Bonfire Elemental
Bonfire Elemental is a 5 Mana Cost Rare Mage Minion Elemental card from the The Witchwood set!
Card Text
Battlecry: If you played an Elemental last turn, draw a card.
Flavor Text
Next step: Marshmallow elementals.- Mana Cost: 5
- Attack: 5
- Health: 5
- Crafting Cost: 100 / 800 (Golden)
- Arcane Dust Gained: 20 / 100 (Golden)
- Rarity: Rare
- Class: Mage
- Card Type: Minion
- Minion Type: Elemental
- Set: The Witchwood
- Mechanics: Battlecry, Draw Cards
Bonfire Elemental Card Review
They are indeed pushing Elemental Mage deck, most likely a minion-based one with the new Archmage Arugal and Book of Specters. And yeah, 5 mana 5/5 that draws a card is good. But didn’t we have something similar before?
I’m obviously talking about the Servant of Kalimos. Both are 5-drops, both have the same requirement, both are Elementals and both give you one card. The stats are obviously in favor of Bonfire Elemental – 5/5 doesn’t seem much stronger than 4/5, but believe me that it is. You’re facing 5 health minions quite often in the mid/late game, and having the ability to just cleanly kill them off without having to use your Hero Power is a big deal.
Then, about the discovering vs drawing a card. Which one is stronger heavily depends on the pool of cards you discover from. In case of Servant of Kalimos, those are Elementals. Which is good since you’re playing an Elemental deck. However, Mage doesn’t have lots of class-only Elementals you’d really like to Discover (nothing like Kalimos, Primal Lord in Shaman). Discovering Bonfire Elemental or Pyros is really slow, while Steam Surger is an okay card, but nothing impressive.
The advantages of Servant of Kalimos are the fact that you can pick the card that fits the current situation, that you don’t get further into fatigue in case of a long game (unlikely, but still), that you can potentially chain them for great value (very slow, but might work in some matchups) and that the Discovered Elementals can be discounted with Leyline Manipulator.
Bonfire Elemental’s advantage is that it has more attack (a really big advantage in this context) and that drawing from your deck lets you dig through it faster to find your win condition (which would most likely be Frost Lich Jaina), drawing card also combos with Arugal (if you draw a minion, you get a duplicate).
And while you can put both into your deck (but do you really want to?), Servant of Kalimos isn’t really seen as a very powerful card, even in the few Elemental decks we had. It was okay, but nothing impressive. And this card is comparable. It might be slightly better, but only slightly, so I can’t really see it being a reason to play an Elemental Mage. If anything, the deck’s power will come from the Book of Specters (or even the combo with Arugal), and not necessarily from this.
Card rating: 6/10
Bonfire Elemental Full Card Art
ok in arena, not good enough for Constructive
So blizzard takes away our most powerful card iceblock and gives us this garbage? Keep making mage rank 20 blizzard
So still pushing Elementals. At least they had the decency to make this a 5/5 and not a 5/6 like Drakonid Operative (it still baffles me that they never nerfed that card to 5/5). Anyway, what to say. This will be a main card in Midrange Elemental Mage. 4/5 stars.
Solid stats, elemental, and card draw. Not only this card is a 5/5, but the rating i give this card is also 5/5 (at least for elemental mage)
not so good. we need tempo minions. card draw already great with the new 2 mana epic spell
More card draw never hurts
like they say in Spain: lo poco gusta, lo bastante cansa y lo mucho aburre or something like that
4 card draw cards are not too many
Remember that no-minion elemental mage only has book of spectres to draw cards. Which means it’s highly inconsistent to pray you draw one of the book of spectres in the next 10 draws each game.
So good gards
Am I the only one who thinks Dark souls when I saw this card. By the way a very good card, draw a card while you have a 5/5 body it’s very good ability and it also gives you good tempo on board.
