There were to discussion threads made for this card when it revealed. One was made by me, and the other was made by Tomisnthere. Even though I made my thread first, my thread was locked in favor of his thread.
Warrior is the only class in which every Legendary costs a different amount.
This is the second collectable Warrior Beast in the game, preceded by Fierce Monkey.
Here we have our Legendary minion for Warriors, a giant, blood-thirsty dinosaur. The obvious combo that everyone is spotting is to play Whirlwind, then play this to kill everything on the board and leave a 9/7 on the board. Essentially a Deathwing without discarding your hand, though it does require a combo of two cards and you get less stats (9/7 as opposed to 12/12). Everyone’s got mixed opinions of this card. Some stating that the card is good and can potentially bring back Control Warrior in a meta with Jade Golems. Others thinking that the card is bad because it's a combo of two cards you need to draw, it's just a 9/7 for 9 if you don’t draw the Whirlwind, and/or it's just too slow. Others additionally believe that Brawl would just be better most of the time. While true that it may not be the most reliable or OP thing in the world, you've got to admit that the combo with Whirlwind is at the very least, amusing.
Normally Warrior does have other Whirlwind effects such as Ravaging Ghoul or Revenge, but at the cost of 9, you can't really combo it well with either of those cards without Emperor Thaurissan, in which both him and Revenge are rotating out. This means that in Standard, the only card that you can combo him with is Whirlwind. However, you don't HAVE to use Whirlwind. If you have minions of your own, you can damage your opponent's minions to use that instead. That won't be as reliable or as cool as comboing with Whirlwind, but it can work fine if you use it. As it is a dinosaur, it is a Beast. Normally, that would mean nothing in Warrior, but instead, it actually allows you to make use of The Curator to force draw this card to make the combo easier (as of now, Warrior uses The Curator more than any other class, so it also makes sense there).
Has potential to be pretty good in Standard. It's even better in Wild because there you have Thaurissan and Death's Bite.
When Mike Donais said there would be two good 1-drops for Hunter, I'm sure a lot people freaked the hell out. 1-drops are probably the most toxic cost slot in the game, as aggressive 1-drops equal aggressive meta. Not to mention, we also have the Hunter Quest, The Marsh Queen which this card works well with because it acts as two 1-drops, just like Fire Fly. And EVERYONE was praising the living crap out of that card, even before this card was revealed.
The card is a lot like White Eyes. You initially play it as a normal minion, and then upon dying, shuffles an overstated minion into your deck to draw later (which in the case of this card is a 1 mana 4/3). Should you happen to draw that 4/3 on your next turn, you’ll be in a good spot but later in the game, a 1 mana 4/3 won't be as impactful. Of course, you do actually have to draw the card later on, but that my friends is where the Tol'vir Warden comes into play to force draw two of your 1-drops, maybe this could be it.
Realistically, I think this card is about the same power level as White Eyes. Good, but not game-breaking.
Two Hunter cards in a row! It was revealed to us by Hafu who made a very interesting reveal video with this card. Do you remember Princess Huhuran from WoTOG, and the very little amount of play it saw? Of course you do, we all do. The card didn't work as the card was a Legendary and too expensive. At 5 mana, you couldn't really combo it too well with most things. This card is better in that regard as it costs 3 so you can combo it easier (and you can get the dream of copying Savannah Highmane's Deathrattle) and it's a Rare so you can put two copies of it in your deck.
As also stated by Hafu in her reveal video, the 3-drop slot for Hunters already has a lot of options. You have Animal Companion, Eaglehorn Bow, Cloaked Huntress, Shaky Zipgunner, as well as non-curve plays like Unleash the Hounds and Kill Command. Obviously, not all of these would be considered for the same deck type, but even then, you still have choices to make. It’s an interesting decision to make but if a Deathrattle Hunter deck were to come up, this would make it for sure. Of course, Deathrattle Hunter didn’t work in WoTOG, and we’re about to see a rotation. It has potential though.
Now for something a little out of the ordinary, we have a Beast related to Elementals. If you played an Elemental last turn, you Adapt this minion. While Adapt is cool for adapting (heh) to your situation, this card has the same problem as Verdant Longneck, in which there are some adaptation that make this not a very good card. Massive for example: You would never run Ironfur Grizzly in your deck, so why would you put a situational Ironfur Grizzly in your deck? Especially one where the tribes don't work together. This is a Beast (which is fitting, it is a Lizard after all), that only works with Elementals. There's just a bit of a clash there.
Some of them are pretty good like Rocky Carapace, a 3/6 for 3 is pretty good, or Crackling Shield, basically a bigger Shielded Minibot. But none of the others are really too good as most of the cards I compared it to in "Comparable Cards" don’t really see play, and they don't have a condition. You just play it and you're good to go. The power of adapting is nice, but most of the results you get aren't really too great. A vanilla 3 mana 4/4 (Volcanic Might) for example isn't really too game-breaking, and to be honest, I don't think we’re that far away from a vanilla 3 mana 4/4.
So, I think this card is pretty weak overall, because the power level of most of the adaptations aren’t really too good, and it requires you to be playing Elementals to work.
And now we're going to review a better Adapt card. Do you remember Quartermaster and Muster for Battle, to summon a bunch of little dudes, and then give each of them +2/+2? Well, this card does the same thing with Adapt. "Pressing the button" is basically what we all do in Paladin. We all summon a bunch of little dudes to fight for us, and those little dudes are always scarier than they seem. Just have some recruits out, play this, and you can Adapt them anyway you want. Give them Rocky Carapace, Volcanic Might or Crackling Shield to make them survive better. Give them Massive to create a wall. Give them Poison Spit to make them a much more deadly threat which can kill a really huge minion.
We may no longer have Muster for Battle, but we do have two other cards to fix that issue. Stand Against Darkness and Lost in the Jungle. The former of those two may not be very good, but the latter is. Without Lost in the Jungle, I think I would just rate this as "Average", but with Lost in the Jungle, you can easily pay 5 mana to get 5/6 worth of stats on the board, and Adapt your two Silver Hand Recruits. Ideally, you'll want to give them a way to survive cards like Maelstrom Portal, but there will be times when basically any adaptation will do fine. It allows to it be rated "Good" in my opinion. The card could perhaps be better if we see another card which summons Silver Hand Recruits.
Hunter is one of 6 classes to have their class name featured in a card name. Other classes that share this trait include Druid, Mage, Priest, Shaman and Warrior.
Along with Ragnaros, Elise and Medivh, Hemet is one of 4 characters to appear in two different places in the game, not including the WoTOG expansion.
Hemet Nesingwary appears as a boss in the tutorial mode.
This is the first card in the game which destroys cards in a deck.
We've seen 3 out of 5 Neutral Legendaries so far.
REVIEW:
This is the card that Trump has revealed for us, and this is one of the most bizarre I've ever seen in my life. When you play it, you get rid of every card in your deck that costs 3 or less. So far, the reaction of this card is one of the most mixed I think I’ve ever seen.
Some people are really happy with this card and think it will be a very good (some are even calling it broken), whereas others think that it's just a pile of trash. Some people may look at this card and go "WTF, why would I ever want to do that?" In reality, the effect does have some applications. Maybe not viable ones, but they do exist. What this card allows you to do is remove all early game cards in your deck so you don't topdeck them later in the game where they most likely won’t be useful. As every single card you’re drawing from this point costs at least 4 mana, it allows you to maximize your mana usage more effectively. Notably, this allow the Holy Wrath deck to work more consistently, but I don't think that deck will become viable from this card alone, or ever, really.
The card however will most likely remove key spells from your deck. For example, you no longer can Kill Command as Hunter, Innervate as Druid, Hex as Shaman, or play any Secrets, and the list goes on and on. The deck specifically needs to be built around this card to work. In a deck tailor made for this card, it can do some pretty amazing things, even if that deck is a bit gimmicky in some regard.
If you weren't hyped for Elementals now, you should be now because this is an insane Elemental card. Yes, you can only put it into an Elemental deck, and you'll actually have to play one last turn, but that’s no problem for them at all. When you play this, you get a 6/6 for 7, and you deal 5 damage to anything. Dealing 5 damage is worth about 3.33 (repeating) mana, so playing this is about paying 3.66 (also repeating) mana to summon a 6/6 Elemental, so it does also trigger the Elemental trigger.
I thought Stone Sentinel was good, but this card may just have replaced Stone Sentinel in your Elemental Shaman, or maybe you run one of each? In an Elemental Shaman, you can go from a turn 6 Fire Elemental, turn 7 either this or Stone Sentinel, then into Kalimos, Primal Lord on turn 8. The point is, the card is really good mana value wise. It'll be an auto-include in all Elemental decks to come, and it's Neutral so any class looking to use it, can.
Just like Servant of Yogg-Saron, this is a 5 mana minion that mentions the name of another card. This card has a reveresed statline compared to that card.
Just like its "boss card" (literally), all four of the main elements can be seen in action here.
Elemental is the fifth tribal tag to receive a specific Discover card for it, preceded by Beast, Mech, Dragon and Murloc (in that order).
More Elementals. More hype. Indeed! So, you play it and you get to Discover an Elemental. Discover of course naturally has the ability to be flexible. You can Discover a Fire Elemental to fill out your curve. You can Discover a Blazecaller for additional damage. You can Discover a Stone Sentinel or Tar Creeper to get additional Taunts on the board. You can Discover Kalimos, Primal Lord for more Legendary action. Hell, if you really need to, you can even Discover a Fire Fly for more Elemental activators.
Now there could easily be a 4-drop Elemental revealed later, but as of now, the only 4-drop Elementals we have are Water Elemental, Lightspawn and Rumbling Elemental (and Fireguard Destroyer, but that Overloads for 1 so you won't be able to play this next turn anyway, and Rumbling Elemental is rotating out), and you can't really do that as a Shaman, but you can do that in Mage and Priest (because Priest will be getting Elementals). But of course, we do have Fire Fly to give you two triggers. So, I still think it will be pretty good in that regard. It however could easily get a lot better.
As stated here, Volcanosaur says "Adapt, then Adapt" because Dean Ayala thought it sounded cooler. Despite that though, this card still says "Adapt twice".
This is the second Warlock Beast in the game, preceded by Clutchmother Zavas.
Well Warlocks got an interesting card. It's another Beast to go into the mystery new Beast Warlock deck. It's one with a very interesting effect. Just like Void Terror, you kill off your own stuff for a benefit (Void Terror often gave you a large minion and a Nerubian from Nerubian Egg). This however will allow you to Adapt, then Adapt… or sorry, Adapt twice. Unlike Void Terror, in which killing a small 1/1 minion would just give you a 3 mana 4/4, this allows killing them to actually be worth it because you can kill a 1/1, and up giving this guy +3/+3 (Flaming Claws + Rocky Carapace), giving you a 4 mana 7/7 (memes), and effectively giving you a net benefit of +2/+2.
While useful in Standard with effects like Possessed Villager and Runic Egg, where this guy will particularly shine in is Wild where you'll have access to Imp Gang Boss, Imp-losion, Nerubian Egg, as well as Power Overwhelming to eat a guy that would die anyway, effectively giving you a REALLY powerful 4 mana creature with no real downside. Even Dreadsteed in Wild will give you value because the Dreadsteed will just come back.
Galvadon was leaked a few days before the first set of cards on March 17th were revealed. He was leaked with no effect but was speculated to have this exact effect.
Galvadon's effect was confirmed about 3 or 4 hours before his Quest was revealed.
Galvadon is the only minion from a Quest that isn't a 5 mana 8/8, instead being a 5 mana 5/5.
Fellow HearthPwner veldinn made a simulator to simulate the effect of Galvadon, here.
