Introduction
Great news everyone, it seems that the new cards are being dropped really quickly this time around! With 5+ cards every day, we’re bombed with tons of new content and we can already start theorycrafting. Just like every time, I’ll try to review most of the cards – give you my thoughts about how powerful they are, whether they will see play or not etc.
I’ll rate every card from 1 to 5, where 1 means “the card is garbage” (unplayable in Constructed), through 3 – “average card” (might see some Constructed play, but it’s not really amazing) to 5 – “insane!” (a card that will almost surely see Constructed play and be powerful). Remember, however, that at this point I’m still reviewing the set without knowing all the cards. Even with the knowledge of every card it’s sometimes hard to predict whether one is good or bad, so take the ratings with a grain of salt.
If I made a mistake somewhere, took the wrong version of the card (sometimes the early translations aren’t 100% correct) or misunderstood the effect, let me know in the comments and I’ll fix it as soon as possible!
Other Un’Goro reviews:
Card Reviews
Crackling Razormaw
Now, this card is like the Kabal Talon Priest which Priest got last expansion. This card is powerful, even too powerful. Adapt options on average are worth a little bit above 1 mana (of course their real value greatly depends on the situation, but with 3 options you also have a bit of flexibility) and this is a 3/2 body for 2, perfect vanilla stats AND a Beast tag for the sake of synergies.
You will only be able to Adapt Beasts, but that’s not a problem in Hunter at all. Majority of the minions Hunter runs are Beasts. Most of the strong 1-drops are Beasts, so if you want to play it on the curve, you will be able to do it most of the time (unless your 1-drop gets answered). I mean, imagine opening the game with Alleycat into this with let’s say the Deathrattle into 2x 1/1 option. Now for 3 mana you get 3/2 and 4x 1/1. That’s good from both value and tempo perspective. Or let’s say you open with Fiery Bat and then give it +3 Health. Now you have 2/4 and 3/2 on the board on turn 2. That’s a really solid opening.
But the card can also work really well in the late game. Imagine giving Stealth or Can’t be targeted by spells to your Highmane. Now it will be much harder to remove. Or even better – if you Highmane survives a turn, give it Windfury, then buff it with Houndmaster and casually deal 16 damage to the opponent’s face. Amazing, right? Not to mention that even dropping it on turn 2, with nothing else in play, won’t be that bad. It’s a 3/2 Beast for 2, of course it’s not perfect, but when King’s Elekk lost the joust it didn’t automatically lose you the game. This is one of the most powerful cards revealed so far. It will make Hunter stronger at every stage of the game. I seriously think that Hunter might have a solid place in the new meta after seeing those cards.
Card rating: 5/5
King Mosh
I like this card. It has a very powerful effect, but requires a bit of set-up or combo. Overall I’d say that in Warrior, this is like a better Deathwing (because it doesn’t discard your whole hand) and Deathwing was used in multiple Warrior decks. Mostly Control, but also Dragon – sure, the fact that DW is a Dragon himself had a lot to do with it, but I imagine that a slower Midrange deck might also want to use it.
The obvious combo here is Whirlwind + King Mosh. It’s a 10 mana full board clear, besides occasional Divine Shields and Deathrattles AND you put a 9/7 body on the board. This combo is obviously very powerful – it’s like a Twisting Nether, but you also get a 2 mana 9/7 body to tempo out. You end up having the board advantage right away and your opponent has to answer it before proceeding to refill the board (or you get even more value from your 9/7). But that’s a 2 cards combo. Let’s say Paladin gets such a board clear for 4 mana (Wild Pyromancer + Equality), but obviously without putting a 9/7 on the board. However, that might be the problem of this combo – lack of flexibility. Paladin can clear the board as soon as turn 4. Even Warlock can do that on t8 with Twisting Nether. This one has to wait until turn 10, so the same as Deathwing, AND you need to have both pieces in your hand by that time.
But, there is a good thing about this. You don’t necessarily have to combo it with Deathwing. If you have some small minions on the board, e.g. Acolyte of Pain, you can trade it and then play King Mosh. Board states with damaged minions aren’t uncommon and this should get value a lot of the time.
