Emberscale Drake
Emberscale Drake is a 5 Mana Cost Rare Warrior Minion Dragon card from the Rastakhan's Rumble set!
Card Text
Battlecry: If you're holding a Dragon, gain 5 Armor.
Flavor Text
The third little dragon made his armor out of adamantite.- Mana Cost: 5
- Attack: 5
- Health: 5
- Crafting Cost: 100 / 800 (Golden)
- Arcane Dust Gained: 20 / 100 (Golden)
- Rarity: Rare
- Class: Warrior
- Card Type: Minion
- Minion Type: Dragon
- Set: Rastakhan's Rumble
- Mechanics: Battlecry, Gain Armor, Holding Dragon
Emberscale Drake Card Review
Remember Shieldmaiden? This is Shieldmaiden, for 1 mana less, with a Dragon tag on it. If you’re playing a Control Dragon deck, it will be an absolute auto-include in a 5-drop slot (Midrange Dragon might still prefer Cobalt Scalebane, but it might play both). Gaining Armor in Warrior is quite important, especially if you aren’t playing an Odd version, then 5 Armor is quite a lot (2.5 turns of Hero Powering). You can combo it with Shield Slam to clear something immediately, or hoard that Armor to get a big AoE with Reckless Flurry. Just gaining Armor is also good enough against Aggro. Dragon tag really helps with the fact that you will have A LOT of Dragon-related cards this expansion, so the more of them have Dragon tags themselves, the easier it will be to activate all of the effects.
It’s not a card you would want to build your entire deck around (like Drakonid Operative was), but it will definitely be a Dragon Warrior staple if such a deck will exist. Not much more to say about it – if Dragon Warrior will be played (and I’m 100% sure that it will at least be extensively tested), it will be a part of the deck. Coincidentally, a lot of those Dragon cards also fit into the Odd build, so that might be the way to go actually.
Card rating: 8/10
I’m unsure whether the Armor part is that useful… If you’re Aggro/Tempo, your Armor doesn’t really matter. If you’re control (maybe Odd Warrior?) you need to include other Dragons for this to prop. So would you really include this over Cobalt Scalebane? It’s still good for Shield Slam, so that might make this card viable, otherwise Scalebane seems so much better.
This is just good. 4/5.
I used to play control dragon warrior ages ago in grand tournament with 2 shieldmaidens and it did pretty well….this is the same card but cheaper and also a dragon….this makes me very happy 😀
Main problem with this is that Warrior doesn’t really need it. Traditional Dragon Warrior is more of a tempo deck and doesn’t particularly care about getting a bunch of armor and Odd Warrior already has plenty of armor gain. Putting this in an Odd deck isn’t going to win you any games you wouldn’t have already won.
The art looks like a red eyes black dragon lol
This is not a meta-defining card, but I do think we’re seeing enough solid Dragons come together that splashing them into Baku Warrior is becoming pretty appealing. And there’s also a bunch of nice non-Baku support outside of that! I’d say that some form of Warrior with Dragons is looking promising.
Beautiful art.
But sadly it’s another typical “balanced” Warrior card, therefore won’t see play.
Just compare this 5 mana Warrior Dragon with 5 mana Priest Dragon. The Dragonid Operator is just way better.
Lit, comparing a standard meta created card to a rotated wild card. Sounds about right.
not even mentioning how drakonid was the most busted card that expansion just about
Obviously this is shield maiden polymorphed into a dragon.
Cost .5 less mana for conditional trigger.
And it cost another .5 off because the art is to awesome for a 6 cost.
Emberscale Drake looks to be the return of Shieldmaiden to Standard, and obviously for dragon decks, it’s better.
The biggest hurdle this Dragon Warrior deck will have to overcome is dragon decks have traditionally been somewhere between tempo and midrange decks. Most of the dragon related effects have involved either giving a minion higher than rate stats or some method of card advantage be it removal or generating a card. Emberscale is the first to my knowledge that is neither, and if its the only dragon specifically for Warrior, it will likely place Dragon Warrior into a control space.
I’m not quite sure if dragon decks can make the shift to control gracefully.
It’s a dragon
4.5/5
Solid 4/5. Dragons are now a thing in Warrior, again.
Ok, first:
Odd cost, which seems relevant nowadays. Goes with Smolderthorn Lancer (The dragon-sinergy execute) and Crowd Roaster (7-mana 7 damage). Unfortunately, the Champion isn’t odd-cost
I think this was made on purpose to prevent Odd Dragon from being too strong. To be fair, Heavy Metal would have been much better if it was at 5 mana. Heck, even 7 mana would’ve been better. I think they are trying to half-push the archetype but prevent it from being full Odd
Not extremely powerful but a decent card to include in your deck and has made me consider the new dragon warrior archetype.
Every card doesn’t have to be game changing and overpowered.
If only this drew 5 cards…
yeah even for 5 more mana that would be insane
Ultimate infestation?
But it would have to have “Battlecry: Deal 5 damage” too.
Exactly, I don’t see how this card with draw 5 for 10 mana would be ‘insane’
Nice flavour, kind of reminds me of proto drake from wow.
Maybe becouse is a proto drake?
No, they look different and this would have said proto.
amazing art
This card is GREAT ! Ok stats with great effect and dragon synergy ? I absolutely LOVE this !
totally with you!!! i love it!
A traditional dragon deck would not want to play this. It neither impacts the board when played, draws a good card, or has stats that are about rate.
Maybe this Dragon Warrior will be different, but I am not convinced.
A cheaper, synergistic shieldbearer with amazing art, all for my favorite class? I’ll take two!
Shieldmaiden **