Blizzard has started the Onyxia's Lair mini-set card reveal period by revealing 7 new cards!
Hearthstone
About the Author
Robert "Fluxflashor" Veitch is the founder of Out of Games. With over a decade of experience in gaming content, and being done with the exhaustion of corporate nonsense, he wanted to do something different with a focus on the community in this online world that tries so hard to just make everyone just another number. Robert is currently playing Path of Exile and World of Warcraft. He can be contacted via direct messages or on Twitter.
Recent Articles
Hot Articles
Leave a Comment
You must be signed in to leave a comment. Sign in here.
Comments
It's still early to judge, but my first two cents on these cards are what follows.
- Spawn of Deathwing - Needs to be justified. Warlock has better removal and little Discard synergy.
- Deep Breath - Fire Mage support and, sadly, No Minion Mage support. See above.
- Lightmaw Netherdrake - Really, really good card: the actual gameplay will have to show how easy (or hard) that condition is to meet, but other than that it's a 2022 Duskbreaker that can go in non-Dragon decks.
- Onyxian Drake - Removal is not what the class needs right now, which is card draw.
- Onyxian Warder - Arena card.
- Don't Stand in the Fire! - Very interesting, depending on the meta. Perpetual Flame's big brother.
- Whelp Bonker - Sleeper of the set.
Control, control, control -.- ...
Arena cards.
but hey, I love arena.
Well no with amount of aggro we having lately, prieat warrior and shaman ones might see ladder play
Really hyped to see more dragons any day.
Comments on new cards;
- Spawn of Deathwing is probably only ever going to see play in a theoretical zoolock, but because its effect is random and it discards a card from your hand, Im not optimistic. Had this discarded from the deck it would have been nuts, but it doesn't, so that's too bad.
- Deep Breath looks bad, and is probably bad. But its an option I guess.
- Lightmaw Netherdrake is one very strange dragon I would say. But its probably not that great. Unlike the more consistent Duskbreaker, this one comes with a frankly absurd condition, particularly against fast decks, when you may need an urgent clear at any point of time.
- Onyxian Drake is strong there's no doubt about it. Shield Slam has survived the test of time and is still one of the most powerful removal option warrior has, only limited by 2 cards per deck. And here's a card that gives you the same effect with a vanilla stated body. And taunt as well.
- Onyxian Warder is an arena card, a very good one at that. But in standard it just wouldn't cut it.
- Don't Stand in the Fire! is basically a weaker Volcano but only strikes one side of the board, but the most important aspect is that its a fire spell. It certainly covers many of shaman's shortcomings, and being an overload card fits perfectly with the already decent quest shaman deck.
- Whelp Bonker is basically a weaker Acolyte of Pain, but will only ever be useful in a buff deck like paladin and priest. Will this break the tradition of shitty midset epic cards? Probably not in my opinion, but comes closer to it than any other previous midset epics that's for sure.
Since discarding from your deck is basically not discarding at all, then yeah, that would be nutty enough that it would raise some serious concerns that the devs have completely given up on reigning in power creep. I'm glad it has not got so far that an over-statted, tribal minion with a powerful and always beneficial effect doesn't also have a real downside. Frankly I miss the days I could describe warlock class design as balancing powerful upsides with downsides; for years the downsides have either been absent or just more upsides in disguise.
Omg! They finally added the Deathling!
Excited for Lightmaw Netherdrake in questline priest (I know it's a niche deck). It runs a decent number of holy and shadow spells already, and almost all of its earlier drops discover spells so you should be able to set it up more often than at first glance.
Deep Breath just looks like a worse Fire Sale to me. By the time you need to remove bigger minions you probably won't have as much spells as needed in hand.
Don't stand in the Fire! seems weak compared to volcano, but Full-Blown Evil proved to be quite good and this being 1 mana cheaper is a big deal, even if it isn't as flexible. I'm only not sure if shaman even needs something like this. Might be included in quest versions simply to progress the quest faster.
Spawn of Deathwing has a mediocre effect on it's own, but the dragon tag could be it's saving grace.
