Just yesterday, a new Hearthstone expansion was announced. The Great Dark Beyond is the third set of Year of the Pegasus (2024) and it launches on November 5. While we already had some cosmic themes in Hearthstone before, this is the first time we’re diving all-in into a part of Warcraft that might be unknown to many.
Blizzard gave me an opportunity to reveal four new Neutral Epic cards from the set. I will focus more on talking about their potential rather than giving them a firm rating, because it’s impossible to make any solid predictions without knowing the rest of the cards. Even more so this time around, given that this is one of the first card reveals from The Great Dark Beyond. But things are already looking quite exciting!
Red Giant
This card feels like it has a lot of potential. If we look at the past Giant cards, most of them have seen at least some play – and for a good reason. Despite all of the power creep over the last few years, an 8/8 you can play for a few mana points (or even 0 mana) remains as tempting as ever.
Red Giant actually starts at a quite low mana cost for a Giant – only 8. It’s also not too difficult to discount… in the right circumstances. And here’s the biggest catch of the card. It only discounts while it’s in your hand. When you draw it, it will always be an 8 mana 8/8 and you will have to work towards reducing its cost. One of the biggest advantages of some of the strongest Giants from the past (such as Arcane Giant or Naga Giant) was the fact that they would already be free if you drew them in the late game.
This card also suffers a bit from positioning RNG. Let’s say that you get it right next to a 5-drop and a 6-drop. Well, that sucks. Now it’s a dead card until the late game. But if you get it right next to multiple cheap cards? Then you might realistically be able to drop it on Turn 4, or just keep it for a couple more turns and plop it down for free let’s say on T6. That’s really good. Or if you play a deck that cycles heavily through their hand, constantly playing stuff and drawing new things. But would those positive scenarios outweigh the negative ones? It’s very difficult to say without playtesting it first. But I do think it has potential.
And finally, here’s a Signature version of the card. While it’s still too early to make this call, it might just be my favorite set of Signatures if others also look like this:
Ace Wayfinder
Draenei is a new minion type releasing in The Great Dark Beyond expansion. While we haven’t seen a lot of them yet, their main synergy is “The next Draenei you play does X”. It might be stronger, it might be cheaper, we’ll probably see even more interesting synergies going forward, but that’s the basic premise of this minion type – you chain extra effects and probably try to pick the best minion to receive that effect.
Ace Wayfinder is quite interesting in that regard. In case you don’t remember, “bonus effects” you can roll are Taunt, Windfury, Divine Shield, Poisonous, Elusive, Rush, Lifesteal, or Reborn (it used to be Stealth intead of Elusive but it has been replaced in one of the recent patches). And as you can probably see, some of those effects are clearly better than the others, especially on a 5 mana 5/5. For example, Poisonous is just… bad. It feels like a wasted keyword. It might come in handy in some specific scenarios, but very often it will do absolutely nothing. Windfury can also be useless if your opponent wants to remove the minion anyway. But then again, you might get something like Rush + Divine Shield combo and that turns it into an actually playable minion. Long story short, yes, it’s RNG. Hence why other cards with “bonus effects” had mixed results so far.
If the card was just that – a 5 mana 5/5 with two bonus effects, I would say that it’s bad. Simply too random. Probably comparable to Paladin’s Fossilized Kaleidosaur if it didn’t have the Excavate part (and it obviously doesn’t see any play outside of Excavate decks). However, the second part is what might push it into playable territory. Giving those two keywords to the next minion. And here’s the catch – now you actually know what those keywords are, so it might influence the way you play.
For example, I’ve said that Poisonous on that 5 mana 5/5 is bad, because it is. And let’s say that you roll it together with Lifesteal – that’s definitely not a combo you want to see. But if they release a Draenei that deals AoE damage on Spellburst for example (seems like a plausible effect), those two keywords can be salvaged and even turned in your favor.
Or if you roll Elusive, you can next follow it up with a big win condition that you don’t want to get removed, Elusive will make it way harder to get rid of. Or maybe you have a big pile of stats that’s too slow in a fast matchup, but you rolled Taunt – now you can play it without worrying about your opponent ignoring it and going for your face.
