Time is changing, literally! After the disappearance of Nozdormu a time vortex has brought itself into existence in the Tanaris desert above the Caverns of Time. All sorts of creatures from many places and times are appearing in the outskirts of the vortex, which has given them strange powers and properties. Upon arriving at the battlefield they produce a Resonance, an effect that will trigger in the future if the creature hasn't been destroyed by then.
Resonance is accompanied by a counter which decreases by (1) at the start of your turn. When it reaches 0 its effect triggers, much like a Battlecry or a Deathrattle would. Some Resonance cards have some of the most powerful effects you'll have ever seen but don't worry, you'll have at least a turn to try to destroy your opponent's resonant minions negating their effect or you could also play around them, minimizing their impact.
But that's not all. Some spellcasters have already been able to infuse some of their spells and weapons with resonant powers, and once a resonant spell is played, there's no going back!
All 132 cards have already been designed months ago so I could post them all right now. However, I think it'd be a lot of fun if I revealed the rest of the cards during the next weeks the same way blizzard reveals their expansions. This way you aren't overwhelmed with more than a hundred cards at once and feedback on balance and general opinions can be focused on a few cards at a time. If you have any questions about how Resonance or any or the cards work or if you think a card's balance is off feel free to ask down below and I'll be happy to answer as best as I can. Thanks for reading and I'll see you soon with the next set of reveals.
I really like Resonance as a mechanic, but you have to factor in going second for the Sporebat card along with the Resonant Axe. Sporebat going first is nigh on a guaranteed to be a 3/3 (ignoring some unlikely coin hero powers for the 3 'ping' classes) , whereas going second it is almost always killed by your opponents one drop. Hearthstone doesn't need to give any more advantage to the player going first. The weapon is a better fiery war axe, which was nerfed for a very good reason.
Also, could you explain or at least outline how resonance would be representing visually because while you, and many others, would understand the mechanic, but we do need to remember that new players exist and this is not a very obvious mechanic.
But I do love the idea's and the mechanic. Keep us posted on the rest of the expansion
Sporebat is pretty much a Wisp if it doesn't trigger so it's understandable that it should have a powerful effect. I see your point about going first but I wouldn't consider using your ping to kill it "unlikely" and pretty much all classes have 1 mana cards that can deal with it. However I might consider reducing the effect to +2/+1 or +1/+2 since it's also a Beast so it has quite a lot of ways of being buffed for extra survivability.
The weapon is NOT better than fiery war axe because you can't attack with it the turn it comes out since it would break, negating the resonance. Used with upgrade it could be broken so I'll look into it.
As for the visual representation it could be an extra number on the card or an effect that stays on the history above all other actions up to when it triggers. I'm not sure yet so feedback would be welcome.
I'll be posting more cards soon. There are some really powerful effects out there enabled by resonance that I think you're going to love.
This looks awesome. Some of you dudes are more creative than the actual game team
Thanks, but then again coming up with the actual game is quite a larger achievement after all.
Eh the platform is good and its all pretty and stuff but lets not delude ourselves, the cards make the game and they should be giving guys like you jobs
This looks awesome. Some of you dudes are more creative than the actual game team
Thanks, but then again coming up with the actual game is quite a larger achievement after all.
Eh the platform is good and its all pretty and stuff but lets not delude ourselves, the cards make the game and they should be giving guys like you jobs
Well, I've actually applied for a game design intern position this summer. It'd be great to actually work on the design of the game but I'm afraid it's going to be very hard to get picked since I'm sure thousands of other people have applied as well.
So far, the minions are underpowered and the spells are overpowered, and there's no way to balance them.
There's a reason deathrattles aren't commonly play, not having an effect on the board immediately is outclassed by Battlecry anyday. A vanilla 2/5 on turn 3 is just a vanilla 2/5, it might be usable if the effect triggered at the end of your next turn but it's still pack trash because it doesn't do enough. Same with the 8 armor, a 3/4 with an effect that takes 2 turns to go off is the same as a 3/4 that has no effect.
