Sandbinder
Sandbinder is a 4 Mana Cost Epic Neutral Minion card from the The Witchwood set!
Card Text
Battlecry: Draw an Elemental from your deck.
Flavor Text
The secret is glue.- Mana Cost: 4
- Attack: 2
- Health: 4
- Crafting Cost: 400 / 1600 (Golden)
- Arcane Dust Gained: 100 / 400 (Golden)
- Rarity: Epic
- Class: Neutral
- Card Type: Minion
- Set: The Witchwood
- Mechanics: Battlecry, Draw Cards
Sandbinder Card Review
This is a Gnomish Inventor that tutors a specific thing instead of drawing a random card. The same mana cost, the same stats. Tutoring is generally less flexible, but also more powerful in the right deck.
And so, if you play a deck with a vital Elemental that you want to draw as quickly or as consistently as possible, then this card will be an auto-include. For example, if you play a Shaman deck with a combo built around Grumble, Worldshaker. If you play some Priest combo that requires Radiant Elemental, this should also see play to tutor it.
Generally, in an average deck, this will be a weaker version of Gnomish Inventor, which already doesn’t see any play. But it might find its place in a specific deck you build around some specific Elementals. Or, if such a deck won’t see play, this card will also be never played.
If it was an Elemental itself, then it would be a great addition into any Elemental deck, as you could then follow it up with an Elemental synergy like Servant of Kalimos or Bonfire Elemental next turn. But without that tag, I don’t think I would want to play it in a regular Elemental deck, unless some really powerful Elementals that I would want to draw quickly would be released.
Card rating: 6/10
If *this* was an Elemental it would be alright – it could discover and proc Servant of Kalimos for example… but since it’s not, it’s pretty poor.
This could be a decent draw card in Elemental decks. It does suck playing it on turn 4 could ruin the chain of elementals, but later on it can prove to be an extra way of ensuring there’s always an elemental to play in your hand next turn.
It’ll be decent…. maybe.
The Tutorwoods
Hmm…Gnomish Inventor does appear in the meta every now and then, but only really in combo decks where you’re desperate to get through your deck as quickly as possible. If there’s some kind of combo deck enabled by an Elemental in the future then this card will 1000% be played there. Grumble, maybe? Right now there isn’t anything like that to my knowledge, and I don’t THINK you just throw this in a straight-up Elemental deck. Then again, Shaman in particular is pretty starved for card draw, so…maybe.
It’s an Okay Card; but it’s kinda slow because of it’s below Average Status.
I would say that this card is meant usually for Elemental Mage, as 1 Card of this, as a Support Card.
Only elemental I can image you really want to fish out of your deck is Lyra the Sunshard in some kind of miracle priest deck with Lyra and the legendary priest weapon. Considering that deck kinda sucks, I don’t know if this will be very good overall. Maybe to fish for Grumble in a deck with good battle cries but no other elemental? I’m skeptical still.
Does Gnomish Inventor see play? No? Well this doesn’t seem it’s gonna be much better. Unless there’s a specific Elemental that you want to draw (maybe Pyros?), but most Elementals work as a chain. And so this will be unreliable. You may draw a Firefly or Baron Geddon. So I don’t think this is in general better than Gnomish Inventor. 1.5/5 stars.
1. Gnomish Inventor saw play in razakus priest, it’s not that bad of a card if you really want to draw
2. This draws a specific cardtype from your deck, much like arcanologist. Such cards will always see play in some deck, even if it isn’t in this expansion. Keep an eye on this card.
I mean, sure, tutoring cards CAN be quite powerful. The problem I see with this one is that Elemental packages usually need a bunch of elementals to be effective, so it’s very unreliable which elemental you will draw. If it’s only 1 or 2 Elementals what you want to draw, then this naturally gets stronger, but it also risks drawing the Elementals before you draw this, and thus becomes a very bad Gnomish Inventor after that. There would have to be an Elemental in the power level of Ice Block for this to see consistent play, since even with only Ice Block in your deck it was already worth it to run Arcanologist. And Arcanologist had vanilla stats… So far there is no Elemental in that power level, so I can’t see this being good at all, for now…
the point Deadlypants is making is that if a specific elemental comes out in the future thats op this card will see play because you want that card asap. like a lyra a card thats good by itself that you want quickly. Its like how people played arcanologist to get iceblock except you are getting a value card instead of a save my self card.
Yep, I’m not doubting that some of the cards that will now feel underwhelming might become good or staples in the future. It’s happened frequently. Kind of like how e.g. YShaarj was considered the weakest of the Old Gods and then Barnes was printed and suddenly YShaarj was super powerful.