The word "kaleidosaur" is a portmanteau of the words "kaleidoscope" and "dinosaur". A kaleidoscope is an optics device that allows someone to see one given pattern in multiple different areas at the same time.
Well, after all of the waiting for The Last Kaleidosaur to be revealed, we finally received it. Well, not everyone's happy about it. The Quest is very interesting, but just like the Rogue Quest, The Caverns Below, it requires more commitment than most of the other Quests do. Instead of simply summoning minion types like some other Quests, you actually have to summon a minion, then cast a spell on that minion.
Fortunately for Paladins, their Hero Power makes it easier for them. You don't have to rely on draw for the minions, you just get one from your Hero Power each turn you use it. On to the actual Quest though, you just have to target one of your own minions with a spell 6 times (and it does actually need a target, so Smuggler's Run won't count, and if it did, it would probably be broken), and of course, Paladin is one of the main classes that buff their own things. Now, there are a number of buff cards Paladin has to target minions including the following:
And as well as Seal of Champions which will be rotating out. In addition to that though, healing cards like Holy Light, Lay on Hands and Forbidden Healing will also work when you target a minion, even if the spell doesn't restore any Health. In addition to that, if you really want to, you could also use damage spells like Hammer of Wrath or Holy Wrath (though you would only do this if you were in a huge pinch). As pointed out by Ides_Hatred, the card does have some synergy with Mukla, Tyrant of the Vale which will give you two Bananas, which will contribute to 2 spells on the counter (already a third of the way there). You could potentially also run Ivory Knight to get another spell, but you aren't guaranteed to get a spell which can target your own minions (however the chance of doing so will increase after rotation). Notably, in Wild, you can get Spare Part cards through the effects of cards like Clockwork Gnome and Tinkertown Technician which will contribute to the counter. It's also very likely that we'll get at least one other Paladin buff card to target your own stuff and add to the counter.
On to Galvadon himself, he's exactly as was leaked through Japanese subtitles. When you play it, he Adapts 5 times (and not "Adapt, then Adapt, then Adapt, then Adapt, then Adapt"). If you use the link to the simulator I provided earlier, you can test out how it works to see exactly what you can make with this. Obviously your first priority would be to give it minion protection through Liquid Membrane or Shrouding Mist. After that, you can go any route you want with it. If you choose Liquid Membrane, you can go for a huge, really annoying control minion with Massive, Crackling Shield, and whatever else you want with it (maybe Rocky Carapace would be good since you want to be protective after all). You can also go the aggressive way and choose Shrouding Mist to combine it with Lightning Speed and Flaming Claws to give you a huge burst minion with Stealth so your opponent will have very limited options to remove it. It's actually not unlikely at all to get a very specific Adaptation you need (in fact, it's actually very likely and you’ll get it more often than not). This alone will make Galvadon a very flexible tool to use, allowing you to make a defensive minion which will be very annoying for your opponent to get rid of, or it allows you to make use an aggressive minion with Stealth and lots of power buffs, which will also be very annoying for your opponent to get rid of.
So, all in all, there's potential to be had, especially with the possibility of getting more buff cards. But you have a lot of commitment needed, and you’ll have to fill your deck with lots of buff spells to make it work. I feel like the reward is enough, but the Quest is most likely not. It does have A LOT of potential to be really good in Wild though, where you have access to Spare Part cards.
New Druid card revealed, and one that's very iffy at that. Pay 4 mana, Adapt everything. Sounds simple enough, but that's where the real evaluation happens. I have a post here on this card's page which runs through the list of all the adaptations and how good they are with this card, so you should read that post if you want my opinion of how good this is with each individual Adaptation.
If you read that post, you'll know exactly how very janky this card is in terms of value you can get. Just like other Adapt cards like Verdant Longneck and Thunder Lizard, some of the Adaptations are really good, and some of them aren't. For example, Crackling Shield is one of the better ones. A 4 mana spell that read "give all friendly minions Divine Shield" would probably be playable in some capacity. Some of them however like Volcanic Might are downright, BAD! Volcanic Might for this is essentially a 4 mana Mark of the Lotus. Some others like Massive or Shrouding Mist could be situationally good, but look at Fade and Conceal respectively to see how much these effects are actually worth.
Some people are afraid of this in Jade Golems. This card will not see play in Jade Druid as the card is strictly a "win more" card. The huge Jade Golems are enough of a threat to where giving it Windfury or Stealth doesn't really matter. The card really won’t see play at all and in fact, most options are pretty bad. It does however get a rating above "Very Bad" as some of the options it provides (specifically Crackling Shield and Flaming Claws) can actually make it a pretty decent, or even pretty good card. But otherwise, it's quite bad.
Hunter and Shaman are currently the only two classes that can produce artificial Deathrattles. Hunters have Explorer's Hat and Infest. Shamans have Ancestral Spirit and this.
The Murlocs on the card art may be hinting to the synergy this card has with the Shaman Quest, Unite the Murlocs, as it can get more Murlocs in your hand to complete the Quest faster.
Here we have the Shaman card that Thijs revealed, which is very weird because I feel like it should be Rogue card and not a Shaman card, as Rogue has more synergy with this, specifically with their Quest, The Caverns Below. That and Rogue has more Deathrattle synergy than Shaman.
But Shaman does still have its usage for the card, primarily in Jade Golems (which Rogue also has). You can cast this whilst you have some Jade Golem minions (Jade Spirit or Aya Blackpaw for example), get them back and you'll be able to summon more Jade Golems and make them bigger. It does also have synergy with Unite the Murlocs to summon more Murlocs and get closer to Megafin. That and in general, putting things into your hand when they die so they don’t permanently go away is always nice (unless you end up milling yourself).
However, unlike Echo of Medivh, you don't get the immediate value. Is paying 1 less mana in exchange to have them die worth it? Echo of Medivh was more combo-able than this as you got immediately value and could have more than 2 copies of a card on the battlefield, which is not something you normally can do. Granted, Mages don't have access to Jade Golems, but the ability to be able to get out of a hairy situation faster and right away is what makes this worse than Echo of Medivh in my opinion. If you weren't going to play them right away anyway though, maybe that can make this card better.
I mean, maybe it's worth trying out in Jade Shaman. And what is worth mentioning is the Hero Power. It may have synergy or anti-synergy with this card. Depends on how you look at it.
Meme card number 2 of the set! Explore Un'Goro was card 6, and here we have card 58. At this rate, we'll have 3, or maybe 4 meme cards in the set (meme-ish in terms of cards like Mayor Noggenfogger, not meme-ish in terms of cards like Flamewreathed Faceless). Of course, obviously the card won't be viable in any competitive environment whatsoever. It's strictly just a fun card, but how good is it as a fun card?
Well for 8 mana, you get a 5/4 (just like Noggenfogger and Servant of Yogg-Saron, what is it with giving ridiculous cards the 5/4 statline every time?), which is not good and nerfs Forbidden Shaping (as 8 mana is the best spot to use it). When you compare this to Servant of Yogg-Saron, you get the same statline and you pay 3 additional mana to choose the spell you cast. Notably though, it can be ANY spell from your class and not just from 0-5 like Servant, but you can only cast spells from your own class as Discover normally works like that. But in regular Hearthstone fashion, and just like Servant fashion, the spell is targeted to something completely random. Your face, the opponent’s face, this minion, your girlfriend, you name it (actually that last one was a joke).
However, this card can actually sometimes be pretty good. If you Discover a board clear spell (especially if it's Flamestrike), then it actually be really good, but so can Servant if you get Holy Nova. So yeah, it's obviously not going to see play unless you want to run it for RNG style points, but even that's questionable.
Rating: Very Bad/Other (for reference, the last card that got a "Very Bad" was Sherazin, Corpse Flower)
Well, we already got the Paladin Quest, The Last Kaleidosaur, so it was only natural that we would receive another buff card to target our own thing. An expensive one at that too, 6 mana. Giving a minion +2/+6 is worth 4 mana, just look at Blessing of Kings (not 5 like Power Word: Garbagecles). A 2/6 with Taunt is also worth about 4 mana (though worse than Bloodhoof Brave or Tortollan Shellraiser, though it does have a tribal tag). All in all, you’re getting roughly 8 mana worth of value combined into one card for 6 mana. Now that sounds really good. You buff a minion by +2/+6 so it can trade better and when it dies, you get your own 2/6 Taunt minion.
The card however does require something on board for it to actually work, so although it may be 6 mana on one specific turn. Overall, it’ll be at least 7, probably 8 because you may use this on a Silver Hand Recruit. In addition to that, +2/+6 is a very awkward statline to give a minion. It can be REALLY useful for trading, but it's also part of why you don’t see cards like Oasis Snapjaw or Tournament Medic played. Their statline is just very, very awkward. Health is always a plus, but +6 Health just makes it harder to actually use the Deathrattle of the minion. As a result, this ultimately is just a very strange stated card, but can wield a lot of value. Can be pretty good in Paladin Quest decks to get out Galvadon, but at the cost of 6, you should probably only run 1 at max.
Well, did you think they would stop pushing Taunts for Warrior after TGT (the set that introduced that Taunt Warrior synergies) would rotate out? Well, sadly no, but to me, this time honestly seems more coincidental than them actually pushing the Taunt archetype, it just seems like they just made a Taunt minion in Warrior without really thinking of it. If you thought Dirty Rat was too risky and didn't like it, then this card should definitely be better for you as instead of the ability to summon a REALLY huge minion and risk losing the game, you instead just summon some three measly 1/1 Raptors (which are obviously Beasts).
Without any additional synergies, this will often end up as just a 2 mana 2/3 Taunt, which isn't really exciting. However, there are some interesting tricks and synergies you can do with this card. You can Whirlwind the Raptors away, but at that point, this will end up as just a 3 mana 2/5 Taunt, which isn't very exciting in the slightest. However, what you can also do is use it with Second-Rate Bruiser which will always trigger its effect to make it cheaper, and it's even better if your opponent chooses not to run the Raptors into this, which might happen??? You can use Grim Patron to spawn more Patrons, or Finja so you have something to kill with its effect. You can combine this with Brawl as well. Yes you increase the chances of your opponent winning, but you also increase the chances of something completely useless (one of the 1/1 Raptors) winning, making it easier to take care of. You can also use it with Mind Control Tech, though you’ll probably take something bad. Credit goes to skymarshall78 for making a list of this stuff which I did read.
So, the effect may be inherently bad, and the card may be average by itself, but its synergies to rise it up to be a good enough card to be rated "Good" in my opinion.
And thus, we have our first filler card of the expansion. Just a 4 mana 2/6 Taunt, and nothing else. Not to exciting, but unlike some of its class counterparts (this and this), it does have a tribal tag, so it may have use in Hunter decks. Good for Arena, but it won’t see play in Constructed unless Hunter decks really need a 4-drop Beast.
This is the second 10-cost Druid minion (and Legendary) preceded by Kun the Forgotten King. It’s also the third 10-cost class minion, preceded by Varian Wrynn.
As of this card being released, Druid has the highest average class Legendary cost, with an average Legendary cost of 8.166. In MSoG, the class with the highest average was Warlock with an average of 8, which as of Clutchmother Zavas, now has an average of 7.
So, we have the Druid Legendary minion revealed. It's simply just a gigantic Faerie Dragon. Although this effect is really awesome on a larger minion, the card is admittedly rather boring for a Legendary. It's not like Fandral which combines your really strong cards into even stronger cards and has some awesome interactions. It’s not like Kun which can give you a 0 mana 7/7, and synergizes with Aviana, and has some sort of meme factor going for it. It's not even a normal Legendary archetype support card. I'd even argue that Flame Leviathan has a more Legendary effect than this as its draw effect is a very unique mechanic seen on only one other collectable card in the entire game. It’s literally just an awkward offspring of Deathwing and Faerie Dragon. Wait, how would that even work? Would… okay, nope, don't tell me.
