given away to all the old players, while the new players will be able to get them easily, quickly and above all for free: it will be enough to have 10 levels in a class to have all the cards of that class, and 60 levels divided among all classes to get all neutral cards.

Watch on YouTube. In our opinion this is a very important step for the game, which for some time had already begun to suffer the weight of the years. This approach, borrowed from Magic, can only help and the extremely positive reactions that the announcement aroused testify to it. The cards in the "basic" and "classic" sets were by now dated and really used sporadically, and will be replaced with completely new cards, some cards of the "wild" format or by enhanced versions of the old cards. Surely then we will have a better and more interesting pool of cards with which to compose your decks.

Above all it should be emphasized that a player who starts playing today and who has cards available that cannot compete with those of the "older" players will certainly not have a pleasant gaming experience, perhaps becoming discouraged and abandoning the game prematurely. In this way instead he will be able to face them with more adequate cards, in step with those released with the adventures and expansions.

In addition, Team 5 has decided that, as for Anduin this year, some of the shaman's cards Thrall will be modified, indeed enhanced: the Lightning Storm will always cause 3 damage, the Spiritual Wolves will give only one crystal of overload while the elemental of the earth will overload 2 and no more 3. Finally also the hero power will be slightly modified: via the totem of the air (the one that gave +1 magic damage), welcome totem of strength, which at the end of the turn will give +1 attack to one of our random minions.

To finish with a flourish, most of the cards Hearthstone magic starting in the Year of the Griffin will be assigned to a "school", just like in World of Warcraft. We will thus have seven schools: Arcane, Fire, Frost, Sacred, Nature, Shadow and Vile. What will they entail? Little or nothing is certain yet, but we certainly got an idea thinking about the synergies that can be created.

Here are some cards of the new main set. Already these "little" news "alone could have been enough to make us happy but Team 5, not happy, has also announced a new game mode that will go alongside the Duels, the Battle and the Arena: we are talking about" Mercenaries "! We haven't been given a lot of information and no gameplay videos have been shown, just a few screenshots; all of our information comes from what the developers said and it all seems to be very ... intriguing.

Players will have to form teams of mercenaries by choosing from the likes of Sylvanas Windrunner and Ragnaros the Fire Lord, and then tackle various missions. The mode will combine a strategic role-playing dynamic with roguelike missions that will offer different challenges each time you will start a game session. As you progress the mercenaries will acquire new skills and new equipment that will level them up, gaining new skills in a way that permanent.

You can play both with AI and against other players: before the battle you will have to decide which mercenaries will take part in it. At each turn, they will choose their actions at the same time as the opponents and then watch the results of the battle unfold in real time in front of our eyes.

There will be a game map, generated randomly with each new game, on the which we will have to decide the path to follow and the challenges to be faced, which may vary for the level of difficulty, but there will also be sessions without combat but which currently remain a mystery, as is the release date of Mercenaries, which it will probably arrive during the first phase of the Griffin year, therefore between March and June.

Watch on YouTube. We can't wait to get our hands on it and try it thoroughly, because this new mode looks totally different from what we've seen so far in Hearthstone, but without straying too far from the atmosphere we love, just like the Battle that turned out to be a great success.

To conclude the triptych of "news-bombs" was the announcement of the Classic mode of Hearthstone, which is inspired by the homologous mode of World of Warcraft and will bring the game back to how it was at mid 2014, before many cards were "nerfed" and adventures and expansions were added. You will thus be able to try the game in its original form, simpler, but certainly always competitive: no more RNG factor taken to extremes, generation of random cards and improbable combos, but certainly less balanced cards than today. The Classic format will have its ladder and its rewards, and will join the Standard and the Wild format.

As we said at the beginning of the article, "Forged from the savannahs", the new expansion, has also been announced of Hearthstone, the first of the year of the griffin and which will join the expansions that will remain in the Standard format: "Ashes from the outer lands," The academy of Scholomance "and" The fair of Darkmoon "." Forged from the savannas "will introduce a story that will continue throughout the year through the next two expansions, as it did during the year of the dragon with the expansions "Rise of the Shadows", "Saviors of Uldum" and "Descent of the Dragons" .

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Mercenaries is Hearthstone's new game mode The expansion will bring the players in the scorching savannahs of Kalimdor, a treacherous test bed for the mighty heroes of the Horde on their first adventures. Here they will recruit legendary mercenaries, take on entire armies of Verrospino and, if they are really lucky, maybe even find Mankrik's wife!

The new keyword "frenzy" will be introduced, a skill that will activate only one time and only if our creature survives damage, and graduated spells, one for each class, which according to our mana crystals will evolve and become more powerful, although they are still in the deck.

The set will consist of 135 cards, but as already happened with The Darkmoon Fair other cards will be added towards the end of May with a dedicated mini-set: together with the new cards of the main set they should guarantee a lot of new archetypes for a long time. We can't wait to experience all of the upcoming Hearthstone news!