Howdy partners! The latest Hearthstone expansion – Showdown in the Badlands – was announced just two days ago. Blizzard once again gave me an opportunity to reveal some cards. And just like in the last expansion, we’re starting with Neutral cards. Four of them in fact, a couple of which look really promising. Let’s get to it!
Bounty Board
The first card I have to show you is Bounty Board. I have to say that I was always a sucker for the classic Warlock card Summoning Portal and this one reminds me of it a bit. Having your cards discounted is undoubtedly a big deal, but the question is how much you have to pay for that discount. If it’s too much – then it negates the whole fact that you’re discounting anything.
In this case, Bounty Board discounts very specific cards – Excavate, Quickdraw, Tradeable and Legendary. That’s a lot of keywords, but actually not that many cards. Sure, we don’t know how many Excavate and Quickdraw cards there will be in this expansion, but only a few Tradeable cards see play and Legendaries are usually a small part of the deck. In order to take advantage of it, you would need to play a lot of each of those. Or, more likely, some specific combo that needs a mana discount.
Do note that the card doesn’t have the pesky “but not less than 1” clause. Which, don’t get me wrong, is good for the health of the game in some cases, but for this card not having it gives it some more usability.
Sadly, this is one of those cards that you likely have to take advantage the turn you play it. A 3 mana 0/5 is not likely sticking on the board – 9 out of 10 times it will get cleared right away, often without your opponent losing any resources. It means that you need to play at least 4 of those cards to get ahead in terms of mana and basically turn it into a weird Innervate. That’s definitely doable at 10 mana, but it’s a really big ask earlier in the game. Of course, after that, the more cards you play, the bigger of a tempo advantage you get from this one.
Still, I currently don’t have a great use for this card in mind. It feels more like something that can activate some weird Wild combo down in line and not a card I would put into my deck right now in Standard.
Burrow Buster
The second card is Burrow Buster. It looks like a pretty basic implementation of the new Excavate mechanic. It’s one of the more complex Hearthstone keywords so far, so I wrote a guide to explain it better. But the gist of it is that whenever you dig you get a treasure, starting with a 1-cost, then 2-cost and 3-cost. After that, for 6 out of 11 classes, the cycle repeats – but other classes have special, 4 mana Legendary treasures. So far we only know a single one – Death Knight’s The Azerite Rat – but it looks really powerful.
So even though this is a Neutral card, realistically you will only want to play it in the five Excavate classes (Death Knight, Mage, Rogue, Warlock, and Warrior). Others can still get some use from it when randomly generated, but won’t likely put it into their deck.
How strong it will be heavily depends on how good the whole Excavate mechanic turns out to be. Since it’s just the beginning of the reveal season, and we don’t even know how 4 out of 5 “Legendary treasures” look, I can only guess. Normally a 5 mana 6/4 with Rush would be quite horrible. This is a card that you might pay 4 mana for, and even then I don’t think that it would see that much play. Most of the time, it’s going to be a 5 mana 6 damage removal, sometimes with a small body left behind (e.g. if you attack into a 2/3, you’re left with a 6/2). The upside of the body gets negated by the downside is it getting stopped by Taunt minions. So yes, you’re overpaying – most of the classes either don’t need 5 mana removals or have better options.
What might make it playable is the nature of Excavate in general. This is one of those mechanics that you really want to pack your deck with. Running only a few Excavate cards means that it will take you too long to reach that 4 mana treasure you’re aiming for – you probably want to get to it quickly so it makes up all the tempo you lost. But that’s the main question – will you make up for it? Sure, even 1-3 mana treasures are quite strong, but you have to play some weak cards to get them and you get them at random. And even assuming that Excavate decks take off, classes might simply have better options. We’ll see – I think that it MIGHT be playable, but it all depends on all of the other card reveals.
Cattle Rustler
The third card I have to show you is Cattle Rustler. First things first – I LOVE the artwork. Interestingly enough, my other favorite artwork so far this expansion is from Living Praire (and Startled Cow token), so maybe I just like cows.
And I really like this card too, not just for its artwork. Tutor cards have historically been quite powerful in Hearthstone. Usually being able to narrow what you draw is better than just drawing a card at random. Not only it means that you can predict the outcome and plan for it ahead of time, but if your deck is built around a specific card (or a few cards), getting them as quickly as possible is important.
The downside is that this one is a 5 mana 3/4. That’s 2 more mana than you should be playing for this statline. However, it makes up for it with the fact that the card you draw gets discounted by (3). So one way to look at it is that it’s actually a 2 mana 3/4 draw if you combine the cost of both (assuming the Beast you draw costs 3 or more). For example, if you play this on Turn 5 together with a 3-mana Beast you draw, it’s a really nice tempo swing.
