In-Depth Analysis of MSG Spoiled Cards – Part 2

nuba

Published: Nov 8, 2016 08:07 pm

This article is over 8 years old and may contain outdated information

Introduction

Kazakus

Just as an additional information, I will be adding one extra card to the list of “cards that don’t need in-depth analysis”:

kazakus

The reason I am adding this dude to the list of cards I won’t need to analyze is because it feels just too clear to me that this will obviously see play in reno-jackson decks, but that it isn’t “safeguarding” enough to make it so you would want to run him alone in your deck without Reno Jackson himself. Sure, the options of the cards we’ll be able to get from him might change that, but we also don’t know which options are those, so an analysis for this guy, at least right now, is impossible.

Pint-Size Potion

And we start off with a very discussed card lately.

Priests get yet another super situational card added to their lot of situation cards, which basically composes around 80% of the total Priest cards in the game. This card, however, made me change my mind about a lot of things recently.

The fact a card such as this one exist makes it so we possibly won’t miss excavated-evil(*) as much in the rotation as we initially thought. This card also is yet another cheap spell for us to use in Priest with wild-pyromancer, priest-of-the-feast and also could end up allowing us to use arcane-giant in our decks as some sort of finisher.

(*) – Another interesting thing to note about this card is that it allows for us to use super-narrow cards such as shadow-word-horror and cabal-shadow-priest in our decks without the fear of not facing the correct decks in the ladder.

So, all-in-all this card will be giving us a lot of room to work with and could ultimately help us build an actual working Control Priest in the future.

Kabal Talonpriest

So we move on from the “tricky” Priest card to the “Curvy” Priest card. Unfortunately, we currently don’t have many cards to curve this super-powerful guy into outside of Dragon Priest cards that will be rotating very soon. This card seems like a very powerful one, so powerful that it might even change how Priest deck building works and how the Priest class is going to look like in the future. I particularly don’t like this kind of design because it lowers the skill-cap of the game (see: what happened to Shaman), but I have to admit I am quite relieved they are releasing actual playable cards for Priests instead of the garbage they have been throwing at the class for the past 2 expansions.

This card will obviously see play in Dragon Priest before the rotation as the effect is quite powerful and Dragon Priest seems to be the only possible deck to pack in a card such as this one for now.

potion-of-madness

This card is too narrow to be played. Even more narrow than shadow-word-horror while also pairing terribly with pint-size-potion because you’ll be getting the minion with a lowered attack that won’t be able to trade well because the opponent’s minions attack will also be lowered, not killing the minion you slot in the process.

Getting to use a card such as this one against Aggro is nice, but you won’t always be facing Aggro, which is why this card won’t do much good.

However, the fact this card costs only one mana and that future cards might be added to make this card playable is enough reason for you not to disenchant it when you get it from a pack! This card isn’t playable right now, but it is amongst those cards that could see play some day.

Counterfeit Coin

And the card Rogues have been asking for! Rogues are now finally able to run a Coin in their decks as part of their 30 cards, which should end up making it so starting without The Coin in a game a less painful experience for Miracle decks.

A card such as this one only helps the Miracle Rogue strategy, which makes it clearly that Blizzard has zero idea what to do with Rogues for future strategies and such as they realized how much they failed in trying to make a casual “Thief Rogue” deck something competitive.

With this card, they guarantee Miracle will continue to exist in the coming Standard after the rotation of tomb-pillager, which is something they said they didn’t want to happen in the game – They said they want strategies to rotate, but apparently appear to not be able to formulate different strategies that won’t involve randomness and/or terrible design.

Now, back to the card itself, it should change the Miracle Rogue deck design quite a lot. I predict that either conceal or sprint should make it back into most Rogue decks as well as more Draw and Semi-Draw effects such as xaril-poisoned-mind (that lately was cut from most every Rogue build).

I Know a Guy

So there has been some (a lot!) of Taunt-Warrior cards announced recently, which makes a super in-depth analysis of this card something a lot harder to do, but let’s try:

Analyzing the currently existing and announced Taunt cards up until this very moment (11/7) we have:

4 Bombs (one being a super Bomb soggoth-the-slitherer).
10 Bad Taunt Cards.
16 Ok/Good cards.
4 Above avarage class cards.

Taking into consideration we have 3x more chances of getting a class card than a Neutral card, it means the chance of getting one usable Taunt out of three options that are presented to us in the Discover is actually higher than 80%, which already makes this card “ok”.

