Hearthstone: Blackrock Mountain: Weeks 3 & 4, a look
into the cards released

With Hearthstone releasing its third official expansion and second official solo adventure, once again the community is given the chance to earn a whole new array of cards to tinker around with. With the slow release of the new adventure coming at us one week at a time, it’s hard to distinguish where the meta will be until the entire card set has been released. As of now, are best bet to evaluate where new decks will end up is by rating the individual cards released each week. This article will be covering the cards released in weeks 3 & 4 and will try to help you in deciding how the cards can be played and whether they’re worth playing at all.

Week 3 – Blackrock Spire

Disappointing to everyone hoping for an awesome legendary card similar to the level that week one’s Emperor Thaurissan provided, yet at the same time we should be thankful that we didn’t get a card as terrible as Majordomo Executus. Rend Blackhand was the legendary released as week three’s final reward and it’s an okay card. Its ability shares a similar quality to the card Big Game Hunter, which was the answer for classes that can’t deal with big minions. Blackhand is unique in the fact that it can kill legendaries with less than 7 attack that are painful to deal with. Cards like Kel’Thuzad, Ysera, and Malygos are effectively dealt with, and having the upside of giving yourself a card that can’t be ignored by the opponent. However his effect is only available to the player if you choose to run a dragon heavy deck. With the way the weeks have panned out, there aren’t that many good early and mid-range dragons to place in a deck, so his true power level is hard to gauge.

As for other cards released in week three, we got a taste of a few of the new dragons released which are looking to make dragon decks a legitimate threat. As of now, it seems that a dragon-themed deck will best fit paladin due to their class card, Dragon Consort, having an innervate as its effect while also providing a 5/5 body on the board. Other cards like Twilight Whelp for priests and Dragon Egg for all classes help provide some more early game options that aren’t Zombie Chow. The other cards released were Core Rager, which might provide hunters more reason to dump their hand on the board, and Volcanic Lumberer which is simply too hard to assess at the moment.

Week 4 – Blackwing Lair

Blackwing Lair is where the real fun begins. The legendary released in week four is Chromaggus. Many players are already comparing him to Kel’Thuzad in the style design of the card. The difference between Chromaggus and Kel’Thuzad however is that Kel’Thuzad requires you to have a large board to get value out of his effect, while Chromaggus requires him to last a turn to get value. The added bonus of Chromaggus is the fact that he can duplicate any card in your deck including spells. Having an extra board clear or single-target removal is incredibly strong which can make this card see constant play in control oriented decks.

Finally in week four we get to see one of the more sought after cards in the adventure of Hungry Dragon. With its raw stats being as powerful as they are with less of a downside than Pit Lord, it looks like it’ll help round out a fully compatible dragon-themed deck. With it being a neutral card, we’ll also find out which classes are best suited for these style of decks, though it’ll most likely come down to Paladin as the main dragon deck that we see. Two other cards that look powerful are the Fireguard destroyer for Shamans and the Flamewaker for Mages. The Fireguard destroyer looks like it can be an absolutely monstrous 4 drop for Shamans, with its ideal stat line being a 6/6, avoiding Big Game Hunter. Flamewaker allows for more aggressive flavoured mage decks to be produced, though we’ll likely see him used extensively in mech mage due to spare parts being very abundant in that deck.

Final Thoughts

Overall with the adventure still having a fifth week waiting to pan out, it’s still going to be difficult to gauge the strength of dragon-themed decks especially considering that there will still be a few dragons left to collect along with a card that synergises incredibly well with dragons. However with the release of cards like Chromaggus, Flamewaker, and Fireguard Destroyer, we’ll likely see decks that don’t rely on dragons significantly gain benefits before the release of the final week. In a month’s time we’ll take a look back on the effect of Blackrock Mountain and what changes it actually made to the meta in Hearthstone.

Brandon Rendina