Hearthstone: Un'Goro Reveals, the Final Stream: Class Cards

 Class cards now! We'll go in order. Brief talk about elementals and whatnot below, too.

EDIT: Because I'm not making an additional post for it, enjoy the final part of E. Malone and Professor Doyle's journey. The video gave us a downer ending with a meteor coming down to murder them, but the journals actually expanded a lot on their journey to befriend the Tol'vir and Saurok, activate the Way Gate, hang out with Megafin and Umbra's tribe, and going through the Way Gate back into the present day. Yay!


Jungle Giants/Barnabus the Stomper
The giant who's carrying a community of Murlocs and Tortollans on his back, Barbabus is the Quest reward for Druids. The Druids' Quest is actually relatively simple, especially for Druids -- summon five minions with five or more attack, which honestly isn't that hard to do. Yes, Ragnaros and Sylvannas leaving the metagame does make Druids lose two of the best minions with more than 5 attack, but it's summon. So yes, it's a Quest that works well with the Jade Golems, though Barbabus himself doesn't really work with the Jade Golem game plan. We do get a couple of great minions that work with the Jungle Giants Quest -- Tortollan Forager, Giant Anaconda, Shellshifter -- and reducing every single minion in your deck to zero? Jeez, that's an even more powerful battlecry than Aviana or Astral Communion! And Druids already have a fair amount of powerful minions at their disposal, too. Cenarius, Kun the Forgotten King, Aya Blackpaw, Ancient of War, Tyrantus... jeez, this quest is just pretty damn good, and the fact that it can synergize very well with Jade makes me actually more than a little scared with how powerful Druid might get in the future. It's easily one of the more flexible and powerful quests with a pretty insane reward. Because, shit, free gigantic minions. Yes, the quest is probably going to take slightly longer to play, but Adapt and new cards like Shellshifter really make completing the quest relatively easier than you'd think. And all you need is five, jeez.

Tyrantus
Tyrantus is... much maligned by the community when he came out, for relatively good reason. He's the Druid Legendary, and all he does is a giant beatstick. Tyrantus is a 10-mana 12/12 (Deathwing's stats) with the Fairy Dragon's spellproof ability, and while he's honestly not horrible... what are you going to do with it? Like, there's no real situation where Tyrantus is better than the Jade Golems, and while spellproof is a decent ability to have, preventing Tyrantus from being Hex'd, unlike Soggoth the Slitherer (a card I love, but doesn't see a ton of play) he doesn't even have the Taunt to make him an immediate threat for your enemy. Plus the addition of a lot of Taunts and Poisonous minions in this set, and Tyrantus gets less and less appealing. Like, even when Barnabus has been played, or if you need a big minion to help fill out the quest, or even a big beast, there's always a better minion to play with. Again, he's not horrible, but when is Tyrantus better to play than, say, other big Druid legendaries like Cenarius or Kun? He's a giant beatstick, that's for sure, but cards like Y'Shaarj, both Deathwings or C'Thun are also giant beatsticks that have additional effects.

Shellshifter
Shellshifter is another 'Druid of the X' style cards, where he's a 4-mana that either becomes a 5/3 Stealth or 3/5 Taunt. So either a Sen'jin Shieldmasta, or a slightly more powerful Jungle Panther. What's more important is that Druids get to play a 5-attack card as early as turn four, easily fulfilling a part of the quest's requirements. Shellshifter is a better Druid of the Flame, simply because it's not just 5/3 or 3/5, but actually gets keywords on top of it that makes it a lot better than just a vanilla minion with stats swapped around.

Giant Anaconda
Snakes! The Anaconda is a 7-mana 5/3 Beast, that as a Deathrattle summons another 5-attack-or-more minion from your hand. So if your Quest isn't complete by turn seven, the Giant Anaconda makes sure to tick two of the five minions you need to summon. Yes, a 5/3 is shit to summon on turn 7, but the Anaconda is just there to die. It's a bit of an expensive tempo loss, but the chance of summoning huge Y'Shaarj's or Soggoths or Tyrantuses from your hand is just amazing. Personally I'm not 100% sure if this snake is actually super good, since some of the >5 attack cards like Ancient of War do need battlecries to go off, but still.

Earthen Scales
A spell that, for one mana, buffs a minion for +1/+1. Pretty crap, right? Well, not when your hero gains armour equal to the minion's attack. It's a very unconventional way to do both the buffing effect that Druids tend to do while still also gaining armour. It's a pretty interesting spell that, if played on the correct minion like an offensive Shellshifter can give you 6 armor for 1 mana, but when played on things like a Jade Golem, or a C'Thun, it's easily 10+ armour for one mana, which is possibly one of the stronger heal/armour up effects in the game.

Elder Longneck
Well, at least not all the Druid cards are good. Elder Longneck is a 3-mana 5/1 Beast, which is Magma Rager stats. And it adapts if you're holding a minion with >5 attack... but it's still a 5/1 itself. Sure, you can give him +3 Health, making him a 3-mana 5/4, and I suppose Divine Shield isn't bad either, but those are just about the only good adaptation on it. Stealth makes it into a Shadow Rager, I suppose, but practically everything else causes him to die to pings. But, still, it's a 3-mana minion that helps to complete your quest, meaning that if nothing else, even if your Adaptations whizz out he's still a card that helps you complete your quest at an earlier turn. I sound negative, but honestly the Elder Longneck is still a pretty powerful card -- if not individually then in how it helps to round up your quest. Jeez, Druids are getting really good cards this expansion, aren't they, when the worst of their cards is still pretty decent?

Tortollan Forager
One of the better cards that's definitely going into your Quest Druid decks is Tortollan Forager, who is a 2-mana 2/2 that discovers a minion with more than 5 attack. Generally, minions with more than 5 attack are good! And Druid's actually got a decent selection of minions with huge attacks. Cenarius, Ancient of War, Dark Arakkoa, Kun, Verdant Longneck... hell, Ancient of Lore, Tyrantus, Menagerie Warden and Ironbark Protector honestly aren't bad discoveries too. I guess Elder Longneck is the one poop discovery in all of this, but still, discover means that you get to choose. And that's not counting all the great neutral huge-attack minions either. It's definitely a card that you'll see a lot in Quest Druid decks, that's for sure.

Dinomancy
Do you want to deal 2 damage to the face and buff your minion at the same time? Look no further than Dinomancy, which seems to be one of the better and more fun Hunter cards, and one that actually looks like it's going to be a pretty decent card. Dinomancy, for 2 mana, transforms your hero power into 'buff a Beast for +2/+2'. Which is just insane! In addition to potentially still dealing 2 damage to your enemy's face, the damage stacks as permanent buffs for your minions if your enemy has no way to remove them. It's actually a decent card to play in any Beast deck, and it'll actually help your fragile 1-mana minions in a Quest Hunter deck survive. Yes, you do lose the tempo for the 2 mana you use to play the spell, but shit, the payoff, while slow, actually feels absolutely amazing. I'm pretty optimistic about this card -- seems pretty fucking powerful.

Stampede
Lock and Load, but with Beasts! Rexxar's old Ultimate skill from Warcraft III finally makes it into Hearthstone, and it looks amazing! One of Lock and Load's weakness is that sometimes you get a lot of minions from the effect and you don't get to abuse Lock and Load's "add a card to your hand" effect. Stampede, meanwhile, is a one-mana spell, and for each beast you cast, you get a beast added to your hand. So all Stampede needs is the card itself and a single preferrably cheap Beast. And while there are a lot of bad Beasts out there (you don't want to get an Ultrasaur from this, for example), there's a lot of good Beasts, and most of all, you can potentially just spend all your mana on summoning Beasts, which tend to be good. Also, you know what's awesome to Stampede with? Carnassa's Brood. Complete the quest, and just summon Carnassa's Brood after Carnassa's Brood with Stampede active, and you'll get so many cards in your hands that a Gadgetzan-Jade-Druid will blush.

Jeweled Macaw
It's a bird! It's a better Webspinner, a 1-mana 1/1 that adds a Beast to your hand as a Battlecry. And therein lies the strength of the Macaw. Making it have a Battlecry means that it's an inherently better card than Webspinner (which itself is already good!) by making it a better topdeck, and it's actually a pretty ideal card to play alongside Stampede. Definitely a great, if simple, card. Babbling Book can attest to the strength of 1/1 minions that adds random things to your hand, and Jeweled Macaw also works well with both The Swamp Queen and general beast synergies.

Grievous Bite
A mini Explosive Shot, it's a 2-mana spell that deals 2 damage to a minion and 1 mana to those next to it. Seems balanced, also definitely good against Pirates. Does it replace Quick Shot? Not really, since it can't go face, but for what it does, it's definitely reasonably balanced, though I don't see it making particularly big waves in the metagame.


Open the Waygate
So far, the Quest rewards have been insane. Barnabus is. a 5-mana 8/8 that turns every minion in your deck to cost 0. Galvadon is a monster that adapts 5 times. Queen Carnassa turns your deck into a self-cycling army of monster raptors. But none takes the cake of being a game-breaker as much as Time Warp, the Mages' quest reward, which literally breaks the game. You take two turns. What the fuck! What the utter fuck! Sure, the Time Warp card costs 5 mana, which is most of your turn, but damn, it's a pretty powerful card. And the quest requirement? Nothing about Secrets, but you cast 6 spells that didn't start in your deck. And, like the Druid Quest, I honestly think this is easier to complete than you think. Between Babbling Book, Antonidas and Cabalist Tome, you already have core Mage cards that already do that. And that's not to mention things like the Kabal cards from Gadgetzan -- Kazakus creates a spell outside your deck, and both Kabal Chemist and Kabal Courier also gives you spells from outside your deck. Hell, I think even the Coin counts as a spell that didn't start in your deck! And to top it off, the new cards in this set really make this quest work. Elise the Trailblazer, Primordial Glyph, Mana Bind, Steam Surger, Shimmering Tempest... Honestly, the quest could read 'cast 10 spells that started outside your deck' and I bet it'd still be balanced. In Wild it's even more degenerate, with Spellslinger, Unstable Portal, Ethereal Conjurer, Elise Starseeker, and anything that creates Spare Parts.

Now how valuable is taking an extra turn? Depends what you have on the field, of course. If you have an Antonidas it's just GG well played, I think, but honestly even without degenerate Antonidas combos taking an extra turn is pretty damn powerful nonetheless. I'm not sure how viable the Time Warp itself will be, but jeez, no wonder they are moving Ice Lance out.

Primordial Glyph
Because Mages didn't quite have enough ways to discover spells from outside their deck, we get a spell... which discovers a card outside your deck! It's a 2-mana card, which makes you think it's going to be similar to Priest's Shadow Visions, but Primordial Glyph actually gives the 2 mana cost for this card back to you by discounting the spell you discovered by two. Because holy shit, this card is just amazing. The power levels of the cards in this expansion is just amazing.

Meteor
Meteor's a cute card. It's Explosive Shot, on steroids. Lots and lots of steroids. For 6 mana, you deal FIFTEEN damage onto a single minion, and splash 3 minions on the ones adjacent to it. Do you ever want to play this over, say, Flamestrike? It is cheaper but has a shorter range, and while there's the potential of murdering a really large minion like a Ragnaros or a big Jade Golem, I don't think Meteor's ultimately that good of a card for you to put into your deck. I do admit that it feels a lot better than Mage's older "deal huge damage to a minion" card, Flame Lance, by virtue that Meteor is a mini-AoE card.


Steam Surger
Kickass looking artwork, but the Steam Surger is actually one of the more underwhelming cards in the set. Not that it's bad, of course -- it's a 4-mana 5/4 that generates a card. But it's also not quite that awesome as far as cards that benefit from playing an Elemental the turn before goes. You do get a Flame Geyser, which if you're playing an Elemental-themed deck is probably something you'll want, but unlike Shamans, the Mages' legendary minion Pyros... isn't something that needs an Elemental the turn before to be good, so I'm not sure about how the Elemental Mage deck will end up doing. It's a good card if you're running Elementals, with lots of value packed into a single card that generates two more, but since the endgame of Elemental Mage seems to just be Blazecallers and Servants of Kalimos I'm not sure if it's going to be worth playing.

