Wild Growth

Wild Growth is a druid spell card, inducted into the Legacy set, formerly from the Basic set.

Generated cards
This spell will generate an Excess Mana card if played when it would otherwise provide no useful effect (for example when the player already has 10 Mana Crystals).

Strategy
Wild Growth is a key strategic card used to allow the druid to prematurely reach higher numbers of mana crystals, allowing them to put powerful and expensive minions and combos into play in advance of the opponent. By using multiple Wild Growths in combination with Innervate, the druid can place expensive minions such as Ysera or Cenarius onto the board several turns earlier than usual, potentially overwhelming their opponent.

Unlike temporary effects like Innervate, Wild Growth's permanent addition can be made use of for several turns after playing it, with the effect only rendered irrelevant once both players have reached 10 mana. Wild Growth therefore acts to trade tempo on the present turn for increased output capacity on the next several turns, a trade-off which is usually advantageous, provided the break in tempo does not lose the druid too much ground.

Excess Mana
Wild growth has a secondary function when a player reaches their mana crystal maximum. If cast when the player already has 10 mana crystals, it will generate an Excess Mana card for the player. They can use this to draw a card for free. This is designed to ensure that Wild Growth remains useful even later in the game, when you already have maximum mana.

Playing Wild Growth on turn 9 provides no advantage as the game's mana progression will provide the player a 10th mana crystal the next turn anyway. The player should think ahead and consider the point at which it becomes more advantageous to hold onto the card until 10 mana is reached, in order to at least obtain an Excess Mana from its use.

Using The Coin at 9 mana and then playing a 2-mana Wild Growth will not generate Excess Mana, but playing another Wild Growth on the same turn will generate an Excess Mana: this happens because the temporary Mana Crystal generated by the Coin disappears as usual when the cost of the first Wild Growth is paid, leaving you with 8/9 mana before the spell resolves and takes you to 8/10 mana; since you now have 10 Mana Crystals, the second Wild Growth will thus grant you an Excess Mana card instead.

Lore
Wild Growth is a targeted AoE druid heal over time spell from World of Warcraft. It heals several of the most injured allies within 30 yards of the selected target, healing quickly at first and slowing down as it reaches its full duration.

Trivia

 * The artwork for this card comes from the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game "Fields of Honor" series, for the card Path of Cenarius.
 * Effects like Wild Growth are often referred to as a "mana ramp", as they allow you to quickly ramp up to higher costing-cost cards.
 * In the collectible card game , 'Wild Growth' is a long-present, basic nature-themed mana acceleration spell, serving a near-identical purpose to its Hearthstone counterpart.
 * Also in Magic: The Gathering, 'Rampant Growth' is a spell that functions exactly like Hearthstone's Wild Growth, costing 2 mana and granting the user a tapped land (equivalent to an empty mana crystal). 'Rampant Growth's' name and use also inspired the Ramp type decks both in MTG and Hearthstone.

Patch changes

 * Moved from Basic to Legacy set.