Ironwood Golem: Kinda bad, honestly. It's only got one health over Sen'jin Shieldmasta, and it can't attack unless you have 3 or more armour? There's literally no reason to play this over Sen'jin or Tar Creeper, honestly. This one's fast and simple.
Oaken Summons: For 4 mana, you gain 6 armour and recruit a four or less minion. I mean, you can recruit Ironwood Golem with this, but honestly there's a lot of better cards to recruit than it. It's a very balanced card, and you can guarantee, say, Fandral Staghelm, Greedy Sprite or Crypt Lord (honestly the only non-battlecry minion that costs 4 or less used by any druid list now) with it. On paper it's a good card... but it's too slow for aggro lists, and control-style druids, be it Big or Jade variations, don't really play a lot of low-cost minions. So it's a good card in a class that can't make use for it, I'd say.
Greedy Sprite: As if Druid didn't already need help ramping... at the moment, druids have four main ramp tools -- Wild Growth at 2, Jade Blossom at 3, Mire Keeper at 4 and Nourish at 5. As someone who faces and plays a decent amount of druid, I can confirm that barring a particularly nasty draw where you draw like Ultimate Infestations and Jade Idols and nothing else, it's child's play to accelerate your ramp as a druid. Greedy Sprite is... a bit too greedy, perhaps. She's a 3-mana 3/1, but instead of giving you a mana crystal as a battlecry the way Mire Keeper does (it's Choose One, but still, the effect happens when the Keeper comes into play) Greedy Sprite does it as a deathrattle. Is it really worth playing a weak 3-mana 3/1 with a delayed effect, though? I really don't think so... for Jade and Big druid, anyway. And aggro isn't one that wants to ramp up that much... but I dunno. The existence of this card makes cards like Grizzled Guardian and Oaken Summons not that crappy. I do like the card, though I don't think it's going to make as much waves among druid lists as I hope it will. It's more of a pre-emptive inclusion for when Mire Keeper and Blossom rotates out, methinks, which leads me into thinking why don't they just revise the Basic/Classic set? In which case, Greedy Sprite makes for a far, far less of an auto-include compared to the Mire Keeper or Jade Blossom, both which have some uses in the late game to actually build your board. That's a conversation for another day, though.
Ixlid, Fungal Lord: Druid legendary! For 5 mana, you get a 2/4 elemental body that... duplicates any minion you play, as long as he's on board. It's a very powerful effect, and thankfully Ixlid's body is small. And it's only when you play a minion that you summon a copy of it. But considering druid can fuck around with mana, you can get some really weird stuff with Ixlid. You could, like, break your Twig of the World Tree after playing Ixlid, play Kun to refresh your mana and get a second Kun, then play another 9/10 drop and get two of those. Overall, Ixlid is a fun but hard to utilize legendary, I think, which is perfect for Druid because lord knows druid doesn't actually need that much help. Probably not a super-good meta card, but one whose design I like quite a bit.Lesser Emerald Spellstone: Hunter's spellstone costs 5 mana, and summons two 3/3 wolves, which is... okay but not great value. Perhaps the thing that kind of kills it for me is the way to upgrade is to play a Secret, then it summons 3 and 4 wolf tokens. It's perhaps thankful that you only have to play a single secret to upgrade, and summoning three or four 3/3 beast bodies is a pretty powerful play. The thing is, though, Secret hunter isn't a particularly good deck, otherwise cards like Cloaked Huntress and Professor Putricide would see more play. Playing in the ladder currently, I honestly see Secret Hunter as a free with with a vast majority of my deck. So yeah. It's a good card, but not one that's going to bring Secret Huner out of its funk, IMO. (Also, Duskbreaker kills all of the wolfies. Just saying)
To My Side: So To My Side is an... interesting card. Obviously, 6 mana for a single animal companion is absolutely shit, but 6 mana for 2 is... maybe decent? It doesn't come too late the way Call of the Wild sometimes does, and animal companions are pretty good. But is it worth it for this card to play an all-spell hunter deck? No. All the strongest Hunter cards are those that interact with minions, or are minions themselves. Even secret decks do need minions like your Huntresses and your Putricides to support it. So yeah, definitely a bad card.
