Looking Back at the Year of the Wolf Expanions Part 1: Festival of Legends

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 first expansion of that year, Festival of Legends. 

Don't forget to take a look at our TITANS and Showdown in the Badlands articles as well. Without further ado, let's get into it!

Thousand Needles! Are You Ready to Ro-Ro-Ro-Ro-Rock?!

The year seemed to be off to a strong start with an expansion built around a battle of the bands in the world of Azeroth, specifically the Thousand Needles canyon. In theory, the theme for this set is great, being a whimsical and fun expansion after the very serious one that preceded it, and the two semi-serious ones before it. The trailer for the expansion shows a lot of variety within the bands and promises a fun time.

In practice, Festival of Legends squanders its theme hard. For starters, it barely feels like a battle of the bands is taking place, with each class having their own "singer" and their respective "song", with some of the non-Legendaries acting the rest of the band. It would've been a lot better if the classes were split in either 3 groups of 4 or 4 groups of 3, and had those be the bands that were competing in the event. Of course, this would be a lot easier to achieve if there were 12 classes instead of 11.

What really would've helped the expansion is a single player campaign to explore the bands and have a bunch of fun songs to listen to. Perhaps a sort of Dungeon Run mode where you play cards in rhythm to the music, in the style of Crypt of the Necrodancer. As is, the "band" aspect is really lost since none of the classes really interact.

Aye, you! Install these for me, won'tcha?

In terms of cards, they've been... alright. There are a few that saw meta play, but for the most part the expansion wasn't the most powerful. There were a few cycles of cards, like the Soloists that wanted to be played alone on the board, or the various weapons with a Deathrattle that got stronger after you played certain cards.

As mentioned, each class got a "song", which are Legendary Spells that were played by the singers during the titular festival. Some were meta-defining powerhouses that still see play today, while other were just outright bad. Power-level aside, these cards should've all had Tradable attached to them, so you can "Trade" the album with the song on it. They would need to be rebalanced around this fact, but the theming would've been on point. As is, only one of the Legendary Spells got Tradeable.

The free Legendary that came with the set is E.T.C., Band Manager. This card introduced the Side-board to Hearthstone, allowing you to add 3 extra cards to your deck (so long as deck-building rules were still followed, and no Start of Game effects). Giving this card to everyone for free is the cherry on top, allowing people to experiment with a fun new mechanic.

It's a very versatile card, letting you bypass some Start of Game restrictions by running odd cards in even decks, or Holy spells in Shadow Priest. Or it can just be a tech card toolbox so you can counter Secret, Armor or Weapon decks with a single card. The 4-mana tax hurts it a bit, but it's a small price to pay for the versatility.

 Music's for everybody, eh?

The expansion introduced a new Keyword: Finale, which would give the cards a bonus effect if there was no mana left after you played it. As the name implies, they were meant to be big finishers for your turn, but a lot of them had effects that generated or drew other cards, meaning playing them last would actually be a detriment, so a lot of them didn't see play, or were played ignoring the keyword.

The biggest missed potential of this mechanic are the Warrior Riffs, a group of 3 cards that would replay the last Riff you played upon triggering Finale. Power-level aside (they were pretty weak), this mechanic would've been amazing in a set focused heavily on dual-class cards where the classes were grouped into bands as mentioned above, where each band got several Riffs and you could mix and mach them for a lot of different effects.

The expansion also introduced an evergreen keyword for Priest: Overheal, which would trigger when a character is healed above the maximum health. So far, the mechanic as proven to be on the weaker side generally, but there were a few cards that were extremely powerful. Since it's an evergreen keyword, there's plenty of time to have achieve its full potential.

The Grimtotem have had enough of your noise!

Audiopocalypse, the expansion's mini-set, saw the return of Dual-Class cards, which have not been seen since Darkmoon Races. Personally, I love dual-class cards, since they allow each class to have access to more cards without increasing the actual number of cards in the set. I wish they became a staple outside mini-sets.

The story of the Mini-set is that the Grimtotem tribe, led by Magatha, were sick of the Festival music and decided to stop the festival. Unlike the main set, quite a few cards saw play from this mini-set and even needed to be nerfed.

What did you think of the Festival of Legends expansion? Did you enjoy the music, or are you more of a "peace and person"? Let us know in the comments below, and we'll see you soon with the second expansion from the Year of the Wold, TITANS!