Hey everybody it’s your buddy Fireflyer and this time we’re going to go over some of the new cards that have been released for Mean Streets of Gadgetzan! In this review I will go over the currently released cards and the possible potential that each card holds. I will divide this guide into sections based on class/gang/neutral and you can jump to those sections by using the table of contents to the right. Without further delay let’s jump into it!
Druid: Ramp Returns
Mark of the Lotus: A weaker Power of the Wild. Probably won’t be used.
Pilfered Power: Probably the best Druid card revealed so far. Very easy to use with effects like Living Roots which is already commonly used, but can be abused with lots of small minion effects like Bilefin Tidehunter which could potentially set up for a turn 3 Pilfered Power that gives you 4 mana crystals if you go unchecked. This won’t be used over Wild Growth in control decks but it will probably be used in some type of aggro zoo ramp.
Lunar Visions: The draw effect isn’t as good as Nourish which has a secondary ability that is commonly used and can also be abused with Fandral Staghelm. It probably won’t be used because the cheapness effect doesn’t really help you accelerate as much as if you would just use normal ramp effects like Wild Growth.
Kun the Forgotten King: Some people are saying this is good if you can ramp into it but I think if you’re ramping to 10 mana you could use it better on something else. At best, this will be used for his armor in control decks to survive.
Hunter: Future Fatties
Shaky Zipgunner: Not a bad card for Deathrattle N’zoth, the corruptor type decks that use Barnes to fetch Deathrattle minions. I don’t think it will be used but I put it at a 5/10 for now.
Trogg Beastrager: Great for aggro Hunter decks. 2 mana for a 3/2 minion is the typical build for a 2 drop such as Huge Toad except instead of dealing a random damage, you get to make one of your future minions in your hand much better to curve with. Will probably be used in aggressive minion-heavy hunter decks.
Dispatch Kodo: Combining this card with effects like Trogg Beastrager or Shaky Zipgunner gives you the potential to kill large threats while also putting a minion on to the board. Not to mention that he also has a decent sized body that doesn’t die easily. Getting the “random minion in hand” pump effects to hit him will be difficult but if you are able to get it off you have a removal as well as a huge minion at the same time.
Piranha Launcher: I don’t understand how this card is supposed to be effective besides dropping out useless 1/1 minions. I think it’s awful. Stick to Eaglehorn Bow.
Mage: Multiple Minions
Manic Soulcaster: I think this card is going to be insane. It’s cheap and easy to use and allows you to put legendaries back into your deck. This means a whole mess of possibilities like comboing with Barnes to get extra copies into your deck of things he pulls into play. Combo with Brann Bronzebeard to put two copies of him into your deck for future uses. Combo with Elise Starseeker to get multiple Golden Monkeys in your deck. There are just so many possibilities, this card is easily a 9-10.
Paladin: Small but Strong
Grimestreet Outfitter: Mana cost of a Novice Engineer that can buff all the minions in your hand. Useful for small swarm type decks that use tons of small but effective minions.
Getaway Kodo: Amazing card for control decks especially N’zoth, the corruptor. With limited ways to remove secrets, I feel like this will be giving people lots of copies of Tirion Fordring and Sylvanas Windrunner.
Small-Time Recruits: I believe this card will be used much like Desert Camel where you only put 3-4 1 mana cost minions in your deck that way whenever you cast this card you always get them. Paladin has a lot of great choices for this including Selfless Hero so I think it will be highly used.
Meanstreet Marshal: A cheap minion that needs to be buffed to be effective. Not sure if this will fit into aggro decks or control decks, will have to see where this one goes. I don’t believe it will be used. Using another card to pump this one and only getting one card back doesn’t seem effective.
Wickerflame Burnbristle: Great legendary that could be used in any type of deck. In aggro it can soak damage while dealing damage and also gaining you life. In control it’s a powerful minion that can soak up two attacks while also healing you. It’s just a strong card, makes me think of Azure Drake where it is a balanced attack/health for its cost while also having great abilities.
