Note: If you wish to see all the revealed cards so far, be sure to check out the beautiful graphic post by Disguised Toast over at Mana Crystals. It’s updated whenever new cards come out so be sure to bookmark it!
Introduction
I just copy-paste this introduction into every part of the review, so it might be slightly off sometimes. But I’ve figured that introduction is not the important part, so I want to focus on the reviews themselves 🙂
Yeah, it’s this time of the year again. Blizzard is torturing us by slowly announcing new cards for the expansion that is supposed to come out in ~a month from now. But hey, at least we’re getting some info.
First thing I want to say is that I really love the cards. Not talking about the stats, the effects, but the whole theme. Old Gods is one of my favorite lore parts in Warcraft. Although I wasn’t there to raid C’thun yet (I’ve started playing in The Burning Crusade, which was the first expansion – C’thun was the raid boss in vanilla game). Yogg-Saron, on the other hand, I’ve raided a lot. It was one of the coolest fights in WoW. Even though it had some really annoying mechanics that made us question our life choices of wiping the raid 10 times on the Friday afternoon when we could do something else, boss was INSANE. The visions, the whispers, player needing to refresh their “sanity” meter and stuff like created an incredible mood surrounding the fight.
But, back to Hearthstone. Card reviews. One thing I want to say before I start. It’s very likely that over half of my predictions will turn out to be completely untrue after the expansion. This one is especially hard to gauge, because besides the expansion itself, we’re getting new formats AND nerfs to Classic cards. We have really no idea which Classic cards will be nerfed or how Standard will really impact the meta. Then, the expansion is supposed to have 134 playable cards and we know, what, 40 so far? It makes judging the card’s strength even harder. Let’s give you a quick example – Eater of Secrets. This card would be insane in meta dominated by Secret Paladin. But with Standard coming, like half of the cards used in the deck are rotating out. Right now the Secret Paladin is dead. But! What if they release a new, strong Secret and other early game minions to compensate? Well, then it can come back even stronger. So it’s impossible to say whether the card will be strong or not. Keep that in mind when reading my thoughts, because that’s only what they are – thoughts.
My reviews will be mostly about the Standard format & Arena. It’s very clear that the Standard format will be a more competitive (Blizzcon points, official tournaments will be hosted in Standard etc.) one and writing two separate reviews for Standard/Wild seems excessive.
I’ll review only a few cards in each article. I try to go pretty in-depth on each one and I don’t want these to be too long.
Shadowcaster
So, we take off from where I’ve stopped last week with this beautiful Rogue card. Well… at least card art is beautiful. And if I had to summarize this card with one line, it would definitely be – “it has potential”.
Having potential doesn’t necessarily mean being great, remember that. I’m repeating this quite often, but some people seem to view the card only taking the best case scenario into the account. And that’s a really bad move. Most of the cards that have good best case scenario aren’t even played in Constructed. Just because the average scenario isn’t good enough.
This card needs quite a lot to be good. It’s obviously NOT playable on the curve if you have nothing else on the board, because it’s a 4/4 for 5 mana. It’s also not playable if you have a minion without any great effect on the board. A minion that’s just a 1/1 for 1 after you copy it. Then it becomes a 4/4 for 5 that adds a 1/1 for 1 into your hand. While it’s cool to have a cheap combo activator, that’s all the minion is – 5/5 stats total for 6 mana with nothing else is terrible.
The card is great if you already have a minion with strong effect on the board. That would be something like, I don’t know, Emperor Thaurissan or maybe Gadgetzan Auctioneer in Rogue. Having a 1/1 for 1 with this kind of effect is very strong. But it means that the card is even harder to get the value from. After all, those kind of minions (strong effect ones) are very high priority targets. They rarely survive a turn. So that’s also surprisingly rare scenario.
Then, maybe copying a strong Battlecry minion? Like you know, having a 1 mana Loatheb or Healbot (I know, out of standard, just examples) is very good. But in most of cases, Brann Bronzebeard is just better – it has better stats for the mana cost, it’s cheaper so it can be played along that minion etc.
