Hearthstone: The Jade Lotus! [Card Review]

So, the Grimy Goons has had a theme of having many cards buff up minions (and sometimes weapons) in your hand, a boring but theoretically very efficient gimmick. The Kabal has a gimmick of many Potion spells and Reno-style cards with powerful effects if your deck is tailored with only a single copy of each card... though the Kabal honestly has had relatively few card reveals compared to the Goons and not a lot to really embody the cohesive theme. I suspect they're still holding back a fair amount of the more exciting cards -- we have barely seen the Warlock set, in particular -- but now it's the time for the Jade Lotus to shine.

(Plus a couple of other cards from the Kabal, but mostly the Jade Lotus)

Angry that people are
smuggling him everywhere.

So a short while after Raza the Chained was revealed, we get a weird Druid card, the Jade Blossom, shown to us. It's a 3-mana spell that basically lets you do the Wild Growth effect and summon a 'Jade Golem'. Bizarrely, unlike most other summon cards just what a Jade Golem is is not stated ('summon a 4/5 Baine Bloodhoof', 'summon a 1/1 Icky Tentacle') so people are speculating that Jade Golems are going to be a token common to the Jade Blossom cards, somewhat similar to the 1/1 Silver Hand Recruits that Paladins utilize. I mean, the little blurbs and blogs do hint at the Jade Lotus smuggling jade statues and jewels here and there.

Except I don't think people expected Hearthstone to do something as cool as a token that scales. I mean, like, sure, fanmade ideas do all sorts of cool shit like this, but I don't think anyone expected them to actually work and be implemented into the client. The Jade Golem basically is a token that gets summoned stronger and stronger into the battlefield. So, for example, you play a card, and it summons a Jade Golem. You get a 1/1. The next card you play will then summon a 2/2 Golem, then so on and so forth up to a maximum of 30/30, it seems.

Which is honestly pretty sweet. So you basically snowball out of control by spamming so much of these Jade Golem cards that the enemy can just watch helplessly as you get to the late game and, like, do a couple of spells and suddenly a 11/11 and a 12/12 just appears in the field.

I think it's my favourite gimmick out of the three classes. The Kabal one is just, well, crazy but ultimately Raza and Kazakus aside the rest of the Kabal are just permutations of things we've already seen before. The Goons are probably the most efficient, but adding +1/+1 isn't just as flashy as summoning ever-expanding Jade Golems.

Anyway, card reviews. I remain relatively optimistic that the Jade Golems are going to be useful if the classes that use them survive to the late game, and with Shamans (who get free Evolve targets to boot) and Druid (ramp up very quickly) at least they seem to be able to do so. Rogues I'm less certain about, but we haven't seen a lot of Rogue cards yet. Needless to say, the Jade Golem minions are all very powerful with Brann Bronzebeard.

• Burgly Bully: A couple of quick errant dudes that aren't part of the Jade Lotus! The Burgly Bully is a rather ugly-looking Trogg that's a 5-mana 4/6 that adds a coin to your hand whenever the opponent attacks. Unlike the GvG Troggs, this ensures that you get something out of the Burgly Bully if the opponent uses a single spell to take him out... but that, of course, is assuming the opponent uses a spell to take him out. Though, granted, he is a 4/6 instead of a 2/3 or a 3/5 like the two other Troggs, and he's a lot cheaper than Troggzor. Having coins in your hand is very cool especially if you're a Rogue, but chances are in Constructed you won't be able to fit this dude in your deck since he doesn't really do much. It's nice to have more anti-spell cards, but ultimately Burgly Bully just doesn't do enough in my opinion. He's going to be great in arena, though. 
• Mana Geode: PRIEST FINALLY GETS A 2-DROP! It's not quite what Priest is looking for, but it's definitely miles and miles more appropriate and more needed than the very specific Wyrmrest Agent or the relatively disappointing Museum Curator. The Mana Geode is a 2-mana 2/3 that summons a 2/2 every time you heal him, which is pretty cool and insane value. Obviously the idea is to buff the Geode up with things like Power Word: Shield, Kabal Talon-priest and Power Word Tentacles to give this little rock friend more health so it can survive and continually spawn 2/2 tokens, which would be a pretty powerful effect. It's basically a far more powerful version of the Silver Hand Regent, and while it's not utterly game-breaking, I find the Mana Geode a very interesting card that I'm sure people will experiment with. Whether it's the 2-drop that priest needs, though, remains to be seen. 
• Jade Blossom: Finally, we return to the Jade Blossom, which I tried to review without the context as to what a Jade Golem is. I thought it was going to be like a 2/2 token or a 2/1 token, which honestly is decent enough. Mire Keeper gets along by being a 4-mana ramp that summons a weak 3-drop body (3/3), but has the additional flexibility of being able to trade in the ramp for a 2/2 token. Darnassus Aspirant has no stat penalties, being a 2-mana 2/3 that ramps, but her free mana crystal disappears with her death. Jade Blossom? It's a 3-mana Wild Growth, which means it costs a mana more to ramp... but on the other hand you get a Jade Golem. Which is probably going to just be a 1/1 or a 2/2 this early in the game, but it helps to build up larger Jade Golems in the future. It's a bit hard to evaluate the Jade Golems, because if Jade Blossom is the first Jade card you play, then it is "3-mana: gain a mana crystal, summon a 1/1" which is bad. But if it gets to summon a 3/3 then it's fair, and if it summons something big, like, gain a mana crystal and summon a 7/7? That's really wild. Especially in the super-late-game. I'm not sure if Jade Blossom will give the Excess Mana card, but 3-mana summon a 10/10 and draw a card is insane value and Ancient of Lore is just weeping in a corner.

