Following the announcement of Murder at Castle Nathria as the new Hearthstone expansion of yesterday, Hearthstone Game Designer, Cora "Songbird" Georgiou, decided to hold a quick Twitter Q&A regarding the new set, allowing players to clear potential doubts on the new mechanics and sharing some behind the scenes facts.

Among all the replies she wrote, there's one piece of information that is quite interesting. Cora stated that the new Location Cards, which are being introduced with the Castle Nathria set, are not an expansion-exclusive mechanic: they are a permanent new card type for Hearthstone, which we are going to see again in the future.

Muck Pools Card Image Sanguine Depths Card Image

Quote From Songbird

Do you see Locations as Hearthstone’s way into more non-minion permanents that stay on the board? Are you guys looking to iterate on Locations for future expansions? Is it too soon to ask questions like this?

Nah not too soon to ask! Locations are a permanent part of Hearthstone now, so we'll be using them going forward. We want to be careful not to overuse them, and we started intentionally simple with the designs.

Such a statement is consistent with how Team 5 has always behaved towards new card types introduced after the game came out of beta:

  • Quest cards, introduced in Journey to Un'Goro, made a return in Saviors of Uldum and United in Stormwind.
  • Hero cards, introduced in Knights of the Frozen Throne, were printed in The Witchwood, The Boomsday Project, Rastakhan's Rumble, Descent of Dragons and Fractured in Alterac Valley as well.

As of now, the reveal season of Murder in Castle Nathria has just started, so we are yet to see more Location cards than the two revealed with the expansion announcement on June 27th.

What mechanics do you hope to see implemented in the remaining Locations? Let us know in the comments below!