Shimmering Tempest
Dang, this card is awesome. As if Babbling Book isn't enough, the Mage Quest gets additional support in the form of Shimmering Tempest, who is a 2-mana 2/1 Elemental with the Deathrattle of adding a random Mage spell to your hand. It's an amazingly powerful card. Perhaps not super-creative design-wise, but Babbling Book was unbelievably strong despite his innocent-looking effect, and Shimmering Tempest no doubt will be the same. Between the Elemental synergy and the spell-adding effect, Shimmering Tempest looks like he's going to be a core card in various types of Mage decks for sure.

Molten Reflection
For 4 mana, you copy a minion. It's pretty powerful! I'm not quite sure what Mage minion is particularly powerful enough to combo with Molten Reflection -- Antonidas, if he survives, for sure -- but it's basically a Faceless Manipulator for one mana less, and it's a spell, which means Mana Wyrm, Antonidas, Sorcerer's Apprentice all do like this spell. At the same time Molten Reflection also makes it so the Babbling Book/Cabalist's Tome/Shimmering Tempest effect doesn't always just add pure damage to your hand, which is definitely something we needed. Probably not one of the stronger cards in the set, but shit, again, it's still pretty powerful. Un'Goro has some really strong cards, man.


Primalfin Champion
My god, this card. When we all thought Murlocs in Paladins would be dead after Anyfin and Murloc Knight rotates out, in comes Primalfin Champion. No, you probably wouldn't actually play Primalfin Champion in a Murloc deck, but he is going to be absolutely powerful in a Galvadon deck. He's a 2-mana 1/2 that recycles every spell you cast on this minion to your hand. He's the single card that impressed me the most during the stream a couple of days ago, because, holy shit, all the spells you just lobbed on him gets recycled, so the nightmare isn't quite over after you manage to murder him with anything short of Silences, Hexes and Polymorphs. I'm just thinking of how degenerate a deck with Galvadon, Primalfin Champion, Voraxx and Djinni of Zephyrs will be in Wild. Easily one of my favourite cards in the deck, and the stream really put my faith that the Last Kaleidosaur quest might actually be pretty reliably completed.

Adaptation
Oh, hey, a cheap buff spell that's good! How convenient! Adaptation is a pretty powerful card that definitely seeing play in Quest Paladin, and between Adaptation, Blessing of Kings and Spikeridged Steed, we have our 6 cards that we need for the Quest to be completed. Throw in a couple of Dinosizes or Blessings of Wisdom or stuff like that, as well as the Primalfin Champion recycling your buffs, and suddenly it's far more realistic to complete the Paladin's Quest.

Vinecleaver
Vinecleaver would be a great weapon if not for its prohibitive cost. For 7 mana, it's a 4/3 weapon. Quite shit, right? But every time you swing this weapon, it's two 1/1 Silver Hand Recruits, which we know is going to be absolutely awesome with both the Lightfused Stegodon and Sunkeeper Tarim. And that's not counting Wild shenanigans. It's basically six Silver Hand Recruits, so in addition to a 4/3 weapon, you get a delayed and better Stand Against Darkness, and playing this a turn before you do a Lost in the Jungle + Lightfused Stegodon combo means that you suddenly get a crapton of Silver Hand Recruits on the board. Ultimately, though, while I'm actually quite excited about Silver Hand Recruit decks, I don't think Vinecleaver makes the cut.

Lyra, the Sunshard
Dang, Lyra looks absolutely hardcore. Visually, anyway. She's the Priest Legendary, a 5-mana 3/5 Elemental with the passive effect of basically being another Lock-and-Load style effect, but instead of adding random Hunter cards, she adds Priest spells. It's like a worse Nexus-Champion Saraad because she's lower-statted and her effect picks from a smaller pool of cards... but you can cycle through multiple Priest spells in a single turn. It's definitely not going to be in the same deck as the Quest Priest, but you do get some great cheap spells in Binding Heal, and a card that discounts spells in Radiant Elemental. Plus, the existence of this card suddenly makes Shadow Visions suddenly awesome, since that's an extra spell that generates another extra spell, both of which synergizes with Lyra. Granted, not all Priest cards are proactive, so some of the spells you get from her might just whiff out. One of the cards that really look like she's going to be super fun, that's for sure! Particularly good, maybe not (I'm leaning more towards not), but shit, she does look fun.

Radiant Elemental
A stat-reversed Sorcerer's Apprentice, with the Elemental tag! Radiant Elemental definitely works well with Lyra, and the ability to just cycle random Priest spells is just amazing. Sorcerer's Apprentice is played in Mage decks even to this day, and while Priest spells aren't as abusable as Mage spells, they're still generally pretty good, and discounting them is also pretty damn good. Not much to say about Radiant Elemental beyond the fact that it's pretty damn good. Also! The wait is over, people, because after so, so long Priests finally have a good two-drop!

Free from Amber
For 8 mana, you Discover a minion that costs at least 8. And then you summon it for free. Which is... amazing! Yes, this expansion did introduce a bunch of crap heavily-costed minions (Tortollan Primalist, brrr...) but 8-mana minions are still pretty good. It's like Forbidden Shaping, I suppose, with the chance to Discover and actually pick a minion that's somewhat good for your situation, as well as the chance to get a bigger minion than 8 mana. And besides, Forbidden Shaping is a card everyone plays on turn 8 anyway, but the thing is, Ragnaros is out of the rotation... but still, powerful minions like Ysera, both Deathwings, Y'Shaarj, and even relatively crap beat-sticks like Faceless Behemoth or Ultrasaur aren't half-bad when they cost only 8 mana -- or less if you have Radiant Elementals on the field. Really, the Discover effect just makes Free From Amber exceptionally powerful, but at the same time not really because Discover only works from your own class, so no Tirion Fordring or King Krush. It's just that the amount of less-than stellar 8-cost-of-more cards are just... quite a lot as of this expansion. I did a quick review of cards above 8 that this can hit in standard:

• Super-Special Awesome: Ysera, Malygos (sometimes), Deathwing, Deathwing Dragonlord, Soggoth the Slitherer, Y'Shaarj Rage Unbound
• Not Bad [still has Taunt or whatever]: Charged Devilsaur, Primordial Drake, Giant Mastodon
• I get a beat stick: Ultrasaur, Doomcaller, Gruul, Medivh the Guardian, Blood of the Ancient One, Alexstrasza, Nozdormu, Onyxia, Faceless Behemoth, Molten Giant, Mountain Giant, Sea Giant, Arcane Giant
• I get a crappy statted minion because battlecries don't go off: Tortollan Primalist, Ozruk, C'Thun, Mayor Noggenfogger (has an effect but come on), N'Zoth the Corruptor, Yogg-Saron Hope's End, Boogeymonster

And more times than not all you're getting is a beatstick. There are 29 minions you can discover in standard, and only 9 are good or decent. 13 end up being just beatsticks, and 7 are actually shit. Yes, you Discover the minion which means you're not going to be an idiot and pick Ozruk or C'Thun, but still, I dunno. I don't think this card is as good as an 8-mana Forbidden Shaping, or if it's in wild... if only because Ragnaros the Firelord and Sneed's Old Shredder are both available to bit hit by this thing in wild. 

Binding Heal
Flash Heal is rotating out, so have a near-identical version that also heals a minion at the same time! Flash Heal was used a lot, and Binding Heal is just leaps and bounds better for healing a minion too, so it's going to be better than Flash Heal. Not much I can say about it.

Biteweed
Edwin VanCleef's little brother is apparently a fucking man-eating plant. Biteweed is a worse Edwin. Edwin is a 2/2 that gains +2/+2 for every card you played earlier, while Biteweed is a 1/1 that gains +1/+1 instead. Is it good? Yeah, just not as good as Edwin. Will it be played? Maybe as a cheap card you drop before Edwin so after that insane lots-of-coin, lots-of-1-mana-cards, multi-Prep turn you drop a Biteweed before you drop Edwin, so if you played like 4 cards before the big Biteweed-Edwin drop, you'll get like a 5/5 Biteweed and a 12/12 Edwin. It's not super good, but it does give you alternate options for making huge combo-centric minions, albeit one that can't quite ramp as quickly and insanely as Edwin. Ultimately, a cute card but one I don't see being super viable.

Envenom Weapon
For 3 mana, give your weapon Poisonous. This... this is actually pretty good, but I'm not sure when do you play this. With a Violet Illusionist on the field this means that your weapon can just murder huge Jade Golems or Tyrantus-es or C'Thuns without damaging your hero... but wouldn't you rather just play, I dunno, Giant Wasp? It's a unique effect since we've never had a

Razorpetal Lasher
Rogues need cheaper spells to trigger those Biteweeds and Edwin VanCleefs, right? And just slotting the coin in is sometimes not enough. So enter Razorpetal Lasher, a 2-mana 2/2 that was foreshadowed in one of the journal posts. The Lasher, as a battlecry, adds a 1-mana-deal-1-damage spell to your hand, which isn't super-amazing, but it does work well if you really need to wreak havoc or have cheap one-mana cards in your hand to trigger those Gadgetzan Auctioneers and Edwin VanCleefs. Pretty decent card.

Razorpetal Volley
Basically the same thing as Razorpetal Lasher, but in spell form. For 2 mana, you get two copies of the Razorpetal card. It's a bit more expensive than the Lasher since you don't get the 2/2 body, but you do get two copies of the card. Which means if done in a particularly good Edwin or Gadgetzan turn, Razorpetal Volley is three cheap spell cards in one.

Obsidian Shard
Oh, hey, a weapon! Been some time since Rogues have gotten a weapon at all, and it's actually a bit of a meme that Blade Flurry was removed for nothing at all. Obsidian Shard isn't a super-great weapon, because it's just a 3/3 that gets discounted for each Burgled card you've played. Yes, discounting this card into a 0- or 1- mana card means that it's a powerful, cheap card that acts like a stronger Fiery War Axe, that also triggers things like combos and whatnot. You definitely put this in a Swashburglar/Hallucination deck, right? I don't think the Burgle deck (weird to be calling it that since Burgle's out of rotation, but okay) has enough cards to really make it work, but between Obsidian Shard and Ethereal Peddler it has a fair amount of support.

Hallucination
One mana, and you Discover a card from your opponent's class. Discover is always miles better than just getting a random thing, which makes Hallucination just better than both Burgle and Swashburglar. It's a great card, and Rogues do love their one-mana spells. And with things like Obsidian Shard, you do have some cards that synergize well with combos.

Fire Plume Harbinger
Shamans get all the cool-looking minions! Fire Plume Harbinger is a 2-mana 1/1. Bad, right? Except it reduces the cost of all Elementals in your hand by 1. Which means I think it's pretty much going to be a must-have in your Elemental deck. He's a pretty shit topdeck, but the fact that he discounts a good chunk of your hand, and cheaper Elementals probably will lead to a fair amount of value, it's a pretty great card with a great artwork. It's just pretty good, with only its 1/1 statline really getting in the way of it being super-OP.

Air Elemental
Just a solid one-mana Elemental that isn't super-overpowered. It's just a 1-mana 2/1 that can't be pinged due to having the Fairy Dragon's spellproof ability, and by virtue of being one mana means that he can potentially trigger the 'play an Elemental the previous turn' effects of basically any card since he can be slotted in an earlier turn. There's no 2-mana card that benefits from playing an Elemental before, but it's still a pretty dang good card that I think will just bulk up any Elemental Shaman deck.