  

  Adorable AND comes
  with a free buddy!

• Jade Spirit: Jade Spirit is a Pandarian elemental spirit, which is one of my favourite designs from World of Warcraft that I'm absolutely happy finally made their way into Hearthstone. It's a very shittily-statted card, a 4-mana 2/3. But it summons a Jade Golem! So at the absolute worst, Jade Spirit is a 2/3 that summons a 1/1, which, again, is shit. If it summons a 2/2 Jade Golem then it's a Barnes that didn't pull out anything good. From 3/3 and above, though, you gain relative value for your 4-mana. So that appears to be the theme, I think. The first two Jade Golem cards you play are going to be a shitty tempo loss, but as the time goes on they get stronger and stronger. Jade Spirit, by the way, is the Jade Lotus's second Tri-Class card after the boring 'discover a card from each class' one. 
• Jade Lightning: Jade Lightning is a Shaman card that costs 4 mana, and deals 4 damage, and also summons a Jade Golem. Assuming that summoning a Jade Golem is budgeted at around 1.5 to 2 mana, then Jade Lightning is a Stormcrack that can hit face, but also comes in at a far later turn. Is 4 damage still relevant at turn 4? My gut says yes, especially with the spell damage toys that Shaman play around with. No, Jade Lightning may be too slow to fit into a regular Midrange Shaman deck, but a Jade Golem Shaman deck? This would definitely be used. It does come it at 4 mana and that feels a little bad, but again, the Jade Golem lets you build up the stats of the Jade Golem pretty quickly and as we all know, Shamans love their 5/5's and 7/7's. I think it's a pretty cool card.

  

  Not sure about the strongest,
   but definitely the cutest.

