Dual Wield and the FAQ is up.

Today's preview card is Dual Wield which is a pretty exciting card. It allows Rogues, Warriors, and Hunters to carry 2 Melee weapons. An interesting note from the FAQ regarding Dual Wield. When Dual Wielding weapons that trigger off of an amount of damage being dealt such as Wraith Scythe or Sword of Zeal, they count all damage dealt in the combat. So if you swing with the two previously mentioned weapons you would heal 4 and untap 4 resources.

I want to take a quick look at how dual wielding will affect each of the classes able to do it. First, Hunters. Hunter rush could add a second cheap weapon to start dealing even more damage. Unfortunately, this would require making room both for a second weapon and Dual Wield. I just don't see a rush deck playing cards that aren't good on their own. Where I think this card will really impact the Hunter class is the new control decks that seem likely to spring up. Imagine this scenario. Your Hunter opponent has a Dual Wield in play with an Ancient Bone Bow, a Krol Blade, and a Sword of Zeal. Now he gets to attack and take out one of your allies without taking any damage back while saving enough weapons to take out two more of your allies on defense. When you run out of guys, he simply gets to start hammering on you. This will give Hunter control a great option for dealing with swarms while also being a very aggressive position when it needs to be.

Rogues are going to love them some Dual Wield. Judging by the cards we've seen, Rogues might finally have a chance to get some love. They are really getting some quality abilities in this set and Dual Wielding is going to allow them to do even more damage. Here's a scary thought. Imagine a Rogue with Krol Blade and Sword of Zeal. They swing in for 5 a turn and actually GAIN two resources from the deal assuming no weapon pumps. In case you haven't figured it out yet, Sword of Zeal + Dual Wielding = good. Don't be shocked at all to see Rogue decks sporting lots of Swords of Zeal to get their combat damage in for free then after their attacks get all their resources back to play their mean combo abilities.

Warriors will also enjoy Dual Wielding. DW greatly increases the power of some commonly played Warrior cards like Heroic Strike and Deathdealer Breastplate. Warriors will have their own mind boggling DW + Sword of Zeal combo with Twig of the World Tree. Zeal + Twig will be netting Warriors some serious resources late in a game or if they choose to go the Rak Skyfury combo route. It also gives them the power to combine Annihilator with another weapon to power through armor. Given the rulings on Dual Wielding weapons anything combined with an Annihilator should all be unpreventable and trigger anything the second weapon would do. Paladins are going to have nightmares about Dual Wielded Annihilators.

In addition to the daily preview, the Dark Portal FAQ also went up today and had about 50 or so new cards mentioned in it. There are some really good cards in there. I'm not going to go into a full review of every single card (but expect a set review on TCGPlayer.com in either next week or the week after) but I will quickly talk about some of the standouts, and where I think the game is headed with this set.

First to Fall seems like a very good sideboard card against decks that like to run big protectors, Ambush is really good especially with the fact that Vanish is so good, Brainwash seems very solid, Cannibalize is going to see a lot of play, Distract isn't as good as everyone thinks it is. It's not an instant so it essentially only negates one turn's worth of attacks which Vanish does a lot better and I don't see enough room in a Rogue deck for Distract and Vanish. If a Mage control deck ever actually does something, Evocation is going to be ridiculous. Eye of Kilrogg is one of the best cards in the game. The Haunted Mills is very good. Tim is probably the second best culture flavored card behind Leeroy Jenkins. I'm not sure about Outrider Zorg, but I know he doesn't like Draconian Deflector. Penelope's Rose is going to sway a lot of control mirrors. War Stomp is pretty good and A New Plague seems like it has a lot of promise forcing tough decisions regarding ability based removal since you can use it in response.

This set is starting to look more and more like it's geared toward control. The Undead Warlock in particular seems to be getting a lot of great cards. There are so many really good control cards and so far we haven't seen much in the way of really good aggro cards. As for the cards from the FAQ, really good control cards tend to need some clarifications whereas most really good aggro cards are more straightforward so they don't appear in the FAQ. I really feel like this set is going to shake up the metagame a lot. I know there are already at least 6 decks I want to build based solely on the cards we've already seen. Getting used to all the new cards will take a while, but it's going to be a fun ride.