Hearthstone's first expansion of the Year of the Raptor, Into the Emerald Dream has been announced. Set releases on March 25th.
This is a set that takes place in The Emerald Dream and the instance of The Emerald Nightmare, split into two groups of classes to represent both sides:
- Druid, Hunter, Mage, Paladin, Priest, and Shaman represent the druids of The Emerald Dream (the "good" side).
- Death Knight, Demon Hunter, Rogue, Warlock, and Warrior represent the corruption of The Emerald Nightmare (the "bad" side).
Two New Keywords
The set comes with two new keywords, one for each group of classes.
The "good" classes get Imbue, which transforms your Hero Power into a new one that upgrades each time you Imbue. Here are the Hunter and Shaman ones:
The "bad" classes get Dark Gift, which is a set of 10 bonus effects that are added to Discover pools (in the case of Creature of Madness, you Discover a 3-Cost minion and each one comes with their own bonus from the pool). Example:
The Dark Gifts are as follows:
- +3 Attack and Lifesteal
- +2/+2 and Elusive
- Costs (2) less, but has -2 Attack. (Only offered on minions whose Attack would not reduce below 1)
- Charge
- When you play this, summon a 2/2 copy of it.
- This minion’s Battlecries trigger twice. (Only offered on minions with Battlecries)
- +4 Health and Taunt
- Reborn. Is Reborn with full health and enchantments.
- +4/+5. Place this card on top of your deck.
- Divine Shield, Windfury
Choose One for all Classes
Class-exclusive keyword? Not anymore.
Every class now gets their own Choose One card to symbolize the druidic atmosphere of the lands.
Three Freebie Cards for Everyone
Throwing a curveball (as is appears to be the theme of the year) is giving everyone not one, not two, but three freebie cards. Everyone will get Ysera, Emerald Aspect by logging in, two copies of Creature of Madness for free in the shop, and two copies of Raptor Herald as part of an in-game event.
Every New Card We Know
![All Into the Emerald Dream Card Reveals for March 10 - Final Day [Finished]](into-the-emerald-dream-day-final.webp)
Comments
I bet there's a neutral "Choose Both" card in this set. Ain't no way they designed Barbed Thorn to have AoE damage or Poisonous with no way to get both.
A bit mixed over the new hp and dark gifts, but its early days.
Seems to me that imbueing hp is a bit too slow for hearthstone these days. Only way this is playable is that the hp does direct damage, or is so powerful that it cannot be ignored. The hunter and shaman hp, for example, is not that. But likely there would be a legendary that gives out a payoff for doing all these, though Im skeptical over whether it'll ever be worth it to play subpar cards just to get a hp that doesnt win you the game.
As for the dark gift, I like the concept but unless theres a way to give these gifts immediately to board, instead of discovering minions with it, I cant see it work neither. Its way too slow, and you'd get destroyed by anything that plays minions on turn 1-2-3. Gonna wreck arena though for sure.
For the new cards so far:
Ysera, emerald aspect - Playable only in druid and warrior because thats the only two classes that can actually ramp up to take advantage of the start of game effect. For all other classes, youre more likely capping your own knee just playing this card.
Naralex - Designed to be played with ysera surely. And for that reason its likely that it'll only see play in druid/warrior. But class dragons to be revealed or designed later would change this obviously. Its a combo card in essence anyway.
Ursoc - Funny thing about this card is that its too slow to act as a board clear, and likely if it survives its gonna get bobbed into your opponent's hand. Definitely a dangerous card, but we'll have to see if its even playable in DK.
And one last card thats not shown in this graphic but is shown in reddit:
Fun card. But unplayable surely. Think about how hard it is to even get mothership working and now we're suppose to believe priest can actually play this card, survive for 3 turns, and somehow win?
Blizzard would normally provide an official news post which would make this process a lot quicker and easier. This year appears to the be the year of unconventional announcement strategies because they've given us little to work off of for every announcement so far, and I really hope this isn't the case for the whole year.
Fun factoid here: Ominous Nightmares is the first Shadow spell for Warrior, which was previously the only class in the game without one. Shadow for everyone now!