Hot Spring Guardian
Bye-bye, Earthen Ring Farseer! Hot Spring Guardian is yet another healing tool for Shaman, but this time it synergizes with the Elemental gimmick, and arguably is a far better three-mana drop than Unbound Elemental or Tar Creeper. It does compete with the Igneous Elemental, and really, it depends whether you want your Shaman to heal more or have more cheap Elemental Tokens to trigger your Kalimoses and Ozruks. A 3-mana 2/4 that restores three health and has Taunt looks so much better than Igneous Elemental to me, at least. The 2/4 Taunt statline is very respectable for 3 mana, and the healing effect is actually not a bad thing to have. Hot Spring Guardian serves as a less-effective Jinyu Waterspeaker, but one that also works very well with the Elemental synergy. So yeah.


Primalfin Totem
Hee hee the artwork on this thing. The Primalfin Totem looks absolutely cute! It's a 2-mana 0/3 Totem that summons a 1/1 Murloc at the end of your turn. It's a good card, but I'm not sure you'd rather play Primalfin Totem over, say, Rockpool Hunter, Bilefin Tidehunter or Murloc Tidehunter. It's a cute card that potentially finishes the Unite the Murlocs quest all by itself, but it's a 0-attack card, it's not a Murloc itself, and there are a lot better Murloc 2-drops out there. I suppose it can help if you decide to tech in like a Thing from Below into your Murloc deck... but why would you do that? A cool card that I'm not sure will be viable, but a cute card nonetheless.

Tidal Surge
For 4 mana, deal 4 damage to a minion and restore 4 health to your hero. Tidal Surge's a very nice little control card for Shaman, and the fact that Tidal Surge doesn't go to the enemy's face is a very, very neat design bit that makes Shamans less insanely face-centric as before. And the restoration aspect of this card does kind of help Shamans deal with the loss of cards like Healing Wave (though arguably with Hot Spring Guardian and Jinyu Waterspeaker, Shaman already has a huge pool of healing tools). It's a pretty cool card, that I don't think will be super viable.

Cruel Dinomancer
This is a card whose effect I really want for some time now -- recover a card you've discarded before. Hey, if Shamans get cards that recover from Overload, why can't Warlocks? The Dinomancer is a 6-mana 5/5 that summons a minion you've discarded this game, so even if it summons like a humble Flame Imp it's already full value stat-wise. If it summons that Doomguard or Lord Jaraxxus (and believe me, Doomguard getting discarded happens a lot more than you think) you might just won the game with the huge tempo swing you just generated. Definitely a card that goes into that Discard-Quest Warlock deck. Between this dude, Clutch-Mother Zavas and Silverware Golem, Discard Warlock's actually looking quite awesome. Yeah, this card has the potential to fizzle out if you've only been discarding spells throughout the game, but still. It's more likely to be left out of Discard decks, simply because it's so conditional, it's a Deathrattle and might just whiff and only summon like a Malchezaar's Imp or something, but still, I love the design of the card even if I don't think it's as awesome as cards like Silverware Golem or Clucthmother.

Chittering Tunneler
Another Silithid hanging out with the Warlocks is this little dude. The Tunneler is a 3-mana 3/3 Beast that discovers a spell, then lobs damage to your hero equal to its cost. It's an interesting bit of flexibility, but I don't see it seeing a lot of play. Might be great in a wild Reno deck simply because damage dealt to your face doesn't really matter, and the extra flexibility from adding more burn options is decent.

Bloodbloom
Cho'gall's effect, but in a 2-mana spell form. For 2 mana, you cast a spell with your health instead of your mana. Man, lots of older-legendary-that-didn't-quite-work effects are being revisited in this set, yeah? Princess Huhuran, Herald Volazj, Cho'gall... again, the same problems that plague Cho'gall also plagues Bloodbloom in that I still don't see a particularly good spell that Warlocks really want to cast early. Like, with this spell you can cast Twisting Nether or DOOM! or Felfire Potion or Kara Kazham or Siphon Soul or Feeding Time as early as turn two... but why would you want to? I guess Kara Kazham or Feeding Time's decent when you sacrifice life to play it in the early game, but I'm not very sure about the others.

Tar Lurker
Tar Creeper's bigger brother, Tar Lurker is scaled up appropriately, being a 5-mana 1/7 Taunt that becomes a 4/7 Taunt during your opponent's turn. I guess the Tar Lurker's biggest weakness is that it's in a class that doesn't need Elementals or Taunters. If Tar Lurker was in Shaman, or Mage, or Warrior then he'd be played a fair bit. In Warlock, though, I don't really see him being played a lot. Decent arena card, though.

Feeding Time
For 5 mana, you deal 3 damage and summon 3 1/1 Pterrordaxes, which are Beasts. It's like Imp-losion, but exchanges the randomness for consistency... and it costs one mana more, and doesn't synergize with demons the way Imp-losion did. It's a somewhat decent card, but in the same way that Stormcrack doesn't see as much play as Crackle, I don't see Feeding Time seeing as much play as Feeding Time.

Fire Plume's Heart/Sulfuras
Fire Plume's Heart is the Warriors' quest, and it needs you to play seven Taunt minions... which I think is actually simpler than it seems. Yes, it's going to take a relatively longer time to get there, but you get Sulfuras, which is a 3-mana 4/2 weapon. Which is great, but as a battlecry, Sulfuras changes your hero power into Ragnaros's hero power, which is dealing 8 damage randomly. Which is amazing! Majordomo Executus, eat your heart out! Sulfuras's effect is permanent, too, not just something that you'll only have while the weapon is active. And the bonus 4/2 weapon isn't half bad either, too.

Now, how easy is it to summon 7 Taunt minions? Very easy, just probably not one that you can rush to complete the way that you do Rogue, Hunter or Shaman's quests. What Taunt minions do you want? Ornery Direhorn and Direhorn Hatchling (from below) are all great Taunt cards, and since the Hatchling is worth two Taunt minions, that's six... but all of them show up later in the game, and so does Tar Lord (which I'm unconvinced will make the Taunt Quest Warrior deck). The Curator, Alley Armorsmith and Soggoth are great Taunters, but likewise they show up only in the late game. Slightly earlier in the game you have options of Bloodhoof Brave, Infested Tauren and Sen'jin Shieldmasta' for turn 4, but I don't see playing all of them. What about earlier turns? Do you play crap like Pompous Thespian and Goldshire Footman? We did get Cornered Sentry, which is a 2-mana card, and I guess Stubborn Gastropod is quasi-decent, but the lack of early-game Taunters might make this quest a bit harder to complete. Which is fine, though, since it's a pretty control-deck oriented quest, so yeah, you could definitely afford to complete this quest a bit later, equip a powerful weapon and change your hero power into 'murder a thing'. It's definitely one of the more interesting quests, maybe slightly lower in power level compared to some of the other quests, but it still looks fun.

Ornery Direhorn
A simple card that is pretty powerful. A 6-mana 5/5 with Taunt makes it already great for the Fire Plume's Heart Quest, but it also Adapts as a battlecry. A 6-mana 5/5 Taunt with Divine Shield? A 6-mana 5/8 or 6/6 with Taunt? Obviously not all adaptation choices is good for the Direhorn, but it's definitely a great mid-range taunt card that you'll definitely play in Taunt Warrior, and it replaces Fierce Monkey as a Beast that you can draw with Curator -- who I think will be pretty great in this kind of Warrior deck. No, it's probably not the strongest card out there, and I think it's weaker than the Direhorn Hatchling, but I still think this goes into the Taunt Warrior deck. Definitely better than Sunwalker, I think. Plus, it just looks cool! Triceratops-es are cool!

Direhorn Hatchling
D'awww how adorable. The Direhorn Hatchling is a 5-mana 3/6 Beast with Taunt, which is already somewhat decent (if sub-par for her cost) Taunt minion which fits into the Taunt Warrior deck. Also, like the Ornery Direhorn, she also synergizes well with the Curator, another great Taunt minion. And, yeah, the Direhorn Hatchling isn't the best-statted minion in the game, but she shuffles her mommy into her deck, which is a 5-mana 6/9 Taunt... which is just fucking amazing. A bit slow, that's for sure, but the Direhorn Hatchling is definitely one of the more powerful tools that Warrior receives in this expansion. And Warriors get two of these!

Tar Lord
Another variation of the Tar Creeper, Tar Lord is the Warrior's version, and it's of course a huge Taunt minion so it's something that Warriors would want for the Quest completion. It's a 7-mana 1/11 that turns into a 5/11 wall during your opponent's turn. And... I think it's not as good as Tar Creeper? A 3-mana minion that can't attack that well during your turn is excusable. Spending 7 mana on one? Yes, it's going to soak up a hell lot more damage, but I think all things considered I'd rather play things like the Direhorns or Soggoth or Bog Creeper for my mid-late game Taunters. Still, that's not to say that Tar Lord is bad, because it isn't -- I just don't really see it being super-good compared to other cards, but who knows? Maybe you do want huge Tar Lords to just be a big meat (well, tar) shield while your Sulfuras-enabled hero power just lobs 8 damage everywhere. 11 health is still no joke. Plus (and I sound like a broken record, I know) just look at that hulking tar-skeleton monstrosity! He looks cool. Also, um, Ozruk? Yeah, this common minion's a lot better than you, I think.

Sudden Genesis
For five mana, just... summon copies of your damaged minions. None of the Blood Warriors nonsense where you have to re-play them. So this means that if you damage your Grommash Hellscream? Yeah, for 5 mana you get a second 10-attack charging Orc, in addition to whatever other damaged minions you have on board. Yes, it's five mana, but the fact that it's an immediate presence on the board, doing this with either Charge or Taunt minions just makes this suddenly super-powerful. Man, forget King Mosh, a Grommash-Genesis combo is what's going to carry my Warrior deck to victory. Very cool design, one that I think will definitely see some play.

Iron Hide
For one mana, gain 5 armour. It's like Shield Block with a vastly reduced cost, but without the draw. Or Shieldmaiden without the minion. I'm not sure if you'll ever want to play it instead of Shield Block, for the same reason that you never see people use Whirlwind, but love Ravaging Ghoul. Or why Stonehill Defender in this expansion is miles better than I Know A Guy despite being more expensive but stuck onto a body -- I'd rather pay slightly more for an effect that comes with a body (or a card draw) instead of a simple deckslot filler. Still I don't think this spell's going to see play. Which is okay, I think, considering the huge amount of great cards Warriors already get in this expansion.

So let's talk about Taunts and Elementals. One of the more interesting cards that I see work is the Warrior Taunt Quest deck, and it's absolutely very viable to get an insane series of Taunters in play. Assuming you play the Quest card for the first turn, the expansion brings together enough Taunt support (which are all decent cards on their own, too!) to really make a taunt deck work. Of course in the mid-game you'll probably want to play like two cards in a turn to expedite the quest completion, but Fire Plume's Heart is really a deck that aims to control the game in the early and mid-game phase, and later just outvalue the enemy with the Ragnaros hero power. Really loved how the expansion brought together so many new good cards so you're not stuck building a deck with crap like Frostwolf Grunt, Squirming Tentacle or Pompous Thespian just to make this work.

• 2 mana: Cornered Sentry, Dirty Rat, Stubborn Gastropod
• 3 mana: Tar Creeper, Stonehill Defender, Second-Rate Bruiser
• 4 mana: Bloodhoof Brave, Sen'jin Shieldmasta, Infested Tauren
• 5 mana: Direhorn Hatchling, Alley Armorsmith, Psych-o-tron, Nesting Roc, Fen Creeper (which isn't even good compared to the others here)
• 6 mana: Ornery Direhorn, Sunwalker, Wrathion
• 7 mana: Tar Lord, The Curator (he draws Beasts and Dragons, too, which actually works), Volcanosaur if he gains Taunt
• 8 mana: Primordial Drake (works with Curator)
• 9 mana: Soggoth the Slitherer
• In addition, if you play weapons, Dread Corsair can potentially just be dropped off anywhen for free. 

