Looking Back at the Year of the Wolf Expanions Part 2: TITANS

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 second expansion of that year, TITANS. 

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

The Timeways Reveal Azeroth's Potential

The first impressions for the second expansion of the year were.... not great. Our first look at the new set started with the arguably the worst trailer the game has ever seen, with barely moving PNGs of the characters and uninteresting background music. The theming isn't that great either, with a very broad "Titans" motif that doesn't tie things together all that well. Doesn't help that this is a lore-heavy set, with some cards not actually being the characters they seem to be.

Amuse Me With Your Tales of Victory

The early impressions get a lot better with the introduction of the Titan keyword. Titan cards have 3 very powerful abilities, and you can normally use one of them each turn, plus either a passive of sorts that triggers after you activate them, or a Battlecry that enables these abilities to function.

All the Titans are high-impact cards when they hit the board, though some of them are more powerful than others. You won't usually see a titan survive more than one turn, but getting only one ability to trigger and forcing your opponent to kill the Titan made sure a good chunk of them saw play. Weirdly enough, some of the cards with the Titan ability aren't Titans in the lore, though that just opens up the keyword to potentially return in the future.

Aside from the Titans, each class also got a legendary Titan Watcher, which were powerful minions that either gave you immediate value or would do so later in the game. Their power lever ranged from "garbage" to "far more powerful than the Titan", with Odyn proving to be especially powerful.

A Titan's Flame Shall Never Die!

The set also introduced the Forge mechanic, which allows you to upgrade a card by putting it over your deck and paying 2 extra mana. There's a surprisingly small number of cards with this mechanic, with classes only getting one Forge cards at most, and some not even that. The crux of the mechanic comes from neutrals, and a lot of them weren't worth the Forge cost. The best Forge cards were class cards.

The keyword was supported by Ignis, the Eternal Flame, a very versatile card that could be used in a lot of points during a match. It works in a similar way to Kazakus, allowing you to craft a custom weapon if you Forged before playing the card. You could get a 1-Cost to deal with some small threats, a 5-Cost  for a medium-sized weapon that you can play with another card, or a 10-Cost for a very powerful effect.

There was also a deck revolving around Storm Giant and Melted Maker. You'd play the Maker, Forge the Giants a few times to get multiple copies and reduce their cost, then your opponent has to deal with a massive board of 8/8 Taunts. And because the original cost of the Forged copies stays low, they can be brought back by cards like Unending Swarm.

Melted Maker

Unity. Precision. Perfection.

Another mechanic present in this set is Magnetic, which was first and last seen all the way back in The Boomsday Project. Weirdly enough, there were more Magnetic cards than Forge ones, the expansion's new mechanic. This doesn't mean the keyword is now evergreen, as it has not been used again since TITANS. It does open up the possibility of previously expansion-exclusive keywords in a single set. Let us know what other keywords you'd like to see get this treatment in the comments below.

The return of Magnetic meant that the original Zilliax was brought back in the Core set, thought his impact wasn't as strong as on release. It also saw the introduction of a new kind of deck: Mech Rogue. While the class had some Mech cards before, TITANS was the first time Rogue really leaned into the Mech package. Sadly, the deck didn't see competitive play, as most of the Mech cards were too expensive for the class' play style.

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Madness Will Consume You

The free Legendary that everyone got is Prison of Yogg-Saron, the first Legendary Neutral Location in the game. It's a fun card, but the fact it casts only 4 spells isn't as exciting as the original Yogg, and the random factor would eventually be better represented by the nerfed version of Yogg-Saron, Unleashed which was released in the mini-set. Speaking off...

The End of Days is Finally Upon You

The mini-set is focused on Yogg-Saron and his escape from the Titan prison. Unfortunately, there are no dual-class cards in this one, with each class getting more cards that support their existing archetypes. This is a sham, since, as we said in the Festival of Legends article, they allow for more cards for each class without actually increasing the number of cards.

A very unique card introduced is Cho'gall, Twilight Chieftain, who can activate an Anomaly at the start of the turn. These are very powerful passive effects that affect both players, with a 50% chance to trigger if one player had him, and 100% if both do. There was also a short event where anomalies would pop up in constructed games even without Cho'gall. A lot of players didn't like that.

The big showpiece of the mini-set is Yogg-Saron, Unleashed, a neutral Titan with insanely powerful abilities. The original version was 15 Mana and cost 1 less for each spell you cast, but it turns out that wasn't much of a restriction. The card would eventually be set to 9 Mana and made so it that using an ability would cast two random spells, which is far more fitting for the Old God of Madness. The card also has the longest attack line in the game, at a whopping 22 words.

One somewhat fun archetype was Chaotic Tendril decks. These cards cast random spells of increasing cost, capping at 10, and there were a few cards that could generate them, including the new Yogg. This deck found its apex once Rotation hit with Whizbang's Workshop. Due to the small number of 10-cost spells, the tendrils could consistently hit Sunset Volley for a ton of Damage and big minions. This deck was eventually put down when Volley was "buffed" to 9 mana.

What did you think of the TITANS expansion? Did it leave a titanic impression on you, or did the scale of things not look so grandiose? Let us know in the comments below!