Not sure if that would be any good, the point of Anub is that you want him to die, so giving him 8 health wouldn't be ideal.

I think he is quite great. He is pretty much an endless minion, unless they can silence. What ever minion runs into him will die due to the 8 attack, and when he does you can just replay him the next turn, over and over again spawing 4/4's too. Really the only way to deal with him is silence, but by turn 10 most silences are used.

I like how the Druid legendary makes the Warlock legendary totally worthless in comparison.

@imsh_pl: Kind of like how the Warlock legendary in GvG made the Druid legendary look worthless by comparison.

@zombie2011: Yeah, I didn't actually mean that. I meant that even in the best case scenario, one where he has 8 health instead of 4, it's still bad.

The immediate comparisons for Anub are stuff like: Sneed's, Gruul, Mekgineer and Foe Reaper. You spend all that mana and they don't really do much until your next turn. 9 mana is a lot. Maybe if the meta slows way way down (like, slower than even Blizzard is trying to make it now, like a pure control meta) then, yeah, this guy would get a lot better. But right now and, imo, for the foreseeable future, he's way too slow.

@acura_max: True.

Except replaying him is the only thing that you can do since it's 9 mana, and the most obvious way to deal with him is to just go face.

Holy shit Aviana is so good. Looks like druids are getting a new win condition. In case it hasn't been said yet, blizzard confirmed that if cards are cost reduced by thaurissian and aviana is in play they will be reduced to 0. Emperor and Aviana can make every minion free under the right circumstances. Even just as a normal play, you get to play her and then another for 1. And your opponent has to address her first no matter what regardless of how low her stats are for 9. She's insane. This is exactly the stuff druid needs. Silence will be really rough, but even if a silence happens then you at least got one turn of a basically free minion.

The real dream is you play as Priest, then turn 3 you Coin out Mind Games and get Aviana, and as long as the Druid you're playing can't immediately remove it or silence it, you basically win the game.

Attempt number 3 to post. Anub'arak is basically a Piloted Sky Golem that can be big gamed and costs 3 more mana and is a class exclusive legendary, one of the finest dust pieces available.

Aviana is really good with double innervate and the super ramp druids have now, I think the meta still has to slow down a little (not necessarily a ton) for it to be viable; but it's a cool card so that's fine. It is never a card that's going to stay on the board so it is almost exclusively for combos in constructed.

Good thing they revealed Paladin cards last time. Otherwise I could have joked that this expansion was giving Paladin cards to everyone but Paladin.

That said, this cards is no Sylvanas Windrunner or Emperor Thaurissan. If you're going to have 5/5 stats at 6 mana, you better have a good effect. And adding a random card to your hand is not good enough.

Cannot fathom why Grand Crusader isn't 5 mana.

I guess using 5 mana to get a 5/5 and draw a card is a little strong, but there are so many 1- and 2-mana Paladin cards that wouldn't be super helpful. Maybe keep him at 6 mana, but make him 6/5?

So, I guess that means we're getting 8 more cards for each other class? Pretty cool. Seems like a fun card. Nefarian is one of my favorite cards and this is kinda like that. Will be fun to run a deck with all 9 of them. I usually don't care about silly, random cards but I really like the design of this.

@bisonhero: 5 mana 5/5 that draws you a card would be waaay too good.

Drawing a random Paladin card is worth 1-1,5 mana. So the card is decent. Unfortunately, decent is not good enough for constructed, and Sylvanas and Thaurissan exist (even Sky Golem is probably better). One of the best epics in arena though.

@hansolol: In an interview with an Asian HS designer (Korean I think) it has been confirmed that there will be 9 class cards per class in the expansion, with the exception of Hunter, who will be getting 10 cards because there's 'a character that they cannot take out'. Reddit has speculated that there will be twin legendaries, similarly to (Feugen and Stallag): Acidmaw and Dreadscale. Apparently in the lore they are two giant beast worms that are summoned for the champions to fight.

http://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/3fxz9e/theres_going_to_be_9_new_class_cards_each_with_an/

@imsh_pl: Oh, I meant 8 more 6 mana 5/5's "add a random class card to your hand" type cards, totaling 9. It only makes sense. Like, why would they single out Paladin for everyone to steal their cards? Seems like they want players to be able to play with more random cards from other classes that aren't in the match itself. For instance, Nefarian and Thoughtsteal can only generate cards from 1 class in a given game. I guess they want to make more cards like Unstable Portal.

