Card reveals continue during day 7 for Hearthstone's Festival of Legends card reveals. Today you can expect to see Mage, Demon Hunter, and Paladin cards. Missed previous cards? Check out our expansion guide!
Don't forget to talk about the new cards in the comments and if you want to talk about them individually, we've got threads in our Card Discussion forum for every one. You can also take part in our expansion Tavern Crawl, which rewards you with limited-time cosmetics on-site, for voting and comments on cards.
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March 24 Festival of Legends Card Reveals
Here are all the cards that Blizzard have revealed today, March 24 2023, for Festival of Legends.
Comments
Yay endless discovers just what we needed...
Funkfin is a Vessina for decks running a bunch of Divine Shields. It's also a decent murloc for The Purator assuming you're running a decent number of Divine Shields. Is the only one of these cards that doesn't work with Starlight Groove not that I think that matters.
Jitterbug seems like a pretty good source of card draw in paladin. It is a decent beast on it's own for The Purator especially since pure is almost certainly keeping Sanguine Soldier and Seal of Blood. That said Lightray is already a beast (and an elemental) for that deck. If your Starlight Groove bubble pops it'll also give you a card draw funnily enough.
Spotlight - Should let you use your own bubble if I'm reading it right which will then refresh itself since this is a holy spell. Even if you don't do that this is a decent tempo card that you can trade away if for some reason you can't get a target for it right away unlike something like Promotion.
If Paladin gives up on pure for whatever reason Candleraiser seems great with these.
Jitterbug is a powerhouse. The best move when facing Divine Shield opponents is often to leave Divine Shield up. The punish for doing so is now REAL. On top of that, if Pally can generate Divine Shield on their turn and drop a Jitterbug, they are getting card advantage immediately.
The "downside" to Jitterbug is the hit to stats. Sub-Yeti Health is bad, right? Well, when the enemy has to waste a damage source just clearing the Divine Shield, you've likely broken even there or even made a profit. So no real downside.
If Pally gets a wide board early they could win the game by 5 just from card advantage. This is the kind of beatings Death Knight needs to match it. I'm not so sure the other classes deserve it.
Spotlight is harder to estimate without being able to test a deck out. What it does do is punish the crap out of slower decks. Most decks have a hard time generating 5 damage AoE. (With Shadowcloth Needle going away, Undead Priest is really hurting on this point.) That means that the even if you sacrifice the minion holding Divine Shield to enemy crowd control, you still likely have an Elemental ready to swing face.
And if a deck doesn't clear your crappiest Divine Shield minion, you punish with a 2-mana 5/5. And maybe you draw a card.
And do you know what gives you a lot of trash weenies with Divine Shield? Lothraxion the Redeemed. Boy, it would be great if he were in Core -- oh look, he is. I questioned his usefulness in this expansion until now. And until he comes out, Buffet Biggun, Blood Matriarch Liadrin, and Sanguine Soldier can get you some cheap sources as well.
Okay, upon reflection, this card may be waaaaay easier to play than I thought. 3 mana make a 2/1 and a 5/5 by turn 2 is pretty okay.
I immediately thought that this was going to be a Control payoff effect with Starlight Groove. I'm now thinking that Starlight Groove has even more tempo/aggro potential than I originally thought. It will be like Warrior where you are forced to hit face to clear off Armor/Divine Shield so that the Warrior/Paladin can't synergize with it. That's going to be annoying to face and amusing to use.
Funkfin is a Bloodlust. Drop him and maybe a Seal of Blood after your Divine Shielded Silver Hand goons were ignored by your opponent and get that win. Eat your heart out, Grave Strength.
Okay, Paladin's looking solid, maybe as strong as it was at the top of the rotation before last. If Death Knight gets nerfed, so will Paladin and vice-versa, imo. Paladin should've gotten the metal theme instead of Death Knight, because Pally will be fuckin' brutal.
I made this for a custom competition last year:
...just sayin'.
Naturally I really like these Divine Shield cards...even if it is a stupid Murloc.
