New Mechanics Overview of Hearthstone's Newest Expansion - United in Stormwind

United in Stormwind, Hearthstone's next expansion, has just been announced just a few days ago! Even though we still don't have the full picture, Team 5 revealed, as usual, a handful of cards to keep us at bay in order to rise the hype and showcase the new mechanics we'll be playing with starting on August 3rd! In the following article, we'll express our ideas about said mechanics, discussing the new cards and the implications for the future of the game.

To be thorough, here are all the game mechanics we'll find in United in Stormwind:

• New Keyword: Tradeable - Play the card like normal or swap it with a random one from your deck by paying 1 mana.
• Questlines - Legendary Quest spells with three parts!
  • After completing a quest, you'll automatically get the next part alongside a small reward.
  • The third and final quest awards you with a legendary Mercenary with a powerful effect.
• Mounts - Buff spells that summon a minion with the same stats and effect as the buff itself when the buffed minion dies.
• Profession Tools - 0-Attack Weapons with special effects.

New Keyword: Tradeable

Let's start with the most awaited mechanic: the expansion's exclusive keyword. This time around we received Tradeable, a keyword that perfectly fits into the Stormwind's merchants fantasy and brings to the table another layer of interactions between hand and deck. For those who are yet to understand how they work, Tradeable cards can be dragged onto your deck and swapped with another card of yours for the cost of just 1 mana.

The first implication of the Tradeable keyword is that it gives some form of card draw to classes like Priest, Shaman and Paladin who aren't really proficient at cycling through their decks. Sure, we're not talking about Skull of Gul'dan or Cram Session levels of cycle, but Team 5 kept their promise and printed card draw in the form of a very interesting keyword.

Second, some cards like Fire Sale or Rustrot Viper may be vital in certain matchups, but may be a liability in others. Tradeable prevents you from being stuck with a useless card in your hand whenever you don't really need it, which is very helpful in the long run. Be careful, since you might need that card some time in the immediate future, so planning ahead will be rewarded.

Consider a tech tool like Rustrot Viper, which may be an instant keep against Poison Rogue or Doomhammer Shaman (or other classes that will take advantage of the new Profession Tools, but we'll talk about them in a minute), but may become totally useless in other matchups (unless pilaying a Spider Tank on curve would be relevant per se): being able to send it back in your deck for a fresh new card will prevent certain stuff to rot in your hand for the rest of the game.

Many players of the Hearthstone professional scene expressed their favor for Tradeable, a keyword that requires thinking and planning ahead rather than lucking out the perfect answer you need (Discover, we're looking at you) and hope we'll see more of it in the future as well. One swallow doesn’t make a summer, but this is a pretty damn good starting point for United in Stormwind!

Quest(line)s are back!

This is the third time in Hearthstone's history that Team 5 has blessed us with a set of Quests for each class:

• It all started with Journey to Un'Goro in April 2017, when we received slow-to-complete Quests but with powerful rewards. Examples:
  • Awaken the Makers' Amara, Warden of Hope
  • Open the Waygate's Time Warp
• The second round of Quests came in August 2019's Saviors of Uldum, with easier tasks to complete and more midrange-y rewards (that didn't need to be played!).Examples include:
  • Bazaar Burglary's Ancient Blades
  • Supreme Archaeology's Tome of Origination.

United in Stormwind's Quests will work a little different from the original ones. Each Quest consists in 3 distinct steps, with their own conditions to meet and a different reward. This extra complication with these quests provides us with a much larger payoff in the end.

One problem with the old Quests is that, by always starting in your hand, they would always take up a slot (quite crucial, especially against Quest-less Aggro decks) as well as (most of the times) your turn 1 play. While this problem was partially solved in Saviors of Uldum with Questing Explorer (as well as other reward cards like Licensed Adventurer and Sky Gen'ral Kragg), we can notice that with this round of Questlines Team 5 tried to compensate that weakness by creating mid-quest rewards.

Not only do these rewards will make you feel better while trying to get your Arcanist Dawngrasp or your Blightborn Tamsin - being killed right before completing your Quest without getting to the reward is one of the most demoralizing feelings the game could give you - but they also try to compensate that card disadvantage. For example, Sorcerer's Gambit is a card draw effect delayed by a couple turns, and we can say the same for Stall for Time. On the other hand, The Demon Seed and Establish the Link's rewards do not contribute to your hand size, but mainly because Warlock already has Life Tap and you want to tap as much as possible towards the Questline's completion.

