Our Thoughts on Hearthstone's Scholomance Academy Druid/Shaman Dual Class Cards

The reviews return! We want to give you all as comprehensive an overview as possible, so we'll be splitting the reviews a little differently this time.

Our first 10 reviews will look at the ten dual class pairings, meaning each one will have four cards. The next 10 reviews will look at the cards available to individual classes - for example, we'll review the six solo Druid cards, and include links to the Druid/Shaman and Hunter/Druid reviews. We'll then review the neutral cards at the end, probably over three reviews.

Now, that's a lot of reviews, and we only have about a week until the expansion launches! In order to fit them all in, you can expect about three reviews a day.

Now, I'm gonna have to think of some good introductory bits to use, doing our usual 'we're always correct, even when we're not' tongue-in-cheek schtick. Don't know how I'm gonna manage to keep that up for 20+ reviews, but if half of them are something like this meta commentary on the joke then it should hopefully be easy to do. Onwards!

Adds a little brightness to any room!

Quote From ShadowsOfSense

Wonderful to see such innervation - I mean, innovation from the design team!

This is a fantastic card, and will absolutely see play. Whether as a tool to push out a ramp card like Overgrowth two turns early in Druid (and thus mitigating the downside of the Overload) or as a combo-enabling piece to be used with [Hearthstone Card (Kael'thas) Not Found] to help push towards another free spell or Malygos to pump out another burn piece, there is no way that this card - for all intents and purposes an unnerfed Innervate - will not find its way into the meta.

The 'downside' it is saddled with is hardly a downside at all; as I said before, the most common use cases will either be closing out the game or pushing you forward in mana, thus negating the downside entirely. In the cases where you do end up using it to simply jump two mana for one turn, it is highly unlikely that what you've managed to put out will be so weak that having two less mana next turn will matter, unless you've built your deck incorrectly.

Alabaster stole her other job.

Quote From Echo

Back in Witchwood, Rotten Applebaum was printed and it saw a decent amount of play. Groundskeeper is very similar to it, but is 1 mana cheaper and is a battlecry, resulting in it being much stronger in the face of removal and silence like effects. Both Shaman and Druid have access to some pretty good 5+ mana cards and so in any slower deck, I can feel it being an easy include. Having it be a battlecry also means it can easily fit into Quest Shaman, with the only issue being that the deck is normally not a control orientated deck. Even when you cannot get the 5 healing, it is still a 4 mana 4/5 with taunt which is just a better Chillwind Yeti so it is not the worst use of your mana. The only chance that this card does not see play is if the rest of the archetype is not able to keep up with the meta.

Honestly, the saplings of today! Next they'll be getting piercings!

Quote From Noxious

Very interesting card. Compared to your usual "Choose One" effects, Runic Carvings does not offer two different choices - it offers the base choice of filling your board with four Treant Totems - which are classified as Totems, so whether these token minions will work with Treant synergy is unknown at this point. The second choice is in fact an upgrade over the first choice. At the cost of overloading (2) mana, these totems can be weaponized to clear the board or take down a particularly beefy minion.

Overall I am impressed by this card's flexibility - the fact that overloading is optional is certainly attractive. Personally, I think Shamans will get more out of Runic Carvings than Druids, with their several Totem synergies; for Druid, this card can also be good, however Druid has quite a few more mid-game options for summoning small minions out of nowhere, such as Glowfly Swarm, which might fit better with Druid decks overall.

"Welcome to my TED talk! Wonderful to see so many Totems, Elementals and Druids all in attendance..."

Quote From FearGralex

Gidra seems quite strong in both Shaman and Druid, although the decks that want to play her are perhaps slightly different in each class. For Druids, Speaker Gidra lends herself quite well to slower token strategies as an additional removal tool, while for Shaman, she'll probably slot in quite well into Totem Shaman decks as a midrange tempo play. Regardless, Windfury and Rush are a strong combination, and the fact that her buff scales with the cost of the spell means that she's a solid play at any point on the curve, making her a flexible and robust inclusion in any deck with a decent density of spells.