Looking Back at the Year of the Wolf Expanions Part 3: Showdown in the Badlands

The year of the Raptor, as well as the annual Rotation, are almost upon us! This means that the 3 oldest expansions currently in Standard, which were released in the Year of the Wolf, will soon rotate to Wild. As such, we thought it would be a good idea to look at each expansion and see how good they were in terms of theming, presentation and balance. Today, we're taking a look at the last expansion of that year, Showdown in the Badlands.

Don't forget to take a look at our Festival of Legends and TITANS articles as well. Without further ado, let's get into it!

Let the Badlands Burn

The final expansion of the year is Showdown in the Badlands, a set all about the Wild West... in a region that's found in the Eastern Kingdom. Yes, fun fact, the Badlands are found in Khaz Modan, which is a massive land-mass usually depicted on the eastern side of Azeroth. 

The reveal for this expansion was weird. First off, the expansion name and theming got leaked via, of all things, a BlizzCon shirt with the art of Maw and Paw and the name of the set on it (looks like you can still buy the shirt at time of writing). Then, the cinematic trailer was shown at the end of the reveal period, on the very last day in fact. It's a fine trailer, miles better than the TITANS one, but at this point the lack of a song made it clear the cinematic team had their budget cut, a problem that would exacerbate the coming year.

Theme-wise, the expansion is a ton of fun, with a lot of fantasy creatures in wild-west hats and dual-wielding guns for duels, desert fauna both realistic and fantastical, and a lot of mining going around. The expansion shows how the league of Explorers got together, with Reno and Elise appearing in the main set, while Brann and Finley show up in the mini-set.

Looking for a Stand-off? Careful, It’s Against Me!

The expansion saw the classes split into two faction. First off, there was Elise Starseeker and her band of Outlaws, consisting of Demon Hunter, Druid, Hunter, Paladin, Priest, and Shaman, with Warrior joining later. Each of these classes got a new Highlander legendary, cards with an effect that triggers when your deck has no Duplicates. This set saw the introduction of Reno as the first Neutral Hero card, while pulling double duty as the Neutral support for these decks. Fitting, as Reno Jackson was the very first card of this kind.

This batch of Highlander cards were changed form "if your deck has no duplicates" to "if your deck started with no duplicates" some time after the expansion launched. This was done to prevent people from just going though their whole deck and playing the Highlander cards when it had no duplicates left. This proved to be a viable strategy due to how powerful Reno was, as the original version would also limit the opponent to a single minion the turn after he's played, rather than just clearing their board. As of writing, the old Highlander cards haven't been updated with the new wording.

Let’s Show These Fine Folks Some Badlands Hospitality

The other faction, called the Bloodrock Mining Company and led by Sheriff Barrelbrim, consisted of Death Knight, Mage, Rogue, Warlock, and Warrior, with Paladin and Shaman sort-of joining later. These classes focused on the flagship mechanic of the expansion: Excavate. When you play a card with Excavate, you're given a 1-Cost Common "treasure" from a pool of uncollectible cards. Do it again, and you get a 2-Cost Rare, then a 3-Cost Epic.

If you do it again as one of the classes mentioned above, you'll get a powerful 4 Mana 5/5 Legendary minion specific to your class. Do it again, and the cycle resets. This was a very well received mechanic, and by far the set's highlight. The pool of Excavate treasures was varied and the cards were all powerful, but mostly fair. The Legendary treasures were all high-impact, with some of them needing to be nerfed. 

Time to Light a Fire Under This Town

The set introduced another keyword for all classes to use: Quickdraw, which gives you a bonus effect if you play the card the moment it enters your hand. Very on-theme, but also very weak, as the cards would be usually sub-par if you didn't play them when you got them, and you couldn't always do that. Sunspot Dragon somewhat mitigates this by being Tradeable, but it's the only Quickdraw card to do so. 

You Call Down the Vengeance of Thunder!

Look, I didn't have many voice line choices to use for the subtitle, ok?

The free Legendary for the expansion is Thunderbringer, an 8-mana 6/6 Elemental Beast with Taunt that would summon a random Elemental and Beast from your deck. This proved to be quite a powerful effect while there were targets for it in Standard, like some of the Colossals from Sunken City, but hasn't seen much play after those rotated. When compared to E.T.C., Band Manager and Prison of Yogg-Saron, it's probably the least flashy of the free Legendaries from this year, but it's still a pretty good minion.

Cower, as the Ground Reaches up to Swallow You!

The mini-set for the expansion is Delve Into Deepholm. It adds a bunch of Elementals into the mix, brings back dual-class cards, and adds a few more Excavate treasures, including Legendaries for Paladin and Shaman. It also brought back Forge and Finale from the previous expansions, as the last mini-set of the year tends to do. Highlander decks got a new option in Maruut Stonebinder, and Warrior joined the club a new Brann, which proved to be quite powerful to say the least. 

Lore-wise, some interesting developments happened. First off, we finally got Therazane, the earth Elemental Lord, into the game! Ragnaros and Al'Akir were here from the very begging, while Neptulon was added in the first ever expansion, so who knows why Therazane took so long to arrive.

The second is the inclusion of Finley. Showdown in the Badlands is supposed to be the first meeting of the explorers, while Finley was supposedly found by Elise as an egg. He's also equipped with the Scales of Justice, which he doesn't get until the events of Savior of Uldum. Fans theorized that time travel is involved, and we're likely to get some answers with the final expansion of this year.

What did you think of the Showdown in the Badlands expansion? Did it strike gold, or should it have kept on panning? Let us know in the comments below!