But I don’t think that tempo is what you’re really looking for with this card. It strikes me as more of a combo activator. Being able to draw a specific card AND discounting it by 3? You might, for example, draw a big Beast with Charge (King Krush), discount it, and then maybe somehow make another copy of it. Other combos that come to mind include tutoring and discounting Shockspitter (sadly Brann is out of Standard now, so the potential of big burn turns is much lower, but it might still make sense), Trenchstalker in Warrior (possibly after buffing it with Blackrock 'n' Roll or Freebird (I don’t think that’s what it takes to make Freebird decks viable, but who knows). Even just targeting Hydralodon in Hunter might make sense (sure, it’s not a combo-oriented card, but it’s very strong standalone so tutoring it might make sense). The new Thunderbringer is also a Beast, and it itself can lead to some interesting combos. When looking at new cards, I have one more use in mind – you can use this Beast discount to turn it into a general discount. If you draw the new Death Knight’s Harrowing Ox, it will cost 4, but discount the next card you play by 7.
Of course, I’m not saying that all of the uses I listed above are good. Most of them probably aren’t. I’m just spitballing some ideas. My point is that there are some cards that really benefit from tutoring and discounting. So even if not right now, it might activate some cool combos in the future.
Howdyfin
I know that not everyone is a fan of this “Wild West” theme of Showdown in the Badlands, but I have to say – I love how this card looks. I really like the expansion flavor-wise. As for how good it is, I have to say that… it actually looks impressive.
Howdyfin is a bit like a mix between Shaman’s Underbelly Angler and Voracious Reader. As you probably remember, both of those have seen quite a lot of play back in the day. This card is an incredible way to refill your hand – it can’t drop below 3 cards, because once it does, you get random Murlocs. Unlike Underbelly Angler, you don’t have to play Murlocs to get more Murlocs – for example, if you play a spell that will reduce your hand size from 3 to 2, you will still get a random Murloc. And unlike Voracious Reader, you don’t have to wait until the end of turn – you can play those Murlocs you get right away and get even more immediately. It’s a real late-game value bomb for Murloc decks.
And here’s the main issue – Murloc decks. While you don’t need to play it in a Murloc deck specifically (any deck that gets rid of their hand quickly can benefit from it), it wouldn’t make much sense otherwise. It has a Murloc tag and it generates more Murlocs. And those fellas don’t work very well solo.
It’s been a hot minute since a Murloc deck was viable in Standard. Shaman ran some Murloc synergies last year, but this card probably wouldn’t be good because that Shaman deck wasn’t known for running out of cards quickly. When we talk about actual, full-fledged “Aggro Murloc” decks this card would fit into, well… I don’t even remember. Luckily, Wild is always an option, and a playable Murloc build pops up in that format every now and then.
This is one of those cards that are really strong in theory but might see zero play because decks that want it aren’t playable. It all depends on whether we get some actual, low-curve Aggro Murloc deck this expansion. If yes – then great. If not – well… I guess that it might still be playable somewhere down the line.
And that would be all! Huge thanks to Blizzard for giving me another opportunity to do a card reveal. As I’ve already said, I’m really digging this whole “Wild West” theme in Hearthstone. I know that not everyone will love it, but I’m happy that they’re trying new things, things that aren’t necessarily closely tied to Warcraft lore (after we just had one lore-packed expansion in the form of TITANS). That’s what Hearthstone was known for after all – those wacky, slightly “out of place” expansions, but most of the ones we got over the last couple of years were less silly and more serious.
Anyway, Showdown in the Badlands expansion launches on November 14. Final reveals (and some surprise) will happen at BlizzCon. If you want to learn more about the expansion and new mechanics, or see all of the other card reveals, be sure to check out our guide.
Congrats
I was just thinking about crafting two Chum Buckets to build murloc warlock, and a perfect card just dropped: Howdyfin keeps some murlocs always in hand for handbuffing! Could work in Menagerie decks too.
And Bounty Board with the new Flint Firearm could be juicy if the quickdraw cards are mostly spells and can go face.
You’re right, at the point I was writing this Flint wasn’t revealed, but the combo seems nice. Still, you probably need to already have Bounty Board played the turn before, because you need to play at least four Quickdraw cards to get advantage of Board (and that might be hard, even if they lean towards lower cost).
And yes, Murloc Warlock seems like the best option right now – but Howdyfin alone probably isn’t good enough to make it work. I hope we get some new Murloc synergies this expansion too.
Seems like this is the expansion titans was supposed to be. As in utterly awesome.