Summary

• New Keyword: Echo - These cards can be cast multiple times in the same turn.
• New Keyword: Rush - These minions can attack other minions the same turn they are played. Charge but not overpowered!
• Monster Hunt - Four unique heroes in a new version of Dungeon Run.
• Pre-order - Contains 70 card packs for the price of 50. You also get a card back.
• 135 new cards
• Free stuff - Logging in when the expansion arrives gives you three free card packs and a random Class Legendary card.

This video is so cringy but in an endearing way.

I said it in the Year of the Raven thread, but I hope Rush still sort of works like a battlecry, or Charged Devilsaur doesn't get changed to Rush. I had a lot of fun with gimmicky Kathrena/Charged Devilsaur/Cube decks and don't want to lose that! Other than that though, Rush is a super exciting mechanic

Echo is also really cool, can turn a 3 drop into a 9 drop pretty easily. Not much to say about it til we see more cards though

Those worgen cards might be neat but I suspect they'll be the new Adapt: good in Arena, but only a few that'll make an impact in constructed

New Dungeon Run! That was honestly one of my favorite parts of the last expansion. It wasn't perfect by any means but it felt genuinely fresh. I had kind of hoped they'd just continue adding cards and bosses to the current one but a new one is cool too

Also I looked it up, and if this is the Gilneas/Worgen expansion it should be Duskwood, not Witchwood right? Witchwood is somewhere else entirely

I really like the echo effect. You can make a card that is good vs both aggro and control without it being too powerful or situational. All of those cards seem potentially playable so that's a good sign (well maybe not the peasant). It is way too hard to speculate with old cards dropping out and new ones coming in without some serious theorycrafting, but definitely interested so far.

https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/blog/21591737

Blog post for those who don't watch the video, also explains the Monster Hunt mode

Look at those Bloodbornes you play as in that mode!

that trailer was pretty good, can't wait to see what interesting interactions we will get from charge and echo.

I'll wait for some new cards to be announced but this announcement does have my attention for the expansion

https://www.hearthpwn.com/news/4442-all-the-witchwood-expansion-and-card

A bunch of little bits of information, that is in fact a new hero card for Shaman at the end of the trailer and Shaman is the only class that gets one, 2 class Legendaries per class again, K&C and Witchwood beasts are being added to Deathstalker Rexxar's pool for Build-a-beasts, and some clarifications about how some of the new mechanics will work

I'm pretty excited about this one, Milita Commander makes me even weirdly excited to play some Tempo Warrior and I usually dislike playing Warrior

I impulse bought the card bundle. Not sure how I feel about it. 70 packs is a lot though.

Since we've got the rotation coming up, if you are planning on playing Hearthstone long term, please don't auto-dust your rotated cards without seriously thinking it through. Start playing Wild either along with, or instead of, Standard. I've been playing Wild since the first rotation and at this point I don't even play Standard anymore. I just find it to be a more entertaining format and it is certainly less expensive to keep up with Wild compared to Standard. Not to mention that dusting cards in Hearthstone is an extremely poor value, and if you're playing long term than your 25% value for your rotated cards is going to be slashed another 75% when those cards rotate anyway. You don't need an entire collection to play Wild and you can get started in the format with just a few commons and then move your way onto some of the more powerful Legendary cards or even pick up the old Adventures on Blizzard's site.

There are far more possibilities in Wild, there is much greater deck variety even at higher ranks, and this is only going to be more true after the rotation when the card pool in Standard is tiny in comparison. If you aren't a competitive pro and don't care about HCT points then please give Wild a shot. Building up your Hearthstone collection is expensive and/or time consuming, don't get rid of your favorite cards for basically nothing.

We got a couple cards revealed recently.

You know, Prince Keleseth is a very powerful effect that only asks you to do without 2-drops. Asking my deck to do without 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10-drop cards for the sake of some slightly better than average cards seems like it's going to be really awkward. The legendaries that change your hero power seem good, but I'm not sure any of the other ones would ever earn a spot in a deck. It just seems like you'd end up leaving unused mana floating even more than a normal game. Plus I think it would be nearly impossible to draft an Arena deck that activates any of these even cost/odd cost effects. Maybe I'll be proven wrong!

@bisonhero: I think they've said they will be unavailable in arena, could be wrong though

I do think if Odd/Even decks are a thing you'll play these anyways, just cause the effects are good, I just don't like the execution for a lot of reasons

1. I don't like forced synergy stuff in general, I'd rather figuring out which cards to use be more natural

2. I also think these dictate which you'll do with each class too much? I think they've said each class is getting one of these, and if you, say, want to do odd Shaman you just don't get the same payoff as if you do even cause you can't play that eel

3. Why are some of them Epic? You're already investing in a Legendary to play these decks, I'd rather all these be common/rare

(I said "I think" a lot in this so it's always possible I'm just super wrong and this'll all be fine)

The even/odd cards will not be offered in Arena drafts.

