Into the Mists - Theme Overview and Mechanics
/When we last saw a full expansion for World of Warcraft the Trading Card Game, Cryptozoic brought us along as Timewalkers to jump from timeline to timeline where we did a panoramic view of ancient Warcraft history culminating in the Warcraft 3 story arc and the fall of Arthas. The mechanical themes were heavily racial and the sets were laid out in such a way that they mostly featured Humans, Night Elves, Orcs, and Tauren. With such a jagged cut-off in terms of story and such an inbred set of mechanics, we felt that the best path to take going forward was through the mists to the ancient realm of Pandaria - a land of both new beginnings and rediscovery. And with that in mind, I’d like to do a brief introduction to Into the Mists, the first set of Block 8 / Mists Block.
Quests are Back!
We couldn’t cover the story of Pandaria properly or be true to the history of the WoW TCG without including quest cards in the set. That might seem obvious, but what I’d like to highlight here is that there are a whopping 22 quests and 5 locations in this set alone - not including potential reprints in the starter decks. That’s just seven quests and one location shy of the entirety of Aftermath Block quests and locations in a single set. With Into the Mists, Quests and Locations are back and in a big, Drums of War Block, way.
What’s more is that a portion of the mechanical focus and themes of the set involve placing, completing, and rediscovering previously completed quests. In addition, as you can see from the card above, this set is a bit of a call back to the days when quests were.. playable.
No, Really. Quests are Back!
Rediscover is the first new keyword we’ll introduce today as it appears as a set-wide mechanic on allies, equipment, and heroes as well as a cycle on single-class cards. Along with rediscovering the land of Pandaria, we are also going to revisit our favorite quests and locations throughout our games - potentially more than once.
Take the card above for instance. In this case, Rediscover is being used as a drawback to balance out a powerful effect at a great rate. The result? Sure, you might take the best card out of my hand, but I get a quest back and with it the opportunity to dig for a replacement.
Conversely, on Mists of Compulsion, you are regaining access to your own completed quest and the chance to reap its reward a second time. This is a powerful effect, but Rediscover never appears on a card that can trigger it more than once. So while you might include multiple cards in your deck that can restore your face-down resources, you won’t be able to loop or constantly use the same copy of a quest. Sorry, Johnny.
Taking the Journey
The second keyword we will cover today doesn’t belong to a new or unusual mechanic. We’ve seen it before on many cards, typically those with the Mount tag. But with the heavy exploration themes in this block, we wanted to expand both the quantity and types of cards that care about resources entering play face up. And in the process, we decided to add a new evergreen keyword to the game in the form of Journey.
Journey will appear on Mounts and similar cards moving forward with or without reminder text depending on the rarity and complexity of the card. In the case of the Pet above, Journey is giving the player information and the ability to control each player’s next draw. A birds-eye view of the game.
A New Standard Race: Pandaren
One of the first things you encounter when you journey to the shores of Pandaria are, of course, the Pandaren. As a player race in the MMO, we have decided to add them as a standard race for Into the Mists and moving forward. Here is what the previous list of standard races looked like:
The Pandaren will initially not be aligned in the battles between the Horde and Alliance on their lands. You can choose during deckbuilding which side you want your Pandaren to support, but for Into the Mists they are considered Neutral Heroes as pictured below.
Pandaren allies also come with their own racial keyword in the form of Inner Peace. In the MMO Pandaren boast the ability to earn twice as much rested experience. So basically, like all of us, they’re really good at sleeping. I can’t think of a more relatable racial power in the history of the game.
Inner Peace (At the end of your turn, if this ally didn’t attack, put a +1/+1 counter on it.)
Counters on allies in WoW TCG have always been used sparingly to reduce confusion when an ally has both damage and counters on it. But we think the general gaming IQ has risen so much since Crypto and Blizzard parted ways that the average WoW TCG player can handle the dice-keeping. Cards like Faithseer Jasmina had already begun moving in this direction.
On the card above, Inner Peace appears alongside one of the first ever WoW TCG keywords Elusive which offers a defensive compliment to the steady growth provided by the Pandaren racial keyword. While most Pandaren allies in this set are neutral, some will appear as this one does as a Horde / Alliance hybrid like the Timewalkers and Arena allies of old.
A New Standard Class: Monk
Of course, in the MMO expansion Mists of Pandaria, a new playable class was released: Monk. Monks are divvied up neatly into three specs that function as tank (Brewmaster), DPS (Windwalker), and healer (Mistweaver). Beginning with Into the Mists and moving forward, Monks will be a standard playable hero and ally class. They will also be included in the list of standard classes in the rules:
As for the roll-out of the Monk class this set, we are borrowing a page from Scourgewar’s release of Death Knight and including 10 dual-class Monk abilities in the set and two additional starter decks. The starter decks will ensure Monks have one of each Talent card and offer a few more single-class Monk cards not included in the actual set. And then, of course, Monks will get the same number of single-class cards as the rest of the classes in Into the Mists. All of this will let them be playable out of the gate despite not having access to an entire block worth of class cards to pull from like the other ten.
Pictured above is the Monk / Death Knight dual-class ability and the Monk Mistweaver Talent card from a starter deck. Each class will be getting a starter deck which will bring reprints into Block 8 and feature cards from the set.
Encountering the Sha
If you’re familiar with the story of Pandaria, then you know the Sha. They are the bad guys. Each Sha Prime is an independent spirit that manifested when the Old God Y’Shaarj was destroyed. Each gains its power from a specific negative emotion. The Horde and Alliance brought ample negative emotions to the shores of Pandaria which caused the Sha to grow in strength and wreak havoc on the land and its inhabitants. While rediscovering and journeying through the islands, we encounter the Sha.
The Sha typically have greater effect against damaged characters as their emotions are the most unstable. Some of the Sha have taken over other beings and use them as a vessel as well. There are different shapes and sizes of Sha and each Prime will be represented in Block 8, though not all of them will appear in Into the Mists. The Sha are here representing #teammonster and are a force for the Horde and Alliance to reckon with.
Pet Battles
As a nod to the 2012 Mists of Pandaria patch that brought a lot of attention to pets via the new Pet Battle feature, we decided to feature more Pets in this set than previous sets. While there are single-class pets as well, we have also included pets with the Scourgewar-style class symbols in the text box.
For the card above, if your hero is a Death Knight you have a healthy amount of keywords on your one-drop while if you’re Rogue you have a build-around tool that goes into a very specific deck. And while drafting the set you have a solid one-drop no matter what class you’re in.
Will You Travel to Pandaria?
Into the Mists will release and become an official set for Reborn Circuit play on Friday June 21st. (Editor’s note: Rolling the release date back to the 30th.) This means that if you’re competing at our GenCon events or a Reborn Circuit event after Origins Game Fair, Into the Mists will be legal and usher in Mists Block (8) which will knock Aftermath Block (6) out of Core. This article marks the beginning of spoiler season for Into the Mists, but expect spoilers to come slowly over the next few weeks. Various socials and outlets will be given cards to spoil but we will try our best to keep an accurate spoiler page on this site and forward things to our Facebook Group as well. So stay tuned as we rediscover WoW TCG and journey to Pandaria together!