Leyline Manipulator: At this point we've seen all but one of the mage cards, and howdy doy, they're doubling down on both 'random spells' and elemental mage a fuck-ton. And out of all the new cards, Leyline Manipulator is one that scares me the most. He's a 4/5 for 4 mana, which is Yeti stats. He's also an Elemental, which triggers Elemental synergy cards and Lesser Ruby Spellstone and gains lifesteal with Frost Lich Jaina. It also has the Ethereal Peddler effect, which... reduces every single card in your hand that didn't start out in your deck by 2. As if Primordial Glyph, Cabalist's Tome and Babbling Book aren't powerful enough! This is such a monster of a card, really. The effect's immediate, too! And it's cards that didn't start in your hand, so Simulacrum-created Sorcerer's Apprentices, the upgraded versions of Ruby Spellstone, Antonidas Fireballs, Pyros's transformed versions... it's just an insanely powerful card for all types of mages, but particularly Quest Mage. And honestly, it doesn't even get any stat discounts! Whether you're playing Frost Lich Jaina, or Quest Mage, or Elemental Mage, all Mage decks can afford to throw Leyline Manipulator, a couple of Primordial Glyphs and just make great use of 5-mana Flamestrikes and shit. Holy crap, man, this card. And mage doesn't just get one good card, either! Lesser Ruby Spellstone, Explosive Runes and Aluneth are all very strong, and cards like Raven Familiar and Arcane Artificier may very well be good options as well.Dragoncaller Alanna: Dragoncaller Alanna is the mage legendary and she's... not that good, I think. Alanna is a 9-mana 3/3 that summons a 5/5 dragon token for each spell you cast this game that costs 5 or more. And I really find it hard to justify putting her in. I mean, casting spells that cost more than 5 mana isn't a hard thing to do. Flamestrike, Meteor, Blizzard, Cabalist's Tome... there are no shortage of expensive spells in Mage you want to cast. But I honestly don't think changing your game plan to suddenly swarm the board with dragons is something you want, although Alanna is certainly a better card than others who do that like, say, Onyxia or Sindragosa. (Also, this card gives a big middle finger to Dragonfire Potion) Ultimately, though, while Alanna is a very solid card, I don't really see her making any more waves in the meta than Sindragosa did -- both very solid legendaries that maybe pop up once every twenty mages you face.
Deck of Wonders: I really wish mages got more expensive, crappy spells just in order to make random-mage-spell generating cards weaker. And this expansion gave us two 5-cost mage spells. Deck of Wonders is a fun, if pretty crappy card. For 5 mana, you do nothing! You shuffle five 'Scroll' cards into your deck that, when drawn, casts a random spell the way that Beneath the Grounds or Fal'dorei Strider does. And while the concept (and D&D reference) is cool, Deck of Grounds essentially acts like a delayed Yogg-Saron that you can't control unless your deck is empty or near-empty. Yogg's biggest strength is that you can control when to bomb the board with a crapton of random spells, and the sheer amount of spells that go off tend to be in your favour. Deck of Wonders doesn't do this, and while perhaps one of the more fun effects in the game, it's not one that I think will be very meta-defining. Which is fun.Dragon's Fury: Another card in the theoretical 'big spell mage' archetype that Dragoncaller Alanna, Raven Familiar and Arcane Artificier seem to be promoting (I say it won't work, but who knows?) Dragon's Fury is a weird card that reveals (not draws) a spell from your deck and deals its damage to all minions. And for 5 mana, you want at least a 5-damage AoE, I think, and I'm pretty sure you don't want to take out Frostbolts and Fireballs (otherwise Dragon's Fury will be an overcosted Volcanic Potion/Hellfire) for Dragon's Fury to go off. And even then, you damage your own board? Nah, I don't think this is a good card. At least it's not another face mage spell, though.
Val'anyr: The paladin's legendary weapon, Val'anyr, which is definitely a pretty cool card as a weapon that doesn't give a shit if it's destroyed. And I really like how at least three of the weapons in this expansion (Val'anyr, Twig and Kingsbane) all act against weapon removal, which is one of my bigger worries about this expansion. Val'anyr is an overcosted weapon, a 6-mana 4/2... that, when it breaks, buffs a minion in your hand with 4/2 (so they just hold Val'anyr) and also gives the minion the deathrattle to re-equip Val'anyr onto your hero immediately after its death. It's a very funky weapon, for sure. A 4/2 buff isn't ignorable, and dealing 4 damage, and then buffing any minion in your hand with 4/2, and upon their death, Val'anyr gets re-equipped? Sure, you could whiff and have no minion in your hand, but that only happens when you topdeck Val'anyr or play really poorly. Val'anyr is a great twist on the handbuff mechanic, and a very powerful control tool. You're not afraid of losing Val'anyr when you play Tirion or Uther of the Ebon Blade either, which was a problem when those two cards were played, that Ashbringer and Uther's hammer will overwrite each other. Great design, and while the initial 6-mana-for-4/2 is a bit steep to play, I do like the card and I think it's going to be pretty decent.Crystal Lion: Ah, the Paladins have their own Thing From Below. The thing is, though, it's a mere 5/5 with Divine Shield. Sure, it gets discounted with each Silver Hand Recruit... that's on the board, not summoned throughout the game the way Thing From Below worked. Although Paladins do have Stand Against Darkness, allowing you, on turn 6, to play Stand and Crystal Lion and get five 1/1's and one 5/5 Divine Shield.... but ultimately I feel Crystal Lion's too situational even in a dude-buff deck. I can see cards like Level Up be used in Wild dude-buff decks, but even there I don't see Crystal Lion being used.
