by JR Cook - 8 years ago     show comments

We’re just 2 days away from the worldwide reveal of Hearthstone’s next expansion “Whispers of the Old Gods” and we now have a total of 10 of the 134 cards revealed. Check out our spoiler list for all the cards revealed so far.

This weekend during the championship events happening around the world we got 4 new cards revealed including a hunter card, a paladin card, a neutral legendary and a neutral rare.

Stand Against Darkness

This card was revealed on Saturday during the American Championship live stream. Muster for Battle is going out of the standard format and a lot of people are speculating this could be a replacement. It’s definitely not as good as Muster was since it’s a 5 mana card instead of 3 and doesn’t give you that weapon. Muster also had the synergy with Knife Juggler on a turn 5 to do some damage. It is possible we could see this as a turn 5 drop in Secret Paladin before a turn 6 Mysterious Challenger.

Possible synergy with this card would be Competitive Spirit and Warhorse Trainer (which currently doesn’t see play in competitive games). With Quartermaster being cycled out in standard we’d probably have to see something else that really affects Silver Hand Recruits before we’ll  see this card get used in Standard competitive play.

Hogger, Doom of Elwynn

Hogger, Doom of Elwynn was revealed during a Chinese stream. This is another corrupted minion and the first legendary corrupted minion we have seen. This takes the classic Hogger and makes him a bit beefier but instead of making 2/2 gnolls with taunt at the end of his turn, he makes them whenever he takes damage.

This is pretty similar to Troggzor, which a lot of people thought would be powerful but was supplanted by the power of Dr. Boom. He could potentially see some play in Standard with Dr. Boom rotating out as people look for something in that 7 mana slot. I personally see his potential in priest, particularly control priest. Priest has a lot of buff cards that could make this corrupted Hogger a pain to deal with.

Giant Sandworm

Giant Sandworm was revealed today during the Japanese championships and is the first hunter card we have seen in the new set.

When this minion attacks and kills a minion, it gets another attack. This is another card that Blizzard has made that is trying to give choices to the player to choose something other than Face Hunter. Since it’s a beast it also has synergy with all of the beast cards. The main ones that come to mind that this could be paired with is Bestial Wrath and Stable Master which makes your beasts immune and will allow you to easily clear your opponents board while also hitting their face for 8 damage. This also gives a bit of a buff to Ram Wrangler as well.

This card is of course a bit weaker if Big Game Hunter doesn’t get the nerf many people are speculating it will get.

At 8 mana though, unless the Hunter Control meta shows up or it has a place in midrange hunter I’m not sure if this will see play.

Eater of Secrets

This was the final card revealed this weekend during the America Championships. Immediately people on social media were calling this the end of Secret Paladin.

However, keep in mind that in standard, Secret Paladin will not be that good of a deck as it will be missing Avenge, Shielded Minibot, Muster for Battle, and Piloted Shredder. With Kezan Mystic getting removed from standard it’s possible this could be a tech card used to combat freeze mage which still has a good potential to be a solid deck in standard.

However, I see this card as more of Blizzard showing they will be paying attention to the wild format. This will help put Secret Paladin in check for dominating the meta for wild and is a possible tech card people will be playing for that. I don’t see it getting much play in standard though.

Final Thoughts

So far this set has only 10 cards revealed and we have 124 more to go. If even half of those cards are exciting in design as these have been it’s very possible this might be one of the better sets we have seen Hearthstone release so far. So what do you think about the cards revealed so far? Was my analysis off base? Let us know in the comments!