Note: If you wish to see all the revealed cards so far, be sure to check out the beautiful graphic post by Disguised Toast over at Mana Crystals. It’s updated whenever new cards come out so be sure to bookmark it!
Introduction
KHADGAR!!
I got one :3 I don’t actually have any iOS system but all I had to do was ask a friend of mine to log into my account using his iPhone and buy it for me. If you want one too, just do the same 😀
He is pretty bawss, not to mention it is an extremely limited release Hero!
You’re also helping WWF if you buy him, which is a bonus!
Now, back to Whispers of the Old Gods, we have had some very veeeery interesting cards the past three days and I believe there is a lot to talk about.
Also, there is something I would want to discuss regarding how people are seeing the spoiled cards and how I want you, my sons and daughters, to look at these cards with criticism instead of following the crowd, so instead of going by release order i’ll start with the card I want to talk about the most…
Deathwing, Dragonlord
Alright, so this is the card I wanted to talk about.
I have been reading a lot of hype about this card, everywhere people are just too in love with it, hearthpwn, /r/hearthstone, and (this is what shocked me the most) /r/CompetitiveHS.
Now, I hate being a heartbreaker, but this card is nowhere near the playable zone, it is actually one of the 5 worst cards in the entire set, if not the worst one itself.
The art do is amazing, and the Deathrattle effect do is powerful, but you have to remember there are still tons and tons of other cards in Hearthstone. Hearthstone is a game where hex, sap, aldor-peacekeeper, fireball, abusive-sergeant, Steady Shot, kill-command and a thousand other tempo-oriented cards exist, hearthstone also isn’t a game where your opponent will be sitting there letting you cast your cards without either trying to kill you or disrupt your game plan. You can’t possibly believe you are going to be spending your whole turn just to drop a big minion, while you have dragons in your hand, and your opponent is either going to pass the turn back to you, or to trade his whole board into Deathwing: that is not going to happen!
Now let us get back to this guy. Let us suppose you are in those 1 out of 100 situations and your opponent passes the turn back to you without punishing you, let us suppose you probably already won the game, is it going to be because of the massive 12/12 you spent your whole turn to cast or because you spent multiple cards to disrupt everything your opponent did up until that very moment? And in that case, are you really supposed to be getting value out of Deathwing? Because if you are playing a very control-ish deck made to disrupt your opponent’s plays, you are likely not playing any Dragon (let us remember, a Midrange-like strategy) based strategy. Sure, you can play Control and run multiple big dragons as finishers, but then won’t you die in a lot of games because you got rushed down simply because you had way too many big cards in your hand?
Deathwing is a card that has seen tons of love by the community, and unfortunately I don’t believe people have been able to tell how weak the card is right now.
This just made me think about old deathwing, and how people would have all yelled the card was ultra-mega-hyper-powerful if it was spoiled today, when in fact the card never actually saw real play.
Embrace the Shadow
I didn’t like this card very much. The text is basically “pretend you have an Auchenai Soulpriest in play this turn”, and while Auchenai Soulpriest’s power is unquestionable, it does come with a 3/5 body that is going to stick to the board and will generate a threat on the board.
This card? It just looks like multiple ways to 2-for-1 yourself, and while it would indeed be awesome to run 3 Auchenais in your deck, I don’t really think you’ll want to run a card like this.
Let me just elaborate a little more on this card:
- You are always 2-for-1-ing yourself.
- You would never want to circle-of-healing on turn 2 anyway, you are likely always fine paying 4 mana for the Auchenai.
- This isn’t a creature (you can’t tempo with it).
Verdict: don’t play this card.
Faceless Summoner
Now let us talk about a good card!
This guy is awesome, dr-boom level of awesome if I might be too bold on my words. This is a full board presence on a single card, which means tons of tempo, which means this is very likely to see play.
I don’t have very much details to go into this guy, except talking about the 3-Drops it can summon.
