So we've got a couple of cards that shuffle these Soul Fragments. Spirit Jailer is easily the far, far more interesting card. 1-mana 1/3 is already a good statline. It's Dire Mole... and it's also a Demon! And it's also a card that shuffles two soul fragments into your deck. Whether it be aggro Demon Hunter or zoo Warlock or, honestly, any other kind of those two classes' decks that isn't super-strict control (and even then...) the Spirit Jailer is already a very good one-drop. The other dual-class card is Soul Shear, which, again, is pretty decent. 2-mana, deal 3 damage to a minion and you shuffle two Soul Fragments into your deck. It's a pretty basic spell, comparable to Darkbomb with a delayed upside. And, of course, that's not counting the fact that Soul Fragments themselves have some use later on.
Marrowslicer is perhaps a bit less exciting, being basically very similar to a basic card -- Paladin's Truesilver Champion. It's a 4-mana 4/2 weapon that heals 4... only instead of an instant heal any time you attack, it's via Soul Fragments. And... the thing is, Truesilver Champion is a very good card. Has to be, for a basic card to still see some fringe play after some dozen-odd expansions. The thing is that whether Demon Hunter can fit this in... and I honestly wager most decks except Wild's Odd DH can fit this one in. It's nothing too spectacular, but it's a decent weapon and, hey, might as well as get some synergy, right?
I'm going to assume that there will be more Soul Fragment generator cards down the line, because a single minion and one extra card each for Warlock and Demon Hunter probably won't cut it. School Spirits, I feel, is basically kind of like Marrowslicer. 3 mana for a mini-Hellfire? And you heal for 4 over time? Drain Soul saw play, and that was a single-target lifesteal spell. Demonwrath, also a 3-mana 2-damage AoE, also saw play. So while probably not the most elegant card and one that Zoo wouldn't like as much, School Spirits is certainly playable while not very wow-ing.
Of course, simple Soul Fragments isn't enough to entire playing it. Warlocks get two payoff cards. Void Drinker is a 5-mana 4/5 Taunt demon.... which is pretty underwhelming. But if you've got a Soul Fragment, the Void Drinker noms on it and becomes a 5-mana 7/8 Taunt. More, if you've got battlecry-multiplying effect. Very respectable, and having taunt makes this far more useful than just a beatstick. Shadowlight Scholar, meanwhile, is a 3-mana 3/4 that deals 3 damage as a battlecry, while also consuming a Soul Fragment. I really don't think consuming the Soul Fragment is that big of a deal. You lose a delayed 2 health restoration, big whoop.
The thing is, though, that makes me a bit iffy... these two are certainly tempo tools, but they're not that spectacular. And when you don't get the Soul Fragment effect, they're just all right at best, and 'all right at best' translates to unplayable in both constructed formats. I think Shadowlight Scholar might be a bit harder to play, because if you don't draw your Spirit Jailers before turn 3, then she's just kind of a dead card in your hand. The package is fun and interesting, though, and I can definitely see something be built around this.
Demon Hunter's got two payoff cards, too. Shardshatter Mystic is... not the most interesting one, especially not for Demon Hunter decks. 3-mana 3/2 that consumes a Soul Fragment to... cast Hellfire on everything except for the Mystic. I'm not sure about Standard, but Wild DH decks tend to be pretty swarm-y, so I don't think this is a particularly good payoff card for Demon Hunter specifically even though as a base card, she's pretty good.
Soulshard Lapidary, on the other hand, consumes a Soul Fragment... to give your hero +5 Attack. It's a mini Inner Demon, and you get a 5/5 body to come with it. Very equitable to Glaivebound Adept, a 5-mana card that also deals damage while also summoning a decent bodied minion. This one certainly looks pretty good... although the fact that her role is kind of assumed by a pre-existing card is kind of worrying. Plus, attacking, i.e. using your hero power, is a lot easier of an ask than to shuffle and not draw any of your Soul Fragments. She's possibly one of the cooler Soul Fragment synergy cards for sure!
