Fractured in Alterac Valley - New Hearthstone Expansion Details - Hero Cards & Special Event - Launches December 7th!
The official details to Hearthstone's new expansion, Fractured in Alterac Valley!
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Quote from BlizzardThe temperature is low, but the tensions are high on this storied battlefield, where the Horde and the Alliance fight for honor and shards of a fallen naaru. The two factions are locked in eternal battle, and have put out a call for new Heroes to help turn the tide. Take key Objectives and secure Honorable Kills to help your faction claim victory! The conflict is inevitable, and you must pick a side. So come, claim your place as a champion among those who are Fractured in Alterac Valley!
Heroes of the Alliance and Horde
After clearing the Barrens, the Wailing Caverns, Stormwind, and the Deadmines, our mercenaries are max level and ready to lead their faction to victory! Each class will have a new Hero Card with powerful Battlecries and Hero Powers that can shape the course of battle!
New Keyword: Honorable Kill
Despite the bitter hostilities between the factions, remember to fight with honor! Cards with the new Honorable Kill keyword have a bonus effect if they deal exact lethal damage to kill an enemy minion on your turn!
Fight for Objectives
Never fall back! Alterac Valley is full of strategic Objectives that you can claim and use to your benefit in battle. Objectives are spells with effects that last for three turns! Press your advantage while you still have it, and swing the fight in your favor!
Log in to Choose Your Faction and Free Legendary!
Epic battles are defined by great leaders. Log in to Hearthstone after the 21.8 patch goes live and you will be prompted to choose between the Horde’s Drek’Thar and the Alliance’s Vanndar Stormpike, two neutral Legendary cards from the Fractured in Alterac Valley expansion. By choosing your side, you will choose one of the two to receive a Golden copy of for free, available to play immediately! Limit one per account.
This is a weighty choice that should not be made lightly! After the expansion launches, you will fight for your faction in order to earn prizes and the ultimate honor of your faction’s legendary being a free Diamond card for the set! But don’t fret, part of the post-expansion journey will include you getting a Golden copy of the enemy faction’s leader, too.
Phase 3 Roadmap Recap
Fractured in Alterac Valley will kick off Phase 3 of the Year of the Gryphon. Phase 3 is on track to include a Battlegrounds update, a seasonal event, and more solo experiences. We will also continue to bring updates to Traditional Hearthstone, Duels, Mercenaries, Tavern Brawls, and Solo Experiences. Take a look at the Roadmap through the end of the Hearthstone year:
Pre-Purchase Fractured in Alterac Valley
The Fractured in Alterac Valley Mega Bundle includes 80 Fractured in Alterac Valley card packs, five Golden Fractured in Alterac Valley card packs, two random Golden Legendary Fractured in Alterac Valley cards, the Vanndar Stormpike alternate Warrior hero and Card Back, Battlegrounds Perks*, five Mercenaries Packs, and a Legendary Mercenary Card.** Battlegrounds Perks, Mercenaries items, and the Vanndar Stormpike alternate Warrior hero and Card Back are awarded right away; Fractured in Alterac Valley items will be available once the expansion goes live.
The Fractured in Alterac Valley Pre-Purchase Bundle includes 60 Fractured in Alterac Valley card packs, two random Fractured in Alterac Valley Legendary cards, and a new Vanndar Stormpike Card Back!
* Battlegrounds Perks are available upon purchase and expire at the end of the Fractured in Alterac Valley expansion cycle.
** If you already own all Legendary Mercenary Cards at the time of your pre-purchase, you will be given 100 coins for a random Legendary Mercenary, instead.
Someone let the Druid out of the bag and spilled information likely meant to stay secret till the announcement tonight. Buffed, a german gaming website, put out an article with a lot of details already revealed for the upcoming expansion, which poetically sounds like after being Forged in the Barrens and United in Stormwind, we might be "Fractured in Alterac Valley" completing the journey of our Mercenaries. You can read the original article in German on Buffed's site, but we have the roughly translated details below!
