Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft

• Dragonmaw Overseer - Rare Priest Minion; 3 mana 2/2; At the end of your turn, give another friendly minion +2/2.
  • Hey, Iron Sensei is back. I thought we agreed that Zoo Priest isn't much of a deck though.
• Underlight Angling Rod - Epic Paladin Weapon; 3 mana 3/2; After your hero attacks, add a random Murloc to your hand.
  • First Paladin card being revealed is... Murloc support, y-yay. The weapon's fine on its own, if nothing else.
• Marsh Hydra - Epic Druid Minion; 7 mana 7/7 Beast; Rush; After this attacks, add a random 8-Cost minion to your hand.
  • Hey, remember when Druids broke Arena over its knee with Ultimate Infestation? Want a somewhat less overpowered repeat? Embiggen Druid might like this too, even if Embiggening the Hydra messes up the curve.
• Al'ar - Legendary Neutral Minion; 5 mana 7/3 Elemental; Deathrattle: Summon a 0/3 Ashes of Al'ar that resurrects this minion on your next turn.
  • Ashes of Al'ar - 1 mana 0/3; At the start of your turn, transform this into Al'ar.
    • ...well, this looks positively underwhelming. I guess Resurrect Priests might try their luck with it, but 7/3 for 5 isn't exactly premium stats, and 0/3 is just too easy to remove by that point in the game.

That sounds terrible for Rez priests. The jar is still easily removable, and if it dies then it pollutes your rez pool.

Hell, Al'ar doesn't have rush, it looks like it will be a sitting duck during the turn it comes back.

Edited by Adannor on Mar 19th 2020 at 3:43:38 PM

• Imprisoned Scrap Imp - Rare Warlock Minion; 2 mana 3/3 Demon; Dormant for 2 turns. When this awakens, give all minions in your hand +2/+2.
  • Bufflock? Time will see if this isn't too slow against aggressive aggroness, but coining this out on Turn 1 could lead to serious shenanigans.
• Shadowjeweler Hanar - Legendary Rogue Minion; 2 mana 1/5; After you play a Secret, Discover a Secret from another class.
  • It fuels itself if you have a Secret lying around. Again, the question is if Rogue Secrets will be worth running, but so far the payoff is on the higher end.
• Astromancer Solarian - Legendary Mage Minion; 2 mana 3/2; Spell Damage +1; Deathrattle: Shuffle Solarian Prime into your deck.
  • Solarian Prime - 7 mana 7/7; Spell Damage +1; Battlecry: Cast 5 random Mage spells (targets enemies if possible).
    • Trump-made statistics suggest that you'll get a net benefit most of the time. The "enemies if possible" clause certainly evens out the playing field among the results you can get.

Being Mage only also helps a lot. It's either targetable damage (yay for the enemies clause) or side-bound AOE. There's only a few awkward calls there. Conjurer's Calling (turns an enemy into 2). Yog Box (because that one would go to full random). Overdraw or Book of Specters. Blast Wave, depending on board state.

Both Book of Specters and Blast Wave are rotating out this year, so it shouldn't be an issue.

• The Lurker Below - Legendary Shaman Minion; 6 mana 6/3; Battlecry: Deal 3 damage to an enemy minion. If it dies, repeat this on an adjacent minion.
  • Meh? It's a sidegrade to a Fire Elemental, which is a fine card, but obviously not being played right now. Not sure why this would be, especially since you have more efficient AOE's for Shaman all over the shop, and 6/3 isn't exactly hard to remove either. (Earthquake comes only a turn later and demolishes just about any board without relying on RNG)
• Akama - Legendary Rogue Minion; 3 mana 3/4; Stealth; Deathrattle: Shuffle Akama Prime into your deck.
  • Akama Prime - 6 mana 6/5; Permanently Stealthed.
    • Ehh? You can't exactly silence or transform something that can't be targeted, but unless you're using it just to hit face, a 6/5 minion won't get to do much work on the board without support. Plus, there is quite a few big AOE's around that negate him completely. Comparable with Waxadred, especially since Spellbreaker is rotating out and it won't be so easy to just silence his Deathrattle either.
• Zixor, Apex Predator - Legendary Hunter Minion; 3 mana 2/4 Beast; Rush; Deathrattle: Shuffle Zixor Prime into your deck.
  • Zixor Prime - 8 mana 4/4 Beast; Rush; Battlecry: Summon 3 copies of this.
    • 16/16 for 8. If you draw this with Scavenger's Ingenuity (which gives a drawn Beast +3/+3) and earlier discount your Tundra Rhino with Scarlet Webweaver, you can do exactly 30 damage from hand, which might be a pipe dream, but you can bet someone will make Miracle Hunter a thing.
• Lady Liadrin - Legendary Paladin Minion; 7 mana 4/6; Battlecry: Add a copy of each spell you cast on friendly characters this game to your hand.
  • ...we haven't actually seen any other Paladin cards besides the Angling Rod (which doesn't help with this) yet. Here's hoping Paladin's class identity hasn't become "has ten different class identities and each of them shitty"...
• Warmaul Challenger - Epic Warrior Minion; 3 mana 1/10; Battlecry: Choose an enemy minion. Battle it to the death!
  • I'm guessing this and the chosen minion will keep hitting themselves until one or both of them give. Obviously disgusting if drawn with Galakrond (it'll basically be a mini-Deathwing, Mad Aspect in those cases), and with Commanding Shout you get a two-card combo of "kill anything, draw a card, put a 1/1 on board".