And there's Soulciologist Malicia, a 7-mana 5/5 that summons a 3/3 Rush for every Soul Fragment in your deck. I am reminded of Blastmaster Boom, who also summons a bunch of minions based on shuffled cards -- bombs instead of soul fragments. Although I would definitely consider 3/3 Rush bodies to be far more significant than a bunch of Boom Bots. Played right and on ideal conditions, you can get a maximum of six 3/3 minions and the 5/5 body of Malicia. That's very significant on turn 7, and unlike any of the other payoff cards, Malicia doesn't actually consume any of your Soul Fragments. Seems pretty damn powerful, I would say, although I'm not 100% sure if the Soul Fragment package as a whole is going to survive the first two weeks of the expansion.
I'm unconvinced if the mechanic is going to be meta... but it's definitely very interesting, and I really, really love the flavour that they're giving a specific subsection of the cards -- namely the demon-using duo. I approve! I might not like the Harry-Potter-parody vibe and the One Night in Karazhan-esque 'prequel when everyone is alive and zany' theme, but I definitely approve of the direction they're taking the classes in.
Another dual-class combo that I feel is very flavourful are the Light-worshiping duo of Paladin and Priest... and their combined mechanic is buff spell synergy -- which is certainly something that works very well for both classes! Devout Pupil seems to be more Paladin than Priest, though, specifically Libram Paladin -- an archetype that's nowhere close to being viable in Wild, but apparently is a pretty good one in Standard. The Devout Pupil is literally just Sunwalker from the Classic class, but it gets discounted any time you cast a buff spell. That's neat and pretty powerful, although in Wild specifically we've got a lot of stronger buff-spell synergy cards.
Gift of Luminance is a powerful buff spell in and of itself, a 3-mana spell that casts Divine Shield... and summons a 1/1 copy of it. Yeah, Libram synergy again and all that, but mostly I feel like its greatest use is going to be copying "greetings, fellow human". We've had a bunch of cards in Priest that allows making 1/1 copies of a minion like Psychopomp and Vivid Nightmare, and they've all seen play, so I have no doubt that this card will at the very least be experimented upon. A 1/1 copy with Divine Shield for 3 mana doesn't sound bad!
High Abbess Alura is... interesting? She's basically the reverse Lynessa Sunsorrow, which is a payoff of casting a lot of buff spells in a game. Alura is a decently statted 4-cost minion that will, as a Spellburst, cast a spell from your deck, preferably targeting Alura. I think it's meant to be a buff spell synergy where you duplicate a good buff spell (like Libram of Hope, or Gift of Luminance?), she doesn't actually consume the spell, and if you run some universally-good spell like Mass Resurrection, Divine Favor or Consecration she can cast it too? It also means you can't run certain single-target-removal card in a deck with Alura. I dunno. And she's Spellburst instead of Battlecry? Ick. Maybe she's more exciting to standard players but she just feels dreadfully weak to me.
This is the set with crazy legendaries with crazy effects, because that's what these three are. Vectus is... interesting? He's like a mini-N'Zoth that summons two 1/1 minions that each gain a random Deathrattle from one of your dead deathrattle minion from earlier in the game. I do like it a lot! Nowhere as powerful as N'Zoth, but certainly more powerful than Undatakah. With the Prime cards from Ashes of Outland, Vectus definitely shows up following the perfect expansion for a deathrattle synergy card. Nothing much to say, he's definitely going to see play at some point, although he probably won't be the biggest powerhouse of that deck.
Keymaster Alabaster is a 7-mana 6/8 with a gigantic 'kill me now' status on his forehead. Whenever your opponent draws a card, you get a copy that costs 1. Sure, most times you're going to whiff, and like Educated Elekk sometimes you get a shitty non-synergy card... but for the most part, even a 1-mana like Shadow Word or whatever is going to be good value. And if Alabaster is allowed to snowball? If you can somehow force your opponent to draw cards with Research Project and Coldlight Oracle in Wild? Honestly, this is one card that you're going to love to see work just to get like a 1-mana hero card or Dragonqueen Alexstrasza or something. Probably going to prove more impractical than awesome, but definitely a very cool card!
