hearthstone Full Spoilers For The Witchwood

[Aleco 252]

The full spoilers for The Witchwood have been released following a reveal stream with Ben Brode and Day[9].

 

A final reveal stream with Day[9] and Ben Brode has provided us with all of the remaining spoilers for The Witchwood. You can view the entire gallery of newly revealed cards right here. Every card from Witchwood Imp to Curse of Weakness was revealed today.

I've chosen a few of my favorite cards from among them to discuss below. I expect some of these cards to be major players in the post-rotation meta, and others I've highlighted because for their compelling designs:

 

 

The spoilers for Shaman are kind of all over the place. They'll be getting cards that care about Battlecry, cards for an Elemental deck, cards that are clearly intended for control decks, a Murloc card, and this enticing removal spell. Its cheap, its efficient, and I'm a fan of the kinds of play patterns this encourages. You'll have to plan out your Mana usage well to get the most out of Zap!, which leads me to believe that smart players will be able to get a lot more out of this card than others.

 

 

The best friend of Fatigue decks, Coldlight Oracle, will be rotating to the Hall of Fame when The Year of the Raven begins. Baleful Banker fills a different role than Coldlight Oracle did, but it offers these decks a tool they didn't have before. Being able to generate 2 additional copies of a key win condition will give Fatigue-style decks a way to guarantee victory in the late game. It could also be used to enable certain combos which require more than 2 copies of a card to execute. Its too early to say exactly which decks this will fit into, but I think it has enough application that I expect it to see play in several decks throughout its time in Standard.

 

 

Kingsbane Rogue has been one of the better decks for what has been one of the weakest classes in the Kobolds & Catacombs meta. It's losing Coldlight Oracle, but its gaining a new tool in Cutthroat Buccaneer which is arguably even better the deck's strategy. This card plays to the board excellently for its Mana cost (something Kingsbane Rogue struggles with at times), and I'm of the opinion that Kingsbane decks should take basically every +1 Attack to weapon effect they can find. Combo is never as hard to trigger as people seem to think it is, and I expect Cutthroat Buccaneer to show up every Kingsbane deck.

 

 

I don't expect many people to be excited about Lifedrinker, but I think its going to surprise people. A 4 Mana 3/3 isn't great, dealing 3 damage to the enemy Hero isn't great, and gaining 3 Health isn't great. However, if you put all three of those things on the same card and add Beast synergy to it, what you get is something that adds up to playable. The sum is greater than the whole of its parts with Lifedrinker.

 

 

Nightscale Matriarch offers a ton of potential stats for the steep cost of 7 Mana. She'll likely have to survive for a turn before she can start to create 3/3s, but at the same time it probably won't be easy for your opponent to remove all 9 of its Health from the board. It has dragon synergy, its awesome with Lady in White and Inner Fire, and I think it does more than enough to see play.

 

 

It looks like the leaked cards were correct, as both Shudderwock and Prince Liam ended up in The Witchwood. Prince Liam is hot garbage, but Shudderwock has an incredible amount of potential. I'm guessing that he is probably one of the reasons that Coldlight Oracle was added to the Hall of fame, because some combination of Coldlight Oracle, Grumble, Worldshaker, Murmuring Elemental, and Shudderwock would be bonkers. Even without Coldlight, I expect there will be plenty of busted stuff to do with Shudderwock. I plan on spending the next few hours trying to brew up an OTK with this card, and will report back with my results.

 

 

Mage and Shaman are both picking up support for Elemental decks in The Witchwood, and I expect Sandbinder to make the cut in them. The downside to Sandbinder is that it doesn't chain into Servant of Kalimos, but its probably a better turn 4 play than Fire Plume Phoenix in the average situation. This could also be used to pull key Elementals for decks that run low numbers of the minion type, such as Lyra the Sunshard, Grumble, Worldshaker, or Ragnaros, Lightlord.

 

 

This is so much stats for Inner Fire and Lady in White. I honestly couldn't say if this does enough to see play as a purely defensive tool for Control decks, but I expect we'll find out quickly whether this card is the real deal in Combo Priest.

 

There's definitely a lot of cards for us to parse through in today's reveals, but its never too early for wild speculation! Let us know in the comments which among these cards you expect to be the strongest and which you are the most excited to play with, and be sure to check out our Witchwood Hub for more information on the upcoming expansion.

[Migol 433]

Honestly I don't think much of Sandbinder.   The body is negligible and you could play spells, play actual elementals, etc instead.

