Batch number three is out of the oven; get your spicy reviews right here! Secret family recipe these, guaranteed to be accurate even if you think they aren't. Does contain some eggs.
I think reveal season may be rotting my brain a little.
If you can't find your own sacrifices, store-bought is fine.
Quote From Demonxz95 Here’s a common Hearthstone trope that a lot of us are familiar with at this point. Overstatted Taunt minions that summon things for the opponent. This particular card is overstatted in the right way with more Health where 1-drops won’t have more than 3 Health anyway (with very few exceptions). Historically, most of these cards that summon things for the opponent haven't seen much play, so I’d suspect that this will follow the same path, but it might be pretty good as a tech card against Resurrect Priest decks by diluting their pool with useless junk. Cornered Sentry saw successful use as a tech card, and this does a similar thing.
No joke here, just enjoy this smug grin.
Quote From neonangel This is one of those cards that looks really good initially, then less and less the more you think about it. If you get this in your opening hand, with The Coin, then it's probably gonna be huge. Otherwise, you have to count on your opponent missing their 2-drop if you expect to meet the "take no damage" requirement and trigger this Sidequest early. You can still give yourself pretty good odds if you're running a lot of Taunts or Time Out! if you end up drawing it late-game. Overall, I think the card is okay, but you either have to draw it in your opening hand or run secondary cards that will allow you to benefit from it. With Secret Highlander Paladin being so popular right now, there's definitely a chance this could make an appearance.
You get to die, and you get to die... everybody gets to die!
Quote From ShadowsOfSense She's a strong one, alright. Ignoring the additional effect for now, Assassinate and a 1 mana 4/4 seems like a pretty good deal to me. Vilespine Slayer saw a lot of play, and this is a very similar card in many ways; similar body and similar cost, especially when you consider that you often had to spend a little extra mana to activate Vilespine's Combo.
Now, that additional effect. In some games, it does nothing. In some games, it'll hit an extra minion in your opponent's hand or deck; if you're really lucky, you'll take out something they had multiples of on the board. The truly interesting aspect of this card though is in its potential for combo disruption.
Whether it be simply taking out a million buffed up Pogo-Hoppers or six 6/6 Chef Nomi Elementals, or taking it a step further and accurately sniping out part of someone's combo which you pulled from their hand or deck somehow, there's a lot of really fun sounding uses for this card. Take out the Baleful Bankers or Shirvallah, the Tiger herself; knock out a Sorcerer's Apprentice; stab a Lucentbark and watch the rest of the forest fall too.
Hell, you can even get cute and run some common combo pieces yourself; Baleful Banker doesn't sound too bad as an extra way of recycling Flik, and you get the bonus of sometimes ruining a Paladin's day with a small sacrifice!
Eat too much and you'll turn green, Fel is pretty rich.
Quote From Demonxz95 I think increasing the player’s hand size might be the most created mechanic ever on HearthCards, which makes it super exciting to me that this card is actually real. I love how the team is making more creative cards every set, and this seems to be at the top of the bunch so far.
Fan-flair aside, this card is pretty fucking awesome! Mechanically, the effect is something we’ve all wanted for a really long time, and the card it was printed on delivers. Not only does it increase your hand size, but it’s also a Sprint on a free 4/4, and in a class that can utilize the effect best. This is an amazing tool for Handlock, allowing more hand space (and possibly a 1-Cost Mountain Giant), while also giving you a draw if you need it. It’s also quite useful for Plot Twist strategies. More cards to shuffle and draw. Yes please!
Even in the event that the card somehow doesn’t end up seeing play, the effect alone makes me really happy that this card is in the game. That said, I wouldn’t be surprised for this to solidly find a home. It also synergizes quite well with our next card, that being…
Professional Abyssal Handler
Quote From Fluxflashor I'm not sure how Blizzard plans on validating the size of everyone's hands.
Could this, alongside Valdris Felgorge, give us the return of Handlock? This is a really cool, though a bit of an odd card to see added to the game because I don't see it being that useful as early as it could be played. Handlock being a deck that could use some extra mid-survival, doesn't really get this out of the card.
At its core, we've got a 6-cost 2/2, which when ignoring any text, is worth 1 mana so let us evaluate this card as a 5-drop. What kind of stats do we need to get to break-even with 5 mana? If Booty Bay Bodyguard has anything to add to the conversation, we only need 6 cards in our hand (including Abyssal Summoner) to break-even on the play. Basic minions are trash-tier though with limited use and should never be used for the sake of comparison, unfortunately, we don't have any other 5-cost, taunt-only minions. The token spawn being a Demon does at least provide some additional value assuming a deck will actually make use of the tag.
