The Blackrock Mountain Adventure has been confirmed at PAX East 2015. It will release in April 2015. We've summarized and organized all the information below from the panel and the official announcement post.

• There are five wings in the adventure, each of which can be purchased for 700 gold, or $6.99 USD.Thirty-one new cards will be obtained through seventeen bosses, wing completion, and class challenges.
• You can get a discount on the wings if you buy them in bulk. All five can be purchased together for $24.99.
• There is no free wing this time around. (Source)
• Wings will be released on a weekly basis, one at a time.

Pre-orders for Blackrock Mountain begin on March 19th or 20th, and will reward a special card back.Purchasing the expansion only unlocks it for the region you have purchased it in. (Source)

• You cannot obtain the card back through a Gold pre-order. Real money only.

Dragons will be getting some love with this adventure, with lots of interactions between the card type!

Heroic Mode will once again be available and will reward players with a card back for completing it.

When a new wing releases, the cards from that wing will be available in The Arena, even if you haven't played the adventure.

Source

Preview Cards

I could do some stuff with that Grim Patron.

Dammit and I was only getting the new deck since it came out... and now I won't be getting any decks anymore since I will be saving, which means no chance for more dragons :(. That Grim patron looks like he will be nerfed, I can too easily imagine warriors flooding the field with him and like 2-3 other cards.

Excited for Rend Blackhand though! I have 1 dragon and I always use her so I am sure to get lots of utility from him.

Ugh but I want to also get my myrmidon head... I am 10 dust away... maybe its not a good idea anymore.

Haha, man, there are so many bad 1-cost minions. Hungry Dragon is stupid good. There are only a handful of truly inconvenient 1-mana minions it could summon, against about the 80% that are so bad they're irrelevant. If you play it on an empty board then sure, your opponent might just suicide the 1-cost into Hungry Dragon, so he's more like a 5/5 or 5/4 in that case, but assuming you already have your own minion on the board or a weapon equipped, you can just play Hungry Dragon then attack whatever is summoned, then bam, super cheap 5/6. Seems like he'd be really good in Zoo decks, though who knows if he's good enough to replace Chillwind Yeti or Piloted Shredder. Also seems like he'd be a beast in Arena.

Well that's really shitty of you, Blizzard. I mean, there are a couple other card backs that are basically money only (buy a Blizzcon ticket, for example, but what else is new), but this new preorder one seems particularly unnecessary.

And I just beat Heroic Naxxramas last night! Great... more pain and suffering... and cursing, and pain, and relentless rage AND I CAN'T WAIT FOR MORE CARDS! YES! ...can we get another page of deck slots now please Blizzard? Please? ...just put another page in... just put a little arrow in the deck slot that takes us to another page of decks... please...

That Hungry Dragon card is amazing looking! Trying to think of the deadliest one cost minion it could pull out... Dust Devil? I like me some RNG.

Oh yeah, he could be very useful in a priest or Warrior deck. I can see it already.

Well, better start farming coins... Anyone hear when this is due out?

Some of those look pretty neat, but I can't seem to find my groove anymore now that Gnomes & Goblins released. I still think the game is wonderful, but the disconnect (and hiatus I took) into coming back to G&G really knocked the wind out of me for Hearthstone.

I still really enjoy watching Totalbiscuit's & WowCrendor's deck videos, though.

@therealmoot: Dust Devil is annoying if you actually have to attack it with a minion (ideally you'd Mortal Coil or Shiv or Mage hero power). Mana Wyrm is annoying if you can't immediately deal 3 damage, kinda same deal with Void Walker and Zombie Chow. Giving a Deathrattle deck another copy of Undertaker isn't ideal, nor is giving a Mech deck a Cogmaster. Webspinner might be one of the best things it could spawn, since that, in turn, could actually lead to a good card.

Honestly though, most of the time the 1-mana minions would be a pretty irrelevant 1/2 or 2/1 or 1/1. Hungry Dragon seems really good, unless Blackrock is also the expansion of "here are a bunch of OP 1-mana minions that insta-kill dragons".

Pretty pumped for another single player adventure! Aside from a little arena play here and there I haven't played too much multiplayer but that Naxx expansion was a good time.

@therealmoot: April 2015. I don't know the precise date, but its that month.

The only problem with digital cards is that you can't rub them all over your face when you crack a pack... Otherwise Hearthstone is pretty good.

