Everything we know about Rastakhan’s Rumble, the next Hearthstone expansion

Hearthstone has, at long last, its Troll expansion. Rastakhan’s Rumble is the third expansion for 2018. Announced during the opening ceremonies at BlizzCon, it takes us to the Stranglethorn Vale arena. Ya man, it be Trolls, da Loa, and plenty of bad Jamaican accents.

Like Witchwood and Boomsday Project, Rastakhan’s Rumble will feature a Hero card as well as a single player experience. In the single player experience, Rumble Run, you’ll fight increasingly difficult bosses, which sounds more like Witchwood’s Monster Hunts, than Boomsday’s Puzzle Lab. If you’ve been playing Battle for Azeroth, you’ll be familiar with the Hero Card: King Rastakhan. Rastakhan is yet another Shaman alternate hero like Witchwood’s Hagatha, but anything to get Shaman players to not play Shutterwcok is fine in my book.

New Keyword: Overkill

This expansion introduces new keyword Overkill. It triggers any time you deal damage to a minion greater than its health. If a minion has 3 health and the Overkill card deals 4 or more, then the Overkill effect happens. The example card shown, Sul’thraze, a 6 mana 4/4 weapon, has an Overkill effect which allows it to attack again. In practice, it should be similar to Fool’s Bane from One Night in Karazhan.

Each class will have a Loa and Spirt cards. The Paladin Loa shown, Shirvallah, the Tiger, is a ‘giant’ type card. You have to cast spells to reduce its mana cost to a playable number. Its starting cost is 25 mana which means it could slot into Odd Paladin, but the standard deck would need to cast every single spell it has to make it playable. Shirvallah would probably work better in a buff focused or Quest Paladin. It’s nice to see some support for the more unpopular quest before they rotate.

The spirit card shown, a 4 mana, 0/3 Rogue card called Spirit of the Shark, has stealth and allows your Battlecries and Combos to trigger twice. Several weapon buffs are Battlecries which would help both Kingsbane and Spectral Cutlass. Spirt of the Shark would double the damage from your SI:7 Agent. It could create a huge Edwin VanCleef, buff you deck twice withe Keleseth, or give you an army of spiders from Fal’dorei Strider.

Blizzard is wasting no time capitalizing on the BlizzCon hype. Rastakhan’s Rumble is available for preorder right now. For $19.99, you get 17 card packs and a card back. The $49.99 bundle gives you 50 card packs, the King Rastakhan Hero card, and a card back.

As part of the BlizzCon celebration, if you log into Hearthstone today, you’ll receive two new golden cards. Secret Plan, a common, and Star Aligner, an epic. The epic can be disenchanted for enough dust to craft any epic you want.