Lady Ashvane
Lady Ashvane is a 5 Mana Cost Legendary Warrior Minion card from the Voyage to the Sunken City set!
Card Text
Battlecry: Give all weapons in your hand, deck, and battlefield +1/+1.
Flavor Text
This is your brain on Azerite.- Mana Cost: 5
- Attack: 5
- Health: 5
- Crafting Cost: 1600 / 3200 (Golden)
- Arcane Dust Gained: 400 / 1600 (Golden)
- Rarity: Legendary
- Class: Warrior
- Card Type: Minion
- Set: Voyage to the Sunken City
- Mechanics: Battlecry, Buff Weapon
This could be a hint that weapons are coming back as a major theme for warriors. As of now it’s mediocre and has a place in casual decks that just want to run a theme, but I can see the next year or two having enough “weapons matter” cards to make this playable.
We still haven’t seen much of what Warrior is getting for this set, with Naga getting a “spells matter” theme for the most part, it’s possible that we get something similar with warrior and weapons. “If you played a weapon while this was in your hand, do X” and “If you played X while this weapon was in your hand, it also gains X”.
I know they seem focused on control and pirate warrior, bit it seems likely that this year won’t be three related sets, so we may be back to getting very different themes in each set, with only slight overlap.
That used to annoy me, because we would be a few cards short of a playable archetype, but it appears that Team 5 has improved with keeping consistency and not throwing in so many cards that just loosely hint at decks that never make it into standard. At the same time, more of those cards seem to have utility in wild and often get backed up by the mini set if Blizzard wants it to be.
I’m still waiting for demon tribal to become a Standard deck. Or at least old-fashioned zoolock.
But this buff weapons in hand and in play also, a big difference. Captain Greenskin saw play, and buffed only weapons in play, while being 5 mana 5/4. A control Warrior with 3 weapons in deck may find use for this, even if Bulwark is rotating out, some other defensive weapon maybe printed to go alongside Outriders Axé?
What? This seems really bad. It’s like that 2 mana goblin that used to give all weapons in your deck +1/+1, except that card wasn’t played and it was in a Hearthstone world where power level was SIGNIFICANTLY lower. What the hell is this?
Armor based control seems to be something they are pushing. I could see weapons that play into that, with outrider’s axe being a draw engine and possible future weapons giving armor or helping build defensive boards.
It’s totally a guess, but I’d be happy to see some more weapons that aren’t made for just attacking. That hammer that forced minions to attack neighbors was a great example of a control weapon, and this new set in particular seems to be trying to be very innovative. Both New keywords are very different, though they also add a lot to the game. If they keep up their innovation, especially their move away from relying on RNG so much, I can see them taking weapons back to the drawing board, and even giving them something like minion/spell types. Having “swords matter” alongside holy paladin, or “axes matter” in an Orc heavy set isn’t out of the question.
This game got caught up with RNG effects for too long with all the innovative stuff they can do outside of it as a digital card game. There’s still a lot of WoW attacks, items, and abilities that they haven’t touched. How would a Mage’s Blink work as a card? Why haven’t we seen the Druid forms as actual spells that grant you abilities, and stats for two or three turns? How about Hunters being able to “tame” enemy beasts?
So much room for both fun and strong cards.
that 2 mana goblin gave your weapons only +1 attack, not extra durability, so he was even weirder than you thought
I just double checked and you are right, but perhaps most surprisingly, he only affected weapons in your DECK, not board and not even hand so whatever little reward you could get out of him was even further delayed by that and would most likely have zero impact. Really weird card.
Not seeing it. Greenskin had pirate synergy and krastinov was usually the better play since it did something proactive on the mana slot.
This is a value card on 5 mana where it really feels too late to actually “matter”. Hobart Grapplehammer had a worse effect, but at least came down before your weapons and saw 0 play in the meta where Warrior was probably running the most weapons (mean streets).
Yup- this is very accurate. And even then how many weapons do people really play in decks these days?
wait? this isn’t a naga?
Tbf lorewise Lady Ashvane isn’t a naga and just a human corrupted by Azshara/N’Zoth. She didn’t really take too kindly too her makeover.
To*
Does this mean it gives +1/+1 to the enemies weapon too?
its says “your weapons” so i would assume no it doesnt.
I mean hey, at its worst its just a better Greenskin( or whatever that 5 mana 5/4 pirate weapon buff guy was)
Except that greenskin is a pirate and weapons are (in the current meta) played or synergizing in pirate decks very well
Right bery true. ( but like in standard i dont think we have greenskin anymore. If he comes back then yeah youd run him, but for now this is kinda cool)