The final card reveal is happening soon. You will find that on twitch on Wednesday August 1st at 10 AM PDT (1 PM EDT, 7 PM CEST).

4 mana draw the exact 4 combo pieces you need? Seems reasonable.

Between that and Floop, Togwaggle/Azalina Druid is going to be an actual thing in Standard, christ

I hate fighting that deck in wild

I like Voltaic Burst a lot, what a fun card that seems pretty flexible

Zerek is... interesting? But I don't really see what deck he fits in. I guess you could use him to pump your quest but for 6 mana? Priest can already play two 2 mana guys and continuously bring them back on the cheap. Zerek is a little hefty for that

I want to like Myra, but man, I dunno. I guess it depends on the odds of getting good deathrattles but that takes more stat crunching than I'm willing to do right now. Even if they're good though Rogue doesn't have the same capability to trigger their rattles early like Hunter or Warlock do

Cthun is back with a new special effect for people who liked Uther of the Ebon Blade. I also expect the card to be just as viable competitively in standard as Uther of the Ebon Blade.

Not only do you have to clear your hand and deck, but you have to kill Cthun as well. Perhaps you can put this into a rogue deck with Myra's Unstable Element. And when you know you have your combo ready, you can draw your entire deck and then toss out your cards in your hand. Then you can use a magnetize minion to kill off cthun. When you think about it, it sounds kind of clunky since you need Cthun to stay on the board for a turn and not be polymorphed (unless you have a way to cheat mana like prep). And I am also assuming that magnetize works with deathrattles.

We shall see when the card comes out, but I like it since it provides a neat deck building challenge.

This seems doable in Druid (because of course it does, you can do anything you want in Druid) since you can clear out your deck pretty fast with UI and other draw and then play this, Innervate, and Naturalize it

I mean it's a pretty stupid combo and you wouldn't but Druid can do it

Well I thought about what happens when you use magnetize on Mecha Cthun and even if it activates deathrattle, it would still not work. The effects says your battlefield needs to be empty and magnetize leaves something on the board.

? Magnetize would only leave something on the board if it's the one with the minion summoning deathrattle, otherwise it's just a pure buff

But I guess I don't understand what you mean by using a Magnetic minion to kill of C'thun in the first place

This druid card looks interesting. If you can guarantee that it hits Malygos, you could pull off a huge combo. On the other hand, it's also an epic card instead of a legendary so Blizzard felt that it was a balanced enough card that you could include two in your deck. So chances are it might not be powerful.

Are they trolling with these druid cards? I honestly don't see how the next meta could be anything other than druid + aggro decks.

Necrium Vial is just baffling. It costs so much more than Play Dead. I guess they pre-nerfed the mana cost, on the assumption that you're going to do Preparation + Necrium Vial.

They've kept pushing Deathrattle Rogue with stuff like Roll The Bones, Onyx Spellstone, and now Necrium Vial, but I still don't even see what deck possibly uses these cards. Rogue still has zero particularly great Deathrattle minions, so I guess Necrium Vial could be used with some combination of Devilsaur Egg or Carnivourous Cube or maybe one of the Neutral Deathrattles from Boomsday, but I still don't see the point. It seems like Hunter is better at triggering Deathrattles because they have more good class minion Deathrattles and more ways to activate them.

My question is this. Who is the person in power at Blizzard's Hearstone team that has a massive hard on for Druid that is able to get away with this shit? First we get Jade Druid, then Ultimate Infestation, now a 4 mana better then Sprint card.

@tennmuerti: Don't forget Spreading Plague

Yeah the more I think about it, while other decks have distracted us, Druid has maybe been the best overall class in the game for years now and it's just now hitting this point of no return that's kind of scary

Like other decks have been better at various points, (correct me if I'm wrong) but Druid has been the only class to have a tier 1 deck in every meta since... I started playing at least, in LoE. Maybe Mage as well?

Since mass nerfs for the class aren't a thing, the only thing I guess we can hope for is to raise the power level of the other classes to be on par but looking at like, the Warlock class legendary and some of the Rogue stuff...

On the bright side, pretty excited about some of the new Shaman things. Could maybe bring back a bloodlust-y Shaman in Standard and a couple fun new toys for Even Shaman in Wild. Thunderhead looks super cool for both

Void Analyst would have to be SO good to in any way compete with Prince Keleseth in swarm-style Warlock decks, but unfortunately it's not especially good. So I guess it's a 2-drop for Arena players, or a budget version of Keleseth for constructed players that can't afford to craft Keleseth. It honestly feels like the card could've been a 2/3 or 3/2, given how weak of an effect "buff some cards in your hand" proved to be in prior expansions.

Prismatic Lens is a neat idea. I don't have the deckbuilding brain to imagine how you could consistently get a result you want from it. Regardless, it's Paladin card draw that isn't Divine Favor, so that's something.

@bisonhero: I'll say as someone who has actually played a decent amount of non-Keleseth zoo, Vulgar Homunculus comes so close to competing with Keleseth on it's own. If they just add a couple more playable two drops I can see Keleseth getting cut. It'll be tight though, and the Keleseth version would still be pretty competitive, I'm just saying that card at least plays well with Vulgar Homunculus and maybe something can be made to work without the Prince

Speaking of Zoo, the Soularium is rad and maybe I'm the most boring person on earth but I really want to play some zoo this expansion

oops nope never mind Keleseth zoo for the foreseeable future

All Hail Keleseth, King of Zoo forever.

