Who are the Jade Lotus?
The Jade Lotus are one of three factions that Blizzard introduced for the new Hearthstone expansion. The Jade Lotus faction belongs to the Druid, Shaman, and Rogue classes. Blizzard has officially launched the Jade Lotus page, including a group of new cards, and a new mechanic.
Jade Golem: New Summoning Mechanic
The Jade Lotus cards introduce a repeated summoning mechanic called Jade Golem. Cards that activate it will read, “Summon a Jade Golem.” The Jade Golem itself will be stronger the more times you have summoned it in a single match. The first one will be a 1/1, the second one a 2/2, and so on. The biggest one that they show is a 30/30, although that would be quite tricky to pull off! The graphic changes as the golem gets stronger as well with new art at 1/1, 4/4, 7/7, and 20/20.
Obviously this will be a mechanic you will have to build a deck around to get full effectiveness. Most of the cards that summon Jade Golem are understated to compensate. This means you’ll have to summon a few before you start getting value. But if you can summon five or ten, they start becoming massive threats!
Summoning Jade Golems
There are, as of right now, currently four released cards that summon Jade Golems. There are two Jade Lotus faction cards, one Druid, and one Shaman card. Without their Jade Golem effect they are much weaker than other cards. The Druid card, Jade Blossom, is literally Wild Growth, but for three instead of two. It is clear they are valuing the Jade Golem at one mana.
The Jade Spirit faction card has worse distribution. It has the body of a two mana card, for four mana. Clearly they are valuing this Jade Golem, from a faction common, at two mana.
The legendary from the Jade Lotus faction is Aya Blackpaw. She summons two Jade Golems. One from her battlecry, one from her deathrattle. The card itself has a body worth just over three mana, and costs six. This means they value these ones at just over one mana each.
Will Jade Golems Work?
This is obviously the big question. Hypothetically, Jade Golems are incredible. Beyond incredible. Playing a card that is a bit below average in order to summon a, say, 5/5 or 6/6? And you also make the next one bigger? That’s insane! The problem is, if you stack too many of these cards together, your deck is going to be incredibly slow, and preyed on by aggro decks.
As long as they come out with at least one more class card for each class, and two or three more faction cards that summon Jade Golems, I am very sure it will be a deck. How effective it is will depend highly on the meta. Regardless, aggro decks are going to stomp it, while it stomps control decks. The Mean Streets of Gadgetzan expansion is not very aggro heavy so far, which bodes well. However, Dragon Priest is a very tempo oriented deck that will have a field day with this, and it’s coming back big time. Slow decks also have a lot of trouble with Shamans, who are still very popular. We’ll have to see what new cards they release for the Jade Golem mechanic, but I really hope they release enough to make it viable.