Hearthstone: Rise of Shadows Card Reaction/Reveal #4

 A final card dump, and... yeah, we've got upwards of 40-50 cards, I think? Not going to waste too much time with discussing them too much, because a lot of them are just unremarkable.

Blessing of the Ancients: 3-mana spell with Twinspell and the Mark of the Lotus effect. Way too expensive, particularly with Mark of the Lotus and Power of the Wild being far, far better options. Fun art, weak card.

Arcane Fletcher: 4-mana 3/3 that draws a spell from your deck whenever you play a 1-cost minion. Would lead to an insanely awkward deck that's a bizarre mixture of one-drops and spells. Very impractical, won't see play.

Ursatron: 3-mana 3/3 mech with the deathrattle of drawing a mech. Very solid card for Mech decks, definitely will see some experimentation in Wild Mech Hunters which would love the cost and effect. Hell, Wild Mech Hunters are running Jeeves to draw cards! But people are wrapped up in that silly Oblivitron nonsense.

Hunting Party: 5-mana, copy all beasts in your hand? Won't see play, honestly. It's too expensive, it doesn't come with a body (like Voone!) and there are better resource-generating cards.

Rapid Fire: 1-mana Twinspell that deals 1 damage. Might see play with Vereesa, I guess, but far too impractical and weak for that, I think. Not horrible, though.

Magic Dart Frog: Great artwork on this one! Also a pretty great effect. Magic Dart Frog is essentially a better Flamewaker, isn't it? 2-mana 1/3 is a lot less durable, but far cheaper and could be chained with a lot of the new cheap spells Mage got in this expansion. Weaker than Flamewaker, I guess, thanks to not having the ability to go face. Definitely a fun card, if nothing else, and I do think it's a minion that's not to be underestimated.

Kirin Tor Tricaster: An interesting card, a 4-mana 3/3 with Spell Damage +3... but your spells cost 1 more. I guess you can off-set this with Sorcerer's Apprentices and whatnot, which is a fair point. I don't want to write this card off since Spell Damage +3 is pretty significant, but making your spells cost more seems like too steep a downside, and if you're relying that much to do a two-card, six-mana combo to get spell damage +3, why not just run actually good spell damage minions?

Mysterious Blade: Shit, it's actually a good weapon -- a 2-mana 2/2 that becomes a 3/2 as a battlecry if you control a Secret? It's not too huge of an ask, particularly since Secret Paladin has gotten a fair amount of support. A great weapon, honestly, probably will pick up the void left by Unidentified Hammer as Paladin's early-game weapon.

Hench-Clan Shadequill: 4-mana 4/7 that has the Zombie Chow deathrattle of restoring health to the enemy. It's... it's a neat card, for sure, and, yeah, you can probably talk about Silence Priest (something that the expansion stream seem to be highlighting), but I dunno. Corrupted Healbot is arguably a lot more powerful and that didn't see play. Of course we do have a lot more new silence toys, but I don't think Shadequill is that powerful. Think it's more for an Inner Fire style priest, I guess.

Unsleeping Soul: A pretty powerful silencing effect, basically Purify and duplicating the silenced minion. It's pretty powerful for what it does, since you get an additional silenced body in addition to the highly-statted mininon you remove the disadvantage from. Maybe in the new value-oriented Standard, this deck could see some play? My gut's saying this is a bit too expensive. S'not terrible, I guess, but I'm not convinced silence priest will be a thing at all in this expansion.

Convincing Infiltrator: HAHAHA look at that Faceless One with a random wooden mask! "Convincing" for sure! What a lark! It's actually a pretty powerful effect, too, a 5-mana 2/6 Taunt with the deathrattle of blowing up a random enemy minion. This dude is a smaller Obsidian Statue, sans lifesteal, but I definitely can see him being played. The stats are definitely a bit on the low side, but I can see this being used in a more controlling Priest that tries to get to an endgame.