Quote from buffed.deThe new Hearthstone expansion is called Split in Alterac Valley and will be released on December 7th!
The first information from Blizzard
- A fight for honor. The time has come to take up arms! Starting today, players in Rifts in Alterac Valley can choose a faction by choosing one of two free golden legendary cards: the Shaman Elder Drek'Thar of the Frostwolf Clan for the Horde or the Mountain King Vanndar Stormpike for the Alliance. From December 7th to January 11th, each faction will receive unique quests where players will earn Honor Points by playing and winning games. The faction that earned the most honor at the end of the event will be declared the winner in the next mini-set, and all players will receive a diamond version of the victorious faction's leader card.
- New keyword: Honorable Victory. It has never felt better to give a servant the fatal blow. The Honorable Victory keyword provides unique bonuses for dealing the exact amount of damage needed to an enemy, such as reducing the cost of all spells or + 1 / + 1 for each honorable victory.
- Mercenary heroes. After a year of battles, the mercenary heroes on both sides are hardened for battle. They are now hero cards with game changing effects - such as increasing a player's maximum mana crystals to 20! With their powerful new battle cries and hero skills, these heroes can decide the outcome of the battle between the Horde and the Alliance.
Hearthstone from Alterac Valley?
The next big Hearthstone expansion is already in the starting blocks. After Unite in Stormwind, the upcoming card set revolves around Alterac Valley and the conflict between the Horde and the Alliance. At least that's what the first little trailer that heralds the reveal season suggests.
In the video you can see the Horde character Rokara and the Alliance character Tavish Stormpike. The orc and the dwarf appear to be on a snowy battlefield. WoW players will have the Alterac Valley in mind here. That would fit in with the current WoW anniversary event, where you can immerse yourself in a special version of the Alterac Valley, Korrak's Revenge . We'll have to wait and see if the upcoming Hearthstone expansion is really about Alterac Valley.
Alliance vs Horde in Hearthstone - Trial # 2
Already with Rastakhan's Rambazamba , Blizzard's trading card game wanted to bring the conflict between the Horde and the Alliance to the fore, and forged in the Barrens has already heralded it. That would have gone well with the WoW expansion Battle for Azeroth, which was active at the time, in which the two factions fought again. In the end, however, the Hearthstone developers decided to focus on the troll leaders instead of the two factions.
The first cards of the new set will be shown from today (11/16/21) by various Hearthstone influencers and websites and the set will be further completed over the next few weeks. An exact release schedule like the other expansions can not yet be found on playhearthstone.com .
Actually people did play Malfurion DK for hero power, it's the closest they can get to odd warrior or DK Gul'dan. The two summons there were nice, of course, but saying people only cared for Malfurion because of two 2-drops. Garrosh, Zul'jin and Thrall were the only ones where your only interest was the effect without no intervention of the hero power whatsoever (Jaina had synergy between hero power and effect, she does not count), and of those the only one that was actually good was Zul'jin.
Does this set a new standard for powercreep?
I mean in the history of gaming.
This all seems insane to me. And I think it may foretell the end of Hearthstone as we know it. With either a complete rebalancing or a total overhaul in the works.
I don't know how this will work for collectors who suddenly have thousands of useless cards.
I'm really not seeing the power creep everyone else is?
Wildheart Guff seems solid. Like Malfurion the Pestilent basically. Will see a lot of play but I don't think it's going to throw the games' power level off of it's axis (and if it does, that's... probably a good thing because it's basically a really grindy late game card).
Cariel seems really strong, and might encourage more weapon hate. Her hero power is fairly strong in theory but she's also a late game card.
Everything else seems... fine to me. I'm not seeing anything bad, but nothing game breaking either.
cancelled
Well, at the very least Aggro druid is off the meta now, I mean... yeah, you can use it to draw, but get insta-powerroll by any other druid that goes control.
