The release of Hearthstone's newest expansion, Madness at the Darkmoon Faire, is under a week away, and the Theorycrafting Event hosted earlier today made one thing very clear: the Old Gods are back, and they haven't gotten much weaker in their time away from the game. Hearthstone has been through many set releases in its time, but some of the most memorable are those that have delivered cards steeped in the game's larger Warcraft lore - Old Gods like Yogg-Saron and C'Thun, or the Death Knight heroes that dominated the game's Standard meta back in Knights of the Frozen Throne.
After giving the game time to breathe and produce cards that either tie into more current Warcraft on-goings - Illidan's arrival as the Demon Hunter class loosely coincided with him being thrust back into the spotlight prior, even if it was some time after - the game is returning to its roots with Madness at the Darkmoon Faire. Not only does the expansion embrace RNG in a way that the game has tended to shy away from in recent expansions, it does so in the flashiest way yet, with cards that produce gigantic, board-altering effects after players put a little effort in. While the Old Gods are clearly the big draws to the set, the Corruption mechanic, which upgrades cards after they've seen a higher cost card played by their owner, also offers a new addition that challenges deck-building decisions in a new way.
In our experience, Hearthstone is at its best when the decisions matter, even if they rely on RNG for the best outcome. Corruption tends to play into that philosophy quite nicely, giving players the option of playing a weaker version of the card earlier or holding it to get a payoff later down the road. The mechanic also interacts with classes differently, which is always a nice bonus. Warlocks make Corruption work quite easily in control builds, for instance, as do ramp Druids, but lower-to-the-ground classes like Rogue and Paladin have more non-intuitive decisions to make. Beyond that, however, it's pretty clear who the stars of the show are, and the Madness at the Darkmoon Faire Theorycrafting Event hammered that home with an eldritch nail.
The first game we queued up into the preview session happened to be against one of Hearthstone's friendliest faces in Thijs, a Dutch professional player who has several top finishes and a popular stream on top of those. He welcomed us into the new set in a big way:
Luckily, we also have a photo taken moments before disaster to really capture the fresh-eyed innocence that was destroyed by Yogg-Saron's merciless wheel spin.
Admittedly, not all of Yogg-Saron's abilities are quite as swingy as "sit here until one of us loses the game," but they're all exceptionally powerful. The cost of playing Yogg-Saron is having to cast 10 spells prior to playing him, a cost that's easily achieved by a number of different classes, most obviously Mage, which both players had queued up at the time. It feels like Yogg's asking price might be a little too cheap at the moment, and if Hearthstone games drag out or the meta becomes slower, this kind of swingy card will end up unproductively deciding matches some amount of the time, invalidating all the decisions that were made prior besides "put this card in a player's deck." It's far too early to tell, but it's a card to keep an eye on, and is much more reminiscent of the old Yogg-Saron - also famed for deciding matches on its own - than perhaps players thought it might be heading into the expansion.
Also, yes, Yogg-Saron really didn't want to co-operate during this preview session. That Pyroblast is heading exactly the wrong direction.
The other card players will want to pay attention to early is the new C'Thun, C'Thun the Shattered. Another Old God with a reputation for being powerful, the most recent iteration of C'Thun actually introduces a fun concept to the game. C'Thun begins each game by splitting into four different pieces, and after playing all four, players then add a C'Thun the Shattered proper into their deck. It's another example of the extra hoops Hearthstone is asking its players to jump through to access some of the most powerful mechanics in the set, and it's a much more fun requirement to meet than Yogg-Saron's, though no less powerful in practice.
While early days mean decklists will certainly be refined, there were plenty of ways already to reliably assemble C'Thun and keep an opponent at low enough health that his 30 random damage would end the game. Druid was excellent at ramping to important spells and finding card draw to get through the deck quicker and assemble C'Thun, while Rogue has cards that find other ones that didn't start in a player's deck - a category which the pieces of the Old God nicely fall under.
It's a pretty reliable way to end a game of Hearthstone and it wouldn't be surprising to see Yogg-Saron and C'Thun be met with some nerfs further down the line if there aren't enough aggressive strategies being employed by players to keep them in check. C'Thun, though, feels like the type of card that's worth giving a chance to, as it adds an interesting mechanic to the game that it lacked before.
The Corruption mechanic in Madness at the Darkmoon Faire is much more nuanced than building around an Old God, so it was tougher to get a feel for, but early returns were promising. It feels like a balanced mechanic that adds meaningful decisions to every stage of the game, which, especially in a set like Madness at the Darkmoon Faire, helps level out some of the swings that its show-stopper cards bring to each match. Other concepts that stood out were the Druid Eclipse cards, which felt fun to work around and could push some Wild strategies in interesting directions, too.
Overall, though, even in a limited playthrough session, one thing is abundantly clear: Hearthstone isn't playing it safe with Madness at the Darkmoon Faire. There are some very powerful things at work in this expansion, and a lot of cards that teeter on the verge of being broken. If they end up that way, though, the digital nature of Hearthstone means they can be fixed quickly, and if they're balanced enough, they're already adding some fun elements to a Standard format that sorely needed some fresh spins on gameplay - including the ones that Yogg-Saron's wheel takes, even if they're perhaps a little less kind to some than others.
Hearthstone Madness at the Darkmoon Faire releases worldwide on November 17, 2020. Screen Rant was provided with a Battle.net login for the purpose of this preview.
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