For the others, Resonant Axe is literally a better Fiery War Axe, the fact that you can't attack for one turn means nothing when it is a 3/2 for 1 mana. They nerfed Fiery War Axe for being a 3/2 that cost 2.
We already have Resonant Spark, it's called Headcrack, can only hit heroes, costs 3 mana, and has to be comboed to get back in hand. The power creep is insane, only getting it back every second turn doesn't change that it's permanent value.
And Wormhole is just broken. It's a slightly overcost Assassinate that also gives you a Mind Control 3 turns later, that's 10 mana of value for 6 mana, you only lose 1 mana worth of value on the turn you play it.
But besides that, you're creating an entire archetype based around telling your opponent every move you're making. Games with Resonance would be so goddamn slow because you'd both have to sit there and calculate turns left on each card and you'd get full control over which of your opponents' effects goes off. Interactivity is great but piloting your opponent's deck for them is a little much.
So far, the minions are underpowered and the spells are overpowered, and there's no way to balance them.
There's a reason deathrattles aren't commonly play, not having an effect on the board immediately is outclassed by Battlecry anyday. A vanilla 2/5 on turn 3 is just a vanilla 2/5, it might be usable if the effect triggered at the end of your next turn but it's still pack trash because it doesn't do enough. Same with the 8 armor, a 3/4 with an effect that takes 2 turns to go off is the same as a 3/4 that has no effect.
For the others, Resonant Axe is literally a better Fiery War Axe, the fact that you can't attack for one turn means nothing when it is a 3/2 for 1 mana. They nerfed Fiery War Axe for being a 3/2 that cost 2.
We already have Resonant Spark, it's called Headcrack, can only hit heroes, costs 3 mana, and has to be comboed to get back in hand. The power creep is insane, only getting it back every second turn doesn't change that it's permanent value.
And Wormhole is just broken. It's a slightly overcost Assassinate that also gives you a Mind Control 3 turns later, that's 10 mana of value for 6 mana, you only lose 1 mana worth of value on the turn you play it.
But besides that, you're creating an entire archetype based around telling your opponent every move you're making. Games with Resonance would be so goddamn slow because you'd both have to sit there and calculate turns left on each card and you'd get full control over which of your opponents' effects goes off. Interactivity is great but piloting your opponent's deck for them is a little much.
These cards are only the introduction to the mechanic and so some of the minions like the Straw Golem shouldn't be seeing constructed play and are intended for arena. Resonant Axe not being able to attack when you play it is kind of a big deal since your opponent can play weapon removal to completely negate it and it is a bad topdeck. That said, it might be too strong and maybe it should only gain +1 durability.
The spells are not broken, believe me. Headcrack is one of the worst cards in the game and dealing 2 damage every 2 turns for 2 mana is not that broken when compared to cards like shadowreaper anduin. Think of it as a hero power that takes an extra turn to refresh. Wormhole indeed would be broken if it summoned a copy for you. That's why I included a note that clarifies that the original owner gets the copy. It basically sends a minion 3 turns into the future (it being a copy means that it will carry on any enchantments and how much health it has remaining).
And yes, resonance makes the game slower and that's the whole point of the mechanic. It means you have to plan out your moves for more than one turn instead of thinking about each turn individually. I'll post some more resonant cards in a moment so you can see what I'm talking about.
I'm going to reveal some more resonant cards to make their purpose more clear and to explain some more nuances about the mechanic. Bear in mind that this expansion contains many cards that do not include the resonance mechanic and every class has their own original theme. Immunity and Enrage are some of the mechanics that are being expanded in this expansion as well and we'll get into them in a little bit.
However, now is the time to reveal the echo spells. these 6 epic spells only have a Resonance (2) effect, meaning that they do nothing when you play them and only later on can you see their results. They all have even mana costs and we're going to start with the low mana ones:
As you can see these spells are meant to set up for specific situations in the future. Both you and your opponent will want to change how successful these cards are during the 2 turns they need to activate and a lot can happen on 2 turns. But let's get to the big guns, shall we?
