Hearthstone: Hagatha Shaman guide
Who is this mysterious character and what is her role in The Witchwood?
UPDATE - 27TH MARCH 2018:
Following last night's reveal stream which showcased ten of the new cards, we now know that the new hero card's full name is Hagatha the Witch!
This alternate Shaman hero does three points of damage to all minions (friendly or otherwise) when played, and provides the usual five points of armour as well.
In addition, Hagatha comes with a new Hero Power called Bewitch! This passive ability provides you with a random Shaman spell every time you play a minion onto the board. There's particular synergy here with Witch's Apprentice, another card that was revealed during the stream
Here's the full artwork for both the hero card itself and the new hero power:
ORIGINAL STORY:
At the start of this week Blizzard announced that Hearthstone's eighth expansion - The Witchwood - would take a decidedly gloomy turn as the team turns to the haunted forests of the titular Witchwood for its design inspirations.
We know that we'll be getting 135 new cards (no surprises there), spread across all nine heroes as well as the neutral card pool. There'll also be more single-player shenanigans in the form of Monster Hunt. This new mode riffs on the insanely popular Dungeon Run that was released with Kobolds and Catacombs, and will likely prove just as compelling.
In addition to all of this though, we also got the briefest tease of one very special card indeed. Hagatha (full name unknown) is a Shaman-specific Legendary card that represents the only Hero card being added to the game with The Witchwood set.
Hero cards, as you may recall from their introduction in last year's Knights of the Frozen Throne expansion, completely transform the game's existing heroes into new demonic creatures with a completely unique hero power. No other characters in the game will get another of these special cards this time around - just the Shaman.
It's led to a lot of curiosity about the origins of this character, and so we wanted to pull together all of the currently known information about Hagatha into one distinct guide. Once the expansion goes live, we'll add links to any decks related to this character, and we'll also be fleshing this piece out with more information as it's revealed by Blizzard.
First up, here's a tweet that was made by game director Ben Brode in the immediate wake of the announcement. It provides some interesting information about Hagatha's place within the universe of the new expansion - and why she was felt important enough to be created as a Hero card in the first place.
Subsequent tweets in that chain provide even more information, and raise other questions as well:
- Hagatha will count as one of the Shaman's two class-specific Legendaries in The Witchwood expansion.
- Although Hagatha's full title was (deliberately?) obscured in the big reveal trailer, she is considered to be the Witch of the Witchwood.
- It is not yet clear whether or not the Shaman will be allowed to include both Hagatha and Thrall, Deathseer (the class's original Hero card) in the same deck.
- There will be no other transformational Hero cards - in this expansion, at least.
That's all we have for now, sadly, but there will no doubt be plenty more information about Hagatha to come in the next few weeks. As soon as that information is released by Blizzard, we'll update this guide with all the latest detail! In the meantime you can check out our massive Witchwood guide for all the juiciest information about the new set.
We'll leave you with one final thought though. With the Shaman being so weak in recent months and Hagatha being such a central character in The Witchwood, we think this is one card that could prove truly meta-defining when the new content goes live...