At its annual BlizzCon event, Blizzard announced that a new expansion is coming to the massively popular digital card game, Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft.
The new expansion comes in the form of a single-player adventure, and it is entitled The League of Explorers. The adventure is the third for Hearthstone, with the first two being Curse of Naxxramas and Blackrock Mountain.
According to Blizzard, the expansion will add 45 new cards to the game, with the single-player adventure containing four wings as opposed to the usual five.
The League of Explorers features four Warcraft heroes, with the leader being Brann Bronzebeard, who founded the league. The dwarf is joined by the human Reno Jackson, the night elf Elise Starseeker and the murloc Sir Finley Murgleton.
The quest of the league is to hunt down the artifact known as the Staff of Origination. The three parts of the staff will be obtained by the player in the locations of the first three wings of the adventure, namely the Temple of Orsis, Uldaman and Stranglethorn Jungle. The fourth wing will be at the Hall of Explorers in Ironforge, the dwarven capitol, as the staff was stolen by an archaeologist known as Rafaam.
The League of Explorers will introduce a new mechanic named Discovery. Whenever a card with the keyword is played, players will be given three random cards to choose from to put in their hand, similar to the Hunter's Tracking card. The choices will depend on the Discovery card being played, with the choices limited to the player's class. For example, Dark Peddler is a 2/2 minion for 2 mana with a Battlecry ability that will allow the player to Discover a 1-cost card, that is to choose from three random 1-cost cards.
Revealed cards from the expansion include Brann Bronzebeard as a 3-mana, 2/4 minion that causes Battlecries to trigger twice and Sir Finley Murgleton as a 1-mana, 1/3 Murloc minion with a Battlecry ability to Discover a new basic hero power for the player. Reno Jackson is a 6-mana 4/6 minion with a Battlecry that restores the player to full health if the player's deck contains no more than one copy of any card.
The card of Elise Starseeker is a gimmicky but potentially very powerful one. She is a 4-mana, 3/5 minion with a Battlecry ability that shuffles the Map to the Golden Monkey card into the player's deck. The Map to the Golden Monkey card is a 2-mana spell that shuffles the Golden Monkey into the player's deck, and then allows the player to draw a card. The Golden Monkey, finally, is a 4-mana, 6/6 minion with Taunt with a powerful Battlecry ability that replaces the player's hand and deck with Legendary minions.
The new adventure will also be featuring two new game boards, namely the Excavation board featuring the ancient stone halls of Uldaman and the Hall of Explorers board.
The first wing of The League of Explorers will be launching on Nov. 12. All four wings can be purchased for $19.99, with individual wings able to be purchased for $6.99 or 700 gold each.
