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Ben Stoll

Hey World of Warcraft TCG community! This is Ben Stoll here to give you a look into the upcoming new set, Aftermath: Crown of the Heavens. For those of you who don’t know me, I am one of the designers for the WoW TCG and Crown of the Heavens is my first effort as a set Lead Designer (and I’m as giddy as a school girl about it)!

Let’s take a look at some of the new and awesome stuff you’ll find in Crown of the Heavens.

One of the things that excites me about Crown of the Heavens is that all of you Monster lovers out there will have access to four new Monster heroes (Warlock, Druid, Shaman, and a surprise!) and twice as many Monster allies. And though the cards I’ll be showing you today should speak for themselves, let me be clear: Monster decks are getting a lot of love from this set. You’ll get to see even more Monster allies as well as the aforementioned heroes in the Monster preview on January 17^th! Monsters also get a heaping helping of the brand new themes and abilities that Crown of the Heavens will be bringing to you.

One of these new abilities is a keyword called Harmonize. If a card you control has Harmonize, you pay one fewer resource to play allies with a cost of four or greater. And it stacks! If you manage to get four cards on the board with Harmonize, you can drop a four cost ally onto the board for free.

From my personal experience, if you build a deck that is designed to be as harmonious as possible, you’re gonna have some pretty over-the-top turns. It’s possible to play a LOT of big allies all at once when you have a few allies with Harmonize in play.

Dryads and Keepers of the Grove, the children of Cenarius, will be found throughout the set and frequently come with the Harmonize keyword. There are a couple of Horde and Alliance allies with the keyword as well (Shamans and Druids are pretty in touch with nature too, in case you didn’t know!).

Since I just showed you Remulos, I might as well show you his papa too:

Yes, I know ten cards is borderline ridiculous. I remember the first time someone in R&D played Cenarius. The first thought that went through my mind was “we need a bigger table” and the second thought thought that went through my mind was “how the heck am I supposed to beat through the 31 total cost worth of allies that Patrick just flipped into play?!” Uh…yeah.

Sometimes it’s fun just to play huge allies and crash them into stuff. Ogres do just that, and set 17 is chock full of the big brutes. Let’s take a look:

I’m not sure I need to say anything. This guy sort of speaks for himself, huh? My design goal with this card was not complicated: make an ally that is preposterously huge. One of the most fun parts about designing a set is nagging your lead developer until he finally agrees to making a six cost 10/10! Here’s another Ogre for you:

Noticing a theme? Ogres are big! They also like to smash stuff, which leads me to my next piece of good news: there is a TON of the keyword Smash in this set! When a hero or ally with Smash would deal more than fatal combat damage to a defending ally, it deals the rest of that damage to that ally’s controller’s hero. In other words, any extra damage you had when attacking a smaller ally spills over to their hero. We were so excited about Smash in R&D that we actually snuck it onto a single card in Throne of the Tides (incidentally, if you didn’t know, that card is a giant Ogre that gives all your other Ogres more ATK and Smash! Happy Day!), but in Crown of the Heavens the keyword is represented in full force. It’s on a bunch of Ogres, but in other places as well…

So we’ve got harmonizing forest dwellers, gigantic ogres, and now I’m going to give you a taste of the third featured race in Crown of the Heavens: Demons!

As you may have known (it’s practically common knowledge), Demons are rather mean-spirited. That’s why they like it when your opponent is all beat up! In order to get the opponent to 15 damage as fast as possible, you’ll find a few Demons in the set with very aggressive ATK values, and you’ll even find a few who force your opponent to choose between some horrible consequence or taking a boat load of direct shadow damage when they enter play. In fact, let me show you a quest from the new set that’s perfect for a Demon deck:

Now, I know there are at least a few of you out there who have been reading about all the new Monsters and are thinking something like “Are there gonna be any new Murlocs?! Are there gonna be any new Murlocs?! Are there gonna be any new Murlocs?!”

Yes, there will be all sorts of fun new Murlocs for you. In fact, I’m going to show you one of my absolute favorite cards from the set. He’s ridiculously awesome, incredibly powerful, and he’s a freaking MURLOC KING. He’s KING BAGURGLE!!!

Let’s just say he might be worth putting in your Murloc deck.

But enough about Monsters, aren’t the Horde and Alliance getting any love in this set!?

Yes, yes they are! Sadly I’m only allowed to show you one from each faction, but they're good ones:

Hmm…draw a bunch of cards, and pound you in the face for four every turn? Yes, please! The (Witch) Doctor is in!

I do not recommend anything but good sportsmanship, but Malfurion can be a lot of fun if you like the occasional trash talk. Just feign surprise (acting genuinely surprised is the key!) and say something like “Oh WOW, you’re only drawing one card and placing one resource a turn? I can’t even imagine how horrible that must be. You’ll probably be okay though, my guy only has 8 health; he’s not that hard to bring down.”

For bonus fun I recommend using Harmonize to put Malfurion into play even sooner.

The set wouldn’t be complete if we hadn’t found an awesome way to expand on the Empower keyword from Throne of the Tides: now you have access to double the payoff potential!

Tokens anyone? Just like the first round of Empower cards, you only need to have one class to get a sweet reward, but in case you’re skillful enough to have both classes, you’ll get both rewards. This is just one of many new cards that will reward you for having either of two different classes, and double the reward you for having both! You’ll notice that all of these abilities are technically generic, so there are a ton of different decks you can build around them.

Finally, Crown of the Heavens is the translation of the name Nordrassil, which is the World Tree that stands on the summit of Mount Hyjal, where most of this set takes place. So it only seems fitting that I close out this preview article by showing you the World Tree itself:

I love this card. If I don’t have anything better to do on turn 1, or I just have an extra resource to spend, I’ll start charging up the ol’ tree. Whether I need a little extra healing or I’m trying to develop my board faster, Nordrassil has me covered!

Hopefully that was enough to whet your appetite for today! There is a ton of new stuff to explore in Crown of the Heavens, and I hope you all will have as much fun playing with the cards as we did making them. Thanks for checking out the new set. Making the game as fun as we can for you guys is what makes this job so rewarding!

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