Festival of Legends Guide – New Hearthstone Expansion – Cards, Reveals, Release Date, New Mechanics, and More!

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E.T.C. is gathering the greatest musicians from all over Azeroth to put on the biggest music festival in history. From rock to hip-hop, and from metal to pop, every class is putting on a show. Start tuning your instruments and working on your harmonies, the next act is the Festival of Legends!

General Information

  • Release Date – April 11, 2023
  • 145 New Cards
  • New Standard Year + Core Set Rotation (not announced yet)
  • New Keyword – Finale
  • New Priest Class Keyword – Overheal
  • Each Class is Themed After a Different Music Genre
  • Signature Cards Redesign

Cinematic Trailer

Announcement Video

Festival of Legends Key Art

New Keyword/Mechanic – Finale

Finale is a new mechanic in Festival of Legends expansion. It’s actually quite simple – it triggers when you spend all of your remaining mana on a card. For example, let’s say that you want to play Ghost Writer and triggers its extra effect, but you’re at 7 mana. You first need to spend 2 mana or something and then play the 5 mana minion to trigger its Finale.

 

Finale is an interesting mechanic that seems to be mostly balanced by the fact that you can only really play one Finale card per turn (other than performing some mana restore shenanigans). Or rather, you can play multiple, but only one will trigger the extra effect. Finale cards don’t synergize with each other and you don’t want to run too many because playing them without the extra effect will likely be a really low value/tempo play.

New Class Keyword/Mechanic – Overheal

It’s not common for a class to get a unique keyword in an expansion, but it looks like we have one this time! Overheal is a mechanic exclusive to Priest and it really fits their general gameplay theme. While the effect is released in this expansion, it will be an evergreen keyword featured in the Core Set and future expansions.

 

Overheal triggers (as the name suggests) when you heal the minion above its max health. For example – Heartbreaker Hedanis has 8 health, but will start with 4 because of the Battlecry. If you now restore 5 or more health to it, you will trigger its effect. Then it should trigger for every time you heal it again at full health.

Other Themes/Mechanics

The expansion also features a variety of smaller, non-keyworded mechanics:

Music Genres

Each class will have a different music genre tied to them. The genre will be referenced in the general class theme for the expansion, such as the card names and artwork.

Legendary Musicians and Songs

Each class will get a unique musician (Legendary minion) and their most popular song (Legendary spell).

 

Instrument Weapons

Every class gets a special weapon with Deathrattle that improves when the weapon is equipped.

 

Harmonic/Dissonant Spells

Harmonic/Dissonant is a series of spells that swap their effect between two values each turn. The effects aren’t necessarily stronger or weaker, they simply might come in handy in different scenarios.

 

Signature Cards Redesign

Signature cards were first released in March of the Lich King expansion, but they weren’t received very well. Most of the players felt like they were a missed opportunity – while having a “full artwork” on display is a great idea, that expansion’s cards were bleak and pretty boring. Blizzard has committed to changing that some time after their release, and it looks like they delivered this expansion.

 

New Signature Cards will feature bright-colored artwork and animations. They will also have thinner frames and no card text at all – it will be shown by a tooltip when you hover over the card. This way the new full artwork can be the center of new cards. Following Patch 26.0, Signature Cards opened in card packs will also become disenchantable at the rate of Golden cards (but still not craftable, because Blizzard wants them to be more unique).

You can find all of the reworked Festival of Legends Signature Cards here.

Pre-Purchase

Once again, we’ll have two different pre-order bundles. You can get the bundles here. Here’s what they include and how much they cost:

Festival of Legends Pre-Purchase Bundle ($49.99)

  • 60 Festival of Legends Card Packs
  • Two Random Legendary cards from Festival of Legends
  • Hedanis Card Back

Festival of Legends Mega Bundle ($79.99)

  • 80 Festival of Legends Card Packs
  • 10 Golden Festival of Legends Card Packs
  • Two Random Golden Legendaries from Festival of Legends
  • Hedanis Priest Cosmetic Hero
  • Hedanis Card Back

Pre-purchase will be available until the Festival of Legends launch, so be sure to get it at least a day before the expansion goes live just to be sure.