Instructor Fireheart is also another one that I feel is going to be more impractical than not, but she's a 3-mana 3/3, which is cheap... and you will discover a shaman spell. If you can play the spell this turn, you can repeat the effect. I do like the built-in mechanics that Fireheart will only discover spells costing 1 or more so you don't get an infinite chain, but honestly, playing this at turn 10, and then potentially getting seven lightning bolts in a row is going to be funny. And even then, the continuous discovering of spells to take up an entire turn is pretty fun -- and unlike Krag'wa, there's no chance of you fucking up your big Krag'wa turn by drawing all the spells already. You just keep discovering spells until you either run out of cheap spells or you see something so good you have to pick it. Either way, Fireheart is amazing. She's like Zephrys, in a way.
I get the Mage/Rogue pairing! They can both cast illusions! Okay, that's cool. Jandice Barov is also a very, very cool legendary minion. 5-mana 2/1, and she summons two random 5-cost minions, which, on average, will be somewhere from 4/5 to 5/6 in stats. Okay, so like a reverse Giggling Inventor, except it's random. Sometimes you get another Jandice, and that's a potential whiff. But Jandice has a mechanic where you can secretly pick one that dies when it takes damage, essentially having reverse-Poisonous. And... everyone raves about how this will make 'mind games' where of course the minion with deathrattle or the weaker minion is going to be the one you'll pick to be more fragile, so you can befuddle your opponent in ping-ing the weaker minion only to have it not die to one damage. The thing is... your opponent might simply have two pings. Or make favourable trades. So for the most part, you're still going to make the less-valuable 5-drop be the fragile one. A very, very cool concept regardless, though, and has my vote for the straight-up the coolest card in this set.
Notable 5-drop minions that you would be happy to get include Leeroy Jenkins, Convincing Infiltrator, Ras Frostwhisper, Earth Elemental, Cobalt Scalebane, Wrathspike Brute, Darius Crowley, Doomguard, Waxadred, Bittertide Hydra, Muck Hunter, Lyra the Sunshard, Ixlid, Despicable Dreadlord and Alley Armorsmith. There are also a decent amount of 5-drops with taunt. Notable shit 5-drop minions would be those with like, 3/3 or 2/1 or 0-attack stats... Jandice herself, too, but honestly, unless you hit Former Champion or Furbolg Mossbiner(both obligatory 1/1 minion, both aren't a problem in Standard), Bomb Squad (that'd be funny), Chromatic Egg or Desert Obelisk (useless 0-attack minions) I don't think you'll be heartbroken about it.
Potion of Illusion is kind of a variation of Echo of Medivh, a card that I slotted into my degenerate Wild Quest Mage to surprise people because sometimes I get lethals by playing my giants early, duplicating them and not waiting for the quest to beat the fuck out of people's faces. And this time, it's less about duplicating giants and more to make cheap versions of minions that you can abuse the battlecries of, Rogue-style. 1-cost 1/1 copies of minions in your battlefield? You can make extra Sorcerer's Apprentices, which would be terrifying in the days of Simulacrum-Apprentice-Antonidas-Time-Warp shenanigans. You can get yet another tool in Mill Rogue. You can bounce your Reno Jacksons back. You could even just duplicate an Edwin that costs 1 and is only 1/1 stats cheaper and that'd be a good use. And that's just on top of my head. Honestly, this is a very, very awesome card that could definitely lead to a lot of degenerate combos, and if at the end of the day this doesn't see play at all I'd be very, very surprised.
Ras Frostwhisper is... wow, what an interesting card, huh? Shared by Mage and Shaman, this pre-Lich dude is going to, at its most basic, be Despicable Dreadlord, a card that sees a lot of play back in its day and is still playable even now. That is at worst. Ras Frostwhisper's board-nuke goes to the face, too, and it can be improved by Spell Damage! We all know Shaman can very easily get a spell damage totem, but between Cosmic Anomaly, Bloodmage Thalnos and the newly-printed Lab Partner for Mage, it's not like Mage doesn't have access to good spell damage minions. I feel like Ras is going to be a lot more easy to abuse in Shaman. A very cool card.
Speaking of Mage and Rogue... Mage gets a very solid 1-drop with Lab Partner, essentially a Dire Mole with Spell Damage +1. Not sure which mage deck specifically would run this, but yes please to more Spell Damage synergy cards.