Some of those cards are Epic so that you need to open even more packs to get them. They really need to do something about either the Epic pull rate or the crafting economy. At this point I have every single Legendary from each of the last few sets but I'm still missing a good third or more of the Epics.

Two more cards. The video talks about an alternative expansion we could have had and the cards they were thinking of adding to the game but didn't

That Investigate mechanic sounds like it would have been cool, but also maybe the slowest mechanic they have ever done

Also a little too C'Thun like in that it would probably have been limited to that one expansion

Face Collector sure is a Rogue Legendary alright, and Warpath is interesting? As a board clear it's a trash Defile but for Patron-y style decks it could be super good... with the caveat being that there aren't really any good Patron-y cards right now unless the Valkyr Soulclaimer/Rotface dream has arrived somehow

@cesakich: Yeah, it'll be interesting to see if Warpath gets used or not. Ravaging Ghoul and Sleep with the Fishes are leaving Standard, but Ghoul hasn't seen as much play in control decks lately, and you usually see Whirlwind, Blood Razor, and Sleep With the Fishes instead. Whirlwind, Blood Razor, and Warpath will be in Standard, but they're all pretty low damage and (based on currently revealed cards) Warrior is going to be back to having no big damage board clear. Warpath can activate the usual stuff like Acolyte of Pain and Armorsmith, but I have to imagine that Whirlwind and Blood Razor will be preferable over Warpath.

Trivia:

1. Shaman is the only class this expansion to get a hero card.
2. You will also get to play Houndmaster Shaw in the dungeon run.

Miracle Shaman time? Hagatha seems like it was made specifically to go with Echo minions, and Witch's Apprentice seems okay for what it is

Loatheb in a bottle there is going to be so obnoxious

I like Wispering Woods a lot, Token Druid is my favorite aggressive deck and that one looks like it could be cool? After Jailer in Paladin I think Witchwood Apple might be okay for that deck as well

Nightmare Amalgam might be an amazing arena card but probably not good in any constructed decks, unless you're doing some silly Curator thing

Shaw might be cool with Poisonous minions but otherwise seems sketchy, Glinda is a combo card that costs 6 mana so I don't see it being good but I've learned not to underestimate cards that do unique things

I’ll hope I’m missing foresight here, but Hagatha looks really bad. I really hope Blizz can pull shaman and warrior out of the gutter sooner rather than later.

@nnickers: yeah, I'm struggling to think of a specific deck for Hagatha but there's still a bunch of Shaman cards left to reveal so I'm stumped

that being said, maybe elemental Shaman with Grumble could actually work really well? grumble gets you back a bunch of 1 mana minions to generate you spells with Hagatha. Firefly in general for the same reason

I dunno, she seems slow but I've learned A) not to underestimate cards in general and B) "miracle" style cards in particular, Lyra taught me that much and unlike Lyra there's nothing your opponent can do to stop Hagatha one you get going since she's not a minion

The issue I see with Hagatha and Witch's Apprentice is that on average, "get a random Shaman spell" is much worse than "get a random Mage spell". A bunch of Shaman Spells are just absolute garbage (the 0-cost spells, Frost Shock, Ancestral Spirit, Cryostasis, Ice Fishing, Rockbiter Weapon, Windfury, Primal Talismans, Avalanche, Lesser Sapphire Spellstone) that you almost never want to get. Granted, some of those may be situationally useful (maybe you have a powerful minion out so Ancestral Spirit or Windfury has a decent target), but most of them are practically useless in most circumstances. At least Primal Fusion is rotating out of Standard.

I agree though, it may turn out that Hagatha has Lyra-like potential, where if you just spam out enough activations of Hagatha's hero power, a miracle will occur and you'll actually get enough non-worthless spells to do something. But Shaman spells fucking suuuuuuuuck when you can't choose which ones you're getting. It's one of the numerous reasons that Runespear is so bad.

Houndmaster Shaw is an interesting fixed Warsong Commander. I'm still amazed that Blizzard chose to obliterate Warsong Commander instead of simply giving it the Houndmaster Shaw wording. If you'll recall, they fixed the Charge spell a while ago by basically changing it to Rush. It's strange that instead of giving similar wording to Warsong Commander, they gave it this lame ability that is of no use to anyone. I don't know exactly what potential giving Rush to your minions has; both Houndmaster Shaw and Glinda Crowskin remind me of Baron Rivendare, in that they're an interesting effect, but they're so expensive that you can't play many minions alongside them under normal circumstances, so you have to play them and somehow hope that their moderately high health keeps them live an entire turn. Maybe they'll turn out great, who knows.