Some of these effects are so powerful that you could build entire decks aroud them. However, they come at a big tempo loss and as such they can't be played lightly. Some might argue that these are some of the least interactive cards in hearthstone since they can't be stopped when they're played. I think it's rather quite the contrary since most of them can have 0 impact at all if your opponent outwits you in those 2 turns you both have to prepare. It's true that it's you who's paying the mana cost, but you choose when you want to take the risk and your opponent must be ready to react.
Now you have seen what great powers Resonance has in store for you. My next post will delve deeper on some of the other themes of the expansion and I'll be making an edit to my original post with all the cards released so far so you can see them all at the same time.
The cards look cool and the concept of Resonance is interesting. There are a couple of things that seem ambiguous. Obviously the Resonance effect for Resonant Spark and Wormhole must persist after casting. Does the same hold for Wandering Soldier? If Wandering Soldier is killed before the Resonance effect fires, does the Resonance effect trigger at the appropriate turn? Also, as written Wormhole "destroys" the minion, so it should trigger Deathrattles. But if the intent is to transport it to the future, it probably should not trigger Deathrattles.
The cards look cool and the concept of Resonance is interesting. There are a couple of things that seem ambiguous. Obviously the Resonance effect for Resonant Spark and Wormhole must persist after casting. Does the same hold for Wandering Soldier? If Wandering Soldier is killed before the Resonance effect fires, does the Resonance effect trigger at the appropriate turn? Also, as written Wormhole "destroys" the minion, so it should trigger Deathrattles. But if the intent is to transport it to the future, it probably should not trigger Deathrattles.
I explained in the beginning that minions with resonance have to stay alive to trigger while spells will trigger regardless. The case of wormhole is more correct than you'd imagine since you could actually die each time you teleport yourself. A new copy of you is created but you were literally destroyed so how do we know that you are still you and not something that thinks that it's you? That dilemma is transported to the card rather well in my opinion. By the way, I'm also going to remark that minions with resonances will activate even if you summon them and not play them and wormhole would remember if a resonant minion had spent some of its resonance before going into it so for example if I played a straw golem and next turn I used Wormhole on it, in 3 turns I would summon a copy of that golem which only has (1) resonance remaining. You can use it on enemy minions to remove them for a while and prepare to destroy them later or you could use it on your minions to save them for later as some sort of protection.
I'm going to show what some of the new tools that druid is getting this expansion look like and this time I'll try to explain every single card more in depth:
This new druid archetype is based on increasing the attack of your hero to gain all sort of advantages. Direct damage has been greatly favored over hero attack since you don't also use your health as a resource. As such, this new tools will make using these attack buff cards more attractive for deck builders. Let's start with a card that I made a long time ago for a weekly card design competition:
I like this card because at first sight it seems really bad. But as it turns out if a minion attacks your hero while it has an attack value your hero will do damage as if it were the one attacking. This means that this card could be a very powerful board clear if you can manage your Health, and druid has a lot of ways of gaining armor as of late so you could certainly take that into account.
I figured an extra way of gaining attack would be a good addition to this set. Letting this stay alive in the late game could be fatal and the concept is fairly interesting.
Cost manipulation is one of the big themes of this expansion but it is a mechanic that should be handled with care. Unlike Thing from Below, this potentially 0 mana taunt will only be benefitted if you really build your deck around it.
Note: On balance: Some of these cards might seem to powerful to some of you and you might be right, but this is just a "first draft" of what a Hearthstone expansion would really look like. Making things powerful to then tone them down in playtesting seems like the right way of seeing what works and what doesn't in card design to me. In Hearthstone sometimes completely broken cards pass right under the radar when they're first revealed and vice-versa. While I'm really interested in your balance suggestions bear in mind that the main goal of this "first draft" is to put the cards on the table (no pun intended). That said keep them coming because they are really helpful to me and I plan on changing some of the cards after giving them some thought.
