Dean Ayala Discusses Adapt and Reveals 2 New Cards!
Dean Ayala put out a blog today discussing the new Adapt mechanic and showed off two new cards!
Discuss this Card
Discuss this Card
Blog Post
Quote from BlizzardDinosaurs: Supercharged!
We knew very early on that dinosaurs would be a huge part of Journey to Un’Goro, but the questions was: “How can we make them unique to this universe?” We started to reimagine our dinosaurs as primal powerhouses that had learned to harness the latent elemental energy of this primal world—dinosaurs that adapted to spew molten lava from their backs or protect themselves with shields of crackling energy. These aren’t your normal dinosaurs . . . they’re dinosaurs powered up! That leads us into today’s topic: Adapt.
Adapt is a new Hearthstone keyword that can be found on many of the dinosaurs in Journey to Un’Goro. When a minion Adapts, the player will be presented with 3 of 10 possible options to buff that minion. Here are all 10 possible adaptations:
Origins of Adapt
The first version of Adapt came about during development of the previous expansion, Mean Streets of Gadgetzan. A concept we had for one of the factions was all about building and upgrading mechanical creations. Whenever a Mech was played, you would get a Spare Part-style card that could give that Mech a new ability. Eventually we simplified the mechanic so that whenever you played a Mech, you could just pick a way to upgrade it. We loved how this played, but at the time we were happy with the Kabal, Jade, and Goon mechanics, and decided to push the idea to a future set. When it came time to brainstorm for Journey to Un’Goro, we came back to this idea of upgraded Mechs and thought it would be perfect for the story we wanted to tell about our dinosaurs.
Near the beginning of Un’Goro, there were around 20 different options for Adapt. Originally we had adaptations that did things like deal damage to other creatures or let a player draw cards, but we felt the story of Adapt was clearer when the expectation was always that it would make the minion itself better. The adaptations that were the most engaging to us were the ones you chose based on the current game scenario rather than adaptations you might pick in any situation.
Playing with Adapt
Minions with abilities like Taunt, Divine Shield, or high attack and health values have a lot of interesting applications on their own. However, a lot of the cards with these attributes are only slotted into deck archetypes that fit with them. You might find cards with Taunt or high health mostly in control archetypes and cards with Divine Shield or high attack mostly in tempo or aggressive archetypes. One of the things we like about Adapt is that it affords you the versatility to make some unusual choices if the situation warrants it. Cards with keywords like Poisonous can create some very interesting board states, but the cards on their own might be too one-dimensional to warrant inclusion in your deck. One of our mechanical goals with Adapt was to take all of these interesting attributes and let players decide when and how to utilize them.
Adapt also shares some similarities with another mechanic we created for League of Explorers: Discover. One of the greatest strengths of Discover is that it creates game scenarios that would never exist if players only had access to cards they put in their deck. Being presented with three random options went a long way in creating new and interesting situations that kept each game experience of Hearthstone fresh and exciting. Our goal with Adapt was to capture that same feeling, but with a set of possible outcomes small enough to allow for strategy and counterplay.
The Cards
We hope you enjoyed some insight into the development process of Journey to Un’Goro. Now that you know all about how and why Adapt was created, you probably want to see some examples! Here are some of our favorite Adapt cards in the set—we can’t wait for you to try them out soon™.
One of the things we like to do with a new mechanic is to provide a card that showcases its simplest form. We felt Druid made the most sense in this circumstance because it provides a good option for Beast decks and at least one other Un’Goro strategy we think you’ll enjoy!
Whenever we make a card that requires you to build a specific deck, it allows us to be a little more generous with its stats than we otherwise would be. This card is meant to be a powerful finishing option for any player willing to turn themselves over to the dark tide.
Being able to Adapt twice offers some added consistency to the type of minion you need in any given scenario. Combining defensive adaptations like Taunt and +3 Health might bail you out of a tough spot whereas combining adaptations like Stealth and Windfury might help you create a minion that can finish the game.
A reasonable minion on its own, Crackling Razormaw can combo with early minions to start snowballing board advantage or work in combination with adaptations like Poisonous for an interesting removal option.
Adapt and Elementals . . . on the same card! We wanted a few good non-elemental cards with the ‘if you played an elemental last turn’ mechanic so it’s not as easy to trigger multiple elemental bonus cards on consecutive turns. While almost any adaptation on this card for turn three is a powerful option, you pay the price of breaking your ‘elemental played last turn’ chain.