Waggle Pick: Togwaggle's pick is... an interesting weapon. A 4-mana 4/2 with a Deathrattle that randomly Shadowsteps a minion? It's... it's admittedly a bit of a high cost, and you really have to make this work with a combo. Nothing particularly interesting comes to mind at the moment -- I guess you can save the charge to "rescue" big value minions like Tak? Or recycle huge battlecry cards like Reno or Tess? I dunno. Seems strong, but needs a proper deck to really work in.

Daring Escape: God, Quest Rogue flashbacks! For 1 mana, you return all of your friendly minions back to your hand. We're really going all in with this bouncing mechanic, huh? Man, I can totally see this being used in those mill decks over in Wild with Coldlight Oracles and shit. It's cheap, and it's pretty powerful. We've seen a bunch of pretty powerful battlecry cards in Rogue over the years, and even if Waggle Pick and Daring Escape might not be super-powerful in the current expansion, I'm sure they'll find a way to be great in future ones.

Mutate: Shamans now! Mutate is... a 0-mana evolve. Won't see play, honestly -- the effect's neat, the cheap cost is neat, but Unstable Evolution (and both Evolve and Thrall Deathseer in Wild) have Mutate completely beat out. It's interesting to add this to the pool of Shaman spells that are randomly generated, but it's not one you'll want in your deck.

Witch's Brew: 2-mana restore 4 health, and it has... Echo without actually saying Echo? What the shit? Card's all right. Far too outclassed by Healing Rain, though.

Scargill: Murloc stuff! Scargil is the legendary, and... he's an interesting one for sure, a 4-mana 4/4 that makes all your Murlocs cost 1. Which could be pretty insane in Wild. This is certainly a far, far better legendary murloc than the Shaman Quest (sacrificing turn 1 in a swarm deck is bad), and particularly in Wild where we have more powerful murlocs -- most notably Old Murk-Eye. I'm not 100% sure a traditional swarming zoo Murloc deck would really work, but this set does add a lot of wacky, fun tools for it. Definitely will try it out.

Underbelly Angler: 2-mana 2/3 that adds a random Murloc to your hand whenever you play a Murloc... which is pretty powerful, I think, if you're playing the Murloc swarm style deck. It doesn't trigger off of summoning, but I guess it'd be a bit too powerful if that's the case. Reloading your hand with resources is definitely something that Murloc swarm decks would love to do, and Underbelly Angler doesn't have a tempo loss like other previous versions of this (Primalfin Lookout, Slitfin Spiritwalker) does. Pretty neat!

Soul of the Murloc: It's 2-mana Soul of the Forest, but with 1/1 Murloc tokens! Seems pretty good. It doesn't trigger things like Underbelly Angler, but it does keep the swarm (school?) of Murlocs on the board even after a board clear, and we've got a bunch of cards like Toxfin that care about having Murlocs on-the-field. I don't see the deck working out in Standard, I don't think, but in Wild, with Everyfin is Awesome? Yeah, I can definitely see that sort of deck working out for sure.

Darkest Hour: Warlock time, and this is a 6-mana spell that destroy all of your minions, then summons minions from your deck to replace them. Utterly impractical, and, yeah, the pipe dream of killing a board of Imps to summon Deathwings, Yseras, Lord Jaraxxus and all sorts of other huge things is neat, but the deck that runs both tiny things and huge things simultaneously probably won't work out.

Jumbo Imp: We've been having a fair amount of Imp-summoning synergies, and here's the payoff -- Jumbo Imp is basically a giant (vanilla 8/8) that reduces its cost from 10 whenever a demon dies while this is in your hand. So like Corridor Creeper, only bigger and far more specific at what dies. I do like that it doesn't just work with Imps, though, making deck-building a bit more flexible. Not sure if it'll work out as the huge final bomb of an Imp-centric deck, though I guess the potential Imp deck is more of trying to buff your board with Grim Rallies and the like moreso than waiting for Jumbo Imp to kill your enemy? And Jumbo Imp's just a bonus? Seems all right.

