Introduction
And so the reveal season begins! Lots of *cough* awesome cards to be discussed and a lot of weird stuff happening.
While the initial revealed cards were quite disappointing, there is still a lot we can discuss about these cards and their impact on the game.
First of all, I’ll go back to doing what people stopped doing long time ago in fear of being called out: I’ll once again give cards score.
The score can go from 5 to 0, 5 being a multi-deck staple to zero being an useless card.
Just before we start, let’s review the scores with a few examples:
- 5 – Multi-deck staple – All-star cards of Hearthstone. Cards like dr-boom, sludge-belcher, arcanologist, ravaging-ghoul, hydrologist and arcane-giant comes to mind.
- 4 – Deck Staple – A card that is good enough to have a deck being built simply because of it, like shieldmaiden, finja-the-flying-star, the-curator, medivhs-valet, lyra-the-sunshard, and nzoth-the-corruptor.
- 3 – Good card, but not a staple – Cards that are good but can be replaced by something else. In this category cards like fire-fly, sherazin-corpse-flower and earthen-scales should be seen.
- 2 – Techs and Narrow cards – Cards that are either only played as Techs or narrow cards, in this category we can fit cards like eater-of-secrets and medivh-the-guardian.
- 1 – Bad Cards that can be sometimes picked in Arena – Meh.
- 0 – Horrible Cards – magma-rager, amgam-rager and so onwards.
Well, at least this is how the theory should work, I will obviously get excited or disappointed and overrate/underrate cards at my free will :v , So you guys can freely rub my bad-judgement on my face later on!
NOW, PREPARE YOURSELF FOR THE ULTIMATE REVIEW!
Ticking Abomination
Score: 0
Ben Brode is seriously trying to force purify. This isn’t even a 7/7. Pick wisp over this in Arena.
Plague Scientist
Score: 1
I like that at least part of the Rogue’s core is moving away from the “Cards from other class” theme. While I don’t think this card is powerful enough to see constructed play, it isn’t the most horrible of the cards. It can have some cute uses in places like Arena.
Ice Breaker
Score: 1
You’re highly likely to be picking this over some possible rare version of magma-rager in arena so I won’t rate this zero. Some people might have thought about ways of making this playable in Constructed, but even with tons of freeze cards being added to Shaman I highly doubt this will ever happen.
Blood Queen Lana’Thel
Score: 2
This can see play, this really can, but the amount of cards Blizzard will have to add to make a possible Discard Warlock viable is beyond my current thinking willingness. The odds of you randomly discarding this card is also gigantic, and the only discard version of warlock that ever saw constructed play was a Zoo Deck, and I don’t quite think Zoo would want to play this card. Emptying your hand isn’t something we often gladly do, but maybe this can see play in the future and that is why I am giving this a well earned 2.
Blood Razor
Score: 5
While I still don’t know if this would see play in Wild, since the odds of this being worse than deaths-bite are high, I think this is quite the addition for many standard Warrior builds.
Despite not being a good choice for Arena, the number of uses this card have is stupendous: From being a standalone good card because it does what Control needs (Deals with aggro), it also has utility with long used Warrior cards like acolyte-of-pain, sleep-with-the-fishes and can even make cards like king-mosh playable. This card is surely to see play, and have even high odds of retiring whirlwind itself from current Warrior builds since it has two imbued on it.
This is also a 3-cards-in-one (two whirlwinds and a poopy 2/2 Weapon that has some uses), which grants this a 5.
Prince Taldaram
Score: 2
Crippling your deck requires powerful effects. While this guy’s brother is easier to manage and has a possible home in sight, this one specific card seems to lack that quality.
Being a cute card doesn’t justify cutting important cards from your deck, and while reno-jackson’s condition may be remedied by having different cards with similar effects, this guy can’t even do that.
I, however, don’t cut the chances of this card being an “ok” tech in a few decks, so let’s consider the possibilities here:
- Mage can’t use this card.
- Rogues can’t use this card.
- Warriors can’t use this card.
- Hunters can’t use this card.
- Shaman has to drop Hex and Storm to use this on a possible NZoth build.
- Priests already have mirage-caller and wouldn’t want to drop other 3-drops.
- Paladins have aldor-peacekeeper on standard but is realistic a possible class that can choose to tech this in on a N’Zoth build(?).
- Druids currently don’t run any N’Zoth or Deathrattle stuff, but could potentially tech this in.
- Warlocks can use this card without any issue currently, mostly because they have zero decks in Standard anyway and no decent 3-cost cards.
Nerubian Unraveler
Score: 2
Disrupting your opponent’s plays is something very hard for us to have in Hearthstone, and cards like this can have its uses countering metagames with specific decks on top. I can see this card seeing play if things like Miracle Rogue becomes much better than others but realistically I doubt it. While this is indeed a cute card, the odds of this being a vanilla 5/5 for 6 are high in most metagames, so I don’t know if constructed can play a card like this. I believe that this card is one mana too costly for constructed, but this is indeed a decent pick in Arena.
