Peter Whalen Talks About Quests & Reveals 2 New Cards!
Two new rogue cards have been revealed in a blog post with Peter Whalen discussing Quests!
Discuss this Card Discuss this Card Discuss this Card
Clarifications
- The effect happens to minions which are played and summoned. For example, Frogs and Sheep from Hex and Polymorph would become 5/5. (Source)
- Cards on the battlefield when Crystal Core is played will become a 5/5 regardless of active buffs on them. You can later on buff them with cards and they will retain those stats. (Source)
- Example: Edwin VanCleef's effect works as normal if he's in your hand after Crystal Core is played. It will just add the +2/+2 to the 5/5. (Source)
Blog
Quote from BlizzardThis Jungle Hides Many Secrets
As we figured out the initial story behind Journey to Un’Goro, we realized that the core fantasy had four pillars: dinosaurs, elementals, exploration, and the primal world itself. Dinosaurs and elementals had their own mechanics, so we needed one more that made players feel like they were on an expedition, exploring the awe-inspiring landscape of Un’Goro Crater itself.
The idea of creating quest cards had been floating around on our team for a very long time. Back when we were first working on Whispers of the Old Gods, one of the designers pitched a new type of secret: Quests. A Quest was only active on your turn, and when you completed its condition, something awesome happened!
When we needed a mechanic for exploring a forgotten world to find something truly amazing, these Quests seemed like a natural fit.
Give Me a Quest
Once we decided to give Quests a real shot in Journey to Un’Goro, we began heavily iterating on them. We started out with the idea that Quests would be Legendary and the rewards would be fantastic—the core fantasy of a Quest is that you work hard and are richly rewarded. As we’ve seen, that core idea carried through to the present with powerful Quest rewards like Amara, Nether Portal, and Megafin—cards we couldn’t make any other way.
Basically everything else about Quest cards changed.
When we started out, we wanted Quests to feel as much like normal cards as possible, which would make them fit into the rules naturally while being easier to understand. The first Priest Quest, for example, said “When this is the only card in your hand, transform it into an Un’Goro pack.” Other Quests looked very similar to the ones that are coming in Journey to Un’Goro, and they had requirements like “play a certain number of minions of a particular type.” We quickly realized that the most fun Quests were the ones that asked you to accomplish something over the course of a game—those paid off the core Quest fantasy the most.
One of the things we noticed with Quests that transformed in your hand was that they were hugely frustrating for your opponent. From an opponent’s perspective, you had just played an insanely powerful card seemingly out of nowhere. For example, this was the first version of the Priest Quest:
To fix that, we required Quests cards to be played, and allowed both players to see their progress. In Un’Goro, Quests will appear around your portrait just like Secrets do.
From there, we talked a lot about how Quests are played. We tried having them simply play themselves from your deck so they didn’t take up space in your opening hand, but that was a little too powerful. With no risk involved at all, every single deck would play Quests just in case they happened to satisfy the conditions, or simply to thin the deck by one card. On the other hand, having to draw a Quest felt really bad, because you couldn’t make progress on it until you drew it halfway through the game. That’s why we decided to have Quests start in your opening hand.
Finally, we needed to decide how much mana Quests would cost, either (0) or (1). When they cost (0), playtesting revealed that players would often hold their Quest and then forget to play it before playing the card that triggered it. Making them cost (1) helped to slow the game down a little—letting the moment you played the quest feel more impactful—and required extra strategy around when to play the Quest. We still liked the overall power level the Quests had at (0), so we made the rewards a little better and the requirements a little easier to meet to balance things out.
Seeing Double
Once we had the mechanic for Quests figured out, they did a lot of great things for the set. On the art side, they gave us an opportunity to show off all the fantastical regions in Un’Goro Crater, from roiling tar pits and seething hot springs to the gleaming crystal caverns below. We relished every chance to bring the world of Un’Goro to life.
On the design side, each class has a Quest to help anchor them in Un’Goro. We wanted the Quest decks to be fun and interesting, so we often provided additional support, like Tortollan Shellraiser and Crystalline Oracle in Priest. We think Quests are cool, but we also don’t expect every player to want to play with one in their deck, so we tried to make sure to provide other themes and individually interesting cards to explore, too.
Because Quest cards are such a central focus of decks that include one, we wanted to make sure there was room to experiment with how you build a deck with a Quest in it. For example, a Unite the Murlocs deck could be very aggressive and play upwards of fifteen murlocs, while a less aggressive deck might use it as a way to get some late game oomph using only a handful of murlocs along with Call In the Finishers.
Since we were making nine different Quests, one of our goals was that they feel different from each other. So far, we’ve shown several straightforward Quests: Summon seven minions with Deathrattle, summon ten murlocs, discard six cards, and so on.
Those Quests are intuitive and offer a clear path for deckbuilding. However, some of our classes are naturally trickier than others, so for Rogue we went in a slightly different direction:
Play four minions with the same name. How do you even do that? One option is to use cards that return minions to your hand like Shadowstep and Youthful Brewmaster. Another would be to use cards like Thistle Tea or Mimic Pod that give you multiple copies of a minion.
Wait, what’s Mimic Pod? That’s one of the cards in Journey to Un’Goro that supports the Rogue Quest while also being interesting on its own:
If you can create an army of pod-minions and successfully explore the Caverns Below, what do you find?
Because your deck has so many tricks to successfully complete the Quest, we wanted to provide you with the raw power you’d need to end the game.
The Quest mechanic has come a long way from its humble beginnings two years ago, but its core remains intact. In Journey to Un’Goro, you’ll explore a forgotten world, quest for amazing things, and unleash their primal power on the Hearthstone board.
