Hearthstone’s next expansion, Forged in the Barrens, is entering its final day of revelations, with the latest card adding more support to the Mill Warlock archetype.
The newest card shown off is Altar of Fire, an Epic one mana Fire spell for Warlock which destroys the top three cards for both players’ decks.
Altar of Fire continues the trend of the recent Warlock self-mill strategy that is being built upon. However, instead of solely burning your deck, Altar of Fire also makes your opponent pay the same price of destroying cards in their deck. This not only gives you a chance to burn key combo pieces from your opponent, but gives you extra knowledge of cards you do not need to play around for the rest of the game.
While Altar of Fire is a potent ability for the new identity Warlock has been given, spending one card to not tangibly affect the board or draw you a card will inherently put you behind on card advantage. Despite this weakness, if enabling the recently revealed Neeru Fireblade proves to be powerful, Altar of Fire adds consistency to this strategy alongside Soul Rend and Bloodshard Bristleback.
In addition to this, due to the amount of draw Warlock has with its Life Tap hero power, going down in card advantage isn’t a difficult downside to amend for the class.
One hilarious way to use Altar of Fire is if your opponent uses Lorekeeper Polkelt or C’Thun the Shattered. Once their deck is shuffled, or a key card is added to their deck, the Altar will burn away key cards from your opponent’s deck at a higher rate.
Forged in the Barrens will release at the end of the month on March 30. Players can pre-purchase the expansion in one of two different bundles from Blizzard’s online store or in the Hearthstone client.
