Hearthstone's upcoming expansion, The Grand Tournament, will add 132 new cards to the game, and introduce a number of new mechanics.

The reveal event two weeks ago focused on "Inspire" - a new key word that is activated when players use their hero power, but today at Gamescom, Executive Producer Hamilton Chu and Senior Game Designer Mike Donais revealed that the expansion will also introduce jousting.

This mechanic sees two cards randomly drawn - and shown - from each player's deck, with the higher mana cost card winning the duel.



Jousting seems designed specifically to slow the game down as a whole, and will help ensure that the Inspire mechanic is more viable. At the moment Hearthstone is quite fast and aggressive, and many players would like to see the super aggressive decks lose potency to make room for slower, more control-oriented play. A number of new cards were revealed that show off the possibilities of jousting - you can see all the new cards in the slideshow at the bottom of the page.



See Paladin face Mage in a full game utilising cards from The Grand Tournament.

The other major announcement today focused on the changes that are coming to Ranked Play. This is one of Hearthstone's competitive play modes, where players fight over the course of a season (a calendar month) to go from rank 25 all the way up past rank 1 and into Legend. This process is referred to as "grinding," and many players would like to see more rewards for their time and effort.

That's exactly what Blizzard is planning on delivering. Not only will your highest rank be recognised - so players no longer have to fear dropping ranks, but anyone who gets a rank higher than 20 will be rewarded. Those players will have a treasure chest to open at the end of the season, containing their card back (as before), as well as one or more golden cards and some Arcane dust.

reward-1.jpg

An example of the reward for reaching rank 17...

reward-2.jpg

...versus rank 5.
This is very much in line with what the community has been asking for and really incentivises ranked play for everyone - not just those with a chance to hit Legend. The Grand Tournament will be available later in August.