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!
Thistle Tea is no good because it can pull spells. Too risky for 6 mana. I would think you have a lot of low mana high value minions. Shadowstep, 4 of the cheap bouncing minions, and maybe new cards to come that allow Rogues to bounce (maybe even vanish or kidnapper). Mimic pod unfortunately isn't that worth it either for this type of playstyle (but it might end up being a good card overall?) since it can also draw spells. If nothing else, this will at least be a fun deck.
Miracle Pod... I mean Mimic Pod not bad. But quite slow at 3 mana. Might see play in a Malygos rogue variant too.
Quest is pretttttyyy bad. For a start, 5 mana to actually play it is a wasted turn (and lets be honest dropping 5/5's at turn 8+ isn't that powerful unless you have somehow managed to keep your hand full of minions (say double stonetusk boar and double southsea deckhand) while bouncing minions back and forth. Really needs cycle still - could be a Miracle variant that doesn't rely on conceal so much - but still needs enough card draw and presence to keep in the game... Mimic Pod probably not enough by itself. Depends on how aggressive meta is and how many priests sit at 40 health bm'ing your combo reach. Cold Bloods a great addition to such a deck for extra lolcomboing though...
1mana 5/5charge stonetusk boar Kappa
Zoo Rogue incoming!
Who cares about the rogue quest. It's all about that Mimic pod bois!
A finely priced arcane intellect that doesn't fatigue as much. This is going to allow control rogue to be a more deeply rooted archetype.
Control Rogue? I'm sorry but I fail to see how a class lacking AOE,Healing and even decent Hard Removal can afford to play a Control Deck... Unless they reveal some really good cards (Which I doubt they will) the loss of Pillager and Conceal will be a blow of catastrophic proportions for Rogue... And this time I really don't see how Valeera will get out of the situation without having to wait Winter's expansion....
Lack of AoE, sustain, and hard removal does not stop Miracle rogue from being a strong deck. Which mind you all, is a control deck at it's core. Control decks are never just about sitting back and reacting to everything that gets played. You always need to think about tempo vs value. Rogue is the king of tempo.
Mimic pod pushes a more traditional control style deck focused on out valuing your opponents deck through attrition. It will find place in my N'zoth jade rogue, which lacks card draw, especially after azure is hall of famed.
I'm not saying this deck is going to be top tier, since no one can possibly know yet. But it's been something people have been looking for since beta.
Yeah, good luck outvaluing your opponent with a second copy of Backstab
And miracle rogue -- control deck? A control deck that aims to kill its opponent a turn after the Gadgetzan Auctioneer(usually turn 7-8)? Much control indeed.
So I'm a bit confused on the wording of the reward card. So all minions are 5/5. Would playing Vancleef add 2/2 onto the 5/5? Or would the 5/5 just override any minion on the board.
Many people probably haven't Played the Karazhan bosses in a while but I recently did them on an alt account and particularly the Big Bad Wolf. I discovered that despite the wording stating that your minions are 1/1 and cost 1, the Jades still grew and other cards that build upon base stats via battlecries and combos still worked. This card has very similar wording to that boss text so I wonder if the rules are the same. Which if so makes this card not too bad if a deck is built around it (like jade rogue) but without context of how the mechanic works it's a little wonky. Guess this is a wait and see type situation.
If you have already played the Crystal Core it is a 5/5 Edwin PLUS the combo buffs.
Source: https://twitter.com/LegendaryFerret/status/844626469754101761
3 Mana 21/21 LUL
Nice! Thanks for this. This ups the power level of this card already.
I totally agree that it feels really easy to immediately hate on this card, but we have only seen the rogue legendary cards so far. Not saying it will be a defining archetype, but look at a card like Fire Fly. If that mechanic is something that is put onto another neutral card, or a rogue card, this quest is that much easier.
See Also: Better.
Actually, the quest is very easy to accomplish if you build your deck around it, but the reward sucks.
Not as easy as you'd expect i think... Only reliable way to achieve it is trough Youthful Brewmaster and Shadowstep. If you rely on stuff like Thistle Tea you can also get copies of spells and you'll never be able to complete the quest.
But I suppose we should wait for the other Rogue cards we're getting this expansion.
I just played today a fun deck to archieve the "play 30 rogue cards" quest. I used many cards like shadowstep to accomplish the quest faster. It was really common for me to get swashburglar early on and play any return effect on it - even twice. I didn´t even played all "return" card in the game. I did not any statistics, but it feels like I accomplish the quest even though I didn´t want it.
If you really want to accomplish this quest you should play vanish instead thistle tea. It clears the board and returns your card. If you face another rogue and are playing a burgle deck, there is a chance that you get a duplicate of a minion, too.
But it just doesn´t feel worthy enough to build your deck around this quest.
most people here cry because they only like cookie cutter builds and can't think for themselves
Mimic Pod seems like a very good card. It's like Arcane Intellect, but in a very fine tuned deck I think it could actually be better- think getting an extra Evis, or maybe Prep, or even Counterfeit Coin, for that matter. Of course, time will tell if it's good or not, but on paper, I think it'll be at least playable.
The quest seems pretty bad. A rogue deck has never existed where you are concerned with the raw stats on your minions- at least not like Dragon Priest or Handlock ever did. I also feel like the effect isn't enough to warrant losing value by bouncing minions back to your hand, or playing the other cards they made that accomplish the same effect.
It's pretty clear that they're still trying to force us to play Bounce Rogue, but at the very least Mimic Pod might find a spot in Miracle.
Is miracle still alive after Conceal rotates out?