Three New Neutral Cards From Into the Emerald Dream Expansion – HSTD Exclusive Reveal

On Tuesday, a new Hearthstone expansion was officially announced. Technically we already knew what the set is going to be for a few months now, but it’s still great to finally see the new mechanics, cards, and so on. Into The Emerald Dream is the first expansion of Year of the Raptor (2025) and it launches on March 25.

Blizzard gave me an opportunity to reveal three new Neutral 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. Doubly so given that this is one of the first card reveals from Into the Emerald Dream. But things are already looking quite exciting!

Flutterwing Guardian

All three cards I’m revealing today are part of a “Hero Power” package. Imbue is one of the two new mechanics so it’s no surprise that Hero Powers will play a big role in the expansion.

If you haven’t been following the earlier reveals, here’s a quick reminder on what Imbue actually is. The mechanic is playable in Druid, Hunter, Mage, Paladin, Priest, and Shaman. The first time you Imbue in one of those classes, you swap your Hero Power to a new version. For example, Hunter’s “Blessing of the Wolf” gives a random Beast in your hand +1 Attack and reduces its cost by (1). Then every subsequent Imbue will improve all values of the effect. Again, in case of Hunter, the Beast will get +2 Attack and get its cost down by (2), then 3, 4, and so on. As you can see, it starts pretty slow, but once you stack up a few Imbues, your Hero Power becomes very powerful.

Imbue looks to be one of those “the more you run, the better” packages. Of course, to a certain limit, because you still need cards to synergize with your improved Hero Power. But you will certainly want to run multiple Imbue cards to get your upgraded Hero Power online and up to speed.

Flutterwing Guardian looks quite decent, to be honest. 4 mana 4/4 with Taunt and Divine Shield is not a card you would normally put in your deck, but the Divine Shield + Taunt combo is always nice. And, of course, the main reason to use it Imbue.

We haven’t seen many Imbue cards so far, so it’s a bit hard to compare, but if we look at Hunter’s Umbraclaw, Flutterwing Guardian doesn’t seem bad. Of course, Umbraclaw is a Beast, so it will scale nicely with the upgraded Hero Power, but playing both on 4, I think that this one might be better. At the very least, it seems like a consistent way to Imbue in the mid game.

Ultimately it’s too early to tell how strong the mechanic is going to be, we don’t even know all of the Hero Powers yet. But if Imbue decks exist, it’s safe to say that there’s a high chance that some of them will run Flutterwing Guardian.

And here’s a Signature version of the card (I know that I shouldn’t be surprised at this point, but they really stepped up their Signature game compared to how they used to look).

Barkshield Sentinel

Inspire is back, baby! In spirit, at least, because they clearly haven’t decided to bring back the keyword itself. It makes sense for the original Hero Power mechanic to make a return since it synergizes well with the new Imbue cards (you want to HP often after you Imbue it – so cards that benefit from Hero Powering might make a cut in your decks).

As much as I’m happy to see the mechanic again (for some reason, I always liked Hero Power strategies, pushing that button when it doesn’t cost you a card felt great back in the day), I’m not sold on Barkshield Sentinel just yet. It’s a bit hard to find a scenario in which this card would shine.

If you drop it on Turn 2, you just played a 2 mana 2/2 Taunt that is very likely going to die right away. Even if it survives, Hero Powering on Turn 3 always feels awful. Not only it’s a low tempo play, but unless you have a 1-drop, you’re also floating 1 mana. Technically you could drop the (spoiler for the next card) Slumbering Sprite and Hero Power on T3, which would actually be quite good, but you still need your 2/2 to survive.

But not every 2 mana card is meant to be played on Turn 2. Maybe this is one of those? Well… I wouldn’t say so. While later in the game you can immediately Hero Power on the same turn you play this, and you probably want to Hero Power often in Imbue decks anyway, all you’re really getting is a 2 mana 2/4 Taunt. That’s a bit above the power level curve, but honestly not even that much these days. It’s not like 2 mana 2/4 Taunt is going to matter later in the game. Assuming it survives you can give it more Health later, but it’s not like giving your 2-drop +2 Health is a power play in the late game.

Maybe I’m not seeing something, maybe we’ll see other cards that make this good, but for now I just don’t think it is going to be played. I think it could have easily been a 2/3 to begin with. I like the artwork, though!

Slumbering Sprite

Another “Inspire” card, although this one is a bit different design-wise, since it’s a one-time effect instead of something you benefit from each time you Hero Power. And unlike Barkshield Sentinel, I think this one has more potential.

1 mana 3/3 is obviously a great statline. We have seen how powerful it can be with Overzealous Healer for example. But that big statline has to come with some sort of downside. In this case, this one starts Dormant and only wakes up after you Hero Power. It’s not a huge deal in a deck that wants to Hero Power a lot, but it’s an interesting balance decision. A deck that would normally want to play a 1 mana 3/3 is an Aggro/Tempo one. But this might not be very interesting for this style of deck, since you don’t really want to “waste” your early turns Hero Powering, you’d rather play more cards.

The one thing it’s missing is, obviously, Rush. In the current form, it can’t do anything on the turn it wakes up. If you play a 1-drop on Turn 1, you can attack with it on Turn 2. If you wake this up on Turn 2 by using your Hero Power, it’s as if you only just played it. This problem gets alleviated if you play it with Hero Power on the same turn. For example, after you already Imbued your Hero Power, you can play this + Hero Power + some 2-cost card on Turn 5. While 1-drops are at their strongest if you play them early, a 1 mana 3/3 is still a nice extra tempo push in the mid-game.

I think this card might fit nicely into slower Hero Power decks. The ones that don’t have much to do anyway in the early game – playing it on T1 and then Hero Powering on T2 might be a slow play in Aggro, but if you would have to skip T2 anyway, then having an extra 3/3 on the board definitely won’t hurt your chance of survival. And it’s not like you have to wake it up right away. Just “banking” it on T1 in a deck that doesn’t have a lot of T1 plays, and then cashing it in the mid game for a nice tempo boost is also not bad.

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 only seen a small portion 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 Into the Emerald Dream guide!