Another thing worth mentioning is that it has synergy with The Curator, since it’s a Beast. While I don’t imagine Warlock running any Murlocs, there are still some solid Dragons like Alexstrasza or Ysera + this as a Beast (sadly no Fierce Monkey in Standard anymore), the card might be worth considering.
Overall I think the the card is a bit stronger than Deathwing, so because of that it should see a bit of play. It obviously depends on the meta, the slower the meta, the stronger it will be. In a fast meta you’ve stabilized most of the games by turn 10, but vs Midrange or vs other Control it might be really valuable addition.
P.S. Maybe Warrior’s quest will have something to do with Whirlwind/self-damage effects? If yes, then Whirlwind might become a staple in a Quest deck and this might be more powerful.
Card rating: 3.5/5
Small Raptor
I’ve read that people are getting excited over this card. And I can’t get why. It’s pretty bad one, mediocre at best. Sure, you shuffle a 1 mana 4/3 into your deck. But the chances that you draw it when you need are very low. Shuffling means it’s random. You have maybe 20% chance that the card will be close to the top of your deck, when it’s still early and the tempo from 1 mana 4/3 will be great.
Of course, if you draw it right away and let’s say curve out with Small Raptor into 4/3 + another 1-drop, then it would be great. But that’s the best case scenario that will happen probably less than 5% of time.
Now, let’s look at the average scenario, the card getting somewhere in the middle of your deck. If you play it in Aggro Hunter, you won’t see the 4/3 token in the majority of the games. And if you play Midrange Hunter and draw it around turn 10 (that’s probably around the average outcome) you won’t even be happy. Sure, you get some extra tempo, but most of the time you’d rather draw your Savannah Highmane or Call of the Wild and not a 1-drop, no matter how good it is.
The only thing that works for this card is the Hunter’s 5-drop – Tol’vir Warden. 4/3 is much stronger than your average 1-drop and fishing it out can be valuable. But, is it worth to play a vanilla 2/1 for 1 in order to accomplish that? Isn’t the 1 damage ping from Fiery Bat going to accomplish more on average than a 1 mana 4/3 that you MIGHT draw after a while, but you won’t even see in many games? I’ll honestly say that I’d prefer Fiery Bat over this one.
The only reason why this might see play is out of the necessity – if Hunter will need more 1-drops for the Quest even the “mediocre” ones might be included in order to accomplish it. But generally this card is not too strong.
Card rating: 2.5/5
Terrorscale Stalker
Oh look, it’s Princess Huhuran… turned into a rare. And yes, it’s better than the original. If we’d only look at the vanilla cards, Huhuran would have a slight edge – while 3/3 for 3 and 6/5 for 5 are similar in terms of competitiveness, Huhuran gets a Beast tag too. But this one is 3 mana as opposed to 5 mana – if the same effect is downscaled into a card that costs less, it’s obviously much more powerful. Huhuran had a great concept, but was too hard to combo – you rarely could play a Deathrattle card and her on the same turn. With Terrorscale Stalker, it’s much easier.
If you’ve played t2 Kindly Grandmother and it didn’t die, this is insane on-curve play. You get a 3/3 + 3/2 for 3 mana, that’s almost like the infamous Tuskarr Totemic rolling Totem Golem. Later in the game you can play e.g. Savannah Highmane and immediately combo it with this for 2x 2/2. Well, it would work best with effects like Sylvanas Windrunner, but she’s no longer in Standard. Or let’s say Cairne Bloodhoof (4/5 > 2x 2/2) but you won’t run it if you run Highmane already.
Overall it’s definitely a great card to put in a Deathrattle Hunter deck. Especially a Wild one – if you play t2 Nerubian Egg there is a solid chance it will survive and then you proc it with this card. Will it get to non-Deathrattle decks? Hard to say. I don’t imagine it being played in the Quest Hunter. In a more classic Midrange Hunter? It heavily depends on the number of cheap Deathrattle synergies, because those are what we should be looking at. This + Highmane is a 9 mana combo, so it’s too slow to be the reason to play this card. But if we get another strong early Deathrattle, similar to Kindly Grandmother (which is a great combo on turn 2), then maybe, maybe. Right now I’m rating it 3/5 in Standard. But it’s a solid 4/5 in the Wild.
