Five New Neutral Cards From The Lost City of Un’Goro Expansion – HSTD Exclusive Reveal

Yesterday, a new Hearthstone expansion was officially announced. Technically we already knew the themes of all 2025 expansions since last year, but it’s still great to finally see the new mechanics, cards, key artwork, and so on. The Lost City of Un’Goro is the second expansion of Year of the Raptor and it launches on July 8.

Blizzard gave me an opportunity to reveal five new Neutral cards from the set, all focused on the new Kindred mechanic. I will mostly be talking about their potential rather than giving them a firm rating, because it’s impossible to make any solid predictions without knowing the rest of the cards (as usual, we’re getting one of the first reveals, so most of the cards are still yet to be shown). Without further ado, let’s get to the reveals!

Platysaur

Let’s start with the only card from the bunch that has no Kindred or Kindred synergy. But it doesn’t matter, because it might actually be the strongest of the bunch.

On the first glance, it doesn’t seem that great. After all, you play it on Turn 1, draw the card, then your opponent clears it and you lose the card. Who would want that? Well, that’s the thing – it’s definitely not an auto-include in every deck, but in the right one, it might show its potential.

I see two ways – first one is in a low curve Aggro deck, especially one with some Beast or Menagerie synergies to take advantage of the minion type. You have a high chance of being able to play the drawn card quickly. If you draw this in the mid game, it will just cycle itself while giving you a body on the board. And even if you play it early and you lose the drawn card, it’s not the end of the world, since you don’t really run key cards you need to win in this kind of deck (of course, a vanilla 1 mana 1/2 is bad, but it’s the worst-case scenario).

And the second one, probably even better, is in a Cycle deck. If you play a deck that relies on drawing as many cards as fast as possible, then this is great. It’s a 1 mana draw with small body and you will almost surely be able to play it because that’s the point of the deck – to keep drawing . Cycle strategy is often employed by Rogue – those decks often curve very low, with lots of 0-2 mana cards. I feel like this card could fit right into the current variant (unless it gets nerfed before the expansion’s release, which is a serious possiblity).

P.S. This is not the only cute card in this reveal!

Steamfin Thief

Well, Murlocs are back! Original Un’Goro lead to some of the best Murloc decks in the history of Hearthstone, but the minion type has been mostly abandoned over the last few years. Sure, we get a Murloc card here and there, but they never reach critical mass to become viable. Maybe it’s finally time.

First, let me explain what Kindred is if you haven’t been following yesterday’s expansion reveal. The keyword works exactly like the main mechanic of Elementals, but it’s more generic. It means that if you played a minion of the same type or spell of the same school last turn, you get an extra effect. For example, in this case, if you played a Murloc the turn before, then you get the effect. If you haven’t, then it’s a vanilla 4 mana 4/2.

If I would rate the card as a standalone thing, I would say that it sucks. And I mean it – it suck REAL bad. It’s a worse version of Mother Duck that also requires activated Kindred to work. However, it’s only saving grace is the minion type. Murloc decks are known for benefiting heavily from wide boards. We always had cards that made all of your Murlocs stronger, and summoning three of them in a single card (including two with Rush) can be very good. Even something as simple as the synergy with Braingill is worth considering, although that alone is clearly not enough to run this card.

So at this point I really have no way of assessing its power. In a non-Murloc deck, it’s terrible. In a Murloc deck, though? It depends on what other cards we get, but it MIGHT have some potential.

And here’s the 1/1 Murloc token summoned by this card. I said that Platysaur was not the only cute one.

Primalfin Challenger

Well, there’s the Steamfin Thief synergy I was asking for, right? Technically yes – this synergizes with the card above. But ultimately, for 7 mana and 2 cards you’re getting a 3/2, 4/2, and four 1/1’s with Rush. That’s not the worst thing ever, but also far from great by the current power level standards.

So this is basically the same discussion we already had. If we’ll have a way to effectivelly AoE buff your Murlocs, then summoning extra two can go a long way. But as a combo without extra context, this is pretty weak. It’s also safe to assume that Murlocs will have more Kindred, so maybe there will be better effects to duplicate with this.