Impferno: Pretty powerful spell! For 3 mana, you deal 1 damage to all enemy minions, while giving your own demons +1 attack. It's a weird effect, but it is a board buff, bundled together with an AoE. The combo is apparently with the new neutral card Mad Summoner, and... yeah, that'd be a powerful play. I'm not sure if Imp decks would work, but while it's certainly not Defile, Impferno's a pretty powerful card regardless.

Vicious Scraphound: 2-mana 2/2 Mech that gives you armour equal to the damage it deals. Fun little card, fun artwork, and pretty great with magnetize. There's only so many mechs you can put into a Warrior deck, though I honestly think that Vicious Scraphound would see far more play from discovery effects more than anything. It's definitely pretty neat.

Sweeping Strikes: For 2 mana, you give a minion the "cleave" effect that Foe Reaper and Magnataur Alpha has. Neat to see the effect crop up again, but Warriors honestly have a lot of better ways to deal with a board instead of relying on a minion damaging three things at once.

Mad Summoner: Neutral cards now, and we'll start with the ones that I think are interesting enoughbefore moving on to the glut of more boring ones. Mad Summoner is a 6-mana 4/4 that fills everyone's board with 1/1 imps, which is, of course, beneficial in combination with specifically Impferno. I'm not 100% convinced Imp Warlock will be a thing, but if it does, the Mad Summoner/Impferno combo would certainly be a pretty powerful tool in their arsenal.

Sunreaver Spy: Probably a card that helps to make the Secret Paladin archetype work, a 2-mana 2/3 that becomes a 3/4 if you control a Secret. The only class that can play Sunreaver Spy on turn 2 is, of course, Paladin, and while the stat increase isn't as powerful as Secretkeeper, it's still a pretty neat little tempo move. Too weak for Wild, for sure, but I do think this dude can see some usage in Standard if Secret Paladin works out.

Dalaran Librarian: 2-mana 2/3, vanilla stats, that silences adjacent minions. Another potential Silence Priest enabler, and it's definitely nice to have a lot of options -- one of the bigger problems of old Silence Priest is that they basically had Purify and Silence, and that's about it. It's neat in exactly that deck, and maybe on very rare occasions against Freeze Mage... but otherwise, won't see play. Nice flavour, though.

Arcane Watcher: An interesting card for the silence priest archetype as well. A 3-mana 5/6 is pretty powerful, far better than the Shadequill, I'd say, but it can't attack... unless you have spell damage. So you can either purify it or just throw down a Thalnos or something. Pretty interesting twist on the 'can't attack' style, and I think it might be pretty neat in those silence priest decks.

Potion Vendor: 1-mana 1/1 with Fungal Enchanter's battlecry. Will definitely see play in Heal Druid if that becomes a thing. Simple but neat. I like it.

Toxfin: 1-mana 1/2 Murloc that gives a friendly Murloc poisonous. Also simple, and pretty useful as essentially removal in any zoo Murloc decks. More of a tech card than anything, but I like this one.

Safeguard: Oh, the pun. Safeguard is this year's "powerful, sticky taunt" minion comparable somewhat to Rotten Applebaum, a 6-mana 4/5 that births a 0/5. And I think both are Mechs, so there's definitely some synergy there. I still think that Sludge Belcher's more powerful in Wild, and unless there's specific token or mech synergy, Applebaum still beats Safeguard out, but definitely one of the better -- and funnier -- neutrals.

Mana Reservoir: 2-mana 0/6 with Spell Damage +1. Also an Elemental. Also won't see play, because we had a card that's more or less the same in Gadgetzan's Street Vendor. There are better cards to give you spell damage, better cards for elemental synergies and better cards for Inner Fire combos.

Faceless Rager: Holy shit, an actually good Rager card? He's a 3-mana 5/1 as usual, but it copies a friendly minion's health! Sure, it's nowhere as powerful as Faceless Shambler, but a 3-mana 5-attack minion that can potentially get a pretty high health stat if you play him off-curve? It's not like the new Corridor Creeper or anything, but it's actually a card that could see some actual play, and an actually good arena card.

