A new Rare Ionia Unit, Ribbon Dancer, has been revealed!

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Akama - and more to the point Akama Prime (AP) - is a card that I have wanted to find interesting for the last year, but it has always been underwhelming. I'm hoping that by writing all my thoughts down I can begin to understand why, and then better understand card design too.

As a 3 mana 3/4 stealth, the first body is a solid card by all accounts, and certainly in the same league as the first bodies of the other prime cards. If anything it is better than most of the primes' first bodies because stealth denies the opponent the ability to remove the minion before it accomplishes something, and isn't situational like rush or spell damage.

The problem arises with the prime version of Akama. All the prime cards were designed to be bonkers strong, and something you couldn't print as a normal minion. Where the other prime cards achieve this with a hefty block of text detailing a fancy effect, Akama takes a more succinct and elegant approach by simply switching out 'stealth' for 'permanently stealthed', which we know from adventures can be very powerful. I have no doubt that if AP was a collectible card, it would indeed be bonkers strong.

So where's the problem? I think it is that the odds of drawing Akama twice by turn 6 are tiny, even in rogue. Statistics tell us you need to be ~75% of the way through your deck on average to draw AP, by which point you're probably long past turn 6. If you're against aggro or playing aggro yourself, the game is probably over before you see AP, so it is only worth evaluating against slow decks, and therein lies the issue: most slow decks have a way to deal with a 5 health stealthed minion.

Even when they cannot remove it immediately, AP still takes a whole turn before it can attack and show off the permanence of its stealth, and it probably has to attack at least twice before people it becomes interesting, making AP really, really slow. Compare that to the other primes, all of whom have much faster effects except Reliquary Prime, but at least that has a set of stats and abilities that make it more likely to achieve something significant right away.

The end result is that AP is in practice only marginally better than a 6 mana 6/5 stealth, a stat-line that can conveniently be compared to two cards that have been around in the Classic set since 2014: Stranglethorn Tiger and Ravenholdt Assassin. I think the tiger did see a tiny bit of play in druid at one point, but that's about all these two ever did in constructed. So AP sitting between them makes it seem like AP is actually just a bad card on its own. I'd say he's weaker than MSoG's attempt at this sort of effect (Lotus Assassin), and you can run 2 of those without any worries about shuffling them first.

Am I contradicting myself? First I say I think AP is a bonkers card, then a bad one? Again, timing is everything. If you could play AP on turn 6 and have him be part of a wider plan to pressure the opponent, then he's great. But if you have him on turn 14, when your opponent has stabilised or you are playing a deck that doesn't put on much pressure, then he doesn't do very much.

The (flawed) logic behind the design

It's quite easy to see how AP was made the way he was. Not only does it look cool and powerful at first glance (the community rated Akama quite highly), but we've seen first hand how powerful permanent stealth can be in adventures.

It's also notable that the prime mechanics (deathrattle and shuffle) are both things rogue had synergies for, and it stands to reason that rogue would have an easier time abusing primes than other classes. Stowaway in particular seems to alleviate the slow draw of AP. The trouble with the Stowaway solution is that you still need to have drawn both Akama and a Stowaway, and you have to be playing a fairly slow deck to justify him when you don't see Akama.

The fix

Fixing AP is simple: give him more health. I'd lean towards 7 to put him just out of range of modern Flamestrike +1 spell damage (which is so common and cheap in mage today that it's pretty much always going to be there). That way it makes 1 more class have to work to remove him, but makes almost no difference to classes that couldn't kill him to begin with, or who have un-targeted hard removal. It also gives him the opportunity to trade into a taunt minion without being reduced to piddly health that can be removed by small AoE.

The design lessons

We already know a card's power depends strongly on when it is drawn and played. This is doubly true for uncollectible cards that are shuffled into your deck. So the lesson is to ensure such a card is a good late game card at bare minimum. It doesn't matter how good it is as an early-to-mid game card if it's almost never going to be drawn then.

I'm McF4rtson from Hearthpwn. Just dropping by to share class borders I've gathered over the years. I slowly, but steadily, maintain a repository of public use class borders over there as well.

Ninja	Warden	Riftblade (experimental)	Motherboard (experimental)	Improved Sea Witch
{{CCLASS=ninja5958}}	{{CCLASS=warden1846}}	{{CCLASS=riftblade5344}}	{{CCLASS=beepboop5916}}	{{CCLASS=seawitch22739}}

A new Common Shurima Unit, Profiteer, has been revealed!

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A new Common Shurima Unit, Merciless Hunter, has been revealed!

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A new Common Ionia Unit, Dancing Droplet, has been revealed!

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A new Rare Ionia Spell, Shadows of the Past, has been revealed!

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A new Rare Targon Landmark, Eye of the Ra-Horak, has been revealed!

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A new Common Targon Unit, Solari Sunhawk, has been revealed!

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Did anyone notice that the ranked ladder seasonal reward epic card (of April) was a duplicate? I am missing quite a few Wild epics still, but did not receive any of them. Perhaps only Standard cards are offered as ranked ladder seasonal rewards?