Does Spotlight convert the Divine Shield itself? Like, it removes it from whoever has it and summons a 5/5? If so, that's pretty cool.
And the best part is that since it's a Holy spell, it works perfectly with Starlight Groove. You just get the Divine Shield back right away with a 5/5.
I had the same question - that seems correct based on a plain-text reading of the card.
Funkin might be cool with divine shield silver hand recruits
Out of these cards only Rush the Stage seems pretty broken
Can definitely see a grindy achievements for Infinitize the Maxitude
Rush Demon Hunter is the most thematic Demon Hunter concept the devs have come up with since release.
(Hell, it's the only thematic Demon Hunter concept the devs have come up with since release, but I give credit where credit is due.)
Having shit on their choices since that time, including just days ago, this is the kind of relief you get after you stop experiencing excruciating pain. But it's still technically relief.
As for the cards themselves -- ehhhhh.
Let's start with the best:
Rush the Stage has the absolute most potential here. It's not the best cost reduction, but tutoring plus cost reduction is potentially huge. If the devs don't abandon Rush going forward (which they well may), this will be key to Demon Hunter Rush success.
Snakebite will be a frustrating card to run. It will have blowout turns, to be sure, but against Control it's going to feel awful. If the devs had thrown the only weenie card worth a damn back into Standard -- Expendable Performers -- Snakebite could be part of a more-reliable package. As it stands, there are a lot of board states where it just whiffs.
But lets say it doesn't whiff. You put out a monster rush 10/10 for 2. Great. Swell. The opponent destroys it and the game moves on.
There's no real follow-up. You don't have super-scary weapon damage to finish or other chunky gals to threaten with. Unholy Death Knight is fielding some thick minions and they don't have to do Hearthsthstone trigonometry to do it.
Being forced to run Immolation Aura in an aggro deck just to combo your good card into acceptability doesn't seem great. And the rest of the package hits like a wet noodle. You're fragile and not sticking any boards here.
SECURITY!! is the workhorse that's supposed to make the rest of this go. If you don't pull it or Coordinated Strike on Coin, you're fucked. Battleworn Vanguard rotates and the devs once again shut Umberwing out of rotation.
Note that unless you're dropping specifically SECURITY!!, you're paying a lot of mana for a bunch of minions who are about to die who will then, maybe, put an okay-statted minion onto the board.
Halveria Darkraven seems just plain bad. Her stats are fucking awful. How is it that Team 5 just got through giving 1-drops and 2-drops +1 Health in the Core set and this 4-drop is coming in sub-yeti with an ability that only works if you're damn near already winning board. You have ZERO stickiness and some of the lowest-Health minions imaginable. The only way her ability even works is if you're popcorning minions, throwing away their attack asap, which means some of those stats will be wasted in your trades. This is some bullshit right here.
Halveria Darkraven is a worse card than Flag Runner, which costs one less and isn't legendary.
Well, in the short-term abandon all hope, 'cause DH is DOA. Outcast is a bad mechanic -- always was -- because it literally can provide nothing but a cost break and it's clear that the devs don't want it to even do that. (SECURITY!! is trash non-Outcast and not great when conditions are met.) The only effects DH has to manipulate its hand order (the Nathria hand-return duo) the devs have already given up on -- and they didn't even intend for the effect to really be used that way, anyway. Rush AND statbuff is a possible way forward, but they stumble at the starting line there.
I'm guessing that, so far, the no-minion Demon Hunter has a healthier chance here than minion-based decks. (Jace Darkweaver is gone so even that mediocre mainstay is off the table.) Sinful Brand into weenies whose only job is dying for face damage seems like it might be a better bet than trying to go toe-to-to with stickier aggro. We have to wait a whole expansion before DH gets to play anything but gimmicky combo.
But after that, the devs might stumble backward into a good mediocre but acceptable idea.
In other news, Infinitize the Maxitude could be acceptably-slow value at the top of rotation but there's little chance of it surviving once deck power curves up going forward. Grindy Control matches would have to come back in a BIG way to make this worth serious consideration after that.
