Awakening Impressions: Freljord and Shadow Isles Pack

Awakening Impressions LoR Spoilers Day 11: Freljord and Shadow Isles Pack

We’ve seen quite a few powerful engines this spoiler season but not much yet from the cold and spooky side.

I’m Jordan “WhatAmI” Abronson and today we’ve got some love for enjoyers of slightly darker things. Let’s check out what lurks behind the spoiler curtain.

To see the rest of the Awakening reveals, head to our Spoiler page where they’ll be revealed each day until its official release.

If you’d like to see our expert breakdowns for the cards, check out the rest of our reveal articles.

Bone Club

I absolutely love how thematic this card is. Freljord just spends all its mana to make one unit incredibly large and then bashes through whatever defenses our poor opponent can set up. Unfortunately, five is an awful lot of mana to invest on this kind of effect.

Unless we’re setting up some kind of crazy One Turn Kill I think this particular equipment will end up simply being too tempo negative to see widespread use. Our opponent’s will be able to punish us hard with removal, or just take the big hit and go wide around.

As cool as this is, and as much as it echoes one of my favorite Runeterra cards of all time in Battlefury, it looks very difficult to find this one a home. Doesn’t mean I won’t try, just that I don’t particularly expect to succeed.

Gift of the Hearthblood

Another crazy cool effect that wants us to spend five mana on it. Warning bells immediately go off but there are a couple of key differences here. First, four points of healing is an awful lot. That will make up for quite a bit of the tempo we sink into this spell.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, while we lose tempo, we are not particularly vulnerable to large removal spells here. This buff will stick around for the entire rest of the game whether our first drawn buffed unit is good enough or not, this gift just keeps on giving.

Keeper of the Box

Efficiently stated fearsome beaters are traditionally quite powerful. This one gives up a point of power from its spider brethren for the ability to get life steal likely starting around turn three to four.

While that’s not exactly optimal for aggression, fearsome decks have been looking for more early drops for a long time, so I would not be surprised if this sees play. On the flip side this is clearly an amazing card if there is a midrange deck to support its playstyle.

Evasive beater that loves getting suited up and makes racing almost impossible for your opponent? Sign me up for three so that I can focus my energy on non-aggro matchups. This is tiny easier to activate radiant guardian, don’t sleep on it.

The Darkin Halberd / Taarosh

Ok, I really need to stop gushing about this, but I can’t help it. I love, love, *LOVE*, these early power boost plus late game alternate win condition cards. They just add such a crazy amount of consistency to high decision point midrange decks which are my absolute favorite archetype.

This one is no exception. It boosts your board, trigger slay procs nicely, lets units die that want to get last breath running, and if we hit turn ten by chance comes back around to be a game ending bomb. This might have just jumped to the top of my to-test list for day one of the new expansion.

Malefic Spear

We were talking earlier about tools for fearsome aggro decks and this one is just *nasty*. There has always been an issue with those decks where you end up with one to two non-fearsome units that just give your opponent’s free blocks you are trying so hard to prevent.

Not anymore. For the low cost of potentially only one mana, now the random spiderling you have lying around is suddenly a real must answer threat again. This feels like a solid two of in basically any fearsome aggro or midrange list and I am excited to burn some faces with it.

Quietus

This is an absolute blessing for any control player out there that was going “How do I deal with any of this nonsense when it will just keep coming back turn after turn?” A versatile early game removal spell backed up by the ability to absolutely merc late-game equipment-reliant decks is a huge deal.

I was kind of despairing of being able to play shadow isles control at all in the coming season, but the existence of this important tool has picked me right up by my bootstraps. Slotting two of these into any control shell I start with to make sure I am prepared for the swarms of weapons come day one.

Stay tuned for more reveal articles! To build your own deck, head to our Deck Builder.