The last Hearthstone expansion to be released in the Year of the Raven cycle will be Rastakhan’s Rumble. The theme is trolls battling in an arena, similar to the arena theme we saw with The Grand Tournament. However, this is more of a free-for-all, anything-goes kind of arena.
The new keyword to be introduced in this set is Overkill. Overkill will trigger when the card with the text is used to deal more damage than a minion’s remaining health.
The example in the announcement video was a weapon for Warrior called Sul’thraze. Sul’thraze is a 4-attack, 4-durability weapon for six mana with the Overkill text: “You may attack again”. This means if you hit a minion with less than four health, you will be able to continue attacking until you cannot kill something with less than four health. This is somewhat similar to the old Fool’s Bane card, but it can go face.
Only one other card with Overkill has been revealed to this point, and that is Baited Arrow. It is a five mana spell that does three damage, and on Overkill will summon a 5/5 Devilsaur. At first glance the card feels like a slightly weaker Flanking Strike, but once again, Baited Arrow can go face.
Powerful new cards called Spirits will be added in the new set. They will all have one turn stealth, and have powerful passive effects written in their card text. 
One of the Spirits shown was Spirit of the Shark, a four mana minion with 0/3 stats that makes all of your Battlecries and Combo cards trigger twice. This is an extremely powerful effect but the card is really expensive at four mana for a minion you certainly won’t be playing for the body unless you are combo-ing Cold Blood on it.
The one other Spirit revealed was Spirit of the Bat, a two mana 0/3 that for every friendly minion that dies, a random minion in your hand will gain +1/+1. This could see some play in some sort of off-hand Zoo deck, which sees a lot of minions.
Three legendary cards have been revealed from the set so far, and some of them are Beast cards being called Loa.
Paladin’s Loa is Shirvallah, the Tiger which is a 25-mana 7/5 with Rush, Divine Shield, and Lifesteal. It costs one less mana for each mana spent on spells so this guy could come out on the board for very cheap with a handful of spells used.
The cards revealed for Paladin encourage a spell buff style Paladin, especially when paired with the new Paladin card Immortal Prelate. Prelate is a two mana 1/3 with the Deathrattle that it gets shuffled back into the deck and retains all enchantments on the card.
Warlock’s Loa is tied to its Spirit, which is a potential spoiler for all of the other classes. For every Loa card, there may be a Spirit card to match. Hir’eek, the Bat is the name of Warlock’s Loa, and he is an eight mana 1/1 Beast with the Battlecry to fill the board with copies of him. This card encourages hand buffs and synergizes with the Warlock Spirit card.
The third legendary revealed so far is Mage’s Hex Lord Malacrass. Malacrass is an eight mana minion with 5/5 stats that adds a copy of your opening hand to your current hand, excluding Malacrass himself. It’s an interesting mechanic and is great for gameplay, as it really emphasizes the Mulligan phase of the game, which is already so important.
A lot of the new cards are really interesting, and a few of them seem like flat out good cards. It will be exciting to see the rest of the set as it slowly gets revealed, and it’s sure to freshen up the meta as the current one grows stale. For the full list of revealed cards, go to Blizzard’s Hearthstone website.
Images courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment via their official website.
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