The Year of the Mech
Welcome to the Year of the Mech. This sets gains its name from the first two sets, which both try to revisit some of the flavor themes last seen in Goblins vs Gnomes, and bring back the Mech tribe that has received an awfully low amount of support after GvG rotated out.
Set 1: Westfall Redemption
In the region of Westfall, law and order have collapsed. In the already chaotic region, a valuable material used for mechs discovered underground adds more complexity to the situation. Gangs fight each other and themselves for that material, opportunistic engineers offer their services for anyone willing to pay enough, or construct their own mechanical armies to take it all for themselves, all while Stormwind struggles with bringing the region back under control.
Westfall Redemption portrays, among other themes, the more volatile goblin side of engineering. Goblin engineers, ready to work for whoever pays the most or for no one else but themselves try to make do with what they have in the chaotic situation, Assembling impressive mechs out of nothing. Assemble is the keyword for the set. When you play a card that Assembles , you get to choose one of three mechs to summon . There's a total of four different mechs, but you will only have three to choose from each time you Assemble
You can see each Mech created by Assemble in the following Spoiler (Credits to ThePixelDash from the r/customhearthstone discord for allowing me to use Hard Puncher for this)
Example Cards:
Desperate Engineer uses Assemble to create small mech tokens that help it stay alive, even if you have no other mechs for it to destroy for survival.
Illegal Improvements is a prime example of volatile and explosive goblin engineering. Use it for a bit of burst and to make a mech that will be dangerous to leave on the board, but also potentially bad for your opponent to remove, or trade up with a mech and either get some face damage or remove another minion, if you're lucky.
Set 2: The Battle for Gnomeregan
From one field of battle to another, this time we join Gelbin Mekkatorque on his fight to take back Gnomeregan. Once the great capitol of the gnomish race, it fell when Sicco Thermaplugg deceived Gelbin to detonate a radiation bomb in the city against troggs, claiming that the gnomish citizens would be safe. The bomb only angered and mutated the attacking trogg force, and backfired on the gnomes, killing many of them and forcing the rest of them to flee. Now, the city is inhabited by leper gnomes, irradiated troggs, and the self-proclaimed 'King of Gnomeregan', Sicco Thermaplugg, driven mad by the radiation.
Here, we continue to explore mechs, but in different ways than what we did with chaotic goblins in the first set. This set also contains a new keyword, Irradiated . Irradiated minions spread their sickness to others, making any minions damaged by them also become irradiated. They however are doomed to die a quick death, taking 2 damage each time they attack.
Being damaged by Irradiated minions includes damage from other sources than attacking, so if you were to Irradiate something like Baron Geddon , it would be quite strong at spreading it to everything else.
Example cards:
High Inventor Mekkatorque is potentially a huge amount of value for some mech decks, filling your board with different mechs. The amount of mechs summoned is naturally limited by board size, and first summons copies of any mechs in hand, and then from your deck, starting with any at the top of your deck.
Sicco, King of Gnomeregan can really cause quite a chain of explosions with his first effect, while his second effect makes those explosions almost certain to happen sooner than later.
Set 3: Dalaran High
For the final set of the year, we leave the Mech theme mostly behind and venture from Gnomeregan to another grand city, this one much more lively. In the great city of mages, Dalaran High is accepting new students! Prided not only for its high quality education on magic, technology and various other subjects, but also for it's top-tier sports team, the Dalaran Gryphons. So take out your books and your writing instruments, and make sure to not miss your lectures.
Dalaran High has a new keyword, and a new mechanic seen in a cycle of 9 books, one for each class. The Study (X): mechanic gives you a reward if the last card you played was X, and the card could have been played on a turn before the current one. X could be many things, like card type (Minion, Spell, Weapon), specific cost, tribe or even some more specific requirements. Each class gets a Book card, which is a spell that becomes stronger as you play certain things during the game.
Example cards:
Field Study is a simple Study card for hunter. Being able to tutor a beast can come in handy, for example if you're playing a deck that runs mostly high cost beasts, you could play this in the late game after playing one of them to guarantee drawing another one. The part of the keyword in brackets not being bolded is intended, as with longer Study requirements, sometimes half of a card's text could end up being bolded, making it look very bad.
Book on Magical History is the mage card of the cycle of Book cards. As with all other Book cards, the text first states what the card does, and then in brackets and italics, the thing you need to do this game to empower it. The number on the card increases whenever you play a card that improves it, so there's no need to track how many of those card you have played so far. This one could be used in some deck that happens to run many different cost spells as a decent amount of damage later in the game, or one could build a deck around getting the most out of it and using it as very powerful burst.
Hall of Fame
Mana Wyrm : Mana Wyrm is an extremely powerful 1-drop, and can snowball out of control very easily. Because Mage is likely going to get a spell synergy theme in Dalaran High, this could get even more insane there, so it is being rotated out. As a replacement, Arcane Artificer is rotated into the Classic set so that Mage still has a cheap spell synergy card there, but not one that is good on its own and snowballs out of control easily.
Cold Blood : Cold Blood is both a very strong tool for aggressive decks and a cheap piece for combos. Rogue has a very strong Basic and Classic set that could do with removing one of their powerful cards. Gang Up is moved to Standard to replace it, as it is a much less powerful card that can be key to some really interesting decks. For example, it could be used in some combo with High Tinker Mekkatorque in a Mech Rogue.
Cabal Shadow Priest ; This might seem like an odd choice, as this has hardly been a problematic card at any point. That is true, and the main reason for this rotation is really the card brought to Classic to replace it, Lightbomb . With this rotation, Priest will finally have a good board clear in Classic, which means that they won't be so reliant on expansions now, and that Blizzard won't need to print more and more board clears to help the class. Cabal Shadow Priest was chosen as the card to go because like Lightbomb , it is a tool for control decks. Having so many good cards for Control Priest in Classic could make the archetype far too good, and removing one might bring it to balance.
And that is all. I hope you enjoyed reading it.
3
If you played something that Overloaded 6, would it go immediately to Greater Sapphire Spellstone or just upgrade to normal?
3
"Knights of the Frozen Clone"
7
Yes it can due to how Potion of Polymorph works. It works on Faerie Dragon as well.
16
"Battlecry: Add a random Magma Rager to your hand." It's called Tortollan Forager for a reason.
1
It's a Core Hound which ate a Magma Rager.
4
We thought the only cute thing in this expansion would be a Dino but then Flame Elemental comes along and proves us wrong. Also Am'gam Rager isn't an Elemental, my dreams are ruined.
7
I feel like this would've been better as the Paladin Legendary with Wickerflame's effect and Wickerflame with her effect. A guy with a cannon for a chest exploding and damaging stuff on death? Nah, Divine Shield and Taunt. Heck Paladins representing the Police would've been a cool idea.
2
This Nerubian needs a golden animation in game.
3
It would be better if it was a 3 mana, give all your totems +2/+2 instead
-14
It says "friendly mech" does that mean that it can target itself?