It’s looking more like Elemental Mage will be a dominate deck in Witchwood. If anything, adding Shimmering Tempest, Ghastly Conjurer, and Steam Surger alongside Archmage Antonidas could work. Add in Thunder Lizard, Tol’vir Stoneshaper with Book of Specters and Arugal, and one has a recipe to rock someone’s world before they can say Jack Robinson. That’s all provided on how these cards are played, and played right. All could work the Elemental Synergy for Mage, and do it well. If Murmuring Elemental went to Mage, and not Shaman, then this card would be even more powerful, or rather, over-powering! I can’t wait to see how this plays out. Cause I will definitely use this card alongside those that I mentioned. If I can make it work, but to do so, I’ll need Lesser Spell stone and Primordial Glyph, and then pray that Book of Specters doesn’t discard either one or both! Then again, why use Book of Specters, when one has Bonfire. In any case, 4 out of 5 stars for me. If they buff Arugal, so much the better a deck an Elemental Mage would be.
An elemental Mage deck would not want to play Shimmering Tempest, Ghastly Conjurer, Archmage Antonidas, and Thunder Lizard. Tempest is too weak to consider. Conjurer adding mirror image to your hand is less powerful than Steam Surger, Water Elemental, and some of the other four cost cards Mages might play. If you were to play a minion based Mage deck, Antonidas wouldn’t really do a whole lot, and an Elemental Mage deck would end up being very much minion based. Lastly, Thunder Lizard just sucks.
Elemental mage without spells did need some way to draw cards because they couldn’t use arcane intellect. But the biggest problem with no-spell elemental mage now is the lack of AoE. In worst case they put in primordial drake or something similar.
They could play Spiteful Summoner and use Flame Strike, Blizzard, and Pyroblast as your big spells along with Book of Specters. Doing so gives you the draw about of the last card I mentioned (You’ll usually draw 2 cards from it if you only play 8 spells) while also not hampering the use of Summoner too much.
As it is though, the lack of AOE has not hurt Secret Mage’s competitive viability. It is weak against the aggro Paladins, but that has more to do with Secret Mage wanting to be faster than the deck it plays against than the lack of AOE removal.
This is just… good! 4/5 for what the card is. I’d say on par with Servant of Kalimos, but curve loosk really good. Odd Elemental Mage looks very promising.
I’m gonna make odd-cost, elemental Big Spell mage and no one can stop me.
please, please dont
curvestone
Could fit into some sort of midrangey elemental based mage deck that plays less spells. Sounds more fun to play against than secret mage
I wonder if you need 2 bright eyed scouts in a mage elemental deck to try to nail Jaina early. Otherwise, I find it hard seeing how this deck type can survive to turn nine without hard removal, ice block, spells or heal.
I guess tar creepers will do some jobs, but fast decks eat through that quickly.
Like to see mage getting some help, it will need it without ice block.. still need some defense..
You probably wouldn’t play Ice Block in a dedicated elemental deck if you could anyway.
Yes. You absolutely would. Ice block is a card that fit into every single mage deck because no matter what game you’re playing you always don’t want to die and there’s no counter play. That’s why Ice block is going wild.
Only recently did Secret mages started playing it generally, and that was due to the prevalence of aggro in the meta game in general. The versions of Tempo Mage with Flamewaker before the secret engine was good enough to integrate into the deck all of the time played only one copy of Ice Block only on occasion, and Elemental Mage decks from the beginning of the Un’Goro format rarely did.
I do agree that there is the no counterplay that can be had with the card that doesn’t result in your opponent getting another turn, but Ice Block is being dropped from the classic set more so because the general Freeze Mage strategy and core has never not see some amount of play be it in Quest Exodia Mage or Big Spell Mage. The ultimate win condition of Freeze Mage may be different from the deck’s inception, but playing against the deck has always felt the same.
Minion elemental mage looking strong. While before, elemental mage focused on dsicovering/generating cards, making it hard to find the best card in the deck, Frost Lich Jaina. With Book of Specters and now Bonfire Elemental, finding that death knight is going to be much easier.
This could easily be Mage’s Drakonid Operative, the extremely powerful card that will fully push the deck into relevance almost by itself.
