Notable cards leaving SV from WD

The next Shadowverse expansion Omen of the Ten has been announced, and when that drops the Wonderland Dreams expansion will be leaving Rotation. So I wanted to write about the cards that I am going to miss and the ones that I will not miss, just like my previous post for TotG. WD is largely considered to be one of the worst Shadowverse expansions ever(along with TotG): the 1st month was one of the best examples of a one deck, one class meta with the strongest class seeing upwards of 45% playrate. The main theme of the expansion, Neutralcraft, also proved to be a very unpopular one as it resulted in the dilution of class identity.

Compared to Tempest, this expansion was not as big of a powercreeping one. Instead of every class getting insane cards, the power was mostly centered around Bloodcraft and the Neutralcraft support cards. The developers did not officially state this, but it was quite obvious that Blood was pushed really hard in this expansion. The class received some of the most ridiculous cards ever. I remember that during spoiler season, there were a number of people who were wondering if Big Knuckle Bodyguard was even translated correctly. At the time it was hard to believe that cards of this power level were real.

The first month of Wonderland Dreams where Neutral Blood defined the meta is considered by many to be the lowest point the game has ever reached. But it was also a big turning point for the game as it caused the developers to officially state that they would be re-examining their design philosophy of making really powerful cards to push certain classes or decks. This was something that was happening a lot throughout the previous two sets. Since then, there has not been a single expansion that has come close to the power level of cards in the RoB/TotG/WD era. To this day, Wonderland Dreams is the most nerfed expansion: 14 out of its 104 cards were eventually nerfed over time. It is just one more card than the 13 that were nerfed from Tempest of the Gods. WD also has a 15th card that was later changed, but it was actually a buff from its original design: Corpselord of Woe.

Anyway, things were not all gloom and doom here. Out of all the expansions, Wonderland Dreams has by far the most cohesive theme, as the fairy tale flavor is spot on with so many cards. There were also a number of really interesting card designs, which we will start with!

