There's also some Battlegrounds news and changes which I straight-up just ignore because I really don't care about that game mode, but it's been doing successfully and I'm happy for the dev team. That's mostly what I can say about?
Anyway, a huge chunk of this was written last week, so I genuinely don't know if any of these suddenly turned out to be great in Standard or whatever, but I did correctly call out the Shaman cards for being powerful. Just probably not that powerful that it ends up causing a week-one nerf.
A bunch of Treant cards, and... they all look great. I just am not sure if they're strong enough to stand up against the rest of the set, y'know? Acroponics is basically Arcane Intellect that gets discounted depending on each treant you control. With one Treant, it's exactly Arcane Intellect, and with two it's a one-mana-draw 2 cards. It's a great reloading tool, which I feel treant druids would tend to want. It looks like a decent card, and a pretty powerful one. Likewise, Shrubadier isn't half-bad, a 2-mana 1/1 that summons a 2/2 Treant, which isn't the most powerful card out there but it puts bodies on board, and Treant decks tend to have a board-buff theme going on. Pretty neat.
Goru the Mightree, in addition to having a dad-joke punny name, is pretty powerful, basically an Ancient of War (7-mana 5/10 Taunt) that gives a permanent buffs to all treants you summon from here on out. Which is pretty damn powerful, even if turn 7 might be a bit too late. He does curve perfectly into the Forest's Aid, though, which seems pretty great!
Treenforcements, fun pun aside, doesn't seem to be that powerful. It's a 1-mana choose one spell that either gives you a 2/2 treant or to add +2 health to a minion, and you'll probably almost never choose that +2 health choice outside of very specific circumstances. It sure is cheap, but I don't think it's powerful enough to be worth a slot in your deck, y'know?
Embiggen is an interesting card. In addition to the glorious name, it's a 0-mana spell that buffs your entire deck with +2/+2, but also makes your minions cost 1. The key word, I feel, is that this doesn't stack above 10, so you could make a big druid deck work, theoretically, by just giving every single 10-cost minion in your deck +2/+2. Maybe in wild with Astral Communion, somehow? It seems kind of awkward for a more general druid deck, though. It's something that certianly has a potential to become a powerful asset for druid, but probably not in this meta, I don't think. (Or maybe it already has, and I'm just making a fool of myself. I genuinely don't know.
Secure the Deck and Strength in Numbers are the two druid side-quests. Secure the Deck is a bit awkward to complete. Sure, three Claw spells is neat, but what're you going to do with Claw? Make a Gonk deck? I don't think so, not in this meta. Strength in Numbers is basically a Recruit mechanic, and all you have to do is to spend 10 mana to summon minions. Maybe in that Embiggen 'big druid' deck?
Mage! Mage's sidequest Elemental Allies is... it's just kinda neat? You have to play an elemental 2 turns in a row, which is pretty easy (this set even includes Violet Spellwing, a cheap elemental), and the reward is tutoring 3 spells from your deck. It's a pretty powerful card, and if you have elementals and spells, you want this spell. The problem, of course, is whether that specific combination of themes is powerful enough in standard, which is going to be one of the biggest limiting factors for many of the cards here.
Violet Spellwing is just kinda neat. A 1-mana 1/1 that always adds an Arcane Missiles to your hand. It's a slower Babbling Book that always gives you a known spell. It's not as powerful as Babbling Book, but it does synergize with things like Elemental Allies and Mana Giant and whatnot. It's not the most powerful card for mage in this expansion, but a versatile one, I feel.
Mana Giant's a giant that costs less for each spell you cast that didn't start from your deck. I guess it can fit into an Open the Waygate deck? Open the Waygate in Wild probably benefits a lot more from Arcane Giant, though, which gets discounted from all spells you cast. This one seems awkward, but I wouldn't discount its power level just yet.
Rolling Fireball is great. It's such a Hearthstone card, y'know? It's comparable to a weaker Volcano, I guess, but man, I love the concept here so much. 5-mana deal 8 damage, but whatever excess damage rolls to the next minion. That's amazing. The spell itself is basically a better Flame Lance, and, again, I'm not sure if that means it's good enough to fit constructed's power level.
Scion of Ruin is easily one of the most powerful cards Warrior got this set. I wasn't super keen on Warrior Galakrond's hero power, but looking at Scion of Ruin, there might be something to say about an aggressive Galakrond Warrior deck that makes more use of the invoke triggers than the hero power itself. Scion of Ruin is Rushing 3/2 dragon, but if you Invoked twice, you get three rushing 3/2's. That's not likely to happen on turn 3, but if you manage to do so at early enough in the game, Scion of Ruin is definitely going to ruin your enemy's day.
Ritual Choper is a weapon that invokes Galakrond, essentially a 2-mana 4/2 weapon that becomes a 1/1 on its second turn. It's not terrible when you put it that way, but mostly it's just going to see play thanks to adding to the Invoke pool to trigger Scion of Ruin. Awaken is... a bit too expensive, I feel. You could say that it's combining Heroic Strike and Whirlwind together, and also having some Invoke synergies, but I dunno. It feels kinda awkward to me.
These two I'm not impressed by. Ramming Speed is a one-use, shittier Supercollider. Use that card instead, and even if Supercollider rotates out, you have better removal cards. EVIL Quartermaster is... it's decent, a Lackey-generating card that also gives you 3 armor, but Livewire Lance is far, far better for Lackey generation and I feel like while EVIL Quartermaster does a lot of things, it's not... that great?
Pirate Warrior's back, babies. Sky Raider's not the best pirate out there, but it's cheap, 1-mana 1/2 is solid, and it also adds a pirate to your hand. There are some pirates that might not be ideal (particularly in wild) but I think that it's a pretty great 'reload' card for Pirate Warriors? It's just such a shame its statline isn't offensive.