We're most likely looking at needing 7-8 cards in-hand to create that 6/6 or 7/7 taunt minion to consider this a worthy inclusion, which isn't too crazy for a handlock-focused deck to have, but it also makes the card slow to respond to aggro! I really think Valdris Felgorge is the only card that will really save Abyssal Summoner since it has immense draw-power and will quickly add stats to the minion if we follow up the Valdris play with Abyssal Summoner on turn 8.
On a more positive note, what does make this cool though is we're seeing more interaction with the size of your hand without cheating mana. You're going to need to hold onto a lot of resources to get really crazy value, which can slow the entire deck down if it sees play. There is too much mana cheating in Hearthstone and honestly has always felt like lazy design so this effect is certainly a welcome addition. It does make me question though, are we going to see Mountain Giant Hall of Famed?
Until we see the rest of the Warlock options for Descent of Dragons, we won't know the exact state handlock is going to be in so giving the card an initial overall rating that isn't bad is tough. As things look right now, I'd rather just play Plot Twist Warlock alongside a kickass 6-drop, Aranasi Broodmother.
Now, if we want to talk about Battlegrounds… I really hope this card makes it into the rotation at some point. It adds an interesting new playstyle of hoarding cards which may mean we need to see the rotation of Dancin' Deryl.
Trying to think of a yolk, but I just can't crack it.
Quote From Fluxflashor Eggs marks the spot for our Bingo!
Blizzard has done it again and laid us more ingredients for some tasty scrambled eggs. Unlike most of the other eggs though, we've got a Battlecry AND a Deathrattle on this one. This is also the second time we're seeing a secretly chosen Deathrattle, the first being back in the Knights of the Frozen Throne through Fatespinner.
Unfortunately, as interesting as this card may be to get a terrifying body like Eggwing out in the mid-game, you need the stars to align in your favor which means that Chromatic Egg is already relegated to meme status. The biggest issue I see with the card is that it is going to be tough to crack. Even if you can remove the shell, many of the Dragons you'll get to choose from in the pool have Battlecry effects that won't trigger since the hatchling is played onto the field immediately.
I give it an initial rating of 4/5 stars only because I love seeing the impossible happen and this card has the potential for it. In all likelihood, it is going to be much lower than that though from a competitive standpoint, completely egg-nored, unless we see some very strong, non-Battlecry Dragons. We haven't even seen half the set though, so there always is a chance. It will be interesting to take a look at the card again before the expansion goes live.
As Battlegrounds has shown us though of the past few weeks, Hearthstone should be taken more fun, so don't be a chicken, give the card a try when the egg-spansion launches and you inevitably whisk up 6 of them from your pre-order cartons.
Also, the Hatch flavor is egg-mazing - it'll be hard to beat! They should consider reworking all the eggs.
I'm sorry-not-sorry.
This is Dragonblight. It's 12 days north of Pandaria and a few degrees south of Ice Crown.
Quote From ShadowsOfSense My immediate point of comparison for this card was Netherspite Historian. They're both 2 mana, and they both serve a similar function of getting you extra Dragons.
Historian is almost always a better early play than Dragon Breeder; in the instance where neither of them nets you a Dragon, she only loses 1 Attack against him, but the potential upside from her is far higher, since you're able to get that additional Dragon without first playing one yourself, which is pretty tricky early on. Even better, you can get a massive Dragon if you want one, where Breeder would be Dittoing up some Faerie Dragons or similar low-impact cards.Lategame they're actually trickier to compare; we can assume that both of them will almost always be active, as it's reasonable that you'll have drawn plenty of Dragons for Historian and played plenty of Dragons for Breeder (or be able to play one in the same turn, at least). You could argue that the potential upside of being able to adapt to the situation at hand with the Discover makes it the better card, but equally the cards in your deck are in it for a reason, so getting an extra copy of one of them will always be good. With the influx of new Dragons in this expansion, we could see an abundance of new effects that would make a Discover more versatile, but at the same time less consistently good.
This is a good card. Dragon decks will likely run this simply to bolster their earlygame; even the ones with ridiculous earlygame already, like Warlock and Nether Breath. One thing I do know is I'm not looking forward to facing this in Arena, because that's a hell of a lot of value.
In such a Rush that she got here early.
Quote From ShadowsOfSense I'm really gonna be sad when we get the official name for this one, I do love a good Fluffy card.