Another point is that because this is a cheap spell we can end up getting a Spell Warrior of some sort rolling, and as I said in the first-impressions article, a deck filled with Taunts actually makes arcane-giant a better card than it already is.

Alley Armorsmith

So I am putting this guy ahead on the list because I really liked him when I saw him but it actually took me some time to realize how bad playing a 2-attack minion at five mana is.

Sure, 7 health is a lot, and against Aggro it might sometimes net you like 6 armor but the fact this likely won’t generate any extra value bugs me a lot – Two attack at turn 5 makes no difference at all, in the meanwhile getting this stolen by cabal-shadow-priest literally became the worst thing that can happen to a player in the game, and I believe we will be seeing quite a lot of the Cabal Shadow Priest in the coming months.

What could get this guy to be playtested though is that the counter-option that could be played in his stead is also terrible – ironforge-portal. So maybe you could playtest this guy once all the clunky Priest lists stop seeing play and we start only facing Dragon versions of Priests.

Grimestreet Informant

So we move on to this little piece right here that has brought people some discussion recently. The main concern in this guy’s viability revolves around him being an extra early-game type of card-advantage – Similar to cards such as novice-engineer and loot-hoarder but that won’t get you close into fatigue.

The point that people have had regarding this card’s viability is the fact it won’t draw you cards from your deck, which fits into the Control vs Control playstyle, while also having the upside chance of giving you other classes strong legendaries such as tirion-fordring and savannah-highmane (lol). The counter argument, though, is that there is a huge number of Paladin, Hunter and Warrior cards that are completely useless when played by a second-class. My personal opinion though, is that the fact you are Discovering a card instead of randomly drawing one though makes it so this guy is actually a good pick for Control-heavy metagames in Control Decks.

Running this guy will give you the option to get Bombs in Control mirrors without hurting your other matchups as much. There is, however, the discussion regarding this guy being a “tech” choice and the fact there might be other more “needed” techs, which is something we can’t really tell for sure right now.

I predict this card won’t see play before the rotation, but might end up seeing fringe play post-rotation if the metagame goes Control heavy.

Kabal Courier

A 3-drop that draws you cards have been asked for since forever, because the number of neutral options we have to draw cards at that slot is just too limited – acolyte-of-pain.

This card, however, is limited to the Kabal family, which is: it can only be played by either Mages, Priests or Warlocks – All the 3 classes that have other alternatives for card Draw.

I believe this card to be good, but something tells me we won’t want to run this card in many Priest/Warlock/Mage decks.

My first impressions of the card were that it would see tons of play, but after some further analysis I ended up noticing how much of a “does everything, but nothing good enough” this card is. This card is also much worse than grimestreet-informant simply because 3 mana is a lot more than 2, and against Aggro decks, at 3, you already want to be responding everything the opponent is doing, you also get less mana to deal with the opponent later in the game by spending three mana instead of two, and that is a major downside.

Lotus Agents

I really thought about adding this card to the “doesn’t need in-depth analysis” list, but I ultimately decided I had to explain why this card is so bad.

First, this card obviously is worse than Kabal Courier which is already considered bad and worse than Grimestreet Informant, so this card could be seen as “very bad” already here. But then there is the fact you don’t have access to cards such as the ones I mentioned in the classes you have access to Lotus Agents, and at the same time Shaman and Druid cards are usually standalone good cards.

The problem starts with the options you have in the 5-drop slot, and the body of this card. First, I would like to mention how worse this card is when compared to azure-drake – It literally loses in every single aspect: The body is worse, it doesn’t have Spell Damage, and it also draws you a random-discovered card instead of a card from your deck. So, discovering is often good and better than Draw in a couple of situations, but that isn’t very much the case when we are talking about Druids and Rogues (classes that needs a lot of the cards in their decks) and I just wouldn’t see myself choosing to run this over most of the 5-drops that already exist in the game.

This card seems so bad in so many ways, that I have to admit it even got me seriously trying to make it look good in some angle,but I failed quite hard.

Conclusion

And we are finally catching up with all the spoiled cards, which we should be doing in the next article we publish!

As of right now I quite enjoyed the design of most of the cards released in this expansion, which is great! Maybe the game might feel more interesting after these cards hit the game.

Don’t forget to turn in to our next In-Depth Card analysis tomorrow, where I will be analyzing my favorite card in the expansion up until this very moment 😀

Interested to know which card it is? Access us tomorrow!

Love you guys, we’ll be seeing each other again very soon!

Cuddles,

Nuba

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nuba