A free card expansion is available to Hearthstone players right now
Hearthstone is bringing back one of its most iconic card expansions and making it available to all players for free, which is either very generous or incredibly cynical, depending on your perspective. Starting today, cards from the Knights of the Frozen Throne set can be played in Standard until December 6, when they will once again be restricted to the Wild format.
The inclusion of Death Knight mythology in the form of an undead “hero card” for each class makes the return of Knights of the Frozen Throne a fun teaser from a thematic perspective. The Lich King, played for the first time by Arthas Menethil, was also introduced with this expansion, joining the ranks of the legendary minions. Today it was also revealed that the upcoming March of the Lich King expansion would introduce the Death Knight playable class, with Arthas serving as the initial hero. This makes perfect sense as a tie-in, especially considering how well-received Knights of the Frozen Throne was.
Knights of the Frozen Throne was initially released in August 2017 and included 135 cards, many of which have already been nerfed. As is customary once a card has spent some time in Wild, the alterations have been largely undone. The previous record for the most Wild Cards reintroduced into Standard by Blizzard for a promotion was October 2019’s Doom in the Tomb event, which saw 23 cards return (and also resulted in a diabolically unbalanced meta, but let’s not focus on that right now).
Adding such a significant amount of used material to the standard growth pattern is sure to cause some major disruptions. I think we’re likely to find surprises in terms of potential synergies with our current collections, despite the fact that power creep means cards like Frost Lich Jaina are unlikely to be as strong as they previously were in Knights of the Frozen Throne. These are 20 of the most interesting cards from Knights of the Frozen, along with some speculation about their current relevance.
