Out of Cards Reviews - Descent of Dragons Final Reveal #1

What a reveal stream! We got a lot of interesting cards - and 47 cards in total - so we'll be splitting up our reviews into a few different categories. For our first review of this final batch, we're taking a look at all the neutral Dragons and Dragon synergy that were revealed. As always, expect our predictions to be completely accurate, because we're definitely professionals and not just giving our best guesses based on gut feelings.

She sure is good at murder.

Quote From Demonxz95

You know they called all these minions "Evasive" to lampshade on Elusive not being an official keyword. If they called it "Elusive Feywing", they would’ve triggered the whole community. But please. Team 5, this is just begging for it to be keyworded.

It's mostly just a bigger Faerie Dragon, literally. Faerie Dragon has seen some fringe play over time as a 2-drop in Dragon decks. The power level of this card is hard to pinpoint down. It's not necessarily better than Faerie Dragon, but I don’t think it's worse either. Bearshark saw some play in Midrange Hunter which was a +1/+1 over Faerie Dragon for 1 more mana, although it was a Beast and Hunter was able to make use of that quite a bit. This similarly is a +1/+1 over Bearshark for 1 more mana. Perhaps it'll be included in some type of Midrange-ish Dragon deck? It however is a pretty good curve play from Primordial Explorer or Bronze Explorer.

It's hard to talk about this card because there isn’t that much to talk about, which is something that's going to happen a lot with these Neutral Common reviews. With all these Elusive cards in this set, I wonder when Team 5 is finally going to keyword the mechanic. They're going to have to at some point.

Red Dead Evasion.

Quote From linkblade91

As I noted in the review for Diving Gryphon, Rush minions can be considered as minion-only damage spells that may or may not leave a body lying around afterward. In this case, with Divine Shield, Evasive Wyrm is bound to stay behind, meaning this card says "Deal 5 damage to a minion, leave a better Bearshark on the battlefield". For 6-mana, that seems pretty solid to me. Because it's a Dragon, you can reduce the cost with Frizz Kindleroost, making for an amazing tempo play. All-around solid card, especially being a Neutral Common.

Hinox ain't got nothing on this chonker.

Quote From Demonxz95

So this card seems pretty strong to me. A 5/5 for 5 that draws a card is pretty damn good. It's literally a Neutral, unconditional Bonfire Elemental. Or another way to look at it is an Azure Drake for +1/+1 without the Spell Damage. Not every deck that used Azure Drake cared about the Spell Damage, and that card was as universal as Dr. Boom was back in the earlier days.

So I expect this card to be really strong. Basically every deck that isn't super-Aggro can run it. If you're short a card in your deck and don't know what to put in, you can't go wrong with this guy.

Not to mention, incredibly strong in Arena and he's actually kinda cute too.

"Oh yeah, the Dragons in my hand? They're amazing, you'll love them when they get here."

Quote From NudeWookie

Wing Commander has potential to be a 4-mana 8-12 attack minion, depending on how your first 3 turns go, that's insane. However, I don't love telling my opponent what's in my hand. I'm a bit old-school, I like to track my opponent's hand and predict what they will play (way easier said than done with Blizzard vomiting Discover onto every card they can). I expect Dragon decks to run a lot of Dragons with relatively limited spells, so you can play around spells or not based on what attack bonus Wing Commander receives.

Can't snipe Dragons if your opponent doesn't have any.

Quote From linkblade91

While the card seems fine at first glance - and Kripp's successful workings with this card helped sell the fantasy - I don't think it will be reliable enough to see much play. Consider what needs to happen: you need to draw a Dragon (one that does not have a Battlecry worth keeping), and your opponent must not also draw a Dragon. You would need to go all-in on the tribal deck to insure the outcome, and hope that you do not face a "mirror" matchup against an opposing Dragon-deck. This card could lose you the game, and I would never recommend a card that can do that to you. Especially early in the set's "meta", when people will be playing with their new Dragons. Maybe it might be worth a pickup after the dust settles, but it's not like Wrathion was a good card either for a Dragon deck.

She's actually trying out a new diet right now.

Quote From NudeWookie

This is a fantastic card when you have a dragon in hand. It is perfectly comparable with Fire Plume Phoenix, but it's costs 1 less mana. It also has a comparison with SI:7 Agent with a different requirement. My one gripe with the card is that it is not a Dragon itself, which means if you put 2 of these in your deck, you will end up less likely to gain the bonus effect and it doesn't activate other Dragon-in-Hand effects. It is notable that you can deal this damage to the face and not just minions, Quest Shaman has yet another good minion if you decide to try the Dragon route. 

"Oh my god, what the fuck is that?!" - Everyone.

Quote From ShadowsOfSense

I can't say I expected to see something like this. I almost want to say it was designed with Battlegrounds in mind, but you don't tend to keep cards in-hand in that mode, so even there this is a bit out of left field.

This is something you'd run in a Menagerie-style deck - you'll probably be including Beasts as well if you're playing Wild, to make use of The Curator, Menagerie Magician and Zoobot. I think the best class for this style of deck is probably Shaman - with their Corrupt the Waters Quest, you can actually start doing some pretty nasty stuff with doubled Battlecries. The more I think about it the more ridiculous I want to get - maybe you include Pit Crocolisk?

I don't know, this card is so weird but I kind of love the idea of trying to make it work. I don't know that all the parts are quite there for a Standard deck, but you can at least have some weird fun with it in Wild.

Dragons have a slightly different definition of 'bite-size'.

Quote From ShadowsOfSense

Again, this is just kind of weird. I don't know that there's a good place for this card outside of Arena, because Dragons and Murlocs don't really have any established synergy together.

I wonder if the idea behind the 'perfect' deck for this card and Skyfin is to use Murlocs for early survival and then round out the game with big, impactful Dragons. It sounds like a pipe dream, because there seems to be just a little too many places that the deck breaks down, but maybe I'm wrong; I can't see it being too strong ever, but I guess it could be a solid Tier 3/4 bit of fun.

Hey, at least the art is super cute!