Slightly more than a week has passed since the release of **Hearthstone: Across The Timeways**, Blizzard’s latest expansion for its long-running digital card game. This expansion introduced some bold new mechanics, with one of the biggest being the introduction of **Fabled cards**. These cards bring three special synergistic cards into a player’s deck for every class, marking a departure from the traditional Legendary cards typically expected in Hearthstone.
While every class received three Fabled cards, there was one notable exception: the Warlock. The Warlock got a special **Fabled+ card** designed after Hearthstone’s most recognizable villain, Rafaam. The 10-Cost **Timethief Rafaam** adds 10 extra cards into the player’s deck, making it one of the most unique ideas to come to Hearthstone in recent times. It was a point of pride for developers like Senior Game Designer Stephen Chang and UI/UX Designer Sola Chang.
“I think Rafaam didn’t change that much from initial conception,” Stephen Chang told Shacknews. “We had the idea of doing Rafaam fairly early on, and we knew we wanted Rafaam to be Fabled+. Most of the changes we did during final design were modifications to make some of the Rafaams a bit more playable and stronger. Because the deck grows to a size of 40, we needed to ensure that you had enough strong plays to get you to the end game. So we juiced up some of the Rafaams along the way, but holistically, I think most of the designs stayed the same.”
The ten Rafaam cards all share equal Cost, Attack, and Health values but differ in power level due to their varied effects. This approach left room for creative freedom, which also led to a few minor changes. Stephen Chang explained, “A few of them, we modified slightly to be a bit more generically playable. I think one of the Discover ones we modified, and then we gave [Mindflayer R’faam]—that summons a copy—Taunt to give it more board presence. But overall, it’s kind of a testament to the initial design team. A lot of the designs went through the whole process and were not that modified, which was really cool. It’s not common that that happens, but we had a lot of good initial ideas of the types of mechanics that we wanted to highlight these characters. And a lot of the essence of those designs stayed true throughout the whole set.”
Playing all ten Rafaam cards triggers a final Battlecry from the 10-Cost Timethief Rafaam that destroys the enemy hero, usually ending the game immediately. While Rafaam’s game-ending effect feels special, there was a time when he wasn’t the only one who nearly had it. The Rogue class was close to gaining a similar effect with the 4-Cost **Garona Halforcen**.
“Garona used to also destroy the hero, but we didn’t like that the damage that [the Rogue player] dealt throughout the game wasn’t going to have as much of an impact,” Stephen Chang explained. “So we wanted it to be a bit more impactful, so that as you were dealing damage throughout the game, you could still get that bonus effect on top of it. So a few of the outputs did change, but for Rafaam itself, [the effect] was always to destroy the enemy hero.”
As the Hearthstone community continues to explore the game’s latest meta, Blizzard also offered a sneak peek at the new **Rewind mechanic**, which allows for second-chance effects on specific cards. While this effect fits well with the heroic Keeper of Time, Chromie, the accompanying visual flair led to longer turn times than preferred—something Blizzard consciously addressed prior to the expansion’s release.
UI/UX Designer Sola Chang shared insights on the effort behind this: “The reason why we’re doing [the Rewind animation] is not only to tie it to a part of the fantasy, but because there’s some technical implementation that requires us to cover the screen as we reset the board to undo the actions if you Rewind. So when we worked on that, there was a lot of work and time spent into making that as efficient as we can.”
She continued, “We read and heard a lot of comments from the community and the players, so the engineering team and a lot of game devs came together to really do their best to make that a faster experience. We definitely have some updates coming out very soon to make that time a bit faster, so we’re super excited for that update to come out and I’m hoping the players will enjoy that new experience with that Rewind animation.”
With these innovations and ongoing improvements, Blizzard continues to evolve Hearthstone, balancing fresh mechanics with player feedback to keep the game engaging and dynamic.
https://www.shacknews.com/article/146793/hearthstone-across-the-timeways-developer-interview