But jokes aside, on to the card. The main problem with really huge minions is that hard removal exists, so huge cards that don’t change the board right away, or have some protection, are inherently bad. This card can’t be targeted by removal, so it does have that as a plus meaning that if your opponent wants to get rid of it, they'll need to use their own minions to do it which will end up wasting a lot of their board presence to kill it, if they even do as 12 Health is a lot to take out. It doesn’t have Taunt so it won’t protect you from lethal, but if it did have Taunt, it would probably be too broken.
If Jade Golems didn’t exist yet, I'd say this card would have a realistic chance to see some play. Jade Druid however is a thing and thanks to its ability to infinitely summon a number of increasingly larger Jade Golems as time goes, you could play a 12/12 for 1 mana, effectively making this card irrelevant. In typical Jade Druid fashion, it also has that one card that single handedly destroys slow decks. So, I don’t think this card will see any play. Not because it isn’t good enough to, but because it has other options that just outclass it and make it obsolete (yes, Jade Druid).
Gormok the Impaler and Reliquary Seeker are the only two other minions in the game with an interaction based on if you have a certain number of minions. Those two cards require 4 and 6 respectively, whereas this only requires 2.
Well, Adapt 2-drop, here we go. This is a card that many people have been sleeping on. People are saying its bad because it’s extremely difficult to play it on turn 2 with the Adaption effect. Okay, fair point there. But, have you ever considered that maybe, just maybe, you aren't forced to play this on turn 2? Getting two minions on the field isn’t too hard of a task, especially in Hunter, Paladin, Shaman, Warlock or even Pirate Warrior.
Sure, some of the adaptation choices you can get are bad, but others are really good and are equivalent to cards we thought were really insane (Shielded Minibot and Haunted Creeper for example). And you see how easy it is to get 2 minions on the field. We have Lost in the Jungle, Alleycat, Patches the Pirate, Reinforce, Totemic Call to all help with that. I think people are sleeping on this. I think it's good.
Well, I think most of us predicted a card like this. When Kripp reviewed this card, he compared it to Fandral, as it doubles up on your Choose One effects. Likewise, this card doubles up on all of your Deathrattle effects. You play a Deathrattle minion and you instantly trigger its effect and when it dies, it'll trigger it again. It effectively acts as a continuous Feign Death while it's on the field.
And of course, it works well in Priest due to the Deathrattles they got. Crystalline Oracle works really well with this as it will give you two cards from the opponent's deck and a 1/1 minion for 1 mana. It does say "summon" and not "play", so this will work with cards like Mirage Caller to get more value. In Druid, you can also use this with Living Mana and get all of the mana back right away. Hunter also has some good Deathrattle synergies of their own with Kindly Grandmother, Infested Wolf, Savannah Highmane, Shaky Zipgunner, you name it. Other classes could easily be able to use this in some way as well.
It's both fun and competitive, just like Brann Bronzebeard. It's obviously pretty good.
Sulfuras appears in the "Showdown to Blackrock Mountain" Tavern Brawl as a 2/6 weapon with the exact same text as a Deathrattle instead of a Battlecry (as you already have the weapon when you start).
Sulfuras is the only Quest reward that doesn't cost 5, instead costing 3.
This was the very first card revealed on the reveal stream on March 31st.
And what we have among is now is the Warrior Quest. As pretty much every single person on this forum predicted, it's about Taunt minions. Even after the initial Taunt Warrior set is rotating out, Blizzard is still forcing Taunt Warrior to be a thing. But to be honest, what else could the Warrior Quest actually be about? I don't really know to be honest.
As to help complete the Quest, we do have some more pretty good Taunt minions coming our way. Namely, after you play this Quest, you can play Cornered Sentry on turn 2 (though as the stream revealed, no pun intended, don't do this against Hunter or you'll just give them a Crackling Razormaw target), then play Stonehill Defender on turn 3, which will allow you to Discover another Taunt minion. Maybe you even play Sen'jin Shieldmasta on turn 4. We also have Direhorn Hatchling, Ornery Direhorn and Tar Lord on 5, 6 and 7 as welcome additions here (with the hatchling giving you another minion). So it looks like that problem is sorted.
After completing the Quest, you get Sulfuras which is a 4/2 weapon for 3 (which is already good in itself), and upon playing it, gives you DIE, INSECT! It's exactly the same as the Ragnaros card effect, and the Ragnaros Hero Power from Majordomo Executus’s Deathrattle. It lasts forever, so now you can be Ragnaros and for only 2 mana, can deal 8 random damage every single turn. With all the new Taunt minions, it doesn’t seem to hard to complete the Quest either, so this seems like a good Quest.
And naturally, with a Quest relating to Taunt minions, we were bound to get additional Taunt minions of our own in Warrior. This being one of them. It's essentially White Eyes in Warrior with worse stats, but it's not a Legendary so you can have 2 of them in your deck, and it's in a class that historically has been better at Control than Shaman, and contributes at least once to the Quest, twice if you draw the token.
So, to start off, you get a 3/6 Taunt for 5 (yes, rip Fen Creeper), and when it dies, you shuffle a 6/9 (very funny, yes) Taunt for 5 into your deck to draw later. Like I said, essentially White Eyes in Warrior. It does have less stats, that is a fair point. But where I think this will be useful is in Warrior decks which utilize the Quest card, Fire Plume's Heart where this will count as two out of the seven for the Quest. As Warrior has historically been very good at Control, I don't think it’ll be too unusual to get the 6/9 (and of course, even better in Wild because of Justicar). Overall, I think this will be a good card for Quest Warriors and even Taunt Warriors in general (like that's a thing). In addition to that, we have a minion for almost every mana slot in Quest Warrior, so that’s a plus.
Well, we knew that new Poisonous cards would be printed, and well, here one is. You look at Emperor Cobra, then look at this and realize that it has Stealth. You look at Patient Assassin, then look at this and realize it's a Common with +1/+1. Those two factors alone, make this card a lot better than either of those cards. Because it has Stealth, your opponent can’t just remove it with a damage spell, and because it has more Health than Patient Assassin, your opponent won’t be able to remove it with a simple 1-damage AoE. No Maelstrom Portal, and no Ravaging Ghoul. This will live through both of those to be able to take a minion out.
Though yes, it does have the inherent problem that Poisonous minions have, in which that ideally you want to take out something bigger and you can’t do right away so your opponent will end up hitting you again. Though because it has Stealth, playing this on turn 3 will make your opponent’s next turn very awkward as they will be forced to play off-curve to avoid one of their mid-game drops dying to this.
I don't think it will see play simply because killing something worth it will be too slow, but it's certainly better than Emperor Cobra or Patient Assassin. Will be a pretty good pick in Arena as well to screw up your opponent’s plays.
Here's another Hunter card that lots of people are exciting for. Astonishing, right? You change your Hero Power to give a Beast +2/+2, which in a lot of ways is like Shadowform. Giving a minion +2 Attack is a lot like dealing 2 damage in a way, but you also give the Beast Health meaning it actually has a chance to stay alive again and keep fighting which makes it better, though it doesn’t go through Taunt unlike Shadowform which does. It's also cheaper than Shadowform which is definitely better because we all know one of Shadowform's biggest problems is its cost.
You can keep using it on a Beast to make it bigger and bigger overtime and pose a more significant threat in the long run. It doesn't stack, unlike Shadowform. Playing another copy whilst you have already played one doesn't make its effect bigger, but it still might be a good idea to run 2 of them since it improves your chances of actually drawing them. In the late game, you can also use your Hero Power, cast this and refresh the Hero Power so you can use it again. So you got to take that into account.
Hunter naturally has a lot of Beasts so that's not an issue. In addition to that though, it encourages a Control Hunter style and actually helps one of the problems of the archetype since one of the main problems was the Hero Power and hot it was literally just "go face". This right here helps it. It’s definitely a very cool, and very exciting Hunter card.
Speaking of Control Hunter, we have another Control Hunter card right here. It essentially acts as a mini Swipe. You deal more damage to one minion, than less damage to other minions. In this case, adjacent minions rather than all others but I digress. It's also similar to Powershot which did see a small bit of play, but this is more viable due to its lower cost (and Powershot is going to be Wild only anyway).
This card looks like the bomb-dot-com, but then some look at Powershot. Even with my comment before though, the card in terms of value does end up only being fair due to the damage, and positioning needs to go in your favor. But, it's another tool for Control Hunter.
When was the last time you saw a Rogue play Swashburglar or a Mage play Babbling Book? Well, the answer to that question is probably the last Rogue/Mage you played, because every Rogue plays Swashburglar and every Mage plays Babbling Book. Just like every Priest is going to play Crystalline Oracle, and every Hunter will play this card because it's the same 1/1 minion that generates a random thing from a certain category. Every Hunter played Webspinner back when it was in Standard. Same is going to be true for this card which is even better because Battlecry and not Deathrattle. Let's just move on to the next review.
Just more pissing on the grave of Silverback Patriarch which has exited forever now. You play it and it basically plays an I Know a Guy, essentially giving you that and a free 2 mana 1/4 Taunt (ala Twilight Geomancer) on the field, which is decent enough itself, and combining the values of both cards makes it better. This puts something on the board and Discovers at the same time, and the extra board presence is actually important here. Because you're Discovering a Taunt minion, you'll probably end up getting two points of your Quest counter completed. However, there is that argument of whether or not this or Tar Creeper would be better and that’s really where the discussion lies in.
If you’re playing this just as a Taunt, than Tar Creeper is probably better. If you’re playing this for the Warrior Quest, than this might be better for the additional value and getting closer to the Sulfuras. Maybe even one of each. Needs experimenting.
And here we have another Taunt and another Dinosaur for our favorite Taunt-Dino class. It has Taunt already and you Adapt giving you more additional value. Combining Taunt with many other adaptations can prove to be an annoyance for the opponent. Crackling Shield and Liquid Membrane can prove to be very effective choices, but Living Spores and Rocky Carapace can also be pretty good choices as well, leaving more minions to kill after this dies, and making it harder to kill it in general. Flaming Claws isn't too bad either given the circumstances.
The rest on the other hand are very meh compared to the others. Stealth can be good, but at that point, it becomes a worse Stranglethorn Tiger. You'd probably never pick Poison Spit because a Poisonous 5 Attack minion would be very awkward. If Massive comes up, you basically only have 2 options since it already has Taunt. These however are just a few meh options. It's more likely that you'll get a good one than a meh one, and that's how I think of this card from a rating perspective.
And here we have our next Poisonous card. With TAUNT! Poisonous and Taunt. Yeah, that's a pretty nasty combo (yes, I do know what I said about Ornery Direhorn, but this is a small minion, where it makes sense to have Poisonous). It being a 1/2 is also HUGE for this minion. If it was a 2/1, it would be pretty bad, but as 1/2, this minion can't die to Hero Powers. In the early game, that means that it can also be very effective at killing anything. At some point, your opponent may be forced to run their bigger minion into this giving you quite a bit of value, so I like it.
In a rather unexpected turn of events, we got a Dragon in this expansion. A really good one too. This is definitely an auto-include in all Dragon decks, which will most likely become Wild only, but they'll still be relevant there. Not only is it a Dragon itself, but it also nukes the board for 2 damage when you play it. You don't even have to have a Dragon in your hand for that to work. You just play it, and there you go. Though because of its rather steep cost of 8, maybe you don’t run 2. You still run at least 1 regardless because the card is really good. Oh, and it has Taunt. They made a LOT of Taunt minions in this expansion.