Lesser Diamond Spellstone: Lesser Diamond Spellstone is pretty good, and I'm glad it's costed expensively at 7. Unlike Dragon Soul, Diamond Spellstone asks you to cast 4 different spells, and I don't think you have to do it in a single turn. And casting 8 spells over the course of a game isn't that hard for either highlander or big priest. On its base form, Lesser Diamond Spellstone resurrects two different friendly minions. It then goes up to three and four, basically making it a mini-N'Zoth. It's definitely quite decent in Big Priest, and even if you whiff and get a Barnes or a Potion-of-Madness'd minion, you still get two or three of your big dudes. And since the Big Priest deck is like 80% spells anyway, Lesser Diamond Spellstone just looks like a card built for that deck. Again, the only real problem is perhaps the cost, and even then, it's balanced more than prohibitive.
Twilight's Call: Another resurrect card, for 3 mana, Twilight's Call resurrects two different deathrattle minions... but 1/1 copies. It's great in Quest Priest, but I don't think I use it in Big Priest lists. Sure, Obsidian Statue's a great minion to have back, but when you Eternal Servitude an Obsidian Statue and get the full 4/8-Taunt body it's just so much better than a single 1/1 body. And Twilight's Call explicitly says different, so you don't get two tiny Obsidian Statues. It's definitely great in a Quest Priest list, though, and whether it brings back to powerful minions or just two minions that draw cards (Loot Hoarder and the Crystalline Oracle for instance) it's still neat for 3 mana. Ultimately, I'm not sure if it's good enough to see play, but it's good. Not OP, which is certainly not something Priest needs considering the sheer power it has now.
Kingsbane: (Blade Flurry died for you...) Oh man, Rogue's legendary weapon. Is this the Rogue weapon we've all been waiting for? I believe so. Kingsbane isn't bad by itself, a 1-mana 1/3, making it a weaker Light's Justice. but it has an effect. A deathrattle -- shuffling it into its deck, and it remembers all enchantments. Let me remind you that there is no way to silence off weapons. Harrison and Oozes can destroy the Kingsbane, sure, but all the Rogue needs to do is to re-draw Kingsbane and replay it for the cheap cost of 1 mana. Deadly Poison, Leeching Poison, Envenom Weapon... Tinker's Sharpsword Oil in Wild... Yeah, there are ways to buff up your Kingsbane, and even with a single Deadly Poison, equipping a 4/3 weapon for 1 mana is still insane value. And you know what else? You can get extra Kingsbanes from Rummaging Kobold. You can stop fatigue with Kingsbane returning to your deck all the time. You can even duplicate Kingsbane itself and the weapon-buff spells with Valeera the Hollow. Sadly, we only have one Rogue common left unrevealed so there doesn't seem to be a lot of weapon-buffing love in this expansion, but holy hell, Kingsbane just looks so great. I don't see Kingsbane decks overtaking the current Tempo lists, but damn Kingsbane is the type of weapon I really wish Rogues have more of.
Evasion: The final Rogue secret, Evasion makes your hero immune after its next damage. Which... just makes it a shitty version of Ice Block. It doesn't wait until you become lethal, and you actually do take the initial damage. It's not a bad card if you can activate it properly, but I think Evasion ends up being a bit too tricky and situational to see play.
Elven Minstrel: Hee hee, a bard class. Elven Minstrel is a 4-mana 3/2 that, as a combo, draws 2 minions from your deck. Tutoring is a very powerful ability in any card game, and you can make it so that your deck only has, like, Elven Minstrels, Malygoses and, like, Gadgetzan Auctioneers or something? The stat penalty isn't even that horrible for drawing 2 cards, with the only real problem maybe being the Combo... but it's not that hard to activate for Rogues, to be honest. Overall, Elven Minstrel is a well-designed card, and has the potential to be a pretty powerful draw engine for Rogues.
