Journey to Un'Goro: A Hearthstone Expansion!

Before you read anything I write here, watch this! It's the announcement video, but instead of just a single trailer, we have the developers and their flannel shirts introducing the general themes and some new mechanics.

So, the new expansion is... JOURNEY TO UN'GORO! And it's not just dinosaurs, though dinosaurs certainly do make up the most exciting and coolest portions of the trailer. We've got Elementals! We've got explorers! We've got giant mountain-sized carnivorous plants! We've got cavemen-Murlocs! We've got Silithids! And dinosaurs! And elemental dinosaurs!

So the trailer opens with our old friend Elise Starseeker talking about this mysterious land of Un'Goro, later revealed to simply be talking to this little junior League of Explorers group. She does establish that Un'Goro is super dangerous, showing off some of the more carnivorous members of the Un'Goro wildlife, the trailer makes some emphasis to primordial wonder, with focus on elementals and on dinosaurs activating elemental powers. And it appears that elementals are going to make a huge, huge portion of the expansion. Also, the whole 'discovery' theme of Elise and her little groupies looking for treasure is related in the new quest cards.

(Alas, that poor Murloc turned into dust by plants...)

So, where to begin? Let's begin with the long-overdue addition of a new tribe to the Hearthstone card pool... not dinosaurs, as everyone was expecting, but Elementals! And, yes, the developers explicitly say that older Elemental cards will be given the Elemental tag, the way Dragon and Mech were added to older cards with their respective expansions. While we haven't seen any real Elemental-synergy cards, you can bet there's going to be some. Maybe not to the extent that Pirates or Mechs have because a lot of the older Elemental cards are already powerful on their own but it's going to be exciting nonetheless. Cards confirmed to be retconned into Elementals are both Ragnaroses, Al'Akir, Neptulon, Anomalus, Magma Rager, Baron Geddon, Fire Rager, Unbound Elemental, Fireguard Destroyer, Earth Elemental, Ice Rager and Rumbling Elemental, but I'm pretty sure other elemental cards (Fire Elemental, Water Elemental, Dust Devil, Frost Elemental, maybe Hallazeal and Am'Gam Rager) will be retconned too, the video just didn't want to run too long.


The addition of Elemental tags might be the reason that pushes Ragnaros out of Classic and into Hall of Fame, actually, allowing them to do cool things with the tag without having Ragnaros being this looming shadow breathing down their necks. In addition to the whole 'design space' thing, too, of course. One such new Elemental is Pyros, the Mage Legendary... who actually is pretty standard as far as Legendaries go. It's not super-broken, it's a 2-mana 2/2 that returns to your hand as a 6-mana 6/6 and finally as a 10-mana 10/10. The concept is absolutely cool, but I think it's not a super-good card in constructed without seeing any of the other Elemental synergy cards.

But we've got yet another brand-new portion of the game, which is a new keyword: Adapt.

See, dinosaurs aren't getting their own tribe separate from Beasts, because that would, I think, cripple Hunter too much by removing a chunk of their beasts (well, King Krush only, really) and turning them into a brand-new tribe with no synergy with Beasts and it'd be weird to have things like Mark of the Wild or Houndmaster buff other animals, but not dinosaurs considering they're, y'know, tameable beasts in World of Warcraft. So they're still beasts...

[Bit of an intermezzo -- shortly after I posted this thing, Blizzard went and clarified some things. Because I'm too lazy to whip up another brand-new post, I'll edit what I'm talking about down here.]

