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!
and what if Brann
Yeah but shaman usually gets 7/7 for 4 or 5/5 for 0, so for it to be balanced it should be atleast 12/12 worth of stats, kappa
"We decided to put them primarily in Shaman and Mage"
Is anyone like me worrying that Shaman will find a way to use both elementals and jades in one deck and continue to make some OP decks? A few months ago ppl said jade shaman won't be a thing against midrange shaman. and here we are.
They pretty much lost their early game minion.. remember back when Pally lost shieldbot and mustard?
They did exactly same thing with dragons and mechs, so its not the first time.
When is the next reveal, it's been 7 hours since this one, please give us moreeeeeeeeeee
I'd say "be thankful we've gotten 8 today so far," but to be honest I'm antsy too. More, please?
In my opinion, Am'gam Rager and Core Rager should've been elementals to. Shifting Shade and Ancient Shade as well. Also Herald Volazj
Core Rager is based on a World of Warcraft mob, which was tamable by hunters, thus a beast. It does not make sense to make it an elemental.Scratch that, looking here, it appears you're right.
Ozruk seems like a bad version of Ancient of War. If a minion has 10 or 20 health doesn't really matter most of the time because it can only be removed with hard removals. Turn 9 is too late to be played against Aggro and we will need a lot more good Elementals to make this somehow viable.
Maybe you can make it work in Shaman, but Jades seem so much better. Playing bad cards in a deck is good when you have an awesome effect like N'Zoth, C'Thun or Jades. But a 5/x taunt that dies to single target removal does nothing.
10 health is much easier to deal with with damage than 25 or more health. Yes, it sucks against hard removal, but there will be situations where some decks that don't have hard removal or wasted it before are unable to deal with it.
But it has no real impact on the board. It is one high health low attack minion. Control can easily handle it and pirate warrior will kill you before turn 9.
Taunt impacts the board. 5 Attack isn't that low. Not saying this card will be great, but it shouldn't be dismissed for "being too slow" or "too low impact".
i really dont like the elemental now since it ruins interactive cards.
they just do what ever they want without the chance of being punished.
It is good that Brann Bronzebeard and Emperor Thaurissan are rotating out. Ozruk would be nuts with them.
Playing a 5-25 taunt is not much worse than a 5-50 taunt.
Both get Polyd.
Yeah, but you can make that argument against literally any minion card that doesn't have Can't Be Targeted By Heropower/Spells ability. "It will lose to hard removal." The person you are playing against needs to not have burnt those cards by then.