Hearthstone’s Blackrock Mountain expansion announced, game’s user interface for phones also previewed

The folks at Blizzard held their panel at Pax East this morning, and they had a few cool announcements to make. One of the announcements pertained to none other than Hearthstone, the addictive collectible card game based on the World of Warcraft universe that launched on Android tablets late last year.

The latest content for the game is another adventure not unlike Curse of Naxxramas. It’s dubbed Blackrock Mountain, and it follows the theme of a never-ending battle in the depths of a molten core between two fiery entities — Ragnaros the Firelord, and the dragon Nefarious — to determine who will maintain control of the mountain once and for all.

The expansion adds 31 new cards to be earned through a total of 5 wings (released weekly) and 17 bosses. It’ll cost 700 gold or $6.99 per wing, or you can opt to pre-order the entire bundle of wings for $24.99 (which you’ll be able to do starting March 19th). Unfortunately the first wing doesn’t seem to be free so you’ll have to spend something in order to go along for the ride.

Blizzard has already previewed five of the new cards ahead of the update’s April landing date:

Beyond that, they’ve given us an early look at the three card backs they’ll be offering to commemorate the launch. On the far left you’ll see the standard card back for reaching rank 20 in the March season of play, the middle cardback is earned by defeating the Heroic (overpowered) versions of each Blackrock boss, and the far right cardback is earned by pre-ordering the game.

There was one other bit of news Blizzard had to share before they peaced out: the phone version is still in the works, and it’s coming along quite well. While it’s been possible to get Hearthstone loaded up onto an Android phone through the use of tricks, it doesn’t do anything to make a user interface that’s suitable for phones.

Thankfully Blizzard has come up with a way to squeeze everything you need into these small-sized devices so you can get the same Hearthstone experience without needing to tote a hefty tablet everywhere. They’ve also confirmed that phone users will be able to play PC and tablet users in cross-platform and cross-device fashion (which also means your decks, cards, gold and dust are all the same no matter which device you decide to play on).

That’s all we know about the phone version right now. Blizzard said it’s still in alpha stages, but they’re working incredibly hard to get it ready for release. As for Blackrock Mountain, look forward to that at some point in April.

[via Hearthstone Blog]