Ancient Raptor is a 2/1 with Divine Shield or a 5/1 vanilla, not both. The three options are all Adaptations, but limited to just the "good" ones on that body. It's trash.
Mana ramping doesn't even counter Druid. It doesn't stop them from ramping into big cards, and presumably they'll have better payoffs for having high mana than you do. I think the card would've been good against Doomkin specifically, but we're not even close to there anymore.
Given the current card pool, I think you're massively overvaluing Crystal Tender. The only mana ramp cards in Standard right now are New Heights (not playable in the best Druid deck, and you don't get the increased cap) and Ysera, Emerald Aspect (mana ramp comes in way too late to be relevant). All of Druid's mana shenanigans are being done via mana refresh like Amirdrassil and Sleep Under the Stars. Granted, maybe Druid's getting a good ramp card this set. But until we know for sure, the card is just "50% chance to be a Wild Growth, 50% chance to be a vanilla 2/2", which I don't think is good enough.
EDIT: Actually, it doesn't even work going second. Going second, you have the same mana as your opponent while they have one more only on their turn. So, waaaaaaay too niche.
EDIT EDIT: Actually, maybe it kinda goes sick-nasty with Fractured Power. Probably a meme combo, but definitely a funny one.
I've been replaying the campaigns in Heroes of Might and Magic IV, which I haven't played at all since I was a kid and never fully completed. Beat the first five pretty handily over the last few days, but the Chaos campaign is a serious difficulty spike. In the first mission alone, you start with basically nothing and have to juggle ocean exploration with base defense against a guy that starts with multiple fully-built towns and a portal straight to your doorstep.
Also, Heroes of the Storm celebrated its 10th anniversary, and released a fully new skin for the first time since maintenance mode. God bless the Classic team keeping that game alive.
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.
I'm really curious how the nerfs will look, because neither are immediately obvious. They're not effects that number changes will matter for. Shaffar could easily be fixed and reset to his intended effect by making his Spellburst only trigger once per turn, but they've never done a limitation like that. Maybe they Starving Buzzard him and make him 5-6 mana, I dunno. Fizzle I have no clue how they're gonna fix that without changing how the card works.
It's kind of an odd choice. Both this and the previous miniset are ridiculously low power level. I wonder if they're trying to scale the game's power level down a little, like the Year of the Raven did. If so, 2026 is gonna be a great year.
In case anyone was wondering, the new names are Wailing Banshee, Spore Hallucination, and Stormcoil Mothership. That's at least according to the Hearthstone wiki.
Only one I'm sad about is Hallucination, since the old name was super-clean. Also, flowers don't have spores. It should be Pollen Hallucination.
Ancient Raptor is a 2/1 with Divine Shield or a 5/1 vanilla, not both. The three options are all Adaptations, but limited to just the "good" ones on that body. It's trash.
Mana ramping doesn't even counter Druid. It doesn't stop them from ramping into big cards, and presumably they'll have better payoffs for having high mana than you do. I think the card would've been good against Doomkin specifically, but we're not even close to there anymore.
Given the current card pool, I think you're massively overvaluing Crystal Tender. The only mana ramp cards in Standard right now are New Heights (not playable in the best Druid deck, and you don't get the increased cap) and Ysera, Emerald Aspect (mana ramp comes in way too late to be relevant). All of Druid's mana shenanigans are being done via mana refresh like Amirdrassil and Sleep Under the Stars. Granted, maybe Druid's getting a good ramp card this set. But until we know for sure, the card is just "50% chance to be a Wild Growth, 50% chance to be a vanilla 2/2", which I don't think is good enough.
EDIT: Actually, it doesn't even work going second. Going second, you have the same mana as your opponent while they have one more only on their turn. So, waaaaaaay too niche.
EDIT EDIT: Actually, maybe it kinda goes sick-nasty with Fractured Power. Probably a meme combo, but definitely a funny one.
It's a Land Before Time reference. Is that close enough?
Holy crap, lore-accurate Tar Creeper! They're fen creepers in WoW, not tar elementals.
I've been replaying the campaigns in Heroes of Might and Magic IV, which I haven't played at all since I was a kid and never fully completed. Beat the first five pretty handily over the last few days, but the Chaos campaign is a serious difficulty spike. In the first mission alone, you start with basically nothing and have to juggle ocean exploration with base defense against a guy that starts with multiple fully-built towns and a portal straight to your doorstep.
Also, Heroes of the Storm celebrated its 10th anniversary, and released a fully new skin for the first time since maintenance mode. God bless the Classic team keeping that game alive.
Making it to turn ten is now considered a Quest-tier achievement.
It's probably powered-down because it's designed as Quest synergy.
Cindersword is already the winner of best flavour text of the set, and I don't see it getting beat.
I think that Plucky Podling transforms into a minion that costs 2 more than the minion it would transform into, not 2 more than itself.
She's been reimagined as a Nightmare Dragon.
https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/Nightmare_dragon
She sacrificed herself in the War of the Ancients to kill a powerful pit lord, killing him as she was impaled with his spear.
Fun fact: Gnawing Greenfin makes Grunty worse by existing, and Grunty makes Gnawing Greenfin worse by existing.
I hope Corrupted Awakening deals 10 damage to Ysera.
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.
Finally adding Uncle Ben. He's literally been in the game files since it launched.
I'm really curious how the nerfs will look, because neither are immediately obvious. They're not effects that number changes will matter for. Shaffar could easily be fixed and reset to his intended effect by making his Spellburst only trigger once per turn, but they've never done a limitation like that. Maybe they Starving Buzzard him and make him 5-6 mana, I dunno. Fizzle I have no clue how they're gonna fix that without changing how the card works.
It's kind of an odd choice. Both this and the previous miniset are ridiculously low power level. I wonder if they're trying to scale the game's power level down a little, like the Year of the Raven did. If so, 2026 is gonna be a great year.
New console means new Smash Bros. There is nothing I love more than the internet culture during Smash reveal season. I'm so excited.
In case anyone was wondering, the new names are Wailing Banshee, Spore Hallucination, and Stormcoil Mothership. That's at least according to the Hearthstone wiki.
Only one I'm sad about is Hallucination, since the old name was super-clean. Also, flowers don't have spores. It should be Pollen Hallucination.