Another common scenario would be having a minion with strong Deathrattle. Like I don’t know, let’s even say Sneed’s Old Shredder (just example again). Having a 1/1 with the effect would be insanely good. But you know what would be even better? Unearthed Raptor copying the effect. 2 less mana, 3/4 body that’s instantly on the board with this effect. Just saying.
So, this minion won’t likely copy any high priority target, because they just die. It might copy some strong Battlecry, but Brann is better at doing that. It might also copy a strong Deathrattle, but Raptor is better at doing that. The only redeeming quality of this card is flexibility – if you play different kind of minions you’d want to copy, this comes handy, because you can copy whatever you want. The fact that 1/1 for 1 is a cool combo activator is another nice thing.
But back to the reality – this is a very slow card. You already need to have something on the board, this one is very understatted so if you’re behind you can’t really play it, and even if you’re ahead you need to have a really good target for it to work. I can’t see it working in any current viable Rogue archetype – it’s just unnecessary for something like Maly Rogue and too slow for high tempo Rogue decks.
So while the card has potential, it doesn’t really fit. It’s too slow and very conditional. I’d see it in a slower Rogue deck an one-of because of how flexible it MIGHT be in the late game. You can play anything up to 5 mana and instantly copy it on turn 10. It means that you could choose to copy a healing card if you need heal, a card draw if you need cards, a removal like SI:7 Agent or Dark Iron Skulker if you need removal etc. Maybe also in Mill Rogue, but I guess Brann is just better for Mill, since they kinda do the same and Brann is cheaper.
In Arena I think this card is very weak. You rarely have cards with really strong effects on the board – let’s be honest, most of the cards in Arena are either vanilla or they have effects that aren’t really… meaningful. Like I don’t know – copying Faerie Dragon isn’t really going to give you a lot of value. The stats are just too low for the mana cost. You’d really need to have a lot of cards like Piloted Sky Golem or Azure Drake in your deck for this to be worth the slot. It’s an Epic, though, so Rogue players don’t really need to worry.
Forlorn Stalker
They seem to be pushing the Hunter’s Deathrattle theme quite a bit (Hunter’s Legendary is also about Deathrattles – but later about that). It might be a cool idea, but honestly? I don’t see it really working. At least not in Standard. The thing is, a lot of strong Deathrattles played in Hunter are gone. Webspinner? Haunted Creeper? Gone. Mad Scientist? Gone. Piloted Shredder? Gone. And so far I don’t really see lot of replacements.
The only Deathrattle minion that’s definitely going to be played in Midrange Hunter is Savannah Highmane. Also, Leper Gnome will most likely always find its way to the Hunter decks. They like each other. But for this minion to be playable in Constructed, you’d need at least like 10 Deathrattle minions in your deck.
4/2 stats for 3 mana are very weak. It has no tribe to maybe carry the score a bit. It only boosts the minions that are already in your hand. So even if you play like 5 Deathrattle minions, how many are you going to have in your hand on average? 1-2? Even then I don’t think it’s enough. Especially since +1/+1 buff is much better on small drops. For example, turning a Webspinner into 2/2 would be insane, but turning Highmane into 7/6 is not that big of a deal. Don’t get me wrong, any buff is good – but the higher base stats/mana cost, the lesser impact +1/+1 on it has.
But, Worgen is my favorite Alliance race, so I give +1 score for the art! Sadly, on the scale of 1-10, it’s still like 3 after the +1.
In Arena it’s also pretty weak. 4/2 is not a good stat line for a 3-drop, even 3/3 is better. And this effect is very likely to be blank. Like we all know, in average scenario it’s impossible to build a deck around certain theme. Even if you have a few Deathrattle minions in your deck, you won’t necessarily have them in your hand. I’d even say that it might negatively impact the win rate among… bad players. I mean, inexperienced players. I can totally see someone passing turn 2 instead of playing Loot Hoarder or some other Deathrattle just because they have this card in their hand. But that’s a digression – on average this is going to be pretty bad, 4/2 for 2 is weak, if you buff 1 card it’s okay (depending on what card it is) and if you buff like 2 or more it starts being good – but what are the chances of that happening?
