This is the first 7 mana 9/9 in the game, and also has the highest stats of any 7-cost minion in the game.
This minion has an auto-attack feature which is comparable, but different to the chess piece encounter in the Karazhan adventure. This mechanic has been used in some fan-made cards.
COMPARABLE CARDS:
I don't really know.
REVIEW:
Didn't take too long as we already have the Hunter Legendary, and it's a very interesting card. We've never seen a card like this in any part of Hearthstone before, not even Tavern Brawls or boss encounters, NOTHING! The effect quite frankly is also very interesting as your opponent effectively can't play any minions with this on board or this will come and (most likely) kill it. This effect can really screw up your opponent's plays and make it very awkward for them to take their turn as any minion they play will die, which will force them to either use hard removal on it, or just play minions to get rid of it, which will end up killing about 2 or 3 minions in the process. It doesn’t matter if its Stealthed or behind a Taunt, Dred just says "fuck it" and chomps at them.
Now, with Poisonous minions being a thing, that can act as an immediate counter to this card as Dred will just attack it, eat it and die. Now none of the Poisonous minions see any play, and after the rotation hits, there will only be 2 of them in the game (Patient Assassin and Emperor Cobra). Hilariously enough though, through Adapt effects, Adapt minions have a 1/10 chance to get the Poisonous effect (if you don't get it, it becomes a 1/9 chance for the second option, then a 1/8 chance for the third option), thought this will only apply for Adapt minions which buff themselves. Alternatively, it's also weak against Divine Shield minions.
Of course, it's worth noting that the card says "play" and not "summon", so Dred will only attack minions your opponent plays directly from their hand. Also Sylvanas Windrunner is rotating out so you won't have to worry about her in Standard (I can't help but thinking this card was part of why). Also, it's a nice curve play after Savannah Highmane on turn 6.
If you think 2-drops are rare in Priest, 1-drops are even rarer. There's currently only 3 of them in the game, Northshire Cleric, Shadowbomber and Twilight Whelp. One of which has already rotated out, and another is rotating out when this expansion hits. The 1-drop slot however has never been very problematic for Priests as Northshire Cleric is a very good card for any type of Priest decks, and Twilight Whelp was a fantastic opening 1-drop for Dragon Priest. Without the whelp rotating out, it makes sense to make another 1-drop so people have another option.
Fortunately, this card does that justice amazingly well. While Northshire Cleric is a really good Priest card, you can't always play it on turn 1 and get value out of it, and it does require a set-up to make use of it. This card suffers from none of those problems whatsoever. You just plop it on the board on turn 1 (or whenever), and it’s going to do its job. The effect of giving you a card from your opponent's deck will tell you information about your opponent's deck and will allow you to see any key cards they haven't drawn yet (therefore don’t need to be played around). It also effectively draws a card without getting yourself closer to fatigue (unless you end getting something like a Shield Slam). Compared to Swashburglar or Babbling Book, you don't get the immediate impact, but instead you get a better card overall since you're getting something you’re opponent put into their deck rather than just a random card created from outside the game (and if your opponent has played Elise the Trailblazer, you have a chance of getting the Un'Goro Pack). But, no one is going to Silence this thing, especially early on in the game so that downside is almost completely negligible.
Also, it's an Elemental so it does have the upcoming Elemental synergies we’re awaiting to see. It just looks like a really awesome Priest 1-drop.
Well, here is a really weird Paladin Legendary, and I mean REALLY weird. It's essentially a very strange mashup of Keeper of Uldaman and Eadric the Pure, two Paladin cards which are both rotating out. I suppose Blizzard wanted make a replacement for Eadric. Compared to him, this guy costs 1 less and has Taunt with the same statline. That's quite the improvement so far. He does have the same problem as Eadric in which your opponent needed a big enough board to justify using it to weaken it, but unlike Eadric, this card can be used to buff your own stuff as well, utilizing the flexibility which made Keeper of Uldaman a good card.
However, it loses some of those points it gained because the ENTIRE board will be effected meaning there may be some minions either player controls that you don’t want to apply the enchantment to, which ultimately makes this card inconsistent and situational. There will be times where you will want some minions effected, but others you don't want effected. To get the dream situation in which you buff your own minions and nerf all of your opponent’s minions is a bit of a far stretch.
