Hearthstone: What’s New in Fractured in Alterac Valley
Published: Dec 7, 2021 - Last Updated: Jul 7, 2023
It is that time again when the meta spices up with a new Hearthstone expansion. There is no better name for the last one in the Alliance VS Horde trilogy, Fractured in Alterac Valley, the famous battleground for these two factions. Like with every expansion, Blizzard introduces some new mechanics, which we are going to explain in detail so you do not get surprised by these new cards during your esports betting adventures.
Honorable Kill
The one mechanic that you will definitely be seeing a lot of is the Honorable Kill keyword. It is represented in 18 cards in the new expansion. If you manage to do lethal damage to a minion with the card that has the keyword, you will get to do a special effect that the card has.
For example, let’s use Axe Berserker, the 4-mana 3/5 minion with Rush and Honorable Kill: Draw a weapon. The ideal situation is to play this minion when your opponent has a minion on board that has no more or less than 3 health. Upon playing Axe Berserker, you can attack that 3-health minion, and gain the Honorable Kill effect to draw the weapon. Axe Berserker does not have to survive.
Best Honorable Kill cards to craft: Siphon Mana, Frostbite
Objective Cards
If you are familiar with the Alterac Valley battleground from World of Warcraft, you probably know where all of these objectives are and how they look from an MMO perspective. However, while these cards do have the names of those locations, mechanically, they got nothing in common with them.
Every class is getting a card with the “Lasts 3 turns” mechanic, which essentially works exactly as you would think it does. The moment you play the card, you activate its effect, and it will repeat in the same fashion every turn.
Keep in mind that not all of the cards work in the same way as one would think. Most of them have the “At the end of your turn…” which activates them at the end of your current, and following 2 turns once played. However, some will activate immediately upon play, which means that they activate at the start of the next 2 of your turns instead.
Some of these cards actually seem very useful, and they can provide a lot of value and open up new strategies in the upcoming months of Hearthstone. However, there are ones that fall flat on their face straight ahead, at least on paper, and we believe that they are never going to be played and that they are just pack-fillers.
Best Objective cards to craft: Iceblood Garrison, Iceblood Tower
Hero Cards
We saved the best for last, and of course, those are the Hero cards. Whenever these are released, they are either absolute garbage, or they are game-defining, and this expansion is not different.
Surprisingly, the pool of bad Hero cards is quite low, and the ones that are good, are extremely good, which is why we got to talk about them in more detail.
The one that probably needs no introduction is Dreadlich Tamsin. If you have been reading about new Hearthstone cards, watched the top lists of your favorite content creators, you have seen how hyped up this card is, and we absolutely agree.
For just 6-mana, you get 5 armor, cast a Fire Sale, Nourish: draw 3, Beneath the Grounds(with a 3/3), and a crazy hero power that shuffles another rift and draws a card. This is an absolutely insane amount of value for just 6-mana, and you will certainly be seeing Dreadlich Tamsin in pretty much every Hearthstone top decks list for warlock out there.
Another card that seems to be getting quite a lot of interest from the community is Lightforged Cariel, and while nowhere close in terms of value as our previous mention, it is still a very good card. For 7-mana, you get 5 armor, cast a Consecration, and you equip a 2-damage weapon that does not lose durability and makes your hero negate half of the damage they would normally receive.
Oh, we forgot to say that your hero power now becomes a give +4/+4 to a minion in your hand. This hero power can do some incredible swings if you happen to get it on Blademaster Samuro, Catacomb Guard, or the new legendary card Saidan the Scarlet.
Best Hero cards to craft: Dreadlich Tamsin, Lightforged Cariel, Shadowcrafter Scabbs
We are really excited to see how the meta changes with these powerful new cards, especially when it comes to Hearthstone esports with the upcoming 2021 World Championship where most of us are probably going to go to get those cream of the crop decks used by the best players in the world.