All of that said, I’m still mixed on this minion and it really depends on a) what kinds of Draenei cards we’ll get this expansion and b) if Draenei-focused decks will be good at all.
Doommaiden
I don’t really like this card. While it might look like a solid value/disruption mix at first glance (something akin to Benevolent Banker), a lot of the time it’s going to be a 4 mana 4/4 with no effect. The card is pretty bad in the mid game, because you won’t likely have the mana to play the drawn card. Sure, it still gives you a small amount of information (that your opponent plays X and that it’s still in their deck, not in hand), but that’s such a small upside that it can be pretty much ignored.
If you play vs Aggro, you have a higher chance of being able to play the card you draw, because their curve is lower… but you might not want to play the card anyway. For example, if you draw some random 1-drop from their deck, not only it’s not going to do much to win you the game, but you don’t mind it still being in their deck. And you rarely can spend your whole mid game turn doing nothing to impact the board against faster decks. The card is obviously more useful vs slow decks. Not only can you afford to have a slower turn against them, but you might actually hit something that will disrupt their game plan.
But again, the issue is that many win conditions cost more than 6 mana so you might not be able to play them anyway. For example, you face Odyn Warrior, you hit Odyn, Prime Designate… and then you shuffle it back because it’s too expensive to play. Marin the Manager – too expensive. Reno, Lone Ranger – too expensive. And so on. Sure, there are some potential high-rolls, such as hitting Reska, the Pit Boss vs DK (you’ll usually be able to play her for free past mid-game), but when the best you can say about a card is that “it’s terrible unless you high-roll”, that’s not a great selling pitch.
Of course, ultimately there might be some synergy with other cards from the set that I’m simply not aware of. But I’m working on limited information, and with limited information this feels very weak.
Mutating Lifeform
And finally, we have another Amalgam! I’ve always been a big fan of those cards, and now, for the first time, they include Draenei in the artwork! That’s neat.
The card itself, however, seems a bit like something you might want to combo with Whirlwind back in 2017, and feel very smart about your deck-building skills. Admittedly, it has a much better statline and/or cost than a card like that would have back then, but I’m afraid that it might be just as unplayable.
As we’ve already established when talking about Ace Wayfinder, bonus effects are… pretty random. At least Ace Wayfinder guarantees two bonus effects right away and then shares them with the next Draenei you play. So that’s 4 bonus effects you’re getting. Mutating Lifeform has a chance to give you more than 4, but realistically it will nearly always be fewer.
A perfect scenario would be playing this card vs multiple small minions and just trading for days. Getting Windfury on the first hit, then some other useful effects… But it’s painfully slooooow. Without Rush, you’re doing nothing the turn you play it, and then the pay-off depends on the RNG. Not to mention that at 3 Attack, it wouldn’t even be able to trade into many 3-drops, let alone higher cost minions. Sure, you can still hit them and get that bonus effect, but 3 attack on a 5-drop feels bad.
And that’s assuming you will even be able to trade into lots of small minions with it. If it dies in one hit (a removal spell, a big minion attack), it’s just a 5 mana 3/8 with no extra effect. Even if it takes 2 or 3 hit to get rid of it, there’s a high chance you won’t roll anything useful. But most likely your opponent won’t willingly attack into it anyway, it’s not like this card will spiral out of control if not answered immediately.
The only thing this card has going for it is, well, being an Amalgam. It means that theoretically you can combo it with multiple different minion types. For example, it’s also a Mech, so you can Magnetize stuff onto it after gaining some bonus effects. Getting Windfury and them shoving a big Mech on top of it can be good. But, again, RNG. Maybe there are some combos with specific minion types that I’m not remembering right now, but I can’t think of anything that would make this card shine.
And once again, I can’t fully speak about the power levels without knowing all of the synergies in the expansion, but this one feels like a miss for now.
And that’s all! Thanks again to Blizzard for providing us with another opportunity to reveal some cards. The reveal season is only just beginning, we’ve seen less than 20% of the expansion at this point, so we still have a lot of exciting cards ahead of us.
Anyway, if you want to learn more about the upcoming expansion and see all of the card reveals in one place, check out our The Great Dark Beyond guide!