This will probably get me back into Hearthstone. I haven't played much since Naxramas, but with this falling in my birthday month I could see myself getting some money for this and some GvG packs as a gift. Not sure how I feel about the pre-order back. It existing doesn't bug me, but I just don't feel like it looks very good. Now, for the back for the month of march, that's a sexy card back.

Grim Patron, welcome to my Warrior deck.

I haven't played Hearthstone since Naxxramas first came out, but this game still seems great.

I like how Blizzard pretends not to know that more health on a minion is always better than attack. I understand the position they're in though. They don't want all their cards to be 4/5's 5/7's 6/8's etc. But a 7 mana 8/4? I guess they think that the battlecry is so powerful that the stats needed to be such to balance the card. But then you also need a dragon in your hand for it to work. Not going to be playable imo.

I want to make a stupid cool Grim Patron deck sooo badly. Man Rendblack hand is not quite hot garbage but soo meta specific that it seems hardly useful.

@hansolol said:

You have to admit, it gets pretty funny at times. Like how Ancient of War can be played as a 5/10 Taunt or as a 10/5 (slightly better than a Core Hound), and literally never in the history of Hearthstone has it been the right play to play Ancient of War as a 10/5.

There are times (like 90% of the time) where I think that the game designers of Hearthstone aren't actually very good at their jobs, but the UI people are fucking amazing so it feels really good to play all the cards and click all the things. I know Hearthstone is striving to be a simpler experience than MtG or whatever, but at least the MtG designers understand the fundamentals of their game.

Also I'm still salty about the completely overreactionary nerf to Starving Buzzard. Sure, it costing 2-mana was silly, but now it costs FIVE!? Every other time a card is overpowered, they increase its cost by 1 mana (Leeroy Jenkins, Gadgetzaan Auctioneer, Unleash the Hounds, all of the Freeze spells). Mind Control went from 8 to 10, but to be fair, that makes sense, that's one of the single strongest spells in the game. Increasing Starving Buzzard by 3 mana still seems utterly ridiculous. I guess Blizzard thinks Turn 8 Starving Buzzard Unleash the Hounds is some kind of viable play, but you've probably lost so much momentum by then that a bunch of 1/1s aren't going to save you. I imagine in their fantasy land they're waiting for the community to settle down and start playing Starving Buzzard again (because there is a psychological component to nerfing stuff where nobody plays that card all of a sudden because they perceive it must be bad now), but I honestly don't see Hunter decks ever coming back to Starving Buzzard at its current cost. Starving Buzzard actually IS bad now.

I'm a casual Hearthstone-Player at best ... but that Hungry Dragon seems really strong. 5/6 for 4 mana with the downside being the enemy gets a one mana creature? That doesn't seem balanced.

At least on non-charge minions. A high damage / low health ratio can be ok on a charge minion, but non-charge ones almost always get immediatly killed (especially health 4 ones since there is a buttload of spells that do 4 damage).

I feel like I'm the main character of a rockstar game when it comes to hearthstone. Whenever I get out they pull me back in.

@bisonhero: Have you SEEN MtG Online? ;) An amazingly ugly mess. I played Magic in 93-95 and it's way too intimidating now, I won't touch it.

UI is so important and Blizzard is killing it in the UI department on all their games. I don't know how they do it. I get a kick out of the sheer number of nasty mockups the designers went through before they found the current look. (Watch the recent GDC talk for some of this.)

Looking forward to BRM and glad the dragons are finally getting some love. I wonder if they will tweak any of the old legendaries nobody uses... There are actually only 3 non-legend dragon cards currently, which is surprising.

This has given me the drive to attempt the Naxx Heroic mode... how did everybody do with that? Not planning on looking up the solutions.

I'm assuming the 5 cards announced are for the first wing? Grim Patron looks fun, but could require much work to be a mainstay of decks. Though it's always fun to build around interesting cards like this. I'm guessing he would be getting the most attention out of those 5 though.

It's good and bad to see a new expansion announced so soon though, as I still have way too many cards that need crafting/ collecting from the original & GvG set.

If you're not planning on looking for hints or solutions, good luck banging your ahead against the rocks. Even though you may have a proven deck that works for a specific heroic encounter, it may still be subjected to RNG bullshit. So often you'll question whether your original deck is sucking because it's bad or it's sucking because of RNG.

They said nothing about which wings the 5 cards teased belong to. Also, Grim Patron + Bouncing Blade.

