Warcraft Rumble is shaking things up in the new year — with bears!

We’ve been playing Warcraft Rumble for a little over a year now, and the Rumble team is still finding ways to shake up the gameplay and keep things fresh. Hot on the heels of the much-anticipated PC launch of the game, Rumble has been running non-stop in-game events and promotions to keep you building your collection of minis. January alone has seen a rework to the Dwarf Mountaineer mini and has us battling in the new Winds of Change event to unlock a pair of beefy units to help give your army some muscle.

The Winds of Change are blowing

Players who log in from right now until January 21 will be able to unlock the ferocious Cenarion mini the Druid of the Claw. This is my favorite Cenarion unit so far! Mainly because it turns into a bear, and bears are awesome, but they’re also pretty versatile! When you play the Druid of the Claw he comes out in his Night Elf form and casts Sunfire at your enemies, but if his health drops to 50% he’ll turn into a ferocious bear and use a powerful swipe to damage anything on the ground in front of him. You can also get talents that will give him either a heal while he’s in Night Elf form, a battle roar that improves damage in bear form, or a self-heal when he turns into a bear to maximize the time he can cause pandamonium. All for only three gold! He’s been a really solid addition to my armies and has helped to turn the tide of battle more than once.

If bears aren’t your thing, you’ll just have to wait until the Winds of Change blow a little harder on January 22, 2025 — when you’ll start to earn the Swole Troll. This muscle-bound brute will head straight to enemy fortifications and bosses and put every ounce of its strength into tearing them apart brick by brick. It’ll cost you four gold and be unstoppable by any other unit crowd control abilities. You can even talent it to knock other units away, or drop a Meatier Elbow on them for an extra large AOE damage ability.

Big changes in PVP

Rumble also gave us a big PVP shakeup in the middle of the current season no less. Originally as you played against other players each different leader would have their own matchmaking rating. So if you just got a new leader like the recently released Orgrim Doomhammer, he’d start at zero rating while your long-serving Tirions rating wouldn’t force you into playing against top-tier players with an under-leveled unit. Now your account has the rating and matchmaking isn’t based on which leader is chosen. This simplifies things but might make it tougher to start out for the newer leaders.

The other big change is that they’ve added a whole new rewards track for PVP. Now every match you play — win or lose — will give you Victory points. As you earn your victory points you’ll unlock the various experience tomes, upgrade cores, and gold rewards throughout the tree. Each season will completely reset the Victory Points you have and give you a whole new tree to unlock. Unlike the old system where points gradually decayed each season, this means you’ll be able to get a quick burst of rewards for your early wins.

More Rumblers, More Rewards

December was one of the best months for Rumble all year. Between the PC launch and the multiple new split-faction leaders Anub’arak, Malfurion, and Orgrim players turned out in droves. Now Rumble is offering a community challenge to all of these players. If you log in from January 15, 2025, to February 5, 2025, you’ll contribute to earning everyone in the game extra gold, a giant tome of experience for your leaders, and a fancy Epic Upgrade Core. The task to complete will change weekly, but the numbers seem like they’ll be pretty easy to hit. Players will have to upgrade 500 units in the first week, play 1000 PVP matches in the second week, and do 1000 dungeon battles in the final week. Easy peasy.

Maybe even too easy. This is the first community challenge in Rumble — so it’s possible that the Blizzard Developers are giving us easy targets for our first outing to make sure that we can complete them, but coming after the boost that the PC version must’ve given I would’ve assumed an extra zero on each of those targets should be within the realm of possibility. Still! I’ll take my extra loot with a smile on my face and hope that we can prove our mettle in another event down the line.

If all of that wasn’t enough, there is more happening in the near future! There is a daily log-in event starting on January 21, 2025 for the Lunar New Year. While rumors abound that the Spiderlings mini will be the next underperforming unit to get a rework as the Mountaineer did. They could use it as they’re pretty weak to play right now. So could the Living Bomb spell– so hopefully that’s on the list somewhere too.

Until then I’ll be sending my Trolls to the best gym so they can grow big and strong.