Blizzard introduced 135 new cards to hit online collectible card game Hearthstone with the release of the Witchwood expansion on Thursday. However, one card has attracted more attention than most.
Shudderwock, a legendary Sharman minion with a 6/6 body, is causing disruption to the game that has left many players unhappy.
“Shudderwock already killed Hearthstone and it hasn’t even been an hour,” one social media user wrote following the release.
Shudderwock’s Battlecry ability repeats all other battlecries that you’ve made throughout the game.
This isn’t an issue when used on its own. However, when combined with fellow minion Grumble, Worldshaker, Shudderwock has the ability to unfairly cut an opponent’s turn short.
Grumble, Worldshaker has the ability to return all other minion cards to the players hand. In turn, this hands the player the ability to use the Shudderwock card multiple times in one turn.
The problem isn’t with the card itself, but the length of time that it takes for the animations to play when Shudderwock uses Battlecry. This reduces the amount of time that the opponent has to take their turn.
However, after complaints from the Hearthstone community, Blizzard developers have confirmed that this feedback has been received and changes to Shudderwock will be considered over the next week.
Posting on social media platform Twitter, Hearthstone’s balance designer Dean “Iksar” Ayala confirmed:
“We’ll be reading more feedback over the weekend and will revisit the Shudderwock topic early next week. [We’re] checking out both animation timings and feedback on the deck playstyle itself.”
Heathstone’s Witchwood update
Witchwood is Hearthstone’s eighth update, which saw 135 new collectible cards and new Driud hero Lunara added to the mix.
The update also saw three new keywords added. These are:
- Start of Game (abilities that activate at the start of the game)
- Echo (abilities that allow cards to be played multiple times in one turn)
- Rush (like Charge, but doesn’t allow player to attack the enemy hero in that turn).
A new single-player game mode, Monster Hunt, was also added to the game. This mode provides similar gameplay to the Dungeon Runs from Kobolds and Catacombs. Players will face eight different encounters during each run.