Mounts

Let's be honest: if you've been playing the game for a couple years, the first thing that came through your mind when you saw Elekk Mount was Journey to Un'Goro's Spikeridged Steed. Mounts are all buff spells which, of course, grant an immediate upside and, upon the buffed minion's death, summon a minion with the same stats and effect as the buff itself. For example, Elekk Mount is literally Steed for Priest, while Ramming Mount is another interesting take on Hunter's relationship with the Immune keyword, as we could see in the past with Ace Hunter Kreen, but also Bestial Wrath (quite similar to Ramming Mount) and Gladiator's Longbow: very comparable to Devouring Ectoplasm, with the obvious exception that you need to cast it on a minion (not just a Beast!).

We can definitely expect to see other mounts bringing traits of the classes they belong to: for example, we could see a Lifesteal unit for Warlock (especially since The Demon Seed involves a lot of self-harm behavior), or a Rush one for Demon Hunter. It will definitely be interesting to see how Team 5 will generate interesting buff spells for different classes without the risk of making them feel all the same, and the same reasoning goes for the next mechanic.

Profession Tools

It's been almost 4 years since the last time Team 5 printed a weapon for every class (the Legendary Weapons from Kobolds and Catacombs, featuring Twig of the World Tree, Aluneth and Kingsbane), and now we're back at it. While we have no guarantee that each of these "Profession Tools" will be a non-Legendary weapon (to be honest, there's a high chance that at least one will be), it's interesting to see Team 5 bringing back weapons for everyone. Let's just hope they'll be less problematic than the last round.

You can look at them as passive weapons, just like Kobolds & Catacombs' Dragon Soul and Skull of the Man'ari or Scholomance Academy's Sphere of Sapience, with the main difference being that (at least when compared to the K&C ones) every time the effect is triggered it consumes a charge.

Prismatic Jewel Kit is another attempt at making Divine Shield Paladin work, maybe with a Handbuff component this time: Righteous Protector, Goody Two-Shields, Cariel Roame and occasionally Argent Protector already see play (or at least they saw play before Paladin got shafted in the last round of nerfs), so there's an already solid foundation to build on. Runed Mithril Rod has blatant synergy with most Warlock cards, mainly Backfire and Soul Fragments (although there hasn't been confirmation yet, Soul Fragments counted towards Supreme Archaeology's completion, so it should work the same way for this weapon): if you're gonna get close to kill yourself for the sake of playing Blightborn Tamsin, then you should give your cards some of that Emperor Thaurissan love.

Although both Prismatic Jewel Kit and Runed Mithril Rod have hand-related effects, Hearthstone Developer Liv Breeden stated that not every Weapon will be hand-based, but we will see some board effects, as well as other things!

Quote From Liv Breeden

We wanted to get the fantasy of what it was like to do the professions without having to do something like shuffle in crafting materials to your deck or something like that. They're not all hand-based;there's one that's board-based, there's one that's cost-based, and there are other things out there as well.

Bonus: School Spells

Together with the release of Forged in the Barrens, new and existing spells were divided into Schools, which are what tribes are for minions.

This implementation added a whole new level of deckbuilding: some classes received specific tools that reward you for carrying a certain Spell School or just that one. Obvious examples of what we're talking about are Cariel, Tamsin Roame, Primal Dungeoneer and Frostweave Dungeoneer.

United in Stormwind seems to continue this trend, suggesting us a new way of building around certain Schools. While running just one type of spell certainly has its own downsides (a class' good spells usually belong to more than a single School, so you'll almost always be forced to leave out some strong cards while building your deck), just like it will happen with Archbishop Benedictus and Shadow spells*, Team 5 printed a very interesting tool in Pandaren Importer.

What makes this unit so interesting in School Spells specific lists is that it will usually Discover some of the powerful tools you were forced to cut. In a normal list, you'll always include the good cards, so you'll be less likely to want the ones you didn't want to begin with (you'd rather have a second copy of the good ones from Venomous Scorpid, for example), but the same reasoning doesn't go for decks like Nature Shaman or Shadow Priest. Too much Discover and resource generation are definitely bad for the game, but if implemented with the right precaution they will benefit more than they'll harm. We are very confident about this.

*The reveal season is yet to start, and Priest is very likely to receive Shadow support in its set (at least another couple of cards), but it's undeniable that most of the best spells at Anduin's current disposal are Holy: just think about Renew, Holy Smite, Apotheosis and Condemn (Rank 1). Priest will be able to SMOrc again, but with a price to pay!

What are your early impressions of United in Stormwind? What cards did you like the most? Let us know in the comments below!