New expansion releases very soon (Update: The new set is now live! Enjoy!), so it’s time for another launch guide! If you have any questions about the new set, I hope that you will find your answers below.
Across the Timeways is the third (and final) expansion of Year of the Raptor (2025). At the heart of the expansion is Chromie, the Bronze Dragonflight’s ever-cheerful chronomancer and protector of the Timeways. She made the shocking discovery that Murozond, Lord of the Infinite, is trying to derail all timelines and send them towards oblivion. To stop him, Chromie raced across the timeways (yes, really) to recruit Fabled heroes from the past, future, and alternate realities. With a pre-banshee Sylvanas, a mech-piloting Gelbin, and the rest of her dream team of Warcraft icons assembled, Chromie is ready to rally against chrono crisis.
The expansion will add 145 new cards (with a mini-set adding 38 more at a later date), as well as a variety of new mechanics and synergies. Learn everything you should know about it below!
Cinematic Trailer
Release Time
Let’s start with the most important – when does the new expansion launch? Hearthstone sets have a simultaneous launch across the globe, so Across the Timeways should be out on every server at the same time. However, due to timezone differences (not to mention daylight saving time and such), that “same time” is a different hour around the globe. Here are some example launch times for different time zones:
- 10 AM Pacific Time on Tuesday (November 4)
- 1 PM Eastern Time on Tuesday (November 4)
- 7 PM Central European Time on Tuesday (Novemer 4)
- 2 AM Korean & Japan Standard Time on Wednesday (November 5)
- 3 AM Australian Eastern Time on Wednesday (November 5)
Since the expansion was already pre-loaded in Patch 34.0 last week, you won’t need to download a big update when it launches. This also means that mobile release should happen exactly at the same time as PC. Just make sure to open the game early and download any patches if you haven’t been playing lately.
Freebies
When new expansion launches, players are usually greeted with some free stuff, like packs, free Legendaries etc. Here’s what you can expect from Across the Timeways:
- A big part of the rewards were already given out before the expansion, including a lot of card packs from Twitch drops. But even if you missed them, don’t worry, you won’t be that far behind.
- Pre-Release Brawl is still going on and it will be available until the expansion’s launch. Each player received one free entry, and even the worst-case scenario of 0-3 finish gives you two free card packs. Additionally, if you have some Tavern Tickets hoarded, you might give it a few more tries. We compiled lots of successful Pre-Release Brawl decks here.
- Mister Clocksworth was given out as a free Across the TImeways Legendary in Patch 33.6. If you haven’t picked it up yet, just log in and it’ll be waiting for you in-game.
- Any player can claim a free Ladder-Ready deck! Usually, those free decks are only available to new players and those who have returned after a longer break (90+ days). But this time, any player. Those have been available since Patch 33.6, but if you haven’t been playing, you should be getting them. While those decks don’t include cards from the new expansion, they can still give you a solid base to upgrade or just a bunch of Dust to craft the new stuff if you own the cards already.
- A random Fabled Legendary card is unlocked at Level 1 of rewards track, which means that you will get it as soon as the expansion releases. Additionally, Chrono-Lord Deios is a Level 20 reward.
- The first few levels of the rewards track require almost no XP, so they are meant to be unlocked nearly instantly as you start playing. You will unlock six extra card packs and a few other rewards over the first 11 levels, which you should easily be able to achieve on Day 1 with a couple of Dailies (only 2200 XP in total is required to get there). You can get even further into the rewards track if you keep your Weekly Quests to get a jump start on the new rewards track.
- A new in-game event will launch together with the expansion. Players can get a lot of rewards – 15 card packs in total (including 6 Across the Timeways packs) as well as one of the three Hero skins, depending on the event “path” they choose. The skins are Kel’thuzad – Mage, Medivh – Priest, or Magni – Shaman.
New Keywords/Mechanics
As usual, new expansions usually come with new mechanics. Sometimes we also see an older one making a big return. Here’s what you can expect from Across the Timeways:
New Mechanic – Rewind
Hearthstone has always been famous – or maybe infamous – for its RNG. Even since the beginning, the matches were often decided by a lucky roll of an imaginary dice. Will that Ragnaros the Firelord hit the opponent for 8 damage and destroy their Hero, or maybe decide to squash a 1/1 insect instead, and then promtply get removed? But what if you had an opportunity to… just re-roll?
That’s where Rewind comes in. Cards with Rewind first play their effect, and then give you two options – you can either keep the current timeline or rewind it and go for another roll. If you keep the timeline – nothing else happens, you just save that outcome. However, if you decide to Rewind, the game is reset to the state from before you played the card.
