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The entire Nathria expansion was basically just midrane carrds with a focus on board and it worked fine. Don't see why it can't work for Druid.

But your entire argument seems to be "it has never worked before therefore it cannot work", which is just short-sighted (people said that about slow Hunter decks and other "meme" decks and they eventually ruled entire formats).

YOu also seem to forget cards like Cannibalize Which can turn any big minion into a massive overheal for your Heartthrob.

Undying Allies is pretty good at creating a wide early board that you can drop a Dreamboat into.

Hedanis himself could be a straight-up OTK your opponent if you have enough cards and Priest is no longer hurting for draw.

You lament the failure of board-centric Priests in the past (and conveniently forget about Spiteful Priest) but you fail to realize that the reason these never worked is because all the cards dedicated around them relied on healing damaged minions, which is pretty crap for a class that cannot reliable damage their own stuff (like Warrior can).

Now we have a keyword that not only changes that, but also gives multi-purpose to all your healing spells, which was one of the main issues with these decks. It also recontextualizes the hero power as a proactive tool instead of just something you do when you have no cards to spend mana on.

I refuse to believe for even a second that they would just dedicate not only an expansion but an entire Core set to a newly made-up keyword if they didn't have playtested it enough to actually function.

3 copies of Obsidiansmith?

What card can enter the deck?

Leads me to believe that Nourish might not be in Core, otherwise this is just awkward competition.

Very strong turn 5 play, especially if you ramp into it. Easily sets up future plays and allows you to function without having to turbo ramp to 8.

Seems a tad underwhelming. The Treant option is just bad unless you're really desperate and the Buff option is good, but requires you to have a board to begin with. Maybe it's playable with the weapon because you can just spontaenously generate a board to buff, but that seems a bit optimistic.

It does buff Convoke with the Spirits though

Honestly, sounds pretty strong. Weapon removal doesn'T really counter it unless they pull it immediately (in which case, good job, now deal with the 5/5), and the longer you let it cook the worse it's gonna get.

Honestly might even be a bit too strong overall unless your curve really sucks. All you really need to do against aggressive decks is make it to turn 6 while playing two 5-cost cards inbetween and you're just creating a massive wall of taunts.

Hopefully they don't jam yet another massive lategame combo into Druid.

I prefer when Druid is allowed to just play for board instead of folding to aggro while curbstomping anything slower than Face Hunter.

Not only you. This card is gonna be hellava annoying  for aggro to deal with. Good thing we now have a side board for everyone to tech in a silence :)

It's like the ultimate Shaman spell. It's got everything: Overload, elemental, Transform and elemental spell school. Only missing Windfury.

Pretty strong card, Schooling is still a staple so you'll never be hurting for a target, but even better you can reduce the cost of it to possibly cheat it out earlier than you reasonably should be and, perhaps even more excitingly, combo with various copying effects, but mainly Criminal Lineup. We're talking a legit combo finisher and that's not even accounting for what else we could put into a deck like this.

All of a sudden OVerload Shaman looks a lot better.

Druids cards are underwhelming, mostly because it seems like they're just midrange cards, with a particular focus on board. Seems too...normal, too balanced. Calm before the storm?

JIVE, INSECT! looks good, but in 2023 even multiple ragnaroses can't usually make up an entire deck. I think its more a win-con for control. All shaman needs now is a decent AoE that ideally doesn't have overload on it.

Paladin looks like focusing on deathrattles this time, so I guess its weapon would be something that triggers deathrattles? Looks like lots of focus on cheating out Annoy-o-Troupe, but that card is way too defensive to ever win the game for you. If paladin is to succeed in the next expansion, it needs more cards that pressure opponents, ideally with rush. Anything that's as slow as this needs major support cards to happen, and thus far Im not seeing it.

Why am I getting vibes from Voidlord by looking at Annoy-o-Troupe? Or is it just me 😅

Blizzard really has a knack for starting an archetype and only supporting it after it already rotated.

That being said Kangor looks pretty nutty if you don't get silenced. He just keeps coming back and pulling more stuff and you can't even race him because of all the Lifesteal.

