For the uninitiated, Hearthstone is Blizzard Entertainment's free-to-play card game brawler, with legendary Warcraft heroes fighting it out with magic, strength, skills, trickery, and certainly some wit and humour. You join the Warcraft tavern and pitch hero against hero, villain against villain, leveraging a horde (or alliance, of course) of minions and spells.

While the game is free-to-play, naturally, there are things you can spend your hard-earned money on. These range from unlocking new cards early to cosmetic items like character skins and emotes, buying single-player adventures, and more. While you can accelerate your progress this way, you certainly don't gain an overall advantage over free players, which means monetisation helps you support the developer,s but those without the same resources aren't disadvantaged.

Each year, Blizzard releases expansions with a new theme and a new set of cards. The latest expansion has now come out, Into the Emerald Dream. At the same time, a new year has begun, the Year of the Raptor, which means the current set of cards (or expansions) that are considered "standard" have moved, rotating the oldest set out into the "wild" batch of cards.

With the Year of the Raptor Blizzard has added a new game board, updated the core set, and is bringing back eSports, planning two seasonal championships and a world championship over the year. The prizes will total at least $US 600,000. Further, an Arena update is in the works.

And with the expansion, Into the Emerald Dream, we get 145 new cards, two new keywords, and an expanded keyword.

The Emerald Dream is a realm of ethereal entities and serves as the source of Nature magic in Azeroth. However, Ysera's domain is experiencing corruption which could transform the dream into a nightmare. Enhance your hero power with blessings from the World Tree or utilise the Dark Gifts of the Old Gods.

Here's where the new keywords come in. The first, Imbue, transforms your hero's power. Ordinarily, your hero power might summon a 1/1 Paladin knight, or deal 2 damage, or give 2 armour, and so on. However, imbuing your hero power gives you a brand new hero power, unique to your class. The hero power can be continually imbued to strengthen your new power. This applies to Druid, Hunter, Mage, Paladin, Priest, and Shaman - so not to Warlocks, Rogues, Warriors, Death Knights or Demon Hunters.

iTWire has been playing and found this mechanic fun - really fun. Some expansions gel with a segment of players, others less so; I remember the Death Knight class coming in March of the Lich King during 2022 and it was genuinely terrifying, such was the excitement and new power it brought. I remember Murder at Castle Nathria also bringing lots of fun. Well, Blizzard has really brought the goods again. Into the Emerald Dream is a great mix of humour, strategy, and ease-of-play such that you can jump right in but still need to consider your moves and their interactions carefully. The Imbue keyword is a tremendous addition, especially as you figure out how to make it increasingly more effective. In my picture below, my Hunter power allows me to give a random beast in my hand +4 attack, while also costing 4 mana less. That's from using Imbue once, then again three more times.

Other new cards in the expansion play on this, giving you special advantages if you have imbued a certain number of times, or if you've reduced a card's cost to a certain threshold or increased attack value.

The second new keyword, Dark Gifts, provides minion power-ups to empower those who would join the cause of the dark forces attempting to corrupt the Emerald Dream. Now, here's where Death Knights, Demon Hunters, Rogues, Warlocks, and Warriors come in - they benefit here by receiving special power-ups that pair with certain Discover options. Now pick out the best minion Gift combinations and take your Discovers to a whole new level!

Meanwhile, the familiar Choose One keyword is expanded so for the first time, every class gets a Choose One card - the Druid's tricks have been made available to all thanks to the Emerald Dream's powers.

Additionally, from now through to 15 April 2025 you can complete event quests to earn XP on the special rewards track. Every day brings a new Dream daily quest, or, if you are brave, you can re-roll for a Nightmare quest. These are harder, but grant more XP.

• If you've never played Hearthstone before, you need to start - give it a go on Windows, macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and Android.
• If you're a lapsed Hearthstone player, this is the time to come back in.
• And, if you're a current Hearthstone player, well, keep it up!