On April 12th, Hearthstone's Voyage to the Sunken City expansion arrived with 135 new collectable cards. It brought some new minion types and keywords that left me quaking in my boots at all of the deck possibilities I could now make. For example, Naga minions were now a thing and were predominantly spell-focused minions. This is perfect for Mages, and I just so happen to main Mage.
Colossal minions are now a thing, and boy are they scary. They come with extra appendages when you summon them, so even if it’s just one card, it will always come with more than one minion. Good luck out there. They've made for some difficult trials for me.
Hearthstone also added Dredge, which is another new keyword players had to look out for. Dredge allows you to look at the bottom three cards of your deck and pick one to come to the top. These can be combined with the new Azsharan cards and Dredge cards to send a powerful beast to lurk at the bottom of the deck, so you can pull out something truly nasty and ruin it all for your opponent!
The Meta
So far, in my experiences with Voyage to the Sunken City, the classes and decks you can build are very damage-heavy. For those that love their beloved pirate decks (looking at you warriors), this is perfect for you. I really enjoy the new additions of Colossal minions, as it makes you have to think a bit more about what’s currently on the deck, and whether it will work with what you have. I personally think they work really well in Paladin decks, as you can buff colossal minions a lot and get a lot of free damage in by using whatever additional minions come with the initial card.
I also love the card art. A lot of love and care has been put into the sea world designs, and I really treasure that. I didn’t get the same feeling from the last expansion and felt it was very rushed, whilst I don’t get the same impression with Voyage To The Sunken City. It feels like it took time and effort to make and build given the amount of new content added.
Admittedly, it is still taking me a long time to figure it all out. I’m not the best at using Dredge cards to the best of my ability, even though I know they can be very powerful. I have had them used against me many times, costing me the game. Mage, Paladin, and Hunter are still the classes that are carrying me through this with their quests from previous expansions. Spells are among my favourite cards to use, so I was really happy to see that there were plenty of new spells added, especially for Hunter and Mage.
I had the pleasure of getting the pre-order pack for Voyage To The Sunken City, and there is nothing more exciting than having over 85 packs of cards to open. Truthfully, it does get a little bit tedious watching the animation of the pack opening over and over again, but it was still great getting to reveal each of those cards and hoping to hear Magni’s voice yelling at me that I got a Legendary. Is there really anything better? Whilst I did have the pre-order and opened plenty of cards, I did get a lot of duplicates. This is always mildly disappointing. Of course, there are always going to be duplicates, but I was a long way from collecting all 135 cards, even from my huge 85-pack haul. It made me wonder how long would it take to get all of the cards, and how much money I would have to feasibly spend to unlock them all.
Options, Options, Options…
Boy, are there options. For me, it seemed like the class that had the most variety was Paladin followed by Warrior. They were fun to play, too - every time I played as a Paladin against a Warrior, it was always a close match-up.
So far, I have mostly experimented with spell-only decks for Mage and Hunter in ranked, but there are so many fun decks you can do if you, like me, enjoy creating weird and wacky decks for a bit of fun. Want a Murloc/Pirate deck? This is a perfect time. Save up those coins, and get buying those packs.
All in all, it’s a stunning expansion. The art style is divine, and I love the new minions. Players are experimenting a bit more, and I’m realising that I should too. It’s time for me to Voyage To The Sunken City and wade into the deep end. Who knows what I’ll find? Maybe I'll even get to a higher rank than Silver!