11 New Journey to UnGoro Cards Revealed

11 New Journey to UnGoro Cards Revealed

11 new Journey to UnGoro cards were revealed tonight on the Blizzard live stream.

Sean "Day9" Plott and Senior Designer Peter Whalen looked very comfortable doing the reveal show. Whalen led us through the new cards, while Day9 asked a lot of interesting questions about the design process.

There is going to be one Quest per class in UnGoro, and today we were shown the Warlock one. The Portal is indestructable and produces two 3/2 Imps every turn. The Portal occupies a place on the game board. 

As always with early reveals, it is difficult to tell how the card will fit into a new meta, but it seems that this card can either be  played in a Zoo shell for huge amount of pressure, or in a very controlling build as a win condition. It seems like it will be a good card, but the best build will take a while to work out.

Three of the Legendary cards were revealed, and as you can see, they all have interesting new mechanics attached to them. Swamp King Dred looks overpowered at first glance, but it is worth bearing in mind that we have been told there will be cards in UnGoro with the keyword Poison. (Cards that kill things when they damage them.) Poison is also one of the options available from Adapt, and so Dred will have some very cheap counters if he gets out of control.

Sherazin, Corpse Flower can be brought back to life by playing four cards in a turn. As a 5/3, this might not be enough to make the card particularly good, but it is definitely a mechanic we are likely to see again in the future.

Elise the Trailblazer is the second incarnation of Elise, and Blizzard have done a good job of retaining the flavour of the original. The UnGoro pack that gets shuffled into your deck costs 2 mana, and when opened, the five cards are put into your hand. (No, you dont get to keep them after the game.) We have been told that "Elise is lucky", and that you can expect an average of about one Legendary in the pack. This should mean that Elise will become a very playable card in control decks.

There were two spells in the reveal, both of which seem to be aimed at casual players. Explore UnGoro replaces your entire deck with 1 mana spells that Discover a card and seems to be unplayable in serious constructed decks. Dinosize also seems unplayable, but there is maybe some scope to use it with Windfury, or to protect a particularly important minion.

The minions revealed were generally interesting. Arcanologist seems to be a fixed version of Mad Scientist. Tar Creepers mechanic is something I think we will see more of, it is important because it acknowledges that the player whose turn it is has a big advantage. The card having a bonus during the opponents turn helps to balance this out. Golakka Crawler seems destined to become a favourite with players, although it remains to be seen if countering Pirates will be necessary. It seems logical that there might be an equivalent of this card that kills Golems.