One of the biggest Blizzard’s Hearthstone expansions, March of the Lich King is here! This time, it comes with the most anticipated, new, Hero class, the Death Knight. This is the second, new Hero class after the Demon Hunter – which was added during the Ashes of Outland expansion.
But of course, a Hearthstone expansion is not an expansion without all the new cards for you to collect, play, and combine for a lethal combo in your deck. The expansion actually comes with 145 new cards and there are also new mechanics introduced in the game: Manathirst and Undead minions.
The Death Knight Class
But let’s talk first about the big thing coming to Hearthstone: a new Hero class. Death Knight is one of the most complex Hero classes in the game, because of the new concept of Runes. There are three types of Runes that you can focus on when playing the Death Knight class: Blood (control gameplay with health manipulation), Frost (direct damage with icy spells and board clears), and Unholy (swarm minions on the board).
The Runes concept goes like this: Every Death Knight card belongs to one of the three category Runes. When you are building your deck, you have three Runes to allocate. If you want to focus on Unholy, for example, you’ll have access to the most powerful Unholy cards which require three Unholy Runes but this means that you cannot add any Blood and Frost cards into your deck.
It’s an intriguing concept and depending on what kind of deck you are building, you may need to decide whether you want to go all the way allocating three Runes in a deck, or do a mix in between at the expense of not being able to play the more powerful 3-Runes cards.
The class can be unlocked by playing the Solo Story mode which is only 4 missions long and introduces you to the new Hero class abilities and Runes system. I like the Unholy Runes which focuses on building lots of corpses that can later be used to create swarms of Undead armies or a really, powerful minion to create a pressure for your enemy. But there are other combinations that may work better for your playstyle.
The Death Knight is not OP (overpowered) obviously, it’s pretty much on par with the other Hero classes and had been balanced well by the design team. It just has different mechanics and playstyle compared to the other Hero classes in Hearthstone.
New Manathirst keyword
Cards with Manathirst gain additional effects (i.e more powerful) when you have a specified amount of mana. You are not spending this mana to activate this bonus effect, but as long as your mana limit has reached the specified amount in the card. This means the cards offer flexibility as you can use it early in the game but if you can hold out, it’ll become more powerful in the late game.
Some of the Legendary Heroes I unlocked in the new expansion were:
- Lor’themar Theron (Neutral)
- Halduron Brightwing (Hunter)
- Blood Matriarch Liadrin (Paladin)
- Sister Svalna (Priest)
- Felerin the Forgotten (Demon Hunter)
- Devourer of Souls (Warlock)
- Hope of Quel Thalas (Hunter)
- High Cultist Basaleph (Priest)
- Overlord Drakuru (Shaman)
- Shadow of Demise (Rogue)
- Souleater’s Scythe (Demon Hunter)
They are obviously other Legendary cards that I haven’t unlocked while opening the Mega Bundle pack. If the Death Knight class is not for you and you’d rather be focusing on your other favourite classes, that’s fine too. There are lots of new cards to pick from with new decks to form with the latest expansion.
If you play now, you’ll also be able to participate in the Lich King’s Call event which is going to end in about a week where you can get some extra cards by playing and finishing the event daily quests.
Hearthstone’s latest expansion, March of the Lich King is a free update but you can also grab the Mega Bundle pack that includes 80 packs, 5 Signature Golden packs, and 2 random Signature Legendary cards from March of the Lich King; the Lor’themar Hunter hero skin and card back; and Path of Arthas, a collection of three ready-to-play Death Knight deck lists, featuring a total of 49 Death Knight cards (26 unique cards, 3 of which are Legendary cards) not obtainable from expansion packs.