So initially I thought hungry dragon looked amazing but the more I thought about it the less impressed I was. If you don't have a way to kill the minion it spawns the board has to be clear or your dragon will almost certainly be dying and even without a board the most likely result is you basically played a 4-mana 5/4 which isn't that great. Then consider that piloted shredder is the most common 4-drop by far and if it's on your opponents board already playing the dragon looks a lot less appealing. It should be good in priest just because it has high health and rogue because a dagger or backstab will usually be the most efficient way to play the dragon on turn 4.

Also, to those saying health is better than attack, that's becoming less true to some extent. Highmane and sky golem are ridiculously good cards just because of their death rattle and piloted shredder is obviously insane. And it IS occasionally correct to play ancient of war as a 10/5, and it's nice to have the option there.

Rend black hand is so bad it's unbelievable but the yt videos of it pulling off ridiculous swings will be hilarious. It's hemit nesingway all over again.

Rend is pretty bad in general but could see like a few days of play before the netdecking starts. Grim Patron is a cool combo with Madder Bomber, seems vaguely okay in arena (they took one of Noxious' ideas with this card); generally terrible in constructed. Hungry Dragon is pretty insane in arena and makes Pit Lord look like even more of a piece of shit, early Zombie Chow status in Constructed (good against some decks, bad against others) Blackwing Technician seems okay, hard to say right now. Dark Iron Skulker is OP.

A two damage board-clear combined with a 4/3 for 5 mana doesnt seem OP considering the crazy board clear some of the classes have. Especially since the damage is tied to creatures that still have full health.

@2headedninja: Let's say it's a good class card (which is by definition OP) but it isn't completely broken like Boom/5 mana Sylvanas/Loatheb in a spell based meta. Since it's rogue there's a lot of ways to get the extra aoe damage out and I don't really think rogue needed yet another decent board clear card, but they got it. On that note Hungry Dragon also makes Anub'ar Ambusher look terrible.

Aside: If you look at the first 5 cards announced for Naxx 4 of them were really interesting and the other was a question mark, we got some serious clunkers this time around. I guess given the previous business strategy it's just a matter of what the Dr. Boom/Loatheb/Undertaker card(s) is, it certainly isn't one of the ones shown so far.

Spoilers for the first boss fight:

Grim Guzzler / Coren Direbrew

Normal Difficulty

• Hero Power: Pile On, 0 Mana - "Put a minion from each deck onto the battlefield".
• Health: 30
• His deck is filled with massive creatures and legendary cards.
• Keep in mind that anytime Pile On brings a minion onto the field, it won't be activating the minion's Battlecry.

Heroic Difficulty

• Hero Power: Pile on, 0 Mana - "Put two minions from [Coren's] deck and one minion from your opponents deck onto the battlefield".
• Health: 30 + 15 Armor
• When he starts losing a bit of control, he would play a spell that drops 4 1/1 Taunt creatures (Bouncer) onto his side of the field.
• When he starts losing a lot of control, he'd play the Dark Iron Bouncer. This card is specific to boss fights and cannot be obtained for constructed or arena.
  • Dark Iron Bouncer: 6 Mana, 4 Attack, 8 Health - Always Wins Brawls.
  • Then he plays Brawl!
• If you can survive, he seems to eventually just run out of minions.

@white: The Grim Patron + Bouncing Blade combo is probably the one I am most looking forward to trying. I like the idea of paying 8 mana to flood the board instead of putting one big minion down. It's a cool possibility, but a board full of 3-2s/ 3-1s is super vulnerable. It could work if you're up against a control deck where the opponent has a big minion that keeps taking the bouncing blade hits, but if the opponent has many low health minions, the combo won't provide a decent result.

I was wanting to try him out in an Enrage Warrior deck with Frothing Berserker/ Unstable Ghoul.

Yeah, I realise trying it without solutions is a bad idea. Further more, I have a far from complete collection, so my options are pretty limited. I've already accepted that RNG will play a huge role in it. You pretty much need perfect draw to be able to counter the fixed events that will happen against some bosses. But I'm taking it just a couple of attempts a day, so at this rate I will never finish it before Blacrock.

Blizzard seems to be obsessed with filling out the missing stat lines in the game, as though that were significant at all, hence why we have garbage like Hemet and mediocre at best Rend Blackhand. If Hemet was a 3/6 or a 4/5 or a 5/5 or something I'm sure he'd be at least somewhat useful, given hunters had a significant presence in constructed.