Potral Keeper & Portal Overfiend: Reviewing these two together because they have the exact same effect -- shuffling 3 portals into your deck, each of which summons a 2/2 demon with rush when you draw them. Both are also demons and have amazing art, the difference is the numbers -- Keeper is a 4-mana 5/2 while Overfiend is a 6-mana 5/6. There are some obvious synergies with things like Elekk, and being demon synergies (and demons that are likely to die when you summon them, too) also makes it a nice fit for the theoretical Imp/swarm Warlock decks. You can maybe have fun with them with things like Plot Twist? Overall, while they might look like a gimmick, I actually wouldn't discount them being ultimately playable. Either way they make for good arena cards.

Spellbook Binder: Also another "good card, but simply outclassed", this is a 2-mana 3/2 that draws a card if you have a minion with Spell Damage. The ask isn't that hard, and the drawing effect is great, but why would you ever run this over Loot Hoarder or Novice Engineer?

Violet Warden: Speaking of Spell Damage cards, this one is 4/7 Taunt and Spell Damage +1. Interesting, but there are a lot of better Spell Damage minions out there. You always want cheaper ones in any case.

Sunreaver Warmage: 5-mana 4/4 that deals 4 damage if you're holding an expensive spell. Like Blackwing Corrupter, but with spells costing 5 or more... it's a neat, solid card, but probably one that's not powerful enough to be competitive in constructed.

Eccentric Scribe: 6-mana 6/4 that dies and turns into four 1/1 tokens. It's like a smaller, shittier Violet Worm, and only relevant when combined with all of those cards that summon 6-cost minions. It's not horrible when you get an Eccentric Scribe, but it's definitely not top of the list of cards you want.

Proud Defender: It's exactly the same as a Stegodon (4-mana 2/6 Taunt) that sometimes becomes a 4/6 Taunt if you have no other minions. It's the same condition as Lone Champion, but Lone Champion's effect of Taunt + Divine Shield is far better than a mere stat boost that honestly isn't anything too impressive. Neat in arena.

Magic Carpet: The flavour of a 3-mana 1/6 that grants small minions +1 Attack and Rush is hilariously fun. Huge fun of the design, and it's not super bad, because we've seen cards like Hobgoblin and Steward of Darkness see play before. I'm just not convinced that a 1-cost-centric deck will be good at all.

Violet Spellsword: 4-mana 1/6 that gains attack as a battlecry based on the spells you're holding. I'm pretty sure we saw a card with an effect like this in Boomsday, Brainstormer or something, and that never saw play. Neither will this.

Recurring Villain: The flavour is fun, this sinister Sherlock Holmes villain that keeps coming back if his scheme is fulfilled -- in this case, if it dies with 4 attack or more. You could do it with something as simple as Dire Wolf Alpha or more elaborate buffs... it's just that it's ultimately just a below-average vanilla body that comes back. Fun flavour, probably pretty weak.

Arcane Servant: Hey, it's a vanilla River Crocolisk, but an Elemental! Hello, card no one will play!

Burly Shovelfist: Hey, it's Rabid Worgen, but three times bigger! Also won't see play. Go for Amani War Bear instead for a big rusher.

Hench-Clan Sneak: Hey, it's Jungle Panther, but a 3/3 instead of a 4/2, which makes this strictly worse than Jungle Panther!

Underbelly Ooze: Hey, it's Grim Patron, but bigger, and far more expensive. (3/5 for 7 mana?) The way it's worded is that it'll summon a copy of its damaged self so it's far weaker than Patron. Weak card.

Dalaran Crusader: Hey, it's Silvermoon Champion, but a 5/4 instead of a 3/3, and 5 mana instead of 3! It's decent, but only relevant in Arena or when you get it through discover or evolve effects.

Heroic Innkeeper: Hey, it's a more expensive Frostwolf Warlord that racks up more buffs based on the minions you control! Also looks like Jaina for some reason. Too expensive.