Card rating: 3/5
Thunder Lizard
If you could consistently activate it on the curve, it would be solid. While some option would be rather underwhelming, e.g. Taunt (3/3 Taunt for 3… right), others would be pretty insane. +3 health makes it a 3 mana 3/6. You can also make it a 3 mana Silvermoon Guardian or 3 mana Infested Wolf – the second one sees common play at 4 mana. But the problem is that if you won’t be able to consistently get it out on curve, I don’t see it being good enough to see play.
I mean, sure, it can be a tempo play later in the game too, but you will have other, much more powerful Elemental synergies. This card is what Tinkertown Technician was to Mech decks or Blackwing Technician to the Dragon decks. 3 drops that don’t activate the synergies, only synergize with the theme. And they get over the curve stats + possibly other small effect (like Tinkertown gave you a Spare Part) if they get activated. Those two are best when played on curve. Their power falls down heavily in the mid/late game, just because other synergies are much more powerful and at the end of the day they’re still 3-drops, just a little bit overstatted.
The same goes for this guy. With a good 2-drop Elemental, this card has a solid chance to see play. Without it – I honestly doubt it. Well, there is also t1 Elemental (we have some already) and Coin into this on turn 2, but that requires a Coin and you get Coin only 50% of the time. But in case some Elemental 2-drop gets released, this card gets pretty juicy on curve.
Card rating: 3/5
Lightfused Stegodon
That’s why I’ve said that we need to wait before really rating Lost in the Jungle. With Stegodon, it suddenly got much more powerful. It has an old Midrange Paladin vibe. It was the era when Quartermaster was one of the biggest threats, especially since Muster for Battle was a thing. Having 3-4 Recruits on the board wasn’t even that hard. Stegodon seems a bit less powerful than Quartermaster, but at the same time it’s more flexible. Less powerful, because QM gave Recruits +2/+2, while Stegodon can only give them +1/+1. So the average Adapt option is weaker than QM. However, we need to remember that Adapt might be a strong mechanic because it’s flexible.
Stand Against Darkness is a solid combo, but not remotely as good as Muster for Battle was. It might be too slow and it’s hard to justify running it by itself, I mean, it’s a 5 mana card that gets completely destroyed by Maelstrom Portal or any Whirlwind effect.
But you don’t need to have tons of recruits for this card to be good. Let’s say your opponent has a big minion on the board and you have some Recruits. You Adapt them and you get Poisonous. Well, you now kill that big minion pretty much for free. Another example – let’s say that you have 3 Recruits on the board, but you suspect that your opponent might AoE next turn. You give them all “summon 2x 1/1” and you end up with a board (almost) full of 1/1’s after the AoE, so you still put the pressure.
At this point I think the card is playable, but whether it will be really good depends on two things: a) whether we get more ways to summon recruits and b) whether we get more recruits synergy. I gave it 3 with the info we have, but it might go up to 4/5 easily.
Card rating: 3/5
Hemet, Jungle Hunter
Okay, this is pretty crazy. New Hemet has already became a new meme card, but this might actually be playable (unlike it’s counterpart, Hemet Nesingwary). This card looks ridiculous at first, why would you want to destroy cards from your deck? But it actually makes sense, it makes A LOT of sense in certain decks.
Generally, low mana cards are best in the early game. Past the early game, you prefer to draw bigger stuff. Not only 10 mana things, because tempo is still important, but 4-5 mana things are better to draw than 2-drops. And this card is there to fix your draws. You play it and now you can’t draw your 1-3 mana stuff, because they are no longer in your deck. You can’t draw that 1-drop you put to counter the fast decks, you don’t need it anymore that late into the game. So it makes sense to get rid of those cards.
On the other hand, many decks run 1-3 mana cards that are useful past early game. For example – you would never put that into Control Warrior, because it would get rid of your Shield Slam and Execute. Shaman? Hex. Priest? Shadow Word: Death. Most of the decks run multiple cards that you still want to draw in the late game, even though they’re small. Best removals in the game cost between 1 and 3 mana, they’re so powerful, because they also give you tempo.