And elementals? Again, in addition to the simple 1/2 generated, I am in love with how the set doesn't just design random elementals with crappy effects for every class to see if it works (like what they did with Mechs -- only like slightly more than a half-dozen mechs from the gigantic roster in GvG was actually viable) but actually designed individual elementals that actually look like they can work and deal a fair amount of damage. In quick summary, here's what the elementals for each mana point looks, with asterisks denoting cards that benefit from playing an elemental the turn before.

• 1 mana: Fire Fly, Glacial Shard, Arcane Anomaly, Crystalline Oracle [Priest], Air Elemental [Shaman], Dust Devil [Shaman]
• 2 mana: Volatile Elemental, Shimmering Tempest [Mage], Pyros [Mage], Radiant Elemental [Priest], Fire Plume Harbinger [Shaman]
• 3 mana: Tar Creeper, Igneous Elemental, Magma Rager, Hot Spring Guardian [Shaman], Unbound Elemental [Shaman]
• 4 mana: Fire Plume Phoenix, Water Elemental [Mage], Steam Surger* [Mage], Lightspawn [Priest]
• 5 mana: Servant of Kalimos*, Lyra the Sunshard [Priest], Tar Lurker [Warlock], Earth Elemental [Shaman]
• 6 mana: Frozen Crusher, Frost Elemental, Pyros Token [Mage], Fire Elemental [Shaman]
• 7 mana: Blazecaller*, Baron Geddon, Stormwatcher, Stone Sentinel* [Shaman], Al'Akir [Shaman], Tar Lord [Warrior]
• 8 mana: Kalimos Primal Lord* [Shaman], Anomalus [Mage], Ragnaros Lightlord [Paladin]
• 9 mana: Ozruk*
• 10 mana: Pyros Token [Mage]
• Non-Elementals that benefit from elementals: Thunder Lizard (Turn 3), Tol'vir Stoneshaper (Turn 4)

As you can see, it's actually not super hard to find cards to trigger your elementals. The main turns that you want to play an elemental are turns 3 through 7, or 3 through 6 if you're not playing a Shaman. Yes, there's the problem of drawing the cards you need. Maybe you reach turn 8 and you haven't drawn your Kalimos, or you reach turn 7 without a Blazecaller but honestly there's enough good elementals to go around, and even classes like Warrior or Paladin who have decent class Elementals can actually consider slotting in cards like Servant of Kalimos, Blazecaller or Tol'vir Warden. The sheer amount of one-drop cards you can choose from is also honestly quite appealing, and this is really what I want from card design. There's no way you're putting all of these cards into your Elemental deck, and it's not like Jade or C'Thun decks where there are only like five or six options to choose from to curve out properly and it's already dictated what half your deck is going to look like if you're going for Jade or C'Thun decks. Here we're given free reign with multiple elementals on each mana slot to make do, and honestly while Ozruk isn't amazing, cards like Stone Sentinel, Blazecaller, Kalimos and Servant of Kalimos are all appealing enough to try and make the Elemental synergy work, and even then the archetype balances out being slightly more difficult to pull off by not relying as much on it compared to, say, Murlocs or Dragon decks.  

Hearthstone: Un'Goro Reveals, the Final Stream: Neutral Cards

 Some 60+ cards were revealed last night in a huge stream with Ben Brode and Frodan, and even more cards are revealed thanks to the Facebook gallery (as well as a couple other cards revealed between my last post and this one). Due to the huge, huge length that the page would be if I lumped everything in one page, I'll do neutral cards first, and try to at least be somewhat concise. We'll go with legendaries, then the assorted neutral creatures, then the elementals will be lumped together at the end.

Spiritsinger Umbra
The leader of the Tortollans briefly foreshadowed in the Eddie journals, Umbra is a pretty cool card. He's a 4-mana 3/4, which is slightly understatted, but every time you summon a Deathrattle minion, its deathrattle is triggered immediately. Which is pretty damn powerful! In wild you can do some truly degenerate things with Sylvannas or Shredders or Belchers. In Standard, we still have some really strong Deathrattle minions. Savannah Highmane isn't going anywhere, Cairne Bloodhoof is still around, and both Priest and Hunter Deathrattle decks are going to lap this little turtle dude up. Between Huhuran, the Terrorscale 3-mana dude and Umbra, Hunters suddenly have so many ways to activate the Deathrattles without killing the minions. And Priests have some really good cheap Deathrattle minions that combos absolutely well with Spiritsinger Umbra. He's not going to be an essential card, but he's definitely a very cool neutral legendary.


The Voraxx
The Voraxx, I think, is going to be a card you'll want in your Buff Paladin deck. He's like a reverse Djinni of Zephyrs of sorts, where instead of copying the buff spell cast on another minion, the Voraxx instead creates little 1/1 tokens that get buffed by the same spell you cast on the Voraxx itself. He's also a pretty cool, weird monster-plant thing as well. And at a 4-mana 3/3, he might be a little slow, but he definitely snowballs pretty quickly if you can get like a Blessing of Kings or Spikeridged Steed spell on him. I'm not sure if the Voraxx is going to be good or not, but he definitely has potential, and it's definitely a pretty cool-looking card. Very much appreciate how much Un'Goro's effects have been relatively unique.

Charged Devilsaur
Charge is a powerful mechanic and one that easily snowballs, so Charged Devilsaur is a 8-mana 7/7 Charge... that can't attack heroes on the turn it hits the field. It's a Charge limitation that a lot of fan cards made, allowing the Charged Devilsaur to be an instant-control minion. I don't think the Charged Devilsaur is going to be a super-relevant card, but it is a cool looking art nonetheless! Some Reno (or Kazakus, I suppose) decks or control decks might want to sub this dude in, and it's certainly another minion to synergize with Hunter's Beast synergies or with the Curator (who suddenly became so good in this expansion, by the way, with the abundant number of new good beasts) but I don't see Devilsaur being a super-awesome core card anywhere.

Primordial Drake
The only dragon in this set, the Primordial Drake would've been amazing had it came out with Blackrock and TGT dragons still around. Still, he's going to be great in wild Dragon decks. An 8-mana 4/8 is a bit low in stats, but it has Taunt and deals a mini-Demonwrath as it hits the board. It's only 2 damage, and it hits your allied minions, but it doesn't hit your face and it's a lot easier to control when the AoE slams down on your field, which is one of the weaknesses that my dear Chillmaw has -- your opponent dictates when Chillmaw's effect goes off more than not. So yeah, while the dragons' day in the limelight might be over, the Primordial Drake's still a pretty dang good dragon. Being the only new dragon in a world where Azure Drake, Twilight Guardian and the whole dragon package from Blackrock Mountain is leaving is not super-good for Primordial Drake in standard, though.

Bittertide Hydra
Did we ever have a Hydra card in Hearthstone? I can't remember any. It's awesome to see one of my favourite monsters in Warcraft finally make its debut in Hearthstone! Gahz'rilla, duh. Nevermind that! The Bittertide Hydra has a bit of a unique effect, somewhat like the Warlock class's Wrathguard, as a penalty to its stats. A 5-mana 8/8 is far, far more obnoxious than the Wrathguard's 2-mana 4/3, I think, but it's effect is pretty... damaging. It reflects every damage dealt to it as 3 damage to your her. On one hand, a Fireball or Eviscerate doesn't translate its full 6 damage to your hero, but several Arcane Missiles? Or simple Knife Juggler lobs? Still, a 5-mana 8/8, in the neutral slot no less, isn't something to sneeze at. I'm not convinced that the Hydra will see widespread play, but it does have potential simply by being such a gigantic minion for its cost. The effect is a lot less appealing than the simple Overload from Flamewreathed, and you definitely can't use this dude to trade without it being risky, but it's definitely an interesting enough card that I'm excited to see something like this enter the game.

Stonehill Defender
Definitely a card you're going to see in the Warrior-Quest deck. The Stonehill Defender is a 3-mana 1/4 Taunt, so literally a Silverback Patriarch. But instead of just being a simple unplayable taunt minion, the Stonehill Defender allows you to discover a Taunt minion so it's a Silverback Patriarch and I Know A Guy combined into a single card, making both those pretty shitty cards useless. And it basically accounts for two of the seven minions you want for the Warriors' quest. I'm not sure if the Stonehill Defender's sub-par stats is going to make him ultimately unplayable, but Discover has historically been a very powerful effect so I'm pretty optimistic about the Stonehill Defender.

Bright-Eyed Scout
Kind of like the Naga Sea Witch, but on a single card, and permanently. The Bright-Eyed Scout draws a card as a battlecry, but its cost gets changed into 5. Now 4-mana 3/4 draw a card is decent enough, making her better than Gnomish Inventor, but the effect is a gamble, so you're going to definitely have to build a deck around her effect. Maybe a Y'Shaarj style deck? I dunno. My gut says she's more gimmicky than useful.

Emerald Hive Queen

Well, at least the filler cards in this set look cool! The Hive Queen is a 1-mana 2/3, with the Venture Co. Mercenary effect. A 1-mana 2/3 is obviously bonkers, but it does kind of stop you from summoning any minions for the next two turns or at least until the Hive Queen trades herself away. It's an interesting take on the Zombie Chow statline, where the Emerald Hive Queen's effect might not necessarily be a drawback in a class that doesn't play a lot of early-game minions. Ultimately I don't think she'll see much play, and her effect's actually bad for the Hunter Quest since you want to vomit out your minions as quickly as possible. She looks pretty, tho!

Emerald Reaver

A 1-mana 2/1 Beast that deals 1 damage to each hero as a battlecry. Okay? Not sure why you want that. Kinda similar to Shadowbomber, I guess? The Reaver is a 1-mana Beast, and its battlecry kinda plays to Hunter's need to hit face as many times as you can, so maybe the Reaver goes into your Quest Hunter deck. Otherwise, kind of a filler card. 

Giant Wasp

Lots of Silithid in this set, yeah? The Giant Wasp is a 3-mana 2/2 with Stealth and Poisonous. He's going to trade exactly once, but unlike Emperor Cobra the Stealth means that he's going to deal it's effect more often than not. He's comparable to Patient Assassin, who never saw play, but 2 Health is a lot more valuable and harder to get rid of compared to 2 health. Pretty cool card, especially for arena. 

Rockpool Hunter

A neutral Murloc, and another powerful dude that's definitely going to make it into Shaman Murloc decks. Blowgill Sniper this ain't! The Rockpool Hunter is a 2-mana 2/3 Murloc, which is already vanilla stats, but it buffs a friendly Murloc by +1/+1 permanently. So yeah, it's a Murloc-only Shattered Sun Cleric but without the stat penalty! It's just a great card for Murloc decks all around, and while it's simple and unassuming it's actually a lot better of a Murloc minion than the ones we've gotten for the past three or four expansions, which focused more on Murloc spells. Liking this card a lot. 

Stubborn Gastopod

A 2-mana 1/2 Beast with Taunt and Poisonous. It's going to simply tank a single minion if your opponent can't remove it with spells or tokens. Actually a pretty cool card that might actually see play in the Taunt Warrior -- it's literally not something you're going to trade against, but you have to deal with it because it's a Taunt minion and you're going to want to go for face or to kill other minions. I don't see Gastropod being a super-staple card, but it's definitely a 'filler' style card that I can see working absolutely well in some decks. Again, it's also a beast, so more Beast synergy?

Eggnapper

A 3-mana 3/1 that dies and summons two 1/1 Raptors. Basically a worse Haunted Creeper. Yeah, the statline's offensive, but I don't think I'll ever play this over things like Harvest Golem or Infested Wolf. And... yeah. Don't think I have much to say about this dude. I guess he summons Beasts, which is cool for hunters, but eh. Decent in Arena, I suppose, but Flametongue Totem shenanigans aside, I can't really think of a situation when you'd play this over Harvest Golem. 