Priest: Dragon Destruction
Kabal Talonpriest: Basically a better Dark Cultist. I don’t believe it will be used because there’s nothing you want to use it on early except maybe Northshire Cleric and even then…
Potion of Madness: I think this is what Priest needed to fight off aggro. Basically a cheap Shadow Madness that works well with the new cards and other minion debuff cards. I think this will be in every Priest control deck.
Drakonid Operative: A new amazing dragon for Priest! Not only is this a fat effective dragon for 5 mana, it allows you to discover a card from your opponent’s deck which will almost always be useful. First, you’re discovering a card in your opponent’s deck which means it’s a deck full of good competitive cards to pick from. Second, you’re discovering so even if you discover two cards that aren’t useful, you will almost always have one good option that you can take, unlike normal discoveries which can lead to stuff like discovering three really bad cards and not having a good option. Dragons are back.
Pint-Size Potion: Works great with Potion of Madness, Shadow Word: horror and Shadow word: pain. It sucks that it will take two cards to make this one effective but we’ll see if it is used as a combo card to do board wipes. Currently putting it at 5/10 because of the card disadvantage but if it combos well with other cards like Equality does then it may become effective.
Dragonfire Potion: Priest’s new board removal. It will be very effective in Dragon Priest but even in Control Priest, it will still be an effective board wipe when you have nothing on the board to lose. This card will make Dragon Priest very dangerous though.
Rogue: Sneaky Stealthers
Counterfeit Coin: Woo! Rogues get half an innervate! This card is insane. It doesn’t quite give rogue the ramp ability druid has to get to high costing minions but the ability to trigger combos and Gadgetzan Auctioneer is going to make Miracle Rogue way stronger. This will highly be used in constructed as well as Arena to help combos happen more often.
Lotus Assassin: This is a better Stranglethorn Tiger which has been used lately as a way of dealing damage without charging but kind of guaranteeing the damage through Stealth and setting up for the turn after. However the new ability it has doesn’t really help it do that any better so it’s still just a Tiger that sometimes can give you a little bonus. I personally don’t think it will see much play.
Shaku, the Collector: I really wish this card did more than just a Swashburglar ability. At least Swashburglar can sometimes give you two cards off of Brann Bronzebeard but I just don’t see any way that this gets you more than two cards if you’re lucky. I guess it’s still a bigger minion and can deal a little more damage while you’re getting a card or two but I don’t think it’s that great.
Warrior: Tons o’ Taunt
I Know a guy: I just counted up around 25 or so Taunt minions and that’s only Warrior related ones. With the wording it seems this may include other classes which means Tirion Fordring is an option but just the amount of low cost Taunt minions makes this seem not that great. A lot of Taunt minions have weird secondary abilities too like Twin Emperor Vek’lor and Avian Watcher which are almost useless in decks that aren’t focused on those abilities. I don’t think this discover will do that well, compared to things like Ethereal conjurer or Netherspite Historian.
Stolen Goods: I think a control deck that uses this with Soggoth the Slitherer could be real dangerous. This card allows you to set up your hand for big minion plays later in the game once you’ve controlled the board with any control warrior type deck. I think it has potential and will call it now that somehow it will be used in a big way.
Alley Armorsmith: This makes me think of Armorsmith who does a good job of keeping small threats off the board while negating their damage with armor. The only downside is that if you’re up against a control deck or something, it’s completely useless. I also think for its cost compared to Armorsmith is just a little too much and might keep it out of play.
Grimestreet Pawnbroker: Anything that gives your weapon more durability is amazing. After playing Pirate Warrior for just a little while, I fell in love with Arcanite Reaper and things like Upgrade! or Captain Greenskin. I think weapon warrior just got a bit of a buff in this set with things like this and more strong pirates.
Gangs: Deadly Discovery
Grimestreet Informant, Lotus Agents and Kabal Courier: These cards are going to be very interesting. They allow you a lot of potential with such a big variety of options to make mid-game, but at the same time there’s always the downside of discovering three useless cards that won’t help you in any way in your current situation. Because it’s less focused there’s just a huge room for randomness to occur so while I think there’s option for them to be used, I think only the two that cost less than three mana will see play because five is too much for a toolbox card. (A toolbox card is one that tries to have multiple answers for a situation, much like a toolbox has multiple tools for different situations.)