• Aya Blackpaw: Whereas Don Han'Cho is a huge, big two-headed ogre gangster don with huge brass knuckles and a tommy gun, and Kazakus is a possibly-draconic Zandalari troll that dabbles in super-powerful potions and might employ mind-control to keep his Kabalists in line... Aya Blackpaw is just this cute little Pandaren girl... who has the power to summon ever-increasingly powerful Jade Golems, communes with the spirit of a forgotten Mogu King, and holds the vast Jade Lotus oragnization under her sway. Aya is the last of the tri-class cards for the Jade Lotus, and she's a 6-mana 5/3 that summons a Jade Golem both as a battlecry and a deathrattle. Even if you don't get a particularly huge Jade Golem, you still get value by sheer virtue of doing two buffs to the Jade Golem in that game, so at the very absolute worst (and you wouldn't want your first Jade Golem to drop at turn 6 if you're playing a Jade Golem deck) you're getting a 5/3 that summons a 1/1 and a 2/2, which is 7/6 stats at total for the absolute worst. You're far more liable to get larger golems than that, though. She's a potentially very powerful card, and as a 5/3 she isn't a slouch herself, a small threat in the battlefield that gets removed easily enough for her deathrattle to trigger. She combo's well with Brann Bronzebeard, she combos decently enough with N'Zoth... and, shit, Shadowstep and Shadowcaster works wonders with Aya Blackpaw. Shadowcaster in particular. 
• Jade Shuriken: Comparable to Eviscerate, this Rogue spell deals 2 damage, but if you combo it, it summons a Jade Golem. Might not be the best and most efficient Rogue spell, because Rogues already do 2 damage for 0 mana, and it's hard for Jade Shuriken to compete with Eviscerate and Shadow Strike... but like all the arguments above, you get a free Jade Golem. Very powerful and very efficient if you get like anything more than a 3/3, a very shit turn for you if you just get a 1/1. Still, more cheap spells is great for Rogue.
• Hozen Healer: The Hozen Healer is a neutral card, a 4-mana 2/6 that restores a minion to full health. It's a bit of an interesting card, and might have some synergies with huge cards like Alley Armorsmith or Injured Blademaster, or indeed just any card with a huge health pool. It's geared more towards Priests methinks thanks to Priests generally buffing the healths of their minions and wanting those to stay alive, but I'm not sure about the 2/6 statline, though I'm sure Priests can make it work... with Auchenai this, I think, is a 4-mana kill a minion, get a 2/6, which is actually pretty freaking sweet, but even without the removal combo the Hozen is still quite decent of a card.
• Fight Promoter: Drawing cards is a powerful effect, and thus Fight Promoter is a pretty powerful card. She's a 6-mana 4/4, which is a bit of a weak statline, but if you control a minion with 6 or more health, she draws you two cards. A slightly more conditional and weaker (but cheaper) version of the old Ancient of Lore, and it's actually not that hard to pull off. By turn 6 there surely are a couple of minions with more than 6 health. The problem is whether Fight Promoter will trigger if the 6-health minion is damaged. So if I have like a damaged Doomguard or a damaged Flamewreathed Faceless, will the Fight Promoter trigger? My gut says no, which makes it a bit harder for her to really work, so... yeah. She looked like she had some potential, but I don't think she's as good as she initially looks to me. 
• Jade Swarmer: A Klaxxi! Yay! The Jade Swarmer is a 2-mana 1/1 Stealth with a Deathrattle of summoning a Jade Golem. The Deathrattle is good, but ultimately I think he only exists for Raptor shenanigans, and while he does have Stealth... what good is a Stealthed 1/1? Worgen Infiltrator is only good because of its 2 attack. If he was 1/2 instead Worgen Infiltrator would be monumentally bad. The Jade Swarmer is a minion that you do want to die, so the 1 health is ideal, but the 1 attack might not be so good. The existence of Shakru as the Rogue Legendary makes me want to think that there's going to be some insane card that combos well with Stealth minions, which would make the Jade Swarmer great, but as it is, I don't think I'll want Jade Swarmer on my deck even if I'm playing Jade Golems.
• Jade Idol: Living Roots will soon exit the metagame, but we get a 1-mana Choose One spell card to make up for it. And, boy, what an insane effect! For one mana, you can either summon a Jade Golem... or Gang Up the spell, that is, shuffle three of it into your deck. Obviously the plan is to load up your deck with Jade Idol cards, which would be relatively weak draws, but this card is excellent on two fronts. One is that it's one mana. One mana summon a 1/1 is bad, but you're definitely not doing that with your first Jade Idol you draw. Early on, though, adding a 1/1 token to start the Jade Golem synergy is good enough, while in late game you can just play three or four Jade Idol cards that you've shuffled into your deck and summon like a 6/6, a 7/7 and a 8/8 for three mana. Or maybe you shuffle that last Jade Idol into your deck and get three more Jade Golems out. With Fandral Staghelm on the board? Holy shitballs, man. This makes Druid basically have an infinite way to get more and more Jade Golems into the battlefield, basically ensuring that your late-game is set and that you won't run out of cards that spawn Jade Golems. The other? Is that Druid will never, ever go into fatigue with this deck, all the while summoning stronger and stronger cards. The weakness of this card, though, is that it will be a huge tempo loss early on when you first play it, and you don't want to just be drawing into Jade Idols especially in the early game. We'll see, though. Moreso than any other card on this list, Jade Idol has made me the most excited for the Jade Lotus archetype to be good.

  

  The Mrgrgrlgrl streets
  of Gadgetzan.
  

