The Comprehensive Into The Emerald Dream Preview

Aspect’s Embrace

Restoring 4 health is not worth even 1 mana, so we are paying a significant price to Imbue without developing a minion. This is certainly our least favored Imbue card for that reason. Shaman’s Imbue demands proactivity, as it does not function without us having minions in play, so Aspect’s Embrace looks like a poor fit for that gameplan. The class might end up running this spell anyway, should maximizing the hero power become the highest priority, but it will not be happy doing it.

Score: 1

Spirits of the Forest

Developing three 2/3 taunts is a stabilizing play against aggression, but we have learned from Cosmic Phenomenon that it is not good enough by itself. A couple of 4/3’s with Windfury can kill the opponent if not answered, but they are realistically always answered, so we do not expect this choice to be common.

This spell is not great with Hagatha the Fabled, as the outcome from a Slime casting Spirits of the Forest will be random. In slower decks, we believe Frosty Décor is still a superior option. In faster decks, this card might be okay.

Score: 2

Glowroot Lure

The idea behind Lure is to offer support for Imbue Shaman, as the deck is inclined to hero power. However, this card is horrendously slow and compares very poorly to Thing from Below, which gets discounted by cards that summon totems, not just the hero power.

Realistically, Imbue Shaman is not going to click its hero power until the mid-game, as it will mostly focus on fighting for board early and spending mana to Imbue first, rather than evolve. This means that Lure is a completely dead card until the later stages of the game. Compare Lure to Seaside Giant, which can get a discount to 0 mana by turn 6 with consistency. Lure is never coming close to 0 mana at this stage of the game. In fact, it might not even hit 0 mana before turn 10. Remarkably weak.

Score: 1

Emerald Bounty

A draw effect with a steep restriction. Not being able to play the drawn cards for 2 turns may not feel as bad in the early game, as we are unlikely to play them when we do not have much mana to spend. For example, if we play Emerald Bounty on turn 2, then we are effectively only restricting ourselves from playing the cards for 1 turn.

However, once we get to the later stages of the game, Emerald Bounty’s drawback is going to feel significantly worse. The issue is that we do not want to play card draw in the early stages of the game. That is when we want to play minions or removal to fight for board. Card draw is meant to help us reload when we do not have stuff to play. That is when the drawback seems severe.

In fact, we can argue that Emerald Bounty is significantly worse than Arcane Intellect once we have mana to float. Considering Arcane Intellect is the most basic form of card draw in the game, one that has not seen competitive play in a long time, we do not think Emerald Bounty is good enough. If it was one turn, sure. Two turns? Not worth a 1 mana discount.

Score: 1

Living Garden

Living Garden discounts a minion in hand by 1, so we are paying a net 2 mana for a 2/3 that imbues. That is not too bad of a deal.

Furthermore, Living Garden’s small body becomes less relevant by turn 5, as we can play it and evolve it immediately. This is an important trait to Shaman’s evolving hero power, as it turns undersized bodies into initiative-taking assets. This is why the card is much better than Aspect’s Embrace.

Obviously, Living Garden is still reliant on Imbue Shaman being a success to see competitive play, but, while we can see Shaman skipping Aspect’s Embrace, it will not skip this card.

Score: 2

Typhoon

We are not sure how this AOE is remotely playable. Typhoon is Psychic Scream/Repackage that randomly shuffles the minions into both players’ decks. That makes the effect worse! We do not want to shuffle the opponent’s minions into our deck, as they have no synergy with what our deck is supposed to do. This weakens our draw. The only way this effect is better is if we are trying to steal our opponent’s minions, which we should not be trying to do with a 10-mana spell.

So, the effect is worse, yet the card costs a whopping 3 more mana. We want nothing to do with this.

Score: 1

Plucky Podling

A pseudo 1-drop for Evolve decks. We do not consider this card to be a real 1-drop, as we should only be playing this in combination with an evolve effect. A 1 mana 1/2 is half a Fire Fly, so it is worthless by itself.

With an evolve effect, this minion is decent, as it is worth 3 mana once we pop it. Our goal will be to Imbue in the early game, then try to outpace the opponent with a Podling/HP. If we imbued 3 times in the early game, then we can summon a random 6-drop for 3 mana in the mid-game. Not that amazing.

Score: 2

Beanstalk Brute

This minion is worth a lot of stats on paper. A total of 16/16 for 5 mana. Of course, the caveat is that we get most stats over a significant period and not immediately. A 5 mana 4/4 is going to set us behind, as it is a terrible play for the board.