That's interesting, though, about the Hunter class cards. I hadn't heard that.

I feel like Hearthstone just needs far more class cards than there currently are in general.

New from the folks at Polygon.

New Priest card revealed on Polygon.

EDIT: See above.

Interesting. A pretty fun and crazy card, to be sure. I'm not sure the effect is reliable enough for it to make it to constructed, you'd probably be okay with Shrinkmeisters in most situations. I don't play priest though so I can't really tell.

@acura_max: Woah, I don't know how competitive Confuse will be, but definitely really fun to play around with.

Well that's interesting. Maybe a potential combo to finish someone off with? Priests already can get some fairly high health minions, and have spells to make that even higher. Swap their attack/health all at once and suddenly you have a spike of damage on the board. Not sure how consistently priest would be able to keep enough minions on the board for that to matter though.

Confuse is basically a strictly better mass Inner Fire that can be useful in other ways sometimes.

There is a very insightful reddit thread which analyzes the viability of Joust from a statistical perspective. Seems like it is pretty reliable against aggro, triggering about 70%-80% of times against face hunter. However, its viability drastically decreases to a slightly weighed coin flip against midrange decks, and a slightly bad coin flip against control decks. See the numbers for yourself!

https://www.reddit.com/r/CompetitiveHS/comments/3fwffh/joust_odds/

I stand by the opinion that Tuskarr Jouster is the only Joust card that will see competitive play, because its battlecry is consistent enough against aggro and 5/5 for 5 stats are excellent since no 4 drops can kill it and it trades up against all 6 drops, which means you're not incredibly behind if it whiffs against control. Instead of Healbot it should be compared to MC Tech I think since it's a tech choice against aggro but it's actually better against both aggro and control than MCT.

The other Jousters either have no place in current deck archetypes or set you too far behind should you fail the joust.

Gamescom Blizzard livestream going on right now. Apparently they're going to reveal some new TGT stuff in a bit.

@hansolol: Thanks for the heads up!

Wahorse is pretty good since you can combo that with musters.It's not as great as imp gang boss though.

Flash Heal will not see play because Light of the Naaru exists. 1 free minion > 1 heal.

Living Roots is a card I am not sure of.

The warlock card is pretty bad because the only card that you see using the discard mechanic these days is Doomsayer. The other card is Succubus. And I don't think this card will convince players to start playing that. It's too random and you can't count on it being in hand. This will be the lava shock of the expansion

The Shaman card is a bit more interesting. After losing your weapon you basically get a buffed mage hero power. It will probably be bad as well since you would need to destroy your own weapon. The 2 attack stats are not particularly great for a 4 mana weapon and the durability is too high for something that you want to set off the deathrattle.

@acura_max: If flash heal sees play it will be in a combo deck ala miracle priest or shadow priest imo. The actual healing isn't what matters here. Prophet velen and auchenai being on the board with 2 flash heals in hand could be 20 burst damage. It would completely rely on thaurissian though, so the reliability is questionable. Not to mention flash heal is 5 damage for 1 compared to the 3 from naaru, and naaru has to have the target still damaged to get the minion in the case of no auchenai. Flash heal is much more flexible and can snipe away big targets like thaurissian or sylvanas. Minions are important, but I think keeping in mind that you don't always get full value from naaru is important.

Living root seems alright. Maybe some kind of aggressive token druid with knife jugglers and violet teachers. There are better options for the damage side i think, but like krip said on stream the flexibility of the card might help it see play. It also lends itself well to the buff cards that druid has at hand like all of its other token abilities.

Warhorse trainer seems cool. Looks like it'll annoy me vs. paladin which is probably a good thing.