That all being said, now that all the cards have been revealed I'll say there are some pretty sweet new cards this set

Once the inevitable Druid nerfs happen, I'll bet there'll be some rad decks in the meta. Just have to wait like a month :L

Floop's Glorious Gloop is so good, the combo potential is off the charts with that one. You could do something like Gloop, Poison Seeds, Primordial Drake, Ultimate Infestation all in one turn. And that's just what I came up with off the top of my head. The problem will be fitting it into a deck since Druid has so many good cards. Alongside Melon and Biology Project I think those are three of the strongest cards in the set by far, at least in Wild.

You know, I wonder about Warlock Mech Zoo in wild

I think the magnetic package looks pretty strong for board control, and this guy

Glinda, Mechwarper, and this thing and if you have a mech already on board from last turn with a clear route to the opponent's face, this guy provides infinite burst

I almost wonder if Mechwarper gets nerfed in Wild with this expansion

Like obviously that's a highly specific scenario but Glinda's good in zoo anyways and the mech/magnetic package has a lot of potential there even without infinite damage

@cesakich: Yeah, it's an interesting combo with Glinda. Technically your opponent has one turn to respond to it if you didn't already have a Mech on the board before you played Glinda + Mechwarper, but even then you'll have a board of Glinda + arbitrarily large mechs that can only be cleared by Twisting Nether and the like. If you did already have a Mech alive, then yeah, you just buff it like 20 times with Skaterbot and go face.

Yeah it's not an otk or anything but it's an easy way to build big boards and threaten lethal with a bunch of cards that are probably good in zoo anyways

I'm excited about the mech side of this expansion, people are sleeping on just how good Wargear is going to be

Mechs are going to beat some damn faces in and I dunno that Shudderwock Shaman or Druid are actually going to be able to control that

Tech in stuff like Void Ripper to beat Spreading Plague and maybe even Scorp-o-matic(!) to fight Doomsayer and some aggro minions and you have yourself a stew

Blizzard just posted an insightful article on how drafting in arena works. They even included the actual spreadsheet of card rankings so we can see how which cards are more likely appear in comparison to other cards. This list includes the new Boomsday cards, so they are the bleeding edge in terms of Hearthstone info.

The link is included in the article. The spreadsheet is pretty difficult to read though. You're going to see a lot of numbers and little formatting.

There is also information on changes to the drafting in the upcoming expansion.

Class Cards, Weapons and Spells

We also looked at the appearance rate of class cards, spells, and weapons. We think it’s valuable for these cards to show up often for several reasons: they make playing each Class feel unique, they change the pace of a match, they help create more skill-testing situations, and finally, many of these cards offer opportunities for a player to catch up from behind, which results in more interesting games.

That, the appearance bonus for these cards is currently too high, causing them to appear so frequently that they can make Arena matches feel repetitive. To solve that, we’re reducing the appearance rates of these cards as follows in the upcoming update:

• Class Cards: +100% -> +50%
• Spells and Weapons: +75% -> +50%

Note that these bonuses multiply, which means that spells and weapons will have a net 125% increase in appearance rate, instead of their old 250% net increase.

Rarity of the Cards

In our last blog, we also took a close look at card appearance by rarity. Each class had a group of Rare-quality cards that showed up more often than desired. Reducing the appearance bonuses for class, spell, and weapon cards helped that problem somewhat, but it didn’t fully resolve it.

Additionally, when Rare cards are offered side by side with Basic and Common cards, they get picked more often, which can result in them being selected and played more frequently than their appearance rate would suggest.

For those reasons, we’re lowering the appearance rate of Rare and Epic cards. Picks 1, 10, 20, and 30 always offer Rare or better cards and will continue to do so. For all the other picks, Rare cards will appear about 11% of the time, and Epic cards about 5% of the time.

Finally, I guess we will be seeing more of Mind Control Tech. It makes me wonder if the next arena meta will be a flood the board type of meta. The phrasing of this is rather passive aggressive. It's kind of hilarious.

One notable exception is Mind Control Tech. That card is being picked a reasonable rate for the typical card, but still often felt oppressive, so in the 12.0 update, it will be promoted anyway.

I find it a little weird that with all the cards revealed, they've functionally reprinted multiple effects from old expansions.

• Test Subject (Priest) is a reprint (with minor mana cost/stat changes) of Primalfin Champion (Paladin). It seems bad in either class?
• Research Project (Mage) is a reprint (with no minion body) of Coldlight Oracle (Neutral). Explains the Hall of Faming of Coldlight Oracle, I guess?
• Necromechanic (Hunter) is a reprint (with minor mana cost/stat changes) of Baron Rivendare (Neutral). Maybe Deathrattle Hunter is good enough to actually want the card this time?
• Mecharoo (Neutral) is a reprint (with tribe change) of Possessed Villager (Warlock). Seems good in aggro decks, just like Villager was.

The set seems interesting, but this just seems like an odd number of reprints. I guess since some of the effects saw little to no play, maybe they just want to give them another shot in a slightly different class/meta.

One minor difference with Necromechanic (that would matter in any other class than Hunter) is that it's all Deathrattles and not just minions, so if they ever get a weapon with deathrattle it'd work with that

I think Test Subject isn't awful, but you probably don't want it in Inner Fire right now. Wouldn't be wrong to play it in that deck though, it'd be functional

Mecharoo is nuts, it really feels like a missing link in Mech Hunter. Lets you play your Fireworks Tech on curve and everything

Got a Golden Harbinger Celestia so decided to mess around with it. Played against a mage and played it. They played a Shimmering Tempest into giving me a copy. When it died gave me a Mirror Entity.

I fucking lost it.

Boomsday might be the best expansion they've ever made in terms of the day one experience. No idea how the game will be in a month or 2 but right now there are a million interesting combos to try out. I've already spent more of my saved dust in one day than in the entire lifespan of Witchwood.

Good job, Blizz. Praise Chakki.