[Hanz39 53]

Sandbinder is terrible for an elemental deck but can be played in a deck with a single or few elemental as a tutor like in a Priest deck with only Lyra/Radiant for example

[Bozonik 94]

Drawing Ixlid with sandbinder could be rather nice for some sort of combo druid.

[Caldyrvan 377]

They really saved the big cards for the final stream. I definitely like to try them out.

Why can't I snap and it's suddenly Thursday?

Side note: Can you stop linking to FB, it sucks :D also sites like hearthpwn offer a much better and user friendly overview :)

[AlSyafiq 0]

ls there a Legendary card for free in this expansion

[Aleco 252]

3 minutes ago, AlSyafiq said:

ls there a Legendary card for free in this expansion

Yes, all players will get one random class Legendary!

[Drachar 45]

17 minutes ago, Aleco said:

Yes, all players will get one random class Legendary!

I think there was a three pack quest on launch as well (so make sure questlog got room).

[Taan 46]

I want to point out some additional cards that caught my eye.

"Earthen Might" (+2/+2 and a random Elemental for 2 Mana) seems quite strong. Its a bit worse than Mark of Y'Shaarj (which saw a lot of play) but most Elementals you can get are usefull.

"Night Prowler": yeah, its a bit harder to trigger than Lone Champion but a 6/6 beast for 4 Mana...wow. It might be to hard to trigger against aggro- or midrange-decks but against control the board is often empty. So it seems promising.

"Curse of Weakness": what a strange card. My first reaction was "wow". My second was "meh". But after thinking about it, this spell might actually be quite usefull for control-Warlock in the future. You basically buy time and (most importantly) you can use this to bait your opponent in contributing more minions to the board for a Twisting Nether or Hellfire. It might not make the cut now, but I would watch out for this one in the future. Oh and it combos with Corrupting Mist...whatever thats worth...

Edited April 10, 2018 by Taan

[Synesthesy 114]

I have to say that I'm a little afraid of having 2 minion with yogg-style effects. Actually, the shaman one is much better then Yogg, as you can plan what to repeat.

And for Shudderwock, I'm curious. Will a second copy trigger the first one's battlecry? :O

[Taan 46]

1 hour ago, Synesthesy said:

And for Shudderwock, I'm curious. Will a second copy trigger the first one's battlecry? :O

Ehh...probably?

Thinking about it, I got some more questions regarding Shudderwock:

- does the Battlecry of Grumble, Worldshaker bring "Shudderwock" back on your hand, so you can play him (theoretically) 10 times next turn?

- is the kind of Kalimos, Primal Lord battlecry also triggered randomly?

- i guess The Darkness-battlecry shuffles more candles in your opponents deck and they still have to draw 3?

- is the order of the triggers also random?

Edited April 10, 2018 by Taan

[Synesthesy 114]

 

For gumble, the answer should be yes... If you also activate something like saronite gang chain to summon a copy... As I have said, I'm a little afraid of this card.

And repeating a battlecry that repeats battlecries, is a nice logic problem about recursion. If you think about it well, the second copy could repeat infinite times his battlecry!

Edited April 10, 2018 by Synesthesy

[FanOfValeera 253]

7 minutes ago, Synesthesy said:

And repeating a battlecry that repeats battlecries, is a nice logic problem about recursion. If you think about it well, the second copy could repeat infinite times his battlecry

We already thought about this with 2xMurmuring Elemental and Fire Elemental. Battlecries don't add up. I don't know why, but that's the case.

[Taan 46]

8 minutes ago, Synesthesy said:

If you think about it well, the second copy could repeat infinite times his battlecry!

I would guess that the term "repeat all OTHER Battlecries..." could mean the Battlecry itself and not necessarily the card. So a second Shudderwock would neither trigger its own Battlecry a second time, nor would it trigger the Battlecry of the first copy. But Iam only guessing here.

[Bozonik 94]

1 hour ago, Taan said:

I would guess that the term "repeat all OTHER Battlecries..." could mean the Battlecry itself and not necessarily the card. So a second Shudderwock would neither trigger its own Battlecry a second time, nor would it trigger the Battlecry of the first copy. But Iam only guessing here.

The first game they played on the reveal stream involved shudderwocks. The first is played at 27min into the stream. The same player then plays a second at 29.5min into the stream, it doesn’t cast the Battlecry of the first Shudderwock.

Was still utterly insane, and this was mostly uncontrolled shudderwock (stolen by Paladin, who also randomly got the hunter dragon that battlecries doubling HP and Attack of all your minions).