This is a card that would fit into a minion-focused Midrange deck. In such a deck, it would be incredibly powerful. A deck that doesn’t run low cost removal etc. – basically a deck that wants to get its big cards past the mid game. I think that the best example would be a Druid deck – old-style Midrange Druid or even Ramp Druid. The biggest culprit in those decks is Innervate. The card is bonkers in the early game, but it gets much weaker late into the game. Topdecking it in the late game might be game-losing. Cards like Wild Growth or Wrath can already cycle, but you just save 2 mana on each, because with this card you don’t have to cycle.
Another example might be a minion-focused Midrange Hunter. The main problem here is that you can lose Unleash the Hounds or Kill Command. However, there were some Midrange decks that actually didn’t even run Kill Command and Unleash is more like a tech card, there are metas where it is bad.
Even crazier use of this card is to run it in an Aggro deck in a slower meta. You can make a deck full of 1-3 cards with just a few powerful finishers that are above 3 mana – like let’s say Aggro Hunter with Call of the Wild. You will have a great early game curve nearly every time and then if the game gets long enough (let’s say in a slower WoG meta, games with Aggro Hunter were often going well past turn 8-9) you play Hemet and now you topdeck a powerful finisher every turn for a few turns in a row. Sure, you get to fatigue very quickly, but if those finishers won’t close out the game, you wouldn’t have won it anyway. That’s a pretty crazy idea and I don’t think it would be too powerful, but it’s an interesting thing to think about.
Yes, I haven’t mentioned it, but one thing we need to have in mind is that fatigue is a bit problematic. Removing a lot of cards from your deck means that you get much closer to fatigue. So you also want to play it in a deck that isn’t afraid of fatigue, one that can win the game before it hits – so once again Midrange Hunter might be the right choice, as the deck has built-in clock with Hero Power.
The card can be powerful in the right deck, but the question is – is there such a deck? I think that without tons of playtesting it’s impossible to say. So far this is one of the most interesting effects in Un’Goro, but also the hardest one to rate. I give it 5/5 in terms of uniqueness and I’ll most likely playtest the hell out of it, but in the end the card itself might turn out to be useless.
P.S. Okay and it’s also an insane Arena card. Sure, you get rid of half of your deck, but your opponent will now topdeck a lot of 1-3 mana cards while you will get only 4+ mana cards. In a topdeck vs topdeck scenario this is nuts, even if your opponent has a slight card advantage you can catch up thanks to that.
Card rating: 3/5
Blazecaller
Elemental decks start to look like the new Dragon decks. And by that I mean pretty powerful. The effects on Elementals are insane if you can activate them and it seems that the density of Elemental cards is high enough to activate them nearly every turn. Let’s take this as an example. It looks like a set up over the Dragon’s Blackwing Corruptor. It’s a better Firelands Portal, which needs to be activated by other Elemental. Which shouldn’t be hard in Elemental decks. It’s a 5 damage – you can target minions or Heroes – and a 6/6 body for 7 mana. Average outcome from Firelands is like 4/4, so it’s a big step up. Sure, you don’t get the “crazy” outcomes like Earth Elemental or Doomguard, but you also can’t get screwed. So assuming you can activate it, it’s better.
It also fits right into the Shaman’s Elemental curve. Turn 6 Fire Elemental into turn 7 Blazecaller into turn 8 Kalimos, Primal Lord. That will be the new nightmare when facing Shaman.
Shaman already had one 7-drop Elemental (Stone Sentinel) but to be fair, this looks better. Sentinel might be better against Aggro, of course, but the instant 5 damage means that instead of blocking attacks you can just immediately kill that 5/5 or whatever.
A very powerful card, I imagine it will fill the 7-drop slot in most of the Elemental lists. The only downside is that right now not every class has an access to a powerful 6-drop Elemental, so it looks best in Shaman on the curve. But other classes will probably manage (not to mention that there are still cards left to show).