Sated Threshadon
A 7-mana 5/7 Beast that summons three 1/1 Murlocs as a Deathrattle. This is actually a lot, lot better than the Eggnapper because 5/7 isn't actually a bad statline for a 7-mana with effect. The Threshadon might be the late-game drop for Murloc decks, maybe, and being a big minion just makes it a whole lot better than a 3/1. A 5-attack minion means he'll be considered in Quest Druids. He's a big Beast with a decent Deathrattle. Not going to be super-relevant in Constructed I think, but probably going to be a great Arena card.

Ultrasaur
Vanilla 10-mana 7/14. It's a Beast so it's Houndmaster-able, but shit, big vanilla minions never saw any play anywhere. I guess we have to be thankful that we only got very few of these boring vanilla or near-vanilla stuff in this expansion.

Giant Mastodon
9-mana 6/10 with Taunt. It's a beast. But there are many better options for both big taunt minions and big Beasts. Decent for Arena, at least, and unlike Ultrasaur it at least has Taunt. More or less pack filler, though.

Humongous Razorleaf
Ancient Watcher's big brother is the big-ass venus flytrap plant from the trailer. It's a 3-mana 4/8 that can't attack. Vasically filling in the niche that Eerie Statue left by being an overstatted minion that can't attack. You can Void Terror it too, I guess. More or less as good as Eerie Statue, which isn't very.

Sabretooth Stalker
Stranglethorn Tiger's bigger, more reckless cousin, the Sabretooth Stalker is a 6-mana 8/2 Stealth. Which... I don't think will see much play. Sabretooth Stalker is a lot better than fellow huge Stealth minion Ravenholdt Assassin, and I guess can be used to push lethal in Beast decks, but one of the strengths of Stranglethorn Tiger is that the 5 health that Stranglethorn has allows it to trade if you really need it too. Sabretooth Stalker's only good for whacking the enemy's face with 8 attack and not much else... which means that it's actually semi-decent, and has some potential, unlike the last three pack fillers.

Vicious Fledgling
A 3-mana 3/3 that Adapts every time this thing attacks the enemy hero. Holy shit, that's actually pretty good! It's probably not going to stick on the board a lot of times (otherwise Lotus Illusionist would see more play), but if it does, it can snowball pretty quickly. And even if you didn't, a 3/3 Beast for 3 isn't the worst thing out there. Historically minions that gain value whenever it attacks the hero hasn't been super-successful, but the Vicious Fledgling is a pretty cool card that might do some degenerate things every now and then. Shit, if it gets either Windfury or Stealth as its first Adaptation, it might just absolutely wreck house. I'm curious just how powerful the Vicious Fledgling will be, and if it'll be a breakout star of a deck the way Raging Worgen was.

Pterrordax Hatchling
Holy shit this dude is adorable. It's a simple 3-mana 2/2 with Adapt, which is actually kind of a crappy statline. Maybe if it's a 3-mana 3/2 or 2/3, getting a full 1/1 discount from the acceptable 3-mana standard the way Volcanosaur or Verdant Longneck were from their respective statlines... Oh well, sadly the Pterrordax Hatchling's a bit of a miss, I guess.

Ravasaur Runt
A 2-mana 2/2 that adapts! Hey, this baby dinosaur is better than the Pterrordax Hatchling by having the same stat and effect for 1 mana less. The catch? You need to have 2 other minions on the field. Which, depending on the deck, might be a little hard to pull off. Zoo Warlock decks or 1-mana Hunter decks might have an easier time pulling this off, I think, albeit not on curve. Still ultimately kinda poop, though.

Devilsaur Egg
More eggs! The Devilsaur Egg is Nerubian Egg's big brother, a 3-mana 0/3 that summons a 5/5. Basically everything's scaled up by 1. Egg decks are pretty fun to play in both Paladins and Druids, and you might even consider this thing in Deathrattle Priests. I really like Nerubian Egg, so I really like this card too. It's going to find a home in egg decks and nowhere else, but still, it's pretty cool.

Nesting Roc
Actually a freaking good card! This two-headed Roc is a 5-mana 4/7 that gains Taunt if you control two other minions. 5-mana 4/7 Taunt is actually quite awesome, and having 2 minions on turn 5 is a lot easier to pull off than the Ravasaur Runt's turn 2. It's just pure stats that scales up quite amazingly up from Sen'jin Shieldmasta, and to top it off? The Roc's a Beast. Lots of Beasts this expansion. Lots of good Beasts. And it actually fits in well in the Hunters' 5-mana slot, if you're playing a more mid-range-y style deck. And it's just absolutely better than Avian Watcher. Both end up being a 5-mana 4/7 Taunt, but Nesting Roc is a beast and has base stats of 4/7 even if the effect doesn't go off, whereas Avian Watcher is a shitty 3/6 if you can't get the effect to go off, plus having a Secret in play tends to be a bit harder to maintain than controlling two other minions. It's just an amazing card, I think, and as far as simple cards go, Nesting Roc might just be ne of the more powerful ones to come out of this set.

Frozen Crusher
Elementals now. Like the Hydra on the top of this article, the Frozen Crusher is a huge statted minion with a drawback. It's neutral too, so Shamans aren't the only class that gets to play with 4-mana 7/7's. The Frozen Crusher is an interesting dynamic, where it's a 6-mana 8/8 Elemental, thus fitting the 6-mana slot for Priests and Mages so they can unleash Blazecaller. It's a far better-statted minion than Frost Elemental, too, which makes it a lot more appealing. But it attacks every two turns, because it freezes itself after attacking. So kind of like Slaking from Pokemon. Still, it's still a 6-mana 8/8, and even if it's frozen every other turn it's still a pretty decent threat. Also Silenceable if you're running Priest. Also not a bad option for Quest Druids. For Shamans I think they'll still want Fire Elementals as the basic 6-drop, though.


Stormwatcher
7-mana 4/8 Elemental with Windfury... and historically, pure Windfury minions have been shit. Doomhammer and Al'akir are the only great Windfury cards, because Doomhammer's a weapon and Al'Akir has Charge, Taunt and Divine Shield in addition to Windfury. Stormwatcher's a lot better than Windfury Harpy or Grook-fu Master by virtue of having 8 mana, which is a lot... but that's not saying much. Again, it's a decent 7-mana slot-filler for the Elemental Curve-stone game plan, but despite the pretty cool-looking art I don't think Stormwatcher'll end up making it into a lot of Elemental decks.

Fire Plume Phoenix
A 4-mana 3/3 Elemental that deals 2 damage as a battlecry. In other words, a scaled-down Fire Elemental. 4 mana is a a slot with many decent Elementals (Mages do have Water Elemental and Steam Surger, Priests have Lightspawn), so maybe the Fire Plume Phoenix might get herself cut out of those decks. She's probably going to fit the Shaman's four-slot, though. Again, having so many variations and options for Elementals at each cost actually makes deck-building a lot more interesting so we don't just go "well, I suppose I'll just put Rumbling Elemental in because I need a 4-mana Elemental". No, now we have multiple options. Do I want a Tol'vir Stoneshaper on turn 4 to gun for a powerful Taunter and possibly fuck up my turn 5 Servant of Kalimos? Or do I want to play it save and put a 4-mana Elemental? And is Fire Plume Phoenix's damage battlecry more valuable than the sheer statline and passive effects that Lightspawn or Water Elemental has? Fire Plume Phoenix is very decent, too.

Igneous Elemental
Very cool artwork! I'm a sucker for fiery Elementals. And one that looks a lot more appealing than Fire Fly, actually. The Igneous Elemental is a 3-mana 2/3 with the deathrattle of adding two 1/2 Elemental tokens to your hand. The statline does make it possibly nowhere as good as some of the Elementals I've described, and the 3-mana Elemental slot does already have Tar Creeper and Hot Spring Guardian hanging around in it, but maybe you want to not play the mid-range Elementals, and just rely on token generators like Igneous Elemental and Fire Fly to get 1-mana tokens, and you just play the huge mid-game to end-game Elementals? Certainly a pretty interesting design. Ultimately I don't think Igneous Elemental will be as good as the other early-game Elementals we got this expansion, but still, I like it.


Volatile Elemental
God damn, the artwork on this dude is just phenomenal! And the Golden one they showed off in the stream looks amazing, too. Volatile Elemental is a 2-mana 1/1 that, as a Deathrattle, deals 3 damage to a random enemy minion. It's more of a delayed Flamecannon than an actual minion, in that respect. It's 2 mana so it's easy to hold on to this and throw it out any time, and while it's a bit of a tempo loss, it does guarantee one dead early-game minion in the next turn -- the fact that it only goes to minions and not face makes it a lot better, I think, in the trading game, and the fact that it's 3 damage means that anything short of a Dirty Rat at that stage of the game is going to die. It's also an Elemental with a Deathrattle, so maybe it's a card you want in your Quest-Priest deck, if your Quest-Priest actually runs Elementals alongside it. Liking this card very much, and the Elemental genre actually looks amazing simply due to the large amount of options you have -- which isn't something I can say about Gadgetzan's tri-class cards where the jade and hand-buff enablers were very samey.

So yeah, optimistic about the Elementals, and I'm actually surprised how little pack filler we have this time around compared to Gadgetzan and Old Gods, because even the 'filler' epics actually look that they can be used, if in janky decks. Going to do class card reviews in a day or two. This article is subject to slight edits over the next few days as maybe I get some different changes in opinions or whatever.

Hearthstone: Un'Goro Reveals, Week 3: More Elementals & Dinosaurs!

 Tomorrow we'll have the ultimate super-final stream where every single card gets revealed. Before then, let's talk about the cards that have been revealed for the past week!

Battlenet blog about creating the Adapt mechanic! Over the week quite a fair amount of cards have been released. Also, the art blog offers some really great insight at the visual design of the cards, which is something that's definitely understated when people are all talking about how viable cards are and stuff. Also we're apparently getting the Time-Lost Proto Drake as a card? Also, the third part of the Malone/Doyle saga has been released. The video with Professor Doyle is a little less remarkable than the previous two, but basically they made it to the foot of the volcano and poor Professor Doyle's expedition sketches got burnt down, and we finally get to see what the full Kaleidosaur card looks like.

Eddie's journal is a little more illuminating. Apparently after their encounter with the Murloc tribe, Eddie's camp and underwear got burnt down by what appears to be Fire Flies. Also Eddie apparently owns the Alley Cat, whose name is called Reginald. Apparently, as they avoid fire elementals, instead of seeing the Un'Goro crater walls, they instead see nothing but the jungle. They encounter Kalimos and his little buddies, but as the volcano erupts and the elementals chase them, they're kidnapped by a Pterrordax.

Crackling Razormaw
Crackling Razormaw's a Hunter minion, a 2-mana 3/2 Beast that Adapts another Beast as a battlecry. It's a pretty simple card, possibly comparable to a lesser Houndmaster that doesn't have as severe a stat loss but only gives a single type of buff instead of the Houndmaster giving stat bonuses and Taunt. I previously said Adapt's roughly equal to one mana's worth of stats, so I guess done right the Razormaw might help out in a general Beast Hunter deck, and suddenly giving Windfury or Poisonous to another minion that's ready to attack ain't something to laugh at. Not sure if he's ultimately going to make the cut or not, but he's certainly a nice companion piece to Kindly Grandmother as the Hunter's resident two-mana drop. Without a Beast on board it's just a Bloodfen Raptor which is just bad, I guess.