A Threshadon is a WoW creature (as in, not real) that is essentially a long neck plesiosaur that can only swim (which explains this card's relation to Murlocs).
Here we have a huge Common minion. Not too frequent that you see one of those. This one actually helps out with two Quests: Priest and Shaman. But more so Shaman than Priest because this will give you 3 points of progress for the Shaman Quest, but only 1 for the Priest Quest, and the Shaman Quest is harder to complete than the Priest Quest. It may see some play for Shamans trying desperately to complete their Quest, but I think Call in the Finishers does that job fine, and arguably, so I don't think it’ll see any play. Okay Arena card I suppose though.
We reviewed Tar Creeper all the way back in Section 1, and now it’s time to review his oldest brother here. It's an 11-Health minion (the first in the game) with 1-Attack, but it becomes an Ancient of War during your opponent's turn. However, it only having 1-Attack on your opponent’s turn doesn't have any pressure and it quite weak, so you'll have to just either attack face or ping off something weak.
And it’s a Taunt so it contributes to the Warrior Quest. We already have a perfect curve for the Quest:
And you only need one more Taunt minion to do the Quest. Maybe the one you Discovered from Stonehill Defender, or the one from Direhorn Hatchling's Deathrattle will do the trick. Has potential in Taunt Warrior, seems like a good card. Definitely really good in Arena.
Well, here's another Hunter card that people are excited for. Remember when everyone hated Rexxar? Oh, how times have changed. So, remember all the 1-cost Beasts we have for Hunters. Fiery Bat, Alleycat, plus newcomers, Raptor Hatchling and Jeweled Macaw. Not to mention other 1-cost Beasts you might get like Angry Chicken and Stonetusk Boar (sure, they might not be good in deck, but out of this effect, you’re perfectly fine with getting them). Compared to Lock and Load, playing Beasts are a lot easier to play than spells in Hunter (even if the Beasts you get aren't 1-cost), you don’t need much setup as Beasts are pretty much second-nature in Hunter.
You know how Hunters run out of steam? So, yeah, this card is pretty good.
Big charge minion. As a Battlecry effect, it can't attack heroes that turn only. If you cheat it out with a card effect (a certain Druid card later on can do that), then it CAN attack heroes that turn. It's an attempt at a Charge Control card, which they’ve tried with Icehowl which never saw a lot of play. I don't see it being run too much, but it's a neat card.
Here's the Druid Quest we got, and I can't say anyone expected this. Do you remember Celestial Dreamer from MSoG? Well, apparently, that may or may not was supposed to be an Un'Goro card because here we have the mechanic pushed even further. The objective of the Quest is simple, summon 5 minions with 5 or more Attack. Just summon them, not play them. This is probably one of the easiest Quests to complete because you summon and not play, so you maybe could work this into Jade Druid. Additionally, we also have some new 5+ Attack Druid support cards, Tortollan Forager and Elder Longneck just to name some. Druid also being the master of ramp have some nice tools to get minions out early.
Once you get the Quest out, you get Barnabus the Stomper, reducing the cost of all minions in your deck to 0. Not your hand, just your deck. But even if it doesn’t include your hand, it’s still a crazy powerful effect to make all of your more expensive minions (and in this deck, you probably will have some), completely cost you nothing. Like a permanent Aviana, that's even stronger. This is a good Quest.
Priest gets a healing spell, and a really good one at that too, to replace Flash Heal. It's worse than Flash Heal for Auchenai Soulpriest (because you can't target the enemy hero, and you heal yourself), but it's better for healing because you basically get 2 Flash Heals at once. You don't have to choose between healing a minion, or your hero, because now you can do both. In terms of healing, this is definitely going to be useful. Even if you don’t get the full healing on a minion, in Aggro, you’d probably use Flash Heal on your face anyway. This allows you to kill a minion with your own minion, then heal that minion and do this at the same time.
Rager much? I'm disappointed that they didn’t call this "Dino Rager" or something like that. So, do you remember Jungle Giants? That's where this comes in, as it's not only cheap at only 3 and counts for the Quest, but gets better if you have another 5+ Attack minion in your hand, which you will most likely have if you're playing this deck. Crackling Shield is a pretty good one to get, Shrouding Mist too. Playable for Quest Druid, but probably not elsewhere.
This is the second most expensive Discover card, preceded by Arch-Thief Rafaam.
This is the second Discover card that does something in addition to the Discover, preceded by A Light in the Darkness which gave the minion +1/+1. This one just summons the minion.
Here is a very interesting Priest card. For the cost of 8, you Discover a minion that costs 8 or more and instantly summon it. You could get a 9 or 10-cost minion and summon it right away. As it is a Priest card, you cannot get minions from other classes with this (though it's arguable if that would actually improve the card). You can get some pretty good options, namely Ysera or Soggoth the Slitherer. With Ragnaros the Firelord rotating out however, you do lose one of the better targets to get.
Do you remember the Mana Geode hype train in MSoG? Were you on that hype train? Were you disappointed that it didn't turn out as well as it was supposed to? Yeah, all of use were, and the chances are, you answered yes to all 3 of those questions. So now, Priest get a new 2-drop, which fortunately doesn't require it to attack or to be healed. It's literally a Sorcerer's Apprentice with its stats reversed. A lot of times, you can make it a 2 mana 2/5 draw a card (with Power Word: Shield). Nothing wrong with that.
It also enables some sick combos, namely with the Priest Legendary, Lyra the Sunshard, as well as a video that Disguised Toast posted where you play highlander with Raza the Chained, Auctionmaster Beardo, Shadowform, Shadow Visions and two of these guys and infinitely spam your Hero Power. I do actually think this will be a deck since you only need to keep 4 of those cards in hand, and it can still be very good with 1 Radiant Elemental since you can still push out 20 damage.
With Mana Geode, I did see a problem. It needed to stay alive on your opponent’s next turn, attack into something and then you could heal it. I don't see that here.
Here’s a pretty good Choose One card for Druid. You either get a Sen'jin Shieldmasta Beast (pretty decent and playable in its own right), or you a get a 5/3 with Stealth to be aggressive, and also contributes to the Quest if you have it. You do have that 3/5 form if you want to be protective though.
This is the second Priest Legendary called "x the y", preceded by Raza the Chained. The first word of both of these ends with "a", and are four letters long.
This is the first Priest Legendary with a tribal tag.
Prior to this card's reveal, Mike Donais noted that the Priest Legendary was very good and even said "we’re sorry if it’s too good". It’s ambiguous if he was referring to this or Awaken the Makers.
So, here is the Priest Legendary that people were excited for, and then immediately lost that upon seeing the card. It’s a 5 mana 3/5 that as you cast spells, gives you more spells so you may get more value out of it when you cast spells as this guy is going to just give you more and you may be able to use them.
Priest however has a variety of spells, from good spells, bad spells, situational spells, cheap spells, expensive spells, we’ve seen them all. You can't exactly predict what you're going to get and you'll inevitably get a spell from one of the weaker categories at some point, so it’s difficult for this to be reliable.
It's an Elemental, but I don’t think that matters too much in Priest. It's interesting, but disappointing because we were hyped for a "possibly too good" Legendary, and we got one that's never ever going to possibly be too good. It's not the worst thing in the world and could use some experimentation, but I think it's just not strong enough.
Here we have yet another card to go into the 5+ Attack Druid. It counts towards the Quest itself and when it dies, it replaces itself with another 5 Attack minion in your hand giving you 2 points of your Quest. That's a really powerful effect like, similar to Voidcaller, but it comes at a steep price. It has really crappy stats. 7 mana for a 5/3 is absolute bottom of the barrel in terms of stats, and without any immediate impact, it's very slow to get the value rolling.
Though you can possibly get a lot of value with this by summoning an absurdly large minion, it's also possible to get an Elder Longneck from this, which will count for the Quest, but without the Battlecry, it's just a Magma Rager. It can possibly summon another one to chain the effect together. The dream would be to summon Tyrantus with this, which admittedly is pretty amusing, but the effect is random and, you’d have to be running Tyrantus to begin with. I don't think this will see play in the 5+ Attack Druid deck.
And for yet another support card for the 5+ Attack Druid deck, this card allows you to get ANY collectable 5+ Attack minion in the game, even those from other classes. Here are two posts from volt229, here and here, as well as another post from Crinosg explaining all of the possible 5+ Attack minions you can get from this card. There’s a LOT of variance with this card, which may be the reason it might not see play in the 5-Attack Druid deck, it's too unreliable.
As a 2-cost minion, it however is a good curve play after the Quest, so it does have going for it. That however can work against the card as well as it's very likely that you’ll get a more expensive minion so you’ll have to wait to play it quite a bit later. Hilariously enough, you can curve it into Magma Rager (though you’d just play Elder Longneck instead).
Meanwhile, at the Druid cards, we have this card. You give a minion you control +1/+1, THEN gain Armor equal to the Attack, so yes that extra 1 Attack is counted for this. You can make a minion stronger and save yourself. If you buff a minion to 5 Attack, you’ve ideally gotten ideal value from this, and it gets better the more Attack it has.
As a result of this, I do think this card will see play in the Druid Quest deck. However, I think this card will shine even more in Jade Druid. Even if it's only like a 7/7, you've still gotten more than enough value to justify the card. But Druid is the easiest class to get big Jade Golems and it usually gets larger than that. I think this card will definitely see play in Jade Druid, and it's arguably better there than in Quest Druid. If Jade Golems didn't exist yet, this card would just get a "Good", but because of Jade Golems, it gets a "Very Good".
Here we have an Elusive 1-drop, which is a first for Hearthstone. The problem that is that people don’t normally run 1 mana small damage spells unless you're playing Malygos, and if you are playing Malygos, you’d probably rather hit your opponent’s face (or a really big minion if you’re in a clutch situation). As far as the Hero Powers go, it only really affects Mage (and Priest if they have Auchenai Soulpriest or Shadowform), since it can still be attacked by Wicked Knife, it can be still Shapeshifted, it can still be attacked by a Silver Hand Recruit or a Searing Totem. This means that a majority of the time, it basically says "can't be targeted by Fireblast". A card with that text actually might see play in a very Mage-heavy meta.
It's a 1-cost Elemental, so it's a cheap Elemental to trigger the effects of the others. However, we already have two other 1-cost Elementals that are better than this: Fire Fly and Glacial Shard. I don't think this card will see any play simply because those two Elementals exist. If none, or one of them existed, this card could have a chance, but I think the other two of them just make this irrelevant when deciding for your 1-drop Elemental.
Here we have a rather interesting Elemental. It's a 2 mana 1/1 (yeah, really bad, I know). When it dies, you basically Darkbomb a random enemy minion. So you essentially get a 1/1 for free, but it's not quite that. When you cast a spell like Frostbolt, Darkbomb, or even anything of that category, you normally want to do it right away and not want to wait for anything. That and also this targets at random so you'll need to do a lot of control to keep this thing targeting the right thing. So, for that reason, it's a bit weaker than it might seem.
But it’s not bad since it's a 2-cost Elemental, and we admittedly don’t have that many of those. It's cheap so it does allow you to use Elemental synergies easier. Maybe it can work. It'll need experimentation though.
Section 5 has been posted, and thus begins the reviews from the reveal stream. I don't know if I'm going to be able to finish it in time. These reviews are also probably going to get shorter as a lot of my Section 5 reviews ended up being short.
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So, I have decided to discontinue this review because there's still a lot of cards left, not a lot of time, and I don't feel as motivated to do this review anymore since a lot of my reviews would end up being so short to do.
Overall though, I think the entire set looks very promising and I'm excited for release and to play with the cards.
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Okay, so it looks like it may still be possible to finish this before April 6th since I only have 3 sections to go. I was bored one day, so I figured I would do this and it looks like I can.