Credit to this card and DJ Manastorm on presentation, though.
Comparing Halveria and Flag Runner seems misguided. Flag Runner gives itself attack, while Halveria gives all of your minions, I assume including itself, +1 when a Rush minion attacks. So if you are lucky enough to have a bunch of rush minions survive a turn, you drop Halveria and send those minions to Face, watching them get stronger with each hit from a friendly Rush. So is it a one of that costs 1 more? Yes. But it’s effect has much more burst damage potential!
In wild, no matter what minions you have on board you can drop Halveria and Broom to make them all Rush minions. Similar to how the ETC, God of Metal combo works.
In both cases the goal is to conserve Attack even as minions are lost with the eventual intent to attack the enemy hero with the minion(s) conserving attack as no deck running either of these has the ability to do significant face damage from hand or through hero attacks. Flag Runner comes down a turn or two earlier, conserves more attack because it can gain it from sacrificed minions over time, and combos better with minion-producers and support such as Wrathscale Naga because it costs less.
Why would you be lucky enough to have this happen? How on God's green Earth are you relying on luck to do what your deck should be doing every single game? Why would your minions survive attacks when they're supposed to die in order to grant attacks?
On top of this, how is any deck you can beat with this deck not dying to literally any other minion deck? There are a lot of players who don't play Demon Hunter who get really upset when I point out problems here. The same thing happened with previous Demon Hunter cards -- people who didn't play DH got pissed when DH players were down on them, then conveniently forgot their malding when the playrate of the relevant cards turned out to hover near zero. (Azsharan Defector was a hilarious example.)
Any viable deck needs to be able to handle a large number of 2-Health minions coming at it in the midgame because Unholy DK exists. DH generates a bunch of 1-Health minions, and does it more slowly. This doesn't work on paper. We had a better version of this in practice at the top of the last rotation and it was powercrept almost immediately.
It has less damage potential. All you're doing is inefficiently clearing minions. None of that is doing significant face damage because it will be cheaply cleared. Having six Health the opponent can't efficiently clear with mounting attack has more damage potential.
In Wild, I can lock up my opponent's mana, have a wider board, and have taller minions while clearing the opponent's minions by the time Halveria can drop. In Wild, it's even easier for Halveria to be destroyed. You actually don't want weenie Rush minions to gain attack if you're using Wrathscale in either format because you want as much enemy minion Health as possible on the board so you can send more minions into them and generate Wrathscale hits. In Wild, she's the answer to the question that no one asked. I could lose a winning game by playing her.
Again: we've already been playing weenie DH. We don't have to guess its weaknesses. We already experienced them.
Remember, fun is a subjective thing. You seem like the type that only finds fun in winning as many games as possible. And that's fine. Personally, I have my Legend card back and have reached the rank on multiple occasions, and that's enough for me. So now I personally like playing a lot of different stuff, trying new things, etc. And I stick by my comments even if you can't understand why I might try to play this card at some point. Just because the meta is X doesn't mean Y isn't possible. Not every player on the ladder just searches a Tier list and picks the best thing on it to play.
It's pretty arrogant to say that someone else only likes winning and doesn't like fun in any other way. It's also changing the subject. No one said you can't put a card in a deck and start a game and implying otherwise is really disengenous. The subject here is whether or not a card effectively does the cool thing it's intended to do. And what you're talking about instead is whether or not the card's existence amuses you.
I get that you don't play Demon Hunter and the card's existence is amusing in and of itself. No one's saying otherwise. But that's not the point. The issue is with people who are actually trying to use the card to do the thing it's intended to do -- which you're not and that's fine, no need to be sensitive about that. Just because you can't answer what other people's play experiences are doesn't mean anybody's trying to stop you from playing the card, you're fine! And if you can't answer an argument that you started, that's no reason for you to feel intimidated or put out or lash out, we're all friends here! The issue is that people who want to play the card for its intended effect are going to have a hard time. I get that you don't understand that and that's fine, but there are more people out there than just the ones who don't care about that.
