Dendrologist

Dendrologist Card

Dendrologist is a 2 Mana Cost Rare Druid Minion card from the The Boomsday Project set!

Card Text

Battlecry: If you control a Treant, Discover a spell.

Flavor Text

He's teaching his little buddy to talk, but all it says is, "I am Gloop."

Dendrologist Card Review

A new Druid’s theme this expansion seems to be Treants. Which is pretty cool, that’s something I’ve been thinking about (extra Treant synergies) when I first saw the Witchwood Apple card. It turned out to be a Hand Druid synergy, but as it appears right now, it has another use (that said, Witchwood Apple is still terrible, even with synergies).

The card is actually looking really good IF we assume that Treants synergies will work. 2 mana 2/3 are vanilla stats, so even if you can’t proc its effect in the early game, it’s not the worst move. And then, it has really nice mid/late game scaling. Druid is known for pretty powerful spells. Remember how Raven Idol was used in lots of Druid builds? And now with cards like Branching Paths, Spreading Plague or Ultimate Infestation, it’s more true than ever – Druid’s spells are nice, so we shouldn’t undervalue this effect. If it could be triggered quite consistently, a 2 mana 2/3 that Discovers a spell would be nuts.

That said, in order to judge this card, we need to look at the whole Treant generation thing.

I honestly think that it looks quite alright overall. What we would need to make it a viable strategy is a 1 mana 2/2 Treant, something like the Enchanted Raven. Without a Beast tag, but with Treant synergies. Curving with Treant into Dendrologist would be quite insane. Right now, there is simply no way to activate this on the curve, and that hurts a bit. When it comes to good cards that give you Treants, there are some of them – the new LandscapingSoul of the ForestLiving Mana, even Force of Nature is okay-ish in such strategy, if you’d have more synergies. Not sure if the Living Mana would count, as it summons Mana Treants not regular Treants.

It seems like Blizzard wants to open more early game strategies in Druid, and disincentive players from putting Oaken SummonsIronwood Golem into pretty much every build. Which is great, in my opinion, because most of the Druid builds share basically the same early-mid game core and just have different late game win conditions.

This is a really hard call. It basically looks that way – if the Treant strategy works out, this card will be great. If it won’t – it will suck. It’s too early to tell at this point, but I have to leave some rating anyway.

Card rating: 7/10 if they print more Treants/synergies (such as 1 mana 2/2 Treant), 3/10 if they won’t

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21 Comments

  1. minti
    July 23, 2018 at 9:49 am

    well if they kinda fix the treant typing into cards and give it to cards that are obviously treants. But not really called that. Like the sapplings, the living mana splintergraft. And that overprised 8 mana 4/4 treants that splits ever more into treants. That will make the that card trully epic and usefull in treant druid since its instanely hard to get rid of all the treants it spawns. and than this card will be autoinclude just for the chance of an extra roar. 3 roars in a turn is 6 attack to all minions and your hero its a win condition with 4 minions with 0 attack

  2. Gobi
    July 21, 2018 at 9:00 pm

    Simply put, if there is a 1 mana treant this will be playable or maybe even good. If there isent then this wont see play outside of arena if at all.

  3. Mrthejazz
    July 19, 2018 at 10:43 pm

    So does this mean nightmare amalgam is getting updated?

  4. Soup And Salad
    July 19, 2018 at 4:28 pm

    Druid will probably be in a situation where the new cards it gets will continue to be mediocre until the Year of the Mammoth cards (Ultimate Infestation, Living Mana, Spreading Plaque, Malfurion the Pestilent) rotate out. Granted, cards thought to be bad to not very good like Hadronox, Ironwood Golem, Witching Hour, and Whispering Woods are currently mainstays in the various druid archetype. As such counting this Trent style of gameplay out immediately will probably be a poor idea.

    If there are more cheap Trent spawners to be revealed, the requirement should not be difficult to achieve (It might not be in the current token druid deck), and discovering a spell is a very powerful effect as shown by Primordial Glyph.

    Assuming Trent Druid is good to any capacity, this will be a good reward for playing such a deck.

    • BoooZee
      July 19, 2018 at 4:57 pm

      um soul of the forest?

      • BoooZee
        July 19, 2018 at 4:59 pm

        no im kidding this card is retarded, 1 mana treant is the only thing that would make this card work

    • CocoAsticot
      July 19, 2018 at 10:55 pm

      Hum hum… floobidinous floop … hum

  5. Trickas
    July 19, 2018 at 2:39 pm

    Does Manatreant Count as Treant?

    • Soup And Salad
      July 19, 2018 at 4:29 pm

      As far as I can tell, it will not.

      • Tricklas
        July 20, 2018 at 2:13 am

        Thx. Then this Card is thrash except in Arena for the stats. Living mana is the only really good treant Card that can be played on an empty board. and just having 2 mana after a living mana turn makes totally sense. even if it would Count i wouldnt Play this Card but when it gets Support so i can Play treants CONSISTENTLY on turn 1 it will be autoinclude

  6. Stannis
    July 19, 2018 at 2:11 pm

    Holy damn, I misread the “Treant” as “Taunt” and I was like, why are these guys that negative about this card. And then, I saw that it says “Treant” and yeah. It is not that good.

  7. Brian
    July 19, 2018 at 1:48 pm

    I mean, it feels like it could definitely be good in token Druid, no? It’s not horrible. The stats are pretty decent for a 2 drop, it can combo and discover you a spell. Looking at the Druid spells, there are definitely some pretty good picks that you could get. Not amazing but better than some people are giving it credit for.

  8. GlosuuLang
    July 19, 2018 at 1:30 pm

    This could be good if it were a 4 mana 4/5, with the new card revealed. As it is, you can’t really play it on Turn 2, because it would be a River Crocolisk… Don’t like it. 1.5/5 stars.

  9. Jed
    July 19, 2018 at 1:24 pm

    Druid is the new shamen with all these failed archetypes.

    • Organis
      July 20, 2018 at 12:29 pm

      …Druid had 4 tier 1 decks right now…

  10. Umbreomancer
    July 19, 2018 at 12:46 pm

    Please let there be a standard-viable Druid deck that runs Cenarius.

    • marshall
      July 19, 2018 at 11:19 pm

      cenarius is good in token druid

  11. hpboy111
    July 19, 2018 at 12:29 pm

    If the set also has a 1 drop Treant card, or a 1 drop spell that generates a Treant, then this could be very powerful. Otherwise, it’s a 2 mana 2/3 in the early game (which is decent) with the potential to be comboed with other cards on later turns to generate value. Probably going to be the latter. So, decent 2 drop, but not great.

  12. Crapcrack
    July 19, 2018 at 12:26 pm

    Wow Druid is getting a big D this expansion