This set reminds me of The Grand Tournament expansion from Hearthstone.
There were a lot of value, stat oriented cards in TGT that snowballed the game. The support/buff/daybreak cards are very similar where if you get board and keep units alive you will just beatdown the opponent. Thing is that it never actually panned out that way in HS because stats become less valuable as the game goes (and I believe Runeterra is similar in that regard) and many of the cards were expensive when played on curve (like say Taric is now or Mountain Sjourners). This meant that regular aggressive decks beat down these new cards and many of the concepts introduced in TGT never really got to shine.
Of course the main difference here is that an entire new region is being introduced which is naturally going to produce new combinations of regions never before seen which by itself should make the meta very different from what we have now. But I still can't shake the feeling that in this stat oriented, midrange meta that something like Ashe + Nox frostbite deck would still dominate or decks with over the top finishers that don't care too much about board state like Ezrael.
This is premature assessment no doubt, we haven't seen all the cards yet but this has been my take on the new cards. The Shadow Isle cards are the exception to this, however, as they promote a more aggressive style of deck or combo driven with Elusives so that at least will result in something that isn't as stat/midrange focused.
There were a lot of value, stat oriented cards in TGT that snowballed the game. The support/buff/daybreak cards are very similar where if you get board and keep units alive you will just beatdown the opponent. Thing is that it never actually panned out that way in HS because stats become less valuable as the game goes (and I believe Runeterra is similar in that regard) and many of the cards were expensive when played on curve (like say Taric is now or Mountain Sjourners). This meant that regular aggressive decks beat down these new cards and many of the concepts introduced in TGT never really got to shine.
Of course the main difference here is that an entire new region is being introduced which is naturally going to produce new combinations of regions never before seen which by itself should make the meta very different from what we have now. But I still can't shake the feeling that in this stat oriented, midrange meta that something like Ashe + Nox frostbite deck would still dominate or decks with over the top finishers that don't care too much about board state like Ezrael.
This is premature assessment no doubt, we haven't seen all the cards yet but this has been my take on the new cards. The Shadow Isle cards are the exception to this, however, as they promote a more aggressive style of deck or combo driven with Elusives so that at least will result in something that isn't as stat/midrange focused.