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there’s a deck out there where shudderwock Battlecry is essentially win the game most of the time. In which case we could be seeing the fastest nerf in HS history...

[Bozonik 94]

5 hours ago, Synesthesy said:

I have to say that I'm a little afraid of having 2 minion with yogg-style effects. Actually, the shaman one is much better then Yogg, as you can plan what to repeat.

I think the strength of the Rogue one, if it proves to be viable, will be more it’s N’Zoth-style effect than it’s Yogg-style effect. You’re unlikely to get the amount of spells that Yogg used to thrive on as you first have to generate them, then have to cast them, whilst also likely rejecting some. But getting every generated minion back for free should be very strong, and has much less likelyhood of backfiring.

May be slightly biased by the games in the reveal stream but I’m less convinced this one will be viable than the Shudderwock one.

[Taan 46]

Okay, maybe I should have watched the reveal-stream first. Ben Brode also stated, that the order is random (after he said, that it is always the same).

I don't know if this will become completely busted in standard. A probably pretty nice combo could be:

Grumble, Worldshaker on 6

Kalimos, Primal Lord on 8

"Shudderwock" on 9

This should trigger Kalimos Battlecry and give you a 1-cost copy of "Shudderwock" back on your hand. On your next turn (or you next turn after you played an elemental?) you could play 10 1-cost-"Shudderwocks", getting 10 triggers of Kalimos' Battlecry. With some triggers of his "Invocation of Fire" (6 damage to enemy hero) this could easely kill your opponent.

But I still feel, that I could be wrong with this. Does someone see a reason that this will not work?

[Bozonik 94]

I think the trick will be building a deck in such a way that you are still alive on turn 9 against Aggro. If Aggro destroys you it’s never going to be a meta-breaker.

Lifedrinker (and even nightblade?) could be interesting since they do targeted damage to enemy face with Battlecry. A lot of damage/heal effects will be random and so not that useful.

On first glance through the available options, I think an OTK style deck might be hard to build in a manner that it survives to actually pull off the kill. A more board-centric build might be the way forward.

Although Lifedrinker -> Grumble -> Shudderwock -> 10 Shudderwocks seems a strong OTK line. I’m not sure it brings back Shudderwock though since the Grumble Battlecry is ‘return all other minions’ so if Shudderwock is casting it does he stay?

Edited April 10, 2018 by Bozonik

[Caldyrvan 377]

1 hour ago, Taan said:

 

This should trigger Kalimos Battlecry and give you a 1-cost copy of "Shudderwock" back on your hand. On your next turn (or you next turn after you played an elemental?) you could play 10 1-cost-"Shudderwocks", getting 10 triggers of Kalimos' Battlecry. With some triggers of his "Invocation of Fire" (6 damage to enemy hero) this could easely kill your opponent.

But I still feel, that I could be wrong with this. Does someone see a reason that this will not work?

The Grumble can not return more to your hand than you have and once a minion is returned it can't be returned again.

[Taan 46]

2 hours ago, Bozonik said:

I’m not sure it brings back Shudderwock though since the Grumble Battlecry is ‘return all other minions’ so if Shudderwock is casting it does he stay?

Ahh yeah, of course. That will probably stop it from working.

But just for clarification:

35 minutes ago, Caldyrvan said:

The Grumble can not return more to your hand than you have and once a minion is returned it can't be returned again.

I meant, that Grumble returns one 1-cost-Shudderwock, then you play that one, then you get another one, then you play that one...and so on. One after another until you run out of mana. But since it returns only "other" cards you will have to use two Shudderwocks and this will probably turn out to be way to complicated.

Edited April 10, 2018 by Taan

[Bozonik 94]

31 minutes ago, Caldyrvan said:

The Grumble can not return more to your hand than you have and once a minion is returned it can't be returned again.

The suggestion is, play Grumble at some point. Later play Shudderwock. This triggers the Grumble battlecry, returning Shudderwock to hand as a 1 cost minion.

Then next turn play that 1 cost Shudderwock. The Grumble Battlecry triggers, returning Shudderwock to hand as a 1 cost minion. Repeat.

Or does this not happen because Shudderwock is casting the battlecries and hence is not one of your ‘other minions’ as specified by the Grumble Battlecry?

[Caldyrvan 377]

Oh sorry guys, I got it wrong ^^. I did stuff like that already doing a OTK with grumble + zola + kalimos ;)