One advantage of Primalfin Challenger is that this Battlecry works on all Kindred, regardless of the minion type. So you could technically use it outside of the Murloc decks. But then again, if you play a deck focused around Kindred, you probably want most of your minions to share the minion type to make the synergies easier. Maybe there will be some combo requiring double Kindred effect outside of Murlocs and then this could come in handy, but it’s way too early to say.

Ravenous Devilsaur

Well, let’s start with the basics. If you’re not activating the Kindred effect, this card sucks. You’re never going to run a 7 mana 3/3 that destroys a single minion, it’s just not good. So we have to run it in a Beast deck to even discuss it further, there’s no way around it.

Destroying a minion and eating it stats reminds me of cards like Insatiable Devourer and Abominable Lieutenant. Devourer was 2 mana more expensive, but didn’t need Kindred and became WAY stronger after you upgraded it with Infuse. And Lieutenant was 1 mana more expensive and random, but it kept going of the opponent didn’t deal with it (and again, didn’t require Kindred). I think that all in all you could make an argument for Ravenous Devilsaur to be on a similar power level, but those cards saw play mostly in decks that didn’t run Beasts, so if it existed back then, they most likely wouldn’t play it.

The best-case scenario for this card right now is probably against Starship decks. They tend to pump up their Starship stats a lot before launching them – and eating that 20/20 or whatever worth of stats can turn the game around. It can also be a pretty solid answer to The Ceaseless Expanse, dealing with a 10/10 and getting a 13/13 yourself is pretty nice.

Since it’s a Beast, I could see it in a sort slower Hunter deck, but 7 mana is still tough. Even if you remove something and get a single big minion in return, is that enough for a late game play? You would probably need to cheat it out somehow. You can do it with Imbue technically, but Imbue decks probably want to get triggers. The current versions also don’t run enough Beasts to have Kindred constantly active (a lot of random Beasts = many wasted Imbues).

Of course – we probably all think about it, the card would work best in Druid, as those types of cards usually do. The class has limited hard removal and thanks to the ramp, 7 mana in Druid is not as much as 7 mana in other classes. That said, the issue might be with Kindred activation. Druid does have some Beasts, but most of them are meh or have a pretty narrow use. They definitely could be used as Kindred activators, and we can also throw in some Neutral ones, but we need more than just Devilsaur as a payoff. So it all depends on the rest of the set, but if it heads in the right direction, maybe a Beast Ramp Druid could be a thing?

Torga

And finally, the last card of the bunch is a new Neutral Legendary. And I’m gonna be honest, I really like this one. I think that if you run a Kindred deck, it might just be an auto-include.

How far we’ve come that we can look at a 4 mana 2/7 that draws 2 cards and not bat an eye. I might sound like a Hearthstone boomer, but I remember Hunters running Oasis Snapjaw in their decks. Come to think about it, maybe those two are somehow related?

And not just card draw – a more targeted one. Those are usually stronger than just “draw 2 cards”, because you can predict the outcome to a certain extent before using it. If you build your deck around Kindred synergies, then it lets you draw them. That’s great. But if you’re looking for something else, like a specific spell, then you won’t play it hoping to get it because you simply can’t.

Also if there will be some decks not completely built around Kindred, but rather running a few Kindred cards and activators, maybe as some sort of a specific combo, then this card might be even better since it lets you tutor them. Normally running Kindred cards in decks that aren’t fully commited might be a bad idea, but this might increase the consistency of such combos, because you have another way of drawing them if you don’t do it naturally.

Overall I’m quite sure that this is going to see a bunch of play, assuming Kindred decks are playable of course. But to determine that, we’ll have to see more reveals (or, more realistically, just test them after expansion it out).

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And that’s all! Thanks again to Blizzard for providing us with another opportunity to showcase a few cards from the latest expansion. The reveal season is only just beginning, we’ve only seen a small portion of the new set at this point, so we still have a lot of exciting cards ahead of us.

Anyway, if you want to learn more about the upcoming expansion and see all of the card reveals in one place, check out our The Lost City of Un’Goro guide!