Blizzard has announced last Friday that the next Hearthstone expansion will be released on April 2nd for the Americas servers (including Southeast Asia and the Oceania regions). It will be released on April 3rd for other regions.

Mage secret not included with Ragnoros

Oh man. Emperor Thaurissan is the reward for the first week. That shit is going to be insane. I hate making hyperbolic claims before a set is released but he seems like he's going to be the Loatheb for BRM. He's probably not going to be as ubiquitous as Dr. Boom(because omg even Hunter is running that shit) but he looks like he'll fit into most control decks. Blizzard sure loves their super powerful 6-drops, huh?

I can't believe his ability keeps triggering! Seems like the kind of thing they'd make a battlecry or something. Perhaps the most, "must remove now" card in the game? People have been crying about Innervate for a while. Wonder how bad the outcry will be over this.

I have to say, I haven't been as down as some people have been over BRM but this is the one card that has made me really excited to make some new decks. Turn 9 Sylvannas into Brawl incoming.

Majordomo is a nice joke card, but unplayable. It will be amusing to see Trolden videos with him but that's about it.

Chromaggus will probably be tried out, we'll have to see how efficient he is at drawing. Might be sick in direct damage decks like freeze mage.

Thaurissan looks like the new meta and honestly, seems pretty awesome. Let's just hope it's a tad too slow for aggro decks because it makes control and combo decks pretty sick and I want to see more of that.

Lumberer doesn't look too exciting. Combo druid is the go-to druid deck and this card doesn't really fit into it that well.

Dragon Consort means that paladins will probably be the only class which will see Dragon decks being made. Could be good, I'll try it out.

Demonwrath is decent.

Resurrect looks interesting as it incentivizes big minions but punishes Kabal/Shadow Madness plays.

Revenge will maybe replace whirlwind, warriors lack AoE and want to save Brawl, could be decent in clutch situations.

Solemn Vigil looks cool, definitely hits the spot. As a paladin I'm excited to see card draw and this is not that hard to consistently get for 3 mana which I'll take over an acolyte of pain.

Fireguar Destroyer looks RIDICULOUS, 4 mana 5/6 is insane, 4 mana 6/6 is insane and these will be popping up on average. Even 4 mana 4/6 is not too shabby. Looks powerful in shaman, but shaman doesn't really see that much play so I'm cool with it.

Gang Up is a nice fun card, people will build decks around it and fail 80% of the time, the remaining 20% will make its way to Trolden.

Druid of the Flame looks like a very solid and versatile minion but I don't feel like it fits the present druid decks.

Quick Shot... man, fuck this.

Twilight Whelp looks terrible. Zombie Chow is more consistent and as a priest you don't care about healing them for 5 in the early game and DO care about hitting them for 5 in the late game with Auchenai in play.

Has blizzard confirmed that Resurrect will work on enemy minions you Kabal/Shadow?

@boxxybae: I can't imagine why Kabal wouldnt as you make their minions yours. I think Shadow will too since you can Recombobulate a Shadowed minion and the card also targets friendlies.

@imsh_pl: I would argue that Twilight Whelp is a more reliable drop than Chow in a dragon deck. Whereas Chow can potentially be a dead card in the late game if you have no Auchenai for the combo.

@imsh_pl: Majordomo could be amazing if you can somehow make your enemies Slyvanus take it.

I'm an ok'ish player at best, but these seem to favour hunter and mage a lot and DD-mages are already so f'ing annoying that I feel the need to concede as soon as I encounter one. And I feel like we didn't really need much more area of effect removal, there is plenty of that already.

Thaurissan looks mad overpowered ... especially in druid decks if they manage to play it like turn 2. Hrm, maybe this expension will cure me from this game. The scenarios I have in my head sure don't feel fun.

@aktivity: So now in your mulligan you're searching for Twilight Whelp and a dragon? What if you don't get the Whelp in your mulligan? Do you keep the dragon hoping to also get a Whelp? Chow is way better.

I suck with Rogue so I'm looking forward to Gang up. Might give me what I need to make some kind of decent deck.

And all the Legendary's look good. There's probably a decent gimmick deck that can be made out of them, That will be priority one at the end of week 5.

@aktivity said:

So I kind of agree with you if this card had the advantage of "maybe you can actually use it outside of a Priest deck", but since it's Priest-only, it is kinda competing with Zombie Chow. Neutral Twilight Whelp could've been interesting. Another thing that works against it: I don't expect Dragon decks to be very good, especially not in Priest. At least Paladin has Dragon Consort.

It's interesting that Blizzard seems to be really trying to kill Handlock and Zoo, if only by releasing pretty solid Demon cards that have almost no place in those decks. Handlock is still really frustrating to play against if you don't draw both of your (basically required) Big Game Hunters.

Also it's still super funny to me that Twilight Drake might as well be a Warlock card for how completely unplayable it is outside of any deck but that one.

Also, Majordomo Executus is the counter to Sneed's Old Shredder.

I guess in my experience the Auchenai + Chow combo is too rare for me to value it. Most of the time I draw early(or too late) into Chow or have used the Circle combo already to deal with aggro. And when I do get it, most of the time it relies on me already having board control. Otherwise they'll just kill the Auchenai first or kill the Chow before I play the Auchenai, I can only guarantee it by also having Circle. I do agree that a Priest Dragon deck doesn't seem to be very viable.

What do you mean? You just get this card if you buy the expansion in the first week?

@lukeweizer: It's one of the card rewards for finishing the first wing of the adventure. You unlock a card for each challenge in a wing. He's the first legendary to be unlocked, so people will have access to him already is what he means.

Domo sucks, Chromaggus is great in control and terrible in aggro, Emperor is good, Volcanic Lumberer is "meh," Dragon Consort is ridiculous and maybe a cry to people to play Paladin or something, Demonwrath is okay, Resurrect is interesting, Revenge is meh, Solemn Vigil is hard to evaluate, Fireguard Destroyer is great (and was awesome in WoW), Gang Up is a really fucking weird card that I think will eventually be insanely OP but it will take a long time for people to get there, Druid of the Flame is solid, Quick Shot is insane, Twilight Whelp is okay.

Man, the servers aren't Naxxramas jacked, but they're occasionally weird. Buying the first quarter with gold took a good 30 seconds.

Then the Dark Iron Arena fight. Enemy summons Nozdormu. I shit you not, my turn was like 4 seconds long. I knew I had to play around Nozdormu, but it threw me off guard so much that I barely had time to play a minion and activate hero power even though I had like 9 mana. Then my next turn (because I absolutely did not kill Nozdormu), it literally just skipped my turn. My turn started, then it immediately flipped over the "end turn" button as if I'd run out of time. Then my next turn, it again gave me about 4 seconds, where I got very little done, but it was irrelevant because with all of my inaction he had flooded his side with a zillion guys.

For the record, it's just regular Nozdormu, with the normal ability text.

Emperor is voiced by Lu Bu and thus 1000 times more awesome.

I think it's getting out of hand that 4 classes now have a 2-mana, 3-damage spell (Mage, Druid, Warlock, Hunter, and if you want you could count Shaman though the mana is distributed differently on Lightning Bolt). At this point, just make Darkbomb a neutral spell that any class can use; they're most of the way there anyways.

I'm not a fan of Hunter having Quick Shot, especially since I feel like it further pushes out other removal from ever getting used, like Multi-Shot or Cobra Shot.

Gotchya. Never actually purchased an Adventure in Hearthstone, so I thought he was a reward for early purchasers.