Druid is up next for a review, naturally. Darkmoon Faire spells doom for their foes, as they face big minions and bursts of magic.
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Not to be confused with the Lunara Eclipse, which is what her enemies see when she Leaping Strikes.
Quote From ShadowsOfSense This is a strong card. 2 mana for 3 damage to a minion is already a pretty standard rate - Druids have it already with Wrath, a strong and versatile card. What Lunar Eclipse brings to the table is the ability to weave that 3 damage into any turn you were planning on playing a spell, completely for free. Already planning to Guardian Animals or Nourish? Why not just drop in a bit of damage first at no extra cost?
The really interesting part of this card, however, is the combination of it with our next card…
Solar Eclipses are better for the environment than traditional Coal Eclipses.
Quote From ShadowsOfSense …the weird new combo enabler! There's all sorts of interesting ideas available with this one, and it fits into pretty much any deck that plans on playing some exciting spells. Get a discount on your ability to double Savage Roar - or perhaps even make it a triple or quadruple! Maybe turn 10 we're pulling four Beasts from our Guardian Animals, or using some sort of cost reduction shenanigans to make sure its really the Survival of the Fittest.
I lead into this mentioning Lunar Eclipse, and there is combo potential there - kind of. Doubling your Lunar Eclipse gets you 4 mana off a spell, but comes at the cost of 4 mana, so you'd need to employ other cost reductions first. Similarly, you can make Solar Eclipse cost nothing, but that's only a reduction of 2 mana that already cost you 2 mana. It seems like they're destined to work together, but they just sort of wiggle around the idea of a combo instead of outright being one by themselves.
This and Lunar Eclipse will definitely see experimentation, though only time will tell which of them proves the better piece of a puzzle.
"I thought you said you had big plans for this year?" // "Nope, I definitely said big plants."
Quote From Demonzx95 Faire Arborist reminds me of a Druid card from The Boomsday Project called Landscaping, as it's another 3 mana card that summons two 2/2 minions. Landscaping is better for Treant synergy, although this version has some extra flexibility giving you the option to draw a card, much like Rising Winds. The upgrade for corrupting it is a bit weaker than most Corrupt cards, but unlike most of those cards, this isn't too bad as a 2/2 that summons a 2/2 so perhaps they didn't want the upgrade to be too significant? It is still a positive bonus though, so it's still good. Its flexibility might give it some spotlight somewhere.
The perfect seasoning for a Baku snack.
Quote From Avalon Remember Feral Rage? This is him now: feel old yet? On a serious note, Moontouched Amulet is arguably a worse Bite in its base form, but when corrupted, it becomes almost an Ossirian Tear Feral Rage, granting you survivability and a chance to either push damage or remove an enemy threat.
While I don't think this card is meta breaking, but just an interesting control tool to overcome early game aggressions, I see Amulet being played in Druid decks that focus late game swings with Kael'thas Sunstrider (maybe in combination with the new Cenarion Ward), Exotic Mountseller and [Hearthstone Card (Animal Guardians) Not Found].
Even if you don't corrupt it, a turn 3 made of Lunar Eclipse into Moontouched Amulet means 7 damage across the board for just 3 mana. I see potential for this card: all we are left to see is if Druid will be able to exploit it or not.
Owl's Moving Faster
Quote From Demonxz95 If there's something that most Hearthstone players know, it's that you never underestimate a card that can cost 0. That's something that this card can do. It can become a 0 mana 4/4 with Rush, which is quite good. Casting a lot of spells is something that Druid already likes to do anyway, so I imagine this will find a home in quite a few Druid decks with relative ease.
"No offisher, I promish I'm jusht a little fizzy."
Quote From ShadowsOfSense Big boy! It's a big boy!
This is a solid high-end piece for any sort of Big Druid, should a deck like that try and make its way into Standard again. Having both Rush and Taunt makes it great both offensively and defensively, and might be enough to push it into play outside of Arena where previous cards like Burly Shovelfist and Living Monument were relegated.
We've come a long way from the days of Ironbark Protector seeing play in any sort of competitive setting, but I have hope that we'll see this guy make some kind of splash at some point. At the very least I'll be throwing him in my decks for testing.
The lines are so long they've started their own game of Guess the Wait.
Quote From Avalon Let's see this card as a 2 mana draw a card with a possible upside: it is basically a Novice Engineer without the body but with Spell synergy, which is even more important in today's Druid. Described in this way, the card does not seem very exciting: in the end, if all you want is drawing cards for 2 mana, you should just run Rising Winds and rely on consistency over highrolls.