Soldier of Fortune: 4-mana 5/6 that gives your opponent a coin whenever it attacks! Comparable to Hungry Dragon, but with the potential to really fuck you up since it can give Coin basically indefinitely. There are a lot of better minions to play in Silence Priest, and even Hungry Dragon saw no play.

Flight Master: A 3-mana 3/4 that summons a 2/2 Gryphon for both players, which is cute but why would you put this in a constructed deck?

Tunnel Blaster: 7-mana 3/7 Taunt that... Hellfires the board when it dies? I dunno. I can mostly just shrug. S'neat in arena sometimes maybe, but there are better taunts.

Whirlwind Tempest: 8-mana 6/6 that turns all minions with Windfury into Mega-Windfury. Now we've got an interseting card. Fun artwork, too! By and by I don't see this hugely under-statted card being played a whole ton, but there's going to be some crazy-ass deck that will try and cheat Whirlwind Tempest out to get some hilarious kills with a buffed-up Walking Fountain or Corpsetaker or something. This is the sort of weird-ass effects that I like filler cards to have, for sure.

Azerite Elemental: Another wacky elemental, Azerite dude here is 5-mana 2/7 that gains Spell Damage +2 at the start of every turn. Yeah, there are a bunch of Spell Damage synergies in the neutral batch, but Azerite Elemental is a card that I think would be played without any of those, and you're just trying to maximize its power and buffing it to power up your Kill Commands, Lightning Bolts or whatever cheap spells. 2/7 is a respectably bulky body, but it also needs at least a turn to 'charge' its effect before it snowballs. Probably a lot more impractical than just cheating out Malygos, but it's, again, a fun weird filler card.

Hearthstone: Rise of Shadows Card Reaction/Review #3

 Holy shit there's a lot of new cards. And the expansion's coming out in like less than a week, and we're getting one of the new legendaries to dick around with for a couple of days! Joy! Anyway, here's a bunch of the cards that were released until yesterday -- haven't checked up on the super-newest cards just yet. Last time I arranged things on whether I have a lot to talk about or not... and that wasn't particularly well done. This time it's arranged by class once more.

Acornbearer (or "Fluffy Squirrel Whisperer"): Very powerful one-drop, a 2/1 that adds two 1/1 beast tokens to your hand. Not much to say, it's a more fragile and slightly slower Fire Fly that adds more bodies. Great in Token Druid for sure, and honestly, definitely a solid 1-drop all around. The Deathrattle definitely makes this a bit less powerful than initially seems, though.

Dreamway Guardians: "Heal Druid" is trying to be a thing, and this is a 2-mana spell that summons two 1/2's with Lifesteal. The token-generating part of this card is certainly great, since you're basically doing a Firefly-turn-two turn, but with lifesteal. I'm still not convinced that the deck itself will be particularly powerful, sine it might genuinely be hard to get damaged and restore that health, but between the Stag, Lifeweaver and Lucentbark, there definitely are the roots for a deck. It's certainly far, far more promising than poor old Gonk.

Lifeweaver: Crystal Stag is a card I deemed to be pretty powerful, but sometimes might just be too impractical to get its effects off. Lifeweaver is the other way around, though -- a 3-mana 2/5 is probably just powerful to be run on its own (Druid of the Flame surely did) but the additional effect of generating specifically druid spells whenever you restore health? It's not just face-health either, it could be any health. Can definitely see this just being a simple turn 3 drop that sometimes snowballs and generates resources, and in Wild I can definitely see this deck working out with the likes of Fungal Enchanter,

Lucentbark: The legendary that is supposed to define the heal archetype, Lucentbark is... not very impressive on purpose. 8-mana 4/8, even with Taunt, is very overpriced. Lucentbark's effect is similar to that of Sherazin from Un'Goro, which is going dormant, and restoring 5 health is definitely a relatively simpler thing to do than playing 4 cards in a turn. Lucentbark being a big-ass body with taunt is also a huge incentive to bring him back as compared to Sherazin's 5/3 body. The real problem, I think, is whether there are enough cards at all to pull this off reliably. I'm just guessing that we need a couple more solid healing cards, although maybe Druids will just really look into the lifesteal pool and go from there? Honestly, while it's probably not going to be a tier-1 deck, I can definitely see this archetype working out. If not in this expansion, maybe in the future.

