Blizzard kicks off Hearthstone: Rastakhan's Rumble with free card packs for everyone

The Hearthstone expansion Rastakhan's Rumble is now live, bringing 135 new cards to the game, a new mechanic, and for a limited time, six free Rastakhan's Rumble card packs, plus a random Legendary Loa and two copies of the Spirit card for the same class, just for logging in. 

Rastakhan's Rumble sees nine teams battling for dominance in a time-honored Troll tradition, each of them led by a Legendary Troll Champion representing a different Hearthstone class. Each team is also backed by powerful Legendary minions known as Loa—"incredibly powerful primal gods that have been figures of worship for thousands of years in troll culture"—while Spirits are a new class-specific 0/3 minions who will deliver "impressive effects that syngergize with the Loa."   

Speaking of impressive, the new Overkill mechanic will deliver various sorts of rewards for dropping the heavy hammer (that is, dealing excess damage) on opposing cards. Using the 4/4 weapon Sul'thraze to kill a 3-health minion, for instance, will enable you to attack again—and as long as you can keep overkilling low-health flunkies, you can keep on going. 

A new single-player adventure called Rumble Run is also on the way, but won't go live until December 13. Ahead of that, you can get a feel for what's in store in Blizzard's three-part adventures of Rikkar, a young Troll getting ready to take his shot at the belt. 

You can get a look at all the new cards coming in Rastakhan's Rumble here, and we've got some expert analysis on which ten of them will have the greatest impact on the game. Hearthstone creative director Ben Thompson also recently told us why he's confident that Rastakhan's Rumble will shake up the meta

Andy Chalk
US News Lead

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.

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