Enrage is one of those keywords that hasn't been used too much since the game came out. All Enrage minions do is increase their attack or gain windfury but this mechanic allows for much more and I wanted to explore this design space in my expansion.
However, everything comes at a cost and some of my new cards require a fundamental change to the mechanic that thankfully wouldn't affect any of the Enrage minions that exist today. This change consists in changing the status of "damaged" from when a minion doesn't have its maximum Health to when a minion has more than 0 Health and less than its maximum Health. This means that if you kill an enraged minion in one blow its enrage shouldn't trigger. You'll see why I proposed this change down below:
As you can see, with the current "damaged" interaction Distracted Knight would always gain +3 Health, even if you dealt 2 damage to it since its enrage would trigger before it died. With mi change in place no other cards that I know of would be affected and Distracted Knight would work as intended. Nevertheless, I'm a bit unsure about the legitimacy of this change so I'd like to know your opinion.
Turriok the Immovable is this set's warrior legendary card. He also uses Enrage so I thought this'd be the best time to reveal him.
He's hard to remove and even harder after being hit. Once this bad boy hits the board he's likely to stay there for a while, offering some precious protection.
This set only has 1 legendary card per class so this is warrior's only legendary. Still, many more neutral legendaries are replacing the slot of those extra legendaries and you'll be seeing some of them soon.
These magical crystals are being used by warriors and mages to create powerful storms whose effects persist across various turns.
The power of the crystals has spread to other cards as well:
These cards continue to explore warrior and mage's most iconic themes while bringing a fresh angle to them. They provide many synergies and can work in a large variety of decks. Furthermore, warrior and especially mage has a lot more support for these archetypes. A midrange freeze mage is one of the decks I'm trying to make viable in this expansion.
Note: I'm talking about a deck that uses freeze effects to gain tempo/value advantages (something that blizzard has tried to do for a long time), not the combo freeze mage that we know.
Hunter has been traditionally an aggresive or midrange class. Even though control cards for this class have been printed a powerful control archetype for hunter has never quite been a thing. Furthermore, hunter's been having a hard time keeping up with the meta since there are better aggresive decks out there and they haven't received many new tools to do what they do best (go face) for a long time.
Feral Chicken should help aggresive hunter decks get back on track but this can't be the only dimension of this class. The first thing you need in a control deck is good cheap removal and hunter's getting it.
Piercing Shot should help hunter clear off pesky boards in the early game without commiting too many resources and potentially do full board clears with the appropiate setup in the late game. Still, nowadays board clears and removal aren't going to be enough against most aggro decks, which will burn you down with spells or just refill the board instantly. Therefore I present to you... healing for hunter.
Not only is this card the best pun ever and a good tech against beasts, it finally gives hunter a healing option that makes sense thematically and could at last make control hunter viable.
I've already mentioned that Immune is one of the mechanics being expanded in this set and a good introduction as to what you can expect is Xuldia Streamrunner, the hunter legendary:
These conditional Immune effects can make for some interesting situations. The fringe use of this mechanic means that most people don't really know all the interactions about it so let me explain some of the nuances.
1. A minion will lose Taunt while it's immune the same way Stealth works.
2. Your enemy can't target Immune minions with anything but destroy effects will still remove them. For example playing twisting nether will kill any Immune minion on the board.
The first thing I did with Immune was to try to think what stats and cost should a permanently Immune minion have and I came up with these figures:
You might look at it and think that I just created an epic pack filler due to the lack of text on the card but you have to take into account that this effect is pretty unique. Buffing it makes it pretty scary since it can't be targeted by your opponent and all kinds of crazy strategies could rely on this card. That said, let's get to a card that uses Immune within certain conditions.
This knight is feeling pretty confident and he'll defeat any weaker foe without getting a single scratch. It definitely would be a good card in arena but I could see it being played in some buff heavy decks in constructed as well.
