So yeah, Scholomance Academy! Apparently that's going to be our next expansion, the second one in this year... and is it just me, or did Ashes of Outland last a pretty long time? I'm not sure. It might just be PTSD from playing and fighting too many Illidans out there. Scholomance Academy is like, the Cult of the Damned's school for necromancy in World of Warcraft, but in Hearthstone it's basically reinvented into a Harry Potter style high school parody. And honestly, I find myself really not caring all that much for the theme, especially after Ashes of Outland ends up tickling that spot where I want something that's a lot more WoW-inspired... but eh. If nothing else, it's going to make writing the Lore of Hearthstone segment very easy, and I guess it's more of a game-mechanics focused expansion, then.
The big thing in this set, I feel, are dual-class cards. We've had tri-class cards before in Mean Streets of Gadgetzan, but that honestly feels like it's playing it so safe and so limited with only three cards for each tri-class set, and one of each tri-class set is just a pretty boring 'discover a card'. Here we're getting multiple dual-class combinations because, well, Scholomance's teachers are all about subverting normal conventions or something, I guess. We're getting a Magic: The Gathering style 'allied class' thing, and each class neighbours two other classes like a circle. And it's pretty neat, making the ten class combinations work like this:
- Druid/Hunter (makes sense, they both like beasts)
- Hunter/Demon Hunter (they both have 'hunter' in the name)
- Demon Hunter/Warlock (they're demon buddies)
- Warlock/Priest (they both use shadow powers to some extent)
- Priest/Paladin (they're both the holy classes)
- Paladin/Warrior (they use sword and shield...? Paladins are basically Priest-Warriors anyway)
- Warrior/Rogue (they use... knives? Eh.)
- Rogue/Mage (??? The one that feels the most 'yep we have nothing else')
- Mage/Shaman (they both use fire and ice)
- Shaman/Druid (they are both tree-huggers)
I'm all about the flavour and, of course, the flavour for the dual-class cards actually make a lot of sense. We've experimented with this a lot in single-player adventures as far as flavour goes, first with the League of Explorers members in Saviors of Uldum and then partly with the Demon Hunter initiates in the recent Ashes of Outland bit.
And let's just go straight to talking about the cards themselves, yeah? Wand Thief is a Rogue/Mage card and combines two of their gimmicks. It's a combo-activated card that allows you to Discover a mage spell. Again, I'm primarily a Wild player, and in Wild we've got a lot of more practical cheap mage-spell-generating cards, but Wand Thief is still a respectable one. Particularly in Rogue, where combo isn't too big of an ask and getting a mage spell counts to the whole burgle archetype.
We've got the legendary Druid/Hunter Shan'do Wildclaw, a choose one card that will either do the Prince Keleseth effect to all the beasts in the deck, or transform into a copy of a friendly beast. My gut feeling says that unless we get some extra help, Wildclaw is going to be a bit of a 'cool but impractical' card. Granted, Dire Frenzy and Scavenger's Ingenuity sees play in both wild and standard, and this is basically a better Keleseth because if you draw her late in the game, she's not a dud and she can just be a restricted Faceless Manipulator. Has a lot of potential, I feel.
Lightning Bloom is old, original, now-nerfed Innervate... but with Overload 2. And traditional druids won't want this at all, unless they're doing some weird Kael'thas hijinks. Shamans... they get more leeway with trying to ramp and benefiting from Overload with some of their cards, but on the other hand I'm hard pressed to try to think what shaman cards will want to ramp.
Devolving Missiles is probably my favourite dual-class card because, well, it's sort of up my alley. Devolve saw play, and this is basically Devolve mixed with Arcane Missiles. It's a lot more impractical than running Devolve (again, at least in wild) but at the same time you can totally screw up people's specific combos (like the aforementioned beast hunter, or big priest, or cube warlock) just like devolve did. And if there's a single big minion, you actually reduce it into a minion that's costed 3 lower, since the missiles hit it three times. Pretty cool card, even if it does seem a bit too
unpredictable, and both Mage and Shaman technically have access to Hex and Polymorph.
As usual, we get yet another new keyword. Spellburst is an interesting mechanic in that it's sort of waits until it gets activated -- something similar to Dragon Consort's 'when you play the next X card' effect, I suppose. And Spellburst activates exactly once whenever you casts a spell. And it's... interesting? I do like this effect on principle because it's so different, and these are basically sort of delayed battlecries. The two neutral cards don't seem to be anything impressive and feel like they're mostly just good, solid arena cards (Onyx Magescribe adds 2 spells from your class to your hand; Wretched Tutor basically casts Volcanic Potion on the baord). Both of them have pretty solid stats for their cost, very defensive ones, and I could see maybe Wild Quest Mage experimenting with the Magescribe.
The two class cards with Spellburst are... interesting? Goody Two-Shields is something everyone gets hyped about, and it's a 4/2 Divine Shield that regains Divine Shield when you cast a spell. I dunno, though. I feel like we've gotten way better divine shield cards, and it's not like this one has taunt or rush or anything. It's not terrible, but I don't find it quite as hype as people make it up to be. Diligent Notetaker is an even simpler card but potentially devastating, it just straight-up recycles the spell you just cast. Shaman is in a surprisingly terrible spot in both standard and wild (all those Galakrond decks just straight-up disappeared when the Demon Hunters arrived). I'm not sure what sort of Shaman deck we'll be getting from this expansion, but Notetaker seems to be a pretty potentially usable card.