Demented Frostcaller
I can’t even stress out how big deal 1 mana might be in Hearthstone. If it costed 3 mana, I would review it as insanely strong card, on the level of Flamewaker or even stronger depending on the deck you play against (weaker in flood matchups, stronger in slow matchups). But at 4 mana, it’s just too slow.
The effect is obviously very strong. Remember how much tempo can the Freeze spare part give? Imagine playing something like a Tempo mage while having this guy on the board. He might give the deck insane tempo, prevent good trades, let you ping minions over 2 turns if you need to, let you stall the game. But just like Flamewaker, you instantly need to combo it with something for it to work. You already don’t want to just drop a Flamewaker without getting value – 2/4 for 3 isn’t even that good if you don’t get anything out of it. 2/4 for 4 is insanely slow. And getting those combos one turn later means it’s useless in some matchups.
I’d say that it should cost 3. I honestly don’t think it would be broken – it’s about the same power level as Flamewaker. It’s better in slow matchups, because opponent’s are more likely to have only 1-2 bigger minions on the board, the chances of freezing something you want would be higher. Then against board flood decks, freezing some 1/1 token might just be useless, while killing it + dealing 1 more damage to something else is much better.
Yeah, one thing is pretty big – you CAN freeze opponent’s face. Which, depending on situation, might be great or terrible. If enemy has weapon, it’s awesome – you can prevent the trade this way. But if he hasn’t got weapon or any way to use his face, it’s an useless freeze – you just get 1 more character you need to roll among.
Next thing is – how long will you realistically keep opponent stuff frozen? Not only you need to cast spells every turn, but you need to cast and and more of them, since opponent will most likely play more stuff. You stall, but you don’t kill. If this was a huge minion that would push for tons of face damage, stalling would be good. But unless you have something like Mana Wyrm on the board too and enemy has completely no spell answers/Charge minions to get rid of them, what will this stall lead to? You use a lot of spells to stall the game and push 2 damage per turn. Sure. You’ll run out of steam or enemy plays more stuff than you can kill/freeze and this just dies. You’ve pushed for 4 damage or 6 damage or whatever. And enemy is most likely to have the board control too, because the effect is pure tempo – it gives you no value at all. So what’s the plan after?
And the thing is – I don’t see it being played over Water Elemental. You can drop it on curve, it’s much harder to remove (2/4 is TERRIBLE statline against pretty much any 4-drop) and it threatens more damage per turn and you don’t have to use your spells for the freeze effect. Obviously, you can only freeze one thing per turn and you have to attack into it, but it’s still better in my opinion.
And if you really need to freeze a lot of stuff, I’d say that you should just play the Frost Nova instead. Unless I’m completely blind and I don’t see some combo, some synergy, I don’t think this card will see any Constructed play.
In Arena – terrible. There isn’t a lot to say – 2/4 stats for 4, the effect that’s very situational and requires you to play spells, so realistically you need to drop it later in the game AND combo with spells instantly to get a good effect. You rarely have a lot of spells in Arena. And even if you have spells, you might not want to play them – like Polymorph. I mean, you need to wait for a good target. Flamewaker is better, because even without any spells in your deck it’s at least “average” with 2/4 for 3. But even Flamewaker isn’t insane arena card. This is way, way below average. Like in the 30’s if you have quite a lot of spells in your deck and ~10 if you don’t.
Shifting Shade
This minion is pretty hard to evaluate. Since it’s pretty slow tempo card and you get random cards from the opponent’s deck – whether it’s going to be good REALLY depends on what decks you’re going to face. It would be insanely good in slow, Control matchups. You get something to drop on the board AND when it dies you get the value back. Stealing random card from Control deck will most likely be useful, and even if not, it’s not that big of a deal to lose the tempo on turn 4.
On the other hand, against fast decks not only you can’t afford to lose the tempo, but also a lot of cards won’t really help you. I mean, you get Abusive Sergeant – what are you going to use it for? Deal 2 more face damage or overkill that 2 health minion by 2 more?