Card rating: 4.5/5
Servant of Kalimos
Continuing the Dragon comparisons, this is a big version of Netherspite Historian. Understatted body, discovering an elemental… But Netherspite was most likely better, because it was more flexible. At 2 mana it meant that it was very easy to play it any time – it could be dropped on turn 2, but also on turn 10 to play the discovered Dragon right away. In case of Servant, it’s not that easy. Not only you have to set him up a turn before, but the 5 mana cost makes it harder to pick the right Elemental for the situation (because you often can’t play whatever you pick right away).
Elemental decks already look slow enough. So the main question is – will they need more value? And that 100% depends on the meta we’ll face. In case of fast meta, I can’t imagine this card seeing play. The extra value isn’t that necessary in already slow-ish decks. But in case of slow meta, it’s obviously auto-include x2, because you pull out extra value from outside of your deck.
Another way to look at things is that in case of a faster meta, people might cut the late game Elementals and run 2x of this instead to “discover” their late game threats, while keeping deck lighter against Aggro. But it doesn’t work as well as let’s say the Netherspite Historian I was talking about, because it’s still 5 mana, so not really much lighter than the other high cost Elementals.
Overall the card is okay, but not auto-include – playing it will most likely be a meta call.
Card rating: 3.5/5
Ravenous Pterrordax
Interesting mechanic, it really fits the Warlock – sacrifice something to make something else stronger. Pterrordax looks like a Zoo card – that’s the only Warlock deck running multiple 1/1 minions (including tokens) and that’s the one you’d want to “eat”.
So, here’s the thing. Assuming a best case scenario, which is eating a 1/1 and Adapting 2 times, the card is great. It can be a 4 mana 7/7 (without Overload!), it can be something like 4 mana 4/7 with Taunt if you need one, maybe 7/4 with Divine Shield to trade up against slower decks, maybe just Divine Shield and Deathrattle into 2x 1/1 if your board is good enough already, to make it as sticky as possible… There are tons of possibilities and 2 Adapts are really strong. If you can pick the same one two times, you can even make it a 4/10, which is bonkers if you’re holding Defender of Argus. And the good thing about this card is that the “best case scenario” of eating 1/1 wouldn’t be uncommon at all. Possessed Villager, Forbidden Ritual, maybe some other small minions, maybe even a damaged Voidwalker or Abusive Sergeant.
The problem with this card is that it’s sometimes completely unplayable. Let’s say you’ve played t3 Darkshire Councilman and the opponent has cleared your small drops. It’s all you have on the board. Now, this card is unplayable – you really don’t want to eat your Councilman. Even not Councilman, you don’t want to eat something like Knife Juggler or Dire Wolf Alpha either. Zoo already runs a situational 4-drop – Defender of Argus, and Argus is arguably even easier to “proc”.
Another thing is that it might turn out that the only way to play Zoo after the patch is Discard Zoo – so does it fit into Discard Zoo? Not necessarily, the deck won’t probably have space to play Forbidden Ritual and it might play the new 4-drop (Lakkari Felhound) too. So while I think that the card is quite solid, at the same time it might not see play, because it would fit into more “classic” Zoo more than the Discard Zoo.
Card rating: 4/5
The Last Kaleidosaur
Oh, they will need to try hard in order to make this quest playable. So far it’s the most unrealistic quest of them all. And I don’t necessarily mean that it’s hard to finish – no, if you throw in lots of buffs into your deck then it will be quite easy to finish. But then your deck will simply suck.
People have tried to build a viable Buff Paladin ever since I remember. That’s over 3 years of trying and failing. Most of the buffs were either too slow or too low value. Even the better buffs are kind meh, because remember that buffs work best only in very specific scenarios. Buffs are great when a) you have a minion on the board you want to buff, b) your opponent has minion on the board you want to kill and c) buffing your minion will make that trade better. If even 1 out of those 3 conditions isn’t met, then buffs are pretty bad. If you buff a 1/1 from your Hero Power, you’ve played an overpriced vanilla minion. If you buff some real minion and you don’t immediately trade with it (e.g. you’ve just summoned it or there was no good trade on the board), then when your opponent clears it, it’s 2 for 1. Â
Yes, there are some good/okay buffs. Blessing of Kings and Blessing of Might are pretty solid. Blessing of Wisdom and Silvermoon Portal are playable. Maybe even the Divine Strength or Hand of Protection if you really want, but those are on the worse side. But the main problem with this quest is that you need to play 6 of them to accomplish it. And that means that in order to do that consistently, you want to put around 10 into your deck. You can’t just put 6, because if the last one is stuck on the bottom of your deck then you won’t see your reward at all. And putting 10 buff cards into your deck makes it really weird – it’s very easy to draw awkward hands. If you get minions you want to buff but you don’t get buffs – it sucks. If you don’t get minions, but end up with hand full of buffs – it sucks even more. See the problem?