Fist of Jaraxxus seems neat, but unreliable. If I have a deck where I'd rather discard this than anything else I probably am not aggro and will have a lot in hand, or will be using void caller to dodge the discard instead. Zoo it could be cool since chances of discarding it are higher, and not as punishing if you discard something else. I'm assuming fel reaver combos with this?

Charged hammer is cool I guess? It's so different that it's hard to predict though. No totems but 2 damage anywhere you want is something that I'll have to wait and see.

@mentaldisruption: Check my post again. I added two more cards.

@acura_max: yep, edited my post with the last two :D

@mentaldisruption: Whoops I thought Light of the Naaru was heal 4 instead of three.

and naaru has to have the target still damaged to get the minion in the case of no auchenai.

You usually do have a target that cannot be healed to full with 3 hp. If it is not a minion, then you can heal your face for 3 and get the secondary effect.

Blizzard also decided to put this card on their blog instead of their stream for some reason. It's not really great unless you're making a aggro deck that revolves around this card. Warriors generally don't run too many dragons and the ones they do run are 8-9 mana. I don't think I need to tell you that holding a 8-9 card that you can't play is bad. This could be very well be the war bot of this expansion.

I have a feeling alexstrasza's champion will be the card that new players will look at and think it's good without realizing that having a high cost dragon in your hand at turn 2 is doing more harm than this card is doing good. Unless warriors are getting some good low cost dragons, but I doubt it.

Hmm, I like Warhorse Trainer but wouldn't it be so much better as a 4 mana card? That way you could do Muster turn 3 into this? Another reason to destroy those pesky 1/1's, I guess. It's so annoying when Paladin manages to get some Recruits on the board and you have to deal with them for fear of Quartermaster. Maybe Paladin will have some sort of Recruit archetype with Justicar, Warhorse Trainers, Quartermasters and Silverhand Regent.

Living Roots seems like it would be really good against aggro decks, similar to Muster For Battle. Play it turn 1 and then your opponent has to sacrifice Leper Gnome or Knife Juggler into the board, kind of like when you play Zombie Chow turn 1.

Alexstrasza's Champion is pretty interesting. I mean, how do you say no to a 2 mana 3/3 with Charge? But, similar to Twilight Whelp, when it comes to dragon synergy cards, the lower the cost, the worse the card is. Current Dragon Warrior doesn't even run Blackwing Technicians. I'l probably try this out for fun. I hope it has a place in the future because Dragon Warrior is a really cool deck.

Alextrasza's Champion has some dope ass art, also it's ridiculous and will only get better over time.

Warhorse Trainer is good.

Flash Heal kind of sucks but it makes sense as a card so whatever.

Living Roots is a pretty good card, just doesn't really fit in druid immediately; might still see play though. Power of the Wild/Mark of the Wild are still really solid cards in general so no reason you couldn't run a huge number of annoying things to make them ever better.

Fist of Jaraxxus is bad but cool I suppose. Edit: To be fair the card has the potential to be pretty good, this is at least a card that's not immediately in the garbage pile no matter what. Of course if it does work it buffs the most annoying deck in existence so that's not great.

Charged Hammer is really interesting but probably only sees play in Arena.

I'm hyped about Warhorse Trainer. Paladin's early game just keeps getting better and better. The class really benefits from a 3 drop that doesn't die to a 2 drop since you cannot always rely on having Muster and you'd be forced to play Acolyte or Coghammer; both of which are bad if you didn't manage to get a Minibot or a Chow (you don't want to Aldor on turn 3). The Silver Hand Regent is also solid choice but I like the more defensive option of Warhorse Trainer. All of these cards combined with Truehart make token Paladin look more and more viable and strengthen the already very good Muster and Quartermaster.

Flash Heal is probably meant to be a removal with Auchenai and makes me wonder if they release a second card with her effect. Also makes a possible Spellpower Priest pretty ridiculous if you think about the fact that the class can now deal 20 damage with Auchenai+Mind Blasts+Flash Heals. For control probably less versatile than Light of the Naaru and difficult to justify a card slot.