Most Recently Revealed Cards from Festival of Legends

Festival of Legends Revealed Card List

If you’re looking for cards from a specific class, click on it below:

Death Knight – Demon HunterDruidHunterMagePaladinPriestRogueShamanWarlockWarriorNeutral

Death Knight

Demon-Hunter

Druid

Hunter

Mage

Paladin

Priest

Rogue

Shaman

Warlock

Symphony of Sins Movements:

Warrior

Neutral

Legendaries

Epics

Rares

Commons

Stonekeep

A Hearthstone player and writer from Poland, Stonekeep has been in a love-hate relationship with Hearthstone since Closed Beta. Over that time, he has achieved many high Legend climbs and infinite Arena runs. He's the current admin of Hearthstone Top Decks.

Check out Stonekeep on Twitter!

Leave a Reply

18 Comments

  1. KonuTech
    March 31, 2023 at 4:37 am

    These cards are looking boring. People are paying for that. Regards from F2P Standard player

  2. Change
    March 31, 2023 at 3:46 am

    can we pls build decks with cards from the next rotation (year of the wolf)?

  3. PxrkerP
    March 23, 2023 at 12:04 pm

    If we’ve got a card that is in wild now but is about to become part of the Core Set and we disenchant it, will we be given it once the rotation happens, in an uncraftable format?

  4. DemianHS
    March 15, 2023 at 11:31 am

    Anyone knows if Overheal works on no damaged minions? ????

  5. JoyDivision
    March 15, 2023 at 1:14 am

    I get some Rastakhan’s Rumble vibes tbh, but gladly the revealed cards look way more solid than those from RR.

    Will the Signature Cards from Rise of the Lich King be disenchantable, too? That would be cool!

    • Alglyphic
      March 15, 2023 at 2:20 am

      The decision to start out 2023 with a lighthearted expansion was a bold one, perhaps, but following 2021’s overarching story and 2022’s general focus on dramatic or serious themes, it’s possible that we might be in for a return to Raven levels of power de-creep. When was the last time we had a focus on all-out class brawl? There’s Rastakhan’s vibes, Mean Streets of Gadgetzan and Boomsday Project to some degree. It’s high time we got back to Hearthstone being unapologetically wacky. Here’s hoping.

    • Stonekeep - Site Admin
      March 15, 2023 at 12:07 pm

      Yes, March of the Lich King Signature Cards will also be disenchantable. At least those you get from the packs – those from rewards track probably won’t be (like any free Legendary).

  6. Inhiszton
    March 14, 2023 at 3:45 pm

    Do we have any hint or guess when will the new gameplay achievements revealed?

    • Stonekeep - Site Admin
      March 15, 2023 at 12:15 pm

      Most likely with Patch 26.0. If I had to make a guess, I would say March 30 or April 4. But I’m inclined toward April 4. The expansion patch usually drops either on the first Tuesday or Thursday after the reveal season ends. The last one (25.0) dropped exactly a week before March of the Lich King’s release, and if the April 11 date is correct (I based it on the pre-order dates) then April 4 would be exactly a week before that.

  7. Nephilim99
    March 14, 2023 at 11:28 am

    Blizzard miss the opportunity to give warlock disco so we could play disco-discolock

  8. Strangiii
    March 14, 2023 at 11:27 am

    Looking at the genres it seems I’ll be DK main for the next two years :kekw:

  9. KonuTech
    March 14, 2023 at 10:29 am

    So I have to start playing HS with background music?

    • Stonekeep - Site Admin
      March 14, 2023 at 12:07 pm

      Yes, and you will have to make a different playlist for each class.

  10. Nathair
    March 14, 2023 at 10:23 am

    Glad they redesigned the Signature cards in their own style. A lot of the “suggestions online weren’t exactly my cup of tea (I actually preferred Blizzard’s monochrome original ones to the suggestions) but these are honestly incredible.

    (Sounds like an overall cool expansion, more in line with the alternative lore HS is supposed to explore like Rumble, Madness and Boomsday)

    • Elasindre
      March 14, 2023 at 1:26 pm

      It looks a good expansion, but we must still see how will be the new core set, that will define better how will be the next year