Lesser Onyx Spellstone: Onyx Spellstone is a pretty cool design, because Vilespine Slayers aren't enough. It destroys enemy minions randomly! For 5 mana, you go from 1 to 2 to 3 random enemy minions. Obviously the Lesser Onyx Spellstone is shit, making it a shittier, overcosted Multi-Shot. But both the regular and the Greater Onyx Spellstone are powerful tools that might just clear your enemy's entire board, and all those big priests and big druids will cry at the sight of this card. The problem is the activation, which wants you to play three Deathrattle cards, so you have to play this in a deathrattle rogue deck, and can't just slip this into an existing deck. I'm certainly going to wild with my old Unearthed Raptor deck (Raptor is, incidentally, easily one of my all-time favourite rogue cards) where it's going to be child's play to upgrade Lesser Onyx Spellstone, but it's a pretty neat design that locks the powerful effect behind a hard but doable quest, so to speak.Unstable Evolution: Unstable Evolution is a cool card. For 1 mana, you evolve a minion, and the spell returns back into your hand after doing so for the duration of a turn. It helps you to control and stop yourself from getting shit evolutions, which is particularly relevant in this expansion due to the huge amount of shit-stats-for-their-cost minions. Dragoncaller Alanna, Lynessa Sunsorrow, Possessed Lackey, King Togwaggle, Dragonhatcher, Furbolg Mossbinder... there's a lot of crappily-statted minions out there that may just tilt the scales of Evolve Shaman's RNG too much in the failure direction. Which is a bit of a shame, since Shaman doesn't actually have a lot of great cards from this expansion. Unstable Evolution is one of them, though, and definitely fits in well into current Evolve Shaman lists.
Murmuring Elemental: Murmuring Elemental is an interesting card. He's a temporary Brann, and also an elemental... but the fact that it's a 2-mana 1/1, and it's a 'next battlecry this turn' kind of kills it somewhat for me. It's not bad, of course, but part of what made Brann quite good is his very respectable 3-mana 2/4 statline for a permanent effect. Murmuring Elemental is a card you can put two of in your deck, and maybe through some miracle works well in that weird Grumble/Elemental deck. In evolve Shaman... I guess you could double the battlecries of your Saronite and Doppelgangster, with the huge highroll being Murmuring Elemental and Thrall Deathseer in the same turn, and in that miracle scenario you get a 4x mana cost upgrade to your board, and instead of being a 2-mana 1/1 Murmuring Elemental becomes a mighty six-drop... it sounds cool on the off chance that you can get it off with Thrall Deathseer, but otherwise... I don't really see Murmuring Elemental be played, to be honest.
Possessed Lackey: Possessed Lackey is kind of shit. It's a 5-mana 2/2, and as a deathrattle, it recruits a demon. The thing with the Lackey is that it's so... overcosted. Sure, a 5-mana 2/2 that draws a Despicable Dreadlord or Doomguard or Voidlord and plays it for free is amazing. But how often do you get that? What if Lackey draws a Flame Imp instead? (Which, admittedly, you won't put Lackey in a deck with Flame Imps and Voidwalkers). What if you draw your Doomguards and Voidlords before Lackey? Comparing Possessed Lackey to Voidcaller from Naxxramas is just such a piss-poor comparison, with Voidcaller also having a deathrattle that cheats out a demon from your hand. Pretty bad card.
Skull of the Man'ari: Skull of the Man'ari is an... interesting card. Wow, you summon a random demon from your hand every turn? Amazing! You get to bypass the heavily painful battlecries of Doomguard, Pit Lord, Lakkari Felhound and all that jazz! But the thing that makes Skull of the Man'ari a lot worse than Aluneth is that, well, the Skull is a 5-mana investment that doesn't do anything on the turn it is played, and that makes it a full win-more card. And its effect happens on the start of your turn, which means that the summoned demon can't attack (unless it's a Doomguard). It's not a bad card, though, and between Skull, Krul the Unshackled and Bloodreaver Gul'dan, Warlock has a lot of great demon synergy, and with Doomguard, Voidlord and Despicable Dreadlord it has great big-value demons. Skull of the Man'ari is potentially a powerful card if it manages to not be removed, but it's one that ends up with such a huge tempo loss if your enemy Oozes this. Overall, a card that might not be good after all.