1.INTRODUCTION
Time is changing, literally! After the disappearance of Nozdormu a time vortex has brought itself into existence in the Tanaris desert above the Caverns of Time. All sorts of creatures from many places and times are appearing in the outskirts of the vortex, which has given them strange powers and properties. Upon arriving at the battlefield they produce a Resonance, an effect that will trigger in the future if the creature hasn't been destroyed by then.
Resonance is accompanied by a counter which decreases by (1) at the start of your turn. When it reaches 0 its effect triggers, much like a Battlecry or a Deathrattle would. Some Resonance cards have some of the most powerful effects you'll have ever seen but don't worry, you'll have at least a turn to try to destroy your opponent's resonant minions negating their effect or you could also play around them, minimizing their impact.
But that's not all. Some spellcasters have already been able to infuse some of their spells and weapons with resonant powers, and once a resonant spell is played, there's no going back!
All 132 cards have already been designed months ago so I could post them all right now. However, I think it'd be a lot of fun if I revealed the rest of the cards during the next weeks the same way blizzard reveals their expansions. This way you aren't overwhelmed with more than a hundred cards at once and feedback on balance and general opinions can be focused on a few cards at a time. If you have any questions about how Resonance or any or the cards work or if you think a card's balance is off feel free to ask down below and I'll be happy to answer as best as I can. Thanks for reading and I'll see you soon with the next set of reveals.
2.CURRENTLY REVEALED CARDS (132/132)
DRUID
HUNTER
MAGE
PALADIN
PRIEST
ROGUE
SHAMAN
WARLOCK
TOKENS
WARRIOR
NEUTRAL
3.BALANCE CHANGES
ROUND 1
4. COMMUNITY CARDS (REPLACING PROTO-DRAKE)
SHAPELESS ONE BY MUROCAGGROB
SPOREBAT MATRIARCH BY LARRYMOMENTS
INFINITE INVADER BY ZANYWOOP
Check out my Hearthstone expansion: The Shifting Sands
This looks awesome. Some of you dudes are more creative than the actual game team
Check out my Hearthstone expansion: The Shifting Sands
Check out my Hearthstone expansion: The Shifting Sands
Check out my Hearthstone expansion: The Shifting Sands
So far, the minions are underpowered and the spells are overpowered, and there's no way to balance them.
There's a reason deathrattles aren't commonly play, not having an effect on the board immediately is outclassed by Battlecry anyday. A vanilla 2/5 on turn 3 is just a vanilla 2/5, it might be usable if the effect triggered at the end of your next turn but it's still pack trash because it doesn't do enough. Same with the 8 armor, a 3/4 with an effect that takes 2 turns to go off is the same as a 3/4 that has no effect.
For the others, Resonant Axe is literally a better Fiery War Axe, the fact that you can't attack for one turn means nothing when it is a 3/2 for 1 mana. They nerfed Fiery War Axe for being a 3/2 that cost 2.
We already have Resonant Spark, it's called Headcrack, can only hit heroes, costs 3 mana, and has to be comboed to get back in hand. The power creep is insane, only getting it back every second turn doesn't change that it's permanent value.
And Wormhole is just broken. It's a slightly overcost Assassinate that also gives you a Mind Control 3 turns later, that's 10 mana of value for 6 mana, you only lose 1 mana worth of value on the turn you play it.
But besides that, you're creating an entire archetype based around telling your opponent every move you're making. Games with Resonance would be so goddamn slow because you'd both have to sit there and calculate turns left on each card and you'd get full control over which of your opponents' effects goes off. Interactivity is great but piloting your opponent's deck for them is a little much.
Check out my Hearthstone expansion: The Shifting Sands
ECHOES
I'm going to reveal some more resonant cards to make their purpose more clear and to explain some more nuances about the mechanic. Bear in mind that this expansion contains many cards that do not include the resonance mechanic and every class has their own original theme. Immunity and Enrage are some of the mechanics that are being expanded in this expansion as well and we'll get into them in a little bit.
