Hearthstone's new core set has now been fully revealed and we've got more dragons! Before we jump into it though, here's a quick recap on the Core set:

  • If you want to see all 29 new cards, check out this article.
  • If you want to see all the cards in one place, you can visit our Core 2021 Expansion Guide.
  • You can build decks with the new cards by visiting our deckbuilder, choosing your class, and selecting the format "Year of the Gryphon".

With that out of the way, let's talk about these three new Dragons that were revealed! If you want to see our last review on Dragons which featured Ysera, Malygos and Deathwing, click here!

Alexstrasza the Life-Binder Card Image

A very interesting rework of the original Alexstrasza. The fact that you can aim at either minions and heroes now (yes, you can go face) is very relevant as it gives the card flexibility and opens up plenty of new scenarios and interactions. Just to name a few:

  • If you're low on Health, you usually want to use Alexstrasza on yourself around 6/7 Health - with Alexstrasza the Life-Binder you'll be able to get around the same amount of healing most of the times; You'll be able to heal yourself even when you're beyond 15!
  • Setting your opponent to 15 and dealing 8 damage to it is not the same thing, but at least this new Alex can chip away your opponent's armor and prevent some synergies like Shield Slam. There can be scenarios in which Midrange decks will run this card as a finisher against control.
  • If Alexstrasza the Life-Binder is your only tempo play, you'll be able to play it and just nuke an opponent minion or heal yourself even if you don't need to; on the other hand, old Alexstrasza always asked you to choose a hero, so that sometimes you were forced to sacrifice your own life total in order to push stats and play an 8/8, which was quite the sad move to pull off. This is a niche interaction that doesn't happen so often, but it's still a great step forward.
  • When targeting minions, it either works as a Healing Touch or a Flame Lance, which is quite a good effect since we also get board presence with an 8/8 body.

All in all, a very flexible and cool minion that the Hearthstone players will be more than happy to experiment with.

Nozdormu the Eternal Card Image

A meme card, just like its predecessor! Since it's a Start of the Game effect, unless both players willingly run a vanilla 7 man 8/8 (which isn't bad, but not great either since it has no synergies outside of the Dragon tribe and is just a beat stick), you won't be able to get the 15-seconds-per-turn effect.

A very fun card we expect to see lots of play in friendly matches or those rolling the dice and taking their chances at playing "speedstone" on the ladder, but we doubt it will see competitive play. Though, there will almost certainly be a tournament out there somewhere at some point that will require the card in everyone's decks.

The biggest upside of Nozdormu's fresh addition is that it was finally able to send the original Nozdormu away. That card caused so much trouble throughout the course of its existence!

Onyxia the Broodmother Card Image

While Onyxia is not a Dragon Aspect but just the daughter of Deathwing, she's still a big Dragon from Classic and we think she deserves to be in this review.

Now, for what regards the card itself, there are a few things that are worth talking about. First of all, it's a strictly better Onyxia: you won't get a full board of Whelps at the beginning of your turn and therefore you'll be able to play other minions from hand (Strongman for example); However, the interesting part is that it will trigger at the end of each turn, meaning that if your opponent won't be able to remove it, you'll get at least another swarm of 1/1s at the end of his turn and so on. This characteristic makes it also a better Shu'ma, which is not a great achievement since that minion saw very little play only in the niche Unseal the Vault Hunter, but it's still something.

Given all of this, we're quite confident that Onyxia the Broodmother will be able to find a home in some "big" archetypes, especially if we'll receive more cards like Commencement.

What do you think of these new cards? Let us know in the comments below!