Deep Breath is okay. Can't imagine it would be too worthwhile in anything outside of Spell Mage.
Lightmaw Netherdrake might see play in standard because there are not a lot of great small AOEs ATM.
Onyxian Drake is a shield slam with a stick that has taunt, will always see play in control warrior in standard.
Onyxian Warder is a arena card.
Whelp Bonker is comparable to Acolyte of Pain at first glance, but realistically you are not going to be getting a lot of honorable kills with it.
Don't Stand in the Fire! is Volcano for board centric decks. Should see play in standard.
Compare lightmaw netherdrake with Duskbreaker... Looks weaker and harder to activate.
It looks like a decent replacement for Hysteria once that rotates out. Quest Priest runs an even spread of Shadow and Holy spells, so it shouldn't be that hard to activate.
It requires you to hold on to these spells, and this being a situational card makes it a big problem. Against a fast deck, you'd might be forced to not play your Thrive in the Shadows or Palm Reading on curve because you might be gambling your clear away. That's just really iffy for a board clear effect that is usually needed on demand.
I don't think you are necessarily wrong, it does have a must stricter requirement than duskbreaker. However we have no idea what other cards released in the miniset or for the next year of HS will synergize with. For all we know dragons could be a broken keyword, and this is pre-emptive toning down by not making it "too easy" to activate. There could be some "dragon synergy" that makes this broken (eventually, perhaps...)
You never finish the quest against an aggro deck anyway. All you have to do is survive until you can stabilize. I would gladly hold a card to guarantee the board swing.
Seriously, the number of times I've had to sit on Condemn (Rank 1) because it's not good until you have 5 mana hurts.
EDIT: I'm also used to holding Palm Reading until I've played my 4, for the record. It actually sucks getting your Hysteria cut to 3 mana and potentially stranding you.
Whelp Bonker looks pretty strong for decks with buffs. If you play it on curve it's basically Acolyte of Pain and if you then manage to buff it up it can get you a lot of cards. Finally an epic from the miniset that isn't just a shitpost.
Also an insanely powerful Shaman Fire Spell. That should fix post rotation Multicaster issues.
Not too crazy about all the dragon stuff. I hope they don't just shoehorn dragons into every class.
With 5 health and Frenzy, it's likely Whelp Bonker will draw at least one card or have the opponent spend a card on it (if they're Fireballing this, you're probably happy). However, you are also spending 3 mana and a deck slot on it and I'm not sure that is worth it.
Honorable Kill hasn't been all that easy to activate. At 2 or 3 attack you have some chance, but once you buff it to 4 and beyond it becomes increasingly unlikely to find a minion with the right amount of health to honorably kill. Acolyte of Pain was good with handbuff because you were likely to get at least 2 activations; I think it will be harder to achieve that with this card.
I think this would need Rush to be a playable card.
Deep Breath concerns and bothers me, because it is a card that would best function in a spell-only Mage deck. Fine in theory, but we've seen the results of such a deck lately. I think most of us are ready for the Mage to go back to needing minions again.
Onyxian Drake, though...*chef's kiss* Shield Slam on a stick, with Taunt and a vanilla body? Crazy.
I'm really hoping that either this miniset, or the yearly rotation will give mages a chance to go back to minion based combat again. I wouldn't mind dragon mage, I loved playing dragon mage back in the DoD expansion. (plus Reno was so much fun
Deep Breath is probably terrible anyways. You need 4 spells in hand for it to measure up to Fire Sale and even then it's 5-mana. The best it does is give you a way to deal with multiplte giants if you have 8 spells in hand and how often does that come up?
I don't see how it would make any existing deck better
Since it starts at 1 damage, I think you'd need only 3 spells in hand (Deep Breath itself and 2 others) to match the damage of Fire Sale.
I do agree though that it doesn't look very good: Fire Sale being Tradeable is very useful, so I don't see Deep Breath replacing it, while I also don't think any deck would run this in addition to Fire Sale.
In theory the fact that this doesn't damage your own board could be useful, but if you care about your own board you probably won't have enough spells in your hand to power this, plus you wouldn't want to spend 5 mana on something that doesn't add a body to the board.