Hearthstone: BOOMSDAY PROJECT

Hahaha, so we've got the announcement of Hearthstone's next expansion last night, where basically everyone thought that it was going to be Netherstorm and Ethereals... and, well, it's set in the Netherstorm, at least, but the whole thing is a glorious love letter to everybody's favourite explosive mad scientist, DR. BOOM!

Yeah, pretty sure no one called this. Here's the trailer and announcement, including the game developers doing the obligatory silly skit in a lab... it's not quite as well-done as the recent Witchwood one, I think, but still kinda fun. But we did cut away to Dave Kosak being transported into a Wronchi Animation short, and Wronchi Animation is glorious, so yay for that.


We also had a patch drop shortly after the announcement, which is basically the tribal consistency update, as well as adding a couple of bug fixes, the return of the Ragnaros Midsummer Festival event, a bunch of card backs, and the pre-order that comes with a Mecha-Jaraxxus Warlock hero skin? That's... that's actually quite unexpected, and this might edge me towards actually spending money to purchase a pre-order for once. Maybe. We'll see.

Anyway, Dr. Boom's gotten a bit of a redesign and some extra swag that includes eyeliners, apparently, and built a big-ass mad scientist base in the Netherstorm! With lots of explosions and SCIENCE! The little preview shows us that we're getting another Hero card for Warriors with a new version of Dr. Boom, which I think is going to be a one-off, similar to Hagatha in Witchwood. It's... it's interesting, to say the least, especially the fact that they gave Dr. Boom to the Warrior class. I guess it makes as much sense as anything?

The preview shows off around a half-dozen new cards, showcasing some of the new mechanics. We'll go through these pretty quickly. Click here for the official Blizzard news post.


Spider Bomb: We're getting new Mechs! Time to dust off those old Goblins vs Gnomes robots, Wild players! And interestingly enough, Mechs are the new tribal synergy once more, with the new keyword, "Magnetic", allowing mechs to basically combine into one, Zombeast-style. So like Spider Bomb here, if you have another mech on board, the Spider Bomb gets transformed into a +2/+2 buff and the deathrattle gets transferred to the other mech. It gives the new minion's stats basically into a charging buff, although apparently you can choose to not have this effect depending on the positioning, which is neat!

Spider Bomb's Deathrattle is... interesting. It's sort of like a non-targetted Voodoo Doll effect, but a 3-mana 2/2 with tribal synergy is definitely better than a 3-mana 1/1. Plus Hunter's got that Play Dead card. A better way to put it is to compare Spider Bomb to a delayed Deadly Shot on a body, which,  again, is neat. The thing is I'm not quite sure is whether Spider Bomb or mechs in general is going to work in Hunter. Back in GvG they tried to force mech synergy on all the classes, and not all of them are able to use the mechs particularly well.

Electra Stormsurge is a 3-mana 3/3 Elemental, and she's the legendary minion for Shamans, with a battlecry that doubles the next spell cast this turn. Which... basically means that with 8 mana, you get a +6 attack Bloodlust. I'm sure there are a bunch of other applications for her, too, but jeez, the double-Bloodlust is just looking pretty dang great. It's definitely a fun, unique Legendary, and we'll see if she ends up being playable.

Myra's Unstable Element: We're getting legendary spells now! And they look pretty dang powerful. I think we're doing the Kobolds & Catacombs model where each class is getting a legendary spell and a legendary minion (or hero, in the case of Warrior)? Myra's Unstable Element seems to be a Rogue spell, in any case, and it's pretty dang insane. For 5 mana, draw your entire deck. Basically the ultimate card for any Miracle-style combo decks, but it has the potential to burn a huge chunk of your deck and to put you straight into fatigue, so I'm genuinely not quite sure if this one will be as usable as other greedy card-draw engines like Aluneth and Ultimate Infestation... but god damn, that looks like a pretty powerful card, for sure. We'll see if it finds a home.


Biology Project: Apparently a card cycle we're going to be seeing this time around are Projects, which are spells that benefit both heroes at once, kind of like some previous druid cards. Biology Project gives both players 2 mana crystals, although thankfully it's at least a full mana crystal like Nourish. You do help your opponent ramp, though, and while this is dirt-cheap for 1 mana, I'm not sure if this one is playable, honestly, but they hinted at other "Project" spells that might be interesting? I dunno.

Omega Defender: Another running theme is the "Omega" cards,  which is meant to be a super late-game bomb, with an effect that triggers at 10 mana. Which is neat in this definitely more control-heavy meta, but also HOLY SHIT DRUIDS. Omega Defender, the one they displayed, definitely looks like a pretty damn good card. Prior to turn 10, Omega Defender's a 4-mana 2/6 with taunt, basically a Stegodon, and that honestly isn't even that bad. You'd rather play cards like Saronite Chain Gang, sure, but it's not a bad card at all. But on turn ten, Omega Defender gains 10 extra health! "Enough to kill Deathwing", to quote Dave Kosak. Definitely a very interesting card for sure, and one I look forward to seeing more variations of.

Overall, I'm actually a fair bit more exited about this than I was for Witchwood initially, with a lot of fun crazy mechanics. The whole mech deal is also definitely unexpected and it's a tribal synergy that's near and dear to my heart. We'll see how soon we get the drip-feed of new cards!