However, now is the time to reveal the echo spells. these 6 epic spells only have a Resonance (2) effect, meaning that they do nothing when you play them and only later on can you see their results. They all have even mana costs and we're going to start with the low mana ones:
As you can see these spells are meant to set up for specific situations in the future. Both you and your opponent will want to change how successful these cards are during the 2 turns they need to activate and a lot can happen on 2 turns. But let's get to the big guns, shall we?
Some of these effects are so powerful that you could build entire decks aroud them. However, they come at a big tempo loss and as such they can't be played lightly. Some might argue that these are some of the least interactive cards in hearthstone since they can't be stopped when they're played. I think it's rather quite the contrary since most of them can have 0 impact at all if your opponent outwits you in those 2 turns you both have to prepare. It's true that it's you who's paying the mana cost, but you choose when you want to take the risk and your opponent must be ready to react.
Now you have seen what great powers Resonance has in store for you. My next post will delve deeper on some of the other themes of the expansion and I'll be making an edit to my original post with all the cards released so far so you can see them all at the same time.
Note: Paladin has some SICK golden dragons.
Check out my Hearthstone expansion: The Shifting Sands
The cards look cool and the concept of Resonance is interesting. There are a couple of things that seem ambiguous. Obviously the Resonance effect for Resonant Spark and Wormhole must persist after casting. Does the same hold for Wandering Soldier? If Wandering Soldier is killed before the Resonance effect fires, does the Resonance effect trigger at the appropriate turn? Also, as written Wormhole "destroys" the minion, so it should trigger Deathrattles. But if the intent is to transport it to the future, it probably should not trigger Deathrattles.
Check out my Hearthstone expansion: The Shifting Sands
NEW DRUID ARCHETYPE: ATTACK DRUID
I'm going to show what some of the new tools that druid is getting this expansion look like and this time I'll try to explain every single card more in depth:
This new druid archetype is based on increasing the attack of your hero to gain all sort of advantages. Direct damage has been greatly favored over hero attack since you don't also use your health as a resource. As such, this new tools will make using these attack buff cards more attractive for deck builders. Let's start with a card that I made a long time ago for a weekly card design competition:
I like this card because at first sight it seems really bad. But as it turns out if a minion attacks your hero while it has an attack value your hero will do damage as if it were the one attacking. This means that this card could be a very powerful board clear if you can manage your Health, and druid has a lot of ways of gaining armor as of late so you could certainly take that into account.
I figured an extra way of gaining attack would be a good addition to this set. Letting this stay alive in the late game could be fatal and the concept is fairly interesting.
Cost manipulation is one of the big themes of this expansion but it is a mechanic that should be handled with care. Unlike Thing from Below, this potentially 0 mana taunt will only be benefitted if you really build your deck around it.
Note: On balance: Some of these cards might seem to powerful to some of you and you might be right, but this is just a "first draft" of what a Hearthstone expansion would really look like. Making things powerful to then tone them down in playtesting seems like the right way of seeing what works and what doesn't in card design to me. In Hearthstone sometimes completely broken cards pass right under the radar when they're first revealed and vice-versa. While I'm really interested in your balance suggestions bear in mind that the main goal of this "first draft" is to put the cards on the table (no pun intended). That said keep them coming because they are really helpful to me and I plan on changing some of the cards after giving them some thought.
Check out my Hearthstone expansion: The Shifting Sands
EXPANDING ENRAGE
Enrage is one of those keywords that hasn't been used too much since the game came out. All Enrage minions do is increase their attack or gain windfury but this mechanic allows for much more and I wanted to explore this design space in my expansion.
However, everything comes at a cost and some of my new cards require a fundamental change to the mechanic that thankfully wouldn't affect any of the Enrage minions that exist today. This change consists in changing the status of "damaged" from when a minion doesn't have its maximum Health to when a minion has more than 0 Health and less than its maximum Health. This means that if you kill an enraged minion in one blow its enrage shouldn't trigger. You'll see why I proposed this change down below:
As you can see, with the current "damaged" interaction Distracted Knight would always gain +3 Health, even if you dealt 2 damage to it since its enrage would trigger before it died. With mi change in place no other cards that I know of would be affected and Distracted Knight would work as intended. Nevertheless, I'm a bit unsure about the legitimacy of this change so I'd like to know your opinion.