It’s very similar to the Thoughtsteal – it’s amazing cards in slower matchups but sucks in faster ones. And Thoughtsteal is taken out whenever the meta becomes too fast, because it’s just unnecessary to get pure value against fast decks.
Maybe let’s talk about the body. 4/3 for 4 is very bad. Especially for the Priest. Priest wants to have high health minions, otherwise his Hero Power is pretty useless. If this dies after one trade then you can’t heal it back. Even 3/4 would be much better for Priest. Heck, in fast matchups even Gnomish Inventor is better – you prefer to draw from your own deck and 2/4 stats might actually be better against horde of small minions. In slow matchups “copying” the card instead of “drawing” it is a big upside, but it doesn’t make Thoughtsteal auto-include into every deck – you can’t plan around only playing slow decks.
Then the effect. Unlike Thoughtsteal, it’s a Deathrattle, so you don’t get the card instantly. What’s good about Thoughtsteal is that you might get a card that fits the given situation. It’s great late game play, because you still have 7 mana to work with. When it comes to this guy – you need to wait until it dies. Most likely it’s next turn, but that’s still 1 turn later than Thoughtsteal.
It would be cool if this one would STEAL a card instead of copying it, but I guess it would be really broken then. In the current state, I don’t really think it’s a card good in Priest. I think that Thoughtsteal is a slightly better card – so you probably won’t want to run this without running Thoughtsteal too, and running both is REALLY greedy – only good in the slowest matchups. So yeah, if the meta really slows down a lot, we might see it. But I honestly doubt it.
In Arena, it’s a good card in terms of value and average in terms of tempo. Dropping a 4/3 for 4 isn’t unknown – sometimes we’re forced to drop Kezan Mystic or Spellbreaker on curve without any effect. And I guess I would rate it highly in some other classes. But that’s NOT what Priest needs in Arena. Priest is one of those classes that really needs to not lose the early game board to win the game. Value is there – Priest’s Hero Power is probably the highest value one when it comes to board control. But then again, this card doesn’t really help with early game board control – it just gives you more value. And don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad card. It’s above average. But it just doesn’t push the Priest out of the “don’t lose board or you lose the game” kind of mindset. It also gets a poor trade against a lot of popular 4-drops (3/5, 4/5) and Priest can’t ping them when they’re at 1. I’d say that it’s a better late game card when you’re already in control of the game, not something you want to get on turn 4.
Twilight Flamecaller
I really love this card. And no, it won’t likely see a lot of play. Maybe not even any play. But I still love this and I think this is the way tech cards should be. Because that’s what it is – clearly a tech card that will only work in very specific meta.
So, this is an Arcane Explosion for 1 more mana, but built into a 2/2 body. While the body itself isn’t that great, you’re getting Arcane Explosion on top of a 2/2 for 1 mana body. A really nice combination. Arcane Explosion was already ALMOST playable (and actually a pretty common pick from Ethereal Conjurer in some matchups) in Zoo and Paladin heavy meta. This card would definitely see some play when the Secret Paladin was running rampant on the ladder. It’s an amazing counter to Muster for Battle. Or against Zoo, sometimes they might have board full of 1 health minions, especially after Imp-losion. Also awesome against Face Hunter with all their 1 health minions – it could even hit Worgen Infiltrator still in stealth.
In those matchups, I’d even say that it might be stronger than Flamewaker. In fast matchups Flamewaker is only great if you have the Coin + 1 mana spell to combo it on turn 3. If not, it’s sometimes hard to use it.
But then, in most of the other matchups this card is pretty weak. 1 damage isn’t really going to kill anything bigger, it might help with some trades, but the 2/2 body would make it too weak to be played and that’s why Flamewaker is better.
So, a tech card. Why I’ve said that a tech card should work like that? Because that’s how it should work – you play it to counter some stuff, it’s awesome against certain matchups, but it sucks against others. You have to take a risk to improve certain matchups. But a lot of tech cards in Hearthstone weren’t really punished stat-wise. Loatheb let’s say – it should be a tech card against spell-heavy decks, yet it has became a very common card in nearly every Midrange deck and some Aggro/Control decks. Or Big Game Hunter – it’s also 3 mana, yet it had 4/2 body, not a 2/2 like this one. I mean, it didn’t matter that much in the era of Dr. Boom (because BGH died anyway after sniping 7/7) but it might be a big deal sometimes.
