Sunday 26 March 2017

Hearthstone: Un'Goro Reveals, Week 2 Redux: Raptor Swarms & Ghost Treants

So yesterday there's a stream reveal of ten or so more cards in the Bahamas tournament thing, as well as a couple of extra cards revealed between the previous reviews I did and this one. Basically the rest of the expansion will be released in a Ben Brode stream next week, and I'll probably do the mass review of everything that shows up next week then. Or maybe I'll do the cards revealed before the stream in one post, and the stream in a separate post. I dunno. We'll see how much I'll have to talk.

Glacial Shard
The Glacial Shard is another one-mana Elemental, which I think is a fair bit better than the Fire Fly. It's a 1-mana 2/1 with a battlecry of freezing an enemy, basically Frost Elemental downsized. One mana's great for triggering Elementals, and as the legendary Hunter quest shows, there's at least one class that really likes one-drops. Freezing enemies might just be a dud effect if the enemy doesn't have minions, but if they do it's actually a pretty decent disable attached to a 2/1. No, not the most powerful one-drop out there, but it's a simple one that's good but not particularly great.

Glorious Glimmerroot
The Glorious Glimmerroot is a very interesting Priest card. It's a 3-mana 3/3, so sub-par stats, but its effect is a unique take on the Drakonid Operative style "copy a card from your opponent's deck" effect... because you play a minigame! You have to look at 3 cards, and choose the one that started in your opponent's deck. If you choose right, then Glimmerroot is a 3/3 that draws a card, like a balanced-statline Drakonid Operative. If you choose wrong then it just kind of sucks. The Glimmerroot is a very interesting case, for sure, in that how powerful it is depends on how good the 'guess these cards' choice algorithm is. If it's a warrior and you're shown Fiery War Axe/Magma Rager/Nozdormu it doesn't take a genius to know which card started in your opponent's deck. If it's Fiery War Axe/Brawl/Grommash Hellscream, on the other hand, it might require some thought to figure out just what kind of Warrior deck your opponent's running. Also, the fact that you'll only draw one card instead of choosing out of three like Drakonid Operative means that you have no real say if the card turns out to be absolutely unusable like Shield Slam or Deadly Potion. Still, a very interesting effect nonetheless.

Volcanosaur
We're all going to get a golden Volcanosaur, so yay for that! The Volcanosaur is a 7-mana minion with a 5/6 statline, which is vanilla for a 5-mana minion. Adapt's rated as 1 mana for the Verdant Longneck, so the Volcanosaur (what a cool piece of art, by the way) uses the two mana's worth of stat deficits to Adapt twice. It's definitely going to lead into an interesting minion. You might get, like, a 8/6 with Stealth, or a 5/6 mini-Soggoth, or a Windfury-Divine Shield combo. Sometimes you just want a huge block of stats, and sometimes maybe you want a flexible creature that can be an emergency taunter or a mini winning condition -- 10 damage due to a Stealthed Windfury ain't nothing to laugh at.


Lost in the Jungle
Paladin spell, where you summon two 1/1 Silver Hand Recruits for 1 mana. Basically Living Roots without the choose one. Part of Living Root's strength is the choice and the potential to deal direct damage. It's a boring card, we don't have any real Silver Hand Recruit synergy (unless you want to combo this with Steward of Darkshire or Dinosize, and I can think of better cards than this) so I don't see this being anything but filler.

Gluttonous Ooze
Oh man, what a card! Acidic Swamp Ooze merely destroys your enemy's weapon. His huge Un'Goro cousin, with a dinosaur skull, is far, far more devastating than the Acidic Swamp Ooze. Meet Gluttonous Ooze, who not only instantly destroys your enemy's weapon, but even heals you up via armour equal to the attack of the destroyed weapon. Toxic Sewer Ooze, bow before your god. It's stat-line is a little poor for 3-mana, so if you're not facing off against a weapon class Gluttonous Ooze is a little worse than Acidic Swamp Ooze, but man, against Warriors? Those huge Upgraded Arcanite Reapers and Gorehowls suddenly get destroyed and get turned into armour for you, which is just a devastating loss to your opponent. I'm actually optimistic that this card's going to be a pretty popular choice if Aggro Pirate Warrior's still going to be around. Also it's honestly about time we got more weapon removal -- and Toxic Sewer Ooze is a piece of shit. The Gluttonous Ooze is just amazing, and it's even useful outside a Pirate Warrior meta.

Mana Bind
A very unique Mage Secret -- when your opponent casts a spell, get a 0-cost copy of it. It doesn't really add anything new, your enemy's going to play Coins and Deadly Poisons to draw out Counterspell anyway... but the off chance that your opponent plays a useful spell it can be a pretty powerful and punishing comeback. 0-mana Pyroblast? Kazakus Potions? Twisting Nethers? Holy Novas? It's not a secret that I really see being super-useful in the same vein that we don't see a lot of Getaway Kodos, but it's definitely a cool card, and one that looks like a lot of fun nonetheless.