Rebuke is going to be pretty disgusting and I assume will somehow fit its way into Aggro Paladin decklists, as a way to protect their board once they fill it. Not sure what they'll cut for it, but it seems so good that they'll have to include it.

Both the druid cards are trash. Even taking on face value they're not amazing, but compared to similar cards like Living Mana and Force of Nature they're just bad. As for Hagatha, she might not have an obvious deck to play with atm but come next year she's gonna be insane. When all the other heroes rotate out she's gonna deliver incomparable late game value, almost to the point of Jade Idol. I mean there was a point where people played Elise for the five extra cards. Hagatha is a better base card and it will in most cases give you way more cards.

I dunno about the Druid cards. Witchwood Apple I agree with you for the most part (unless there's other handsize payoff cards for Druids this set but even then) but as someone who has played their share of Token Druid I think Wispering Woods looks pretty good? It wouldn't replace Living Mana but there's going to be room for both with Mark of the Lotus, Enchanted Raven, and Mark of Y'Shaarj all leaving Standard and having multiple 1-card board refills is really good. The issue though if it is really good is a bit more meta, since it's another Epic. One of the benefits of Token Druid in say, Whispers of the Old Gods was that it was a really good cheap deck to craft, but if you want like, Living Mana/this card/maybe Branching Paths too since it can fill up your hand and buff your tokens it's starting to push out of budget territory, and that's kind of Token Druid's niche, so unless it's a really good deck it's probably not worth it

@cesakich: I guess the question is how many cards you think Token Druid is going to have in their hand by the time they have 4 mana. If they're just dumping their hand playing Dire Mole and Fire Fly and whatever, Wispering Woods may have a hard time generating more than 2 or 3 guys. It seems like at best it might be as good as Call in the Finishers, but usually the kind of deck that would play Wispering Woods is going to have trouble holding onto that many cards. Also the 1/1s are just much easier to remove than the guys from Living Mana.

@bisonhero: I just don't think you'll be able to dump as much early anymore

You're not playing Dire Mole anymore without Mark of Y'Shaarj, without Mark you won't be able to draw as much to support dumping early in the first place, if you don't have coin Fire Fly just replaces itself

I dunno, we'll see, if nothing else saving it for board reload after playing a draw card is always an option, don't have to play it on 4.

Plus if there's enough payoff cards to this whole "Handruid" style of token Druid it might just be a new archetype, still early in the set and only three Druid cards have been revealed

Like I said earlier, I just don't want to underestimate cards anymore. I've done it too much in the past and I've been wrong so many times that I want to be prepared for the inevitability of cards being good by thinking of decks for them preemptively

@cesakich: The problem is that you're probably talking about a turn 6+ fill your board with 1/1. If you're playing against aggro it's way too late, and you'd much rather have Plague. If you're playing against control it's not something they'll struggle with, even if you buff them the same turn. The only way you're slamming this down on turn 4 with any real value is if you developed nothing the turns before.

You're probably both right and the card is too clunky, all I'm saying is I can see a world where that card is good and I want to have it in my mind as more cards get revealed, I like Token Druid enough that I want to be aware of my options now that a bunch of major Token Druid tools are leaving standard

@cesakich: You can just play Token Druid in Wild where it has all the tools you could ever want. These cards aren't being deleted from the game or anything.

@mike: I do! Wild's fun, but I prefer Standard so much more for the most part and would like an excuse to play that deck in standard

@cesakich: Why do you prefer Standard? Just curious, I find the format to be so predictable and boring.

What's this?! A hunter who does not go face. 1/10

@mike: well, I say I prefer standard but I tend to hover around the same rank in both formats (around 7 right now) so I actually play both equally

Wild has badass combos that feel really good to get going, Standard is more... standard? I dunno a way to say that that has a good connotation, lol. Basically I like that decks are a little simpler and have much more pronounced strengths and weaknesses. Decks in Wild have gotten to the point where certain archetypes are really good and have a ton of legitimately good options and I like the aspect of standard where you have to occasionally use more janky, ad hoc cards to fill slots in certain decks

Good thing Warlock finally got a good board clear!

Worse or better than unleash the hounds guys?

I mean in my mind its about the same. Combine that with a Youthful Brewmaster and you got a pretty strong late game card.

Worse, can't go face on the same turn.

My problem with the Echo cards shown so far is that most of them seem like they're actually 6-10 mana cards that are pretty low impact if you just play them for 2-4 mana. It makes them feel like kinda slow cards/Arena-only cards, but hopefully they turn out better than Inspire did (most Inspire minions were actually 2 mana more expensive than they looked since you really wanted to use Hero Power on the turn you played them). That being said, I look forward to degenerate Echo + Summoning Portal combos that only work 30% of the time.