I was kinda thorn on which side to pick based on the Legendary, but Drek'Thar seems universally better so went with the Horde
im going for vannar!! already testing it with priest :D
So, I will always be FOR THE HORDE as long as I live - but I have to say, the effect of Vanndar seems way more fun to me. And we know how good mana cheating is.
I like big, chunky decks with big, chunky cards. Can't go wrong.
What to do...
so far both hero cards shown dont give you infinite value like hero cards in the past (deathstalker rexxar im looking at you >:( )
Are you high?
A weapon that doesn't lose durability that also reduces all damage by half to your face, and a hero power that gives you +4/4 isnt infinite value?
Not to mention the insane ramp AND draw value of guff.. Super Giant ramp druid already has me terrified.. not only easy ramp, but a just draw a card anytime for 2?
Yeah blizzard. Pft. no value at all in these boring cards. Gives us way more!
Seriously, just keep Mr. Smite in your hand and mash the hero button until you can one shot them.
Drek'thar: Oh cool, another reason for games not to go beyond turn 5
Vanndar: Oh cool, Keleseth on steroids, you draw this and you win or you don't and you lose
Good design...
Pretty much my reaction. Unless the rest of the set somehow has great cards to help you survive till you can get your hero up and going too, Your just gonna lose if they get their hero up before you do.
I'm sorry, what? Keleseth? Keleseth was a powerplay in agro decks, because the card took advantage of the fact that you had a lot of low cost minions in your deck (0 and 1 cost minions). To put it simply, if you play multiple minions in the same turn, you "multiply" the effect of Keleseth. Keleseth was never played in anything other than extremely agro decks.
Do you really think Vanndar is similar at all? You can't put him into a deck full of 1 and 2 drops because he'll literally have no effect at all, to get the effect all the minions in your deck have to be 5 cost or higher. And it's just impossible to build an agro deck with those restrictions, since you just straight up lose if you don't draw Vanndar, and even if you do you've not been putting on any pressure for the first 3 turns. At best you could try to build a deck that relies on cheap spells for early pressure and then transitions into Vanndar, but I wouldn't even bet on that, since you're still in an awful spot if you don't draw him by turn 4 or 5.
No, Vanndar is very clearly a midrange/combo enabler, not an agro card like Keleseth.
Just to make sure im understanding the factions event correctly... From what i understand. Everyone will be given a choice of two different golden legendary. Then you can earn honor points for that faction, and no matter which team you chose, everyone will get a Diamond copy of the winners legendary.
So... correct me if im missing something here.. but doesnt that mean its better if your side loses? I mean.. that way you get both legendary cards.. but if your side wins, you just have a diamond and golden of the same one.
Kinda encouraging you to NOT do those quests for points unless im not understanding corectly
https://youtu.be/ey0RW2ry_6Q time stamp 3:45,"by completing the legendary questline you´ll end up with Golden Objectives (cards' and both Legendary leaders"...
So I assume, that you will chose one right now, and for the final legendary quest from questline you´ll get the oposite faction Legendary card.
Plus if I got this right the gold one will not be able to be dusted.
Nope, it doesn't work that way. You only get one leader for free, and ANOTHER copy if your side wins. So dumb.EDIT: I was just going by what happened when I logged in -- it's nice to know they aren't completely dumb and are giving out both.
Are you assuming? Or actually have this info from blizzard source? Not being a dick, just would like to know for sure, since i agree how its written makes it sound like its better for your side not to win so you can get both cards instead of just 2 of the same. I couldnt care less about a Diamond skin, seems like just getting punished for your team winning instead of rewarded
Nevermind, they cleared it up.
-Get 5 Armor
-Draw a Card
-get a Manacrystal
-Set your Mana to 20
-Hero Power 2 Mana draw a card or get a Manacrystal
for - 5 f*cking Mana
Why should any druid Deck in this world dont use this Hero Card until next Rotation ? There is no Downside at all.
powercreep 9999999