Card Name - Elise the Enlightened

Class - Druid
Rarity - Legendary
Type - Minion
Mana - 5
Stats - 5/5

Effect - Battlecry: If your deck has no duplicates, duplicate your hand.

■ Developer comments

- We liked the idea of her sort of breaking the no duplicates rule, but you have to make the right decision on when to do it depending on what is in your hand at the time.
- Her design is something we’ve been playing around with for a while, and when we got to designing for Saviors of Uldum we finally found a place for this that we felt made a lot of sense
- Elise’s story is something we really enjoyed too – in League of Explorers and Journey to Un’Goro she was searching for artifacts and the like, hence her name being Starseeker, and Trailblazer. But now she is Enlightened, and ready to fight!

On the 18th, Blizzard revealed a Legendary Druid card, “Elise the Enlightened”, through an event at Comic con. Elise had already appeared as a common card in Journey to Un’Goro in the form of “Elise Starseeker” and “Elise the Trailblazer”. However, this time, she appeared as a Druid class card as the bundle pack offers a Druid hero Elise.

Elise the Enlightened is a 5-mana minion with 5/5 stats. To activate the Battlecry, there shouldn’t be any duplicate cards in the deck - also known as highlander decks. Although you can have a wider variety of cards in highlander decks, its weakness is that there can be only one of each key cards. However, through utilizing Elise the Enlightened, cards in your hand can be duplicated. It is anticipated that highlander decks would be strengthened through this card.

Theoretically, by using Elise the Enlightened, it is possible to duplicate your hand infinitely. By using cards like Youthful Brewmaster or Ancient Brewmaster, you can maintain specific cards in your hand while using them as well.

Of course, to use this combo, more than 7 mana is required; at the turn you duplicate your hand, extra moves are extremely limited. Still, as much as you can use only one of each card in highlander decks, this would be a very attractive attribute.

The card itself seems extremely good, but it’s not that it’s invincible. The biggest issue would be that a highlander-style deck has never been main meta for Druids.

Mostly, highlander decks aren’t very viable except for Priests in the Wild, who has many AoE cards. To pick a class that has the weakest AoEs would be the Druid. This would mean big trouble against aggro decks.

Also, highlander decks had relied a lot on insta-kill strats like using Alexstraza and squeezing spell damage or burning all your deck and hand to use Mecha’Thun. Considering that, Druids seriously lack methods to make insta-kills against late-game decks such as Boom Warriors.

However, this new card shouldn’t be too undervalued. Cards can be used for two years after its release; depending on cards to come, highlander Druids may clinch the meta, and among those deck types, Elise the Enlightened would become the key card to those decks. Also, not all cards for this expansion have been revealed, so there’s still a chance for it to become meta.

Would ‘highlander Druid’ be able to appear in the main meta? There are high expectations to Elise the Enlightened and more cards to come that may change her value.