The holiday season is in full swing, and not be left out of the festive activities, Overwatch is back with their Winter Wonderland event. The limited-time event includes holiday decorations on some maps, four arcade modes, three new weekly challenges, and of course some festive, new cosmetic items. 

Winter Wonderland Arcade Modes, Mei’s Snowball Fight, and Yeti Hunter are back along with a new addition for this year, Freezethaw Elimination, which is just a fancier way of saying Freeze Tag. This new challenge based on the traditional 3v3 mode has teams of 4 attempting to freeze, aka get a kill, on their opponents. However, instead of being out for the match, players will be frozen within a block of ice. That block can be unfrozen by their teammates. Careful though, there is a small defrosting period after you’ve been unfrozen by your ally. Rounds end once all enemy players are ice blocks. 

I had the chance to hop into a few Freezethaw matches this week and in terms of strat, keep an eye on the enemy ice blocks. Just as you need to watch those backcaps in Quickplay, the same applies here. Don’t let a sneaky Tracer try to unfreeze their allies while you’re fighting someone else. Stick as a group too, much easier to defrost one another if you’re sticking close by. And as always, a more balanced group made up of multiple roles will fare far better than without. 

Arcade modes are a quick way to help secure those nine wins to unlock one of the three new Weekly Challenge skins!

Keep in mind the above three skins are only available through the Weekly Challenges so don’t forget to log into the game and get those wins during the event times, which may vary depending on your location. 

If like me you’ve been hoarding your in-game gold for just the right occasion, you’ll be happy to see that this year’s cosmetic releases are nothing short of epic. These cosmetics include voice lines, emotes, sprays, and of course skins. I immediately purchased Ice Empress Moira because... LOOK AT HER. 

Conductor Reinhardt also comes with a fitting new sound effect for his charge…

And of course, if you missed last year’s skins, you can now purchase them at 1,000 coins, instead of 3,000.

The update also includes winter aesthetic updates added to the following maps, Blizzard World, King’s Row, Hanamura, Ecolab, and the Black Forest.