King Mosh
Warriors join Hunter this time around as having a gigantic bestial dinosaur as the Class Legendary. One of the giant Devilsaur bosses in the World of Warcraft version of Un'Goro crater, King Mosh is a 9-mana 9/7 Beast, which is obviously not the best statline out there. It's a total of 16 stats, comparable to the 9-mana dragons, but a lot more fragile than the 8/8's and 4/12's that Malygos, Alexstrasza and their ilk have. But King Mosh's suboptimal stat distribution belies a powerful battlecry: Mass Execute. Obviously, Execute is a 2-mana spell, and King Mosh allows you to destroy every single damaged minion on board, which control warriors love a lot. Of course, Mosh eats your own damaged minions, but honestly if it didn't then it would be a bit too broken. King Mosh is comparable to Sleep with the Fishes, a spell from Mean Streets of Gadgetzan that only saw fringe play, mostly because it costs 2-mana, and it only deals 3 damage to damaged minions so it doesn't act like an answer. Mosh allows you to just Whirlwind and murder everything on board. It's definitely slow in a 9 mana slot, but it does work quite well against a board filled with Jades. The Beast tag, for what it's worth, does let it be drawn by the Curator. I don't fully think that King Mosh is going to be in every deck, but it's definitely a great Control Warrior card, and definitely a better legendary than poor Varian Wrynn.

Raptor Hatchling
A card blatantly meant to interact with the swamp queen quest that requires you to summon a whole bunch of one drops is Small Raptor. He's a cute little baby raptor, a 1-mana 2/1 Beast that shuffles its mommy, a 1-mana 4/3 Beast. Theoretically it's 2-mana 6/4, which in itself is such a huge value, but the value's kind of offset, similarly to White Eyes, by the fact that mama raptor is shuffled into your deck instead of summoned immediately by a Battlecry or Deathrattle effect. It does allow you to continue playing one-mana cards without losing tempo, though, helping to complete the quest while not topdecking another 2/1 minion in the late game. How powerful a vanilla beast that shuffles another vanilla beast (albeit an overstatted one) will remain to be seen, but I have a hunch that Raptor Hatchling's going to be pretty good, if nothing else to help enable the Hunters' Quest.


Terrorscale Stalker
The Terrorscale Stalker is a Saurok, and he has a similar effect to Princess Huhuran or Feign Death. The Terrorscale isn't a beast, and has a slight stat penalty, losing a point fro the standard for a 3-mana, but it comes in early so it can help trigger those Kindly Grandmothers, or Small Raptors, and as deck builders will note, the more of a single effect you have in a deck, the more consistent it is. Huhuran is powerful, of course, but the fact that you only have a single copy of that effect makes the deck utilizing her as a whole a little less inconsistent. Terrorscale Stalker fixes that a little, I think. The fact that the Terrorscale Stalker is a lot cheaper mana-wise than Princess Huhuran means that he's a lot easier to combo than the Princess. The big problem is that Terrorscale Stalker suffers from the same problem that Rat Pack does -- it's a 3-mana card, and Hunter tends to be pretty heavy on the three-mana slot. I think it's a perfectly balanced card, especially with that slightly lower stat-line.

Thunder Lizard
Speaking of 3-mana 3/3's, Thunder Lizard is a neutral beast with the battlecry that allows you to Adapt it if you played an Elemental in the previous turn. Which I don't think will really see the cut into Elemental decks? It's one thing if your effect is as powerful as the Tol'vir Stoneshaper (turning into a 4-mana Psych-o-Tron with an extra health ain't no joke), but a simple Adapt to a 3-mana 3/3 isn't something that I really want to run in an Elemental deck, I don't think. Cool artwork, though.

Lightfused Stegodon
Jeez, it's the Quartermaster on steroids! The Lightfused Stegodon is the Paladin's dinosaur, and it's a 4-mana 3/4, which is perfectly one mana less stat-wise. Its battlecry? Adapt all your Silver Hand Recruits. Hitting one Recruit would break even. Hitting three, or four? Man, this dude's going to be insane in Wild with Muster for Battle. And giving the Silver Hand Recruits the Attack buff is basically a free Bloodlust. Giving them the Poisonous adaptation's going to make them a board clear. I really think this dude's a pretty powerful card, one that suddenly makes the 1-mana summon two 1/1 dudes suddenly feel appealing.

Hemet, Jungle Hunter
A very strange card, Hemet the Jungle Hunter is an upgrade to the hilariously bad Hemet Nesingwary from Goblins vs Gnomes, unquestionably the worst of the worst as far as Legendaries go. His effect this time around thankfully has nothing to do with his old, crappier incarnation. Hemet is now a more respectable 6-mana 6/6, and as a battlecry he destroys all cards in your deck that costs less than 3. It's... a very interesting card, which in theory will allow you to get rid of any early-game cards you failed to draw before turn 6, and with a few exceptions those tend to be bad anyway. Obviously not a card you want to play in Pirate Warriors, One-mana Hunters, Jade Druids or Rogue decks, but it is still a pretty interesting card that pulls off a pretty impressive 'thin out your deck' play. Maybe use Hemet to kill every single 1-drop card in your Carnassa Hunter deck, then play Queen Carnassa the next turn, thereby guaranteeing that you'll keep drawing cycle cards? It's going to leave your deck very vulnerable to fatigue, though. I'm not entirely sure what deck New Hemet is going to be used in, some kind of heavy-duty control deck I suppose, but honestly it's going to be a 'wait and see' card.

The Last Kaleidosaur/Galvadon
So after accidentally having its effect be leaked by other language translations, the Paladins' Quest Legendary, Galvadon, is finally confirmed to be a 5-mana 5/5 Beast that Adapts FIVE TIMES as a Battlecry. While the value of Adapt is still questionable until we actually see it in play (remember when we all thought Grimy Goons was going to be good?) Adapt really looks like each Adapt costs somewhere between half to one and a half of a mana. In addition to already having respectable vanilla stats, Galvadon can adapt five times. Which mean he can be a 11/5 with Windfury, Divine Shield and Stealth. Which is just scary and absolutely makes Al'Akir's nonexistent mouth hang agape in jealousy. Galvadon has the potential to really be broken despite his innocuous "eh, same thing but five times" battlecry.

Now what about the quest, though? It's... cast 6 spells on your minions. Which actually doesn't really seem as tricky as the Rogue's Quest, but it's going to take some time before you can get 6 spells out. The only real good buffing Paladin spells at this moment are Blessing of Kings and Dinosize. Even with the Quest, I don't see Blessing of Might, Blessing of Wisdom or Hand of Protection being played, neither Lay on Hands or Forbidden Healing are ever getting cast on minions, and Seal of Champions is rotating out. I guess we'll see Silvermoon Portal or Divine Strength being played after all? It's an interesting quest and an interesting reward. We'll see how well this stacks up against the other quests we've seen so far.

Blazecaller
So yeah, if you're playing Elementals, Blazecaller's definitely a dude you want to put in your deck. It comes on turn 7, so it comes perfectly after the Shaman's Fire Elemental and the Mage's 6-mana version of Pyros. It's a 7-mana 6/6 that deals 5 damage as damage if you played an Elemental the previous turn. And judging by Blackwing Technician, who's also a one-mana-more-expensive-for-his-stat and has a conditional damage dealing battlecry, Blazecaller's a pretty powerful effect. I honestly think that if I make an Elemental Shaman deck, Blazecaller's going to be my 7-drop instead of the Stone Sentinel. It's actually looking pretty good in my opinion, a lot better than the likes of Ozruk.

Servant of Kalimos
Servant of Kalimos is adorable! Also, another neutral Elemental. He costs one mana's worth of stats less, a 4/5 statline for 5 mana. The Servant of Kalimos is also an Elemental, mind you, and its battlecry is one of the better ones -- if you play an Elemental last turn, Discover an Elemental. Discover is a pretty powerful card, and depending on your class you can get some really good Elementals, too. Blazecaller, Kalimos himself, Al'Akir, Ragnaros Lightlord, Fire Elemental, Water Elemental... I think it's a card you'll want for your turn five play if you're running an Elemental deck. A card that discovers another card without stat penalty is actually pretty good, though, again, you really need a dedicated Elemental deck to make it work.


Ravenous Pterrordax
A curious dinosaur that joins Clutchmother Zavas in the ranks of new Warlock beasts, which is something that I honestly didn't expect to ever see. The Pterrordax is a 4-mana 4/4 with the Battlecry of destroying a friendly minion to adapt twice. Warlocks do have ways to make disposable minions with the brand-new Nether Portal, or from Possessed Villager or Forbidden Ritual, though without Imp Gang Boss or Implosion in Standard, it's a bit hard to find disposable 1/1's. I guess killing a Power Overwhelming'd minion is something, except P.O. is leaving Standard as well. Killing like a Flame Imp or Voidwalker will always feel bad, and yes, theoretically it's a huge, huge value boost since you get to Adapt twice, which means you might get something as big as a 4-mana 4/6 with Divine Shield or something. Ultimately I don't think Adapting twice is really worth destroying a friendly minion, though, and it'd be horrible if you topdecked this dude. An empty board means the Pterrordax is a bad 4-mana 4/4, but it's worse if you have a board with valuable minions like Doomguards and the like.

Evolving Spores
A Druid 4-mana spell that adapts all your minions... and it's honestly not very appealing. Gentle Megasaur does the same thing to all Murlocs, and still comes with a body that doesn't even get a stat-to-cost penalty. A 4-mana Adapt really depends on the type of adaptation you get, really. Some adaptations are just bad when done en masse. A mass +1/+1 is overcosted at 4, especially since Mark of the Lotus does it for 1-mana. Mass Stealth, likewise, is a shit choice considering Conceal is also priced at 1-mana. I don't really see the point of making all your minions get Taunt, +3 Health, spell-proof, or get the 1/1 Deathrattle (you'll want to cast Evolving Spores on a full board, and when they die they'll just swarm the board with the maximum amount of 1/1's which isn't that good for 4 mana). I guess mass Divine Shield or mass Poisonous is somewhat decent for trading, but do you really want this card to just do that? The +3 Attack or mass Windfury are probably best for finisher purposes, but it's not reliable that you get those, and besides Druid still has Savage Roar around. So no, I don't think this card is super reliable or will really be played.


Spirit Echo
Spirit Echo is a card that I didn't expect to see as a Shaman card of all things. It's something that Rogues would really love to have considering their new quest. But Shaman gets yet another strange new toy with Spirit Echo, which is surprising considering their repertoire in the Un'Goro set is split evenly between Murlocs and Elementals, leaning more towards the latter side. Spirit Echo... kinda synergizes with those two, but also kinda don't. Like, Elementals benefit from playing other Elementals, so obviously having a recycle mechanic is useful (ditto for Jade Shaman too, actually), and getting a Kalimos or Blazecaller or Stone Sentinel back, so long as you have an activator, would be pretty great. Of course you still have to pay the cost when you re-play those minions, but it's still pretty good. Now whether you want to pay three mana to give an entire board 'return this card to your hand when it dies', and then have to pay the mana to summon Kalimos or Megafin or Aya Blackpaw or whatever again... I dunno. My gut says that Spirit Echo is good, but situational. We'll see. It's 3 mana, so it's kind of cheap, and comparable effects like Echo of Medivh and Blood Warriors did see play.

Tortollan Primalist
There's not enough Tortollans in this set! For a brand new race, we've got, what, three, four of them in total? The Primalist doesn't seem quite good either. He's a 8-mana 5/4, which is disastrously bad stats, and his effect? A glorified Servant of Yogg-Saron. Yes, you get to choose the spell, so if you get something that definitely targets the enemy (Consecration, Flamestrike, all Secrets) it's good, but is it worth paying 8 mana for a 5/4? Yes, you'll probably want to get the value, but Discover means that the three spells are going to be from your class, which begs the question -- instead of playing this understatted card that has a not insignificant chance to whiff, why not put in said spell?