Check out my Hearthstone expansion: The Shifting Sands
WARRIOR LEGENDARY CARD REVEAL
Turriok the Immovable is this set's warrior legendary card. He also uses Enrage so I thought this'd be the best time to reveal him.
He's hard to remove and even harder after being hit. Once this bad boy hits the board he's likely to stay there for a while, offering some precious protection.
This set only has 1 legendary card per class so this is warrior's only legendary. Still, many more neutral legendaries are replacing the slot of those extra legendaries and you'll be seeing some of them soon.
Check out my Hearthstone expansion: The Shifting Sands
BLOOD CRYSTALS/ FROST CRYSTALS
These magical crystals are being used by warriors and mages to create powerful storms whose effects persist across various turns.
The power of the crystals has spread to other cards as well:
These cards continue to explore warrior and mage's most iconic themes while bringing a fresh angle to them. They provide many synergies and can work in a large variety of decks. Furthermore, warrior and especially mage has a lot more support for these archetypes. A midrange freeze mage is one of the decks I'm trying to make viable in this expansion.
Note: I'm talking about a deck that uses freeze effects to gain tempo/value advantages (something that blizzard has tried to do for a long time), not the combo freeze mage that we know.
Check out my Hearthstone expansion: The Shifting Sands
HUNTER AND CLASS FLEXIBILITY
Hunter has been traditionally an aggresive or midrange class. Even though control cards for this class have been printed a powerful control archetype for hunter has never quite been a thing. Furthermore, hunter's been having a hard time keeping up with the meta since there are better aggresive decks out there and they haven't received many new tools to do what they do best (go face) for a long time.
Feral Chicken should help aggresive hunter decks get back on track but this can't be the only dimension of this class. The first thing you need in a control deck is good cheap removal and hunter's getting it.
Piercing Shot should help hunter clear off pesky boards in the early game without commiting too many resources and potentially do full board clears with the appropiate setup in the late game. Still, nowadays board clears and removal aren't going to be enough against most aggro decks, which will burn you down with spells or just refill the board instantly. Therefore I present to you... healing for hunter.
Not only is this card the best pun ever and a good tech against beasts, it finally gives hunter a healing option that makes sense thematically and could at last make control hunter viable.
Note: Taunt is cheat.
Check out my Hearthstone expansion: The Shifting Sands
HUNTER LEGENDARY CARD REVEAL
I've already mentioned that Immune is one of the mechanics being expanded in this set and a good introduction as to what you can expect is Xuldia Streamrunner, the hunter legendary:
These conditional Immune effects can make for some interesting situations. The fringe use of this mechanic means that most people don't really know all the interactions about it so let me explain some of the nuances.
1. A minion will lose Taunt while it's immune the same way Stealth works.
2. Your enemy can't target Immune minions with anything but destroy effects will still remove them. For example playing twisting nether will kill any Immune minion on the board.
More Immune cards will be revealed soon.
Check out my Hearthstone expansion: The Shifting Sands
2 MORE NEUTRAL IMMUNE CARDS
The first thing I did with Immune was to try to think what stats and cost should a permanently Immune minion have and I came up with these figures:
You might look at it and think that I just created an epic pack filler due to the lack of text on the card but you have to take into account that this effect is pretty unique. Buffing it makes it pretty scary since it can't be targeted by your opponent and all kinds of crazy strategies could rely on this card. That said, let's get to a card that uses Immune within certain conditions.
This knight is feeling pretty confident and he'll defeat any weaker foe without getting a single scratch. It definitely would be a good card in arena but I could see it being played in some buff heavy decks in constructed as well.
Check out my Hearthstone expansion: The Shifting Sands
Whoa! Looks great!
Check out my Hearthstone expansion: The Shifting Sands