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Link to Part 1 + 2017 Rotation Reviews
Link to Part 2
Link to Part 4
SECTION 4 (Posted March 29th)
King Mosh
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Here we have our Legendary minion for Warriors, a giant, blood-thirsty dinosaur. The obvious combo that everyone is spotting is to play Whirlwind, then play this to kill everything on the board and leave a 9/7 on the board. Essentially a Deathwing without discarding your hand, though it does require a combo of two cards and you get less stats (9/7 as opposed to 12/12). Everyone’s got mixed opinions of this card. Some stating that the card is good and can potentially bring back Control Warrior in a meta with Jade Golems. Others thinking that the card is bad because it's a combo of two cards you need to draw, it's just a 9/7 for 9 if you don’t draw the Whirlwind, and/or it's just too slow. Others additionally believe that Brawl would just be better most of the time. While true that it may not be the most reliable or OP thing in the world, you've got to admit that the combo with Whirlwind is at the very least, amusing.
Normally Warrior does have other Whirlwind effects such as Ravaging Ghoul or Revenge, but at the cost of 9, you can't really combo it well with either of those cards without Emperor Thaurissan, in which both him and Revenge are rotating out. This means that in Standard, the only card that you can combo him with is Whirlwind. However, you don't HAVE to use Whirlwind. If you have minions of your own, you can damage your opponent's minions to use that instead. That won't be as reliable or as cool as comboing with Whirlwind, but it can work fine if you use it. As it is a dinosaur, it is a Beast. Normally, that would mean nothing in Warrior, but instead, it actually allows you to make use of The Curator to force draw this card to make the combo easier (as of now, Warrior uses The Curator more than any other class, so it also makes sense there).
Has potential to be pretty good in Standard. It's even better in Wild because there you have Thaurissan and Death's Bite.
Rating: Good
Raptor Hatchling
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When Mike Donais said there would be two good 1-drops for Hunter, I'm sure a lot people freaked the hell out. 1-drops are probably the most toxic cost slot in the game, as aggressive 1-drops equal aggressive meta. Not to mention, we also have the Hunter Quest, The Marsh Queen which this card works well with because it acts as two 1-drops, just like Fire Fly. And EVERYONE was praising the living crap out of that card, even before this card was revealed.
The card is a lot like White Eyes. You initially play it as a normal minion, and then upon dying, shuffles an overstated minion into your deck to draw later (which in the case of this card is a 1 mana 4/3). Should you happen to draw that 4/3 on your next turn, you’ll be in a good spot but later in the game, a 1 mana 4/3 won't be as impactful. Of course, you do actually have to draw the card later on, but that my friends is where the Tol'vir Warden comes into play to force draw two of your 1-drops, maybe this could be it.
Realistically, I think this card is about the same power level as White Eyes. Good, but not game-breaking.
Rating: Good
Terrorscale Stalker
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Two Hunter cards in a row! It was revealed to us by Hafu who made a very interesting reveal video with this card. Do you remember Princess Huhuran from WoTOG, and the very little amount of play it saw? Of course you do, we all do. The card didn't work as the card was a Legendary and too expensive. At 5 mana, you couldn't really combo it too well with most things. This card is better in that regard as it costs 3 so you can combo it easier (and you can get the dream of copying Savannah Highmane's Deathrattle) and it's a Rare so you can put two copies of it in your deck.
Hunter already has a lot of Deathrattle minions (they tried to push a whole theme with it in WoTOG that never got even close to taking off) from cards like Fiery Bat, Kindly Grandmother, Rat Pack, Infested Wolf, Shaky Zipgunner, Savannah Highmane, the new card Raptor Hatchling, and the list goes on. You already have a lot of possible targets for this, and that's not even including the Neutral Deathrattles like Loot Hoarder, as well as Wild Deathrattles like Nerubian Egg and Piloted Shredder.
As also stated by Hafu in her reveal video, the 3-drop slot for Hunters already has a lot of options. You have Animal Companion, Eaglehorn Bow, Cloaked Huntress, Shaky Zipgunner, as well as non-curve plays like Unleash the Hounds and Kill Command. Obviously, not all of these would be considered for the same deck type, but even then, you still have choices to make. It’s an interesting decision to make but if a Deathrattle Hunter deck were to come up, this would make it for sure. Of course, Deathrattle Hunter didn’t work in WoTOG, and we’re about to see a rotation. It has potential though.
Rating: Good
Thunder Lizard
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Now for something a little out of the ordinary, we have a Beast related to Elementals. If you played an Elemental last turn, you Adapt this minion. While Adapt is cool for adapting (heh) to your situation, this card has the same problem as Verdant Longneck, in which there are some adaptation that make this not a very good card. Massive for example: You would never run Ironfur Grizzly in your deck, so why would you put a situational Ironfur Grizzly in your deck? Especially one where the tribes don't work together. This is a Beast (which is fitting, it is a Lizard after all), that only works with Elementals. There's just a bit of a clash there.
Some of them are pretty good like Rocky Carapace, a 3/6 for 3 is pretty good, or Crackling Shield, basically a bigger Shielded Minibot. But none of the others are really too good as most of the cards I compared it to in "Comparable Cards" don’t really see play, and they don't have a condition. You just play it and you're good to go. The power of adapting is nice, but most of the results you get aren't really too great. A vanilla 3 mana 4/4 (Volcanic Might) for example isn't really too game-breaking, and to be honest, I don't think we’re that far away from a vanilla 3 mana 4/4.
So, I think this card is pretty weak overall, because the power level of most of the adaptations aren’t really too good, and it requires you to be playing Elementals to work.
Rating: Somewhat Bad/Average
Lightfused Stegodon
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And now we're going to review a better Adapt card. Do you remember Quartermaster and Muster for Battle, to summon a bunch of little dudes, and then give each of them +2/+2? Well, this card does the same thing with Adapt. "Pressing the button" is basically what we all do in Paladin. We all summon a bunch of little dudes to fight for us, and those little dudes are always scarier than they seem. Just have some recruits out, play this, and you can Adapt them anyway you want. Give them Rocky Carapace, Volcanic Might or Crackling Shield to make them survive better. Give them Massive to create a wall. Give them Poison Spit to make them a much more deadly threat which can kill a really huge minion.
We may no longer have Muster for Battle, but we do have two other cards to fix that issue. Stand Against Darkness and Lost in the Jungle. The former of those two may not be very good, but the latter is. Without Lost in the Jungle, I think I would just rate this as "Average", but with Lost in the Jungle, you can easily pay 5 mana to get 5/6 worth of stats on the board, and Adapt your two Silver Hand Recruits. Ideally, you'll want to give them a way to survive cards like Maelstrom Portal, but there will be times when basically any adaptation will do fine. It allows to it be rated "Good" in my opinion. The card could perhaps be better if we see another card which summons Silver Hand Recruits.
Rating: Good
Hemet, Jungle Hunter
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This is the card that Trump has revealed for us, and this is one of the most bizarre I've ever seen in my life. When you play it, you get rid of every card in your deck that costs 3 or less. So far, the reaction of this card is one of the most mixed I think I’ve ever seen.
Some people are really happy with this card and think it will be a very good (some are even calling it broken), whereas others think that it's just a pile of trash. Some people may look at this card and go "WTF, why would I ever want to do that?" In reality, the effect does have some applications. Maybe not viable ones, but they do exist. What this card allows you to do is remove all early game cards in your deck so you don't topdeck them later in the game where they most likely won’t be useful. As every single card you’re drawing from this point costs at least 4 mana, it allows you to maximize your mana usage more effectively. Notably, this allow the Holy Wrath deck to work more consistently, but I don't think that deck will become viable from this card alone, or ever, really.
The card however will most likely remove key spells from your deck. For example, you no longer can Kill Command as Hunter, Innervate as Druid, Hex as Shaman, or play any Secrets, and the list goes on and on. The deck specifically needs to be built around this card to work. In a deck tailor made for this card, it can do some pretty amazing things, even if that deck is a bit gimmicky in some regard.
Rating: Average/Good
Blazecaller
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If you weren't hyped for Elementals now, you should be now because this is an insane Elemental card. Yes, you can only put it into an Elemental deck, and you'll actually have to play one last turn, but that’s no problem for them at all. When you play this, you get a 6/6 for 7, and you deal 5 damage to anything. Dealing 5 damage is worth about 3.33 (repeating) mana, so playing this is about paying 3.66 (also repeating) mana to summon a 6/6 Elemental, so it does also trigger the Elemental trigger.
I thought Stone Sentinel was good, but this card may just have replaced Stone Sentinel in your Elemental Shaman, or maybe you run one of each? In an Elemental Shaman, you can go from a turn 6 Fire Elemental, turn 7 either this or Stone Sentinel, then into Kalimos, Primal Lord on turn 8. The point is, the card is really good mana value wise. It'll be an auto-include in all Elemental decks to come, and it's Neutral so any class looking to use it, can.
Rating: Very Good
Servant of Kalimos
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More Elementals. More hype. Indeed! So, you play it and you get to Discover an Elemental. Discover of course naturally has the ability to be flexible. You can Discover a Fire Elemental to fill out your curve. You can Discover a Blazecaller for additional damage. You can Discover a Stone Sentinel or Tar Creeper to get additional Taunts on the board. You can Discover Kalimos, Primal Lord for more Legendary action. Hell, if you really need to, you can even Discover a Fire Fly for more Elemental activators.
Now there could easily be a 4-drop Elemental revealed later, but as of now, the only 4-drop Elementals we have are Water Elemental, Lightspawn and Rumbling Elemental (and Fireguard Destroyer, but that Overloads for 1 so you won't be able to play this next turn anyway, and Rumbling Elemental is rotating out), and you can't really do that as a Shaman, but you can do that in Mage and Priest (because Priest will be getting Elementals). But of course, we do have Fire Fly to give you two triggers. So, I still think it will be pretty good in that regard. It however could easily get a lot better.
Rating: Good/Very Good
Ravenous Pterrodax
Ravenous Pterrodax
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Well Warlocks got an interesting card. It's another Beast to go into the mystery new Beast Warlock deck. It's one with a very interesting effect. Just like Void Terror, you kill off your own stuff for a benefit (Void Terror often gave you a large minion and a Nerubian from Nerubian Egg). This however will allow you to Adapt, then Adapt… or sorry, Adapt twice. Unlike Void Terror, in which killing a small 1/1 minion would just give you a 3 mana 4/4, this allows killing them to actually be worth it because you can kill a 1/1, and up giving this guy +3/+3 (Flaming Claws + Rocky Carapace), giving you a 4 mana 7/7 (memes), and effectively giving you a net benefit of +2/+2.
While useful in Standard with effects like Possessed Villager and Runic Egg, where this guy will particularly shine in is Wild where you'll have access to Imp Gang Boss, Imp-losion, Nerubian Egg, as well as Power Overwhelming to eat a guy that would die anyway, effectively giving you a REALLY powerful 4 mana creature with no real downside. Even Dreadsteed in Wild will give you value because the Dreadsteed will just come back.
Rating: Good in Standard, Very Good in Wild
The Last Kaleidosaur and Galvadon
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Well, after all of the waiting for The Last Kaleidosaur to be revealed, we finally received it. Well, not everyone's happy about it. The Quest is very interesting, but just like the Rogue Quest, The Caverns Below, it requires more commitment than most of the other Quests do. Instead of simply summoning minion types like some other Quests, you actually have to summon a minion, then cast a spell on that minion.