As for Hunting Mastiff in particular, it's kinda just Forbidden Flame, except you can distribute the damage in increments of 2 across multiple enemy creatures if necessary, with the downside that you have to get through Taunts first. And I guess if you spend 10 mana on just the Mastiffs, and your opponent has low health minions to be cleared, you might have 1-2 Mastiffs left over that just sit there until next turn, which is slightly better than Forbidden Flame. Overall, X mana = X minion-only damage isn't usually that great in Hearthstone (Forbidden Flame was never really played outside of Arena). Unleash the Hounds is great because a 3-mana spell nets you anywhere from 3-7 charging damage that can clear enemy minions or go face. Like Unleash the Hounds, the Mastiffs are dramatically better if you have a Leokk or Scavenging Hyena alive.

I guess the Mastiffs could also go in an evens Hunter deck, but that deck seems terrible since you would lose Animal Companion, Kill Command, and Eaglehorn Bow, and Hunter decks without those cards usually just have to lay down and wait for death.

btw, if you have a Tundra Rhino out when you play the Mastiffs, so they have Rush and Charge, can they go face, or does Rush overrule Charge?

Lord Godfrey and Rebuke make me really nervous for the future. Control/Cube Warlock isn't really losing much (N'Zoth, Mistress, and sometimes Barnes), and Silver Hand/Murloc paladin is doing well too (most notable losses being Rallying Blade, Steward of Darkshire, and Vilefin Inquisitor). Godfrey and Rebuke both fit extremely cleanly into their respective decks and are likely going to be making up for the things these decks are losing, and seeing that the two most clearly powerful cards revealed so far are going to two of the classes who need the least help going into this rotation is sort of deflating.

I'm a Druid/Warrior player for the most part and I'm not exactly enthused by the cards they've shown for these classes so far. It's tough because we can't get a picture of the full set and how the meta is likely to look until we've seen everything, but I sometimes wonder just how far in advance they're designing sets since Team 5 seems a bit sluggish to adapt to the meta. I'm not saying this is a Purify situation but it does sometimes feel that balance in this game is a revolving door of which class they decide to print broken cards for.

Currently people are thinking it will override the Charge, since Charge simply means the minion doesn't get summoning sickness but Rush is an active effect preventing the minion from attacking face. Pretty disappointing if this is how the card actually works, since it seems like an active nerf to Zombeasts.

Second to last card for the night

Wow, that card seems awful! Symmetrical draw AND your opponent gets to take advantage of it before you because it's the end of your turn AND terrible stats

I guess the idea is it's meant to go in the Handdruid thing they're pushing but it's just so bad

Like aggro players play Jeeves cause they can take advantage of it in a way their control opponents can't, Coldlight can mill AND you get to use the cards you draw with it immediately

Sick(?) Mill Druid card in Wild I guess?

@acura_max: these handsize focused Druid cards are all even cost. So is the plan to include Genn and do some sort of even only token deck where you use hero power to try to contest the board? Seems like a tall order without Savage Roar or any 1 drops at all.

Eh I don't really think so. It's more a fatigue deck at least right now, and this isn't good enough to fit in there. I think you pretty much called it though, Forest Guide is Jeeves but bad, so it won't be played in wild aggro Druid.

I don't know about Standard.

@mike: I would be pretty surprised to see this played in Standard Druid. We already have Nourish, Ultimate Infestation, Branching Paths, and even Wild Growth for draw. Maybe it would be used if it was a Hunter card, haha.

New Rogue spell. Seems like abysmal tempo. Goes to show how incredibly good Tomb Pillager was!

Nightmare amalgam might be my new favorite card. The design of that thing is ridiculous and makes me chuckle. The sound design better not disappoint!

Lord Godfrey....did they really need give this to warlocks? This card almost certainly gets played right?

I *think* Hagatha is going to be a good card. Shamans lack card draw and their main problem right now is being outvalued. The problem with Hagatha is she isn't good enough to carry a deck, so shamans are going to need some sort of deck that she can be played in first. Also yeah.....some shamans spells...but you should get a lot of them. I don't know, i think its good but it could go either way.

I'm not sure why they are trying to make token druid a thing while simultaneously putting in even more aoe. Also not a fan of them dedicating so many card spots for even/odd stuff.

And finally, rebuke is insane. 2 mana loatheb effect.

I just realized Lord Godfrey is even a counter to rebuke. Makes him that much better.

@noobsmog: Last card of the night!

I abandoned hearthstone after playing for a couple of years simply because the expansions are too frequent and too expensive. In order to stay ahead of the curve you need to drop literally hundreds of dollars a year. With this update I'm glad that I did; the emphasis on odd/even cards to me indicates that the designers are creatively bankrupt.

I agree that the idea is pretty dumb, but there are only 6 of those even/odd cards in the entire set.