Skybarge's going to be one of Pirate Warrior's strongest asset, though, alongside that one 2/2 that jumps out of your hand. It's a 3-mana 2/5, a very solid statline, but it also just launches 2-damage cannonballs onto random enemies every time you summon a pirate. It's a buffed-up Ship's Cannon, and it's a mech to boot, meaning you can maybe finnagle in some Zilliax shenanigans into your Pirate Warrior deck. The main power of this deck's going to come from Anchaarrrr, the legendary weapon, or however you spell it, but Skybarge is certainly going to help out a lot!
Priest Priest Priest. We get three dragon cards! Muruzond the Infinite is such a cool effect, an 8-mana 8/8 dragon that replays all cards your opponent plays last turn, but I feel like it's sort of comparable to Tess Greymane since things like battlecries don't go off and spells cast hit random targets. You kind of really have to wait for a big-value turn your enemy has, and sometimes I guess that just means you wait until something that's super-valuable to you happens? It's a bizarre card, that I guess allows you to for-sure steal things like quest reward spells (in Wild) or cast giant minions that your opponent has or whatever, but I dunno. I feel like this card's going to fall by the wayside because it doesn't really duplicate battlecries and whatnot.
Mindflayer Kaahrj, meanwhile, seems a bit more powerful. It's sort of like an odd version of Sylvanas Windrunner or Faceless Manipulator, in a way, in that it's choosing an enemy minion and then when it dies, you get a copy of whatever enemy minion you choose. It's just kind of a solid 3-mana play. It's just kind of a shame that I don't think Priest has any obvious synergy with this just yet -- Kaarhj would be insane in a deathrattle rogue deck -- and ultimately I'm also not sure if this one's going to see much play.
Chronobreaker looks great at a glance, but then you realize that the AoE is a deathrattle and I don't know if Standard is so desperate for a board-clearing dragon, but I can guarantee you Wild Dragon Priest decks will never voluntarily put this in a dragon priest deck over Duskbreaker. It's just way too slow, there's a condition and it's a deathrattle to boot. One of the few cards here that I'd actually call out for being pretty trash, I think.
Grave Rune looks pretty fucking powerful. It's basically Carnivorous Cube, but without jumping through the extra hoops of destroying a minion first and then destroying the Cube. And in a way that does limit the power (since sometimes you do want the first deathrattle trigger when the Cube cubes your valuable minion) but man, 4 mana for the Cube effect? Pretty powerful.
Disciple of Galakrond is a very solid Invoke card. The problem is just that I really don't think Galakrond Priest's hero power is all that powerful, so I don't think this one will see much play. The same problem, to some extent, hits Whispers of EVIL. Rogue would wet themselves with a 0-mana Lackey generating spell, but Priest really can't use Lackeys too well, so this is a very powerful card in a class that can't really use it.
And now we come to Shaman! Two main archetypes are highlighted here, and I'll cover perhaps the less-interesting one. Overload Shaman, which... is probably going to be nightmarish in Wild. Tunnel Trogg still exists there! Squallhunter is basically Flamewreathed Faceless, only swapping out two attack for Spell Damage +2, which is going to be pretty damn powerful! And it's also a dragon! Definitely powerful enough by raw power alone, I feel.
Storm's Wrath is basically a neat board-buff. One mana, buff your entire board by +1/+1? Now all your totems can attack, without running totem-synergy specific cards. And Overload isn't necessarily a bad thing either, because of cards like Surging Tempest, which is a 1-mana 1/3 elemental that becomes 2/3 if you have Overloaded mana crystals. I feel like Shamans have got enough Overload-synergy cards like Likkim or whatever that this could become a neat deck in Wild. Not so much in Standard, though, because I feel like Battlecry Quest Shaman and Galakrond Shaman's going to be so much more powerful.
Galakrond the Tempest is our Galakrond, and its hero power/invoke effect is the extremely potent "summon a 2/1 elemental with rush". The tag doesn't matter, but casing spells and just gaining rushing 2/1's indefinitely? Galakrond's battlecry is perhaps also pretty dang powerful. Instead of just adding the amount of rushing 2/2 tokens that he summons, the bigger Galakrond versions summon two 4/4's and two 8/8's respectively, which is a lot better than just, say, four 2/2's because Shamans like to fill their deck up and just adding to the quantity of rushing tokens means that sometimes you'll overload your board!
Dragon's Pack is basically Feral Spirit, but you pay all the mana upfront instead of it being a 3-mana spell that overloads for 2. And that's fair enough of a price for two 2/3 taunts, I guess... but if you invoked twice? They become 5/6 Taunts, which is pretty damn great! And do Shamans get Invoke cards? Of course they do! Invocation of Frost is a 1-mana spell that freezes and enemy, and invokes Galakrond. In practice, that means you basically play Glacial Shard, except the 2/1 body has rush, and it also counts to the activation of cards like Dragon's Pack or Galakrond himself.
Corrupt Elementalist is probably the backbone of Galakrond Shaman, though, because it just straight-up invokes twice. 5-mana 3/3, summons two 2/1 rush creatures, and you immediately get Galakrond up to its next form? Yeah, that's just pure value, plain and simple. Fear the Elementalist.
Apologies if I do seem a bit rushed, because, well, I kinda just want to get this over with? I'm not sure, I'm just sort of not really enjoying the speculation and review/preview for Hearthstone as much as I did before. I still enjoy the game, but I don't feel like I have quite a good grasp of it as I did before. Depending on how I feel, I might not do too many reviews for the next standard year.
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