The Comprehensive Restoration of Azeroth Preview

Leyline Nexus

The first and cheapest Leyline. The baseline effect is clearly unacceptable, so we need to evaluate how good Leyline Nexus is once it gets upgraded by one of the Leyline buffers.

A single Surge Needle or Ley Walker turns this spell into a decent one. A Mystic Runesaber turns it into a cheaper Far Sight, which is okay, but likely represents the weakest buff. Any second upgrade makes Leyline Nexus a strong card, so it does not require much to become a powerful draw engine around the mid-game.

This is the lowest hanging fruit amongst the Leylines, needing the least amount of work to turn into a decent, constructed-worthy card.

Score: 2

Mystic Runesaber

Runesaber provides the smallest buff to Leylines, as it only increases their effect by a count of 1, which is relatively less dramatic than the other Leyline buffers. However, it does not sacrifice stats for its ability. A 2-mana 2/3 with elusive is a solid body to develop in the early game, so it does not come with a significant cost.

This card is unlikely to be omitted from Leyline Mage, but also unlikely to make the deck competitive. Just solid.

Score: 2

Surge Needle

Surge Needle provides the strongest buff to Leylines for the rest of the game, making them trigger an additional time. Surge Needle buffs stack, so if we play both copies, our Leylines trigger three times.

Any Leyline becomes significantly more powerful when triggered twice, even without other buffs, so Surge Needle represents a dramatic form of late-game scaling for the archetype. However, it also comes with the biggest stat penalty. A 4-mana 3/3 is horrendous, guaranteeing the Mage to initially fall behind on board as a result.

Even if we assume that Mage has the comeback mechanics required to overcome the setback created by playing Surge Needle, there is a major issue in finding the card consistently in the first place. Without it, the Leylines are not threatening enough to overwhelm opponents in the late game.

Score: 2

Crystallized Leyline

This Leyline offers Mage a pathway to pressure the opponent through the board. This spell is unacceptable at its baseline, but becomes significantly more threatening after receiving Leyline buffs, especially from Surge Needle. Surge Needle is particularly important at turning Crystallized Leyline into a serious threat.

A perfect curve of Leyline buffers leads to a turn 5 Crystalized Leyline that summons two random 7-drops. Not a terrible outcome from a deck that may not mind prolonging the game and scaling. However, we obviously cannot count on drawing this curve consistently, nor can we ignore how weak it is without Needle. We think the baseline effect could have been budgeted more generously. 5 mana would not have been an outrageous mana cost.

Score: 1

Ley Walker

Ley Walker discounts all our future Leylines by 1 mana, while generating us a random Leyline. A 3-mana 4/2 is a significant stat penalty, but this card provides us with a high value spell. It is important at accelerating our entire game plan and should be a powerful turn 3 play, especially in slow matchups. The Leyline package contains 11 Leylines we can cast during a game, so finding our Ley Walkers early will be important.

We are concerned about what happens to this deck when it does not find its Ley Walkers. There is no other way to easily discount Leylines, so the package may suffer from inconsistency issues as a result, much like Libram Paladin in The Great Dark Beyond.

We think Ley Walker will be a strong performer in a Leyline Mage deck and a high priority mulligan target, but the absence of consistency in finding it may prove to be another major issue of the package.

Score: 2

Bursting Leyline

The board control Leyline, one that can also offer some face damage in the process. Much like Crystallized Leyline, Bursting Leyline needs Surge Needle to unlock its potential as a legitimate win condition. The difference is that Bursting Leyline is a more reactive spell, so we believe it is the weakest Leyline out of the three.

We cannot simply play Bursting Leyline in any situation and expect an effective use of its mana cost, in contrast to developing stats in play or drawing discounted cards. The spell is dependent on the enemy board state to be effective.

We are hardly impressed with this effect. This spell could have cost 3 mana, easily.

Score: 1

The Arcanomicon

The late-game value bomb of the package, The Arcanomicon generates all three Leylines and then offers the choice to upgrade them based on the effects of the minion buffers. We either choose Surge Needle or doubled effects from Ley Walker and Mystic Runesaber.

Spending 7 mana to do “nothing” does seem like a very steep cost, though choosing the discount by 2 mana option means the legendary spell’s net cost is reduced. We should be able to swing back if we have played the other buffers earlier in the game.

In a way, this spell reminds us of Shaladrassil. A high-cost spell carrying value and swing potential but requires greedy deckbuilding. Its prohibitive cost means it needs the rest of the package to carry it to competitive viability.

Score: 1

Final Thoughts

Mage’s Leyline package looks underpowered. At the core of it are the payoffs that seem to be one mana too expensive, which makes the deck possibly too reliant on finding the Leyline buffs without the ability to tutor them. This is what prevented Libram Paladin from being competitively viable across the previous year of Hearthstone, until it received brute force buffs before it rotated.

We hope we do not see the same thing happening in Leyline Mage, as we would consider this archetype to be an attractive deck that players will want to see work out.