Fortunately for Paladins, their Hero Power makes it easier for them. You don't have to rely on draw for the minions, you just get one from your Hero Power each turn you use it. On to the actual Quest though, you just have to target one of your own minions with a spell 6 times (and it does actually need a target, so Smuggler's Run won't count, and if it did, it would probably be broken), and of course, Paladin is one of the main classes that buff their own things. Now, there are a number of buff cards Paladin has to target minions including the following:
And as well as Seal of Champions which will be rotating out. In addition to that though, healing cards like Holy Light, Lay on Hands and Forbidden Healing will also work when you target a minion, even if the spell doesn't restore any Health. In addition to that, if you really want to, you could also use damage spells like Hammer of Wrath or Holy Wrath (though you would only do this if you were in a huge pinch). As pointed out by Ides_Hatred, the card does have some synergy with Mukla, Tyrant of the Vale which will give you two Bananas, which will contribute to 2 spells on the counter (already a third of the way there). You could potentially also run Ivory Knight to get another spell, but you aren't guaranteed to get a spell which can target your own minions (however the chance of doing so will increase after rotation). Notably, in Wild, you can get Spare Part cards through the effects of cards like Clockwork Gnome and Tinkertown Technician which will contribute to the counter. It's also very likely that we'll get at least one other Paladin buff card to target your own stuff and add to the counter.
On to Galvadon himself, he's exactly as was leaked through Japanese subtitles. When you play it, he Adapts 5 times (and not "Adapt, then Adapt, then Adapt, then Adapt, then Adapt"). If you use the link to the simulator I provided earlier, you can test out how it works to see exactly what you can make with this. Obviously your first priority would be to give it minion protection through Liquid Membrane or Shrouding Mist. After that, you can go any route you want with it. If you choose Liquid Membrane, you can go for a huge, really annoying control minion with Massive, Crackling Shield, and whatever else you want with it (maybe Rocky Carapace would be good since you want to be protective after all). You can also go the aggressive way and choose Shrouding Mist to combine it with Lightning Speed and Flaming Claws to give you a huge burst minion with Stealth so your opponent will have very limited options to remove it. It's actually not unlikely at all to get a very specific Adaptation you need (in fact, it's actually very likely and you’ll get it more often than not). This alone will make Galvadon a very flexible tool to use, allowing you to make a defensive minion which will be very annoying for your opponent to get rid of, or it allows you to make use an aggressive minion with Stealth and lots of power buffs, which will also be very annoying for your opponent to get rid of.
So, all in all, there's potential to be had, especially with the possibility of getting more buff cards. But you have a lot of commitment needed, and you’ll have to fill your deck with lots of buff spells to make it work. I feel like the reward is enough, but the Quest is most likely not. It does have A LOT of potential to be really good in Wild though, where you have access to Spare Part cards.
Rating: Average
Evolving Spores
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New Druid card revealed, and one that's very iffy at that. Pay 4 mana, Adapt everything. Sounds simple enough, but that's where the real evaluation happens. I have a post here on this card's page which runs through the list of all the adaptations and how good they are with this card, so you should read that post if you want my opinion of how good this is with each individual Adaptation.
If you read that post, you'll know exactly how very janky this card is in terms of value you can get. Just like other Adapt cards like Verdant Longneck and Thunder Lizard, some of the Adaptations are really good, and some of them aren't. For example, Crackling Shield is one of the better ones. A 4 mana spell that read "give all friendly minions Divine Shield" would probably be playable in some capacity. Some of them however like Volcanic Might are downright, BAD! Volcanic Might for this is essentially a 4 mana Mark of the Lotus. Some others like Massive or Shrouding Mist could be situationally good, but look at Fade and Conceal respectively to see how much these effects are actually worth.
Some people are afraid of this in Jade Golems. This card will not see play in Jade Druid as the card is strictly a "win more" card. The huge Jade Golems are enough of a threat to where giving it Windfury or Stealth doesn't really matter. The card really won’t see play at all and in fact, most options are pretty bad. It does however get a rating above "Very Bad" as some of the options it provides (specifically Crackling Shield and Flaming Claws) can actually make it a pretty decent, or even pretty good card. But otherwise, it's quite bad.
Rating: Somewhat Bad
Spirit Echo
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Here we have the Shaman card that Thijs revealed, which is very weird because I feel like it should be Rogue card and not a Shaman card, as Rogue has more synergy with this, specifically with their Quest, The Caverns Below. That and Rogue has more Deathrattle synergy than Shaman.
But Shaman does still have its usage for the card, primarily in Jade Golems (which Rogue also has). You can cast this whilst you have some Jade Golem minions (Jade Spirit or Aya Blackpaw for example), get them back and you'll be able to summon more Jade Golems and make them bigger. It does also have synergy with Unite the Murlocs to summon more Murlocs and get closer to Megafin. That and in general, putting things into your hand when they die so they don’t permanently go away is always nice (unless you end up milling yourself).
However, unlike Echo of Medivh, you don't get the immediate value. Is paying 1 less mana in exchange to have them die worth it? Echo of Medivh was more combo-able than this as you got immediately value and could have more than 2 copies of a card on the battlefield, which is not something you normally can do. Granted, Mages don't have access to Jade Golems, but the ability to be able to get out of a hairy situation faster and right away is what makes this worse than Echo of Medivh in my opinion. If you weren't going to play them right away anyway though, maybe that can make this card better.
I mean, maybe it's worth trying out in Jade Shaman. And what is worth mentioning is the Hero Power. It may have synergy or anti-synergy with this card. Depends on how you look at it.
Rating: Average
Tortollan Primalist
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Meme card number 2 of the set! Explore Un'Goro was card 6, and here we have card 58. At this rate, we'll have 3, or maybe 4 meme cards in the set (meme-ish in terms of cards like Mayor Noggenfogger, not meme-ish in terms of cards like Flamewreathed Faceless). Of course, obviously the card won't be viable in any competitive environment whatsoever. It's strictly just a fun card, but how good is it as a fun card?
Well for 8 mana, you get a 5/4 (just like Noggenfogger and Servant of Yogg-Saron, what is it with giving ridiculous cards the 5/4 statline every time?), which is not good and nerfs Forbidden Shaping (as 8 mana is the best spot to use it). When you compare this to Servant of Yogg-Saron, you get the same statline and you pay 3 additional mana to choose the spell you cast. Notably though, it can be ANY spell from your class and not just from 0-5 like Servant, but you can only cast spells from your own class as Discover normally works like that. But in regular Hearthstone fashion, and just like Servant fashion, the spell is targeted to something completely random. Your face, the opponent’s face, this minion, your girlfriend, you name it (actually that last one was a joke).
However, this card can actually sometimes be pretty good. If you Discover a board clear spell (especially if it's Flamestrike), then it actually be really good, but so can Servant if you get Holy Nova. So yeah, it's obviously not going to see play unless you want to run it for RNG style points, but even that's questionable.
Rating: Very Bad/Other (for reference, the last card that got a "Very Bad" was Sherazin, Corpse Flower)
Spikeridged Steed
NOTE: Stegodon is a collectable card, and not a token, so it will have its own review later.
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Well, we already got the Paladin Quest, The Last Kaleidosaur, so it was only natural that we would receive another buff card to target our own thing. An expensive one at that too, 6 mana. Giving a minion +2/+6 is worth 4 mana, just look at Blessing of Kings (not 5 like Power Word: Garbagecles). A 2/6 with Taunt is also worth about 4 mana (though worse than Bloodhoof Brave or Tortollan Shellraiser, though it does have a tribal tag). All in all, you’re getting roughly 8 mana worth of value combined into one card for 6 mana. Now that sounds really good. You buff a minion by +2/+6 so it can trade better and when it dies, you get your own 2/6 Taunt minion.
The card however does require something on board for it to actually work, so although it may be 6 mana on one specific turn. Overall, it’ll be at least 7, probably 8 because you may use this on a Silver Hand Recruit. In addition to that, +2/+6 is a very awkward statline to give a minion. It can be REALLY useful for trading, but it's also part of why you don’t see cards like Oasis Snapjaw or Tournament Medic played. Their statline is just very, very awkward. Health is always a plus, but +6 Health just makes it harder to actually use the Deathrattle of the minion. As a result, this ultimately is just a very strange stated card, but can wield a lot of value. Can be pretty good in Paladin Quest decks to get out Galvadon, but at the cost of 6, you should probably only run 1 at max.
Rating: Average/Good
Cornered Sentry
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Well, did you think they would stop pushing Taunts for Warrior after TGT (the set that introduced that Taunt Warrior synergies) would rotate out? Well, sadly no, but to me, this time honestly seems more coincidental than them actually pushing the Taunt archetype, it just seems like they just made a Taunt minion in Warrior without really thinking of it. If you thought Dirty Rat was too risky and didn't like it, then this card should definitely be better for you as instead of the ability to summon a REALLY huge minion and risk losing the game, you instead just summon some three measly 1/1 Raptors (which are obviously Beasts).
Without any additional synergies, this will often end up as just a 2 mana 2/3 Taunt, which isn't really exciting. However, there are some interesting tricks and synergies you can do with this card. You can Whirlwind the Raptors away, but at that point, this will end up as just a 3 mana 2/5 Taunt, which isn't very exciting in the slightest. However, what you can also do is use it with Second-Rate Bruiser which will always trigger its effect to make it cheaper, and it's even better if your opponent chooses not to run the Raptors into this, which might happen??? You can use Grim Patron to spawn more Patrons, or Finja so you have something to kill with its effect. You can combine this with Brawl as well. Yes you increase the chances of your opponent winning, but you also increase the chances of something completely useless (one of the 1/1 Raptors) winning, making it easier to take care of. You can also use it with Mind Control Tech, though you’ll probably take something bad. Credit goes to skymarshall78 for making a list of this stuff which I did read.
So, the effect may be inherently bad, and the card may be average by itself, but its synergies to rise it up to be a good enough card to be rated "Good" in my opinion.
Rating: Good
SECTION 5 (Posted March 31st)
Stegodon
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And thus, we have our first filler card of the expansion. Just a 4 mana 2/6 Taunt, and nothing else. Not to exciting, but unlike some of its class counterparts (this and this), it does have a tribal tag, so it may have use in Hunter decks. Good for Arena, but it won’t see play in Constructed unless Hunter decks really need a 4-drop Beast.
Rating: Average
Tyrantus
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So, we have the Druid Legendary minion revealed. It's simply just a gigantic Faerie Dragon. Although this effect is really awesome on a larger minion, the card is admittedly rather boring for a Legendary. It's not like Fandral which combines your really strong cards into even stronger cards and has some awesome interactions. It’s not like Kun which can give you a 0 mana 7/7, and synergizes with Aviana, and has some sort of meme factor going for it. It's not even a normal Legendary archetype support card. I'd even argue that Flame Leviathan has a more Legendary effect than this as its draw effect is a very unique mechanic seen on only one other collectable card in the entire game. It’s literally just an awkward offspring of Deathwing and Faerie Dragon. Wait, how would that even work? Would… okay, nope, don't tell me.
But jokes aside, on to the card. The main problem with really huge minions is that hard removal exists, so huge cards that don’t change the board right away, or have some protection, are inherently bad. This card can’t be targeted by removal, so it does have that as a plus meaning that if your opponent wants to get rid of it, they'll need to use their own minions to do it which will end up wasting a lot of their board presence to kill it, if they even do as 12 Health is a lot to take out. It doesn’t have Taunt so it won’t protect you from lethal, but if it did have Taunt, it would probably be too broken.
If Jade Golems didn’t exist yet, I'd say this card would have a realistic chance to see some play. Jade Druid however is a thing and thanks to its ability to infinitely summon a number of increasingly larger Jade Golems as time goes, you could play a 12/12 for 1 mana, effectively making this card irrelevant. In typical Jade Druid fashion, it also has that one card that single handedly destroys slow decks. So, I don’t think this card will see any play. Not because it isn’t good enough to, but because it has other options that just outclass it and make it obsolete (yes, Jade Druid).
