Hearthstone: Descent of Dragons - Ysera, Deathwing, and how dragon-focused decks feed into each other
During BlizzCon we got chance to sit down with some of the key Hearthstone team and chat about some of the cards coming to Descent of Dragons, the game’s upcoming expansion.
These dragon-focused decks are built around a simple mechanic: the more dragons you have, the better. It’s also scientifically proven that you only need to add lots of dragons to a game to make it 99.9% more enjoyable than it was before you added loads of dragons to it.
Designer Chadd Nervig explained how this series of Descent of Dragons cards feed into each other and can be mixed across several classes.
“One of them is Explorer Dragons,” Nervig said. “In each of the Explorer classes - the four good classes - there's a minion that's an Azure Explorer, Primordial Explorer, they're dragons that have joined the Explorer's League. They're mostly adorable baby dragons that have joined the Explorer League and they're cute. But their mechanic is always that they have some bonus like Spell Damage or Taunt or Poisonous or something and Battle Cry Discover Dragon.
“That sounds pretty simple, but it's actually elegant in terms of being useful in a dragon-focused deck because our common buildaround mechanic for dragons is if you're holding a dragon, get a bonus. This is a dragon that you get to play and still are holding a dragon because you discover another one. That ends up working well. That dovetails well with our dragon breaths - every class has a dragon breath which is a spell that does something cool and has a bonus for if you're holding a dragon.”
Nervig’s favourite card in the entire expansion is Ysera, a Legendary neutral minion card. This card shuffles Dream Portals into your deck and these Dream Portals summon a random dragon. You can see how those aforementioned bonuses quickly stack up if you play these at the right time.
Lead mission designer Dave Kosak has a different favourite, however. “My favourite is also a dragon,” he said. “It's Deathwing, Mad Aspect. Deathwing is a 12/12 minion. His Battle Cry is he attacks everybody else on the board. He just lands down and attacks everybody, including your own minions. He just attacks everything, which is not subtle. It's super fun to play.”
Deathwing is best played when the enemy has a stacked board and you’re down to just a few. Since the dragon only attacks minions and not heroes, you’re guaranteed to cause some big damage when he’s deployed.