Hearthstone‘s next expansion, Voyage to the Sunken City, is coming on April 12 in NA and April 13 in ANZ, and has a colourful nautical theme based around the ancient city of Zin-Azshari, which (according to World of Warcraft lore) was sent to the bottom of the ocean in the cataclysm. (More details in our annoucement article from yesterday.) Across the set’s 135 cards you’ll find vengeful Naga, sunken treasure, pirates, sea monsters and more. Today, we’re going to showcase two of those elements, with Nellie, the Great Thresher, a brand new legendary for Warrior.
Blistering barnacles!
As you can see, Nellie is one of the new Colossal creatures, which means that it’s too big to fit on one card. It’s a Colossal +1, so summons one additional appendage when it hits the board – in this case, Nellie’s Pirate Ship. A 5/5 and a 2/6 taunt for seven mana is nothing to sniff at, but what makes Nellie so powerful is its battlecry, which gives you three separate Discovers (choose one card out of three) of pirate minions, which are then added as a deathrattle reward to Nellie’s Pirate Ship. When Nellie’s Pirate Ship is destroyed, they’re then added to your hand, and cost one mana each. So if you’re able to find a Mr Smite or two, Nellie’s Pirate Ship can represent quite a lot of very cheap damage from hand.
We don’t really know what the Standard Hearthstone landscape will be like after rotation (which happens when Voyage to the Sunken City is released, and sees Ashes of Outland, Scholomance Academy and Madness at the Darkmoon Faire leave the format), particularly since we don’t yet know what the new core set will contain (this is the foundational card pool and is free to use for all players), but it’s clear that this card has a tonne of potential to see play, and the other Colossal cards that have been revealed so far look extremely promising too.
Elsewhere in the set, there’s another new mechanic – Dredge – which lets players look at the bottom three cards of their deck, and choose one to bring to the top, and a brand new minion type – Naga. Sure, there are a number of Naga cards already in Hearthstone, but they’re now a tribe like mechs or beasts, with their own spell-focused synergies. You can see all the cards that were revealed with the set’s initial announcement in the slideshow below, and as more are revealed, be sure to check Hearthstone’s official card collection page to see all the latest.
Cam Shea has worked at IGN since before the before times, and has covered Hearthstone since it was gleam in Ben Brode’s eye. When he’s not playing games he’s mixing records.