How do you do, fellow kids? Whizbang’s Workshop expansion is releasing in three weeks, so it’s about time to kick off another reveal season in full strength. And who could do it better than us…
Please don’t answer that.
Anyhoo, Blizzard gave our website another opportunity to reveal some cards from the upcoming expansion (thanks!) and I’m pleased to do so. This time we got three Neutral cards to show – one Rare and two Epics. Let’s get to it, shall we?
Factory Assemblybot
Starting off, we have a Factory Assemblybot. For those of your who aren’t familiar with the new mechanics – Miniaturize is incredibly simple. When you play a card with Miniaturize, you add a 1 mana 1/1 copy of it to your hand (you can see both above – keep in mind that the only way to get the “Mini” version is by playing the full one, no cheating). This effect usually means that you have to “invest” more mana that you might want at first, but then have a very high tempo version of the same card. And Assemblybot pushes the mechanic to its limits.
You first have to pay 10 mana for a 6/7 minion that summons another 6/7 minion. Granted, the second one will attack a random enemy so it’s not literally spending 10 mana turn without affecting the enemy board, but the hit is random. The first time you play this card, it’s basically comparable to Troublemaker. And while Troublemaker was a solid card that saw play, keep in mind that not only it was 8 mana, and it was also usually meant to be cheated out earlier than Turn 8. As a Turn 8 play, it was pretty mid – still not bad, but not great. And yeah, sure, if you cheat Assemblybout out somehow you get a decent card, but keep in mind that in order to get the Miniaturize effect, you need to play the card from your hand. So cheating it out ruins its main purpose – the “mini” version.
Because of that, I’m frankly not convinced that this card will see any Constructed play. The Mini version is insanely powerful and you could do all kinds of stuff with it (like copying, getting extras with Joymancer Jepetto and probably a few things that haven’t been revealed yet), but I don’t see a way you could squeeze that 10 mana version into your turn and live to tell the tale. One potential synergy is Inventor Boom, the 10 mana version would be a nice Mech to revive. But again, the biggest problem is that playing a 10 mana minion that doesn’t have a massive immediate board impact (that you can control) is just hard.
Of course, I’m still withholding my final judgment because we’ve only seen a small portion of the set, maybe there will be a card that will make it viable (a way to discount it perhaps). But with the current information, it should be a great Arena card, but that’s it.
At least we have a new vanilla 6 mana 6/7 minion (I heard those are some great stats for the cost), even if it’s a token card and not something you can put into your deck. Boulderfist Ogre still has no competition in that matter.
Origami Dragon
Now this card is really fun! I always liked cards that swap the stats of two minions. The OG Vol'jin is still one of my favorite Priest cards ever printed. And this is like Vol’jin on steroids. Granted, the cards have got way, way more powerful since his release, so being a better version of a card that was released years ago is not a big deal. But it’s still really cool.
The idea of this card is very simple – it’s supposed to be a removal and a big body in one. The best-case scenario is, of course, targeting a big minion like an 8/8. This way for 6 mana you’re dealing with your opponent’s big threat while playing a 6 mana 8/8 with Divine Shield and Lifesteal of your own. That’s an insane tempo swing and because of the Lifesteal + Divine Shield combo, unless your opponent has a way to clear it with spells, you’re most likely healing for a bunch too. The card is very susceptible to Silence, but Silence isn’t very popular right now. It’s impossible to say how common it will be after rotation, but I wouldn’t worry about it that much.
Of course, just looking at the “best case” scenario and calling it a day would be silly. And this is where the card gets much weaker. First of all, it’s only reactive – if your opponent has no board, you can play it as a 1 mana 1/1 (or just swap with another minion of yours, but that’s not great). And even if your opponent has a board, I’d say that this card is bad or anything smaller than 5/5. Even 5/5 is kind of an edge case – it’s not great, but probably playable. And the problem is that some decks simply don’t play big minions for you to swap stats with. This card might be sitting in your hand for many turns unplayable, and that’s not something you want.
