Fye the Setting Sun

Class: Druid

Rarity: Legendary

Type: Minion/Dragon

Mana: 9

Stats: 4/12

Rush, Lifesteal, Taunt, Costs (1) less for each Dragon you’ve summoned this game.

Developer’s Comment: Fye’s sunset flight through the Badlands signals the end of the day. If you summon a lot of Dragons, Fye also will signal the end for your opponent. Hmm, if only there were a way to summon a lot of dragons at once in this expansion…

Dragon Golem

Class: Druid

Rarity: Epic

Type: Minion/Dragon

Mana: 7

Stats: 3/4 

Taunt, Battlecry: Summon a copy of this for each Dragon in your hand.

Developer’s Comment: One of the key pieces for Dragon Druid, Dragon Golem can create an overwhelming board state for your opponent to deal with. To really max out its value, you’ll need to decide on whether to play certain dragons or hold them back to increase the strength of Dragon Golem’s Battlecry.

Spinetail Drake

Class: Druid

Rarity: Common

Type: Minion/Dragon

Mana: 4

Stats: 5/4

If you’re holding a Dragon, deal 5 damage to an enemy minion.

Developer’s comment: It is a great piece for Dragon Druid, removing your opponent’s minion and developing a threat of your own. A great turn 3 option after playing Splish-Splash Whelp.

Splish-Splash Whelp

Class: Druid

Rarity: Rare

Type: Minion/Dragon

Mana: 2

Stats: 2/1

If you’re holding a Dragon, gain an empty Mana Crystal.

Developer’s Comment: What a card! A foundational piece for Dragon Druid, this can also enable some cheap mana ramp for a Dragon-focused Highlander druid as well.

Cactus Construct

Class: Druid

Rarity: Rare

Type: Spell/Nature

Mana: 1

Discover a 2-cost minion. Summon a 1/2 copy of it.

Developer’s Comment: An excellent card for filling out Druid’s early game, Cactus Construct constructs a great game plan for constructed. Of all the minions you could make your Cactus look like, we recommend choosing Nerubian Egg.

For Inven’s exclusive card reveal for Hearthstone’s new expansion, Showdown in the Badlands, there are five cards! The cards are Fye the Setting Sun, Dragon Golem, Spinetail Drake, Splish-Splash Whelp, and Cactus Construct.

In the expansion, Showdown in the Badlands, noble outlaws fight against the corrupt Bloodrock Mining Company, which wants to mine Azerite, drawing a Wild West-like story.

Badlands, as its name suggests, had appeared as an arid and desolate region. Not only that the environment is desolate, but there aren’t many quests to gain from, so the players didn’t seek the region much. Only those who wanted to tame Broken Tooth came occasionally, and besides that, there were only a few elementals, eagles, or dragons hanging around.

Afterward, when Deathwing swept Azeroth, the geographical features changed drastically and many interesting quests were added. Among the quests, The Day that Deathwing Came is probably the most famous, and Theldurin the Lost, who insists that he punched Deathwing in the face, had already been revealed as a new card.

Card Effects, Pros, and Cons

The legendary minion, Fye the Setting Sun, is a 9-cost 4/12 Dragon minion. It has strong keywords such as Rush, Lifesteal, and Taunt, and its cost is reduced for each Dragon you summon in this game — it’s a Dragon version Titan.

The cost isn’t very low, but like the Titan minions were, it depends on how the synergy cards are to play it. It can appear quite early in the game. Its attack isn’t very high, but its health is 12, so a lot of health can be recovered through Rush and Lifesteal. Especially, Druids tend to have a weak early game. By using Fye the Setting Sun to recover, Druids can move on to the late game plan more conveniently.

However, there aren’t that many Dragons to play to reduce the cost. Currently, the only Dragons that Druids can use (besides neutral minions) are Topior the Shrubbagazzor and Whelpagazzor.

