Hearthstone’s Saviors of Uldum expansion adds the Reborn keyword — here’s how it could change the game

Hearthstone: Saviors of Uldum will be arriving next month, and with it comes a new card keyword: Reborn. It’s a close cousin to Deathrattle, but instead of doing anything the card says when a minion dies, Reborn resurrects the minion with one health remaining. The health remaining is key, because the Reborn minion will be fragile, but classes like Priest will be able to heal the minion back provided they have the mana.

Once they’re resurrected, Reborn minions won’t retain any buffs they had, so if you cast Blessing of Kings on a 2/2 Reborn minion, when it is “reborn,” it will be a 2/2 with 1 health remaining. If the Reborn minion is returned to your hand after it dies the first time (using a card like Shadowstep), when you play the minion again it will again have Reborn. But like any other keyword, Reborn can be silenced off minions, so playing it isn’t a guarantee your minion will get a second chance at life.

Only one Reborn minion has been released so far: Restless Mummy. It’s a 4-mana 3/2 minion with both Rush and Reborn for Warrior. The natural comparison for Restless Mummy is Militia Commander, a 4-mana 2/5 which has Rush and +3 attack the turn it’s played — a good card for taking out mid-sized minions immediately. Restless Mummy has the advantage of being able to kill two minions. You could play it, immediately attack and kill and any 2-health mob on the board, and then kill a second minion when it resurrects itself with Reborn. That would be a great play against a token Druid who’s packed the board with Treants using Soul of the Forest — and Militia Commander, despite its higher stats, couldn’t do the same.

For token decks, leaving even a small minion on the board can be important. Reborn minions provide the stickiness token decks love. I imagine we’ll eventually see a Mech minion with Reborn. Magnetic decks will love that. Like Token decks, all a Magnetic deck needs is one small minion to start building.

I find it both interesting and somewhat telling that the minion the developers chose to introduce the keyword also had the Rush keyword. On its own, Reborn isn’t that powerful. A 1-health minion isn’t going to last long. But imagine Reborn with Taunt. You have almost Sludge Belcher potential. And a Reborn minion with Divine Shield needs to be “killed” four times — twice to remove the divine shield, and twice to actually kill it.

Like other keywords, we’re also likely to see cards to give Reborn to a minion just as we have cards to give Rush, Lifesteal, Divine Shield, etc — which could provide some interesting synergies, depending on which classes get them.

It’s too early to say if Reborn will find a place in the meta like Echo and Lifesteal or be relegated to the scrap heap with keywords like Inspire.