Let us take a quick look at our 3-drop Base and cards we can summon that are very good, average, or bad (this only considers current standard-legal cards, not counting WOG ones, yet):
- Bad (2/2s and such): coldlight-oracle, fencing-coach, ironforge-rifleman, edwin-vancleef, druid-of-the-flame, magma-rager.
- Very Good: imp-gang-boss, injured-blademaster, king-mukla… wow wait there are a lot of “very good cards”, let me just count them instead: 20. Ok, that’s 20 standard-legal currently “very good” cards.
- Average – The whole rest (everything in between 3/3, 4/3, 4/2, 3/1 Divine Shield, 3/4 and more…), which is a total of 45 cards.
So, even when the result is the worst possible, you’re still left with a 2/2 on the board, when it’s best you’ll get something amazingly powerful. Also keep in mind there are no doomsayers in the 3-drop slot, so you’ll always be safe and RNG won’t be screwing with you.
Now, after analysing this card a little we can easily come to the conclusion that it’ll be powerful, as a full-board-position in one card is always that powerful.
Easy craft in case you don’t get one in a pack.
Servant of Yogg-Saron
Different from the card we just spoiled, this one can easily screw you over just because of RNG and is the type of card I hate.
For multiple reasons, I came to the conclusion that this also won’t see competitive play, simply because the chance of screwing you is always there.
You can end up shadowflameing a minion when your opponent has nothing on board, killing your own minions, hellfireing your own board there are just so many ways you can get screwed by running this that I don’t believe it’ll be playable, at least not in competitive Hearthstone.
Come to think of it, the randomness of this card’s effect can be diminished in case you find a Control-mage-ish home for this card, since the chances of you not having anything on board exists. However, a deck like this is probably the same deck you’ll want to run yogg-saron-hopes-end into, and as I said before I don’t believe that card will be playable either.
Kripparian made a pretty nice video on youtube explaining why he believes that despites the changes of good effect, Yogg-Saron isn’t going to be playable and the reasons. I liked it so I am passing the video to you, because it is also relevant to this card’s discussion:
Shadowcaster
Here we go another over-hyped card by the community.
At first sight this card seems marvelous, the number of Battlecries and Deathrattle effects you can abuse: si7-agent, edwin-vancleef(!!!!), earthen-ring-farseer, cairne-bloodhoof, the-black-knight not to mention the infinite combo with two of those. Right, we got it, this card has some amazing potential and power, there is no denying that and in case you want to build a deck around it, go ahead as this is undoubtedly powerful.
But then, why am I calling this over-hyped? Because despite the power, this is a situational card.
This isn’t the kind of card we can simply smash on the board because it’ll do literally nothing.
We need a very specific situation from an endless set of situations for this card to work, and in case you don’t build your deck around it, it won’t work. And even if you do, sometimes it’ll still not work.
Sure, this is a powerful card, but the situationality of it is what bugs me the most, as Rogue is the most vulnerable classes when it comes to getting rushed, and having this stuck in your hand can sometimes be game-breaking.
I will take a little of your time to talk about the Wild Format: In Wild, this card has something I would call unlimited possibilities revolving around unearthed-raptor based decks. Getting a 1/1 Nerubian Egg? Please! 1/1 piloted-shredder?? Holy mother! Not to mention stuff like 1/1 dr-boom and 1/1 piloted-sky-golem, and different from Standard the number of times you’ll be able to consistently play this on curve is just absurd.
Closing
Now this was a big review I might say.
I hope you guys enjoyed this overly-extended review as I believe I talked too much, but I also believe the words said here were necessary to try and explain my point a little more.
The Mage card is absurd, so powerful it can win games by itself, and the Shadowcaster has a lot of potential even in Standard, so we are now finally seeing the good part of the expansion! I can’t wait to see more cards being released!
Love you guys, see you in the next review!
Cuddles,
Nuba
Published: Apr 15, 2016 08:40 am