Blizzard has revealed all the cards coming to Hearthstone in its impending, troll-based Rastakhan’s Rumble (sigh) expansion, and inarguably the most important among them is Krag’wa, the Frog.
A new legendary Shaman minion, Krag’wa is a beast (both figuratively and literally) that gives you back all of the spells you cast in the previous turn, which makes him very useful, hence his legendary status. I also happen to think that he’s legendary for a few other reasons, which we will now cover in-depth.
(Full disclosure: I worked at Blizzard from 2008 to 2011 as an In-Game Support representative for World of Warcraft. If your account was hacked in that time frame, there’s a non-zero chance that I fixed it! Unless it was fixed wrong, in which case it was somebody else. Anyway!)
Reason #1: Big
Those are full-size trolls that Krag’wa is eating in his card art. Trolls in the Warcraft universe average between nine and 10 feet tall, which makes Krag’wa, the Frog over 40 feet tall, easy. That’s like stacking two giraffes directly on top of each other. My dude is roughly the size of one of the letters in the Hollywood sign. You’d need eight Danny DeVitos to even begin approaching the stature of this guy. Incredible.
Reason #2: Hungry
Healthy diets should always be encouraged in growing boys! Yes, Krag’wa has already done quite a lot of growing, but that doesn’t mean he can’t do more, does it? We should be proud of (and respect!) Krag’wa for eating all the trolls on his plate, just like we are when our kids eat all their veggies, or our dogs finish their din-dins without throwing kibble everywhere. Who’s a hungry boy? Who’s a hungry boy??
Reason #3: Powerful
Are you seeing this? Are you seeing these incredible folds? This bulging, vascular vocal sac? The weathered fangs of a true warrior? The dominant stance of a stalwart king?
Krag’wa exudes power from every one of his moistened pores — from his stumps to his dumps, you can tell that he is truly a being of exceptional strength and, dare I say, wisdom. There is more power in one of Krag’wa’s bulbous pleats than in 10,000 minions of the Burning Legion. Even the Lich King himself once said, “Dang, y’all get a load of this guy? Heck.”
Reason #4: Good Value
Even boiled down to his basic cardness, Krag’wa represents good value for the investment, especially when his fantastic battlecry is taken into consideration.
In Hearthstone, a good rule of thumb for determining the true value of a card is to even out its attack and health, and then compare that to the mana cost of the card. For instance, Krag’wa has 4 attack and 6 health, so if we add those two numbers together and divide them equally, we get 5, which is only one less than the card’s mana cost of 6.
This would be “just okay” by normal standards — a great card would see the mana cost be equal to or less than the given quotient — but since Krag’wa has the potential to return a full 10 mana’s worth of spells back into your hand, 6 mana is a bargain, especially with how good Shaman spells are on their own. Used in the right circumstances, Krag’wa could enable some truly vicious combos, or allow players to use cards beyond what would normally be allowed by Hearthstone‘s two-card duplicate limit.
Reason #5: Full Body Eyebrows
Not only are my main man’s eyebrows made out of totally rad spikes, they also extend the entire length of his body. No mortal creature could possibly hope to achieve such an unbelievable feat. Absolutely astonishing.