Cards that I am going to miss

Wizardess of Oz by Mushimaro

• Wizardess of Oz – Earth Rite Rune was a complete joke in every meta before Wonderland. In the previous expansion TotG, Cygames decided to push a different variant of Earth Rite that was burn focused with some strong cards like Halo Golem and Magic Illusionist. It still was not enough… but Wonderland Dreams was the expansion that finally made Earth Rune into a competitive deck, with Oz as one of its key new additions. One of my all time favorite Shadowverse cards: I even have a real Oz promo card that I got from Anime Expo 2017. The prevailing opinion at the time was that design space for Rune was limited because every spell printed would benefit Spellboost more than its other archetypes. So Wizardess of Oz was a very interesting way of pushing for other Rune archetypes to run big powerful spells without actually supporting Spellboost. She enabled a lot of nutty plays, and previous clunky cards like Dance of Death and Mutagenic Bolt became so much better when comboed with her. Going to miss this card a lot, she has great voice work in both English and Japanese too. Unfortunately pure Earth Rune has been close to unplayable in the past two metas, and with the rotation of Oz as well as key cards like Witch’s Cauldron and Master Mage Levi, the deck will probably die off completely in Rotation.
• Locked followers – This expansion printed a lot of followers similar to Devil of Vengeance from the Standard set who were overstatted but could not attack, and had to be unlocked either through evolution or some other condition. One of these in particular(Tove) was so broken that it had to be nerfed right away in the first month. The others I felt were well designed for the most part. My personal favorites are Corpselord of Woe and Abomination Awakened, since the condition to unlock them is tied to parts of their respective class identities(necromancy and drawing cards). Abomination in particular has a lot of fun setups with Rune’s multitude of ways to increase hand size, whether by drawing 2 cards or suddenly adding a ton of cards to hand with the enhance on Golem Assault. Abomination was initially theorized to be good in Spellboost decks as a way to get emergency AOE damage, but the meta was way too fast for that. It took all the way until Rotation happened that this card started showing up, but it was in Ginger decks, not Spellboost. Nowadays Abom gets played in all sorts of decks and is one of the main reasons why the new Abyss Summoner archetype even works. A really cool theme from this expansion and I would not mind seeing Cygames try it again with different classes.
• Carabosse, Wicked Fairy – Wonderland Dreams gave us our very first leader effect card! A card clearly meant for Aggro Blood, she was dismissed by many during spoiler season. Lots of people thought that she would not be worth playing over Imp Lancer in aggro decks because of the downside. In the end, Carabosse ended up becoming a staple of the archetype. I really like her design because she is a great example of the Bloodcraft class identity of getting great power through some kind of sacrifice. Except this time the sacrifice is play points instead of life. I feel that her eventual nerf in the Starforged Legends meta was completely unwarranted. Nowadays every class has access to leader effects(often with no real downside), so I think Carabosse was one of the best designed ones.
• Odile, Black Swan and Odette, White Swan – These two just ooze flavor. WD was the official Neutral push expansion, but it also experimented with a lot of different ideas. Other than more locked followers and leader effects, there were also cards that summoned followers on the opponent’s side of the board. Odile and Odette were the most interesting ones and between the two, Odile saw a lot more play. Turns out doing 2 AOE damage is better than 2 AOE healing. I really appreciated Odile for being one of the few cards that can truly punish people for overextending on the board, since the Odette she summons will get banished if the enemy board is full. She created a lot of interesting counterplay situations both playing as and against Shadow. It was always funny to watch people experience the Odile Brambles interaction for the first time.
• Illusionist – The third Runecraft card in this list. WD was honestly a home run expansion for Rune: lots of powerful and interesting cards for the class were printed in this set. Illusionist is a really cool card that has occasionally seen play in Earth Rite and Ginger decks. She was primarily used for her ability to be a pseudo Saha in Ginger, resurrecting Israfils and Zeuses after they had died. But she had a lot of other fun combos: I liked using her in slow Earth Rite decks to resurrect Professor of Taboos, and curving into Illusionist after a T4 Shining Bellringer for even more draw.
• Demon Eater – Midrange Shadow from WD and SFL era is one of my all time favorite decks in the game. But at the time I never would have expected to like the deck so much, because I really disliked the previous TotG version of Mid Shadow. It was a really boring curve-out deck with ridiculous snowball potential. With the numerous nerfs that Shadow received in Tempest, the deck became quite a bit weaker… but also went in a much more interesting direction. With the addition of Demon Eater, the deck became much more focused on Last Words synergies. Running both Soul Conversion and Demon Eater slowed down Mid Shadow a lot(since killing your own followers is inherently anti tempo) so the deck lost its potential auto win curves. But it also gave the deck much higher consistency and I appreciated that this new Mid Shadow was closer to the class fantasy of being a necromancer.
• Tenko –

Cards that I am glad to see go

I should mention that this list pertains to cards in their current state. If I was going to consider them in their original pre-nerf status, this list would be way longer and would include cards like Alice, Big Knuckle Bodyguard, Council of Card Knights, etc.