"He has to play Hungry Dragon and get Zombie Chow to be able to live!"

is going to be the new

"He has to kill Piloted Shredder and get Doomsayer to be able to live!"

@hansolol: WHOAAAAA I'VE SEEN THIS EXACT SCENARIO THOUSANDS OF TIMES HOW EXCITING!!!!

The passion of hearthstone commentators.

Two more cards have been added. One of them looks like a staple in the Shaman decks in the future. The other one looks like it will build a stronger case for battlerage warrior.

Shaman card is good but boring (except maybe in murloc shaman I guess?), warrior card is too combo-ey. I'm sure you could build a 52% win rate warrior deck based on combos in the future just like you can now but it's such a weak gimmick. If it was a 3/5 it'd be solid, probably still not better than water elemental.

New cards have appeared.

Dragonkin Sorcerer will see play for being a dragon, dragon egg kind of sucks; if the whelps were 2/2 or something it could be alright. We just keep getting mediocre cards announced so far.

So, am I crazy or is the text on the Dragonkin sorcerer weird? It makes it sound like it gets buffed by just mousing over it, not actually casting the spell on it. That aside, should work nice in a priest, paladin or Druid deck with some buffs. Can't wait to see the rest of the cards and start brainstorming some new dumb decks.

@therealmoot: I think there's a distinction between "casting" and "targeting."

Let's say I play Blessing of Kings on Dragonkin Sorcerer and my opponent's Counterspell secret procs. I still targeted it so it gains the +1/+1 buff despite not receiving the +4/+4 from Blessing of Kings.

More cards have been revealed. This time we get three cards instead of two.

Flamewalker is basically like a mini Goblin blastmage for spells. That will probably be useful in the recent Tempo mage decks that I have been seeing lately. The dream combo with this card would be like turn three flamewalker + coin + spare part.

Core Rager - I guess Blizzard wants more face hunters. Everyone is certainly continue to keep their Big Game Hunters in their decks for at least another season.

Imp Gang Boss - In my opinion, this is a better imp master. But will it see any play? Probably will because of the demon synergy.

Flamewaker and Imp Gang Boss are both pretty solid, interesting cards. Core Rager isn't very good in most situations, probably doesn't make the cut unless Hunters want to go even faster, but BGH just murders it so I doubt it.

More interesting cards! Core Rager seems really cool. Sorta like Druid of the Fang, but with rage and fire. I guess he works well in a zoo deck? Dump your hand early and get a sizable minion out of it and then prey it doesn't get hexed, poly morphed or silenced. I'll probably give that a shot.

Imp Gang boss: A demon that doesn't hurt you or erase your cards. NICE. Another good Zoo card?

Flamewaker looks like he could be really useful for punishing your opponent. "If you don't kill this, it's going to hurt you. Every. Turn." ...at least in a spell heavy deck. Could be very entertaining in the right circumstances.

Now let's see some more Neutrals! I wan't to see what a "Blackrock Mountain deck" could look like. What kind of Synergies and battlecry's are we going to get, are the legendary's going to be awesome? Really happy to be getting more cards.

Two more cards

3 more cards have been revealed. Also, Blizzard has confirmed that the release date of the expansion will be April 2nd for North America and April 3rd for Europe

Dragon's Breath seems okay for arena, who knows for constructed. Blackwing Corruptor is really good if you can make a good dragon deck. Drakonid Crusher is cool, no clue how good it is or isn't (6 slot is a ton of legendaries). Volcanic Drake is hard to judge, 5 health would make it better though. Nefarian would be solid as a 4/12, nearly useless as an 8/8 in constructed.

So it's 31 cards, right? Any word on what the split is this time? Last time each class only got one card, and the rest were neutral cards, but it already looks like two Mage cards have been announced.

So two class cards maybe (18 cards) then neutral cards for the rest (13)? Or maybe it's just super arbitrary this time and some classes get more cards than others.

Overall, I don't know if I find these cards as interesting as some of the Naxxramas cards. Naxxramas led to a bunch of Deathrattle focused decks, but that was neat because it synergized with existing cards as well. The number of existing Dragons is a lot smaller, and also I really am not feeling compelled to make a Dragon deck based on Rend Blackhand, Blackwing Technician, and Blackwing Corruptor. It kinda doesn't seem worth the trouble.

@bisonhero: Each class is getting 1 common and 1 rare.

@bisonhero: It's all legendaries from hereon out for neutral cards. I wouldn't be surprised to see a class dragon.