The Great Dark Beyond expansion sends Hearthstone to space, adding Draenei minions and a Spaceship you can build

Fasten your seatbelts and get ready to explore space: Hearthstone takes us where no Murloc has gone before as we try to find the Draenei a new home in The Great Dark Beyond. The expansion is now live so it’s time to hop in our starship and head to the stars, or join some of your favorite Hearthstone content creators act it out as the crew of the starship Exile’s Hope in the team’s expansion teaser below.

Let’s dive into just what this new expansion has to offer.

This teaser shows off a cool new card, Xor’oth, Breaker of Stars, which seems to be aimed at Aggro Demon Hunters and has a very interesting effect: it adds two star cards to each end of your hand. Once the two stars meet and are sitting side-by-side, you deal five damage to all enemies. So while the cards are sitting in your hand, your Outcast effects will be disrupted — but if you’re playing Aggro, you’re usually aiming at dumping your hand fast anyway, so the more aggressive you are with your resources, the faster you’ll be able to make your stars collide.

Returning Keyword: Spellburst

The Great Dark Beyond features a returning Keyword from past expansions: Spellburst. If you don’t remember it, cards with Spellburst have additional effects which activate when you play a spell. And a brand-new card, Nexus-Prince Shaffar — which makes great use of Spellburst — is being given to all players for free. Simply login to get yours!

New minion type: Draenei

Draenei are a new minion type in this expansion! Most Draenei minions have effects that empower the next Draenei you play. Sometimes they get buffs to their stats, while other times they might get even more powerful effects, such as refreshing your Mana Crystals by an amount equivalent to their Attack.

And then there’s the big man himself: Velen, Leader of the Exiled is a 7-mana, 7/7 Legendary Draenei with Taunt and a Deathrattle effect that triggers the Battlecries and Deathrattles of all other Draenei you played that game! We foresee Draenei-themed decks trying to take advantage of this new, extremely synergistic minion type — and we can only wonder if they’ll eventually be added to the Battlegrounds as well.

Here are all of the details on the new Draenei minions.

New keyword: Starship Piece

But even more interesting is what we can see in the small gameplay window at the end of the video: it’s a Spaceship, a totally new type of Location! It takes up a space on your board, and you can build it by playing other cards that have the new Spaceship Piece keyword. When cards with that keyword die, their stats and effects get added to the Starship you’re building on your board. Once you’re satisfied, just click the Starship Location — and pay the 5-mana cost — to launch your Starship, and get it added to your board!

Here are all of the details on the new Starship keyword.

And now that the expansion is out, we can stare at the stars and take in the magnificence of the deep, dark space, as we pray for the Light of Ku’re to reach our hearts from without. And when faced with hardships and difficult times, we just close our eyes and ask ourselves: WWVD?*

*What would Velen do?