Secret Passage raises a whole lot of brouhaha, and no wonder. Comparing this to Soularium (1-cost, draw 3 cards, discard them later), Evocation (1-cost, fill your hand with cards, discard them later) and Myra's Unstable Element (5-cost, draw your entire deck).... Secret Passage seems amazing, right? 1-mana, and you temporarily swap hands to five cards from your deck? It's like, drawing five cards, right? And it's cards from your deck, so cards you want. You don't even lose the cards like with Soularium, so it's like duplicating 5 cards while drawing them for maximum value and you can do it twice in a game, right? But... I dunno. I feel like there's just something that's not clicking right here. Sure, it's a powerful effect and I won't deny it. It's getting an extra resource of five cards no matter what, and if you've got an empty hand it's honestly pretty devastating to potentially end a game or swing it around with 5 extra cards. And I feel like that's how the card's going to be used, more in the vein of Myra's Unstable Element. I dunno, though. Unlike Soularium and Evocation, you can't use them in conjunction with the cards that you were keeping in your old hand. It's a very interesting card if nothing else, and one that's potentially pretty dang powerful.
Speaking of effects that can be potentially powerful... Educated Elekk! This one doesn't just double your shuffled cards, the Educated Elekk will, like any good elephant, remember any spell that's casted by both sides of the field. And then when it dies, it'll shuffle everything into your deck! Some obvious spells (oh no wild big priest and quest mage) that you want to duplicate are there, but you can also get some good spells from your opponent. Of course, depending on who you're facing, this might lead to some demon-specific or weapon-specific spells clogging up your draws. Like Potion of Illusion, though, this is one card that I would be very surprised if it didn't see play as part of some degenerate combo at some point.
And we have two extra druid cards. Forest Warden Omu is... oh man, this is the next Kun, basically, right? Kun's biggest annoyance back in the day is that he can refresh your mana crystals, and the only thing that makes him hard to play is that he costs 10 mana. Forest Warden Omu is a lot cheaper at 6, and you have to Spellburst to make him work, but druid has lots of 0-cost spells. And unlike Kun, this technically means that you have 14 mana total to play around with after playing Omu. I don't want to be that guy to hype a card up all that much... but Omu really seems like a card you can abuse simply because refreshing all your mana crystals is a scary prospect. And you thought all those scary druid cards are in wild!
Survival of the Fittest is like, Embiggen. But it's like Ultimate Embiggen. 10 mana for Ultimate Infestation? That's not quite enough value! You get +4/+4 to all minions in your deck, hand and battlefield. It's like Embiggen and Mark of the Lotus had a hideous baby and it learned how to hand-buff. There's no way this can't be broken, right? There's no way that they won't learn to abuse this with like Kael'thas or Omu or something, right? Part of me wants to say that, no, turn 10 for a Keleseth effect takes too long. No, Barnabus the giant brachiosaurus buddy didn't work. But on the other hand... +4/+4 on everything in a druid deck and battlefield... that's a scary prospect. You can do it twice, too.
Lord Barov is our second Warrior/Paladin smashy-smash card, and this one sort of combines Equality with Ravaging Ghoul, sort of? A 3-mana Equality that comes with a 3/2 body is pretty great, especially since not a lot of people play Equality anymore after its nerf. But the fact that it comes with its own 1-damage AOE deathrattle is neat. And sure, maybe you don't need that deathrattle all the time, but I think it's kinda nice to have it as a backup in case you don't draw into your Whirlwinds and Consecrations and Warpaths. Not particularly impressive as far as legendaries go and certainly not compared to the high power level ceiling as the rest of this expansion, but not a terrible card by any means.
Druid/Shaman, a.k.a. the tree-hugger squad, have a trio of cards revealed, too. And... these sure are interesting, if not particularly powerful-looking. Runic Carvings is a very cool card, though! It's basically Kicker from Magic: The Gathering, where you can pay an extra cost of mana in order to get an extra 'kicker' effect. In this case, you can spend 6 mana and get four 2/2 Treant-Totem tokens... or you spend 8 mana total via the overload, and you get 2/2 rushing totems. I don't feel like there is any meaningful Treant synergy at the moment whether in Wild or Standard; and certainly none that mix Totems and Treants together in any meaningful way. But four 2/2 rushing Totem tokens? With all the Totem synergy cards that's running around, it's certainly a huge deal. I think for the most part you'll almost always want to get the Runic Carvings with Rush, but I do like the option of basically discounting the spell's overload effect if you can play this against an empty board. Very cool card, design-wise, although in Wild we've had a lot of more powerful 2/2 generators (Forest's Aid, Living Mana, Glowfly Swarm) that aren't being played. So.