However, I think that it might be worth to try to finish this quest. I think that people are severely underestimating the reward. I’ve heard that it will die too easily – what? With 5 Adapts you’re nearly guaranteed to get things like Divine Shield, Stealth or “Can’t Be Targeted by Spells” effects. Imagine something like that: +3 Attack, +3 Attack, Divine Shield, Windfury, Stealth. With Stealth & Divine Shield, it doesn’t die to normal board clears, even Pyro + Equality, only to “hard AoEs” like Brawl (unless it wins) or Twisting Nether. It can’t get stolen with Sylvanas, because she rotates out. It’s really hard to kill it. And that’s 11 Damage AND Windfury – 22 damage on the next turn, not to mention the big minion you still have on the board. That’s bonkers. Or another example: 2x +3 Health, Taunt, Divine Shield and Can’t Be Targeted by Spells. Now you have a 5/11 minion with Taunt, Divine Shield and Can’t be Targeted. Basically a much better Soggoth the Slitherer – good luck getting through that.
Yes, the reward is insane. But will it be worth to dilute your deck with multiple “bad” buff cards in order to accomplish it? It’s hard to say at this point. We still haven’t seen some Paladin cards, so there might be a new strong buff somewhere in there. The reward is well worth it to try, that’s for sure, but at this point making a viable deck around buffs doesn’t look good.
Card rating: 1.5/5Â (Reward: 5/5)
Evolving Spores
Druid has got a new card that would fit Token/Egg versions nicely. Let’s make one thing sure – this card has no place in slow Druid decks. I’ve heard voices that it will be insane with Jades – no, it won’t. Jade Druid doesn’t work like that, it doesn’t need a “win more” card. When you’re winning on board with Jade Druid after summoning a few Jades, you most likely won the game anyway. And this would be dead until that point, because you don’t really want to Adapt 1-2 minions for 4 mana.
Since Adapts are worth around 1 mana on average, I’d say that this card is worth it when you Adapt 3, maybe 4 minions, not less. So yeah – Token Druid seems like the best choice (or Egg Druid, but only in Wild). However, I see some problems with the card. While it’s not as apparent on a single minion, some outcomes are worth well more than the others when you’re adapting a whole board.
Let’s say +1/+1. Why would you ever want to run this card when both Mark of the Lotus and Power of the Wild exists? Giving your minions Stealth is also a 4 mana Conceal, although in this case Druid doesn’t have access to that card, so it’s a bit different story. Then again, giving your 5 minions +3 attack is 15 damage, it’s like a cheaper Bloodlust that’s permanent, that would work insanely well with Eggs. Or another scenario – you give your minions Windfury and then play Savage Roar. That’s a nice combo, which most likely just kills your opponent.
And that’s the problem with this card. Variety is just too damn high. You have only ~30% chance to get the exact option you want. And getting the ones you don’t want is usually a card wasted, or nearly wasted. Giving your whole board Taunt for 4 mana when you need some instant damage is pretty bad. Giving your board health when you face Twisting Nether next turn and you wanted to hit the Deathrattle is also not good. There are just so many scenarios where this card will fall short.
I think it still might see play in Token/Egg Druid, especially in Wild, but in Standard? I can’t see it so far.
Card rating: 2.5/5
Closing
That’s all folks. Thanks for reading and thank you for so many comments on the last review! The new cards are popping out very fast, so I’ll try my best to keep up with the releases and give you reviews that are as fresh as possible 🙂
If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comment section below. And if you want to be up to date with my articles, you can follow me on Twitter.
Good luck on the ladder and until next time!
Published: Mar 31, 2017 03:31 am