A new card has been revealed by Lt. Eddy!
Don't forget to follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook to get notified of new card reveals! You can also follow along with us on Discord
Learn More About Descent Of Dragons
You'll want to check out our Descent of Dragons expansion guide to see all the currently revealed cards and information we have.
Card Reveal Season Giveaway
We're giving away card bundles thanks to Blizzard, forum titles, and more! Learn more about it our giveaway announcement.
Get Cheaper Hearthstone Packs with Amazon Coins
Learn more about how you can save money on Hearthstone packs for the new expansion with our guide on Amazon Coins!
Comments
I don't like this, feels like it's just a non conditional keleseth and it's gonna get abused by aggro-midrange druid (which has a powerful finisher in swarm based strategies in the form of Savage roar). Goddamn man enough with the keleseth-like cards already...
Now I have a proposition for you:
Biig Beast Druid....but you make the beasts big.
We run all the RR big beast stuff like Stampeding Roar and Oondasta, then we buff a bunch of normally not as impressive beasts (Silverback meta hype) and summon them with those. MAybe even run Sathrovarr to get some additional value.
Aside from that we also have great interactions with Anubisath Sentinel, which will always cost (0), Zilliax is always fun with stat buffs, and just generally any taunt minion with high Heath benefits from this.
It's clunky, but at least Druid has enough draw to give this consistency.
I would try that. Don't see why people downvoted you...
SLima finally posts what I was thinking the second I saw this card, after more than a page of comments thinking this card will be busted...
This card is not particularly powerful if you're playing anywhere above rank 10 with decks that actually have a game plan beyond 'put stuff on the board I guess'. The keys to a HS deck are, in almost all cases, a) synergy, b) combinations, and c) game plan. If all your cards cost (1) more, suddenly all three of those get a whole lot harder. Synergy is more difficult to exploit when it's harder to get minions out quickly. Combinations become prohibitively expensive or stop working entirely. And it's much more difficult to have a game plan when you have to build your deck entirely around cards which only affect targets in the deck and you have no real way of tutoring them.
Now, never say never. It's theoretically possible for a deck built around this card to be strong. But it would have to be carefully built so as to prioritise mana timings and curve expectations when you draw one copy of this card, vs when you draw two copies, while also retaining enough game to survive and find an alternate win condition when they happen to be buried in the bottom half of your deck (which, incidentally, will happen somewhere in the region of 35% of the time assuming you hard mulligan for them and there are no tutors). It will be very hard to pull off.
My expectation is that we'll see a little of this card in opening week. Those decks will lose a lot to mana inefficiency. Playrate will drop off hard for a while. Then, when the meta starts to settle, we'll start to see moderately successful variants of the deck released which have been tuned to allow for the difficulties above. Those decks will get to around tier 2-3, but no higher, then drop off again as people get used to encountering them.
TL;DR - not very strong, stop complaining.
do you know that you can set your mana curve around this card ?
In a Zoo-like deck you can build a deck around it.
Prince Keleseth decks did not have 2-cost cards but still were too powerful. You can use 2-cost cards with it and make them cost 3 with this card. Almost same with Prince Keleseth.
it is easy to build a deck around mana curve. Simply put 1-cost cards to consider them 2-cost, put 2-cost cards consider them 3-cost etc.
Yes it is very strong because it makes big archetypes + zoo archetypes better at the same time.
A little curious why you're asking 'do you know' when my original post went into that area in significantly more detail than you did, but for the sake of clarity I'll explain further:
Yes, you can go through building a deck tuned for that specific mana timing. You can treat 1-drops as 2, 2-drops as 3. The trouble with that, as I was setting out in my original post, is that a) a solid 35% of the time you won't be drawing this card in the first half of your deck, if at all, meaning that's fully a third of your games in which you're running an out-of-kilter curve (and probably some inefficient minions that you added to try to capitalise on the raw stat boost.
In other games, you'll draw both copies. At which point, either one is dead, or you've broken your deck design again because your curve changed from what you expected it to be.
Now, as I laid out above, that problem isn't entirely unsurmountable. There are, no doubt, builds which will optimise a one-copy draw while remaining balanced enough to function with a 0- and 2-copy draw. But those builds will take time to find, and further time to refine. And even after that's done, I don't expect these decks to be particularly oppressive because of the significant downsides to what you're doing.
The comparison to Keleseth is a phenomenally unhelpful one, by the way, which I'm disappointed the community has latched onto for some reason. Keleseth required very little in the way of deck modification - drop the 2s, add in a couple more 1s and 3s to ensure early curve, you're good. And past turn 2-3, having no other 2-drops had very little impact on your game plan. That is not the case here. With this card, you are having to tailor your entire deck to function properly with a fluctuating curve, and you are under the negative effect of +1 costed minions for the entire game after playing it. The positive effect is greater, yes, but it's not the fire-and-forget that Keleseth was. Surrender to Madness is a far more apt comparison - and while this card is significantly stronger than that was, that doesn't make it good.