Another issue with Brute is that the period when we are supposed to draw our buffed minions could be further extended if our deck has a notable number of spells. To minimize this, a Beanstalk Brute deck needs to be minion dense, which is a subtle deck building limitation. A spell heavy deck that aims to buff specific minions is an optimistic idea.

While we do think the format will power down compared to today, it is hard to believe that Beanstalk Brute will become a competitive card. It does not seem to speak with other Shaman cards in the set. Its combo with Shudderblock is funny, but incredibly slow. It is an Elemental, but Elemental Shaman does not have much of a reason to come back. We suspect this card will be forgettable.

Score: 1

Merithra

A mass resurrection card that is restricted to expensive minions, making Merithra a slow, but potentially powerful card in prolonged, late game matchups. There are a few approaches that could utilize Merithra.

Nebula is a card that players have tried to make work unsuccessfully. Merithra could offer a follow-up, although this set does not seem to push the class in this direction. A Big Shaman cheating out things with Cliff Dive could use this legendary, but it requires the minions to die on the Cliff Dive turn to become reliable enablers for Merithra. Alternatively, Dungar can help us cheat out these minions outright and utilize Merithra as the class’s “Hydration Station”.

Finally, we could use Merithra in Imbue Shaman, relying on our evolve hero power to spawn big threats that Merithra can later resurrect. The problem with this game plan is that it is slow and unreliable. It takes a long time to imbue our hero power to the point clicking our minions summons 8-drops.

We think Merithra has some power behind it to see play down the road, but we are not convinced about its current support.

Score: 2

Ohn’ahra

A massive, end of turn effect minion is the kind of threat that a ‘Big’ deck wants to cheat out. Remember that end of turn minions trigger on a Cliff Dive turn before they go back into our deck. So, an Ohn’ahra pulled from Cliff Dive can do work.

Ohn’ahra has two hidden restrictions tied to its inclusion in a deck. It wants a curated minion package that can be cheated out with Dungar or Cliff Dive. It wants a high value curve with cards that are good when automatically played by its effect. We do not think a generic Control Shaman deck will be slapping this Wild God at the top of its curve and feel good about it.

This suggests that Ohn’ahra is only a good fit in decks that are naturally greedy. These tend to be obscure strategies, or ones with a polarizing game plan that is feast or famine. We are a bit sad that Walking Mountain is rotating out, as we would have been more optimistic about Ohn’ahra’s competitive chances if it stuck around.

Score: 2

Final Thoughts

Into the Emerald Dream Set Rank: 11^th

Overall Power Ranking: 9^th

Shaman’s Emerald Dream set leaves a lot to be desired. With its primary competitive archetype nerfed, a questionable Imbue package and several cards that look like a clear waste of time, we expect the class to take a significant step back. 

Some of you are probably thinking that Terran Shaman, even after the nerfs, should still be strong, so why would we be pessimistic about the class’s overall prospects? Let’s get that out of the way first.

Three things can happen to Terran Shaman. It can remain very strong and dominate the format, in which case, it gets nuked two weeks later. It can be balanced and competitive, in which case, it will not see much play because it is now an “old, nerfed deck” that lost some of its late game potential and there are new and fresh things to do. It can be weak, in which case, it will not see play. No matter what happens, Terran Shaman is a doomed archetype on borrowed time. For Shaman to have sustained success during Into the Emerald Dream, something else needs to succeed. 

Shaman’s Imbue package carries the same concerns as Druid’s Imbue package. It is slow to scale up and develops incremental advantages, which means it does not kill opponents fast enough before major swing turns come online during the late game. It is arguably even worse than Druid, as it is reliant on us having a constant supply of minions to evolve, does not scale as well, and does not leverage Sing-Along Buddy as well as Druid does.

When we look at the aggressive side of the spectrum, we note that Shaman no longer has access to Bloodlust or other forms of burst damage. A Swarm Menagerie path is possible, as Menagerie Jug and Mug seem mandatory to leverage board leads.

The other half of this Shaman set seems to promote a greedy route, through either Cliff Dive or Nebula, but this build path lacks survivability, especially after losing Walking Mountain.

We have been wrong plenty of times, but we will be surprised if a non-Terran Shaman deck ends up top tier. The set is less compelling compared to other classes. It may struggle with power, visibility, or both.