Slightly more than a week has passed since the release of *Hearthstone: Across The Timeways*. Blizzard introduced some bold new mechanics in this latest expansion for its long-running digital card game. One of the biggest innovations was the introduction of Fabled cards, which add three cards with special synergies into a player’s deck for every class.
These Fabled cards differ from the Legendary cards that players might typically expect from Hearthstone, and their design reflects this distinction. While every Fabled keyword provided a class with three unique cards, there was one notable exception: the Warlock. The Warlock received a special Fabled+ card inspired by Hearthstone’s most recognizable villain, Rafaam.
### Timethief Rafaam: A Unique Fabled+ Card
The 10-Cost Timethief Rafaam card introduces 10 extra cards into a player’s deck, making it one of the most unique and intriguing ideas to come to Hearthstone in recent times. It quickly became a point of pride for developers like Senior Game Designer Stephen Chang and UI/UX Designer Sola Chang.
“I think Rafaam didn’t change that much from initial conception,” Stephen Chang told Shacknews. “We had the idea of doing Rafaam fairly early on, and we knew we wanted Rafaam to be Fabled+. Most of the changes we made during final design were to modify some of the specific Rafaams to be a bit more playable, a bit stronger. Because the deck grows to a size of 40, we needed to ensure that you had enough strong plays to get you to the end game. So we juiced up some of the Rafaams along the way, but holistically, most of the designs stayed the same.”
The ten Rafaams all share the same Cost, Attack, and Health stats, but each has a different power level. This design choice gave the team room to experiment with their effects, which led to some minor adjustments during the development process.
“A few of them we modified slightly to be a bit more generically playable,” Chang added. “I think one of the Discover ones we touched up, and then we gave [Mindflayer R’faam]—the one that summons a copy—a Taunt to give it more board presence. But overall, it’s kind of a testament to the initial design team. A lot of the designs went through the whole process without major changes, which was really cool. It’s not common that that happens, but we had a lot of good initial ideas about the types of mechanics we wanted to highlight with these characters, and the essence of those designs stayed true throughout the set.”
### The Final Battlecry and a Near-Miss for Rogue
Playing all of the Rafaams activates a final Battlecry from the 10-Cost Timethief Rafaam, which destroys the enemy hero and, in most cases, instantly ends the game. While Rafaam’s game-ending effect feels special, there was a time when he wasn’t the only one holding such power.
The Rogue almost received a similar effect with the 4-Cost Garona Halforcen. “Garona used to also destroy the hero, but we didn’t like that the damage the Rogue player dealt throughout the game wasn’t going to have as much of an impact,” Stephen Chang explained. “So we wanted it to be a bit more impactful, so that as you were dealing damage throughout the game, you could still get that bonus effect on top of it. So a few of the outputs did change, but for Rafaam itself, [the effect] was always to destroy the enemy hero.”
### Addressing Turn Time with the New Rewind Mechanic
The Hearthstone community is currently in the midst of sorting out the game’s latest meta. Blizzard also offered a sneak peek at an exciting new mechanic: Rewind. This mechanic allows for second-chance effects on specific cards and fits well with the heroic Keeper of Time Chromie.
However, while the effect’s visual flair was impressive, it sometimes caused longer turn times—something Blizzard consciously evaluated before the expansion’s release.
“The reason why we’re doing [the Rewind animation] is not only to tie it to the fantasy but also because there’s some technical implementation that requires us to cover the screen as we reset the board to undo the actions if you Rewind,” Sola Chang explained. “When we worked on that, a lot of effort went into making it as efficient as possible. We read and heard a lot of comments from the community and players, so the engineering team and many game developers came together to do their best to make that a faster experience. We definitely have some updates coming out very soon to make that time a bit faster, so we’re super excited for that update to come out, and I’m hoping players will enjoy the new experience with the Rewind animation.”
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Blizzard’s latest expansion is pushing Hearthstone’s mechanics and storytelling in bold new directions, and players are now diving deep into discovering the full potential of these fresh ideas. Keep an eye out for upcoming updates that promise to refine the gameplay experience even further.
https://www.shacknews.com/article/146793/hearthstone-across-the-timeways-developer-interview
