Hearthstone’s new expansion, March of the Lich King, is introducing a whole new class with the long-awaited appearance of the Death Knight. But as always it’s giving the existing classes some new tools, including a set of cards that synergize around Shaman having big big beefy minions to dominate the battlefield into the late game. GameSpot can reveal not one or two but four of those cards, which all look to work together nicely.
In the current meta, the Shaman typically focuses on smaller minions like Murlocs, or a midrange deck. The class is no stranger to big minions, but it has typically used Evolve tools to randomly borrow big minions from other classes. This new package gives Shaman some more high-cost tools to call its own, starting with Prescience. This four-cost spell is built to fetch your big minions while giving you the benefit of smaller Taunt minions to buy you time until you can roll out the power hitters.
And what might such a spell grab? Two new big minions make their debut in this set. Blightblood Berserker is a big Taunt minion that also comes with Reborn and Lifesteal, and both times that it dies it does damage to an enemy minion, healing you in the process. That’s a big effect by itself, and it also comes with the new Undead synergy. Then there’s the new Shaman legendary, Overlord Drakuru, a big minion with Rush and Windfury that has the effect of summoning any minions it attacks and kills. Youch.
That’s a lot of power packed into two cards. But if you want a serious one-two punch at a major combined discount, you can use the new spell From De Other Side. This 10-cost Shadow spell summons copies of every minion in your hand, has them each attack a minion, and then die. In the case of Blightblood Berserker, this means you get the Lifesteal benefit of both its attack and Deathrattle instantly, and you’re still left with it standing as a Reborn minion with Taunt. For Overlord Drakuru, this effect negates his Windfury, but still leaves you with a copy of whatever he killed. And since the spell summons copies of minions in your hand, rather than pulling them out of your hand entirely, you still have the original minions to play from hand whenever you want.
Hearthstone’s March of the Lich King expansion launches on December 6. It will launch alongside a new Core set of 68 Death Knight cards, which use a new Rune system, along with the introduction of the new Undead minion type. Preorders are now available for Lich King bundles, and while you wait for the expansion, you can check out all of the March of the Lich King cards revealed so far.
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