• Augumented Porcupine - Epic Hunter Minion; 3 mana 2/4 Beast; Deathrattle: Deal this minion's Attack damage randomly split between all enemies.
  • Remember Dispatch Kodo from Gadgetzan? It cost one more and dealt one bigger blow instantly. Not sure if this is worth it, even though it curves out very nicely with Scavenger's Ingenuity.
• Beastmaster Leoroxx - Legendary Hunter Minion; 8 mana 5/5; Battlecry: Summon 3 Beasts from your hand.
  • Have fun, Wild players.
• Kayn Sunfury - Legendary DH Minion; 4 mana 3/5; Charge; All friendly attacks ignore Taunt.
  • ...

I mean, while doing all this fun stuff, Blizz obviously had to add in a totally broken face card, right?

Good card SMOrc

They really want to push that aggressive archetype with demon hunter dont they?

If the face plays taunt, me still go face.

Considering the direction they've gone in recent years, that's a weird card to print.

It's also kind of a punishing card? If the DH has any kind of board when he plays it, wow that's gonna hurt. Put that on the list of "Cards most likely to be nerfed in the future"

• Evocation - Legendary Mage Spell; 1 mana; Fill your hand with random Mage spells. At the end of your turn, discard them.
  • Well... that's a big battery of spells you can get from a startlingly high amount of sources (i.e. Magic Trick, Cobalt Spellkin). Even if you don't put it in your deck, it'll find its way into your hand one way or another.
• Maiev Shadowsong - Legendary Neutral Minion; 4 mana 4/3; Battlecry: Choose a minion. It goes Dormant for 2 turns.
  • Depending on how minions going Dormant interact with buffs/effects (Sherazin and Lucentbark lose theirs, so...), it can either be a do-anything Legendary or some extra source of smorcing. It will most likely going to be used as a Spellbreaker on a big Taunt in most cases. (how amusing that said minion with a silence effect and this exact same statline just got rotated out...)

Edited by FergardStratoavis on Mar 21st 2020 at 12:19:20 PM

Now that dormant minions are an expansion's gimmick, and there is plenty of handbuff options, dormant coding should be keep them. Lucentbark and Sherazin will probably not be changed - they summon the dormant token through deathrattle, so the original minion loses buffs because it's dead.

Tbh, it may already be the case that it is kept. The Darkness exists and while buffs don't really matter for it in gameplay, they still ought to be accounted for in code.

Guess we'll see. Regardless, it's been pointed out combo decks and ones running Imprisoned minions can use this too, either to protect a combo piece to have ten mana two turns later with it already on the board or to trigger an Imprisoned minion's effect (though the latter is probably quite a lot less useful).

• Apexis Smuggler - Epic Mage Minion; 2 mana 2/3; After you play a Secret, Discover a Spell.
  • Curves into a turn 3 Secret, I suppose. Not sure if worth it.
• Apexis Blast - Epic Mage Spell; 5 mana; Deal 5 damage to a minion. If your deck has no minions, summon a random 5-Cost minion.
  • It's Firelands Portal for two mana cheaper! Well, it has a steep condition to fulfill to get a minion part of it, but it's here. Firelands Portal was a quality card back in a day, but that was some years ago now, and furthermore, Mage doesn't have many spells that summon minions to make up for wanting this card (compared to Hunter, who could indeed make Spell Hunter a reality; granted, Deathstalker Rexxar helped a ton for that)

Amusingly, despite both of these cards being Apexis they don't synergize with each other.

Imprisoned Vile Fiend - Common Neutral Minion; 2 mana 3/5 Demon; Dormant for 2 turns. Rush

It's a card, I suppose. Could show up in some decks that have a poor turn 2. Paladins can make it a 7/9 Rush on turn 4 with Blessing of Kings, too.

