Introduction
And our final review before the big explosion of reveals and Brews is here!
So, this is probably the last review we’ll be doing before things go live, because Blizzard is likely to publish the expansion very soon, which makes this review unique to a point.
There are a bunch of things we still need the whole picture for us to be able to see through, and others that, even after the whole picture is shown to us, won’t be viewable with clarity because we’ll need weeks of playtesting.
So, let’s start discussing the last cards to be reviews with certain in-depth now!
Jinyu Waterspeaker
So healing-wave is rotating out of the format next year, which means Blizzard wanted some way of getting Control Shamans to be able to heal themselves once that card was out of the format, and Jinyu Waterspeaker is kind of the perfectly tailored card for that.
First things first, it allows you to heal minions, which means you can (in the future) aim your Shaman deck at playing big taunts as defense mechanisms, or even just minions with high health, so this opens up for a lot of potential.
Then, it obviously can heal your hero, which combined with the first statement makes this a lot versatile and needed. This card is supposed to be playable in every single Shaman build, but given how Shaman decks have some very powerful 4-drops right now, I wouldn’t be surprised if this doesn’t see play in today’s Midrange Shaman, but I am quite positive that as far as healing mechanisms go, this card has tons of potential to make Control Shaman viable simply because it exists. I also have the super strong sensation that Blizzard aims on making Shaman a Control class next year.
Then, the last statement is that this card can actually be viable in Midrange Shaman itself. The deck already can do a lot of things without hurting itself in the non-specific matchups simply because of how powerful it is, and being able to heal itself is literally the only thing Midrange Shaman can’t do better than other decks in the game right now, so it wouldn’t surprise me either to see this card being played on Midrange Shaman decks after it gets released.
Certainly one of the strongest cards in the entire expansion, and one that opens up for post-rotation Shaman decks, which makes me happy.
Jade Chieftain
The Jade Mechanism kind of gets me super intrigued. If a card that seems to be so bad such as this one becomes playable then it means that the entire concept of Jade Golem is extremely overpowered, which leads into yet another huge design flaw that I don’t think Blizzard can let happen in a period where they just left an immense design flaw only to fall on another one.
So, considering that the Jade Golem mechanism isn’t utterly broken, this card doesn’t seem that appealing to me. Paying 7 mana to get a 5/5 on the board and, let’s say a 3/3 taunt isn’t worth it and wouldn’t be even if it costed 6 mana.
A lot of people have the impression that they’ll make Jade Golem decks and that those decks will just consistently play 10/10 golems all games for 1-2 mana and that the value they get out of it will be immense every time, but I have to say that this doesn’t seem very likely to happen, and I would only count actual Jade Golem cards that are good by themselves as viable ones for now.
Jade Claws
So I was just talking about Jade Golem cards that are good by themselves, and this seems to be just about one of those cards.
The thing that came to me once I started analyzing this card was how hard it is to correctly analyze it, because it is directly tied to the Jade Golem strategy being good on Shaman. This card isn’t a bad one, but I don’t believe we would want to run this card without other Jade Golem cards, so the only way to have this card be good enough is if cards like jade-lightning becomes good, which should only be good if at least one more Jade Golem card (summed up with this one) is good by itself.
Currently we have no Jade Golem card deemed “OP” for Shamans, so this leads me to believe that these cards won’t be viable, but in case we get yet another Jade Golem card (total of 6 class cards) being viable, then I believe we can start counting Shamans actually joining the Jade Golem tribe.
Virmen Sensei
Possibly a trash tier level of card currently, but with a lot of potential in the future.
The thing about today’s Beast Druid is how it lacks actual Beasts, being mostly a deck centered about having only one beast on the board and overbuffing/abusing the fact you have one beast on the board with a series of effects. By running a card like this you often need more beasts in your deck, because this clearly is a card made to be curved into, and today’s beast Druid deck doesn’t allow that.
Despite being a classic card, and a pretty bad one, I don’t believe this card would take the place of a card such as stranglethorn-tiger, and that is a card we actually really want to get rid of in Beast Druid decks right now.
PS: This would have been playable if it was a beast, even if it couldn’t buff itself.
Gadgetzan Ferryman
The thing that bothered me the most about this card wasn’t even the fact that it is both a filler and a trash tier card, but the actual Blizzard interview centering around this card.
Rogues currently don’t seem to have much to do in terms of deck – just play the good old miracle or play bad decks. Even N’Zoth Rogue is a disguised Miracle deck that has no contingency plan or effective ways of regaining tempo, clearing board, healing itself or doing anything mostly all other classes do, which makes it not only a very hard class to play (miracle-only decks), but also a very niche class that you rarely want to bring to a metagame as chaotic as the Hearthstone Ladder.
All this happens while Blizzard clearly seems to have no idea what direction they want Rogues to go, and during the time they keep deciding what to do with it they just randomly throw shit cards at it in hopes it doesn’t becomes OP because they simply don’t have a clue.
PS: Don’t read the interview, you’ll just get angry like I did.
White Eyes
Talk about cool design, here we go!
People are quite angry about this card’s creation, thinking it will destroy the metagame and make Shamans even more OP, but I beg to differ. This card doesn’t seem to be a good one in Midrange Shamans simply because it doesn’t have any immediate effect in game and is literally countered by the deck itself (hex). I know this card isn’t bad, but you’d need to play around it in order to have a successful deck running this.
And now I ask you, what would get the strongest with a powerful Deathrattle Taunt minion added to it? Yep, you heard it here: nzoth-the-corruptor!
N’Zoth decks simply get a huge boost with the addition of a card such as this one, which is (let me remember you) yet another awesome Control Shaman tool getting added to the game.
This card also has some amazing sinergies with barnes, ancestral-spirit, N’Zoth and other cards to re-abuse this card’s Deathrattle without being utterly broken in the process, which just gets me in love.
No, this isn’t a 5 mana 10/10, it is a 5 mana 5/5 taunt that has an “Elise-like” effect that should only be relevant in long games and even then, not as reliable because spot-removal can easily take care of a blank 10/10 on the board, but in the other hand it has some amazing synergic potential.
I loved this card!
Sergeant Sally
An Aggro tech card to beat other aggro decks, yey!
This card also has some cool applications in some niche decks such as Zoolock as an amazing board clear in combination with power-overwhelming.
Some people talked to me saying this would be amazing in Renolock, but I beg to differ: This is a Zoo card, Renolock has no place wasting its combo piece and running a card that would only be “ok” if comboed for a situational effect with another card they run as a 1-of.
This card also has some minor (MINOR!) tech power in Goons Aggro, but as I said I believe that the deck where this really has some high chances of shining is in Zoo, because you actually want to run 2x power-overwhelming as well as you don’t need those for a Combo or something while actually wanting an effect such as this one.
Cards That Don’t Require Discussion
- shadow-sensei – Oh, and now this, wonderful! This card simply proves my point written in the Ferryman review. Seriously, what on earth do you want to do with Rogues, Blizzard?
- daring-reporter – Awesome Arena card, but not strong enough for the predatory constructed scene.
Closing
And this pretty much covers all the in-depth (sort of!) reviews I had to do for Mean Streets of Gadgetzan before the expansion is released!
I will be doing a “First impressions” review on the last revealed cards on the big announcement they do with all the expansion’s cards, so keep an eye out in this website for our last review!
Brews should also be coming by very soon, so let’s get this train going guys!
I am quite hyped about this expansion, are you?
I hope you guys enjoyed all these reviews I have been doing, and we’ll see each other again very soon!
Love you guys,
Nuba
