It’s been a crazy couple of months in Hearthstone. The Tavern Brawl game mode and the recently announced “Grand Tournament” card set have been a one-two punch to put the spring back in Hearthstone’s step, particularly after the relatively lackluster impact of the dragon cards in Blackrock Mountain. But what makes these new features so interesting?

“Better gameplay rewards” have been a big sticking point when new and professional Hearthstone players suggest updates to the game. Card backs are nice but rarely encourage pushing forward into ranked mode due to their low rank requirements, and Arena is great fun but can also be very frustrating if you haven’t quite gotten the hang of how to pick winning cards.

Tavern Brawl created the best of both worlds: card packs as rewards and no barrier to entry. The game mode also comes with lots of crazy variety, so players that are jaded about the hordes of Patron Warriors and Face Hunters can go into Brawls and have a lot of fun, depending on the week. It’s a little disappointing to see the truly great Tavern Brawls disappear every week, such as The Great Summoner Competition, but that just gives us something to look forward to when game modes return later.

This variety is the most fantastic thing about Tavern Brawls, because literally anything can happen every week. We’ve already seen everything from random pre-made decks to Adventure Bosses dueling for supremacy, and the potential doesn’t end there. With the Grand Tournament set coming next month I could easily see a week where the Brawl is pre-made decks using the new cards, much like Trump, Amaz, and Firebat used in the Grand Tournament announcement matches.

Since Hearthstone is such a community-driven game I could even see Blizzard using the Tavern Brawl for community competitions. Much like Team Fortress 2’s WAR! Update that pitted Demoman and Soldier players against each other for class-specific items, Hearthstone could call on players to make decisions about upcoming content. For example, if Blizzard decides to make a new class they could ask players to pick a side, such as Death Knight versus Monk, and then whichever side wins the most Tavern Brawls that week would have whatever character they represented get made first.

The Grand Tournament set is the second bit of excitement in Hearthstone these days. As I’m writing this we’ve only seen about twenty-five cards, but the new “Inspire” effect has such huge potential to change the game that I’m sure we’re going to see Hearthstone open up in incredible new ways.

Let’s just take one example: Justicar Trueheart (pictured above). Whether or not she’s any good or will be used competitively is a question for another day and lots of playtesting, but what’s important here is simply the fact that she exists. Trueheart, and other cards like Garrison Commander or Silver Hand Regent, show the level that Blizzard is willing to go to shake up the game and make it fresh again. Goblins vs. Gnomes lightly pushed that door open but The Grand Tournament looks like it’s going to kick the door down and take over your couch.

What’s so great about changing hero powers? It changes the entire dynamic of the game. If we go back to Trueheart as the example:

-Giving a Warrior the ability to gain four armor not only makes their control game better but it also increases the value of Shield Slam exponentially.

-A Priest with Trueheart will be able to either heal their own creatures enough to negate most common four and five-drops with just two mana, or deal four damage with Auchenai Soulpriest.

-Druids could deal more damage faster on the way to Force of Nature/Savage Roar while absorbing more damage from the other player.

Simply put, Trueheart shows Blizzard’s willingness to push Hearthstone in new directions. Just imagine what else Blizzard could reveal in The Grand Tournament. Paladins could gain a whole set of cards based around Inspire and Silver Hand Recruits, Priests could have a minion that heals friendly minions whenever their Inspire effect activates, or there could be any number of equivalents to Nexus-Champion Saraad that add anything from random dragons to random demons to your hand/the field whenever they’re Inspired.

There are plenty of other cards in this expansion already that just shine with similar potential, both in terms of their own playability and what it could mean for other cards in the set. The Mage’s Coldarra Drake’s ability to use your hero power any number of times could lead to serious hijinks if other classes get their hands on it. Priests healing ten HP in a turn (or more), Jaraxxus summoning five Infernals, or even making Majordomo Executus playable by letting you spam Ragnaros’ hero power the turn he’s summoned.

Naturally the Majordomo point is something that a Mage could do on his or her own, but that’s half the beauty of good expansions: they make older cards or underused classes better. Considering the number of incredible Shaman cards and potential combos that we’ve seen already, I’d say the next few months are going to be very exciting.