Hearthstone: Road to Sunken City, new Scan and Colossal abilities announced

snowstorm a few days ago he included us in a quick test of the next set of cards. hearthstone, The Road to the Sunken CityIt will be officially released in the client of the popular card game on April 12.

This is a very important set because it will also mark the beginning of the game.year of hydra, thus allowing us to say definitively goodbye to the year of Griffin, which is actually now almost over. The change of holidays will bring a significant rotation in the format to include only Forged in the Savannahs, United at Stormwind in Standard mode, while Ashes of Outland decks will become the Scholomance and Madness Academy Wilds at Darkmoon Faire. , divided into the Alterac Valley, and clearly the Sunken City Route and Main embankment were only revisited for the year Hydra.

Going into the details of the Sunken City set’s new Route, the quiz allowed us to tap into all 135 cards that will make up the add-on, giving us the opportunity to better explore the workings of the 2 new skills Scan. and discovering some extra details about the Naga, the new minion type that has become part of the Colossus and Hearthstone meta, and all that follows in terms of alchemy and combinations with available cards.

scanning

scanning and new mechanic Thus, the Underwater City Route officially enters the Hearthstone abilities around which you will build and interact with your own decks. Those of you who are minimally familiar with Magic The Gathering may find a direct link to the Prophecy skill, which Scan is clearly inspired by, but suggests an interesting reversal of dynamics.

Where Scrying in Magic practically allows to split and discard a certain number of cards from the top of the bookcase, putting others under it, Scanning works in the opposite way, allowing the player to take three cards from the bottom. to put one on their deck and then on top. So both abilities guide the game strategy, allowing you to act on the next draw, but with one key difference: Scan allows for additional interaction, because through other special abilities you first send certain cards to the bottom of the deck and then, with Scan, place them on top.

To give a concrete example, each class has a specific creature, and once killed with the Death Rattle, the mana cost is very similar in terms of attack and defense, but generally allows you to spawn another attacker and send it directly to the bottom of the deck. a very powerful skill. Also, spells that can create copies of themselves at the bottom of the deck immediately after being collected, along with everything necessary for speeding up combos and attacks.

Exactly as with Prophecy, we’re convinced Scanning can revolutionize massively. My love By significantly changing the pace of matches with some very fast and aggressive decks from Hearthstone.

giant

The other mechanic introduced in The Road to the Sunken City, giantit is seemingly simpler and more linear in its results, but equally capable of expressing an unimaginable potential as soon as players work on some seemingly unrelated interaction.

L’Skills It is currently tied to only a few very powerful creatures, one in each class, accompanied by a number denoting the amount of extensions summoned with that monster. To put it bluntly, the 6/5 cost 7 Tartacqua belonging to the druid deck has Colossus +1, which means he enters the field with only one add-on: the Tartacqua shell; The 3/6 Abyss Xhilag belonging to the Demon Slayer deck has Colossus +4 instead and lands with 4 Bulb of Xhilag in reserve.

The peculiarity of this dynamic is not only about the physical occupation of the battlefield, which will obviously be affected by these events. gigantic creatures Certain interactions between the main card and its attachments, however, that lay more coins on their side, often force the opponent to think long enough about what to attack and kill first to try to limit the damage. Retrieving the 2 cards just mentioned, Tartacqua is immune as long as his Shell is in play, but the latter grants the hero 8 armor when his Death Rattle is activated. Instead, Xhilag increases the damage of his Bulbs by 1 per turn, but at the same time, each Bulb deals 1 random damage to an enemy at the end of each turn.

The choice of how to act is therefore always very complex and requires clarity and great timing: it is better to remove the extensions first, at the risk of leaving room for the strongest card, or it makes more sense to intervene immediately. main connotation, but leaving the field open to extra elements that can destroy our defenses too quickly?

Nagas

Long after something similar happened, Road to the Sunken City introduces a new type of maid: naga. This time, it is a tribal type that has changed dramatically. hearthstone metato bring alchemy as a dowry and interactions with the entire set and indirectly with other expansions and especially the main deck.

Naga doesn’t really represent a purely aesthetic addition, but Standard mode also offers new and interesting opportunities in a series of dynamic functions built around summoning creatures and casting magic. In fact, compared to other races, this tribe focuses on strengthening summons in synergy with hand-held cards, healing both spells used on the battlefield, for example, additional damage in multiple copies when obtained, or can be dissolved. naga, both by causing any creature that enters the battlefield to be empowered when the spell is cast at that time.

Also in this case, therefore, Blizzard’s goal seems to be an overall summon speedup with an exponential increase in enchantments obtainable during a single turn, and the naga’s such predisposition to summons overwhelms them. Particularly efficient with scanning and with all these dynamics for moving cards through the deck and for multiple draws in one turn.