The Great Dark Beyond adds Draenei as a new minion type to Hearthstone

Hearthstone is getting a new minion type: the Draenei are joining the fray in the next expansion, The Great Dark Beyond, and they’re all about rewarding you for playing more and more Draenei. Basically, a lot of Draenei minions have effects that buff the next Draenei you play — perhaps making them cost less, or buffing their stats, or giving them keywords or other effects, such as making them immediately attack an enemy, or adding attack to your hero, etc.

Many of those “buff the next Draenei you play” effects come in the form of Battlecries or Deathrattles. And there’s a big payoff for players who want to build a deck centered around that concept: it’s none other than the leader of the Draenei himself, Velen.

His new card, Velen, Leader of the Exiled, is:

• 7 mana, 7/7 Legendary Neutral Draenei
  • Taunt. Deathrattle: Trigger the Battlecries and Deathrattles of all other Draenei you played this game.

It’s like a Shudderwock for Draenei! Velen will not only allow you to repeat all of those powerful effects that have a lot of Draenei synergy, but other, stronger ones as well — that’s because the most powerful Draenei minions in the game are tailored to make a splash when they come into play. A good example are the other paragons of the Draenei people, the Exarchs — particularly two of them, Maladaar and Naielle.

Exarch Maladaar has an extremely powerful Battlecry capable of turning games around on its own:

• 6 mana, 5/5 Legendary Death Knight Draenei
  • Battlecry: The next card you play this turn costs Corpses instead of Mana.

As for Exarch Naielle, she’ll single-handedly enable a new Discover package that a lot of Hunter cards in this expansion are designed around:

• 3 mana, 3/4 Legendary Hunter Draenei
  • Battlecry: Replace your Hero Power with Tracking (Discover a card from your deck).

Speaking of deck archetypes, Paladins are getting their Librams again, and those decks will surely include another major paragon of the Draenei — I’m talking about Yrel, Beacon of Hope:

• 5 mana, 4/3 Legendary Paladin Draenei
  • Rush. Deathrattle: Get three different Librams from an older timeline!

Given that several new Paladin cards in The Great Dark Beyond have the ability to discount your Librams — just the way this deck used to work in the past — those Librams you get from Yrel are probably going to be heavily discounted as well, and immediately able to make an impact in the game.

Finally, we need to talk about one more major representative of the Draenei race, and that’s Farseer Nobundo, finally making his Hearthstone debut:

• 5 mana, 6/4 Legendary Shaman Draenei
  • Deathrattle: Open the Galaxy’s Lens. It absorbs the power of the next spell you cast.

And what is the Galaxy’s Lens, you’re surely asking? It’s a Location that gets added to your board as soon as Nobundo dies. It reads:

• Spellburst: Absorb the spell’s power!

Basically, the Location allows you to cast that spell again, for free — and it can be re-cast up to twice, since the Galaxy’s Lens has two Durability. Neat!

But there are even more Draenei cards beyond those we highlighted — this is but a taste of how they’ll likely make an impact in the game with their introduction. So, are you excited about Draenei? Which of the new cards is your favorite? The Great Dark Beyond is almost here, launching on November 5.