Crystalsong Portal: Druid spell, costing 2 mana. You discover a druid minion, and if your hand has no minions, you get to keep all 3. Some druid minions are good, some are okay, some are crap... comparable to Omega Assembly, except Omega Assembly's ask -- reaching turn ten -- is far, far easier than running a Spell Druid deck. Never say never, since Spell Hunter did end up eventually working, but unless we get some powerful support, definitely not going to be a particularly powerful card.

Nine Lives: A 3-mana spell that... hoo boy, what an interesting effect! You discover a friendly deathrattle minion that has specifically died this game, add it to your hand, but also trigger the deathrattle immediately. A very powerful late-game card, particularly if you play it with some of the more powerful Deathrattles -- Spider Bomb, Sylvanas, Cairne... hell, the fact that this is a Discover effect means you can straight-up choose! People are pointing at Oblivitron and while it certainly supports that deck, I still don't think the currently revealed cards are enough for Oblivitron to actually be a proper deck. Nine Lives itself will definitely see play in some degree, though. I guarantee it.

Shimmerfly: Simple card that combines Webspinner and Babbling Book, except for Hunters, a 1-mana 1/1 that deathrattles into a hunter spell into your hand. Sounds neat, but probably a bit too weak for its own good. Deathrattle decks will want genuinely powerful deathrattles to not dilute their Nine Lives, whereas spell-centric decks will want actual spells. Not a bad card, though.

Conjurer's Calling: A card I actually like a lot -- a 3 mana Twinspell card that destroys a minion, and then summons 2 minions of the same cost to replace it. Obviously you want to do this with large minions, preferably those of the 6-10 mana range. 3 mana isn't too expensive to run in, say, a Cabal Crystalrunner into a trade, and then swap out your damaged minion for two fresh 6-drops. Obvious synergy with Khadgar and whatnot... it's comparable to Evolve, I guess, where you have to set up a board so that you want to get the maximum value from the spell, but instead of getting value through upgrading cost, you just go with quantity. Particularly powerful in Arena, I would believe.


Desperate Measures: A Twinspell 1-mana spell that casts a random paladin secret? I'm seeing a lot of Paladin secret synergy, but this one just looks cute but impractical. It's fun, maybe, to baffle your opponent with "ooh, what secret do I have, I don't even know what I get", but I don't think it's worth it to run this instead of actual Secrets you want.

Call to Adventure: An interesting Paladin spell! A 3-mana card that tutors out the lowest cost minion in your deck, similar to Piper, but also hand-buffs it for +2/+2. Is that powerful enough? Standard Paladin might just run this for the card draw, since they are losing Divine Favor, but I dunno. 3 mana is pretty expensive for bundling together card draw and hand-buff... and that's not quite enough, I think. Sure, Immortal Prelate combo and whatnot, but I dunno. Seems to be a bit too impractical for my liking.

Vendetta: We're throwing in a lot of support for Burgle Rogue, huh? Vendetta is a 4-mana deal 4 spell that costs 0 if you're holding a non-Rogue card. It's an effect that has cropped up every now and then in Rogue, but a lot of previous Burgle Rogue synergy cards are "if you play" instead of "if you're holding", which makes Vendetta interesting. Not sure if it'll see that much play -- after all, it could go the way of Wing Blast. Neat design, though.

