Hearthstone’s New ‘Shrink Ray’ Card May Bring Back Control Paladin

Hearthstone‘s next expansion, The Boomsday Project, is coming up, and as is the tradition, Blizzard is rolling out cards progressively up to the release. GameSpot has just had its own reveal for the new Paladin spell Shrink Ray. You can watch the video above for our reveal, but there’s lots to unpack when it comes to this card, so we’ve put together an in-depth analysis about what this means for Hearthstone and its meta.

The Shrink Ray card is a clear signal that Control Paladin is primed to make a comeback. That’s no small feat. Mike Donais told us that the design team tries to push classes into directions where they’re currently under-developed. Control Paladin was a mainstay of vanilla Hearthstone and lasted through the first few expansions, but more recently expansions have consistently pushed it into a more aggressive direction. Cards like Shrink Ray may be enough to bring it back. The name comes from the ability to control the battlefield and outlast your opponent into the late-game, and this could just be the tool Paladin needs.

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Why? In short, it’s a one-card answer to a big board. Paladins have long relied on powerful combos like Equality-Consecration or Wild Pyromancer to clear the board and reset. But if you drew only one part of the combo, you were still out-of-luck. The new card provides a cleaner answer, which could still be combined with Wild Pyromancer in a pinch if you absolutely need a (rather expensive) total board wipe. More often, it will simply make your enemies much less threatening, giving you a chance to heal and reassert board dominance.

It also synergizes well with the Paladin Hero Power, making your 1/1 Silver Hand Recruits able to contest anything the opponent has on the board. On top of that, it fits well into Odd Paladin, with double the Recruits to take down the newly weakened enemy minions. We may also see Paladins experiment with Egg-based decks, since this card gives them an easy way to activate Eggs and makes them extremely easy to break.

Hearthstone: The Boomsday Project launches August 7. Two pre-order bundles are now available–a $50 for 50 pack bundle with a free golden legendary and card back, and a separate $80 for 80 pack bundle that also throws in the Warlock hero Mecha-Jaraxxus. Check out our full gallery of all the revealed cards so far.

First Look at Netflix’s Shapeshifter Drama The Innocents

Teenagers go through a lot of changes, but Netflix’s new supernatural series The Innocents is taking those growing pains to another level. The show follows two star-crossed high-schoolers, Harry (Percelle Ascott) and June (Sorcha Groundsell), who run away from their overprotective families to start a new life together, only to discover that June has the power to shapeshift. Unfortunately for them, it’s not quite as cool or useful as the X-Men would have us believe – instead, it’s a painful, confusing, and traumatic ordeal, and one of many discoveries that June will make about who she is and where she comes from.

Netflix revealed a first look behind the scenes of the atmospheric new drama series over the weekend, which you can check out below.

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League of Legends Reveals New Game Mode, and It’s Not Battle Royale

League of Legends developer Riot Games has announced a new game mode, dubbed Nexus Blitz. It’s the first of a new, community-driven method of testing possible additional game modes called Experimental Modes.

In a board post written by gameplay producer Michael “SpaceNorth” Chu, Riot detailed how these Experimental Modes differ from other timed content like the Ultra Rapid Fire mode that comes and goes: “With experimental modes, we’re looking for something that could last a while—maybe even as a permanent addition to League.”

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No, Kingdom Hearts 3’s Play Length Has Not Been Confirmed

Despite reports suggesting Kingdom Hearts 3 will have a campaign of around 40-50 hours, and additional content bolstering that number to an estimated 80 hours, Square Enix has not yet actually settled on the final length of the anticipated sequel.

A preview report from Geek.com of Kingdom Hearts 3 published earlier this month suggested those play time estimations had been confirmed. That would make for one of the longest main campaigns in the Kingdom Hearts franchise, and the news of this lengthy play time was reported by a number  of outlets as confirmation of KH3’s official length earlier this week.

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Destiny 2: Forsaken – Legendary Collection Contains All Destiny 2 Expansions

The Destiny 2: Forsaken – Legendary Collection will be arriving day-and-date with the launch of the latest Destiny 2 expansion, Forsaken, on September 4, and will include the base game, Curse of Osiris, Warmind, and of course, Forsaken.