The good news is that for a while now even high tempo, aggressive decks run some big minions. For example, Aggro Paladin is famous for producing huge minions out of thin air. Sludge Warlock also plays some chonky minions (Waste Remover, sometimes Gloomstone Guardian, both can be copied by Forge of Wills). Even Rainbow DK has some big bodies like Stitched Giants and Corpse Brides (or rather the Taunt minion it summons). But the bad news again is that those decks can usually play those big minions while maintaining some solid tempo, they often have them on the board ON TOP of some other things, so you need a proper AoE clear and not just spend your whole turn on a single target.
One more thing that’s worth mentioning is that this card is Neutral. Duh, I know. But it means that classes that might struggle with removing big minions can play this. For example, I could see Ramp Druid running it, especially the Reno variant since it wants Dragons anyway. Druid can sometimes struggle to deal with big minions, and the class is usually ahead of the mana curve, so spending 6 mana on this might not be such a big deal.
All in all, I think that this card has a chance of seeing Constructed play as a tech card in some metas with big minions. I think there might be a place for it in certain builds. But it’s most likely not going to be a “main deck” option but rather sometimes you might keep add when the time is right.
Observer of Mysteries
And finally, we have Observer of Mysteries. I think that it’s the most exciting one from this batch, but also the hardest one to rate.
First of all, I assume that it will draw from the pool of Secrets that are currently available in the format. So in Standard, it should only cast Secrets that are available in Standard. It means no Paladin Secrets and – unless Rogue gets some this expansion – no Rogue Secrets. So Hunter and Mage Secrets are the only ones in rotation. And I think that’s for the best because preferably you want to get Mage Secrets (they cost the most and thus are overall the most powerful – Reliquary Researcher proves that casting two random Mage Secrets is amazing).
The main strength of this card lies in the fact that your opponent will have absolutely no idea what they have to play around. The Secrets have SO MANY different triggers that no matter what they do, they can trip some of them. Because of that, I honestly think that this card will be kind of a “noob trap” (for the opponent and not for the player who runs it, so maybe a “reverse noob trap”). A less experienced player will probably try to play around everything or even just skip their turn entirely if they can’t. After all, why risk playing that spell if it might just get countered? It will still be in your hand next turn! And that’s, of course, great news for the person who played Observer, because they forced the opponent to play suboptimally while pushing some tempo on the board. But more experienced players will most likely just ignore it unless they can afford to play around them pretty easily.
Also, while this card costs 3 mana, I think that it might be a stronger mid-game play where your opponent might run into more potential obstacles. Let’s say that you play it on curve and they want to play a minion. A good player will probably just play it, pass turn, and a lot of the time your Observer’s effect would be gone. You just played 3 mana 2/2 do nothing because only a handful of Secrets trigger from playing a minion. The chances to “dodge” it are in your opponent’s favor. But in the mid-late game, most of decks want to do more than one thing, and that’s when the potential to trigger some Secrets grows. And even just one solid Secret triggered on top of a 2/2 body makes this card worth it. But that’s RNG for you – you can get a Counterspell and be happy to ruin your opponent’s big spell or Ice Barrier when your opponent has no intention of attacking you and just wasting it.
It’s worth mentioning that it has some synergies in actual Secret decks. While Contract Conjurer rotates out, that would be a really nice combo. You could play this on T3 and then drop a 0 mana 6/6, or even two. It also has synergies with other cards that require you to have a Secret in play like Medivh's Valet or Chatty Bartender (though you need to play both on the same turn so it’s more of a mid/late game play), but let’s be honest, those are easy to activate anyway with the Secrets you actually run in your deck.
But even if it won’t turn out to be playable, at least it’s going to be fun to watch your opponent squirm, trying to figure out what Secrets you just dropped and trying to maneuver around them (yes, it shows the kind of player I am).
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 seen less than 20% of the expansion at this point, so there’s still plenty of exciting cards ahead. This entire expansion is really cool, as it’s a big throwback to the older expansions. That’s because Hearthstone’s 10th anniversary is coming very soon, in just 2 weeks.
Anyway, if you want to learn more about the upcoming expansion and see all of the card reveals in one place, check out our Whizbang’s Workshop guide!