But they get a new tribe-exclusive keyword, which is Adapt. Adapt's going to let you discover an effect to add to your dinosaurs, which is shown in-universe as the dinosaurs being mutated by all the raw elemental energy in Un'Goro and basically transforming into Pokemon as the trailer shows off this fire triceratops and this lightning ankylosaur battling. The first dinosaur card we see, the Verdant Longneck, is a 5-mana 5/4 beast (yet another support for the still-not-there-yet Beast Druid), which is one mana too much for its stats... but its Adapt ability allows you to discover and choose one effect from six ten (+3 Attack, Deathrattle summon two 1/1's, Fairy Dragon's spell-proof ability, Divine Shield, Windfury, Taunt, +1/+1, +3 Health, Stealth and Poisonous). Charge and Stealth aren't there because, well, we've seen how troublesome they are to balance. Obviously depending on the statline things are going to be different. Like the Longneck wouldn't be super-good with Taunt, but maybe sometimes you really do need that ability. And the dinosaurs being beasts, and having the attack be part of battlecry, means a lot of synergy abuse options with things like Houndmaster and Brann. Oh wait Brann's leaving standard. Whoops.

In any case, for the Verdant Longneck, which is a pretty simple minion, let's go through what the ten various effects will end up giving you.

• +3 Attack: You get an 8/4 beast for 5 mana, basically a better version of Salty Dog. Salty Dog doesn't see play, but with possible beast synergies it's... not the best thing you can get, but not the worst thing either.
• Deathrattle: Summon two 1/1's: It's always a default 'good' answer when you don't have anything better to do, I suppose. Both the Haunted Creeper and the Infested Wolf, which have identical or similar effects, have a -1/-1 dock from what's considered a good standard vanilla card for their cost, so it's fair.
• Spell proof: A more fragile but attack-oriented version of Spectral Knight, not the best thing either but not the worst.
• Divine Shield: A bigger, badder Silvermooon Guardian. It's actually not the worst thing you can get either, because at least you'll trade economically.
• Windfury: Possibly only useful if you have like a Druid of the Claw up, leaving the Longneck a setup for possible Savage Roar shenanigans. Windfury tends to be kinda shit, but the fact that you have two other choices means that it's a lot more flexible than, say, Grook Fu Master.
• +1/+1: A 5-mana 6/5 is a reverse Pit Fighter, which means it's probably not good enough for constructed, but not the worst thing out there.
• +3 Health: A free Power Word Shield, making the Longneck a 5/7 for 5 mana, which is a lot better than a 6/5 or a 8/4. You're almost a Boulderfist Ogre at this point, with the added caveat of being a beast.
• Stealth: Shit, you just turned yourself into a slightly-weaker Stranglethorn Tiger. The Tiger is actually one of the better finishers in Beast Druid, able to be copied by Menagerie Warden (which would work well if you get a Windfury or Stealth version of the Longneck, actually) so this is good.
• Poisonous: Oh, right, the Emperor Cobra effect has just got transformed into a brand-new keyword, 'Poisonous'. Right now there are only four cards with that effect, two of which are in Wild and never see play, but it's nice that they're seemingly going to introduce more key words. A 5/4 with the poison effect is good but not the most exciting thing...

But it's going to be absolutely awesome with this other card, revealed shortly after my first posting of this post. The Gentle Megasaur is a 4-mana 5/4 Beast, and a normal epic card. Right away from the get-go, the Megasaur already has a far more favourable statline than the Longneck, not getting any stat penalties. The tradeoff is that she doesn't buff herself... but she adapts your Murlocs. Which means combined with things like Call in the Finishers (which works wonders in a deck with Everyfin is Awesome, by the way) allows you to add insane buffs. A +3 Attack is basically a permanent Bloodlust, giving them all Poisonous basically wins you the board, +1/+1 permanently adds to the Everyfin/Warleader buffs going around, and if you already have an Everyfin-Warleader board set up, give them some Windfury to really seal the deal. I might be overhyping this simply because I'm on a huge Everyfin Murloc Shaman binge and absolutely climbing in the rankings, but shit, I really like this card. 

Also, while we're all distracted with the fancy Adapt keyword, the Verdant Longneck supports the Beast Druid archetype, while the Megasaur, in addition to being a good Murloc support card, also is asking to be played with the Menagerie cards from Karazhan, none of which saw any sort of play. 