With this and the other minion based Mage cards revealed, I can easily see an Elemental Baku or Spiteful Elemental deck being possible and competitive.
I can see it now, being crushed by cubelock too.
Most decks at the moment get crushed by Cube and Control Warlock, but if Secret Mage is anything to go by, a deck with a lot of direct damage cards and a good early game can more than compete with it. Such a Spiteful Elemental deck would also probably do well against Cube/Control Warlock inherently if the statistics on Spiteful Priest are anything to go by.
I feel like this would have been better suited for Shaman.
Indeed, considering that Shaman has huge problems with drawing cards since the gone of Azure Drake….
That is part of shaman identity, so blizzard wont add such cards to shaman….
Perfect card for Spriteful Elemental Mage.
Curvestone coming thru
This card is good but elementals mana 1-4 need help. Firefly weak 1 drop, pyros only 2 drop can only run one need another 2 drop, tar creeper at 3 is slow and its saying your playing from behind need aggro 3 mana elemental, no 4 drop
Leyline manipulator and the 5/4 from Ungoro are both 4 drops. Agree we need another strong early game elemental
mages curve looks decent from 2-
pyros
tar creepo
4 5/4
this
pyros v2
Dont forget Arcane artificer and shimmering tempest for Super cheap elementals.
I wouldn’t be so sure tbh, Frost lich Jaina is obviously going to be a big part of this deck and as such it’s quite obvious that this deck isn’t going to be nor does it need to be so strong. Once you get Frost lich out you’ll probably still have tons of cards left in hand and that’s going to give you insane sustain. Therefor it’d be pretty unfair if the deck would also have a strong start.
Firefly is one of the best 1 drops in the game, Tar Creeper is decent 3 drop, the only weak link in the chain is the 2 drop spot.
Pyros and Archmage Arugal – granted they’re both legendaries – or there’s Shimmering Tempest; Volatile Elemental at a push.
No 4 drop? What about water elemental, steam surger and leyline manipulator?
I think you are just seeking a complete OP curve there is already really decent drops whether it is 2, 3 or 4 drops :
NIGHTMARE AMALGAM (3) into STEAM SURGER (4) into this one.
Or IGNEOUS ELEMENTAL (3) into FIREFLUM (4) PHOENIX into this guy.
As 2 drops you have, whether Shimmering tempest, which gives you a spell which you are likely not to have in your elemental minion based deck, or Pyros, both synerging with the neutral Legendary that draws Rush, Lifesteal and Deathrattle.
I let you have a look at all elementals there are in all the sets ,Firefly, Glacial Shards, Volatile, Kalimos Servant, even Arcane Tyran and Frozen Crusher and Grave Shambler could find a place in this type of deck. Along with spiteful summoner, Pyroblast and Cabalist Tome or Glyph.
To conclude, you are asking too much I think.
Water elemental is a 4 drop
Theres also Arcane artificer (staple 1 drop used in ton of mage decks) and Shimmering tempest (2 drop)
Leaked news: apparently Blizzard forgot to print this card in Un’Goro so they just decided to stick it into the Witchwood set.
How is it even possible to forget to print a card.
A virtual card, that is. 😉
I wonder if minion Elemental mage could be something. Probably with Froch Lich Jaina as late value card.
Worse than Azure Drake. But still pretty good.
How is this worse than azure drake?
People played drake in decks that didn’t care about spell damage, so being a 5/5 is better than spell damage a lot of time. Not in mage though I don’t think. And this guys’ trigger is conditional on having played an elemental last turn. So drake is definitely a generically better card. But being worse than azure drake by a marginal amount is not a bad place to be, that card was played in basically every deck.
Because azure drake isn’t conditional and has spell power +1. Still a meaningless comment because nobody would play azure drake in a minion-based mage deck with elementals :p
This is perfect for elemental mage. It was missing a solid 5 drop (and 6 drop) apart from servant of Kaimos.
5/5 draw = stronk
v tru
Ok, that’s a solid 5 drop.