Hearthstone’s Next Expansion, March Of The Lich King, Finally Adds The Death Knight Class

Hearthstone will be receiving one of its most requested features in its next expansion, the Death Knight class. The Death Knight will be only the second new class introduced to Hearthstone since its inception. The next expansion, titled March of the Lich King, revolves largely around the story of the iconic villain along with new keywords and mechanics built to support the arrival of a new way to play. The new expansion will launch on December 6.

The Death Knight will introduce 68 new class cards, 32 of which will be free Core set cards. His hero power is Ghoul Charge, a 2-Mana power which summons a 1/1 Ghoul with Charge that dies at the end of the turn. Meanwhile he can make use of a new resource, Corpses, which is tallied every time a minion dies. Finally, the Death Knight will use a new deckbuilding tool called Runes, letting you play a deck revolving around Blood, Frost, or Unholy Runes. Those deck types focus on health manipulation, direct spell damage, and swarms of minions, respectively.

The new expansion, March of the Lich King, will introduce a new minion type called Undead. Undead creatures already exist in Hearthstone, but being a minion type will make them easier to identify, and hundreds of older minions will be retroactively given the Undead label. Some will even sport a dual label for the first time. The expansion will also introduce a new keyword, Manathirst, which triggers extra powers if you have enough Mana crystals, but importantly, it doesn’t consume that extra Mana.

All players will get a login reward of the first neutral Legendary spell in the game. The card, which is called The Sunwell, fills your hand with random spells. It’s a pricey 9-Mana, but it costs one less for each card in your hand.

Longtime Hearthstone fans know that this is actually the second time the game has based an expansion around a Death Knight theme, the first being 2017’s Knights of the Frozen Throne. Blizzard remembers that too, apparently, as it’s bringing that expansion back into Standard for a limited time. The Knights of Hallow’s End event brings all of the Frozen Throne cards back into Standard play until March of the Lich King releases, and adds it to the Core set so all players will be able to use it for free. The event will also mark a revamped interface for limited-time events, with its own space in your journal.

Knights of the Frozen Throne was a popular expansion, especially for its Death Knight versions of the nine standard classes. The other post-launch class, Demon Hunter, was added after Frozen Throne, so it doesn’t have a Death Knight version.

You can check out all the revealed cards for the March of the Lich King expansion below. Death Knight cards appear in a dark gray-blue, with light blue accents, to differentiate them from similarly-colored cards like Rogue.