Back to this card – it’s very balanced and it’s a good counter to “flood the board with small minions” kind of strategy. If this kind of deck becomes popular – this card is here to counter it quite nicely. It might never see play, but I think cards like that are necessary just “in case”, to keep some things in check if they spread too hard.
It’s also a pretty strong Arena card. Arcane Explosion is playable, it’s not very strong, but it’s… average. This card is clearly stronger than Arcane Explosion, so it should be above average. Also another comparison would be Ironforge Rifleman. It’s below average, but also playable. This card is clearly much stronger, the 1 damage ping is rarely going face and the situations where you needed that 1 damage to finish the game are very rare. So instead of dealing 1 damage to 1 minion, it deals 1 damage to everything. Suddenly I’d rate it somewhere in 60’s, which is nice for Arena.
Princess Huhuran
I’m really excited for this card, it might be one of the strongest individual cards released in the set so far. If Midrange style of Hunter will be played in this expansion, this card will DEFINITELY find the way in.
Let’s start with the stats. It has vanilla 5-drop stats, aggressively distributed (compared to the Pit Fighter). And it has a Beast tag. That alone might actually make the card playable, just like Stranglethorn Tiger has seen some play (although not very likely). But on top of the vanilla stats and Beast tribe it also has an additional effect, which is actually pretty strong.
Like I’ve said before, they seem to try to push the Deathrattle Hunter to work. While this minion is obviously an auto-include into a Deathrattle Hunter style of deck, it should also be played in other Midrange Hunters. Okay, so – it would be completely broken in Wild. Webspinner, Mad Scientist, Haunted Creeper, Piloted Shredder – they won’t be playable in Standard any more and they were all common in Hunter. But we still have probably the best contender – Savannah Highmane. It’s one of the best Hunter cards and it’s notorious for surviving until next turn, just because killing it often doesn’t do much and opponent’s prefer to spend their resources elsewhere. If played after Highmane, this one will be 5 mana 6/5 + 2x 2/2, which is insane tempo and insane value. Yeah.
But, my prediction is that we’ll still see some Deathrattles in Hunter. After all – not all of them are going away + we might see some more in the expansion too. I think this card would even possibly make a slower version of Midrange Hunter with something like Sylvanas Windrunner playable. Maybe even play a N’Zoth, The Corruptor just to top the curve and have great win condition in slow matchups? I don’t think going all-in into the Deathrattle strategy is good, but even with just 4-5 strong Deathrattle minions (and Highmane/Sylvanas are definitely ones) N’Zoth would be great. But those are only guesses right now.
One thing that I think about is whether we’ll be able to trigger a Deathrattle of a Silenced minion. We’ve already learned that N’Zoth will bring back Deathrattles that were Silenced. Savannah Highmane is one of the highest priority Silence targets in Hunter, so it might be a big difference.
In Arena, very good. You really don’t look at the effect that much – it’s just an addition. 6/5 Beast for 5 mana is amazing in Hunter, on the level of Pit Fighter, which is very good Arena card. Stat distribution is slightly weaker, but the Beast tag makes up for it. +an additional effect, while it won’t likely proc, if you run a Hunter deck with some Deathrattles and let’s say follow up a turn 4 Piloted Shredder with this minion, well, you just won the game. It’s already a high value pick in any Hunter deck and gets even better in case you draft a lot of Deathrattles. And the thing is – good Hunter decks often have quite a lot of Deathrattles.
Dark Arakkoa
When Klaxxi Amber-Weaver was revealed, I’ve said that Druid is a very likely candidate to play C’Thun just because of that. And hey, we have another amazing reazon to pick Druid as your class of choice for C’Thun deck.