Edit: Forgot to mention one point which you raised in your post - the idea that this card would make 'zoo' archetypes (which are pretty unseen in Druid, by the way, as it either focusses on more of a token setup-burst build or a slower survival-token one, but that's by the way). This thought is wholly incorrect. Zoo as an archetype exists and works through early consistency, value and tempo. This card helps with value, while actively hurting both consistency and tempo. Running it in a zoo build would be an atrociously bad idea.
You don't want to use this card in a token deck. Your tokens doesn't even get those buffs unless they are copies of card itself like Oasis Surger. This card has nothing to do in token decks unless you build it with cards like Oasis Surger and those are quite high-costed cards in general.
Deck tailoring for community is really easy because there is netdecking fact. Noone has to tailor their decks, someone will do that for them. That's why I hate netdecking so much. Intelligence is nothing in this game. If you can pilot a deck, you can simply win in this game. Noone worries about deckbuilding skills because of shitty netdecking fact.
I still think that it is fair enough to compare this card with Prince Keleseth. You will not care the mana costs at late game because what it really matters for the deck that you use this spell (unless it is a big archetype) is early and mid game. It will be an aggro deck that you use and you will try to finish-off your opponent until 7th-8th turn and you will know already that your opponent will be powerful in late game. Even the "if i can't mulligan Emibggen" fact is the same with Prince Keleseth. If you can't draw it, you simply play a normal aggro game with your minions' normal stats. If you are good enough in deckbuilding and lucky enough to draw Embiggen in first turns of the game, you can also convert an old aggro deck into a mid-range deck with this card either. Tailoring your deck around +1/+2 cost isn't that hard in my opinion. There are plenty of cards that are better if they get even +1/+1 and 1 mana is almost a vanilla 1/2 minion's cost. This gives +2/+2 to a minion with +1 cost which is more than vanilla stats. 3 mana 4/4 Knife Juggler or 4 mana 6/6 with double ticks for example. This doesn't bother an aggro deck to mid-range deck conversion in my opinion. I can give you some more fancy examples of minions here;
Belligerent Gnome; 3 mana 3/5, 4/5 if there is 2 minions on board;
Pint-Sized Summoner; 3 mana 4/4 with (1) mana cost reduction;
Shieldbreaker; 3 mana 4/3 with taunt silence;
Faerie Dragon; 3 mana 5/4 Can't be targeted...
Worgen Infiltrator; 2 mana 4/3 stealth
Swamp Leech; 2 mana 4/3 lifesteal
Bloodsail Corsair; 2 mana 3/4 weapon distrupt.
Argent Squire; 2 mana 3/3 Divine Shield (Which is 4 mana in classic set)
Bluegill Warrior; 3 mana 4/3 Charge
Master Swordsmith; 3 mana 3/5, +1 attack some other minion every turn.
Even Wisp is 1 mana 3/3.
etc.
I am planning to build a deck with Potion Vendor, Lifeweaver, Injured Blademaster, Injured Tol'vir, Neferset Ritualist, Crystallizer, Crystal Stag etc. Kind of a combo priest deck with this new Embiggen card. That will be for honor of Lifeweaver because i like her too much while considering the deck will not be good enough but I am saying you to consider the minions I have mentioned above and the minions like them, Can't give all the examples here for my time. I think you are little underestimating the Embiggen.
Time will tell; if the decks around this card will be so oppressive and strong like I said or not very strong as you said. I still think that the card is so powerful for both big and aggro-to-midrange archetypes.
Edit: It was not a question tho, it was an indicator and sarcasm like "You know that you can set your mana curve around it, why do you still act like that you can't build your deck around this card.". I hate to explain this kind of things, you know.
You can counteract the +1 Cost penalty by using Breath of Dreams or Frizz Kindleroost in a Dragon deck. Someone will experiment with Big Dragon Druid, I'm sure of it.
Makes everything bigger but more expensive. It's scary at first glance but cost increase isn't something small. Mana discounts are extremely powerful and broken in this game. But the reverse should be true as well. Making everything more expensive (even with stat increases and ramping) will make many turns pretty awkward. I may be wrong but i think this card will also cost you a lot of flexibility during the game. I don't think this is all that good but we will see.
I think this works in a ramp deck, it'll be interesting to see what decks come out of this
Man I just don’t know about this exp. it feels like we will have a bunch of “evolve shaman” decks. Just being able to do stupid things that end the game fast. I hope somehow all this power cancels itself out, but it’s unlikely. It feels like the power creep took two steps instead of one.
BIGLY! Make them BIGLY!
It's a perfectly cromulent word.
They didn't come up with it, the Simpsons made it up, and it was accepted into the English language.
True. I would have preferred "Get Swoll".
Anubisath Defender: "Funny...I feel more powerful but I don't cost any more."
MAGIC SPELL!
MAKE MY MINIONS GROW!
*que power rangers music*
its so frustrating to see they gave priest a 3 cost card that destroys another 3 mana
but they give druid 0 mana card without a downside, a class that can ramp easily.
im so mad...
Don't get upset, embrace the madness instead!
there is a downside just not as big