Although somewhat understandable, it is not mentioned specifically anywhere in-game, I think 🤔

This is not really meant as a complaint, but it does feel bad that the Wild cardpool is not included (at least so it seems). Especially since you can reach Diamond 5 also in both Wild and Classic modes nowadays.

GRIM ENCOUNTERS

A Hearthstone Battlegrounds expansion

Everyone, get in here and welcome to the Grim Guzzler! I'm Plugger Spazzing, the boss of this place, and from now on I'll be your host. Our beloved Bob unfortunately had to take a break for reasons totally unrelated to me (just ask my laywer). Six years ago, a horde of adventurers paying a children's card game ransacked my bar just for fun. But now, we're back in business! If you like beer, brawls, literal hot chicks, brawls, and getting in here, this is the place for you! Did I say brawls already? 'Cause that's important! Here's what we have in store today:

• 30 new minions!
• 4 new heroes!
• Frenzy : Something good came out of the Barrens after all! Patrons LOVE to hurt each other!
• Pints : What would the Grim Guzzler be without its Dark Iron Ale? For the very affordable price of 1 Coin, you can give a minion +3 Health!
• Dark Iron dwarfs : A brand new minion type! Dark Irons like three things: taking damage, having high Health, and BEER!

(Note: I started this before Quilboars were revealed, I didn't expect they would have such a similar mechanic)

THE SET

PLUGGER SPAZZRING'S LINES

The new bartender isn't as nice as Bob...

Well, it's not exactly a hidden issue that Taliyah is the worst champion in the game by far. I held some hope and expectations that the new Landmark synergies such as Zilean or Malphite would be enough, but I often wouldn't include her in the deck in the end. Regardless if Landmark decks are good, not a lot of the new cards synergize well with her, in my opinion, so she would probably still be unplayable.

Now I'm not going to suggest what kind of buff she needs because she has a lot of issues that any buff suggestion would become reasonable. The question now is, will she get buffed? Will Riot think ahead and buff Taliyah alongside the release of the new expansion so that people will actually play Taliyah?

If they are going to do it, I don't actually think that we should wait for 2-4 weeks after the release because I don't want to play the new decks with Taliyah in them and get absolutely stomped. I'm actually betting that they are going to buff Taliyah, and I'm also going to bet that the buff will not be enough to make her playable as a competitive deck but rather a meme deck. I did hear through some rumors that Shurima's landmark support won't end here but would also continue towards the next expansion, but I really don't want to wait for 2 more months for Taliyah to be sorta ok. So hopefully, by the end of this, I was either wrong and Taliyah is actually good, or I shouldn't have doubted Riot in the first place and they actually had buffed Taliyah. I'm not even a Taliyah simp or a Taliyah main in League. I just don't to see a Champion with a depressing 30% WR.

Right, I've got another tribe here, but instead of doing it on a PowerPoint as per usual, I'm just gonna do the traditional method of putting the cards on this post behind the spoilers. The Quilboar tribe was fully revealed the other day which forced me to scrap my other tribe, the Kobolds, due to how staggeringly similar they were. This led me back to square one, and then suddenly, Nagas came to mind as a potential new tribe. 

The Nagas mainly function around one mechanic, surpassing Attack thresholds. The simplest card to demonstrate this idea is the Starving Seahunter, which gains Windfury once it reaches, or surpasses, the 5 Attack threshold. This effect will only go off once on the minion, similar to a delayed Battlecry. We also have minions with repeatable Attack triggers, such as the Advance Hydroguard or the Swamplands Stalker.

There is also a small synergy within the tribe related to Golden cards, which was partially inspired by the inclusion of a new version of Zola the Gorgon (Zola, Golden Witch). Goldscale Temptress is the other synergy with Golden minions.

Thank you for looking at this tribe!

Heroes

Minions

Golden Minions

I was playing paladin with Reckoning in play. My opponent plays Tundra Rhino and gives it Immune with Bestial Wrath. He attacks with it and it dies from Reckoning even though it had Immune.

Normally, things with immune can't be targeted, and if you play an AoE they just ignore the damage. But I guess since Reckoning hits a single target, but you aren't the one picking the target, it works differently.

Also, could you destroy an Immune minion with a random effect like Deadly Shot? Or would that work differently?

A new Rare Targon Spell, Ground Slam, has been revealed!

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A new Champion Targon Unit, Malphite, has been revealed!

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A new Epic Targon Unit, Stonebreaker, has been revealed!

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A new Common Targon Unit, Blue Sentinel, has been revealed!

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A new Common Targon Unit, Earth Elemental, has been revealed!

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A new Common Targon Landmark, Rockfall Path, has been revealed!

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A new Rare Targon Landmark, Spiral Stairs, has been revealed!

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A new Epic Shadow Isles Unit, The Wings and The Wave, has been revealed!

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A new Epic Freljord Spell, Buried in Ice, has been revealed!

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A new Common Freljord Spell, Succumb to the Cold, has been revealed!

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A new Common Bilgewater Spell, Monster Harpoon, has been revealed!

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