The knife is quite solid. However, it has one big minus. You have to activate your mage before your friendly animal. There are quite a few occassions, where you want to activate your mage at last.

I feel like the Steelclaw Cub in particular is going to open up more options for the Straywood Beastmaster. It's going to make Animal Kinship and Call of the Wild stronger, as well generally strengthening the Beastmaster's swarm options. I also like the idea of a Straywood Beastmaster with 6 cubs and 4 matriarchs. That way playing a Steelclaw Cub can give you a significant damage boost that your opponent doesn't really want to dedicate resources to attacking. Of course, this type of strategy encourages you to concentrate on a limited number of zones, so I kind of doubt it will be a good idea in Domination in most cases.

What does minor creature mean? Level 1 or 2?

Minor creature: Level 1 + 2

Thank you, i have been waiting for that since it has been anounced.

This is by far my number 1 release of this year. I have high hopes. First I hope that it will be the perfect entry point for arena. Secondly, I hope it will give a wonderful game for in between. Too often time constraint was an issue, so that MW arena was left inside the box. Thirdly, I hope for many clever level 1 spells that will enrich MW arena play.

Let us make this thread the longest in all of the MW forum. 

Go editor! Go!

By the way. There are four spoilers  on the Academy product page, if you have not noticed before. One answers the novice question.

These are great ideas Laddinfance. I think that would be the right direction to develop the samara tree further. Make it more unique and give it some special use.

These are great news. I am really looking forward to academy.

Hope both core sets will be released soon.

Can you give us any info on card distribution? Will it be the same as in recent arena expansions or will it be totally different?

Do you know, if the images have been approved? Unfortunately I can not find them.