Knights of the Frozen Throne Review: Neutrals Part – I

Today we’ll take a look at the neutral reveals so far from Knights of the Frozen Throne. With only five days to go until we get to play with the new cards, the spoiler season has been built up really well and we got to see some great cards with many more yet to be revealed.

Commons

Bonemare: Bonemare is essentially a 7 mana 9/9 with Taunt if you have another minion on the board. While the card might not be viable for constructed play, it is definitely going to be a great pick in Arena due to the sheer value it provides.

Snowflipper Penguin: A filler token just like Wisp and Murloc Tinyfin.

Cobalt Scalebane: A Dragon with standard stats that offers +3 attack to an allied minion every turn, providing regressive value if not dealt with. Again, while it may not be constructed viable it definitely has potential to be a great card in Arena.

Necrotic Geist: The card has potential to be a good fit in token decks situationally. You can sacrifice your cheap minions for trades while also gaining back board presence in form of 2/2 ghouls.

sunborne-valkyr: Yet another highly valuable card for Arena that can offer more sustainability for your minions by buffing their health. Unlikely to see consistent constructed play just like most Common cards in expansions.

Deathspeaker: A decent minion that can help you get free trades off on the board without losing any value on the targeted minion.

Fallen Sun Cleric: A mini version of Shattered Sun Cleric that offers the same value as its Basic cousin but loses out on stats compared to its bigger cousin.

Bone Drake: You lose out slight tempo but you generate massive value out of this little dragon. While most cards in Dragon decks are aimed at providing tempo, Bone Drake steps away a little and offers great value by drawing Dragons outside your deck.

Rare

Shallow Gravedigger: A seemingly weak card since the cards you get are completely random while something like Journey Below or Museum Curator lets you choose from a pool of Deathrattle cards through a discover effect. The 1 HP does not help its cause much either since it can be taken out with most hero powers.

Ticking Abomination: A card you might want to run Eggs or things like Twilight Summoner, or if you have no early game minions in a slower deck as it can offer decent board presence and take out multiple early game minions..

Mindbreaker: A tech card that can shut down hero powers that all of the fancy Death Knight Hero powers. While it is unlikely it’ll be too predominantly used, it can definitely get annoying in Arena to play against

Phantom Freebooter: Hearthstone has not had enough of Pirate decks it seems. A solid minion that can 6-8 attack if you have a Fiery War Axe or Arcanite Reaper equipped and even more if you buff up your weapons.

Corpse Raiser: Corpse Raiser is Ancestral Spirit on a stick and ideally you want to stick it on high value minions like Taunts and Deathrattle minions.

Epic

Nerubian Unraveler: A tech card that can disrupt spell based decks and can be good in any deck that is loaded with minions or weapons.

Corpsetaker: One of my favorite epics so far and great card design. You can get almost all of the effects activated through Al’Akir and even just pulling off the Taunt and Divine Shield effects is good enough for the 3 drop.

Meat Wagon: The card can pull out big minions if you buff it enough and it can be tried out in buff based decks. The card is unlikely to see any play in current meta decks.

Tomb Lurker: A decent minion that you can run in your Deathrattle decks as it helps you get extra draw out of your own deck. Despite the HP being on the lower side, it is worth including if you have limited powerful Deathrattle minions in the deck to squeeze out more value out of them.

Rattling Rascal: Another 4 mana 7/7 this year! It can be a good addition to decks that run silence or bounce effects to prevent the Deathrattle from going off. Not meta viable, but definitely something you can have fun with.

Skulking Geist: A hard counter to Jade Druid and any deck that runs core 1 card spells like Malygos Rogue, Wild Freeze Mage etc. If you detest playing against Jade Druid a lot and keep running into them, this is a one of a kind counter that can ruin their day.

Legendary

Prince Keleseth: Mistcaller’s newest avatar and it is quite a strong effect as well. If you run a lot of minions in your deck, the stat buff can do wonders for you. The unfortunate part is pretty much every class runs a bunch of 2 cost cards and you would need to build your deck around it to get value. Zoo might be a consideration for putting Prince Kelseth in as they currently do not have core 2 drops that are auto-include. You also need to be drawing the card quite early to get any value out of him.

Prince Taldaram: If you are running a greedy control deck you might want to include Prince Taldaram in your deck. Ramp Druid can make room for the card as there are no must have 3 mana cards that you need to auto-include.

Prince Valanar: I honestly do not feel the card is legendary worthy as Corpsetaker simply does it better with a far lenient activation condition.

That’s all the neutral cards that have released so far, we’ll cover the rest of the cards by 9^th once the remaining neutrals have been revealed.

 

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