Special kudos goes to Transfer Student, an adorable fox-kid that we get two copies of for free! Transfer Student's battlecry changes depending on the board of the game you're playing, which is awesome and honestly completely pretty random. And I've thought of fan-made cards based on this sort of effect (maybe sometime in the future I'll share some of my fan-made cards) but it tends to basically revolve around 'gain a card from the set that this board debuted in'. Transfer Student actually has completely different effects, which I suppose makes it a lot more unpredictable and unlikely to swing games all that far since it's a crap-shoot whether your board is going to assist the Transfer Student in giving you a value or tempo effect.
Rattlegore, a boss in WoW's Scholomance, is the Warrior legendary and he's... basically sort of an undying minion that keeps getting back with -1/-1 stats. Theoretically you get a total of 45/45 stats, but he's also just kind of a vanilla beat-stick and gets fucked over by Silence. Probably going to be very fun in like, arena or solo, but never going to be viable in ladder, I feel.
First Day of School isn't super-duper exciting for Wild Paladin, which have different variations of this sort of 'get cheap cards into your deck', but it's a 0-cost card that adds two random 1-cost minions. I guess it's comparable in value to something like Fire Fly? Except it's a spell that costs 0 mana so maybe it has some Spellburst combo applications? I don't see this card being exceptionally powerful, but I wouldn't be surprised if it actually is .
None of the other cards honestly look all that interesting, but a good chunk of it is due to the fact that I play wild and some of the new cards' effect just really overlap with Wild cards. Like Cult Neophyte, which is just mini-Loatheb, and probably never going to be played over Loatheb in wild. Definitely gonna see some play in Standard, though. Or Frazzled Freshman, a.k.a. better Dire Mole for Priest, because they need a new one-drop to cast buff spells on... and, again, they have better options in Wild. Troublemaker has a fun effect, but ultimately probably never going to be useful outside of arena. There are simply a lot of better removal options for Warrior. It's not terrible, though.
A cycle of cards this set is the 'studies', and druid gets Nature Studies, which... basically behaves similarly to Far Sight or Haunting Visions. Somewhat underwhelming but definitely neat for chaining Kael'thas combos.
Also, we get a bunch of random Battlegrounds changes. I literally have no interest in the game mode, but I am so happy that it's doing well and it seems like everyone is really happy about it. We're also able to purchase the pre-order bundle and the alternate hero skin is... Kel'thuzad as a mage, which is very very tempting I must say. It's a shame that I don't particularly care for the flavour of the set, but the Kel'thuzad mage skin might actually tip me over to purchasing a pre-order bundle for the first time ever.
Also, coming later this month is that finally the ugly all-gray weapon cards will get unique borders! Which, I think, is motivated by trying to get dual-class weapons make sense without just relying on the subtle line around the card text, but I know that there are a lot of times when colour-blind people find it hard to tell what class a weapon card belongs to because they don't have the unique borders like spell and minion cards. A very good cosmetic change.
And lastly, mostly because this was announced a while back... even more nerfs, because fuck Demon Hunter to the ground, I guess? It's like, what, the fourth set of Demon Hunter nerfs? Yeah, they really made this class too powerful out of the gate, huh? And honestly, maybe it's the Wild player in me talking, but I really didn't think they were that bad.
Kayn Sunfury (a card I don't think I've ever seen outside of the first week of Ashes of Outland, oh man we thought this was going to be game-breaking) gets nerfed by one health. Which seems... eh? I'm not sure if Kayn is rampaging in Standard, but it feels like an odd decision just to pick that specific stat to nerf instead of his cost or attack. Metamorphosis goes from one of DH's most powerful damage bursts to... still one of DH's most powerful damage bursts. The hero power gets nerfed from dealing 5 damage to 4 damage. Which makes it still powerful but fair. A good balance tweak, I feel. Warglaives of Azzinoth gets nerfed by cost from 5 to 6, which doesn't change a whole ton... in Standard! In Wild, this means that Demon Hunter's most powerful weapon suddenly isn't available for the Odd Demon Hunter decks, which actually does make them less able to clear huge aggro boards or swarms of little taunts. This one actually punched Demon Hunter in the teeth in Wild, which I approve.
Dragonqueen Alexstrasza also gets changed, now her dragons cost 1 instead of 0. I've always found that Dragonqueen Alexstrasza's effect is easily one of the best and most powerful effects in Hearthstone full stop, and since the stats and cost of Alexstrasza isn't the problem, it's another pretty fair nerf.
The other four cards... I never really saw them as being particularly problematic, but, again, Wild. Hell, I've never even seen half of the four cards being played outside of Arena or Solo Adventures. Rogue's Galakrond, the Nightmare gets nerfed and now the cards you sprint with it costs 1 instead of 0. I don't think I've seen too many Rogue Galakronds (it's Shaman and Warrior that I feel were the big offenders back in the day) but I know it's actually a decent tier 1 or 2 deck in Standard. A fair change, I feel. Dragoncaster and Fungal Fortunes gets their costs nerfed by 1 mana each -- Fungal Fortunes is the card that they occasionally play in Wild as a draw engine, and I don't find it too powerful... but I can see why it could wreak havoc in Wild. And lastly, Corsair Cache (also kind of a tech card in Wild) goes from giving a weapon +1/+1 to +1 Durability. Again, fair, and focuses the effect of the card more on the tutoring.
I really do wish that with all of these random nerfs they also did periodic buffs, you know? Like, browsing through my Hearthstone collection for the past two or three expansions (let alone older expansions) there are a lot of cards that simply could've used with a little bit of tweaking here and there to make them really playable.
And... that's about it from me today, Hearthstone-wise. Just felt like I needed to talk about it.
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