Overwatch gets special limited edition content released for big events or holidays, we know this now. First it was the Summer Games content for the Olympics, then we had Halloween’s Dr. Junkenstein’s Revenge. Christmas content is inevitable and some eager gamers have been sneaking a look through datamining.

What’s been found so far are references to new maps, something that could be the holiday’s potential special gamemode (ala Lucioball or Junkenstein’s Revenge), which characters are getting new festive skins and even the menu music.

On the subject of the maps and gamemode, the file references seem to suggest something like the Halloween gamemode with a specialised map for it. Some other maps might also get a little Christmas decoration too for the length of the seasonal event.

On the cosmetic side, every character will be getting a new spray, voice line and victory pose through the Christmas loot crates, but just as with Halloween only not all of them will be getting a skin, emote or highlight intro though the loot crates. Those characters getting at least ONE of the three will be Widowmaker, Reinhardt, Mercy, Symmetra, Reaper, Sombra, Roadhog, D.Va, Ana, Soldier: 76, and Lúcio. The ones getting TWO are Winston, McCree, Mei, Pharah, Zarya, Tracer, and Zenyatta; however Torbjorn will be getting all THREE from the loot. This hints that maybe his character will be put into an important role for the new gamemode possibly.

We should see when the event kicks off. December the 13th is the estimated date of release right now, which would take it through to January 3rd if it ran for the same three-week period of time as other events. However, keep your eyes on the official channels for more information as Blizzard release it.

It’s December at last, so finally Christmas is allowed to be absolutely everywhere. Including in video game launch trailers apparently.

As the tale “Twas the night before Christmas” is read, we get a load of footage of the sort of gameplay the Dead Rising series is famous for – slaughtering huge packs of zombies in the most creative and strange ways you can. And, as the trailer confirms, Dead Rising 4 will be out on December 6th, well in time to make it under many peoples’ Christmas trees. The Xbox team will be doing “something” in London on Monday to mark the game’s release as well, so keep your eyes and ears open for what that is.

DR4 is going to be revisiting the start of the series in this game, but will come with the new weapons to make and photos to take that you’d expect from a new entry into any game series.

Titanfall 2 has already had quite the price drop despite having only launched recently. Now, if you’re still not sure, it’s getting a limited trial so people can try out the multiplayer for a few days before Christmas.

The trial has been open to Origin Access members since the end of November, and now it’s being opened to all from the 2nd to the 4th. There’s no provision of any of the singleplayer elements to it, but the multiplayer is the part that Titanfall was originally built on. Even if the singleplayer is reviewing greatly to people playing it, there’s no value to EA letting players have the chance to potentially finish it for free unfortunately. At least you can get a feel for the game before you decide to buy it or not for that story.

The trial might only be open for a few days but the hours aren’t limited at all. You could play the full chunk of hours non-stop if you wanted to… and were able to handle it. The demo is available for download now at the Origin store.

What’s more, a new map is dropping for the game pretty soon during the trial period. Angel City is the first DLC drop from developers Respawn for the game and is a free piece of DLC to boot. People who pre-ordered have, again, had access since the end of November, but it’s nice to think that even people in the trial will be able to play it soon. Respawn have also said that all post-launch content (maps, weapons, gamemodes etc.) will be free too, so there’s even more to come if you do decide to stick around.

What’s more, any progress you make in the trial can then be transferred over to the full game should you buy it. So really, you might as well give it a go if you’re curious. It’s free, so what do you have to lose?

So after a few weeks of waiting, card reveals and information being handed out to us on the three crime families of the expansion, Hearthstone’s Mean Streets of Gadgetzan has finally made its entrance to the public servers.

The release was staggered out across the different regions of the world, in a bid from Blizzard to avoid repeats of past incidents that overloaded servers from the extra load and would lead games crashing and inaccessibility – which obviously lead to a lot of negative feedback from the players. That didn’t totally stop complaints though, as while NA kept the December 1st release date, other regions such as the EU servers (which are the ones the majority of the team here play on) did not get to see Gadgetzan’s release until the day after.

However, this did work out a little bit in the favour of those who had to wait, as Gadgetzan’s packs came with a strange bug that saw some of the tri-class cards (3 for each crime family) popping up multiple times in the same packs. I’ve even seen a screencap of someone getting a pack that was 4 Kabal Chemists and a Polymorph Potion…

Blizzard to their credit reacted very quickly to the reports of this bug, sending out messages publicly to people that recommended that they not open any Gadgetzan packs they had until the bug had been fixed. Any packs bought during the time the bug was active wouldn’t be affected as the content of a pack are determined upon opening, instead of upon generation like a Loot Box does in Overwatch. The bug was quickly fixed within a few hours, and for those players who had opened their packs and fallen victim to the multiple tri-class bug, Blizzard gave them 33% of the packs that they had as compensation.