The card above show two simple examples of the effect in action. Portal Vanguard draws a minion and gives it +2/+2. However, if you don’t like the minion it drew at first (for example, you want a minion with Handbuff synergy), you can Rewind and draw a card again. Same for Semi-Stable Portal. The card works exactly like the oldschool Unstable Portal, just with Rewind added in. So you can choose to keep the first minion you get… or re-roll it into another random minion if what you got was bad.
Keep in mind that the Rewinded outcome CAN be the same as the original. In most cases it will be unlikely to get the same RNG, but it can happen. And of course, you always risk getting a worse outcome than the original one.
New Mechanic – Fabled
Fabled cards represent Heroes brought from different timelines by Chromie to help her fight against Nozdormu. They are all Legendary cards, and each class is going to get one.
To be more precise, it would probably be better to describe them as “card packages” instead of “cards”. When you add a Fabled card to your deck, it adds multiple cards instead. All Fabled cards (with an exception of Rafaam, more about him later) use 3 card slots. So if you add one of them to your deck, you only have 27 more card slots left (unlike cards that shuffle extra things to your deck at the start of the match).
Fabled cards have strong synergies with each other. In case of Hunter’s Ranger General Sylvanas, each Windrunner sister gets stronger based whether you’ve played others already. Paladin’s Gelbin of Tomorrow plays Aura cards from your deck, and comes in a package with two strong Auras with Tradeable. This way you can stick them back to your deck in case you draw them before you can play him.ve a bit more unique rewards.
We also have one special “Fabled+” card – Timethief Rafaam. Instead of taking 3 card slots like all the other Fabled cards, it takes 10 card slots, while also increasing your deck size to 40 (so you still can use 30 other cards). Unlike Prince Renathal, it doesn’t affect yout starting Health (but if you play in Wild, you can use both of them at once). In case of Rafaam, the payoff is huge, but it’s also difficult to get there. Once you play 9 different Rafaams, the final one (Timethief himself) will destroy the enemy Hero. As you can imagine, it’s a very late game win condition, but it will surely be fun to pull off (maybe not for your opponent).
New Signature Cards
Another batch of Signatures has been released for Across the Timeways. They have seen no general updates in this expansion (such as the card’s border or rarity gems). However, as usual, many of them look phenomenal. Sadly, we haven’t seen all of them yet – we know that some of them exist from datamining, but they haven’t been revealed yet (maybe they weren’t ready for launch and they will drop at a later date).
We’ve gathered all of the currently available Across the Timeways Signatures in a separate post, but you can find a few examples below:
New Rewards Track
As always, the rewards track is getting refreshed. When Across the Timeways launches, all players will get reset to Level 1 and will work their way up through the track again. The rewards track goes through some minor changes this expansion, like the position of Legendaries on the track or some minor value changes for Tavern Pass. You can find more information here.
Your daily & weekly Quests will NOT reset when the new expansion launches. It’s not a bad idea to save them for after the launch to give you a nice boost through the early levels of the rewards track. The only situations in which I’d recommend finishing all your Quests under the old rewards track is if you have Tavern Pass right now, but you don’t plan to buy a new one after launch (this way you’ll get 20% extra XP), or you haven’t finished the previous rewards track and you’re close to leveling for some good rewards. In the second case, if you want to min-max, try to hit a new level on your current rewards track and stop there because any “excess” XP won’t carry over. Ultimately this is not a big deal and no matter what you do, you should come up with a similar amount of rewards in the long run. But a free pack here and there can’t hurt, right?
Across the Timeways Decks
Once the expansion launches, I will be compiling decks from pro players & streamers in this post. I’ll try to add decks for all 11 classes, but as always, it’s hard to say whether every single class will be viable around launch. The post will be updated every few hours over the early expansion period (roughly the first week). We also generally do compilations of best-performing decks in separate posts – one after ~24 hours and the second about one a week after launch. So if you want something to base your early crafting decisions on, that would be your best choice (it’s still not a guarantee that those decks will remain viable, but it’s better than nothing).
Until we get some actual decks, you can check out Old Guardian’s theorycrafting impressions. He talks about each class and how it might fare in the upcoming expansion, plus he showcases some decks from the event. Those never translate into the expansion meta once it launches and everyone gets to play it, but some decks that are strong during theorycrafting also end up being good once the set launches. So you can get some ideas this way. Here’s the article!
Vicious Syndicate also always prepares an article with lots of decks to try on Day 1. And they are quite good at predicting some upcoming meta builds. Of course, the final decks still usually require some refinements, but many of them are great early meta picks. You can find their theorycrafting post here.
