The best art from the new cards of Hearthstone’s Restoration of Azeroth class sets

Hearthstone’s newest card set, Restoration of Azeroth, tells the story of rebuilding areas ravaged by Deathwing’s shenanigans during the Cataclysm. The details of the between-expansion card drop are different this time, with four class sets replacing the traditional mini-set.

Mages, Hunter, Druids, and Paladins are the lucky classes to get their sets first, and each has its own theme and synergy. Let’s take a look at my favorite illustrations from the Restoration of Azeroth catalog.

The Lay of the Leylines

The Mage set is all about leylines: a web of magical energy strands that blankets Azeroth. While the magic-users of our world have been manipulating and channeling the leyline network for thousands of years, there are also arcane-attuned creatures on our planet like the Mystic Runesaber. I am highly amused by the thought of a magic kitty all tangled up in a leyline network as if it were strands of mystical yarn, and the artwork strikes a great balance between fearsome predator and mischievous kitty.

The Ley Walker allows you to spend less mana casting your leyline spells, then adds one of those spells to your hand when it dies. The illustration manages to capture this noble sacrifice quite well, in addition to suggesting an entire backstory for an iconic piece of Legion transmog. I spent much of my time on the Broken Isles with a Leywalker Halo equipped, and finding out that its original owner bravely laid their life down to repair Dalaran’s magical energies a few years earlier makes me want to add that Legion questing gear back into my ever-growing transmog rotation.

Fantastic Beasts and How to Win With Them

The Hunter cards lean into using Animal Companions to overwhelm your opponents, and Talya Earthstrider is a 5-mana minion that permanently causes you to summon more of them with each spell. The artwork is an appropriately chaotic stampede led by Talya herself, but the real reveal is that she is riding a giraffe.

We have a giraffe battle pet and they are tameable for Hunters, but we still don’t have the ability to ride them around in World of Warcraft. I am hoping that this reveal will be similar to other times that we’ve seen things in Hearthstone first (like the Tortollans). With any luck, Talya will soon appear in the Barrens to teach me how to ride my own giraffe.

Roam Free upgrades your summoned Animal Companions, and the illustration features several of the happiest kodo you’ve ever laid eyes on. If my opponent suddenly conjured a herd of enormous pack animals frolicking among the butterflies, I’d at least be distracted.

Healing the planet? Mandatory. Mood? Take your pick.

As usual, Druids can be found restoring balance to the natural world in the wake of the Cataclysm. The Wizened Wildspeaker appears to be quite grumpy about something. Perhaps he is fed up with colossal dragons, marauding zombie hoards, and invading demon armies disrespecting his forest. Or maybe he just can’t get over being assigned the title ‘wizened’ by some young upstart on the Cenarion Circle board of advisors.

In contrast, Seeding Dragon seems perfectly content to flit around and sow the scarred soil of Azeroth with magical acorns. This artwork perfectly represents the expression on gardening aficionados’ faces when all of their tasks are completed (or ignored) and they can spend the rest of the day digging around in the dirt.

Time for a musical montage!

Paladins are all about collaboration in this set, as their underlying strategy is summoning a whole army of buffed Silver Hand Recruits. You can see them in action rebuilding a damaged fortification in the art for Teamwork, a card that looks like it should have its own peppy 80s soundtrack. Nothing bad ever happened to humans who were good at working with stone and labored out of the goodness of their heart and a desire for their world to be a better place, right?

Finally there’s Charity, a fitting card to end on for this coming-together-and-healing chapter of Hearthstone. The artwork shows a Night Elf handing out food to hungry children of the Horde. It’s such a shame that Mists of Pandaria is next on the timeline for all of these characters and those warm fuzzy feelings are about to be smashed to bits.