Most of the Cultists were… underwhelming. Weak stats, no other effects, maybe not buffing the C’Thun enough. I thought that we even might be forced to play something Skeram Cultist (which in the light of recent news that Big Game Hunter is very likely to be hit with a nerf bat doesn’t seem as terrible as it did before, but still not good) just to get enough +X/+X for out C’Thun. But fear no longer, Dark Arakkoa is a way to go.
So, it has good stats / stat distribution. 5/7 for 6 is pretty good – it’s only 1 less Attack then Boulderfist Ogre. Unlike another 6 mana Taunt – Lord of the Arena – this one has a good stat distribution. It has enough attack to be relevant while having high health amount.
I’d actually say that with Sludge Belcher going away this card MIGHT have been playable even without the C’Thun thing, just as the 5/7 Taunt for 6. I mean, Ancient of War is most likely better, but this one comes a turn earlier and isn’t as vulnerable to Silence (War becomes 5/5 after Silence, this one stays as 5/5). Or you know, it’s a Druid of the Claw with +1/+1 for 1 more mana (just less flexible, because you can’t Charge it).
But, that’s not the most important part. It gives a freaking +3/+3 to your C’Thun. +3/+3! That’s really a lot. It means that C’Thun might really be playable on the curve, when turn 10 comes. Let’s say you play turn 2 Beckoner of Evil, turn 4 C’Thun’s Chosen and turn 6 Dark Arakkoa and your C’thun is 13/13 already. While it’s not impressive, that’s just after 3 Cultists being played, 2 of which are actually pretty good and the one that’s meh is a 2-drop so it doesn’t matter that much anyway. So in a VERY COMMON SCENARIO you’re able to drop C’Thun on turn 10 and already have a huge impact on the game.
I already predict that C’Thun Druid will be playable – and I’d even say that one more strong Cultist (on the level of C’Thun’s Chosen/Dark Arakkoa) is released and it will be top tier deck. Maybe it’s a bold statement, but it’s already pretty easy to build a Druid deck that doesn’t lose a lot, but gains a 4/10 for 4 mana minion (well, probably not on curve, but still amazing) and great finisher in form of C’Thun himself.
Since it’s C’Thun related, it won’t be playable in Arena, so no reason to talk about it. But IF it was playable in Arena, it would be amazing card.
Shifter Zerus
Amazing card concept. And even though I hate the completely random part, I think that more cards like that should be released. Why? Because the card is more complicated than just “do X”. Blizzard has always stated that they don’t want to make Hearthstone too hard, they want it to stay as a casual-friendly/new player-friendly game. No long card texts, no “confusing stuff”. But to make the game harder and thus more competitive, I think having some “complicated” stuff is really good.
But, back the card. I don’t believe it’s going to be strong for a few reasons. Maybe let’s first talk about what decks would/wouldn’t want to play this card. Aggro decks or high Tempo decks that want to play out their hand quickly definitely won’t want to play it. Decks where every card is precious and it’s already hard to fit anything else, especially something that might not be playable for really long (so a lot of Midrange decks) also wouldn’t want to play it. So, we’re left with decks that can afford to have a potential dead card sit in their hand for quite a long time. So stuff like Control decks. Maybe Priest or Warrior.
So, this guy would be PLAYABLE in this kind of decks. Playable, however, doesn’t mean good. You put every card into your deck for some reason. You don’t just throw in random stuff. And this is that kind of random stuff that might work sometimes, but will be a dead card most of time. “But hey, Stone, why is the Unstable Portal playable? This is an Unstable Portal every turn until you get something good!” Except it’s not. Unstable Portal is played in Tempo Mage, because it’s a cheap spell (for the sake of all the spell synergies), it’s also a tempo gain – you play it for 2 (or 1 with Sorcerer’s Apprentice) mana but you get 3 mana discount. You also don’t have to play the card instantly – if you get a Malygos from Unstable Portal, it costs 6 mana so you can just wait until turn 10 and finish enemy off with Malygos + 2x Frostbolt or something. Or just drop it on turn 6 as something that enemy clearly has to remove, but it might be hard because it has 12 health. If Zerus shifts into Malygos – it’s still 9 mana and you can’t keep it.
