Blizzard released its next expansion for Hearthstone and the first for the Year of the Dragon this week.

The expansion draws inspiration from past expansions including Whispers of the Old Gods, Kobolds & Catacombs as well has The Witchwood, among others.

Rise of Shadows also presents a different tack for Hearthstone expansions. This expansion will be the first in a three-part adventure that will play out out across the year.

Naturally, a new expansion means new cards which you require you part ways with your money or the in-game currency you’ve been grinding for.

The folks over at Megarom were kind enough to send us 80 packs to start our Rise of Shadows collection to which we added 27 to using the in-game gold we’ve been saving since February.

So, the question then is how well does 107 packs round out your collection?

Did we get every card in the collection? No, but then we also didn’t expect to. Our results are better than they were with Rastakhan’s Rumble but we also opened more packs this time around. We will say that the number of golden Legendary cards we opened was great.

For anybody that hasn’t logged into Hearthstone yet we urge you to do so. The reason for this is because you get a copy of the Legendary neutral minion, Archmage Vargoth for free.

Blizzard also has a number of Legendary Quests that will play out over the first five days of the Rise of Shadows’ release. The quests and the rewards you’ll earn are outlined below.

• Day 1 – Play 25 Cards in Play mode
  Rewards: 1 Rise of Shadows card pack & 1 The Witchwood card pack
• Day 2 – Play 5 Games in Play mode
  Rewards: 1 Rise of Shadows card pack & 1 The Boomsday Project card pack
• Day 3 – Draw 20 Cards in any mode
  Rewards: 1 Rise of Shadows card pack & 1 Rastakhan’s Rumble card pack
• Day 4 – Win 1 Game in Play Mode
  Rewards: 1 Rise of Shadows card pack & 1 The Witchwood card pack
• Day 5 – Play 100 Cards
  Rewards: 1 Rise of Shadows card pack, 1 The Boomsday Project card pack, 1 The Witchwood card pack, and 1 Rastakhan’s Rumble card pack

But wait, there is more!

Between now and 15th April you can purchase the Shadow Bundle for €9.99. The bundle contains seven Rise of Shadows packs, two bonus packs and one Arena ticket.

There will also be a single player adventure launching in the future but details about that are thin on the ground at the moment.

Of course we haven’t touched on whether Rise of Shadows is fun to play. We’ve played a few games with Whizbang decks as well as a Thief Rogue deck and the matches have been close. The Twinspell mechanic is great but the Scheme cards that were introduced seem a bit over powered.

We’ll be playing Rise of Shadows for the next week and we’ll report back on our experience when we feel we have a good grasp of the meta.