Underbelly Fence: Another Rogue card that works with the "if you're holding a Burgled card" mechanic, Underbelly Fence seems to be a far more practical card than Vendetta, I think. A 2-mana 2/3 that becomes a 3/4 with Rush when you're holding a card from another class? While we do have Swashburglar to burgle cards on turn 1 in Wild, it remains to be seen if we're going to see a 1-mana burgle card be printed in Standard. Again, I'm not 100% sure that burgle rogue is going to be super-powerful, but if nothing else, giving a inherently fun, wacky deck actually powerful tools is definitely great in my books.

Tak Nozwhisker: Once more, AmazingLP knocks it out of the park with an amazing card reveal. Tak Nozwhisker is a 7-mana 6/6 that adds a copy of whatever cards you shuffle into your deck to your hand. Lab Recruiter is great to play with Tak, since you can suddenly get three copies of whatever great minion you're playing. Togwaggle's Scheme is another obvious one, shuffling a lot of a minion you want into your deck and hand, suddenly doubling things. The reveal video suggests the insanely fun way of comboing Tak with Academic Espionage, and with the addition of Preparation, you can theoretically play Tak, Preperation and Espionage at turn 10 and can both know what cards you shuffled into your deck and cast one of those. Pretty fun card! Probably one that Wild Mill Rogue decks would want -- and that honestly seems pretty scary in conjunction with the likes of Togwaggle's Scheme.

Plot Twist: A 2-mana spell that shuffles your hand and re-draws. It's a powerful effect in many other card games and I've seen this be debated back and forth. We've got a card with effect similar to this back during the Caverns of Time event in Arena, but that was an effect attached to a decently-statted minion. Plot Twist is a 2-mana spell... and while I can definitely see some combos with Augmented Elekk or Soularium, I still think it's honestly a bit too clunky... particularly since Warlock can already draw cards. It's not inherently bad, though, and we'll see if there are enough payoff cards that like being shuffled or drawn multiple times.

Aranasi Broodmother: Like Aranasi Broodmother! We've had "cast when drawn" effects seen very sparingly in the past. Flame Leviathan, Sea Reaver, the various 'shuffle into deck' spells... but none that are always beneficial, while the minion stays in your hand. Broodmother is a 6-mana 4/6 Taunt, which is pretty shitty, but heals your hero by 4 when drawn. And... and maybe you just keep her in hand throughout the entire game and only cast her when you really have nothing better to do with your mana. She's also a Demon, so there's that going on for her. Comparable to Rotten Applebaum, but the effect casts faster and she's slightly more expensive. Not very impressive, but kinda solid, I think.

Dimensional Ripper: 10 mana spell that summons 2 copies of a minion in your deck? It's a Warrior spell, thank god, and not one for Priests (Wild Big Priest doesn't really need much more help) and... and it's definitely a better version of the Boomship, I'll tell you that much. Recruit Warrior decks have basically been beaten down by more powerful decks, and 10-mana is... is a lot to ask from a card since it eats up your entire turn. And the deck this would fit in suffers from the same problem that Big Priest suffers from. What if you draw the minions? What minions are good enough? The card is all right, but I'm not sure about the deck this would theoretically go into.

The Boom Reaver: The Boom Reaver is another "use a copy of a minion in your deck", and it's really important that these effects are not Recruit. You're not spending a card from your deck. The Boom Reaver is a 10-mana 7/9 mech, but also comes with the battlecry of summoning a copy of a random minion in your deck... with Rush! One thing that's been missing is the lack of actual late-game bombs in a Warrior mech decks, with their game plan basically just outlasting the enemy with the Dr. Boom Mad Genius hero card, but Boom Reaver allows them to generate a whole ton of tempo in the late game. Boom Reaver summoning the likes of Ysera or Lich King or Deathwing from your deck is definitely an amazing power play... particularly with Rush! but at the same time, having Boom Reaver actually miss, and either pull out a weak minion (presumably you just don't run weak minions in a Boom Reaver/Dimensional Ripper deck) or just draw Boom Reaver last, and then he's just an expensive 7/9. Either way, though, definitely a fun-looking card for sure! I like this one.