Yes, that’s another big part. You get a random card EVERY TURN. Let’s say you get Sylvanas Windrunner as the Warlock and you have Shadowflame in your hand. You can’t plan around playing it next turn or turn after, because Zerus will already be something else. If you each turn you could CHOOSE whether you want this to shift into another minion or not, it would be much, much better. Just a simple “yes/no” button. If you get something good, something you want, you might be able to keep it and just not shift it further. But here, you have only one turn to play each minion – it doesn’t matter that you get something crazy good if you are forced to remove something or Brawl this turn or I don’t know, play a Taunt because you’re scared of dying.
Then, the quality of a random minion. It’s bad. Only like 20% of minions are even played IN GENERAL. It doesn’t even mean that 20% of minions fit your deck. There are hundreds of useless/incredibly weak minions in the game. It means that this card might not even give you a good result for a whole freaking game. If it’s 10 turns in your hand, there is a very high chance that you might get 10 weak minions back to back. Even in a very slow and reactionary deck, it would be a dead card a lot of time.
“Hurr, durr, but you MIGHT get that 0.1% exact card you need in this situation”. Yes, but that’s so rare that you can’t count on that happening. It’s going to be a great Trolden clips material, but that’s it.
Then, another thing – this card is a 1/1 for 1 the turn you draw it. It doesn’t shift into anything else. So if you’re playing a slow deck and you’re topdecking, it’s a dead card. You just can’t play it. I mean, you can, but who would ever want to play a 1/1 for 1 with no effect? In a Control deck? It’s a big deal when you play a high pressure matchup where every draw is important – instead of getting a meaningful minion or a removal or something you get this and you can’t even play it. In matchups where you’re often low on cards, like against Zoo Warlock, it’s a matter of life and death.
So overall, this card is really weak. The variance is too high – and the thing is that EVEN if it shifts into something good, so what? I mean, the card doesn’t get any discount, it’s just like you’ve played this card in your deck. It’s like getting excited about this shifting into Ragnaros the Firelord – WOOOW, IT’S SO GOOD! Why not just play Ragnaros in the first place instead of it then? Just to hope that you’ll get a good heal/Taunt card against Aggro at the sake of it being unplayable for 90% of time? That’s not a good deal at all.
If you want to build a serious deck – just play any strong card in place of this guy. I guarantee you that it will be better in majority of your games. If you, however, like to play wonky stuff and really count on your luck – yes, this is a good pick, because IN THEORY it has a 0.0001% chance to be the best card in the game, because it will shift every game into just the right minion you need.
In Arena.. I mean, it’s better than in Constructed in a way that a lot of “bad” Constructed cards are actually “okay” in Arena. But I still think I’d pick pretty much any Legendary over it – it’s a dead card too often and you rarely can afford to have dead cards in Arena. And it sucks so hard in the top deck wars – if you top deck it it’s pretty much unplayable until your next turn, so you’re just skipping a whole turn. I don’t like it at all.
Closing
So here we are guys. We’re very close to the WoG release – April 26th is confirmed. In the official announcement they’ve stated that it will be 27th on EU/Asia, but I’m not sure what it means. It might mean that the non-Americas releases will be delayed, but it can also just be the matter of time zones (let’s say if it’s going to be released on 10PM in Americas, it would be a next day in EU/Asia already). We’ll see.
Like I’ve said last time, we’ll have a live stream on April 21th (10AM PDT, 6PM CET). My predictions about nerfs being announced there were right, so we’ll have a lot to talk about before the actual release! Probably we’ll do some live coverage here at HSP, so if you’re interested in our first thoughts, you’re welcome to come and share your own comments too! After that we’ll have a big recap of what happened, so in case you miss the stream – don’t worry, we’ll have everything covered for you 🙂
Also, expect a lot more articles after WoG release. I know the site has been a little stale lately, but don’t blame us – there isn’t really a lot to write half year after the last expansion! 🙁 Expect a lot of cool new brews, theorycrafting and coverage of the most popular decks next week!
Published: Apr 20, 2016 10:17 pm