Rating: Average
Ravasaur Runt
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Well, Adapt 2-drop, here we go. This is a card that many people have been sleeping on. People are saying its bad because it’s extremely difficult to play it on turn 2 with the Adaption effect. Okay, fair point there. But, have you ever considered that maybe, just maybe, you aren't forced to play this on turn 2? Getting two minions on the field isn’t too hard of a task, especially in Hunter, Paladin, Shaman, Warlock or even Pirate Warrior.
Sure, some of the adaptation choices you can get are bad, but others are really good and are equivalent to cards we thought were really insane (Shielded Minibot and Haunted Creeper for example). And you see how easy it is to get 2 minions on the field. We have Lost in the Jungle, Alleycat, Patches the Pirate, Reinforce, Totemic Call to all help with that. I think people are sleeping on this. I think it's good.
Rating: Good
Spiritsinger Umbra
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Well, I think most of us predicted a card like this. When Kripp reviewed this card, he compared it to Fandral, as it doubles up on your Choose One effects. Likewise, this card doubles up on all of your Deathrattle effects. You play a Deathrattle minion and you instantly trigger its effect and when it dies, it'll trigger it again. It effectively acts as a continuous Feign Death while it's on the field.
And of course, it works well in Priest due to the Deathrattles they got. Crystalline Oracle works really well with this as it will give you two cards from the opponent's deck and a 1/1 minion for 1 mana. It does say "summon" and not "play", so this will work with cards like Mirage Caller to get more value. In Druid, you can also use this with Living Mana and get all of the mana back right away. Hunter also has some good Deathrattle synergies of their own with Kindly Grandmother, Infested Wolf, Savannah Highmane, Shaky Zipgunner, you name it. Other classes could easily be able to use this in some way as well.
It's both fun and competitive, just like Brann Bronzebeard. It's obviously pretty good.
Rating: Very Good
Fire Plume's Heart and Sulfuras
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And what we have among is now is the Warrior Quest. As pretty much every single person on this forum predicted, it's about Taunt minions. Even after the initial Taunt Warrior set is rotating out, Blizzard is still forcing Taunt Warrior to be a thing. But to be honest, what else could the Warrior Quest actually be about? I don't really know to be honest.
As to help complete the Quest, we do have some more pretty good Taunt minions coming our way. Namely, after you play this Quest, you can play Cornered Sentry on turn 2 (though as the stream revealed, no pun intended, don't do this against Hunter or you'll just give them a Crackling Razormaw target), then play Stonehill Defender on turn 3, which will allow you to Discover another Taunt minion. Maybe you even play Sen'jin Shieldmasta on turn 4. We also have Direhorn Hatchling, Ornery Direhorn and Tar Lord on 5, 6 and 7 as welcome additions here (with the hatchling giving you another minion). So it looks like that problem is sorted.
After completing the Quest, you get Sulfuras which is a 4/2 weapon for 3 (which is already good in itself), and upon playing it, gives you DIE, INSECT! It's exactly the same as the Ragnaros card effect, and the Ragnaros Hero Power from Majordomo Executus’s Deathrattle. It lasts forever, so now you can be Ragnaros and for only 2 mana, can deal 8 random damage every single turn. With all the new Taunt minions, it doesn’t seem to hard to complete the Quest either, so this seems like a good Quest.
Rating: Good/Very Good
Direhorn Hatchling
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And naturally, with a Quest relating to Taunt minions, we were bound to get additional Taunt minions of our own in Warrior. This being one of them. It's essentially White Eyes in Warrior with worse stats, but it's not a Legendary so you can have 2 of them in your deck, and it's in a class that historically has been better at Control than Shaman, and contributes at least once to the Quest, twice if you draw the token.
So, to start off, you get a 3/6 Taunt for 5 (yes, rip Fen Creeper), and when it dies, you shuffle a 6/9 (very funny, yes) Taunt for 5 into your deck to draw later. Like I said, essentially White Eyes in Warrior. It does have less stats, that is a fair point. But where I think this will be useful is in Warrior decks which utilize the Quest card, Fire Plume's Heart where this will count as two out of the seven for the Quest. As Warrior has historically been very good at Control, I don't think it’ll be too unusual to get the 6/9 (and of course, even better in Wild because of Justicar). Overall, I think this will be a good card for Quest Warriors and even Taunt Warriors in general (like that's a thing). In addition to that, we have a minion for almost every mana slot in Quest Warrior, so that’s a plus.
Rating: Good
Giant Wasp
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Well, we knew that new Poisonous cards would be printed, and well, here one is. You look at Emperor Cobra, then look at this and realize that it has Stealth. You look at Patient Assassin, then look at this and realize it's a Common with +1/+1. Those two factors alone, make this card a lot better than either of those cards. Because it has Stealth, your opponent can’t just remove it with a damage spell, and because it has more Health than Patient Assassin, your opponent won’t be able to remove it with a simple 1-damage AoE. No Maelstrom Portal, and no Ravaging Ghoul. This will live through both of those to be able to take a minion out.
Though yes, it does have the inherent problem that Poisonous minions have, in which that ideally you want to take out something bigger and you can’t do right away so your opponent will end up hitting you again. Though because it has Stealth, playing this on turn 3 will make your opponent’s next turn very awkward as they will be forced to play off-curve to avoid one of their mid-game drops dying to this.
I don't think it will see play simply because killing something worth it will be too slow, but it's certainly better than Emperor Cobra or Patient Assassin. Will be a pretty good pick in Arena as well to screw up your opponent’s plays.
Rating: Good/Very Good
Dinomancy
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Here's another Hunter card that lots of people are exciting for. Astonishing, right? You change your Hero Power to give a Beast +2/+2, which in a lot of ways is like Shadowform. Giving a minion +2 Attack is a lot like dealing 2 damage in a way, but you also give the Beast Health meaning it actually has a chance to stay alive again and keep fighting which makes it better, though it doesn’t go through Taunt unlike Shadowform which does. It's also cheaper than Shadowform which is definitely better because we all know one of Shadowform's biggest problems is its cost.
You can keep using it on a Beast to make it bigger and bigger overtime and pose a more significant threat in the long run. It doesn't stack, unlike Shadowform. Playing another copy whilst you have already played one doesn't make its effect bigger, but it still might be a good idea to run 2 of them since it improves your chances of actually drawing them. In the late game, you can also use your Hero Power, cast this and refresh the Hero Power so you can use it again. So you got to take that into account.
Hunter naturally has a lot of Beasts so that's not an issue. In addition to that though, it encourages a Control Hunter style and actually helps one of the problems of the archetype since one of the main problems was the Hero Power and hot it was literally just "go face". This right here helps it. It’s definitely a very cool, and very exciting Hunter card.
Rating: Good/Very Good
Grievous Bite
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Speaking of Control Hunter, we have another Control Hunter card right here. It essentially acts as a mini Swipe. You deal more damage to one minion, than less damage to other minions. In this case, adjacent minions rather than all others but I digress. It's also similar to Powershot which did see a small bit of play, but this is more viable due to its lower cost (and Powershot is going to be Wild only anyway).
This card looks like the bomb-dot-com, but then some look at Powershot. Even with my comment before though, the card in terms of value does end up only being fair due to the damage, and positioning needs to go in your favor. But, it's another tool for Control Hunter.
Rating: Average/Good
Jeweled Macaw
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When was the last time you saw a Rogue play Swashburglar or a Mage play Babbling Book? Well, the answer to that question is probably the last Rogue/Mage you played, because every Rogue plays Swashburglar and every Mage plays Babbling Book. Just like every Priest is going to play Crystalline Oracle, and every Hunter will play this card because it's the same 1/1 minion that generates a random thing from a certain category. Every Hunter played Webspinner back when it was in Standard. Same is going to be true for this card which is even better because Battlecry and not Deathrattle. Let's just move on to the next review.
Rating: Very Good
Stonehill Defender
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Just more pissing on the grave of Silverback Patriarch which has exited forever now. You play it and it basically plays an I Know a Guy, essentially giving you that and a free 2 mana 1/4 Taunt (ala Twilight Geomancer) on the field, which is decent enough itself, and combining the values of both cards makes it better. This puts something on the board and Discovers at the same time, and the extra board presence is actually important here. Because you're Discovering a Taunt minion, you'll probably end up getting two points of your Quest counter completed. However, there is that argument of whether or not this or Tar Creeper would be better and that’s really where the discussion lies in.
If you’re playing this just as a Taunt, than Tar Creeper is probably better. If you’re playing this for the Warrior Quest, than this might be better for the additional value and getting closer to the Sulfuras. Maybe even one of each. Needs experimenting.
Rating: Average/Good
Ornery Direhorn
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And here we have another Taunt and another Dinosaur for our favorite Taunt-Dino class. It has Taunt already and you Adapt giving you more additional value. Combining Taunt with many other adaptations can prove to be an annoyance for the opponent. Crackling Shield and Liquid Membrane can prove to be very effective choices, but Living Spores and Rocky Carapace can also be pretty good choices as well, leaving more minions to kill after this dies, and making it harder to kill it in general. Flaming Claws isn't too bad either given the circumstances.
The rest on the other hand are very meh compared to the others. Stealth can be good, but at that point, it becomes a worse Stranglethorn Tiger. You'd probably never pick Poison Spit because a Poisonous 5 Attack minion would be very awkward. If Massive comes up, you basically only have 2 options since it already has Taunt. These however are just a few meh options. It's more likely that you'll get a good one than a meh one, and that's how I think of this card from a rating perspective.
Rating: Average/Good
Stubborn Gastropod
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And here we have our next Poisonous card. With TAUNT! Poisonous and Taunt. Yeah, that's a pretty nasty combo (yes, I do know what I said about Ornery Direhorn, but this is a small minion, where it makes sense to have Poisonous). It being a 1/2 is also HUGE for this minion. If it was a 2/1, it would be pretty bad, but as 1/2, this minion can't die to Hero Powers. In the early game, that means that it can also be very effective at killing anything. At some point, your opponent may be forced to run their bigger minion into this giving you quite a bit of value, so I like it.
Rating: Good
Primordial Drake
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In a rather unexpected turn of events, we got a Dragon in this expansion. A really good one too. This is definitely an auto-include in all Dragon decks, which will most likely become Wild only, but they'll still be relevant there. Not only is it a Dragon itself, but it also nukes the board for 2 damage when you play it. You don't even have to have a Dragon in your hand for that to work. You just play it, and there you go. Though because of its rather steep cost of 8, maybe you don’t run 2. You still run at least 1 regardless because the card is really good. Oh, and it has Taunt. They made a LOT of Taunt minions in this expansion.
Rating: Good/Very Good
Sated Threshadon
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Here we have a huge Common minion. Not too frequent that you see one of those. This one actually helps out with two Quests: Priest and Shaman. But more so Shaman than Priest because this will give you 3 points of progress for the Shaman Quest, but only 1 for the Priest Quest, and the Shaman Quest is harder to complete than the Priest Quest. It may see some play for Shamans trying desperately to complete their Quest, but I think Call in the Finishers does that job fine, and arguably, so I don't think it’ll see any play. Okay Arena card I suppose though.
Rating: Average
SECTION 6 (Posted April 4th)
Tar Lord
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We reviewed Tar Creeper all the way back in Section 1, and now it’s time to review his oldest brother here. It's an 11-Health minion (the first in the game) with 1-Attack, but it becomes an Ancient of War during your opponent's turn. However, it only having 1-Attack on your opponent’s turn doesn't have any pressure and it quite weak, so you'll have to just either attack face or ping off something weak.