Are we actually just doing Cube Paladin now? Because Lead Dancer and Annoy-o-Troupe gives me Voidlord flashbacks and I don't like it.

I honestly love a good Tree Druid deck!

Druid cards seem nice. No crazy combo that flips the table and kicks your opponent in the balls, just good and honest stats that you pile on one by one.

Since Brann is probably not staying in Core Druid will need something else to finish games with and I think just summoning a bunch of big lads and buffing them up could be good enough (and in the end there's always Astalor)

Drum Circle is a really nice big spell. Offers a wide board buff that makes Gift of the Wild and Wisps of the Old Gods look like jokes (which they kinda are). its summon effect is [Hearthstone Card (The Forest’s Aid) Not Found] without twinspell. Also it’s practically corruped Carnival Clown when you choose both. Not sure where else it’d see play though.

Timber Tambourine can be a really scary board dump. It seems pretty good if it’s not too slow.

Summer Flowerchild is a decent draw card for druid. It being a 5 drop is the only problem I could imagine with it.

That's exactly what I'm doing. I look at the overheal cards they've revealed so far and I can honestly say I wouldn't want to play a single one of them without having the perfect heal combo piece already prepped. In some cases that combo piece doesn't even exist currently. Even looking at the best case scenario, let's say I have a Circle of Healing in my mitts. That's not even enough to overheal Heartbreaker Hedanis. It summons a free 4/4 with Heartthrob, ey, that ain't bad! In this very specific combination. Anything less than Circle and, well, stick Gift of the Naaru alongside it and do the math. Let's be generous and assume you're not helping your opponent by healing their stuff, BTW, which both Gift and Circle do. With Gift you've paid 4 mana for 5/8 worth of stats for two cards. Didn't Silence Priests use to make 3 mana 4/8s for 2 cards through Humongous Razorleaf? How far did that get them? And that was back in Un'goro, we've moved forward a lot in power level. Or let's say that you have the heal location they revealed. Well, sure, you generate a 3/3 alongside your 3 drop on turn 3. But you must have spent the mana to get the location down on turn 1. Your opponent didn't. Their 1 drop in the form of Filletfighter just trades into your glorious 3/3 you got as payoff and what exactly did you achieve? Setting up your overheal just put you behind on the board so that the overheal tempo you were supposed to get is negated. Then there's Dreamboat. Just how many minions do they think Priests can stick? If this lands as a 2 mana 2/3 with heal on your 1 drop, that's a Neferset Ritualist you just put in your deck. Welcome to Arena gaming I guess.

None of this sounds like an appealing way to play the game. And even if there's just an absolute baller heal card we haven't seen yet, let's say 2 mana heal a minion for 6, then 4, then 2. That gives you a ton of stats with Heartthrob and does a bunch of clear or face damage with Hearbreaker Hedanis. How are you gonna ensure you get those cards together? Cause drawing isn't Priest's strong suit. In fact one of Priests main weaknesses has always been that they'd get stuck with a situational card in hand that they couldn't use cause they were missing the other half needed to make it do miracles. There's a reason Shamans run Firemancer Flurgl + Toxfin in almost everything but Priests never ran Wave of Apathy + Shadow Word: Horror. And that was in control decks. Now you're trying to build a proactive, board-centric Priest with these requirements. You can't spend your mana on tutoring the pieces for your deck to actually work if you intend to retain board presence. That's a solution for control and combo decks, but not zoo or aggro.

I've tried to build board-centric Priests A LOT in the past, expansion after expansion, for years. I think I finally stopped some time around Alterac Valley. It never worked, because Priest never had the tools to compete with other board-oriented decks, nor was it aggressive enough to pressure control or combo decks nor did it have the consistency of draw/tutoring to ensure they don't get stuck with big-butt minions but no buffs or a hand full of buffs but no board presence. Overheal, to me, is just the latest addition to the same failing pattern. Again, I'd be happy to be wrong. Don't think I will be though.

Btw, this is a Blizz video from 3 months ago. No one see it coming

"I RETURN TO THE CORE SET, PRESUMABLY!!" - Ragnaros

Now I just need to afford Criminal Lineup in the same turn...oh wait, Jazz Bass exists! I can see it now...