Update: Ragnaros returns in the latest Hearthstone Rastakhan's Rumble card reveals
The Firelord is back in Standard after his spell in the Hall of Fame, but you'll need to play Mage to get easy access to him.
Update: The reveal stream has now concluded, but you can still watch how it went down here. We've embedded all the cards that were shown above, starting with the most exciting—a new legendary called Jan'alai the Dragonhawk. This is the Loa for the Mage class, and it synergises strongly with the hero power buff which is granted by its accompanying Spirit of the Dragonhawk card. Deal eight damage with your Hero Power over the course of the game, and when you play Jan'alai its Battlecry effect will summon Ragnaros the Firelord.
Rag is probably Hearthstone's most iconic legendary card, and became so ubiquitous in decks that it was actually banished to the Hall of Fame in early 2017. Bringing the card back, albeit in a more restricted manner (because only one class will have immediate access to El Fuego) is likely to be a popular move. Elsewhere, we also saw the new Shaman legendary—Zentimo—which packs the potent effect of casting any targeted spell on adjacent minions. Obvious possible combos include Rockbiter Weapon, Evolve, Hex and possibly even Windfury—and that's without seeing the other Shaman spells in the set.
I also liked the look of Oondasta, a 9-Mana 7/7 neutral Beast with Rush and Overkill: Summon a Beast from your hand. The merits of yoinking out a free King Krush doesn't require much explanation, and I expect Deathrattle Hunter to make mischief with this. The new spell-based Paladin gets a potent tool in the form of A New Challenger, which lets you discover a 6-Mana minion for 7-Mana, but then gives it Divine Shield and Taunt. A quick check of the collection manager suggests that Damaged Stegotron at 6/12 is probably the highest roll possible, even though it already has Taunt.
Having been a little cool on the cards revealed so far from Rastakhan's Rumble, today's stream absolutely showcased some exciting, potent effects that I'm eager to mess about with. There will be another stream next week, on 28 November, followed by the expansion's launch on 4 December.
Original story: Five hours from roughly two hours ago, which by my calculations will take us to 10 am PT/1 pm ET or thereabouts (which is also what it says on the reveal schedule), Hearthstone senior designer Peter Whalen and streamer RegisKillbin will unveil some of the new cards coming to the game in the Rastakhan's Rumble expansion. The card dump is happening on Twitch, and you can watch along with us right here.
Rastakhan's Rumble is a Troll-themed set featuring nine Legendary Troll Champions, each representing one of Hearthstone classes. It brings a new class-specific minion called Spirits to the game, a new Overkill mechanic that rewards players for inflicting excess(ive) damage, a single-player adventure called Rumble Run, and of course 135 new cards, a few of which we'll be seeing today. We wrote more about what's in store here, and Tim and Bo dove deeper into the expansion with creative director Ben Thompson a couple of weeks ago.
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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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