And it’s a Taunt so it contributes to the Warrior Quest. We already have a perfect curve for the Quest:
And you only need one more Taunt minion to do the Quest. Maybe the one you Discovered from Stonehill Defender, or the one from Direhorn Hatchling's Deathrattle will do the trick. Has potential in Taunt Warrior, seems like a good card. Definitely really good in Arena.
Rating: Good
Stampede
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Well, here's another Hunter card that people are excited for. Remember when everyone hated Rexxar? Oh, how times have changed. So, remember all the 1-cost Beasts we have for Hunters. Fiery Bat, Alleycat, plus newcomers, Raptor Hatchling and Jeweled Macaw. Not to mention other 1-cost Beasts you might get like Angry Chicken and Stonetusk Boar (sure, they might not be good in deck, but out of this effect, you’re perfectly fine with getting them). Compared to Lock and Load, playing Beasts are a lot easier to play than spells in Hunter (even if the Beasts you get aren't 1-cost), you don’t need much setup as Beasts are pretty much second-nature in Hunter.
You know how Hunters run out of steam? So, yeah, this card is pretty good.
Rating: Very Good
Charged Devilsaur
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Big charge minion. As a Battlecry effect, it can't attack heroes that turn only. If you cheat it out with a card effect (a certain Druid card later on can do that), then it CAN attack heroes that turn. It's an attempt at a Charge Control card, which they’ve tried with Icehowl which never saw a lot of play. I don't see it being run too much, but it's a neat card.
Rating: Average
Jungle Giants and Barnabus the Stomper
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Here's the Druid Quest we got, and I can't say anyone expected this. Do you remember Celestial Dreamer from MSoG? Well, apparently, that may or may not was supposed to be an Un'Goro card because here we have the mechanic pushed even further. The objective of the Quest is simple, summon 5 minions with 5 or more Attack. Just summon them, not play them. This is probably one of the easiest Quests to complete because you summon and not play, so you maybe could work this into Jade Druid. Additionally, we also have some new 5+ Attack Druid support cards, Tortollan Forager and Elder Longneck just to name some. Druid also being the master of ramp have some nice tools to get minions out early.
Once you get the Quest out, you get Barnabus the Stomper, reducing the cost of all minions in your deck to 0. Not your hand, just your deck. But even if it doesn’t include your hand, it’s still a crazy powerful effect to make all of your more expensive minions (and in this deck, you probably will have some), completely cost you nothing. Like a permanent Aviana, that's even stronger. This is a good Quest.
Rating: Very Good
Binding Heal
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Priest gets a healing spell, and a really good one at that too, to replace Flash Heal. It's worse than Flash Heal for Auchenai Soulpriest (because you can't target the enemy hero, and you heal yourself), but it's better for healing because you basically get 2 Flash Heals at once. You don't have to choose between healing a minion, or your hero, because now you can do both. In terms of healing, this is definitely going to be useful. Even if you don’t get the full healing on a minion, in Aggro, you’d probably use Flash Heal on your face anyway. This allows you to kill a minion with your own minion, then heal that minion and do this at the same time.
Rating: Good/Very Good
Elder Longneck
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Rager much? I'm disappointed that they didn’t call this "Dino Rager" or something like that. So, do you remember Jungle Giants? That's where this comes in, as it's not only cheap at only 3 and counts for the Quest, but gets better if you have another 5+ Attack minion in your hand, which you will most likely have if you're playing this deck. Crackling Shield is a pretty good one to get, Shrouding Mist too. Playable for Quest Druid, but probably not elsewhere.
Rating: Average/Good
Free From Amber
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Here is a very interesting Priest card. For the cost of 8, you Discover a minion that costs 8 or more and instantly summon it. You could get a 9 or 10-cost minion and summon it right away. As it is a Priest card, you cannot get minions from other classes with this (though it's arguable if that would actually improve the card). You can get some pretty good options, namely Ysera or Soggoth the Slitherer. With Ragnaros the Firelord rotating out however, you do lose one of the better targets to get.
But, a lot of high cost minions do rely on other effects to work, and as a result, have lower stats. Such examples involve all of the Old Gods (except C'Thun if for some reason, you're playing this in C'Thun Priest), The Boogeymonster, Mayor Noggenfogger, Varian Wrynn/Kun the Forggoten King or Medivh, the Guardian. More often that not, you may be forced to pick bad cards that you don't want to pick, and you may have to end up picking vanilla beatsticks (all Giants, Eldritch Horror, Fossilized Devilsaur, Faceless Behemoth, etc.) as well as some really awkward and bad picks like Blood of The Ancient One, Majordomo Executus or Gruul.
I think there are way too many bad options to make it competitively viable, but at least you can have some fun with it.
Rating: Somewhat Bad
Radiant Elemental
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Do you remember the Mana Geode hype train in MSoG? Were you on that hype train? Were you disappointed that it didn't turn out as well as it was supposed to? Yeah, all of use were, and the chances are, you answered yes to all 3 of those questions. So now, Priest get a new 2-drop, which fortunately doesn't require it to attack or to be healed. It's literally a Sorcerer's Apprentice with its stats reversed. A lot of times, you can make it a 2 mana 2/5 draw a card (with Power Word: Shield). Nothing wrong with that.
It also enables some sick combos, namely with the Priest Legendary, Lyra the Sunshard, as well as a video that Disguised Toast posted where you play highlander with Raza the Chained, Auctionmaster Beardo, Shadowform, Shadow Visions and two of these guys and infinitely spam your Hero Power. I do actually think this will be a deck since you only need to keep 4 of those cards in hand, and it can still be very good with 1 Radiant Elemental since you can still push out 20 damage.
With Mana Geode, I did see a problem. It needed to stay alive on your opponent’s next turn, attack into something and then you could heal it. I don't see that here.
Rating: Very Good
Shellshifter
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Here’s a pretty good Choose One card for Druid. You either get a Sen'jin Shieldmasta Beast (pretty decent and playable in its own right), or you a get a 5/3 with Stealth to be aggressive, and also contributes to the Quest if you have it. You do have that 3/5 form if you want to be protective though.
Rating: Very Good
Lyra the Sunshard
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So, here is the Priest Legendary that people were excited for, and then immediately lost that upon seeing the card. It’s a 5 mana 3/5 that as you cast spells, gives you more spells so you may get more value out of it when you cast spells as this guy is going to just give you more and you may be able to use them.
Priest however has a variety of spells, from good spells, bad spells, situational spells, cheap spells, expensive spells, we’ve seen them all. You can't exactly predict what you're going to get and you'll inevitably get a spell from one of the weaker categories at some point, so it’s difficult for this to be reliable.
It's an Elemental, but I don’t think that matters too much in Priest. It's interesting, but disappointing because we were hyped for a "possibly too good" Legendary, and we got one that's never ever going to possibly be too good. It's not the worst thing in the world and could use some experimentation, but I think it's just not strong enough.
Rating: Average
Giant Anaconda
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Here we have yet another card to go into the 5+ Attack Druid. It counts towards the Quest itself and when it dies, it replaces itself with another 5 Attack minion in your hand giving you 2 points of your Quest. That's a really powerful effect like, similar to Voidcaller, but it comes at a steep price. It has really crappy stats. 7 mana for a 5/3 is absolute bottom of the barrel in terms of stats, and without any immediate impact, it's very slow to get the value rolling.
Though you can possibly get a lot of value with this by summoning an absurdly large minion, it's also possible to get an Elder Longneck from this, which will count for the Quest, but without the Battlecry, it's just a Magma Rager. It can possibly summon another one to chain the effect together. The dream would be to summon Tyrantus with this, which admittedly is pretty amusing, but the effect is random and, you’d have to be running Tyrantus to begin with. I don't think this will see play in the 5+ Attack Druid deck.
Rating: Somewhat Bad/Average
Tortollan Forager
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And for yet another support card for the 5+ Attack Druid deck, this card allows you to get ANY collectable 5+ Attack minion in the game, even those from other classes. Here are two posts from volt229, here and here, as well as another post from Crinosg explaining all of the possible 5+ Attack minions you can get from this card. There’s a LOT of variance with this card, which may be the reason it might not see play in the 5-Attack Druid deck, it's too unreliable.
As a 2-cost minion, it however is a good curve play after the Quest, so it does have going for it. That however can work against the card as well as it's very likely that you’ll get a more expensive minion so you’ll have to wait to play it quite a bit later. Hilariously enough, you can curve it into Magma Rager (though you’d just play Elder Longneck instead).
Rating: Average
Earthen Scales
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Meanwhile, at the Druid cards, we have this card. You give a minion you control +1/+1, THEN gain Armor equal to the Attack, so yes that extra 1 Attack is counted for this. You can make a minion stronger and save yourself. If you buff a minion to 5 Attack, you’ve ideally gotten ideal value from this, and it gets better the more Attack it has.
As a result of this, I do think this card will see play in the Druid Quest deck. However, I think this card will shine even more in Jade Druid. Even if it's only like a 7/7, you've still gotten more than enough value to justify the card. But Druid is the easiest class to get big Jade Golems and it usually gets larger than that. I think this card will definitely see play in Jade Druid, and it's arguably better there than in Quest Druid. If Jade Golems didn't exist yet, this card would just get a "Good", but because of Jade Golems, it gets a "Very Good".
Rating: Very Good
Air Elemental
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Here we have an Elusive 1-drop, which is a first for Hearthstone. The problem that is that people don’t normally run 1 mana small damage spells unless you're playing Malygos, and if you are playing Malygos, you’d probably rather hit your opponent’s face (or a really big minion if you’re in a clutch situation). As far as the Hero Powers go, it only really affects Mage (and Priest if they have Auchenai Soulpriest or Shadowform), since it can still be attacked by Wicked Knife, it can be still Shapeshifted, it can still be attacked by a Silver Hand Recruit or a Searing Totem. This means that a majority of the time, it basically says "can't be targeted by Fireblast". A card with that text actually might see play in a very Mage-heavy meta.
It's a 1-cost Elemental, so it's a cheap Elemental to trigger the effects of the others. However, we already have two other 1-cost Elementals that are better than this: Fire Fly and Glacial Shard. I don't think this card will see any play simply because those two Elementals exist. If none, or one of them existed, this card could have a chance, but I think the other two of them just make this irrelevant when deciding for your 1-drop Elemental.
Rating: Average
Volatile Elemental
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Here we have a rather interesting Elemental. It's a 2 mana 1/1 (yeah, really bad, I know). When it dies, you basically Darkbomb a random enemy minion. So you essentially get a 1/1 for free, but it's not quite that. When you cast a spell like Frostbolt, Darkbomb, or even anything of that category, you normally want to do it right away and not want to wait for anything. That and also this targets at random so you'll need to do a lot of control to keep this thing targeting the right thing. So, for that reason, it's a bit weaker than it might seem.
But it’s not bad since it's a 2-cost Elemental, and we admittedly don’t have that many of those. It's cheap so it does allow you to use Elemental synergies easier. Maybe it can work. It'll need experimentation though.
Rating: Average
Click the image to go to my custom Time Traveler class.
Section 5 has been posted, and thus begins the reviews from the reveal stream. I don't know if I'm going to be able to finish it in time. These reviews are also probably going to get shorter as a lot of my Section 5 reviews ended up being short.
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So, I have decided to discontinue this review because there's still a lot of cards left, not a lot of time, and I don't feel as motivated to do this review anymore since a lot of my reviews would end up being so short to do.
Overall though, I think the entire set looks very promising and I'm excited for release and to play with the cards.
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Okay, so it looks like it may still be possible to finish this before April 6th since I only have 3 sections to go. I was bored one day, so I figured I would do this and it looks like I can.
Click the image to go to my custom Time Traveler class.