Living Roots takes the place of Zombie Chow as the best 1 drop in the game I think. Two 1/1s for one mana is insane against any kind of aggro deck out there (not sure how much they have actually been a problem for Druids). Increases the viability of a token enhanced druid deck with Violet Teacher, Power of the Wild that utilizes the standard Combo as a finisher. Also since it's a spell it pushes Joust as a thing for Druids.

Fist of Jaraxxus is kinda bad. You can't afford a deck slot for a 4 mana Flamecannon that's only good when you discard it. Too situational.

Charged Hammer is interesting. Classic Midrange Shamans probably don't want to lose on spamming totems but maybe this could be used in Malygos Shaman? Although Spellpower Totem is pretty important there, will have to see.

Alextrasza's Champion is insane if it works, but requires a completely new Warrior archetype to be consistent, and cards like these should always raise an eyebrow. Current Dragon Warrior is still Control at heart and doesn't have a need for chargers. It's kinda puzzling to me that Blizzard is trying to push both aggroy Dragon Warrior and defensive Taunt Warrior in a single expansion, and makes me worry that none of them will be good enough to beat the reliability of Control Warrior (I'm counting on Patron being nerfed).

Overall... can I just say how insanely better these class cards are compared to GvG? And these are just commons! Compare Warhorse Trainer, Living Roots, Darnassus Aspirant, Effigy, and Totem Golem to some garbage like Seal of Light, Cobra Shot, Warbot or Ogre Ninja and you'll see how much seriously Blizzard is taking the opportunity to release new, powerful class cards. Definitely a huge leap forward when it comes to their card design mindset.

Another new cards has appeared on Kripp's stream. Wow. Now this is a druid card. 10 mana on turn 4 is huge. And since you will be playing this on turn 4 (turn 2 with innervate), I imagine that you will gain two excess mana cards like wild growth does. That means that you could probably draw 2 cards after discarding your whole hand. I can imagine discarding your whole hand and then drawing into something like Windrunner or Thaurissan. Maybe you draw into the new druid legendary and then start top decking heavy stuff.

Edit: Never mind. Kripp explains that the card is closer to nourish than wild growth. Thanks for getting me excited for no reason Blizzard.

Dumb, dumb card but I guess if you want to run an all 8-10 mana deck here's your chance.

So I guess this is Blizzard basically putting in wacky/bad spells into the game to make sure Spellslinger, Saraad and Nefarian have more varied results? This is Druid's version of that. Hunter got Ball of Spiders, Mage got Flame Lance, Priest got Confuse, Rogue got Burgle, Warlock got Demonfuse and Warrior got Bolster.

I bet Paladin and Shaman each have 1 totally crap spell getting ready to be revealed.

I don't know, if you put in a sufficient number of Ancient of Lore/Nourish/Azure Drake/Jeeves(???) so that you could somewhat refill your hand after dumping it, then play a bunch of 8-10 mana minions, this could be interesting to mess around with.

@acura_max: It's been infuriating watching everyone react to this card. The card is absolutely completely overpowered ... but not quite yet. What most people fail to realize is that it's not a ramp card, it's a tempo card. The card gives you 10 full mana, meaning it's basically a triple Innervate. Yes, it has a drawback, but as soon as you're able to make a deck that plays around that drawback it's insane. In something like a tempo deck that will already dump its hand fairly quickly having this tempo boost on top is just stupid. Combine this with the new mana gain 2 drop minion, some typical druid token stuff (hello, Living Roots), innervates (ofc), some of the triggered draw minions and Cult Master and you're looking at something with amazing potential. All it really needs is one more triggered draw machine to get some consistency. If you're tired of losing to Innervate now....

@ares42: The problem is the difficulty of developing such a deck and the reliance of the community on others to create decks for them. So it might eventually be in a competitive deck but for a while it'll just be a card for youtube videos.

@fredchuckdave: Ye, it's not something that will see play any time soon. But at some point down the line it'll be the new Unleash or Patron.