Kazakus: Oh man, this card. If you’re curious to see more about it you should go to Youtube and look up the kazakus video that shows him creating a potion. First you get to discover one five or ten mana cost spell to create. Then you get to discover one ability, and then discover a second ability. Blizzard has said there are something around 120 different combinations so I’m very curious to see if all the effects are strong enough to make this card see lots of play. I think just by being a Reno Jackson effect it will be used in some decks, but with the ability to make some crazy potions it may even see competitive play as well.
Neutral: Variety of Value
I’m running out of space for this article so to make room I’m cutting these cards from the review because they are just basic cards that won’t have any real effect on the current meta. These cards are: Friendly Bartender, Grook Fu Master and Wind-Up Burglebot.
Kooky Chemist: This won’t see much competitive play since Crazed Alchemist can do the same effect for cheaper, but I think it will be highly used in arena much like how Dark Iron Dwarf is used as a bigger Abusive Sergeant, Kooky Chemist is a bigger Crazed Alchemist.
Mistress of Mixtures: An interesting Zombie Chow that also has the ability to heal you late in the game or to be used with healing trigger effects.
Big-Time Racketeer: Can be combined with Brann Bronzebeard to get multiple effects or with Rogue decks that Shadowstep or Shadowcaster but that’s about it.
Second-Rate Bruiser: Defense against aggro decks, three mana 4/5 taunt.
Fel Orc Soulfiend: Usable in decks that trigger off of damage to minions like Frothing Berserker or in decks that can heal like Priest decks.
Dirty Rat: I thought Deathlord was risky but this one is super risky. I don’t believe this will see competitive play but if it does, people will start playing around it.
Patches the Pirate: There was a video showcasing this card by Blizzard where they used Gang Up on Patches the Pirate twice and then used Southsea Captain to pull all of them into play. It was interesting and I think there’s something there.
Finja, the Flying Star: The murlocs are random and having to guarantee the kill is a little difficult. There may be a combo aspect here but I don’t see it.
Auctionmaster Beardo: Possibly some kind of combo effect using Maiden of the Lake and lots of spells but I can’t think of one currently.
Conclusion: Make your own predictions!
If you haven’t already, one piece of advice I can give you is to do this for yourself if you consider yourself a competitive Hearthstone player. Make a list of all the cards and make your predictions on how usable the card is and in what way the card will be used. By doing your own assessment of the new cards and comparing those predictions to what happens when the expansion releases, you can see how insightful you are when evaluating competitive/metagame cards. If you make a lot of predictions that come up wrong, it means that you don’t know much about what makes a card good or that you don’t understand the current meta of the Hearthstone competitive scene. But that isn’t a bad thing! By knowing that you don’t know much about competitive Hearthstone you now know that card evaluation could be one of your weaknesses that prevents you from becoming a better Hearthstone player. On the opposite side, if you evaluate cards correctly and can make good predictions, it shows that you are knowledgeable of Hearthstone and that you can probably rely on your own judgment when altering decks to fit your style as you understand what works in the meta and can give you an edge against the netdeck players who copy and paste decks from websites.
That’s all I have for part 1 of my Gadgetzan review. Once more cards are released I will probably do a review when 2/3 of the cards are revealed and one final review of the last remaining cards. If you liked my ideas and predictions, come back around and check out the rest of the reviews for the new set! If you have any ideas or predictions of your own don’t hesitate to leave a comment and tell me what you think is going to be the best card in the currently released cards.
As always you can follow me on Twitter @HS_Fireflyer to keep up with my Hearthstone arena antics or just watch me stream on Twitch at twitch.tv/itsFireflyer Monday-Friday 6-9 PM Eastern time. Leave me some love below and come read more of my articles in the future! I will see you then.
