Hearthstone: Saviors Of Uldum makes me wish World Of Warcraft was as silly
A pith helmet'y retort.
Has it really been three months since the last Hearthstone expansion? It feels like it was days ago. The next expansion for Blizzard's popular CCG will be Saviours Of Uldum, due on August 6th, and it looks like they're doubling down on the Saturday morning cartoon antics of Rise Of Shadows. They're unearthing the League Of Explorers from the now-defunct adventure and making them the stars of the show for a few months, and heading to fantasy Egypt to battle villainy. Below, a tongue-in-cheek announcement trailer, in which is nestled an extremely silly theme song.
League Of Explorers will be the second chapter in Blizzard's planned year-long story arc. As with Rise Of Shadows, it'll just be a card release at first, with a (likely paid) solo adventure coming in September. Among the twists this update is the returning Quests rule, cards which lets you set yourself challenges which (if completed) give big rewards. Reborn minions are annoyingly hard-to-kill mummies that respawn with one health after dying, and Plague cards are an indiscriminate board-clearing nuclear option. Unless you have a bunch of minions that won't stay dead - hint hint.
Among the cards revealed so far, there's a few fun ones. Supreme Archaeology is a quest card best played early in the game. Draw 20 cards total and you get the Tome Of Origination, a new Hero Power that lets you draw a card and drop its mana cost to zero. The challenge is surviving long enough to use it. The Puzzle Box Of Yogg-Saron is what I like to call a table-flipper. Screw strategy, screw tactics, you're just rolling the dice and casting ten random spells at random targets and hope you end up hurt a bit less than the other player. Hearthstone at its best and worst in one card.
Hearthstone: Saviours Of Uldum launches on August 6th. Blizzard will be announcing more about the solo campaign soon, but you can check out the expansion's official page here for more details on the cards announced so far.