Gadgetzan packs should now be available in the Shop for purchase with real money or Gold; and for those who were unable to afford the pre-order 50 packs, Gadgetzan offers at least three expansion-related Daily Quests that you can complete to earn 2 packs per Quest. They’re simple ones too, simply asking for you to get 3 wins with the family’s preferred class (that’s Hunter, Paladin, Warrior for the Grimy Goons; Rogue, Druid and Shaman for the Jade Lotus; and Warlock, Mage and Priest for the Kabal in case you need a refresher) to earn your free packs.

Gadgetzan had a pretty smooth launch in all, despite the duplicate bug and the slight delay in some regions. Some will probably say differently, but then I remember The Grand Tournament’s launch being much more trouble personally. The servers were a nightmare to access for a few days after it launched.

I look forward to seeing how Gadgetzan cards affect the Standard meta, and especially if our own tournament champ Agtheo’s thoughts on it will turn out true.

It’s that time of year again fellow card slingers, when the nights get longer, the weather gets colder, and three factions of organised criminals kick their turf war over a fictional goblin city into high gear. That’s right Hearthstone’s latest expansion ‘Mean Street of Gadgetzan’ finally has a release date and is due to hit us on the first of December, just in time for the new Ranked Play Season.

The first thing that catches the attention when looking at the card list is the introduction of ‘Tri-Class’ cards, here representing membership in one of three crime families, the 20s gangster style Grimy Goons (Hunter, Paladin or Warrior), the Eastern flavoured Jade Lotus (Druid, Rogue or Shaman), or the criminally magical Kabal (Mage, Priest or Warlock).

In terms of actual deck building,at least for me personally these seem more to be there to help thematically define the factions in this expansion rather than cross the lines between the classes, there is no giving overload to druid or ‘choose one’ style cards to rogue within the Jade Lotus faction for example outside of -maybe- getting something useful from another class via each factions ‘Discover’ minion which can reach into the whole clans card pool, but that does not seem reliable enough to build a deck around. At first I was a little let down by this (especially since there are only three card per group), but now that the whole card list has been released the unique ‘themes’ of these factions as supported by the both the Tri-Class cards and cards within each pure class itself become clear and seem to be what will really define this expansion rather than what seems at the moment to be a slightly gimmicky deck building constraint.

The ‘theme’ for the Grimy Goons is buffing cards that are in your hand rather than in play, Jade Lotus are all about the ‘Jade Golem’ mechanic which I will go into more detail on later, and the Kabal have a number of legendaries that require no duplicates in your deck (like Reno Jackson) plus ‘potion’ spells. Think of these more like restricted neutral cards to support specific class strategies rather than expanded class cards in other words.

The above might seem somewhat sacrilicious, and, as with all reviews of a card list not in actual play yet it is quite possible I will be proved wrong by the meta but below are five cards (not in any particular order) that I think exemplify the kind of decks we may be seeing after the expansion hits.

-Note- I’m not going to be talking about how these cards may potentially affect future metas when a new set of expansions gets rolled out  into Wild next year as A) That’s an article all by itself B) We don’t have all the information for yet. C) I’m ill at the moment and can’t quite kick my brain into gear to think that widely at the moment. Anyway, onwards!

It’s probably no surprise that this is the first card that really grabbed my attention during the reveals. I am a fan of Dragon Priest but despite some recent gains it has been hurting for mass removal since the loss of Lightbomb, and I am sure this new card being costed the same is not an accident. Combine this with the new Drakonid Operator, which has good stats, a discover mechanic to get a card from the opponent’s deck, and slots perfectly in at the 5 mana slot and you get the Dragons coming home to Priest after their recent forays into other classes. It’s probably also worth mention the other raft of goodies that Priest has got this expansion too. Potion of madness does the same thing as shadow madness but to minions of one strength lower but at 3 mana less. Combine this with a pint size potion that reduces all enemy minion – 3 attack for a turn to allow for a turn of very favourable trades at a bargain cost and you have the kind of combo I like where each individual component is also strong by itself. I still need to run the numbers but I am also looking forward to trying out Wrathion (who draws cards until you -don’t draw a dragon) and Kabal Talonpriest who  rounds out the theme of ‘value’ here, again with strong stats at 3 mana at 3 and giving another minion + 3 health isn’t a dragon but is just -strong- and is a reminder that in Hearthstone you can have all the flashy combos you like but one of the most consistent ways to win matches is to build around ensuring you play a better ‘value’ card than your opponent at every point along the mana curve, a hallmark of Dragon Priest in particular but perhaps on the Mean Streets there is a new contender for that crown…