Alice, Wonderland Explorer by Mushimaro

• Neutralcraft – Yes, not a specific card, but the main theme of the expansion. I can see what the intent was behind pushing for Neutralcraft. It was an easy way of creating a new archetype for every class and was great for new players since the key cards were usable in all classes. And I imagine that it was a pretty novel idea at the time, since class cards tend to be stronger than Neutral cards. But it is very clear looking at the entire WD meta that the Neutral theme was pushed way too hard. It was depressing seeing class identity erode in favor of most decks running the same core Neutral cards. I think the issue was that Neutrals were fully statted followers with insane snowball potential, rather than being utility cards like they were in the past. This resulted in most of the top decks playing the exact same way with the exact same cards: just curving out with Neutrals and snowballing off anything that stuck for a turn. The T1 Goblin T2 Tove T3 Goblin Leader T4 Alice curve was the stuff of nightmares. Was an interesting experiment, but I definitely will not miss it.
• Beauty and the Beast – Fuck this card, seriously. One of the biggest disappointments from this expansion for me. I remember when I first saw Beauty and the Beast in the WD trailer, I thought that this card would have a crazy design. The effect that I thought it would have(summoning two followers on opposing sides of the board) went to Odile and Odette instead… and Beauty and the Beast ended up becoming a giant beatstick who was hard to interact with. It is pretty much a Turn 6 Heavenly Aegis in some matchups. A terribly designed card who encouraged Forest decks to run a boring, curve-out deck where you just play the highest costing card in your hand every turn. I am sure many people have experienced the T2 2drop T3 Kindly Treant T4 Impartial Strix T5 Hector T6 BNB curve.
• Spawn of the Abyss – The finisher in one of the most broken decks to exist in the game, Neutral Blood. It was nerfed fairly quickly after the first month of WD, and since then it has been a powerful but balanced late game win condition for slower Blood decks. So it is not OP at all, but I really dislike the design of this card. Ambush is a degenerate mechanic in a game where you cannot assign blockers. I do like how Spawn was meant to be support for Control Blood… but there are much more creative ways of giving that deck a finisher. There is nothing particularly interesting about a big dude who is hard to interact with and almost guarantees at least 5 face damage.
• Princess Snow White – Snow White was originally a very broken card, but was overlooked because she was not as broken as Tove, a card that was seeing much more play in a stronger deck. She got a preemptive nerf after the 1st month of Wonderland, and has since been a strong but not overpowered card. However I am still glad to see her go because I greatly dislike the type of legendary design that she represents. Just low pp, high utility legendaries that go in every deck. Any Haven deck that is not running Snow White is a suboptimal one, so she created a 10,500 vial gate to playing Haven competitively. I would like to say that I hope Cygames never makes another card like this ever again, but unfortunately it has already happened. The DBNE mini expansion gave us Filene, who is guilty of the exact same design flaw.
• Phantom Cat – When you compare followers in Shadowverse to minions in Hearthstone, you will see that followers tend to be weaker because they are balanced around leaders having 20 health instead of 30. Phantom Cat is one of those rare exceptions, and it even has an analogue in Hearthstone called Ancient of Lore. Ancient of Lore is a Druid card who costs 7 mana, and used to have two effects: you could choose whether to draw 2 cards, or heal yourself for 5. It was eventually nerfed to just draw one card. The healing effect was almost never relevant, so Phantom Cat is pretty much a better version of unnerfed Ancient of Lore since he costs 1 less. Not only that, he has the extra upside of doing a potential 4 face damage right away. A really disgusting card, I feel that Phantom Cat embodies a lot of the things that were bad about TotG/WD card design: singular cards that do too many things at once, usually with a Fanfare effect.
• Tilting at the Windmills – This card was considered a meme for the longest time since it was printed until the last two months of Chronogenesis, where it gained a very broken interaction with the nerfed version of Bahamut. Afterwards it caused Queen of the Dread Sea to get nerfed. This card has not been relevant since then, but I am glad to see it leave because the two months where it saw a lot of play was one of the more unpleasant metas that we have had. The design of this card is really gross. It just encourages non interactive games where Dragon ramps into this and then plays big storm units every turn. I know this is what Dragon has been doing since the beginning of time, but there is something extra scummy about clearing the entire board and storming face with a 9/9 simultaneously.
• Kunoichi Master – Nothing much to say here. Ambush is degenerate and I don’t think anyone would be unhappy if the mechanic just disappeared.

Honorable mention

• Wood of Brambles – I both like and hate this card and could not decide where to put it, which is why it gets its own section here. Going into Wonderland Dreams, Forest was not in a good spot in the meta. It was becoming increasingly clear that playing 1/1 fairies to fight for the board in the early game was not cutting it anymore. So I definitely appreciate the design of Brambles in allowing fairies to trade up, and making it awkward for the opponent to attack into them. Brambles was not even enough for Forest to deal with Alice boards, and you can see from the stats that Forest was by far the worst class during the WD meta. I know this is going to be an unpopular opinion, but I really don’t think that Brambles by itself is a broken card. What brought it over the edge was its interaction with Airbound Barrage and its ability to be tutored with Starry Elf, two cards that got printed in the next expansion. And even in the SFL meta, Brambles did not get played much in the best Forest deck at the time. But once Rotation happened… this card became obnoxious. Forest basically turned into Bramblescraft. The power level of the game went down significantly, and now a lot of decks got completely shut down in the early game by an army of fairies backed by Brambles. It has been like this since Rotation started so I am definitely happy to see this card go. Looking forward to seeing what new direction that Forest will go in the upcoming expansion.