It’s Your Last Chance To Purchase Stormwind’s Mini-Set Deadmines – But Is It Worth It?

Deadmines is a mini-set tied to United in Stormwind Expansion. Ever since mini-sets were introduced, there was always an option to purchase them all at once for $14.99 or 2000 Gold. For Deadmines, this option expires this Tuesday (January 25), which means that it’s your last chance to get it that way.

You will still be able to open Deadmines cards from Stormwind card packs or craft the individual cards, but those options are certainly less efficient.

But is the Deadmines mini-set even worth the asking price? Or is it better to ignore it and just use your Arcane Dust instead? Or maybe it’s better to buy a bunch of Stormwind packs? We’ll answer your concerns here!

Best Ways To Get The Deadmines Mini-Set

Before I get into the power level of the set, let’s think about the different ways to obtain it:

• Opening it from card packs – To be honest, packs is basically the worst way to get the mini-set. While it’s easy to get all of the Commons and Rares that way thanks to the duplicate protection (assuming you already own all of the Stormwind Commons & Rares), the most of value lies within Legendaries. With four Legendaries, you need to open an average of 80 packs to get all of them – and again, that’s assuming you already have all of the Stormwind Legendaries. And that’s just an average number – if you get unlucky, it might be even more. In reality, you might need to open well over 100 packs to get the whole mini-set.
• Crafting the set – In order to craft an entire mini-set, you would need to spend thousands of Arcane Dust, well more than it is really worth it. However, in the case of crafting, you don’t need to get the entire thing and that’s a big advantage – you can just select a couple of cards and get them instead of having to obtain the whole thing.
• Buying with Gold – You can get all of the cards for 2k Gold, which is frankly a really good deal. It’s the equivalent of 20 card packs and you would never even get close to opening all of the cards with 20 packs. You would get all of the commons and that’s about it, you probably wouldn’t even unpack all of the Rares. It’s the best way to get the entire set if you want to do it with in-game currency.
• Buying for real money – Basically as good as buying it with Gold, and overall a great option if you want to spend real money on Hearthstone. You’re basically trading $15 for 2k gold, which is pretty sweet and comparable to some of the better card bundles. But, of course, if you’re F2P you should stick with Gold.

If you need only one or two cards from the mini-set, crafting them will be the most efficient way. However, if you need more cards then straight-up buying the entire mini-set will be a better option. Keep in mind that the mini-set will stay in Standard for quite a long time, until ~April 2023, so there’s a very high chance that you might need more cards from it in the meantime and you just don’t know it yet.

Best Cards from Deadmines Mini-Set

Here are Deadmines cards that have seen the most play so far:

• Mr. Smite – Hands down the best cards from Deadmines mini-set. It has seen play in multiple meta decks, as a part of the combo, Pirate synergies, or just as a good, standalone finisher. It’s a 6 mana Fireball that leaves a 6/5 body on the board.
• Edwin, Defias Kingpin – A Rogue staple that has been played in all but the most aggressive build (Poison). It’s a big threat + often multiple card draw in one card. Plus you can also combine it with Smite for a big late game burst finisher.
• Doggie Biscuit – Face Hunter staple, as it turns out giving your small minion +2/+3 can make it much more sticky and deal more damage over time or trade better. And if you don’t have any minions to play it on, you can just trade it away and try to find something else (like burn).
• Moonlit Guidance – A staple in non-Aggro Druid decks, it lets you Discover an extra copy of some powerful card from your deck + if you manage to play it on the same turn you get 2 cards for 2 mana, which is great. It’s been played in Beast Druid and Ramp Druid over the last month or so.
• Multicaster – If you play cards from at least 3 different schools and you have a Midrange or slower deck, then Multicaster will be useful. So far it’s been played across multiple Mage and Shaman decks since those are the classes with easiest access to 3 or more schools.
• Blackwater Cutlass – 1 mana 2/2 weapon is already solid, but this one is incredible because of Tradeable – you can trade it whenever you don’t need it and then “bank” the 1 mana you’ve used into one random spell in your hand. So ultimately you often end up trading it for free, and it even lets you do some interesting combos thanks to the discounted spells.
• Brilliant Macaw – Repeating the last Battlecry you played for just 3 mana (and a 3/3 body) can be very strong – if you have any bigger, important Battlecry minions, it can be very, very powerful (Snowfall Guardian, Mutanus the Devourer for example).
• Defias Cannoneer – A staple in Questline/Pirate Warrior. Although the deck is getting nerfed in Patch 22.2, if Pirate Warrior sees play at any time during the next Standard year, it will definitely be with this card in it.
• Druid of the Reef – Great, great Aggro/Beast Druid card – a very flexible 1-drop with a Beast tag on top of that for the sake of synergies (e.g. discounting Frostsaber Matriarch).
• Shadowblade Slinger – Questline Warlock is loving this card, since you’re dealing a lot of self-damage, you’re turning it into a powerful 1 mana removal. It’s very easy to make it deal 2 damage, but just combine it with some other cards and you can easily pump 5+ damage later in the game.
• Sunwing Squawker – It was a great card in Buff Paladin, but the deck was pushed out of the meta by Libram version. However, with Librams rotating out in just a couple of months, I can imagine this being a Paladin staple in the next Standard year.

As you can see, Deadmines is quite heavy on strong cards. While they lean towards lower rarities (mostly Commons), we also have two Legendaries, and that’s a lot – if you wanted to craft just those, you would need to spend 3.2k Dust.

Okay Cards from Deadmines Mini-Set

And here are the cards that haven’t seen nearly as much play as the ones above, but they were part of some less popular/off-meta decks or decks that got nerfed and have a solid chance of seeing more play in the future. I won’t go through the individual cards here, but they had at least some meta presence ever since Deadmines got released and might also be considered when making a purchase:

Conclusion

Overall, I’d say that Deadmines mini-set is worth the asking price. Many of the cards have already seen play and keep in mind that the mini-set has only been out for 2.5 months – it will remain in Standard for ~14 more months so I’m sure that it’s a solid investment. And some of the cards have a solid chance of getting nerfed – Mr. Smite in particular – so you might also get a solid extra chunk of Dust from it.

Of course, it’s never possible to predict whether given cards will be playable a couple of expansions (and a rotation) from now, but I’m very optimistic. If you still don’t have the mini-set, then I would definitely consider buying it – for real money if you want to spend some $$$ on Hearthstone and for Gold if you’re F2P.