Unidentified Shield: While the Elixir and the Maul are 'okay, but not good', Unidentified Shield is just kinda... poop, I think. It's a 6-mana card that gives you 5 armour and a bonus effect via the 'identify' mechanic. And the possible effects? Gain 10 more armour, deal 5 damage, summon a 5/5 and equip a 5/2 weapon. Out of those, only two are decent, with the Runed Shield option essentially making this a Shieldbearer, and the Spiked Shield option making this an Arcanite Reaper and an Iron Hide strung together. And even then, those aren't particularly amazing. The deal-5-damage-gain-5-armour and especially gain 15 armour are insanely overcosted at 6 mana. Dealing damage is at least decent because it can go face, but all the effects are just so underwhelming. It's perhaps a decent arena card, and the artwork for the shield variations are pretty cool, but it's ultimately a card that I don't think is good.
Reckless Flurry: Armour Flurry! It's not actually as good as it looks like once you think about it. Warriors often have an excess of armour, and spending all of them to AoE the board isn't particularly good, to be honest, not when Warriors have access to Brawl or Shield Slam or Sleep With The Fishes, all far superior board clears and removal options. And you lose all your armour? Yeah, Reckless Flurry is particularly reckless, and it's not a card I think is good at all.Drywhisker Armorer: Drywhisker Armorer is cool, though. It's a better version of the Worgen Apothecary dude from Old Gods, only instead of health, it gives you armour. Which, as you can see, synergizes with a lot of the new cards, and is just better than health anyway. Armourer is also cheaper, a 2-mana 2/2 as opposed to the Apothecary's far more penalized statline of 5-mana 4/4. It's perhaps not as good or stable as Armorsmiths and the like, but it's definitely a decent card.
Geosculptor Yip: Somewhat better than Rotface, I think? But Geosculptor Yip is a weird legendary. Severely under-statted at 4/8 for 8 mana, Yip summons a random minion equal to your armour, which is nice if Yip gets to summon a free 10-cost minion every turn. As cards like Evolve, Forbidden Shaping and Free From Amber have shown, high-costed minions are pretty good, and 10-cost is one of those slots where you don't have any particularly bad minions in it. The worst is, like, C'Thun or N'Zoth, but a 6/6 or a 5/7 isn't the worst outcome, unlike Rotface who can truly backfire and give you like Nat Pagle or some shit. Geosculptor Yip is a cool card, and you can do a 10-mana combo with Bring It On and Yip to guarantee the 10-mana train to be started. It's a card that I'm perhaps a bit more optimistic about than I should, but Yip does look like a cool, if somewhat impractical, legendary.Bladed Gauntlet: A very interesting card. It's a warrior weapon, a 2-mana 0/2 that has the same attack as your arrmour... but can't attack heroes. It's definitely a control weapon, but the price of not being able to attack the hero is perhaps a bit too harsh, else Fool's Bane would see more play. Bladed Gauntlet is a lot cheaper than Fool's Bane, though, and Warriors gain armour pretty quickly. With a simple Shield Block, Bladed Gauntlet becomes an Arcanite Reaper... and it's a pretty cool weapon in design. It's definitely really good for Control Warrior if the stars align and we get it back, that's for sure.
Furbolg Mossbinder: A very... interesting card. He's a 1/1 that transforms a friendly minion into a 6/6 elemental (and the tag doesn't really matter since it's not played). And it's pretty hard to have a minion you're happy to turn into a 6/6. I guess Shamans and Paladins can use it pretty well, since they generate tokens, and in that aspect it's neat. But even then all you're getting is a +5/+5 buff at the most, and you still waste 2 mana pushing the hero power button on the previous turn. It's a very interestingly designed card, and you can use Furbolg Mossbinder to transform minions with shit deathrattles (like Rattling Rascal) and you can do some weird Evolve shenanigans with it, but it really feels like a worse Rattling Rascal to me, and Rascal got cut out of Evolve decks pretty quickly. A very cool-looking card, but ultimately not one that I see making its way into meta decks too much.
Dragonhatcher: A 9-mana 2/4 that recruits a dragon at the end of your turn? Yeaaaah, spend one more mana, and play Y'Shaarj instead. Playing Dragonhatcher means that you only want to put big-mana dragons in your deck... and that, by default, eliminates a lot of dragons that cost a little or have powerful battlecries, leaving, what, Ysera and the two Deathwings as the only possible target? And if you draw Dragonhatcher after you draw the two dragons... yeah, this is a crap card. There are lots of better ways to cheat out your dragons, and Dragonhatcher isn't one of them. Cool art, though.
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