Spikeridged Steed
Well, at least we're getting a somewhat decent Paladin buff card to play with the quest. It's a +2/+6 and Taunt, which is kind of like a better, more expensive version of Power Word: Tentacles... but the value doesn't stop there, because you summon the 2/6-Taunt as a Stegodon when the buffed minion dies. It's actually not a bad play. I'm not entirely sure if you want to spend your turn six buffing a minion and doing nothing else, and that really seems to be the big weakness of the Paladin Quest -- Galvadon is insanely good, but when are you really going to get the chance to play all the buff cards? Regardless, though, if you do end up playing the Paladin Quest, I'm pretty sure Spikeridged Steed makes it into the deck. (Side-note: this card wins the 'most difficult to pronounce mentally' prize.)

Stegodon
Some sources are citing that the Stegodon from the Spikeridged Steed is actually a collectible card in the set itself? What a fucking boring card that is, then, our first real 'boring statline swapped around' card in the set. It's a slightly more defensive Sen'jin, and that's more or less it.


Cornered Sentry
"Clever girl!"The Sentry's a pretty interesting card. She's similar to Dirty Rat in that she's a 2-mana 2/6 Taunt, but instead of summoning an opponent's minion from their hand, she summons three 1/1 Raptors for the opponent. The flavour's certainly there, this lady explorer just stumbled into the wrong neighbourhood and is now attacked by a group of angry tiny raptors. On one hand, unlike Dirty Rat you don't deny powerful battlecries. But on the other hand, you also minimize the chance of giving your opponent a free huge body on the field, and while three 1/1's can definitely do some work, if Leeroy Jenkins is any indication they tend to not matter much against a 6/2, let alone a 2/6. Plus, this followed up with a Ravaging Ghoul is just amazing. Just don't give the Raptors to a Hunter, lest they do a lot of Adapt/Houndmaster/Beast shenanigans with them.

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. 

Hearthstone: Un'Goro Reveals, Week 2: Elementals & Quests

 So over this week we've got a fair amount of reveals, too. This is done in rough chronological order because I'm doing it as a draft over time as new cards are revealed. I'll get this over with before tomorrow's big stream reveal. We've got... a fair amount.

We also get the Part Two of Professor Doyle's journeys through Un'Goro, and really, it's just free, additional flavour content that Blizzard's not charging the fans for. Poor Doyle's still suffering from the lilyfeather venom from the first part, he and his long-suffering cameraman Eddie find themselves in the company of Murlocs (conveniently off-screen, with all we see are prop hands and dancing shadows) before being fed a cup of some hallucinogenic jungle vine extract before passing out. Moral: do not eat anything handed to you by Murlocs. More hints of the mysterious Paladin quest reward, Galvadon, is shown. It's a 5-mana 5/5, apparently, but we still don't know the effect.

That ties in with a blog that's the third part of Doyle's journals, and this time Eddie's journals actually have cards stuck to them! After their encounter with the Tortollan tribe (whose leader is called Umbra -- a possible Legendary?), they were handed to a tribe of Murlocs, which we see in the video. Eddie's totally convinced that they were being dressed up to be fed to the Murlocs' tribe leader, Megafin... who turns out to be a really, really nice bloke and he's now pen-pals with Eddie. The Murloc village is also on top of a dinosaur's back, and Megafin is this giant Murloc that leads the dinosaur around Un'Goro. The (actually quite long) journal page ends with Eddie and Doyle reaching the base of the volcano, where they part ways with the Tortollan/Murloc community to scale the volcano and seek 'the truth'.

Really like the lore. Just hope that the Un'Goro expansion is a fair bit more balanced with regards to the metagame.

Crystalline Oracle
Priests get a one-mana card that's basically a smaller Shifting Shade with the Elemental tag. It's a Deathrattle card, so it automatically is good for the Awaken-the-Makers style deck, and it's 1/1 statline makes is very comparable to Swashburglar and Babbling Book... except the Crystalline Oracle's a fair bit worse due to the fact that it gives you a card after it dies instead of immediately when it enters the board. The relatively narrower scope that the Oracle can draw form is either an advantage or disadvantage depending on the deck you're facing, and unlike Drakonid Operative, you can't choose. It raised a bit of controversy online, apparently, for being an RNG-fiesta card, and... I don't really understand why this card in particular made people angry compared to other random-effect cards. It's one mana, which means that it's perfect to combo with the 'play an Elemental the turn before' style effects that we'll talk about later below.

Sunkeeper Tarim
The Paladin's minion Legendary is revealed, and he's a cool-looking giant stone statue Tol'vir thing. Tarim is a 6-mana 3/7 that unleashes the Keeper of Uldaman effect (set a minion to 3/3) on every single minion on board. At first I was confused -- it's like a variation of Eadric the Pure, but instead of disabling everyone, it also potentially buffs your opponents' minions. I mean, sure, your little Silver Hand Recruits get buffed, but why would I want give my opponents a board full of 3/3's? What if they have a board of tiny pirates or totems or imps? Why would I want to buff them? Well, when my opponent's board is nothing but Jade Golems, of course! It's a pretty powerful card that's going to fuck up any Jade Golem board, and the fact that Tarim himself is a 3-attack Taunter means that it's literally going to eat up the weakened Jade Golems like breakfast. 3/7 Taunt is literally the perfect statline to go up against a board of 3/3's. Tarim is going to eat up at least two minions and force a third if the enemy doesn't have a ping. No, it's not the kind of hard counter that automatically makes Jade decks fall apart, not at all. But it's still a pretty cool card that does the double work of buffing your board (Stand Against Darkness? No?) and disables your enemy's heavy-hitters at the same time. On the other hand it also has the potential to really screw you over, especially if you are controlling big minions yourself like Tirions... I dunno. We'll see. I honestly am a bit more optimistic about Tarim, and he's probably a card that requires you to really read the board properly before playing him.

Shadow Visions
Priest gets a weird epic spell. It's 2 mana, and it allows you to discover a copy of a spell in your deck... so, yeah, you get an extra copy of whatever spell, and theoretically you can rig it so your deck only contains several specific spells, but why would you want to spend a card slot and two mana instead of just putting the spell again? It's kind of a sneaky way to implement tutoring for spells, but at the same time Priest isn't exactly a class that wants multiples of spells that badly. In Mage or Rogue, Shadow Visions would be pretty awesome, but for the life of me I can't think of a Priest spell that justifies me putting a tempo-loss card and spend two mana to get a copy of it. Like, it's cute, but it's just 2-mana draw a card. And gaining a copy makes it better than Purify, obviously, but that's not a hard bar to clear. It's unique, I guess? Lots of people love this card, but I'm just underwhelmed.

Clutchmother Zavas
Oh hey, a Silithid! Very, very surprised to see a Silithid as a Warlock card of all things -- the Beast tag certainly doesn't matter here. So Zavas is a boss in the Silithid hives that are found in Un'Goro crater, and she synergizes very well with the discard mechanic. The only real cards that benefit from being discarded are Fist of Jaraxxus (which suck) and Silverware Golem (which rock), so adding another minion that benefits from being discarded is very good. One of the problems that fulfilling the quest has is that sometimes you just run out of cards in your hand to discard -- one of the best ways currently to play Soulfire or Doomguard certainly is to play them as the last card in your hand. But therein lies one of the big problems for the Lakkari Sacrifice quest. You run out of cards to discard at one point, and you're going to sacrifice a lot of life to life tap if you didn't manage to get the Malchezaar's Imp combo going. And since Lakkari Sacrifice counts the number of cards you discard instead of the number of discard-effect cards you play, that presents a problem.

Zavas fixes that, both by being a card that benefits from being discarded, as well as keeping sure that there's a card to discard in your hand. Zavas just gets bigger and bigger, getting a not insignificant +2/+2 buff, basically growing and growing and growing, until it becomes like a 2-mana 8/8 or 10/10. And, sure, the Clutchmother is still a glorified beatstick that your opponent will see coming, and a single Shadow Word: Death will get rid of her, but if your opponent doesn't have an immediate answer then Zavas is free to destroy your opponent's face. Not to mention the combo between Clutchmother Zavas and the quest and the stream of 3/2 Imps... Yes, she's not a demon, but then there's not much demons in the Un'Goro crater. Zavas may be a wee bit too slow by virtue of its effect, but I do love that between Sherazin, Elise, King Dred and Zavas we're getting a lot of unique effects for legendaries in this expansion, which I love.

Ozruk
On Tuesday, Battlenet posted a post about Elementals. We get confirmation that eighteen old minions get to become Elementals (Water, Earth, Fire, Frost, Unbound and Rumbling Elementals; Magma and Ice Rager; Anomalus, the two Ragnaroses, Al'Akir, Neptulon, Lightspawn, Dust Devil, Fireguard Destroyer, Arcane Anomaly, and Baron Geddon) -- which is basically everything I guessed would become elementals. The Shades, Ancients and Bog Beasts don't count. But anyway, the gimmick is that Elemental cards get a bonus when you play an Elemental in the previous turn, which actually is a great way to make the older Elemental cards still retain their powerful effects but still interact with the new gimmick. So the Elemental tribe has two distinct cards: Elementals that are just strong minions to play, and newer ones that benefit from playing those other minions before. It makes cards lke Arcane Anomaly, a previously oft-overloooked minion, suddenly be useful because he's now a cheap one-mana minion that activates Elemental synergy. The new Crystalline Oracle and Pyros makes sense when you consider that they're also cheap Elementals to be played on an earlier turn. It's a pretty unique thing going on, instead of doing something similar to Pirates and Murlocs with a 'give +1/+1 to all!' style cards.

Take Ozruk, for example. He's a legendary neural minion, this big-ass earth elemental with beards made up of fungal tendrils or something, a boss in the Deepholme raids in World of Warcraft. He's a 9-mana 5/5 with Taunt, which is obviously garbage stats, but he gets +5 Health for each elemental you played last turn. Which... well, still isn't super good. If you played a single Elemental, then Ozruk becomes a 9-mana Ancient of War. Still shit, because Ancient of War is 7 mana. But if you get to play, like, two or three Elementals, then Ozruk is a 9-mana 5/15 or 5/20, which is a lot better for 9 mana. On the other hand, though, Ozruk is just... a bigger Ancient of War that needs you to jump through some hoops to activate his effect. And even then he gets decimated with a single removal card -- unlike fellow 9-mana neutral taunt legendary Soggoth the Slitherer, a card dear to my heart. Soggoth has the spell-immunity ability which prevents it from being taken down with something as cheap as a Hex, and Ozruk just doesn't quite work that well. I mean, yeah, sure, it's going to be great if Elementals are great, as another weapon in their arsenal, but it's just good and not super-great. And if the effects don't pan out it sucks.


Stone Sentinel
The Stone Sentinel is a Shaman card, and he costs a whooping 7-mana, with a measly 4/4 statline. Eh? Eh? 7-mana 4/4? Cute, Blizzard. The Stone Sentinel requires you to play an Elemental in the previous turn to, well, basically do a free Feral Spirits, summoning two 2/3's with Taunt. Unlike Ozruk, it's an effect that happens once and doesn't stack. Doing the math, you get a 8/10 for seven mana, which is a decent amount of total stats even if the 2/3's are relatively easy to remove by turn seven. I don't think Stone Sentinel is going to be that good. Time will tell if I put my foot in my mouth, of course, but my impression of the Stone Sentinel is that it comes too slow, and it doesn't compare very favourably to Shaman's other seven-drop minion -- the Jade Chieftain, which also summons a creature with Taunt, except Jade is a lot easier to get running than Elementals. Again, there's a huge problem -- the Stone Sentinel is, in theory, a pretty good card, and even has a buddy in Shaman's classic minion the Fire Elemental, a powerful six-drop... but can the elementals outshine the jade? It's not a bad card, but it's not super-great either, and the fact that it's conditional means that if you can't manage to get its effect off it's just an absolutely crap 4/4 for 7 mana.