@ares42: Tempo is worthless if you cannot capitalize on it with cards. Having mana crystals is not having tempo, tempo means playing cards that are faster and more mana efficien than your opponent's.

The best tempo decks etiher have efficient card draw engines (Divine Favor in Aggrodin, hero power in Zoolock) or other ways to put pressure on the opponent (Hunter's hero power). The moment you play this card you are basically going into topdeck mode on turn 4 since there aren't enough reliable early game card draw engines that can only come from the board (Loot Hoarder, Acolyte, Thalnos and that's it). For you to build a deck around it you would have to pack tons of card draw... which means you are left naked if you, say, don't draw into it Astral Communion in your first 5 turns.

This card isn't a tempo card, it does nothing to develop the board. It's a POTENTIAL tempo gain from the card you are going to draw next turn. Which is not a tempo play at all.

I'm not saying this card is unplayable since I agree with you that there will be tons of people better at deckbuilding than any of us here who are going to pour all of their creative juices into it. Still, I just don't think that there are currently enough ways in the game to consistently win the game with an emtpy hand since turn 4.

@imsh_pl: It's not a turn 4 card, more like a turn 8+ (or earlier if comboed with Innervate). You play it when your hand is already close to empty and you're able to combo it with a draw engine. Like with the kind of deck I talked about you'll have a board of a handful tokens/creatures, you play Cult Master then Communion, sacrifice in your creatures and play 10 mana worth of stuff from what you draw. It's a second life for tempo decks, without losing tempo due to Communions insane mana gain.

If there's ever a cheaper/better draw engine this kinda deck could use introduced to the game it will run completely rampant.

@imsh_pl: If by tons you mean 0.001% of the population then sure. I'm good at deckbuilding myself just constructed is the most boring thing imaginable because of netdecking so I barely touch it anymore. Bots were more interesting than netdecking. I'm sure the vast majority of the other creative people in the scene feel similar, you only really need to look at Noxious for signs of that. Even if you add 130 cards to the game the meta will still stagnate within a couple weeks tops, probably more like 2 or 3 days.

Constructed was actually pretty fun like 2 years ago.

Edit: I see what you were doing, you meant to write "tens" instead of "tons," that makes more sense.

New card today and it's a worse abusive sergeant. One thing we can say about this card is that Piloted Shredder will be slightly weaker.

@acura_max: That's a pretty hilarious card, I guess it's Brode's fabled shitty heroic card that will very occasionally do something to everyone's shock. At least with a card like Gnomeregan Infantry it's sort of vaguely okay in certain situations.

Blizzard, just admit you were wrong, make Shredder a 3/3 and be done with it. This whole pussyfooting around, making 2 drops with negative abilities is just dumb. This isn't a physical TCG, you can patch the game. It's ok.

New card revealed on a Chinese player Lovelychook's stream.

'Thief'; Rogue rare minion, 2-2-2.

"Whenever this minion attacks the enemy Hero, put a Coin into your hand."

Looks really strong as a turn 2 or turn 1 play with the coin. Could really spiral out of control quickly, and rogue has excellent tools to defend it early game.. imagine coining this on turn one, attacking and coining out an SI7 Agent. Coins can net you insane discounts and activate your combos. Definitely the best Rogue card in the set so far, fits both the current decks and a possible future tempo Rogue. An extreme kill-on-sight priority in the early game is always strong and can win you games on its own if your opponent doesn't draw into an answer.

@acura_max said:

New card today and it's a worse abusive sergeant. One thing we can say about this card is that Piloted Shredder will be slightly weaker.

It's an interesting card in a hobgoblin deck. It might be a competitive card.

Don't listen to Ben Brode.

For a 4 mana minion 1/1 stats won't have that much impact on the board. But if you had an effect such as "as long as a demon is on board this happens" then this card will be very useful. It could also make sacrificial pact real useful as well since you aren't really sacrificing anything when you destroy this. Interesting card, but still no fit in the current meta.

@imsh_pl: Lol. you beat me to the punch this time. But yeah, don't listen to Ben Brode.