Hearthstone: Whispers of the Old Gods’ 5 most promising new cards

GamesBeat is here to help you prepare for the next age of Hearthstone.

The Whispers of the Old Gods expansion adds 134 cards to the free-to-play game when it launches on April 26. Hearthstone is the leader in the $1.2 billion digital card games market and makes over $20 million a month. This expansion will help keep users engaged (and buying more cards). It will also bring in new players who are behind on their collections — or avoided the game because they feared they could never catch up on cards.

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But every new minion and spell aren’t equal. That’s why we went through the entire list of new cards and picked five that we feel have the most promise (you can also check out our list of the least promising cards here)

Some of the cards in the new set (16 of them, to be precise) focus on powering up the Legendary minion C’Thun, which deals his damage split evenly among all enemies as a Battlecry. If you’re able to buff up your C’Thun to at least 10 attack, which shouldn’t be too hard, playing the Twin Emperor Vek’lor will then summon two 4/6 minions with Taunt. That’s an incredible value, and your opponent will have a hard time dealing with that threat in a single turn. Now imagine playing this neutral legendary with a Brann Bronzebeard (a neutral legendary who duplicates a card’s Battlecry) on the board and having three 4/6 Taunt minions.

OK, I just really liked Annoy-o-Tron from the Goblins vs. Gnomes expansion, and it makes me sad that he’ll be gone once Standard comes out. Psycho-o-Tron eases that pain. Having Divine Shield and Taunt will make him a great tool for protecting your hero or other minions. Even if your enemy uses a Silence on him, he’ll still have those 3/4 stats to play with. Plus, just look at him! This common neutral mech is like a robotic, evil, Pee-wee Herman version of that guitar guy from Mad Max: Fury Road.

This card will help make sure that Mages never run out of spells. While you don’t know exactly what you’ll get, the class already has a lot of the best magical abilities in the game, so chances are you’ll get some great stuff. I think this epic card will work especially great in Reno Mage decks, where only having one of each spell or minion in your deck gives Reno Jackson the ability to heal your character to full health. Cabalist’s Tome will help give those decks more spells to play with.

This is just a fun card. The downside, of course, is that you don’t know exactly what you’re going to get. Cards that cost more mana are often more powerful, so you’ll probably get upgrades. This rare Shaman card also only costs 1 mana, so you can get an insane amount of value from Evolve if you play it when you have a board full of minions. If you have a board advantage but some minions have taken damage, this can give you a fresher, more powerful row of cards.

This common Paladin card of reminds me of the Mage spell Unstable Portal (which isn’t legal in Standard), except it might be even better. Since it’s a Discover card, you get to choose between three random minions, and whichever one you pick will get a +1/+1 bonus to its stats. The only negative difference is that it will still have its normal mana cost. Still, this could net you a useful minion with stronger-than-usual stats. Besides, it’s a fun card since you’ll never know exactly what will happen. You could randomly discover a Legendary that helps you win the game.