Hench-Clan Hag: Very interesting card, Hench-Clan Hag is a 4-mana 3/3 that summons two 1/1 Amalgams that are like Nightmare Amalgams -- they're all types. Nightmare Amalgam's used as a curve rounder in some Murloc and Dragon decks, and I can maybe see Hag be played in swarm-style Murloc decks? Maaaaybe as a tech card in Wild Even Shaman with Totem synergies? It's solid in arena, but I don't think any Mech, Beast or Dragon deck really cares about having two 1/1 tokens all that much.

Archmage Vargoth: The card we'll be getting as the preview card for this expansion, Vargoth, is... a potentially far more dangerous card than Marin from days past. A 4-mana 2/6 isn't the best statline, but far from being fragile either. And at the end of your turn, you cast a spell you've cast earlier in the same turn, meaning you can basically double up on some really powerful spell. Some highlights would be Time Warp, Academic Espionage, Diamond Spellstone, Deadly Shot, Flamestrike, Blizzard, Consecration, Mind Blast... essentially any spell card that targets your opponent's side of the board specifically or just summons things on your side is going to be amazing. It's not going to be practical, of course, but I can definitely see Vargoth being a wacky one-off legendary here and there.

Big Bad Archmage: A 10-mana 6/6 that summons a random 6-cost minion at the end of your turn? This is better, bigger Hogger! Except it's 10-mana 6/6, so actually playing this card would be painful. Sure, you get a random 6-cost minion to go with the Big Bad Archmage, which tends to be great (particularly in wild), something I've covered when I talked about Power of Creation... but sometimes you do whiff. Still, at first glance, Big Bad Archmage is definitely a powerful card. A quick consideration might be the hypothetical 'cheat out minions from your deck' Warrior archetype that's been building up, but honestly, I actually do think that Big Bad Archmage might just be a neat little value card. After all, 10 mana to summon a 6/6 that might potentially summon a Cairne Bloodhoof? Or a Sylvanas, or a Thaurissan, or a Hungry Ettin, or a Sunwalker? Not bad if you get it for free, but never a card you'll voluntarily put into your deck.


Archivist Elysiana: Lots of neutral legendaries get revealed in the past day, and they're a whole lot more interesting than poor old Chef Nomi. Elysiana is an 8-mana 7/7 that basically lets you discover cards 5 times, then replace your decks with 2 copies of each. It's... it's an interesting card, one that turns your deck into zero and allows you to reset it with a 10-deck card which you know exactly what's in it. It also allows you to recover from fatigue, albeit for 10 turns. And... I don't think it's good. "Discover 5 cards" is way to vague, but the effect is certainly interesting, if nothing else.

Exotic Mountseller: A 7-mana 5/8 with the very specific effect of summoning a 3-cost beast whenever you cast a spell? What a bizarrely specific reward for casting spells. A 5/8 for 7 mana is a bit too expensive, and on an average, you get maybe a 3/3 Beast every time you cast a spell. Sometimes luck runs out and you get Silverback Patriarch, Pantry Spider or Ironbeak Owl; while sometimes you luck out and get King Mukla, Vicious Fledgling or Stoneskin Basilisk. The current pool of 3-mana beasts in both Standard and Wild are generally decent enough that there aren't a lot of actual straight-up failures, but I dunno what deck really wants this highly specific effect.


Barista Lynchen: A very interesting neutral legendary, this barista doesn't serve you a cappuccino, but rather is a 5-mana 4/5 that adds a copy of each of your other battlecry minions to your hand. A far more efficient -- if more expensive -- version of Zola that only works with battlecry minions, and can do multiples! It's like Grumble, but without bouncing the minions and adding copies instead. I can definitely see her seeing a lot of mileage in wild, particularly Reno decks. Particularly Reno Warlock! It just feels pretty solid all around. Definitely going to see a lot of usage in Shudderwock decks, too. Definitely a pretty powerful effect for sure. I like her!

Overall, a lot more cards with genuinely interesting and refreshing effects this time around. Keep them coming, Blizzard!