Fire Fly
Of course, the nature of the Elemental gimmick means that we really need more cheap Elementals, Which is where the next two cards come in. The Fire Fly's cool. He's a 1-mana 1/2 Elemental, so he'll trigger Elemental effects, but as a battlecry he adds a vanilla 1/2 Elemental to your hand, allowing you to have this 1/2 body you can just drop down whenever you get ready to summon an Elemental next turn. The Fire Fly is a minion whose purpose is only to activate larger, stronger Elementals, and it's the existence of cards like this that really make me somewhat confident that the 'play an Elemental the previous turn' gimmick might actually work. Again, I think the tribe needs a lot more support to really work, but cards like Fire Fly are well-designed token-generators that, while weak (1/2 isn't anything to write home about), with enough Elementals that benefit from this gimmick then the Elemental tribal synergy will really work well. Also, this is exactly the way to design a one-mana minion that works well with a synergy yet isn't absolutely overpowering and punishing the way Small-Time Buccaneer and Tunnel Trogg were. Otherwise, though, as cool as the design is, Fire Fly just doesn't cut it if you're not using it for Elemental combo purposes.

Flame Geyser
Similar to Fire Fly, only instead of a 1/2 minion, it's a 2-mana spell that deals 2 damage. It's definitely sub-par value, especially when Tempo Mage loses one of its strongest tools in Flamewaker. It's a weaker card compared to Frostbolt, and while Jade Shuriken does a similar thing, it summons the jade idol immediately on the board. Still, it's kind of fair, being a 2-mana deal 2 damage and draw a (very specific) card. The 1/2 Elemental token's only going to be useful for activating other Elementals. That said, if the Elemental gimmick doesn't work for Mages, then this is a pretty sub-par card.

Primalfin Lookout
A neutral Murloc card that's going to help out in the below Shaman Quest, the Primalfin is a 2-mana 3/2 Murloc, which is nice. As someone who plays a swarm Shaman Murloc deck for a bit, we do need more 2-mana Murlocs. The Primalfin basically plays out similarly to Gorillabot A-3 from League of Explorers, except without a stat penalty. If you have another Murloc on the field, this allows you do discover a Murloc. Definitely a very powerful card for swarm Murloc-type decks, which really seems to be the only Murloc archetype that's going to be viable, considering Anyfin and Everyfin are both rotating out before Un'Goro. We'll see if the Murloc archetype will continue surviving without those two finisher spells, but if they do then Primalfin Lookout looks to be one of the more powerful Murloc cards out there. One of the weakness of Murloc decks (that aren't in Warlocks) is that you tend to run out of cards in your hand, and only Coldlight Oracle is both a Murloc and draws cards (and it draws for your opponent, too) so having a card like this is definitely a great, great boon especially since it's a Discover effect, which is almost always more powerful than just adding a random Murloc -- you get to choose those Warleaders and Finjas. The fact that Murloc Tinyfin and Sir Finley are moving out means that the only real bad, low-statted Murloc left is the 1-mana 2/1 Murloc Raider.

Unite the Murlocs
Sir Finley Mrrglton might not be featured in this expansion as either a card or in the trailers, but he sure shows up in the artwork for this card! It's the Shamans' quest, and it's definitely nowhere as easily to build around as the Priest or the Warlock quests, because it's tied to a specific tribe -- the Murlocs. But that's okay, because everyone will agree that Shaman has had its time to shine as the unshakeable dominator of the meta for an entire year. If the quest revolved around summoning totems or casting overload cards then it's just going to encourage the same spamming of Flamewreathed Faceless and Thing from Below that Shamans did during the Old Gods meta. Having them turn to Murlocs, while probably not the most popular thing to do, is something I like. Mostly because I like Murlocs, so I might just be a little more biased.

Anyway, the quest wants you to summon ten Murlocs. Like Awaken the Makers, it's summon, so Murloc Tiderunner counts as two, and the Shamans' Call the Finishers counts as four. Finja gets you through this quest remarkably quickly too. Ten Murlocs aren't that easy on first glance, but Call the Finishers definitely makes up for it. As mentioned above, Murloc decks tend to play multiple cards in one turn, so having an empty hand is definitely a possibility. Unite the Murlocs rewards this gameplay by giving you Megafin, a mammoth of a Murloc. He's 5-mana 8/8, larger than Flamewreathed, and in addition to being a gigantic beatstick himself he fills your hand with random Murlocs -- which tend to be good if you're playing a Murloc deck. More chances to get Murloc Warleaders, and in the current standard, again, the only 'bad' Murloc in your hand is the 2/1 Murloc Raider. There are problems inherent with this, though, namely because you'll start with one less hand thanks to playing the 'Unite the Murlocs' card on turn one, and Murloc Shaman decks tend to run out of cards really quickly. Sure, Megafin replenishes it, but then it'll be a wee bit more reliant on Coldlight Oracles and Finja to really survive, and if you don't draw into them you're liable to run out of steam before you reach ten. Still, the payoff, the big grand poobah of all Murlocs, is just amazing.

Kalimos, Primal Lord
So lore-wise, Kalimos is absolutely cool. He's a Primal Elemental, which is an Elemental formed out of all four primary elements -- fire, earth, air and water. It's an existence only hinted at in the old RPG sourcebooks, and so far in World of Warcraft only Animus, who's artificially created by the Twilight's Hammer Clan, can claim to be such a type. As an extra bonus, Kalimos's name is definitely derived from Kalimag, the name of the Elementals' language, again, from the old WOW-RPG sourcebooks. But as a card? Kalimos falls into the same category that made Stone Sentinel and Ozruk kind of disappointing. He's a 8-mana 7/7 with a pretty powerful battlecry, and the ability to choose between multiple effects gives him a degree of flexibility. Again, he's a good card, but he's not super-broken the way the Jade cards are and it's still hard to justify running Elemental Shaman over Jade Shaman -- which was, I think, one of the problems with TGT and Karazhan where the newly introduced gimmicks simply aren't powerful enough to compete with the previous toys. Kalimos allows you to choose only one from 6 damage to the enemy hero's face, 3-damage AOE, filling your board with 1/1's, and heal your hero for 12. I guess in an ideal curve-stone world you go from Fire Elemental on turn 6 to Stone Sentinel on turn 7 to Kalimos on turn 8? Turn 8's definitely not a time when you want to fill your board with 1/1's I don't think, but the other three effects definitely pay for Kalimos's below-average statline and the pre-requisite. Like, the  invocation of air choice is basically a free, guaranteed Lightning Storm that always hits for 3, which costs a total of 4-5 mana depending on how you rank Overload. The invocation of fire likewise is a free Lava Burst. But on the other hand... I just don't think Kalimos is honestly that powerful to be the endgame in an Elemental deck, though he's by no means a bad card.

Tol'vir Stoneshaper
It's another card that benefits from playing an Elemental last turn, except the Tol'vir Stoneshaper isn't an Elemental himself. He's a 4-mana 3/5, which is kind of m'eh stats -- one point less than a Yeti -- and he gains Taunt and Divine Shield, essentially becoming a bulkier Psych-o-Tron (who normally costs 5 mana) when you get the effect off. It's a pretty solid card all around, possibly an even better anti-aggro Taunter than Tar Creeper. On the other hand, you're not always guaranteed to get Taunt with him, so while he's not a bad card, he's also a bit more inconsistent which makes up for his pretty nice total value when he does go off. Don't think I have much to say about it -- the Taunt/Divine Shield combo is a pretty awesome wall, and so if you're playing an Elemental deck you'll probably want this dude in it. Again, at the risk of sounding like a broken record -- I'm not sure how viable it'll be.

Hydrologist
A Paladin minion, a 2-mana 2/2. She's a Murloc, too, with an adorable piece of artwork. So what's her gimmick? Well, as a battlecry, you discover a Secret. And unless we get something with a power level comparable to Avenge, Hydrologist's probably not going to see much play. Paladins don't really do Murlocs that well without Anyfin, and hasn't been. So I dunno. Maybe they're getting more cards that'll make Secrets or Murlocs good? As it is, though, I don't really see this card being super playable. Jeweled Scarab was powerful because it gave you a card on-tempo for the next turn, so despite its low stats it's still played. Paladin Secrets tend to be bad, so yeah, it's a filler card. A lot more interesting than Worgen Greaser, mind you, but filler nonetheless.

The Caverns Below
I don't think the Caverns Below is going to be a top-tier quest, but damn if it isn't a wonderfully designed quest. The other three quests revealed so far have all been relatively simple ones that don't require much thought. Summon X number of Y, trigger X keyword Y times. The Caverns Below wants you to play a minion with the same name four times. And it's play, not summon, so no Doppelgangster shenanigans. Obviously you can only get two copies of a minion in your hand, so how do you do this quest? Shadowsteps, Shadowcasters, Thistle Tea, various 'bounce back to hand' cards (Gadgtezan Ferryman anyone? No? Brewmasters then), hell, even Vanish! It's a deck that requires a lot more thought put into it, and honestly I'm a little baffled as to what deck can run with this gimmick and be awesome with it. Of course, the reward isn't super-exciting mostly because I haven't quite figured it out yet. Basically, it's a 5-mana spell and it makes all your minions summoned or played from then onwards be 5/5's. It's big, sure, but at the same time it means a lot of plays like C'Thun or Edwin VanCleef or Jade end up being crap since they can't grow beyond 5/5. On the other hand, cheaper, smaller minions get to be absolutely powerful. Defias Ringleader and Murloc Tidehunter become 2-mana 10/10's split over two bodies. Harvest Golem is a 3-mana 5/5 that summons a 5/5 after it dies. It's still a very curious gimmick, though again it's going to take some thought to think of a deck that can reliably Shadowstep a minion three times and still benefit from the 5-mana card. Maybe something with a draw effect? Novice Engineer is a cheap card with a drawing battlecry effect, and when Crystal Core comes into play she gets turned from 1/1 to 5/5.

Mimic Pod
Old Gods introduced Thistle Tea, a card that see almost no play at all due to the unpredictability of its effect. It's a very unique card, but at 5 mana for something that's unreliable isn't that awesome. Mimic Pod is just the same card, shrunk down into a more manageable 3-mana card, drawing a card and adding another copy of it to your hand. Spending 3 mana to draw a card and get a second one is definitely a lot easier to justify when you accidentally draw like an Assassinate or something -- think of the difference between Arcane Blast and Flame Lance. A cheaper spell with a similar but scaled-down effect tends to be a lot better, especially in Rogue. And it definitely works really well with the Caverns Below.

Tol'vir Warden
Revealed a short while after I posted this post, this is a Hunter card, a 5-mana 3/5 minion that draws 2 1-mana minions as a battlecry. It's another tutor card on the same vein as the Paladin's Small-Time Recruits from the previous expansion, except it comes stuck to a body. A 5-mana 3/5 that draws two cards is pretty great! It's an Azure Drake with stats swapped around and exchanging a Spell Damage for a draw effect. But it draws two one-mana minions. And Hunters tend to not want their one-mana minions on turn 5 or 6. Looking at the current cards, post-rotation, Hunter will still have Fiery Bat, Timber Wolf and Alleycat available to them. Timber Wolf isn't really played a lot, and I don't see any of the neutral 1-manas except maybe (that's a huge maybe) Argent Squire make it into a Hunter deck. So that leaves four cards, if you're running two Bats and two Cats. Maybe you run pirates? Southsea Deckhand and Eaglehorn Bow isn't the best thing out there, but it's something, I guess? Thing is, it's not really that good to play either of them on turn six, and the Warden himself not being a Beast means that it's one less activator for Houndmaster, Kill Command, etc which tends to be Hunter's bread and butter. And the Tol'vir's effect doesn't go off every time, and a 5-mana 3/5 that does nothing is really bad. And I'm honestly unconvinced that drawing any two 1-mana minions would be worth slotting this card into your deck, unless the set gives us some great synergy -- either via strong 1-mana minions or something that'll make Pirate Hunter work. Also, why does this particular Tol'vir seem to keep pet dogs?