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Will Across the Timeways Bring the Fun Back to Hearthstone?

By: Old Guardian - - Updated:

November 4 will be a big day for Hearthstone. The final expansion of 2025, Across the Timeways, will launch on that day, and the expectations are high. Based on the reveal season, the expansion is a success thematically, the right flavor is there, and we have some fun-looking cards that people really want to play with (Rafaam!).

Yesterday, Blizzard arranged a pre-release theorycrafting event where streamers, YouTubers, and members of the press got to play with the new cards in advance. I played in the event all evening myself, and I’ll try to reflect on what we saw in the event in this article.

It should be noted that these events are always showcases for the new expansion: you need to include 10 cards from the new set in every deck, which means that the power level is lower than on the ladder, and there is more time to play with fun cards that may not be competitive in a real-world environment. The real test will only happen when deck-building is not limited.

That said, let’s take a look at what happened in the theorycrafting event.

Rewind Takes Time

We were playing on a new patch that had some improvements to Rewind. The new keyword is fun: it allows you to reroll the random effect of a card that has the ability. Sands of time will swoop across the screen, and the card will be replayed.

Unfortunately, Rewind has been technically challenging to implement, and it has been sloooow. Rewind is part of the teaser card that we have on the live servers, Mister Clocksworth, so people have already expressed their concerns about it. It’s not about the animation, the animation just covers up the game going back to a previous state and continuing from there.

I tried to compare the Rewind effect on the test server with the live version: it took around 10 seconds on the test server according to my stopwatch, and 11 seconds on live on my computer. Maybe I was just slow that late, but several people commented how it felt faster, so I think it really was. Blizzard is still exploring further options to improve it, so maybe this is not its final state yet.

10 seconds is still a good while, so if you like to think through your options, save some time for any rewinding you may do, and ideally go for those Rewind effects early in your turn to make sure you don’t rope out. A bit of a mixed bag, this one, as the effect itself is really cool.

Rafaam Is Worth the Wait!

The card I have seen people hype the most during the reveal season is Timethief Rafaam, and let me tell you, Rafaam is every bit as fun as you can hope for. It is the perfect Timmy card: it gives you a big deck of 40 cards, it has an inevitable win condition at the end, it features an iconic Hearthstone-original character, and it goes into a slowish control deck, or a control-combo draw deck at fastest, but one that plays a 10-mana card at the end so it will rarely end a game fast regardless.

Is Rafaam competitive? If people want to counter it, no. Dirty Rat is devastating since Timethief asks you to PLAY all other Rafaams. But not every deck is out there with the disruption tools to fight against your Rafaam. Against many aggro or midrange decks, you can have a good game. Not necessarily one that you are favored to win, but it is not all about winning, anyway. With Rafaam, Blizzard has hit that sweet spot where you want to play the deck even if you lose more than you win. The deck is easy enough to counter if you specifically build for it, so it can never be the dominant deck on the ladder. But with a medium-sized population, it may find some success.

Warshack’s Rafaam Warlock – Across the Timeways Theorycrafting

Deck Import

Death Knight Cannot Be Killed

Death Knight’s Legendary cards are interesting and also fit well in the same deck.

Husk, Eternal Reaper gives your hero a Deathrattle to resurrect yourself with up to 20 health. This sounds like it can be game-changing, and it does offer a level of protection against some combos, but as the card’s flavor text says: “It is to Husk’s eternal amusement that the second life is often wasted.” Most of the time, it is just 20 extra Health, and will not change the outcome of a game.

Death Knight’s Fabled package Talanji of the Grave and Bwonsamdi likewise promises value eternal, at least as long as you find your Bwonsamdi and won’t have it stolen or transformed. What I discovered during theorycrafting was that a Mage discovering spells from the past can hit a polymorph effect more often than I would like. I did not find the value when playing with the package myself, nor did any of my opponents get anything useful done with them. Despite this, they are interesting cards and I look forward to people experimenting with them more because there is a chance to make them work.

Demon Hunter Is So Demonic Now

Demon Hunter can now run a deck with no minions in it, and discount the ones that you generate with Solitude. It is actually a pretty good plan. The Eternal Hold is also sweet. Big Demons hit the board for free as soon as the location is unleashed. Even Crewmates felt better than before when combined with some in-hand discounts. I can’t find any specific decks right now, but the class has potential.

Druid Ramps Up As It Should

Druid feels like Druid in Across the Timeways: you ramp up, you have some weaknesses in the early game, and this time you have Lady Azshara as a win condition, mostly with The Well of Eternity giving you a handful of spells that cast twice to play with in the late game.