If you're netdecking to legend, great! Nothing wrong with that. But there's a lot of people who don't have a lot of money or dust who are trying to have fun with with the few resources we have and crafting the wrong thing or trying to use something that looks like it's going to work but doesn't can be a big downer. Coming down on us because we're trying to navigate a budget is kinda toxic. Upthread, I gave high marks to Paladin using the same logic I used for Demon Hunter but you didn't get really mad there, but got mad with Demon Hunter (that you don't play). A glowing review doesn't mean " you're good" and a negative review doesn't mean "you're bad."
People trying to make tight budget decisions aren't coming for you my guy! I hope you have a good time with the set.
Halveria Darkraven - Seems like a high piwered finisher for token dh, assuming token dh is viable. I don’t know where else you’d put this. Dh is currently losing their support from alterac valley, and while the Wrathscale Naga buff is nice I don’t think it’ll be enough.
Rush the Stage Is a nice card. Maybe outcast cares enough about finding their Vengeful Wallopers and Fierce Outsiders that it makes the cut in outcast dh. In token dh this doesn’t have enough targets they’d care about (pretty much just Snakebite).
Snakebite - can’t believe they powercreeped the all powerful Wicked Skeleton Smh. More seriously this is an okay card. Considering how hard it is sometimes to get Feast of Souls to work I forsee similar problems with this card.
SECURITY!! - Token dh probably wants the extra summon spell and it’s a decent spell for outcast dh. H
Is that a... worgen demon hunter?
What, the Orc and Draenei and Dwarf and Shivarra and Observer and Ogre and Jinyu and Murloc and Sklibb (sporeling!) demon hunters didn't throw you but a worgen one does? %-) And this one isn't even the first worgen demon hunter.
I'm surprised there isn't a Mech demon hunter yet.
The only way the Illidari could out-weird themselves would be if a crystal geode becomes a demon hunter, and I'm here for it.
Scratch that, Therazane as a demon hunter. That would do it.
Not only is the variety of Demon Hunters in HS really fun, it's actually feels more story- and thematically appropriate than WoW. Illidain spent most of his career in a violent conflict with his fellow Night Elves and allied with Naga and Blood Elves and everyone else in Outland; those people should have been the first Demon Hunters. WoW saying it should be only elves, including a bunch of elves that really hate Illidain, is a strange choice. I hope they open the class up to more WoW subspecies. 'Till then, Hearthstone gets the more fun version.
I'm deadly serious about how stupidly cool Therazane would be as a Demon Hunter.
Yeah! How dare Hearthstone break Warcraft canon.
Looks like dhunter's going rush and hero attacks this time round...and both look spectacularly subpar.
Halveria Darkraven looks poor, but given how easily dhunter spams rush tokens its actually a pretty good card, especially for a finish. The problem is actually having minions on board, and then having the rush minions to do this, as well as playing darkraven herself. Too convoluted. Imagine if Bloodlust requiring two cards + board to work it'll never see play ever again even if it was 3 mana. But I remain cautiously optimistic that in practice it works a hell lot better.
I have to say, Im beginning to hate outcast as a keyword, because it seems like team5 really really dont want to push the power levels up while at the same time making no attempt to make playing outcast any easier. SECURITY!! for example, could've summon two tokens for outcast and I would still think its decently balanced.
And finally, nothing to synergize with Going Down Swinging, making it one of the worst legendary spells Ive seen so far...
...if it werent for Infinitize the Maxitude. 2 mana discover a spell. Finale to do it again. Vast Wisdom gives out two spells for the same mana and you need not bother about the finale.
Infinitize the Maxitude - is a neat value generator for mage, it’s kind of like Headcrack except instead of doing almost nothing for its cost it generates “infinite”card advantage if you can finale it several times over several turns. In wild this could be another tool for ungoro quest mage (Especially if the returned copy counts for the quest). In standard it could be splashed somewhere but I have no clue what mage is doing yet. Why on earth are they holding back so hard on mage reveals? They’re both cool cards, yes but why only two cards one at a time, so far