It's a very exciting effect, but perhaps even more exciting are Quests. Something that I've seen in many, many fan-made concepts are Quests, which are continuous spell cards that you need to do a bunch of things throughout the game to activate. Here Quests finally get put into the game as Legendary Spells (another thing common in fanmade cards) and we get to see the Priest's quest: Awaken the Makers.

See, I'm not sure if each class gets a Legendary Minion and a Quest, or if Mages just get Pyrus while Priests get Awaken the Makers but hey It's confirmed that both class get a Legendary Minion and a Legendary Quest, but the total amount of Legendaries in the expansion is the same -- the neutrals are decreased. Here are some points:

• So basically, they are one-mana spells you always get in your opening hand. You can mulligan them, though, if you really need to. A bit important, because while it's not super relevant to the slower priests, it's probably going to be relevant to the other classes.
• The end up like Secrets on your side of the board, but your opponent can see them.
• For the Priests, you must summon 7 Deathrattle minions, and then you get the legendary minion Amara, Warden of Hope, as the quest reward.

Awaken the Makers itself seems very convoluted, and you'll probably not get 7 Deathrattle minions until late in the game. But when you do, Amara makes good her status as a Titanforged being far, far better than Reno Jackson. She's a 5-mana 8/8 Taunt, which itself is already an insane amount of stats, but she not only restores your health fully, she even gives 5 bonus maximum health to boot! Yeah, Priest isn't going nowhere. On paper Amara does seem a bit too slow for my liking, especially in the current meta, but holy shit if she isn't a very attractive card that really makes you want to play her. 

In addition to the Quest mechanic, the whole fully restore and increase your life pool total are definitely very welcome additions to the game. Hell, the continuous effect itself is something I'm very much cheering for. We'll see what the other classes get. Seven Deathrattle might seem a lot, but a dedicated N'Zoth Deathrattle deck might honestly manage it by like turn eight or nine, because it's Summon so things like Resurrect or N'Zoth himself works.

Hope that the nerfs to aggro cards at least makes the meta slow down somewhat so these cool Quests and value minions can survive a little and not die by turn five or six to aggro pirates, eh? 

Also, in addition to that, we can see the artwork for some upcoming card both in the brief montage at the beginning of the trailer, as well as some full art in the Battlenet site. Lots of dinosaur-esque humanoids, lots of Elementals, lots of dinosaurs at least a giant carnivorous plant and a caveman Murloc.... and maybe we can get a new Elise card? Man, I'm definitely hyped. It definitely knocked Gadgetzan out of the park by the sheer amount of new things it introduced.

So yeah, Questing! Adapt! Elemental tribe! Hype!

Seems like a shame that we end off this post with the Volcano card, which is supposed to represent the Volcano in the center of Un'Goro crater... and it's a very underwhelming card. It's 5-mana, deal 15 damage spread randomly on all minions. The Warlocks' Spreading Darkness is never played, but the specificity on minions means that you can guarantee a board clear if you really need it to be without risking of dropping everything on your own face. Volcano's 5-mana deal 15, which is great value, but while the 2 Overload might seem cheap now, in a world where we don't have Tunnel Trogg or Lava Burst I'm not sure how well the Overload mechanic will stand with only Unbound Elemental hanging around to synergize with it, and even the Unbound Elemental's going to be easily consumed by the Volcano. I'll say that it's a nice replacement for Elemental Destruction for Shamans, though, as the big 'fuck everything on the board' spell.

Also, shortly after this announcement, the nerf hammer came down on Small-Time Buccaneer and Spirit Claws. A couple of changes, like the Standard Arena, went live -- from the sample size of one Arena draft, I can confirm that class cards and rare/epic/legendaries do show up a fair bit more often... though of course I get offered crappy ones like Goya and Noggenfogger. Also, the Poisonous keyword got added, replacing the previously wordy effect on Emperor Cobra, you can pre-order Un'Goro cards, and some text and bugs got fixed.

So yeah. Very, very exciting expansion, which really feels to be super-different. Really digging the more kiddie art-style, very much digging the Quest and Adapt mechanics, and adding new tribes? Yes please.