There are multiple ways to build Druid, here is Jambre’s take:

Jambre’s Ramp Druid – Across the Timeways Theorycrafting

Sideboard

Zilliax Deluxe 3000 (2)

Deck Import

I also met some with Endangered Dodo, which is a pretty big roadblock against aggro when it swoops in to save the day as two 10/10 Taunt minions for 5 mana. With Druid’s powerful locations, I also enjoyed playing with Scrapbooking Student to make copies of The Well of Eternity, Amirdrassil, and Elise the Navigator‘s locations. That aspect is explored in Kubu’s version of the deck:

Kubu’s Ramp Druid – Across the Timeways Theorycrafting

Sideboard

Zilliax Deluxe 3000 (2)

Deck Import

Hunter Goes Face

Across the Timeways is just so good with class identities. Hunter is aggressive. You play everything, your hand is empty, and you love it, and you can dig for more resources, and you go face. There is also an infinite Banana subtheme with King Maluk, but I was unable to make it work and doubt whether that will stay for the final list.

The aggro set is just so sweet with Quel'dorei Fletcher, Arrow Retriever, Precise Shot, Ranger General Sylvanas and her sisters, and Wormhole. This is Hunter really reaching back to its Face Hunter roots in a new environment where resources are not as scarce and the cards need to support that to be a threat.

Machadogps’s Face Hunter – Across the Timeways Theorycrafting

Deck Import

Mage Goes on an Arcane Barrage

The Mage package has Arcane spells from ALL past expansions ready for you to Discover, Dragons that make Arcane spells cheaper and better, and can give Spell Damage, and a way to resurrect those Dragons for huge turns. Spells are just flying everywhere when you meet a Mage, and again, Mage FEELS like Mage.

Here is Otsu’s version of Mage:

Otsu’s Arcane Mage – Across the Timeways Theorycrafting

Deck Import

Paladin and Priest Maybe Missed This Time

I only met one Paladin during my entire time, and I played some games with Paladin myself, but this one feels like a miss. The auras and extending them just do not do much. Maybe you can grab something from the new set to an older Aggro or Murloc shell, but the new pieces felt too slow and ineffective.

I did not meet any Priests either. I tried the Health package myself, just buffing up my stuff, and it felt quite slow. We’ll see what happens when people start to refine it.

Rogues Are Always Up to Something Eruptive

The Rogue deck of the day seemed to be Incindius Rogue. With a Chrono-Lord Deios thrown in for some extra upgrades, Rogue is blasting with eruptions once again.

Machadogps’s Incindius Rogue – Across the Timeways Theorycrafting

Deck Import

Shaman Heads Back to the Nature

Shaman uses Nature spells a lot in the new expansion, but with a new twist: Some minions have an effect that happens when you try to damage them with Nature spells. The minions take no damage, but something else happens instead. It gets really scary if it gets some time, so react fast or get snowballed. I think it can be stopped early, but we’ll see what further refinement brings. Windfury weapon with attack buffs can also be a scary finisher.

Machadogps’s Nature Shaman – Across the Timeways Theorycrafting

Deck Import

Warlock Is More than Rafaam

As much as I enjoyed Rafaam myself, I did not meet many at the event. Most Warlock players chose a much more aggressive strategy, playing some variant of Zoo Warlock. That’s pretty amazing, really. Zoo Warlock is such an iconic archetype that was a constant presence for almost a decade in various forms, and now it may be coming back again.

Here is Otsu’s take on the archetype:

Otsu’s Demon Zoo Warlock – Across the Timeways Theorycrafting

Deck Import

Dragon Warrior Returns

Blizzard has clearly been looking for something else for Warrior than old-school control for some time. We had Draenei. Self-damage. Taunts. None of those things really did much. However, there used to be a strong midrange Warrior archetype, and that was Dragon Warrior. In Across the Timeways, Warrior again explores some of these themes, aided by the Blood Fighters Fabled package (Lo'Gosh, Blood Fighter and friends) and some Chemical Spilling.

Here is Machadogps’ take on the archetype:

Machadogps’s Dragon Warrior – Across the Timeways Theorycrafting

Deck Import

Classes Feel Like Themselves Again?

After a period of time when you could drop a neutral package into any class and head to the ladder (only slight hyperbole here), Across the Timeways seems to put more emphasis on class identity again. At least in the lower-powered meta of the theorycrafting event, the classes felt like something. They felt like themselves. An identity rediscovered. Can this hold in the full-powered meta? Honestly, I do not know. But I do like what I have seen from Across the Timeways so far.

Old Guardian

Ville "Old Guardian" Kilkku is a writer and video creator focused on analytic, educational Hearthstone, and building innovative Standard format decks. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/OldGuardian Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/old_guardian

Check out Old Guardian on Twitter or on their Website!

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One Comment

  1. Mimeoplasm
    October 26, 2025 at 6:10 PM

    The new Rafaam is not going to do well. Theres to many different ways to disrupt it, and to many chances to disrupt it. Itll be fun for a week, but nobody likes losing constantly with a deck, not fun…

    Two classes already DOA (priest and paladin), and Rogues best deck is Incindius (again…), not good.

    Dragon Warrior was never really “there” so it can’t be back. Id say Aggro Hunter Warlock will be the best decks to use the new cards, i just cant tell yet if they will be good enough to dethrone our two set old decks yet.

    Not looking good. But hopefully the last three lower power sets will get balanced out with the next set and annual rotation next year.