However, if Malfurion will be able to come back to its April version of Big Druid with Strength in Numbers as its most representative card, there is a fat chance (pun intended) that Guess the Weight will be able to find a place to shine: if your draw is Scrapyard Colossus or Lightning Bloom, you can easily get rewarded for your deckbuilding choices.
In the end, it is a very specific yet interesting card: who knows, maybe N'Zoth, God of the Deep will make an appearance in Druid (Fizzy Elemental seems to be printed just for that specific archetype) and Guess the Weight will become an auto include. All we have to do is wait, play and then judge by ourselves.
Don't worry, Cenarius definitely won't be coming through - he's 9 mana.
Quote From ShadowsOfSense This is a very basic looking card - 8 mana, 8-Cost minion, 8 Armor. Simple!
Looking only at Standard, your options do vary quite a bit, from all-star options like Tirion Fordring or Plagued Protodrake to relative duds like Heroic Innkeeper and (though it pains me to admit it) Tortollan Pilgrim. I think that overall though, there are enough strong options that this card isn't bad, especially with the additional 8 Armor.
The real hurdle for Cenarion Ward is just that it doesn't really synergise with anything else that Druid does, beyond being a big card you can throw out after ramping up. The only chance this sees competitive play, I think, is if Solar Eclipse has enough power plays in a deck to be able to combo with it. If this was your only big Solar Eclipse play, I wouldn't expect to see it, but if you manage to get a few more big plays in their then you may be onto something.
The original Twilight fan.
Quote From ShadowsOfSense This is a really weird card. Does anyone else find it really odd that a Legendary minion just gives you spells that were introduced in the same expansion as it? It's not even a potentially infinite source of them like Archmage Antonidas is for Fireball - you just get one each of Lunar Eclipse and Solar Eclipse and a very meager body to go along with them.
It's not even about the fact that it's a bad card - which it is, by the way, just run the spells in your deck if you want them. It's just an incredibly strange design choice, one I'm not really sure I like. Druid doesn't even really have any synergies with returning minions to hand or doubling their Battlecries. I just… don't understand this design.
If a tree falls on the battlefield and there's no one around to save it, does it come back to life?
Quote From linkblade91 I like Greybough: it's a recurring wall if you can keep a minion on the board for the Deathrattle to attach to; similar to Lucentbark, save for the condition. I don't know yet what I'll replace, but this seems perfect for my N'Zoth, the Corruptor + Hadronox deck in Wild. I have no idea if it'll find a home in Standard, though, because Greybough doesn't seem to fit with any existing archetype. A deck that swarms the board (providing Greybough many targets to latch onto) doesn't want the Taunt minion, while a spell-based deck won't have the minions Greybough needs. It's a neat card overall, but there's only a small window of opportunity for it to flourish.
Comments
I hadn't even realized the Eclipse cards were cards you could put in your deck. I thought you could only get them through the Legendary.
I also forgot lucentbark was in standard and if the interaction works the way I think it does where it keeps the greybough bough deathrattle when it goes dormant, then it could be very good. Every time your opponent kills a lucentbark they have to kill greybough too. And when you copy lucentbark that value is exponential unless they kill all the lucentbark at once.
Sadly, I don’t think this will work. Lucentbark will not keep Greybough’s buff when he dies and goes dormant nor will Greybough be able to interact with a dormant character. You will see evidence of this when you cast Brawl when a dormant minion is in play as it is immune to all interactions
I mean I know the deathrattle womt affect a dormant minion, but I'm wondering if itll keep the deathrattle summon greybough part.
It will not work. For example if you copy Lucentbark with Flobbidinous Floop the copied Lucentbark will awoke as a 4/8 and not a 3/4, loosing everything before getting dormant.
Let's suppose you kill Greybough, and his deathrattle attaches to Lucentbark. Lucentbark then dies. I'm 100% sure that the now-dormant Lucentbark is just a normal Lucentbark - when he comes back, he will not still have Greybough attached to him.
It's one of those, chances are slim but the payoff is high type deals. i'll try to test it on release. People are talking about greybough with hadronox but that sounds pretty terrible to me, since taunt druid of the past summoned way better things that greybough. But with greybough lucentbard druid, every time lucetbark would die there would be a two factor taunt in the way. And that's not even including if you copy a lucentbark that has the buff on it. then the potential for more taunts on death is there.