Edited by FergardStratoavis on Mar 22nd 2020 at 2:10:14 PM

• Imprisoned Felmaw - Common Hunter Minion; 2 mana 5/4 Demon; Dormant for 2 turns. When this awakens, attack a random enemy.
  • If the face goes Taunt... jokes aside, this isn't exactly a 5/4 with text "deal 5 damage to a random enemy character", so it's quite possible it will hit something and then die, which is a terrible deal for 2 mana and two turns worth of wait.
• Magtheridon - Legendary Neutral Minion; 4 mana 12/12 Demon; Dormant. Battlecry: Summon three 1/3 enemy Warders. When they die, destroy all minions and awaken.
  • ...so let me get this straight. You get a Twisting Nether and a 12/12 for all of 4 mana as long as you manage to kill three 1/3's (of which there is a multitude of ways to do so). These 1/3's take up board space, pollute a Res pool for Priests, and would presumably(?) require a transform effect to deny the Magtheridon effect (which aren't generally common outside of a Witchy Lackey). You can trade off your board if you're an aggro/zoo deck or just throw out some AOE otherwise, and as long as you kill these 1/3's you kill literally everything else on the board.
  • ...how does this not go into every single deck with space to spare? You can't even go "oh, well, it's expensive", it's 4 mana, for crying out loud. Warlocks will be kings just for the ability to Sac Pact this fucking thing (and Imprisoned Anthaen, I suppose) for 0 mana. (on top of Rogues being able to just Sap it, as they do)
    • I realized that you can Faceless Corruptor a Warder to soften the blow somewhat, but this is still some awful specific tech for this hugeass Legendary.
    • Second impression of this card is that you will need a few things to go off right for you: you can't summon it from your hand or deck like you couldn't The Darkness, and presumably if there isn't enough board space for three Warders, you'll just be giving your enemy 1/3's for free. Still incredibly dangerous, IMO.

Edited by FergardStratoavis on Mar 22nd 2020 at 6:44:52 PM

Hello new Zilliax

"and would presumably(?) require a transform effect to deny the Magtheridon effect "

If mechanically, he checks up on their presence, it doesn't mean how they are removed - death, transform, Reno. If they gone, he goes up. If there is no board space or a cheat summon, he pops instantly. Okay, that's actually too yikes to be real.

Soo, perhaps Wardens have "Deathrattle: Awaken Magtheridon"? Then you do have some maybe options, but its still hella strong. Mag+Hellfire = Twisting Nether+free 12/12.

Edited by Adannor on Mar 22nd 2020 at 9:41:29 PM

Considering Sac Pac works on every imprisonned demon card, if these take off you wont see a Warlock not run at least a copy.

Yeah, Sac Pact is gonna be an auto-in this expansion. A lot of demon focus.

Heh, if Mag Wardens are deathrattle version, Rogue can potentially do a hilariously cheeky Shadowstep.

Here is a Q and A about the upcoming stuff

Some interesting stuff is that Zephrys is getting updated with Demon Hunter and the new priest cards, no plans to replace Leeroy yet and Greymane does nothing for Demon Hunter, so don't bother playing even Demon Hunter games.

The interesting one to me is that the DH has no Classic set. This set will be made by Blizzard later in the year and will include expansion cards and cards from the Initiate pack.

• Sethekk Veilweaver - Epic Priest Minion; 2 mana 2/3; After you cast a spell on a minion, add a Priest spell to your hand.
  • Goes extremely well with all the low-cost removal Priest has for early game (Holy Smite, Penance, Shadow Word: Pain/Death). It's basically a mini-Lyra the Sunshard.
• Shattered Rumbler - Epic Shaman Minion; 5 mana 4/6 Elemental; Battlecry: If you cast a spell last turn, deal 2 damage to all minions.
  • All minions, so it will be a 4/4 if the effect goes off (and 4/2 if you're using Quest Shaman); alternatively you can play it as a 4/6 for 5, which is... not... very good. Meh. Shaman has no shortage of efficient AOE's, let alone ones without any conditions attached to them.
• Mok'Nathal Lion - Rare Hunter Minion; 4 mana 5/2 Beast; Rush; Battlecry: Choose a friendly minion. Copy its Deathrattle.
  • Hey, there's that Armored Porcupine support card. Jokes aside, this is pretty bonkers; Cursed Castaway cost 2 more and offered card draw instead of tempo. Here, you get to instantly trigger the copied Deathrattle while dealing 5 damage to something, and 5/2 is extremely tradable so you're guaranteed that much on even something as lowly as Devoted Maniac.
    • Also comes with some damn pretty art.

It's also the world champ's card, so that's cool.