Predatory Instincts

Predatory Instincts Card

Predatory Instincts is a 4 Mana Cost Rare Druid Spell card from the Rastakhan's Rumble set!

Card Text

Draw a Beast from your deck and double its Health.

Flavor Text

Somebody’s been eating their funnel cakes.

Predatory Instincts Card Review

4 mana to draw a single card? Well, I do get that it tutors AND doubles the health of that card, but still, it seems like too much. The only real use I can see for it is a guaranteed tutor for Hadronox in Taunt Druid – you lose a lot of games in which you get it too late vs slower decks. Doubling the health part would be irrelevant, though, sometimes even negative (if you want to kill it but don’t have Naturalize), so I don’t know if it would fit in there, especially since it would be a dead card in case you do draw Hadronox (you play no other Beasts after all).

Another option would obviously be Big Beast Druid. Here doubling the health would be relevant, but it doesn’t change the fact that this card is terribly slow. You pay 4 mana to cycle a card, that’s A LOT. That said, hitting e.g. Witchwood Grizzly might be amazing in some matchups – you could consistently pull off 3/18 Taunts for example. Doubling the health of Oondasta is also a nice deal, since you would have more opportunities to trigger the Overkill effect.

In the end, I think that this card would be too slow. Might be used in some Combo decks to pull a specific Beast (like Hadronox case), but not much more than that.

Card rating: 2/10

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30 Comments

  1. Drbedspread
    November 25, 2018 at 3:45 pm

    I think people are really unestimating this card. Big Druid was a hugely powerful deck until recently this year with the rotation of deathwing, simply because it no longer had ways of cheating out huge minions. This combined with grizzly and many big beasts, such as charged devilsaur, means this with witching hour pulls nothing but massive power swings. While this card loses massive tempo, many seem to forget that Druid hits 10 mana rather easily; so the loss in tempo is made up for.

    Many are focused on Nox, but doesn’t synergize very well with this card. I could 100% see this card run in a big beast deck. Given Druid has such a massively strong variety of spells, this may be the end game package that can tilt Druid into being something very scary.

  2. TheTallRonan
    November 22, 2018 at 2:36 pm

    4 mana draw a card. Seems legit.

    • agapito
      November 23, 2018 at 5:44 am

      2 mana tutor a card, 2 mana double it’s health. Seems really good in fact.

  3. Jed
    November 22, 2018 at 1:04 pm

    Whoops! Too many mana!

    1.6/5

  4. BeerWizard
    November 22, 2018 at 12:26 pm

    As the image implies, this would be good with the new neutral legendary Oondasta, which is a 9 mana rush with overkill to summon a beast from your hand. The health from this may help make multiple overkills over multiple turns, or it could be applied to a different beast you intend to summon with the overkill.
    It is also a 4-mana druid card where they play it and draw a card and do nothing. Druids do that right now, so I don’t see that being too slow to see play.

    • Anarchy
      November 22, 2018 at 1:02 pm

      There is no reason to play this over branching paths unless you need a consistent way to draw hadronox. It’s not good with Oondasta because to justify playing her you need to play other beasts, which reduces the consistency of drawing her

  5. UNKN0WN5
    November 22, 2018 at 11:06 am

    this card seems quite bad but one day it may make a broken archetype like a tempo cube grizzly druid….who knows

  6. Ruhzi
    November 22, 2018 at 10:46 am

    wow with witchwood grizzly

  7. Soup And Salad
    November 22, 2018 at 9:01 am

    Predatory Instincts seems far too slow to work well in constructed. While there are beasts one would want to have doubled health, Witchwood Grizzly would be probably the best example off the top of my head, this is four mana’s worth of tempo and one card going into generating a net zero in card advantage.

    It can find Hadronox rather quickly and relatively early, but Taunt Druid would rather have the flexibility of Branching Paths over the exactness of this card. Plus, if you draw Hadronox before this, it ends up being dead in your hand for the rest of the game.

    This is not going to do much when released.

  8. Omnitarian
    November 22, 2018 at 8:39 am

    I have a hard time imagining a scenario where you want to pull a big beast, but would prefer this effect over drawing 2-3 extra cards via Juicy Psychmelon. And I have a hard time imagining any BIg Druid deck will run so many 7+ beast cards where you’ll want/need to run both.

  9. Jonnychill1331
    November 22, 2018 at 8:18 am

    If the druid loa is powerful then this will be a great option to tutor it, otherwise seems way to slow

  10. SirV
    November 22, 2018 at 7:15 am

    “Gain armor equal to its life”?

  11. JoyDivision
    November 22, 2018 at 5:10 am

    Umm … Where’s the rarity crystal?

  12. Crapcrack
    November 22, 2018 at 4:56 am

    Super trash

  13. Ypsilon
    November 22, 2018 at 2:45 am

    omg this with Witchwood Grizzly

  14. Essexmcintosh
    November 22, 2018 at 12:55 am

    I’m not convinced that hadronox is the best card to tutor, grizzled and verdant longneck seem like better choices, though they don’t witching hour well.

    We still need to see more of the expansion before we can say what the (hopefully aggro) druid needs.
    Though if you want a strong capstone for your aggro I don’t think those are it either?

  15. politzo
    November 22, 2018 at 12:33 am

    for hadrynox but they already have oakheart, maybe in big druid whichll probably run the whole oondasta + tyrantus along with the usual hadro as well all in all not too great 3/5

    • KingKalevi
      November 22, 2018 at 7:56 am

      Hadronox’s power is in the deathrattle, so I don’t see a reason for it to have 14 health.

  16. Warptens
    November 22, 2018 at 12:30 am

    Unleash the grizzly

  17. Sand-12
    November 22, 2018 at 12:19 am

    I can imagine Hadronox druids running 1 copy of this so they can pull out their win condition more consistently. Other than that, I don’t think this will see play.

    • Soup And Salad
      November 22, 2018 at 9:03 am

      The only issue with that is the card will end up being dead in your hand if Hadronox is drawn before this. Branching Paths, while it can’t guarantee you Hadronox, has much more flexibility and is never dead in your hand.

  18. Piterno
    November 22, 2018 at 12:09 am

    Makes Oondasta a 7/14. allowing it to Overkill more, and makes Tyrantus a 12/24 so Oondasta can pull out an even better big body

    • Soup And Salad
      November 22, 2018 at 9:04 am

      That’s a lot of planning ahead and really slow. With the tempo loss and net zero card advantage generated by the card, you would be better off using it to find Witchwood Grizzlies.

  19. Safminnesota
    November 22, 2018 at 12:06 am

    king krush

    • :(
      November 22, 2018 at 12:06 am

      Druid spell feelsBadMan

    • Safminnesota
      November 22, 2018 at 12:06 am

      I got too excited before realizing it was druid

      • Dark
        November 22, 2018 at 12:08 am

        Haha I got excited when I saw the armor paladin legendary for a minute, and started thinking about how great it would be in a renolock deck

        • Stonekeep - Site Admin
          November 22, 2018 at 12:09 am

          Or in Suicide Warrior. Play him + Reckless Flurry!

    • Dark
      November 22, 2018 at 12:07 am

      This is a druid card