Mountainfire Armor
Score: 2.5
Not a bad card, but possibly in the wrong class.
I like this card because it has a powerful effect that you’ll want to happen, what I don’t like is the fact I keep trying to think of a strategy that I would want to play this card over other constructed viable cards but I just can’t.
This won’t see play in every deck, and would possibly require some sort of Midrange Warrior to exist in order for this to ever see play, but the fact this is a decent card stats and power wise makes me not want to give it a 2.
An excellent Arena pick as well for sure!
Professor Putricide
Score: 2
You’ll all want to rip my head off for this, but I am indeed just giving this guy a 2.
While most reviews I read are praising this guy, I don’t quite see this as anything else other than a “meh” tech in most decks that will want to play it.
The effect is surely powerful if you can make it work, but the effort it’ll take to do so is beyond my view of constructed-viableness.
I obviously can be grimly wrong, but I am betting people will craft this for nothing.
Ghastly Conjurer
Score: 5
And this is my first vote for what I believe is a Sleeper in this expansion!
All of the reviews I have read about this card are spitting on it, I haven’t currently seen a single person saying this is even a remotely decent card, but I am having a strong feeling that this will see play in every currently-existing standard Mage Build.
The body of this card is “ok”, not excellent but it is indeed Vanilla. A 2/6 for 4 has to have some pretty good effects like giving you an extra card in order for it to be playable, and I believe this card does exactly that.
A mirror-image helps quite a lot in many different situations, there also happens to be tons of different cards that would want you to be casting extra spells or even cards that aren’t on your deck, and all of these are currently valid Mage strategies.
This card also fixes issues that current Mage decks suffer, like making it slightly better against Pirate Warrior without hurting other matchups, and gives you something cool to make it so you can actually play archmage-antonidas.
On top of being helpful in many situations, this card also has synergy with cards that already see play in Standard:
- archmage-antonidas
- mana-wyrm
- arcane-giant
- open-the-waygate
- yogg-saron-hopes-end
So, you guys can come here and laugh at me later on for being the only person saying this card is actually very powerful, but here I am making my bets.
Leeching Poison
Score: 0
Here is another bet I’m making that this card will see zero play. This is highly likely to heal for less than most neutral cards that already don’t see play in Rogue anyway, and would require too much effort to break even on value as a single card anyway.
Sindragosa
Score: 3
This card is pretty straight forward so I don’t think there is much to talk about. It’s a very powerful finisher but so are other cards.
I don’t think this is bad, I don’t even think this can be a bad card. We could play this over Medivh in Control Mage maybe as it has a cool effect, possibly we will want to play this over Medivh as it seems to be a straight up update in terms of value.
I don’t think that this is enough to make something like a N’Zoth Mage possible though, but we could as well try!
The point of this card is you can play it and ping one of the Frozen Champions for a Legendary straight away (since it costs 8 mana and leaves you up with the possibility of pinging).
The main decision you’d have to make, at least if this card was released today, is sheer value (Sindragosa) vs Tempo (Medivh)
Bring it On!
Score: 2
Tech against Face-Decks metagame but nothing else other than that. Possibly good against burn but I’d rather just run Shield Block anyway.
The odds of this losing you the game on the spot in some matchups makes this a late-game card that won’t give you any real advantage unless you already stabilized, but I won’t deny the fact this can see play as a 1-of on the right metagame.
Voodoo Hexxer
Score: 3
People are strongly underestimating the power of this card.
2/7 is strong enough for a Taunt card that it often requires more than one hit in order for the opponent to pass through, meanwhile this also freezes whatever survives stopping it from attacking the following turn, which is an effect most Control Shaman lists will desire.
Buying time is awesome, especially when there are things we want to protect like mana-tide-totem or even a small collection of minions that we would want to bloodlust later on.
This obviously will not see play if/when Priest becomes a tier-1 or high tier-2 deck because cabal-shadow-priest is scary as hell.
Bearshark
Score: 1
I will try to be realistic here, I don’t think this will see constructed play because the 3-drop slot for hunter is already ultra-mega-hyper crowded. This is a very powerful Arena pick as the stats and value of this card are very good, but in Constructed I would never drop the Hunter staples for this.
Hadronox
Score: 1
9 mana is quite a lot to invest, even for a Taunt Druid deck filled with ramps and bombs.
This can be an amazing hit with barnes later on in the game, but not realistic enough as yshaarj-rage-unbound is a better hit both earlier and later and it still barely sees any play, and there are only so many 9-10 mana cards we can play, even on a Ramp deck.
People will play this, they will craft this. I just don’t think it’ll survive the initial playtests.
Closing
I know at this point many of you will want to skin me for most of the scores I gave, but hey, the bets are made!
I kind of enjoyed writing it like this over the overused method of being scared of saying things are “too good” or “too bad” as people are nowadays, despite the odds of having my head chopped off these reviews are fun as hell to make and I’ll continue to make them like this!
I hope you guys enjoyed this review, and we’ll be seeing each other again later when another batch of cards is revealed!
Love you guys, take care!
Nuba
