The Comprehensive Day of Rebirth Preview

Fire Breath

A 4 damage spell for 3 mana is not good enough to see constructed play most of the time, as it offers a worse rate than a basic 3 damage for 2 mana spell. However, Fire Breath also applies a +1/+1 buff to our Elementals, which is easily worth 1 mana on its own.

This makes the card strong in Elemental decks, which can consistently leverage the buff. Direct damage does not always synergize optimally with a board buff, but we can see a lot of situations where Fire Breath helps us snowball an early game advantage. If we develop some minions and are contested by an opposing minion, this spell helps us clear it while buffing our board.

This should be a good card whenever Shaman opts to build a deck with a large count of Elementals, regardless of whether the quest is involved or not. Could replace Menagerie Jug’s role in aggressive Shamans and push them into a single tribe.

Score: 3

Tortotem

Quest Shaman does not have a good totem card, and this is clearly an attempt to add one to the deck to improve quest completion. It provides the deck with a turn 2 play that generates a minion that further helps it progress the quest. The pool of minions is large and not too reliable, but the totem has 4 health and cannot be ignored.

We do not think Tortotem sees play in any other deck, so its competitive prospects are entirely reliant on Quest Shaman. We are not optimistic that this set’s additions will lift the archetype enough to reach a viable status. It is currently a 40% win rate deck. This does not move the needle enough.

Score: 1

Chillspine Stegodon

At its baseline, this card is not good enough. A Spider Tank that casts Cleave is hardly worthwhile. The freeze effect makes Stegodon acceptable, as it becomes useful against larger minions. Therefore, Stegodon belongs in a tribal deck.

With its two tribal tags, it is an obvious candidate for Quest Shaman, helping it stall the game to reach its quest completion in theory. But it is also strong in any deck with a large Elemental count, where the Kindred ability is trivial to activate.

We do not count on Quest Shaman becoming competitively viable, but unlike Tortotem, this could be a decent addition to an Elemental Shaman running Fire Breath. It is more reactive in nature, which is why we suspect it will not be as strong, but it can help the Shaman get ahead on the board, especially in faster matchups.

Score: 2

Final Thoughts: We think it is more likely that Elemental Shaman becomes competitively viable with these additions, but we are not sure if players will care enough to play the archetype. We do not see the required 8-10% win rate gain in Quest Shaman from these cards.