Vilespine Slayer
A 5-mana scary-looking plant, the Vilespine Slayer has a measly 3/4 statline... but it has Combo: Destroy a minion. It's Assassinate, but it comes with a 3/4 body as long as you combo it. We've seen that larger Combo minions are a bit harder to hit, like Shado-Pan Rider, but then Shado-Pan Rider is really the only hugely costed Combo card (Kidnapper who?) and the effect isn't really huge enough to warrant playing. Destruction effects, though? Vilespine Slayer destroys an enemy and still stays on the board, and I do think that it might be one of the cards that you play in a Shadowstep-Shadowdancer style deck. It even benefits from the "turn your minions into a 5/5" thing from the Crystal Core. It's probably not the most ideal minion to complete the Rogue quest, but I can see myself trying out the Vilespine Slayer in those decks, that's for sure. A very interesting design, and the fact that it's not a spell probably will save it from being nerfed like so many other Rogue cards.

Living Mana
Oh, man, this is a very cool card. For 5 mana, you transform all your mana crystals into 2/2 Treants with the Deathrattle of giving back a mana crystal each. You can only have so many minions on the board, so you can only spend 7 mana at the most. It fills your board with seven 2/2's, which is amazing. Your opponent can either remove the Treants or not, and that's going to raise some interesting questions. If they remove it, well, you get your mana back and you just shrug off losing a bunch of 2/2's. If they leave it alone you basically have no mana on the following turn, but then you have a board full of 2/2's. It's like Force of Nature on Steroids, but at the same time, the fact that the effects of recovering your mana crystal is tied to the minions, things like Potion of Madness or Mind Control Tech is going to fuck up your mana. Mass Dispel and Devolve basically just read "destroy 7 of your opponent's mana crystals" at that point. So there's definitely a fair bit of risk there, but it's definitely one of the more clever cards of the expansion, and one that, while not the most practical card, is definitely one of the coolest.

Mirage Caller
Lots of Tol'vir and Anubisath in this expansion, yeah? The Mirage Caller is a smaller Herald Volazj, but she's a 3-mana 2/3 and you only choose one minion to make a 1/1 copy. The smaller size means that Mirage Caller is far easier to set up a combo with than Volazj, and Volazj tends to only hit one or two minions at one go anyway. Ultimately I don't think this is going to be super good mostly because Ragnaros is leaving Standard, but hitting cards with aura effects like Prophet Velen is still going to be pretty powerful for a game-winning combo. It's not going to be that good, though, I predict -- it's a Barnes that requires you to have already done some setup work. 

Corrupting Mist
A very interesting Warlock card. For 2 mana, you cast Corruption on every minion. It's kind of like Doomsayer, but different. Doomsayer doesn't guarantee the destruction of the board, but you can bet that Doomsayer's going to tank a removal or at least 7 damage from your enemy's minions, and it discourages your opponent from summoning any more minions. Corrupting Mist ensures the destruction of the minions already on the board, but during the turn after you play Corrupting Mist your opponent's board is still going to hit your face, plus it doesn't do anything against minions your opponents play on that turn. Still, a pretty interesting design for a card. I'm just not sure it has a place in the current Renolock style decks, or in the hypothetical Discard Warlock we'll have in the future.


Molten Blade
Oh, hey, a Warrior card. Haven't seen a lot of those. Molten Blade is a 1-mana 1/1 weapon... that has the Shifter Zerus effect. For each turn it's in your hand, it transforms into a different weapon. The thing is, one of the weaknesses of Malkorok is that sometimes you get a Cursed Blade and you just lose the game there. Well, Cursed Blade is leaving Standard, so Molten Blade will almost certainly be a good card, and maybe you can bank on it becoming a Doomhammer. Upgraded Arcanite Reaper getting you down? Well, fear an Upgraded Doomhammer! Out of all the weapons that Molten Blade can transform into, I don't think there's any that's particularly bad, and honestly even if you get Light's Justice all you have to do is to wait a turn before it turns into something better.

The Marsh Queen
The Hunter's quest requires you to play seven 1-cost minions, so that's why Hunters got the Tol'vir Warden a couple days back. The reward is Queen Carnassa, a 5-mana 8/8 Beast, itself absolutely an insane beatstick, but that's not all! Carnassa shuffles 15 Raptors, and the Raptors are 1-mana 3/2's... that draw a card as a battlecry. It's absolutely insane, especially in the late game when you can guarantee that the Raptors will be pretty much unstoppable. A more realistic view is that while Carnassa's Brood is still going to draw you a card upon dropping into the field, it's as likely to draw into the other useless 1-drops that you put into your deck to enable this quest. Which is why you need cards like Tol'vir Warden to help thin out your deck, I guess. I can think of a card with like 10-15 one-mana drops, Tol'vir Wardens and some core cards like Savannah Highmanes, Tundra Rhinos (which will be awesome with the 3/2 raptors) and Kill Commands. Carnassa is going to be absolutely powerful when you get to drop her and get what's essentially a self-cycling swarm deck, but on the other hand, how many one-drops do you want to play? Alleycat, Fiery Bat and Argent Squire are all good enough that you'll want to put two of each. Timber Wolf isn't good enough I don't think, but maybe you'll want it in? Maybe Abusive Sergeant or Mistress of Mixtures? We'll see. It's definitely a pretty awesome quest, and, shit, it summons a crapton of dinosaurs! Definitely a quest worth doing. 

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