Blizzard kicks off Hearthstone: Rastakhan's Rumble with free card packs for everyone

The Hearthstone expansion Rastakhan's Rumble is now live, bringing 135 new cards to the game, a new mechanic, and for a limited time, six free Rastakhan's Rumble card packs, plus a random Legendary Loa and two copies of the Spirit card for the same class, just for logging in.

Rastakhan's Rumble sees nine teams battling for dominance in a time-honored Troll tradition, each of them led by a Legendary Troll Champion representing a different Hearthstone class. Each team is also backed by powerful Legendary minions known as Loa—"incredibly powerful primal gods that have been figures of worship for thousands of years in troll culture"—while Spirits are a new class-specific 0/3 minions who will deliver "impressive effects that syngergize with the Loa."

Speaking of impressive, the new Overkill mechanic will deliver various sorts of rewards for dropping the heavy hammer (that is, dealing excess damage) on opposing cards. Using the 4/4 weapon Sul'thraze to kill a 3-health minion, for instance, will enable you to attack again—and as long as you can keep overkilling low-health flunkies, you can keep on going.

A new single-player adventure called Rumble Run is also on the way, but won't go live until December 13. Ahead of that, you can get a feel for what's in store in Blizzard's three-part adventures of Rikkar, a young Troll getting ready to take his shot at the belt.

You can get a look at all the new cards coming in Rastakhan's Rumble here, and we've got some expert analysis on which ten of them will have the greatest impact on the game. Hearthstone creative director Ben Thompson also recently told us why he's confident that Rastakhan's Rumble will shake up the meta.