I was undecided about whether to put this here or Smuggler’s run which is a spell that does the same thing but for 1 mana but ended up going with the Outfitter due to the potential for bouncing him back to hand with Brewmasters and to actually get a body on the board. Both cards are paladin and for a drop in early tempo with either of these cards (probably both if you are building a deck around this concept) every single other minion in your hand just gets -better-. Often the way of determining the value of a card is to compare cost to stats, the baseline acceptability without tradeoff is generally considered to be that either attack or health should be equal to the mana cost and the other should be one higher (3 mana for a 3 / 4 for example hence why I rated Priest cards with these stat lines -plus- a strong additional ability so highly in the previous section), but with the Outfitter,  the coin, and a deck focused on minions for example you could be looking at 5 / 5 worth of stats for 2 mana as your first play with no major downside. That’s incredible value. At the start of a new season and when a new expansion comes out so do the minion focused ‘face’ decks. While everyone else is still getting used to their new cards and strategies these singularly focused decks know exactly what they are doing and can navigate the maelstrom of uncertainty with ease (until they get to the choppy waters of high up the ranked ladder but the metaphor is getting away from us at this point). It happened with Shaman when Karazahn was coming out and I would be surprised if Paladin rush decks were not somewhat of a thorn in people’s side when the new expansion hits too. Lots of small minions offset with card draw like Coldlight oracle, the new Meanstreet Marshal and potentially space for the new Small Time Recruits (3 mana to draw 3 1 cost minions) spell to help offset the usual issues Paladin and you could just power through opponents before they get a chance to get going. What can possibly help stop a deck of undercosted minions though, well I’m glad you asked…

Perhaps a left field pick as it reactive rather than proactive, but in my opinion this card just straight up takes certain deck archetypes round the back of Fizzgrimble’s Inn and shivs them in the kidneys until Gold comes out. The Paladin decks mentioned above lose all their advantage since the in initial cost doesn’t change and therefore the devolved minions are tiny, not to mention it is a reliable way of stopping those annoying one hit combo murloc decks as it removes the key component minions from the game rather than killing them to be returned by Anyfin Can Happen later. Against other shaman decks it negates the advantage you get from overload minions, and any other deck that relies on specific minions to work (Flamewalker for mage, deathrattle minions for N’zoth) just get massively disrupted. Admittedly you still have to deal with the minions that are left and you -could- end up with some nasty but Shaman is generally fine with board clear on smaller minions. It doesn’t really help with larger creatures with standard costs that are brought in by other means though which may be somewhat pertinent as we will now see…

What is a ‘Jade Golem’? Well the first time you summon one it’s a 1 /1 creature with a nominal cost of 1 mana. So far so unimpressive, but the next time a Jade Golem is summoned it will be a 2 / 2 for 2 mana, the next time it’s a 3 /3 for 3, and so on building on subsequent played cards not unlike the C’thun mechanic. Soon, once you have gotten over a bit of an initial tempo hit to get the first one out every time you summon one you are getting great value for your mana. There are a lot of cards that summon a golem as a battlecry particularly the Tri-Class Cards but I’ve picked this spell as the secondary effect makes it the real workhorse of this kind of deck, to clone itself and shuffle 3 copies back into the decks is just bananas even before you get to the idea of doing both with Fandral Staghelm! Adding back into the deck like this more or less makes it impossible for a fatigue loss which makes certain Control Warrior decks very sad indeed and potentially sets up a similar Druid version of this kind of control deck backed up with healing spells. Jade blossom seems a good spell to get the Golem train rolling as for 3 mana it drops a golem ramps you with an empty mana crystal and there are plenty of other cards along the mana curve to keep it rolling. Unless I have missed something major it is difficult to see how this card will not be one of, if not -the- stand out player of the expansion. Speaking of stand out players we haven’t actually touched on any ‘big legendaries’ yet…

You may have been expecting Kazakus (the Kabal legendary who creates a unique and powerful potion at a specified mana level based on some discover mechanic style choices if you have no duplicates) in this slot but my gut feeling is that he is more of a supporting player to be included once you have already made the decision to make a deck that supports the ‘no duplicate’ mechanic since the unique potion, while potentially powerful does not seem powerful enough to build an entire deck around by itself due to the randomness involved. Neither do the other two class legendaries who have a similar deck building constraint, strong as they are but Krul? Krul seems a lot more like an Old God from the previous expansion, you can build a deck around making sure you have demons in hand, and then getting them all in play on turn 9 in a similar manner to N’Zoth, particularly comboing a Doomguard or two with Mal’ganis, plus with Reno and Kazakus to help you get to endgame (plus it’s not like Warlock has a hard time filling it’s hand up) this could be an interesting deck to keep an eye on. In general it’s worth noting that it seems that this time around the designers have moved away slightly from having big high costs legendaries, Hobart Grapplehammer for Warrior (who buffs all weapons in the deck and hand for 2 mana) and Wickerflame Burnbristle for paladin who has a huge amount of abilities for 3 are good examples of more ‘utility’ legendaries like Bloodmage Thalnos from the base set which is a nice direction to be going in that adds flavour to the classes rather than just raw game ending power.

I think that’s my main takeaway from this card list, there’s a lot of flavour here between the Tri-Class factions and inexplicably motorcycle riding pigmen and it seems there are a -lot- of new mechanics here to be tried out and experimented with that I am sure will be expanded on in future. Apologies if I did not touch on your favourite class here or missed an ‘obvious’ card but these were the ones that jumped out at me like a cutpurse to a humble tourist, on the Mean Streets of Gadgetzan.