Groundskeeper is... she's a very decent card. 4-mana 4/5 taunt is already all right, and if you're holding a big spell, Groundskeeper will restore 5 health to any character of your choosing. It's a better Steel Beetle from Galakrond's Awakening, a card that saw a decent amount of experimentation, only Groundskeeper is better since she can potentially restore any other minion you also have. Also she has taunt. A very decent card, if I don't think works particularly well in Shaman.
Speaker Gidra is... an interesting one? 3-mana 1/4 with Rush and Windfury? Sure, that's something... but when you cast Spellburst, she gains +X/+X, where X is the cost of the spell? Now you're talking. Unlike Alura, this is how to make a very interesting Spellburst legendary. You can cast Gidra with a decent 2 or 3 mana cost spell and a 3/7 Rush/Windfury minion is pretty significant. If somehow she survives a turn and then you cast something really big like Eye of the Storm or Ultimate Infestation? Very unlikely since she's probably going to die in a turn, but I can totally see Gidra make some really stupid turns. I think she'll be more of a druid card than a shaman card since shaman's cards don't tend to be super-expensive, while druid already have a bunch of Big Spell synergy and you can ramp up to turns where you can play Gidra with a big spell a bit more comfortably. I am unconvinced that she's going to suddenly be the best legendary ever, but I am certainly intrigued and hopeful.
A bit more boring are these final batch of cards. I know there are a bunch of other cards revealed here and there, but I'm just going by Playhearthstone.com because they have high-def, finalized cards instead of blurry, half-translated stuff. Adorable Infestation is Ultimate-Infestation-lite, and is available to Hunters and Druids, the beast-lovers. A +1/+1 buff, a 1/1 token and you get a 1/1 token. It's like a mini-Fire Fly, I feel, except that it also comes with a +1/+1 buff... which might not be that easy to get at turn 1. I dunno. It's not a terrible spell, but I am terribly underwhelmed by this.
Professor Slate is a 3-mana 3/4 that turns all your spells Poisonous. Which... neat? Your Rapid Shot and Flanking Strikes are poisonous, that's nice I guess? I mean, it's not completely useless, but it's so impractical and Hunter has so many better minion-removal tools (Rotnest Drake, Deadly Shot, Hunter's mark) that Slate here feels like it's going to go the way that the other hunter professor, Putricide, went.
And these two Paladin cards are just... eh. I wager if they showed up a couple of years earlier we'd be all over them, but Turalyon the Tenured is a 3/12 Rusher that will set whatever it beats up to 3/3. Which is an interesting way to get rid of big taunt minions or something, but Turalyon still gets his tooth kicked in. It's like kind of an impractical way to basically have a Poisonous/Rush combo that Hunters and some other classes have access to, and in Wild you'd definitely rather run Sunkeeper Tarim to completely 3/3 the entire board and potentially buff your side of the board. A very interesting effect for sure, but one that everyone called out as being extremely underwhelming and I have to agree. Sorry, Turalyon, you probably should stick with the Army of Light instead of teaching in an academy.
Argent Braggart is... eh? It gains attack and health to match the biggest value of each on the battlefield... leaving you with a gigantic beat-stick that does jack-all. And sure, he's 2-mana. But this is so allergic to silence, it doesn't have any other keyword, and there's really no place where this is super-useful. If your opponent has the big minions, then the Braggart just copies them without really dealing with them -- at that point, you'd rather have the far more underwhelming Turalyon, surely? And if you have the big minions, why the hell don't you run more minions with better deathrattles, battlecries and keywords instead of Braggart? A cool effect for sure, and I applaud this entire set for having very cool effects, but the Braggart definitely won't see play, I feel.
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