A bit more Dragon minions are needed since there’s Amalgam Of The Deep — the low-cost Dragons available are Splish-Splash Whelp, which was revealed together here, Faerie Dragon, Amber Whelp, and the Whelp summoned through Whelp Wrangler.

Since Fye the Setting Sun isn’t as good so that you can end the game right away, the problem is that the deck’s overall power weakens when you include multiple Dragons that aren’t very worth including.

Dragon Golem is a 7-cost 3/4 Dragon minion with Taunt. Its Battlecry summons a copy of this for each dragon in your hand. Theoretically, you can play up to seven 3/4 Taunt minions with only 7 mana, but it would be very rare to have that many Dragons in your hand. In an average game, you can probably summon 1-3 extra Dragon Golems.

That being said, the Dragon Golem can summon about 2-4 3/4 taunt minions with 7 mana, and this is rather unstable considering other Druid token cards. However, if you were to create a Dragon deck, you could use it to stall a turn around mid-game after boosting your mana.

Spinetail Drake is a 4-cost 5/4 Dragon minion. If you have a Dragon in your hand, it deals 5 damage to an enemy minion. It’s an upgraded version of the Amber Whelp, which is a 3-cost 3/3 minion that deals 3 damage, but the difference is that you can’t attack the face with Spinetail Drake. Since Druids have more trouble dealing with minions on the field, the 5 damage is quite useful. The fact that you can’t hit the face isn’t much of an issue unless you’re playing an aggro deck.

Although Druids didn’t have too much trouble recently with Yogg-Saron, Unleashed or Prison Breaker, after the nerf, the value of Spinetail Drake has relatively gone up.

Splish-Splash Whelp is a 2-cost 2/1 Dragon. If you have a Dragon in your hand, you gain an empty Mana Crystal. This card is an important card if you want to create a Dragon Druid deck since you can also ramp while playing a dragon. Also, it’s a low-cost Dragon card, so you can use it to fulfill the conditions for Fye the Setting Sun.

The last card is Cactus Construct, which isn’t directly related to Dragons. It’s a 1-cost nature spell. You Discover a 2-cost minion and summon a copy of it as a 1/2 minion. Thinking about the synergy with the cards above, you can Discover a Splish-Splash Whelp to fulfill the conditions for Fye the Setting Sun while gaining more mana. However, there are a LOT of 2-cost minions, so it’ll be really hard to Discover Splish-Splash Whelp.  

Still, since you can Discover a 2-cost minion with 1 mana and you can summon a copy of it with a 1/2 stat, it can be a useful spell in the first two turns. If you Discover a Deathrattle minion, it can be strong enough even if the minion’s stats are low.

Overall

Druids have been consistently making their presence felt in the Hearthstone meta, leveraging their unique class characteristic of ramping up mana quicker than other classes. They've made it look effortless to incorporate high-cost, high-performance cards into their decks, all while maintaining their hand through strategic draws and searches, blending various concepts to secure a spot in the meta frequently.

In the most recent expansion, multiple Dragon synergy cards were revealed. The cards are effective, but it's important to note that, for the most part, the Dragon cards lack game-ending power. Fye the Setting Sun is somewhat lacking to use as an end-game card, and even including the neutral cards, the only Dragon card worth using in an end-game situation is Alexstrasza the Life-Binder.

Therefore, the Dragon Druid deck, if it does appear in the meta, is expected to bring a shift in the early-to-mid game rather than the late game. Players might find themselves utilizing cards like Splish-Splash Whelp to ramp mana, employing Dragon Golem as a taunt token to stall, and leveraging Fye the Setting Sun for life gain, eventually leading up to the final end-game plan.

Alternatively, regardless of Dragon synergies, there's the intriguing possibility of Druids making creative use of versatile cards like Cactus Construct. It's in these fresh deck-building possibilities that we look forward to witnessing the Druid's ingenuity amidst the landscape of this latest expansion.