  
  

• Devolve: Well this was inevitable. And holy shit, look at the artwork! It's Don Han'cho, Aya Blackpaw and Kazakus as Murlocs! The three family leaders! That alone made this card a lark. This is how Hearthstone should do self-reference, not by printing zero effort crap like Backstreet Leper and Am'Gam Rager. Devolve is, well, basically Evolve, but reversed. And done on your opponent. It's 2-mana, which is still hideously cheap. It's not hard removal, of course, but in some cases -- like N'Zoth decks, or a board with an opposing C'Thun -- it's far better to not kill minions but polymorph them into something else. And there are only two polymorphs or two hexes in your deck... but with devolve? You'll basically make their Tirions, Sylvanases and Ragnaroses die not as themselves, and that's really powerful. You eliminate a bunch of Deathrattles, and while the enemy will still have a board you obviously follow it up with a Lightning Storm or a Maelstrom Portal. Of course you might just kind of roll bad RNG with this, and, like, turn a 5-drop into a Flamewreathed Faceless which would be harder to remove, or turn 7-drops into Sylvannases, Thaurissans and Cairnes (protip: never devolve 9-mana and 7-mana enemy minions!) but it's a very interesting card and one that I love dearly to really have some fun shenanigans with. 
• Call in the Finishers: More Murloc ninjas! On the surface, this is like a scaled-down version of Stand Against Darkness. Spend 4 mana to summon four 1/1's, and it's also remarkably similar to the I Am Murloc card from Elite Tauren Chieftain. But the fact that the 1/1s are Murlocs instead of Silver Hand Recruits makes Call in the Finishers a lot more powerful. Granted, four 1/1's get cleared by Arcane Explosions, Wild Pyromancers, Holy Novas, Maelstrom Portals and Fan of Knives remarkably easily, not to mention the slew of Kabal AoE cards... but four Murlocs might make all the difference. A single Coldlight Seer or a Murloc Warleader might be enough to buff the four 1/1 tokens. It's not the most spectacular card out there, but it combos remarkably well with Everyfin is Awesome, turning the card relatively cheap if a couple of the Murlocs survive. It's not the bet card out there... but it's going to be a great utility simply because it exists. Not a good card, but a fun one undoubtedly.
• Jade Behemoth: A huge jade Elekk that's 6-mana 3/6 Taunt that also summons a Jade Golem as a battlecry. At turn six you better have used a couple of Jade Golem cards, because a 6-mana 3/6 with Taunt is shit when Druids also have access to a 6-mana 5/7 Taunt, the Dark Arakkoa from C'Thun decks. If you pay 6-mana to summon a 3/6 Taunt and, like, a 5/5 Jade Golem, it's great value. But, again, we'll have to see if the tempo loss suffered in the early game by Jade Golem decks will be salvageable by the insane tempo swing that the larger Jade Golems will net you. Jade Behemoth's a decent card until then.

  

  Technically a Murloc.

• Jinyu Waterspeaker: In Chinese, 'Jinyu' literally means goldfish. Like, literally just goldfish. So all you English-speaking people out there just see the Jinyu as some oriental-sounding name, but they just sound funny to me. Anyway. The Waterspeaker is a 4-mana 3/6, which is premier stats if the likes of Priest of the Feast are anything to go by. It also restores 6 health as a battlecry, also a very premier healing punch. It's kind of like the Hozen Healer, but it has a specific quantity that can be directed to the face if needed. It also comes with a single Overload point, which, well, as Totem Golems will remind everyone, isn't the worst thing out there. It's a very efficient minion and while healing might not be what Shamans require the most right now -- and it certainly has no business in the totem-centric midrange decks that plague the ladder -- the Jinyu Waterspeaker is going to be a very interesting and powerful tool once the TGT/LOE midrange kit rotates out. One thing that they kind of missed out with the Jinyu is not making them Murlocs... because they are evolved and enlightened Murlocs in the lore. But then, hey. 
• Jade Chieftain: Another Shaman card, and an expensive one at that -- a 7-mana 5/5 minion that summons a Jade Golem... with Taunt. At 7 mana the Chieftain will be dropping with a well-buffed Jade Golem, so the reduction in stats honestly don't matter as long as you get at least a 3/3 to 4/4 Golem. Of course, it's a bit worse than Vek'lor, who only really needs two buff cards to be played earlier in the game, whereas the Jade Chieftain requires you to play around three or four to really be super-awesome, otherwise it's just a 5/5 with a small little taunt buddy that won't matter on turn 7. Again, if you get a 8/8 with Taunt it's awesome, but otherwise I feel that the Chieftain is a wee bit too slow. Cool concept, though.