New Hearthstone TITANS expansion: Legendary Titans, Forge keyword, and cards galore!

Blizzard just announced Hearthstone TITANS as the game’s newest expansion! The Gods of Warcraft are arriving to bring players 145 new cards, 11 legendary Titans, and the Forge keyword. We interviewed lead designer Cora Georgiou and visual effects artist Luke Mason about Hearthstone TITANS cards, the Forge keyword, and more!

There are 11 legendary Titans in the new Hearthstone expansion, which means one for each class. Each Titan has a passive ability and three more abilities that represent its class. On each turn, a player can use one of their Titan’s abilities. Once all three abilities are used, the Titan can attack like a normal minion. 

An example of a legendary Titan in Hearthstone is Norgannon for Mage players. This Titan's abilities include Progenitor's Power, Ancient Knowledge, and Unlimited Potential.

In addition to Norgannon, other Titans include Eonar, the Life-Binder for Druid, and Khaz'goroth for Warrior. Georgiou revealed that her favorite Titan is the Shaman one that can offer a nature-focused deck. There's a Titan that's exclusive to Hearthstone as well.

"I will say her name is Amitus, and she is an original Titan specific to Hearthstone," Georgiou said. "You'll get to know a little bit more about her. She's pretty cool. I'll say she's a peacekeeper. It's a bit of a niche that I thought the Titans didn't have already in the order."

When players use Titans, there are special visual effects that are worthy of these godly beings. These are in the form of the three abilities. Mason shared details about Norgannon's visual effects with esports.gg.

"This is a Titan that controls all of the different magic types," Mason said. "For it being the Mage class in addition to the normal Arcane, you can see hints of green with Fel yellow — all of the different magic types all coming together in this rainbow spectrum of runes."

As the new keyword in the Hearthstone TITANS expansion, Forge can be upgraded while in a player's hand. This upgrade costs two mana and requires one to drag the card over their deck. The card then returns to the player's hand with an upgrade. Examples of cards with the Forge keyword include Embrace of Nature and Cyclopian Crusher.

"When players drag their cards over the deck, they see the head of an anvil with these runic etchings similar to a star map," Mason said. "Once they release their card over the deck, down comes this large Titan-tastic hammer emanating this celestial heat and energy onto it and imprinting your now forged card [and] returning it back to your hand."

The Prison of Yogg-Saron is a free and pre-release card, according to Mason. It's a Location that lets the player select a character and cast four random spells. Mason also described his process of creating the visual effects for this, accounting for how "heavy" Location tokens should feel compared to minions.

"When it comes to VFX, we often think about things like the mana cost [and] this sort of size of this character," he explained, noting how this informs the animations. "In the case of the free pre-release card, Prison of Yogg-Saron, this is our first time doing a legendary Location."

When asked about the similarities between Locations and Titans on the board, Georgiou revealed that she didn't expect the team to revisit this direction so soon. However, Titans do offer something unique to players because there is no overlap between any of the abilities across them.

"The Titans are minions, they can be killed," Georgiou added, noting how Titans are not a guarantee. This brings more excitement to the board. "So you need to really plan out ahead of time. 'This is the ability I want to use, this is how I want to use it, this is how I'm going to try to protect my Titan so that I can try to get the most use out of it.'"

Other cards in the upcoming Hearthstone TITANS expansion include ones such as Hodir, Father of Giants, Inquisitive Creation, Noble Minibot, Tyr, SP-3Y3-D3R, Son of Hodir, and Fate Splitter. Additionally, the Magnetic keyword's return also comes with an update. Cards with Magnetic no longer require a space on the player's board to magnetize to other minions.

"I personally love being able to magnetize onto a full board in Battlegrounds," Georgiou said. "It feels so, so good. In Standard, I think it's not as important. You certainly will run into instances where you'll do it and you'll feel great about it, but I wouldn't anticipate that that would change too much in Standard."

That's all for now. Stay tuned on esports.gg for more news and updates!