Totally fine with Genn / Baku getting the boot, but I feel a little weird about naturalize. “Druids aren’t supposed to have hard removal”? That’s a classic card aka they’ve always had hard removal.

I just hope they don’t completely bury Druid. With the recent nerfs and now this I have a hard time imaging any Druid deck that could have success. I would like it though if they focused more on the lore of Druid forms and adaptability and printed more “choose one” cards. Those always make me feel like I’m more in control of the game and that decisions matter.

My main takeaway based on the change to nat is that big dumb piles of stats are getting a lot better. At this point the only real hard removal will be some random classic stuff that barely sees play along with hex / poly.

Honestly, the “smarter” deck builder sounds cool, but part of the reason I think the meta has been getting so stale lately is netdecking. Metas are figured out in 2-3 weeks for the most part. This feels like a great idea for really casual players who don’t have much of a set, but I wonder if it could take away even more from the fun of figuring out what works. Essentially it’s getting newer players onto the netdecking bandwagon.

Big fan though of the arena move. I’m very optimistic this is a test run for bringing a more frequent and targets rotation into the ladder system (to help alleviate my point above). Or maybe even a separate ladder – an anti-wild where maybe it’s classic with one current set.