Rabid Worgen saw some play in Warrior decks; this is Rabid Worgen but you can bring your friends along with very little effort. Easy staple in Galakrond Warrior decks. What makes it especially fun is that it summons copies; just like Saronite Chain Gang before its untimely demise, you buff this Dragon up a bit and you're looking at a terrifying force of nature. Draw this with Galakrond, the Unbreakable and you've got a cheaper, stronger Oasis Surger that gives you an additional body to boot, all without wasting mana in your early turns.
This is another one of those "incredibly strong (assuming the deck it goes in is strong)" cards, like Nether Breath. The kind of card that Trump gives one star or five stars, and then gets mocked endlessly for predicting the meta wrong. I'll throw my hat in the ring and say you're going to hate playing against this card, that it'll be the strongest part of the deck it's in, but also that as it stands, I don't think the deck is going to be that strong. Solid Tier 2 material, maybe.
Comments
I would mostly agree with the analysis here, with a couple of disagreements:
- As cute as it is, Valdris' hand size increase is not going to be a major factor in most games I feel. It's still a solid card, but it's a solid card because it's a sprint with a 4/4 stapled to it. And even that may not be enough to make it playable, considering we've not seen a good control warlock deck for a while now.
- Abyssal Summoner is, in my view, garbage. We've seen variable token summons on a LOT of cards over the years, and with the notable exception of Jade, almost all of them have been too weak to see play in Standard. Essentially the problem is that, no matter how big your hand is, it's still just a vanilla taunt coming out at the end of the day. 6 mana is usually too much to follow with anything significant, so we're looking at the 'main' play for the turn - which in turn means the power of this minion is basically just mana efficiency (i.e. minion size for cost) - the value of which goes down as cost goes up. Let's be generous and say you usually get this off with, say, 8 cards in hand. You're looking at an Ironbark and a 2/2 for 6 mana. Good on paper... but is that really a big deal in constructed most of the time? I'd say not, unless you're specifically playing it on turn 6 or 7.
- Fluffy Kibler Dragon (love that name) is, if anything, being underrated right now. And I say that despite most people being positive about it. My point, I suppose, is that this isn't a card that will be good or bad depending on Galakrond's strength - this is a card which MAKES Galakrond's strength. People (including me) will build Galakrond Warrior for this card even if all the others are trash.
Oh, and incidentally, the Raging Worgen comparison is a really bad one I'm afraid. Worgen was played in Warrior almost exclusively as a combo card, not for its own merit.
You are absolutely correct that Raging Worgen is a terrible comparison, because I meant Rabid Worgen >.< That's an oops on my part.
That [Hearthstone Card (Fluffy Kibler Dragon) Not Found] seems sooo strong!
And also poor Shudderwock who sees another "copy" card out of his reach.
Guys.
I am so freaking excited for this expansion.
Mate this ones has Dragons in it. Dragons! Am counting down the days too :)
Don’t forget that you can drop the side-quest and it just sits there until activated. If you play it on turn 2, then at any point in the game if you take no damage for a turn, you will get the big taunt. It’s a great card
It's an excellent card compared to spamming your hero power with nothing else to do. I'm not sure it justifies a card in the deck. It's a strong card that doesn't break the game. I see it working best in some kind of zoo Paladin where you and your opponent are incentivized to trade a lot. Do they take an easy value trade or go face? I like the design of the card because it warps your opponents decision making a lot like a secret even though it's not a secret. I want them to continue to explore the side-quest space after this expansion because this one is a lot more interesting than "spend 8 mana on spells."
Now that I think about it, Abyssal Summoner can see some experimentation in Wild EvenLock, maybe instead of Faceless Shambler: consider that the summoned minion is a demon with taunt and it will be a between a 6/6 and a 8/8 on average.
That should make it a little worse than Shambler, but said demon will be brought back by Bloodreaver Gul'dan, which means a bigger board swing later (EvenLock doesn't run that many demons, so I guess it' should be worth it).
I'd say it's better than Shambler on account of not requiring a target. Shambler is a dead card if your mountain Giant or Twilight Drake doesn't stick, making it clunky on curve.
This will usually be at least a 6/6 taunt, which is enough in matchups where you can't just tap endlessly.
"That should make it a little worse than Shambler"
This statement was written because of the mana cost: given that Abyssal Summoner costs 6, you can't go turn 3 Mountain Giant into turn 4 Faceless Shambler but yeah, you're also right.
i was more thinking in terms of consistency, seeing how best case scenarios aren't really enough to determine a card's value
Thank you Shadows for another one of the allways correct predictions. I really enjoy your flavourtexts, they are simply better than the real ones. Break a' Egg!