Never before have your Silver Hand Recruits posed such a threat! Most of the time we utilized this card for small advantages in the mid-game, but sometimes the stars align for a double Lightfused Stegodon play in the late game that can result in an enormous damage output from an unexpected source.
We are super excited and can’t wait for you to join us for Journey to Un’Goro in early April!
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!
Silver hand recruits with stealth and windfury PogChamp
Thunder Lizard strikes me as a pack filler and arena card unless there is some hereto unknown elemental-beast synergy being introduced (Elemental Hunter?). Alright for what it does.
I have a very strong feeling that Lightfused Stegodon will be good when we see the whole picture. With Lost in the Jungle and Sunkeeper Tarim promoting midrange Paladin, Lightfused Stegodon will be the new Quartermaster that gives it the ability to turn harmless recruits into real threats. We just need to see the rest of the cards to be sure if midrange Paladin will rise again.
Thunder Lizard: 3 mana 3/6?
I dunno. Some of the options on Thunder Lizard are quite powerful. 3 mana 3/6? 3 mana infested wolf? or even 3 mana 4/4? Sign me in. Can someone do the statistics, what are your chances to get one of 2-3 positive effects out of a group of 10?
Thunder Lizard is "good," but "good" doesn't cut it for ladder most of the time. The problems I see with it are:
So this is basically why it seems like an "okay" card to me. Obviously I could be proven completely wrong and am underestimating a the potential of a powerhouse 3-drop, but these were my first impressions.
Great job. Thank you. That's quite interesting. We have 50% for it being completely busted (HP, Deathrattle) and another 30% (total 80%) for it being reasonable (Divine shield, stealth). Really interesting.
1 cost 1/1 adapt your pirate
2 cost 2/2 adapt your murloc
3 cost 3/3 adapt your beast
4 cost 4/4 adapt your elemental
5 cost 5/5 adapt your dragon
6 cost 6/6 adapt your demon
7 cost 7/7 adapt your taunt minion
8 cost 8/8 adapt your giant
9 cost 9/9 adapt your jade golem
10 cost 10/10 adapt your old god
Lightfused Stegodon is preeety goood with Stand Against Darkness, Lost in the Jungle and maybe with paladin quest, but Thunder Lizard is actually garbage even in elemental decks.
I think, for elemental decks Tar Creeper has more valuable then Thunder Lizard, because Thunder Lizard is beast, you lost super strong combo Tar Creeper+Tol'vir Stoneshaper
They might run both you know..
Thunder Lizard only has a few good adaptions, its pretty weak overall.
"Can't be targeted by spells" / Windfury / Taunt / +3 Attack / poisonous. All just dies to a 2 mana minion trade. Poisonous early = not gonna trade into a value target. Poisonous later = just gonna get removed by some random minion or spell.
+1/+1 just doesn't provide enough stats. Its only +1 stat compared to a base statline = never gonna see constructed play. Even stealth isn't that good, because its still a 3/3 for 3, which is garbage. Divine Shield is average.
The only good options are two 1/1 plants and +3 health. Plants mean that the opponent need to trade 3 times, or use a spell to completely remove the minion. +3 health means that you most like get 2 trades or a trade and a spell out of it.
2 good options out of 10 means the card will never see constructed play except maybe for the first 1-2 weeks when people are experimenting.
TheOriginalFirebolt, thing is not if a 3 mana 4/4 is playable. It's that there is 100% going to be better options for 3 drops than a minion with only +1 stat above baseline (baseline for textless cards being double manacost +1). A 3 mana 4/4 textless card is never gonna see play (in constructed).
With two good options (Plants & +3 health) and one average (Divine Shield), i just don't see this card being played in constructed. There is no way there won't be better 3 drops to fill the spot.
It is good to see some elemental synergy with beast. There will be too much Hunter posibilities this standard year. Too much Beast card for each classes and neutrals. Hunter can reach every of them with Infest. So good for him. I wish Webspinner could stay in standard. Now Ball of Spiders rotates too. Blizzard doesn't want me to enjoy the game with RNG God.
Anyway, at least we have wild and Infest.
And It seems Lightfused Stegodon guarantees that the paladin's quest is "Summon 10 Silver Hand Recruits"
Interesting. Not a big wow, but still playable.
Paladin mission is summon silver hands
lul
Make it double
Living spoilers
Adapt Druid confirmed?