Announced by Bungie alongside a new trailer, this collection will retail for $59.99 USD and will include everything needed to enjoy this latest adventure, as Forsaken requires players to own all previous expansions to play.

While this collection includes all previous content, it does not include the Destiny 2 Annual Pass which will grant access to three smaller expansions – Black Armory (Winter 2018), Joker’s Wild (Spring 2019), and Penumbra (Summer 2019).

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HBO Orders Time Traveler’s Wife Adaptation from Sherlock Boss

HBO is developing a TV adaptation of The Time Traveler’s Wife from Sherlock co-creator Steven Moffat.

The network has given a straight to series order for the project, based on the novel of the same name by Audrey Niffenegger. A premiere date for the series has not been set yet.

The story centers on Henry, a man who time travels unpredictably because of a genetic disorder, and his complicated marriage with Clare.

Moffat will write and executive produce the series alongside Sue Vertue and Brian Minchin. New Line Cinema also developed a 2009 film adaptation of the book which stars Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams.

“We are thrilled to be partnering with Steven Moffat, Hartswood and WBTV on The Time Traveler’s Wife,” HBO president of programming Casey Bloys said. “Steven’s passion is evident in every project he’s written and we are certain that his love and respect for this mesmerizing and textured novel will make it a quintessential HBO series.”

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Why Avengers: Infinity War’s Directors Filmed Those Thanos Snaps That Way

Avengers: Infinity War directors Joe and Anthony Russo have explained the thought process behind some of the choices they made with the film’s ending.

Warning: Spoilers for Avengers: Infinity War follow…

During the bonus features for the movie’s DigitalHD release, per ComicBook.com, the Russo brothers revealed how they chose who would perish at the hands of Thanos and his Infinity Gauntlet. The directors had to decide which characters’ demise would be the most emotional for the other superheroes.

“In terms of our choices of who Thanos would end up eradicating with his snap, it was very story focused,” Anthony Russo said. “How do we pay off each individual character story most profoundly?”

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Valve Removes Scam Game From Steam, Bans Developer

Abstractism, a simple platformer made by developer Okalo Union, has been removed from Steam following allegations that the game was running a cryptojacking program in the background of player’s computers. Okalo Union, along with publisher dead.team, have disappeared from Steam as well.

As reported by Steamed, a branch of Kotaku, Abstractism has been accused of secretly using player’s resources to mine for cryptocurrency. Players first became suspicious after the game was taxing their CPUs and GPUs, despite being graphically simplistic. Reviews of the game on Steam claimed it installed a virus disguising it as a steam.exe process.

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Stephen King’s It: Chapter 2’s Adult Cast Revealed In New Image

It’s sometimes hard to keep track of all the Stephen King movie and TV adaptations that have been released recently, and there’s plenty more to come. But there was one movie last year that exceeded the rest in terms of audience numbers, and that was the hugely successful It. The film grossed more than $700 million worldwide, making it one of the most successful horror movies of all time, and the sequel is set for release next year.

It: Chapter 2 is currently in production, and a new image from the set has been released. The movie is set 30 years after the first film, and it follows the adult versions of the kids in the original. While we’ve already seen a picture of the adult cast at a pre-production script reading, this is the first shot of them all in character. Check it out below, via Slashfilm‘s Chris Evangelista:

It: Chapter 2 stars Jessica Chastain as Beverly, James McAvoy as Bill, Bill Hader as Richie, James Ransone as Eddie, Andy Bean as Stan, and Isaiah Mustafa as Mike, plus Bill Skarsgård as the terrifying clown Pennywise. It’s directed by Andy Muschietti, who helmed the first movie, and hits theaters on September 6, 2019.

In an interview last year, Muschietti explained that while the movie would focus on the adult characters, the young cast will still play a part. In King’s novel, the two timelines are told side-by-side, elements of which will remain in the sequel.

“In my opinion, it can’t only be about adults,” he told The Independent. “Something that I love about the book is the dialogue between the two timelines because, ultimately, it’s a story about childhood. It’s a love letter to childhood, but it’s also a story of the death of childhood. It’s symbolic, of course, because when Pennywise describes himself as the eater of worlds, he’s not talking about a monster that eats planets; he’s talking about eating the world of imagination and magic.”