The next expansion for the card battler Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is coming, and it’s really, really grand.
Blizzard invited fans of its popular free-to-play card game to watch live in San Francisco as it announced the next major expansion for Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft. It’s The Grand Tournament, and it features more than 130 new cards that you can buy in their own packs. It hits next month. It features “epic” characters doing “epic battles.” Really, that means knights of all kinds, like — for example — a pirate riding a parrot, because why the heck not?
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So yes, you’re going to get new minion cards and new spells, but The Grand Tournament also introduces new mechanics.
“You’re going to see a ton of new cards that affect player hero powers,” said Hearthstone designer Eric Dodds.
Above: Maiden of the Lake can really change the dynamic of a match.
He showed an example of a card called “Maiden of the Lake” that makes your hero power cost only 1 mana. And you can combine that with the new “Coldarra Drake” that enables you to use your hero power any number of times you want.
Both Maiden and Coldarra are part of a new type of card in Hearthstone that the designers are calling “Inspire” cards. Any minion that changes the way your hero power works will feature a flag banner on the bottom and the word “Inspire” in its description. This means you can also search your collection for “Inspire” and all of these new cards will pop up.
