As we celebrate BlizzCon together, we’re excited to keep making the Tavern a place that’s open and inviting to everyone. Often, when we talk to players who have been away for a while, or who are looking to try Hearthstone for the first time, they tell us they’re most concerned with building up their collections.

Today, we announced new Catch-Up Packs—game-changing packs designed to get you caught up to the new expansion. Each Catch-Up Pack contains up to 50 cards! We’re giving everybody some Catch-Up Packs for free and we’ve added a ton to both Showdown in the Badlands Pre-Purchase Bundles at no extra cost. For players with small Standard collections, this can mean hundreds of extra cards!* Come find out how.

* A player with no current Standard collection who opens 30 Catch-Up Packs will receive over 1000 cards!

What Are Catch-Up Packs?
 

Catch-Up Packs are a new type of Hearthstone Pack that include a variable number of cards in them—between 5 and 50 cards per pack—based on the percentage of prior Standard expansion cards you’ve already received.

These first Catch-Up Packs are specifically Badlands Catch-Up Packs. They’re designed to catch you up to our upcoming expansion by including cards from the five prior Standard card expansions: Voyage to the Sunken City, Murder at Castle Nathria, March of the Lich King, Festival of Legends, and TITANS.

These Badlands Catch-Up Packs will always include cards from those five sets, and only those five sets, regardless of when you open them. If we do Catch-Up Packs for a different set in the future, we’ll make a new type of Catch-Up Pack at that time.

Badlands Catch-Up Packs will be able to be opened with the launch of Showdown in the Badlands, on November 14!

How Do Catch-Up Packs Work?
 

Here are all the tasty details:

• Number of Cards: Each Badlands Catch-Up Pack includes 1-10 cards from each of the five included sets, for a total of 5-50 cards per pack. The number of cards you get from each set is based on the percentage of cards you’ve received* from that set:
  • 25% or less of that set: 10 cards from that set
  • 75% or more of that set: 1 card from that set
  • Between 25% and 75% completion: scales with collection completion percentage
• Rarity Distribution: At least 20% (rounded up) of the cards in each Catch-Up Pack will be a Rare or better. The overall rarity distribution for Catch-Up Packs is the same as normal packs.
• Quality: All cards are normal quality (non-Golden).
• First Legendary Guarantee: One Legendary in the first 50 cards from each expansion (yes, that means you get to capture five different Legendary offering bonuses in these packs).
• Mass Pack Opening: You can Mass Pack Open up to 20 Catch-Up Packs at once.

See the full Pack Disclosure Site for more details.

* Like duplicate protection, this counts any cards you’ve received from the set, including any cards you crafted, regardless of whether you later disenchanted cards. Collection percentage only counts up to 2 copies of each Common, Rare, and Epic card, and 1 copy of each Legendary card.

How Do I Get Catch-Up Packs?
 

Catch-Up Packs have also been added to both Showdown in the Badlands Pre-Purchase bundles: 10 in the regular Pre-Purchase bundle and 20 in the Pre-Purchase Mega Bundle!* Everyone attending BlizzCon in person, or who purchased either BlizzCon Collection level, gets 3 Catch-Up Packs automatically added to their BlizzCon goodies. There will also be a free login reward of 2 Catch-Up Packs, and an event that grants 5 Catch-Up Packs with Patch 28.0—more details on those are coming in the 28.0 Patch Notes. Also in Patch 28.0, Catch-Up Packs will be added to the new and returning player experience. Finally, there will be bundle offers in the Shop that include Catch-Up Packs.

Badlands Catch-Up Packs unlock with Showdown in the Badlands, on November 14—that's when you’ll be able to open any Catch-Up Packs you get before then.

* These have been added to the accounts of people who already got their Pre-Purchase Bundles.

We’re really excited to see how Catch-Up Packs open Hearthstone up to all our players—those who are brand new, those who play every day, and all those in-between! We can’t wait to see you in the Tavern.