After refusing to add the fan-favorite Death Knight class for many, many years at this point, Blizzard has finally relented and given the players exactly what they want. As is to be expected, the new Death Knight class brings with it a variety of unique and interesting mechanics to explore, as well as a sizable amount of class cards to help facilitate all of that.

The most exciting new feature are the Runes whose combinations determine which Death Knight cards you can add to your deck. You can choose to devote yourself fully to one Rune in order to really leverage the strength of a certain type of cards, or mix and match in order to create a deck that suits your needs. It's a fairly simple system to understand, yet it offers a great deal of complexity, so I must admit I'm quite a big fan of the idea.

You can read more about the Death Knight class, their mechanics and the design decisions that went into it all, over at the developer deep dive.

Besides the Death Knight class, the March of the Lich King expansion has also brought with it a whole host of new cards to play around with, as well as a couple of new types and mechanics to keep an eye out for:

• Undead have been added as a brand new minion type for both new and old cards

• In order to make the above even remotely feasible, Hearthstone has now made it so minions can have two types! For example, World of Warcraft's often memed-about mount Invincible is both undead and a beast.

• Manathirst is a brand new keyword that gives you bonuses if you have at least a certain number of mana crystals. It's well worth noting that you don't need to spend that extra mana in order to trigger the effect. Simply having enough is all that matters.

How these mechanics translate into actual cards, as well as what exactly the March of the Lich King expansion even brings to the table, that you can find out over at the official card gallery.

Have fun exploring new deck ideas, and I'll leave you with the cinematic trailer which also shows off some of the new Death Knight cards in action: