Mike Donais Talks Elementals, and Reveals FOUR New Cards!
In a blog today featuring discussion on Elementals, Mike Donais revealed four new cards!
As usual, you can find discussion threads for all the new cards below, but we've also got a special Elemental Tribe Discussion Thread.
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Announcement
Quote from BlizzardWhen venturing into Un’goro, be on your guard—the crater is home to huge dinosaurs, challenging Quests and primordial Elementals! Today we’re going to take a closer look at how Elementals were designed and what they do.
But first, check out this brand-new Shaman minion:
When you play an Elemental, their latent energy sticks around and other Elementals can make use of it on the following turn. Many Elementals in Journey to Un’goro get a bonus effect if you played an Elemental on the previous turn. Elementals in your hand will light up with a unique glow when this bonus is active.
There are a bunch of awesome new Elementals coming with Journey to Un’goro, but one Legendary Elemental takes the mechanic of soaking up elemental power to an extreme:
Yes, we have definitely seen this guy reach 30 health.
How did we come up with the Elemental mechanic?
We want each minion type to have its own unique feel and gameplay. When working on the Blackrock Mountain adventure, we decided some cards should get a bonus while you’re holding a Dragon in your hand. This let Dragon decks focus on having large minions, and their mechanic mitigates the downside of holding onto an expensive Dragon while you wait to have enough mana. We knew we had to come up with something unique for Elemental decks that made them feel very different.
During the initial design phase of a set, we explore a lot of ideas—even ones we know won’t work in the end—because iterating on those ideas helps us learn what kinds of things are fun. Maybe we try one mechanic that turns out to be bad, but along the way we discover a certain element of it is entertaining. We can then make a new mechanic that gets right to the heart of the fun.
In Journey to Un’Goro, we knew we wanted to add Elementals, and we tried about 10 different mechanical designs. By playing with each design and discussing them, we narrowed in on the best ones. Eventually, we chose our favorite and adjusted all the Elementals to match the one we liked best.
What other designs for Elementals did we try out?
1. Elementals get a bonus if you cast a spell this turn.
2. Elementals get a bonus if the last card you played was an Elemental.
3. Elementals get a bonus if the last minion you played was an Elemental.
4. Elementals get a bonus if you control another Elemental.
5. Elemental was a minion type and a spell type.
6. Gain Elemental Charges and spend them to power up Elementals.Each of these designs hit us with different problems or challenges, causing us to eventually arrive at the mechanic we shipped with.
Do all the new Elementals have this new mechanic?
No, there are plenty of other Elementals in the set.
Check out the new cards Fire Fly and Flame Geyser - and their token, Flame Elemental:
Both of these cards can help set up big plays by giving you 1-Cost minions you can play to power up your other Elementals.
Previously, we revealed Pyros. Pyros is particularly great because it can help trigger your Elementals when you play each incarnation of him.
Why do we like this mechanic for Elementals?
Elementals are fun because you can plan future turns in advance and get rewarded for it. You end up playing your turn differently because you’re thinking about what you want to do on your next turn …and even the turn after.
Some of the Elemental cards are particularly good in control decks. Notice how Stone Sentinel is a late game card that gives you two Taunt minions? Ozruk, the new Legendary Elemental, is a huge Taunt minion when played in a deck with lots of other small Elementals.
What existing cards became Elementals?
When we created the Elemental minion type, we knew we would want to change some existing cards to become Elementals. We went back and looked at every Hearthstone card one by one and decided which ones to change.
Here are the 18 cards we changed into Elementals:
- Water Elemental
- Anomalus
- Ragnaros Lightlord
- Lightspawn
- Dust Devil
- Unbound Elemental
- Fireguard Destroyer
- Rumbling Elemental
- Earth Elemental
- Fire Elemental
- Neptulon
- Al’Akir the Windlord
- Arcane Anomoly
- Ice Rager
- Magma Rager
- Frost Elemental
- Baron Geddon
- Ragnaros the Firelord
What you should expect from Elementals in Un'Goro
There are about 25 new Elementals in Un’goro. We decided to put them primarily in Shaman and Mage because those are the classes that traditionally use elemental magic and summon things like Water Elementals and Fire Elementals. However, there are a bunch of Elementals in neutral and the other classes, so everyone can dabble in Elementals if they want to.
The elementals are callin’ and if you put them all in, you gon’ be ballin’.
Learn more about Journey to Un'Goro!
Visit our expansion guide to look at all the new cards that have been revealed so far, as well as anything else you want to know about the new expansion!
So far the Elementals are not very appealing... Though I think that the best part is already to be seen!
Mate, it just applies to mage and shaman lore
Applied to lore or not, it is just terrible to give a archetype of cards/mechanic to only a selection of classes. A good comparison here is GvG and MSG. We can all agree here that MSG is a bad expansion as compared to GvG. In GvG, all classes get some sort of mech even though only Mage got the best benefit out of them. In MSG, we had a tri class thing going on but... Let's just say only two out of the three mechanic introduced worked like a charm.
Anyway, my point here is that I wish that elemental and adapt is available to all classes. But lore exists.
Ever heard of Beast Mage or Beast Shaman? Every class has a tribal thing from time to time. For Shaman and Mage, its Elementals.
Ever heard of Beast Mage or Beast Shaman? Every class has a tribal thing from time to time. For Shaman and Mage, its Elementals.
Mike Donais just posted on Reddit that Twilight Elemental and Flames of Azzinoth will be tagged as Elementals also. This list is only the played elementals, not the token/summoned ones.
https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/60hpjf/new_cards_hearthside_chat_elementals_of_ungoro/df75a2b/
the elementals are callin’ and if you put them all in, you gon’ be ballin’.
Fantastic!
I logged in just to say this expansion is looking awful, as usual. Same stuff that happened with GvG, new tribe that will die short soon after, but wil dominate the meta for a while. Go back to trying stuff like Inspire or Discover, only two good things to hit HS.
I just clicked that wowpedia link and found Voidwalker, but didn't see anyone saying anything about him. Looks like it's a shadow elemental D:
Voidwalker is already a demon. I dunno if they're going to give cards two classifications.
Kel'Thuzad? Doomhammer? Not even Booty Bay Bodyguard? Every card should be elemental like wtf blizz???
yeah right? he's named elemental fcs.
https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/60hpjf/new_cards_hearthside_chat_elementals_of_ungoro/df75a2b/
Tokens aren't on this list, Twilight Elemental will get the elemental tag. (Doesn't seem to matter at this point since elly synergy triggers on playing them, not summoning. Then again we've seen hardly any cards so we'll probably get something that buffs an elly or something else that'll make the tag relevant.)
Yep, Arcane Anomaly is a good question :/
It feels like this expansion was supposed to be adventure,but then they just made a lot of fillers to make it worth expansion.
i can't acept that Lightspawn, a creature made out of light is an elemental, but the shades like Ancient Shade and company, creatures made out of shadows are not, bunch of racist inconcistence bullshit there.
Source: http://wow.gamepedia.com/Shade and http://wow.gamepedia.com/Elemental
Flamewaker isn't elemental? But I thought the wiki said its a fire elemental in serpent form idk
I'm laughing at the Shaman 7 mana 4/4 minion. :D
Turns out it's a 7 mana 8/10, but split in 3 bodies for a better bloodlust turn.