The best art from the new cards of Hearthstone’s Across the Timeways set

Hearthstone’s newest expansion, Across the Timeways, is a wild ride of alternate-universe madness that, as usual, includes some amazing art worth examining in all of its hi-res glory. While I don’t always have the bandwidth to fit a proper ladder run into my gaming rotation for every new set of cards, I always do try to pick out a few favorite illustrations from each new release.

This set does not disappoint, with a large cast of mostly-familiar characters in some unique new roles — and great art all around. It was difficult to narrow down to just a few top picks, but here are my nine favorite pieces of card art from Across the Timeways.

Cards that pack a punch

Our first entry stars everyone’s favorite temporal draconic brigand, Hooktail. As Cory mentioned in last week’s Queue, this expansion bestows her a promotion from Captain to Time Adm’ral. In the art for Chrono Daggers, Hooktail is seen raining corrupted shards of some other unfortunate timeline on her hapless victims.

The Death Knight card set features a Talanji from an alternate universe where she has been raised from death to lead the now-zombified Zandalari people. The illustration for Talanji of the Graves is stunning, but I love the art for the signature version of the card even more. It gives a first-person view of the last moments of the target of a flurry of runed blades.

The far-future fate of one timeline’s Gnomeregan is a golden era powered by Holy magic and the preserved brain of their ancient leader, Gelbin Mekkatorque. The idea of being resurrected and handed the keys to an enormous Light-powered mech in the shape of my own head sounds divine, and the art for Gnomish Aura somehow manages to reflect that joy perfectly.

Art that’s true to temporal form

Gladiatorial Combat summons a 5/5 tiger with Stealth for your opponent, in a very cool throwback nod to a card from the original Hearthstone lineup. Everything about the art works — the contrasting color palette, the mid-action stance, and even the expressions on both of the faces of the appropriately-named Ogre combatant, Two-Heads.

Broxigar has perhaps the best time travel story in the greater World of Warcraft universe, so it makes perfect sense to include him in Across the Timeways. The brother of Varok Saurfang and a veteran of the first three major wars on Azeroth, Broxigar was flung back in time ten thousand years in order to achieve a record demon kill-count during the War of the Ancients. His signature card art is correspondingly metal.

There are many illustrations throughout the art of this expansion that are extremely on-point with respect to their inspiration, but my favorite example is Mend the Timeline. The Bronze Dragonflight might have total mastery over temporal magic, but I am highly amused by the idea of a Goblin thanklessly maintaining the flow of time with tedious physical labor. And then probably overcharging for it.

Funny across all canonical timelines

What better way to express the awesome power of temporal magic than an enormous hourglass pancaking a dragon? Untimely Death features an extremely well-done illustration that captures both the weight and velocity of time slipping away from the viewer.

As suggested by Phil, the Living Paradox art accurately depicts the inevitable chaos that is sure to follow any attempt to manipulate the Timeways in order to command your own army of alternate-universe selves.

Finally, there’s the Infinite Banana, an endlessly playable +1/+1 buff. In addition to referencing the original princess-kidnapping, barrel-tossing ape, the card’s illustration manages to capture the grandeur and majesty of a never-ending banana in the possession of a temporally-corrupted primate. Would eat.

There were many other illustrations that were so close to making the cut, as is typical of the whimsical and smile-inducing Hearthstone art. So what’s your favorite card from Across the Timeways?