Hello everyone, Yangzera here to follow up on our card reviews for the upcoming Heart of the Huntress expansion and let me tell you – I’m kind of disappointed today. Let’s get right into the reviews so I don’t babble too much in the introduction, but I have some thoughts to share on the new cards.
Ambush
To understand the reviews, you need to understand the Ambush mechanic, so let’s talk a little bit about it. You probably know the basics by now:
- You can play any Ambush unit as a 2 mana 2/2 Shadow in the Brush
and generate in hand a burst speed spell that will transform the brush into the unit you’ve played. - You can play any Ambush unit as a Shadow in the Brush regardless of how much mana you have left, as long as you have the 2 unit mana required to play the Shadow in the Brush
- As soon as Shadow in the Brush leaves play from your side of the field, its respective spell will be obliterated, regardless of where it is, be it your hand, deck or even the opponent’s hand.
- The Shadow in the Brush is directly linked to its spell and its spell only, so if you create another copy of it through weird means like Dawn and Dusk or Condense, it’s been confirmed that the copies will be vanilla 2/2s forever.
- If you silence Shadow in the Brush, it can still transform to the original body, but it will remain silenced.
or Condense
, it’s been confirmed that the copies will be vanilla 2/2s forever.Power Rankings Scale
For the sake of Consistency, let’s keep using Sorry’s scale for card ratings, which are:
- 5.0: Meta-defining card, should prove itself as a staple in multiple top-tier archetypes.
- 4.0: Archetype staple, or auto-include in multiple archetypes.
- 3.0: A solid playable, could serve as a staple for some archetypes.
- 2.0: Could be used for specific synergies, or to counter some decks.
- 1.0: Unlikely to find its place in the meta.
If you haven’t yet, check out his review of yesterday’s cards!
Nidalee
That sure is a whole lotta cards that do a whole lotta damn nothing! Honestly, though, I didn’t really enjoy Nidalee’s playstyle at first, and when we got confirmation that she doesn’t get level up progress when she’s still a Shadow in the Brush
makes me dislike her even more.
At first glance, level one, she’s a worse Sivir
, and then when she levels up she’s kind of alright? That until she transforms back to human form and then you have to level her up all over again, which can be very hard for Shuriman decks. Her premise is cool, but she lacks a bit of extra oomph for me to see her played as a win condition while also lacking the built-in tools to act as an enabling champion for other strategies. We’ll see how the meta pans out, but so far I don’t see her taking down one of the top dogs of standard.
Rating: 3/5
Prowl
I didn’t talk much about this card on the Nidalee section because I think there’s more to this then just a champion spell. We’ve seen what a 1 mana +2/+2 buff can do to the game in All Out
, and Prowl has potential to do the very same. I say potential because this condition is very hard to meet, and you’d need to play a super synergistic deck for the card to deliver on its promises. I think we’ve seen every ambush card right now and it should be safe to assume the card’s powerlevel by now.
Ultimately, you’re forced to playing the Prowl before transforming your unit, and that adds a layer of proactivity that All Out didn’t require to be fully utilized. I think this makes the card very hard to utilize and much easier and safer to play around for the opponent, diminishing the value of the deck. Sure, in old Samira
Fizz
builds you’d still happily use All Out because the deck’s raw powerlevel was too high, but I don’t think the powerlevel of the ambush archetype is high enough to make up for how difficult it is to activate Prowl and I don’t think Prowl or Nidalee can carry this archetype, but I’m down to be proven wrong.
Rating: 3/5
Bushwack Trap
At first I read this card wrong and thought it would grant the weakest enemy vulnerable everytime you summoned or transformed an ally and thought it was pretty good. Then I read it again and realized it didn’t grant vulnerable to the weakest enemy when you summoned an ally, only when you transformed one. And only then I read it one more time and realized it doesn’t even grant vulnerable to the weakest enemy, it’s only a debuff for one round.
Now I don’t think I can stress enough how bad this card really is – you’re giving vulnerable to enemies once per round, on a region that doesn’t have rally abilities, so you’re only utilizing this effect half the time you can trigger it, and you need to lock yourself into a specific secondary region to do that. If it is for a really good effect, I’m down to lock myself into two regions, but for an effect this weak, I can’t see it making the cut in any deck.
Rating: 1/5
Towering Pairofant
The only thing Towering Pairofant has going for itself is the ability to come down on round 4 if you’re willing to spend the full seven mana for it. Outside of this scenario, it’s a seven mana 6/5 with Overwhelm, and that is pretty bad. One thing you can notice in this ambush archetype is that the units need to have less stat value then their cost due to them being playable with spell mana, which in turn makes them not as appealing when you’re looking to play in a curve. The fact that this card is pretty bad won’t stop Rickorex from bonking people with it, but it’s only because it has the overwhelm keyword.
Rating: 2/5
Aurora Hallunatis
Everyone make room for your new Concurrent Timelines
highroll! Aaaand… That’s it… That’s all, folks!
Jokes aside, I don’t see why you would be playing a 6 mana “summon two 4/2 units”. It takes a bunch of willpower and a lot of pain to add in Assembly Line
to the decks that run it, and the 3/3 statline is deterministically better then the 4/2 one, especially when there are no keywords involved.
I’d really like if Aurora Hallunatis’ text would say “Summon an exact copy of me” instead of just a flat new unit because that would add an extra layer of diversity and buff play, something that we currently don’t have going for the Ambush archetype. Increasing the density of playable Ambush cards would also lead to more unpredictability for the opponent and subsequently more mind games, but Aurora Hallunatis sadly falls short in this department – missed opportunity.
Rating: 2/5
Avenging Vastaya
Possibly the best card revealed so far, Avenging Vastaya is an ambush unit that can comfortably go out of the archetype and fit in different shuriman decks that just want extra ways of using Rite of Negation
.
Sure, it’s not exactly easy to fit the card in any deck, but let’s take Akshan
Varus
for example: As a deck known for setting up a big attack token round, you can definitely set it up very easily by playing the Avenging Vastaya as a 2/2 Shadow in the Brush and even though your opponent can easily tell what card it is, they are still forced to deal with it somehow.
If they go for a kill on it with Mystic Shot
for example, you may use a combat trick like Momentous Choice
to save the unit and keep threatening the deny effect. If your opponent overextends to kill your Avenging Vastaya, you may not only cast his negation effect and just be a 3/3 spellshield body you can use later, or you can just let it happen and have a much easier time killing your opponent since they’ve just spent a bunch of resources to answer a possible deny, leaving themselves open to further combat tricks or even an actual Rite of Negation.
Of course this is all just speculation, but I definitely see this card slotting in a bunch of Shuriman decks right away. Possibly cut to a few copies or becoming a region staple, but still leaving its mark in the metagame.
Rating: 4/5
Conclusion
And those were my ratings for the Nidalee card reveals! It’s very exciting to cover a new season and a new expansion again and I hope you’re as hyped as I am for the second season! Thank you so much if you’ve made it this far and I’ll see you all very, very soon.