Naga Sea Witch

Naga Sea Witch is an epic neutral minion card, from the League of Explorers set.

Strategy

 * "This card enables some pretty weird stuff." - Ben Brode

This card is difficult to use. Ideally you would play it on curve then on the next few turns you would be able to play a card you wouldn't normally be able to due to their high mana cost. However due to this effect until Naga Sea Witch's effect ends (by silence or death) you are limited to playing only 1 card per turn until you have 10 Mana Crystals. Then at that point you are limited to two cards per turn. This can greatly limit your tempo if mishandled (in other words If your hand would normally allow you to play more than one card if not for Naga Sea Witch's effect).

Due to a change (released around the time of Knights of the Frozen Throne in 2017) which seems to cause this card's effect to change the base cost of cards. As such, Naga Sea Witch's effect would be applied before other cost reductions, including the card-text present on the affected cards. A notable effect is causing giants to be much cheaper or mana-free, which for example makes Mountain Giant cost 0 with 5+ cards in hand, Molten Giant to cost 0 from only 25 Health remaining, and so on.

History
This card saw limited play (and no competitive play) for most of its existence from release until 2017. The effect, while very unique, did not fit any particular archetype. However, the consistency update around Knights of the Frozen Throne gave rise to a new style of deck, limited to Wild format.

The archetype played multiple Giants, typically Mountain Giant, Sea Giant, Molten Giant, and Clockwork Giant, as well as occasionally Arcane Giant. The deck tried to draw a handful of giants, then play Naga Sea Witch on turn 5 and fill the board with 0-cost 8/8 minions. This card package was entirely neutral, but the most consistent build turned out to be Giant Hunter thanks to Stitched Tracker easily searching for Naga Sea Witch and King's Elekk for a powerful generic draw card. A variant of Handlock also used this build effectively.

This eventually led to Blizzard increasing Naga Sea Witch's cost from 5 to 8, killing the competitive viability of this card. Notably, this was the first ever nerf to a Wild-only card.

Quotes

 * Summon
 * I will not be trifled with.


 * Attack
 * For the empress.

Lore

 * ''The serpentine are some of the most formidable villains of Azeroth. Masters of sorcery, the naga were formerly night elves, members of 's court in the . They were transformed into naga by the, and now haunt the seas of Azeroth building a great civilization on the ocean floor.

Trivia

 * The artwork for this card comes from the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game "Throne of the Tides" series, for the card Idra'kess Enchantress.
 * Naga Sea Witch's flavor text refers to academic grading systems that follow a scale of letter grades.

Patch changes

 * Cost increased from 5 to 8.
 * (Undocumented) Mana cost modifier from this card is now applied before other mana cost modifiers.
 * Added.