Notably though, since ALL other minions are now 3/3, this allows you to easily be able to trade minions you otherwise would have a really hard time taking care of. Changing their Health means they also now easier to kill, which is something Eadric lacked. The card could potentially be used as a Jade Golem counter, but Eadric could do that exact same thing, arguably better and it still didn't see much play. There's the possibility that Paladin does get a card which greatly combos with this (like their own Hellfire), but as it stands, I think the card is too inconsistent to really work out too well.
Reveals aren't stopping now as we've just received a very interesting Priest card. If the Fun Fact cards are anything to go by, 2 mana to Discover something isn't really too good (A Light in the Darkness was a 2 mana Discover with an addition benefit, and that card didn't really see any play). However, because you are Discovering something in your deck, your card pool is going to be both, and smaller (therefore more predictable). In the card’s reveal video, we saw as an example, Discovering a Shadow Word: Pain in a clutch situation to destroy a Frothing Berserker. This situation isn't actually too unrealistic and very well could happen in a real game.
The card does allow you to Discover a spell you may really need in your deck at this instance or to save it for later. It can also be very useful for Reno decks to get a second copy of a useful spell in your deck without destroying the deck consistency. Though because the spell you played will say "Created by Shadow Visions", your opponent may then assume that they no longer have to spell since it's most likely going to still be in your deck. You can also do fun things with Elise the Trailblazer and get another Un'Goro Pack and get it right away. Because you have 3 choices, that's actually a very real possibility. Could also be used in an OTK Priest with Prophet Velen to Discover a copy of one of the combo pieces, which you may draw later, though do be aware that Emperor Thaurissan is rotating out which will make this deck Wild only.
The card in interesting and may be worth trying out, however I don’t necessarily think it would’ve been too overpowered at 1 mana, since this is better than cards like Journey Below and I Know a Guy. The former of which has seen/sees niche play, whereas the Latter didn't really see any play at all.
This is the cheapest Warlock Legendary minion in the game, and tied with Pyros and Hobart Grapplehammer for the cheapest class Legendary minion in the game.
So here is the card revealed to us by Reynad, it's the Warlock Legendary minion. Surprise, surprise, it's related to discarding cards. This in unlike other Warlock Legendaries which tend to have the highest cost out of every class in the game, but instead is a very cheap one, only costing 2 mana. In terms of discard synergy however, this card is actually insane. Just like Fist of Jaraxxus and Silverware Golem, this is a card that you actually want to discard. There's never a bad time to discard it, and unlike Fist, you'll never get an unsatisfactory result from it. You discard it one time, and it becomes a 2 mana 4/4. Any more times after that and you're going to be ballin’. It also works awesomely with Lakkari Sacrifice because you can just keep discarding this and get your Quest done much easier.
Along with Malchezaar's Imp, you can repeatedly discard this and get free cards and give this +2/+2 at the same time. With Deathwing, you can discard this and all of a sudden, you can easily have a REALLY big, scary creature in your creature to play for a cheap price to make up for what you lost with Deathwing.
It's also a Beast, which means absolutely nothing for Warlocks. I suppose it's tagged as a Beast because it's a Silithid (like Princess Huhuran). If for some reason, you decide to run The Curator in your Discolock, then I guess there's value there. Even if it isn’t a Demon though, the card is still exploding with potential. In a Discolock, I don't think the Demon synergy really even matters that much.
This is non-retroactively, the first 1-cost Elemental in the game. After the rotation hits, two 1-cost minions will become Elementals: Dust Devil and Arcane Anomaly.
The name of this card is a pun of the word "firefly", which is a type of bug, and has absolutely nothing to do with fire.
Well, here we have a new Elemental minion. A basic 1/2 for 1 that adds another 1/2 Elemental to your hand. Despite what one might think, it doesn't add a copy of itself to your hand, but instead adds a vanilla token to your hand called Flame Elemental which is a 1/2 Elemental for 1. Now, if we look at this card, then look at 1 mana 1/2's, 2/1's or even 2/2's, this card doesn't seem to exciting at first glance. In reality though, the card just brews with potential because of two newly revealed cards at the moment: Stone Sentinel and Ozruk. The synergy Elementals have is with playing Elementals on the previous turn, which is perhaps the most interesting tribe synergy in the game as of now.
From there, we see why this card is actually pretty good, as both itself and the Flame Elemental token provide very cheap ways to buff up your next Elementals. For example, in Shaman, you can play a 5-drop (White Eyes for example), then this, and then you just made a really cheap trigger for Stone Sentinel and still made a very optimal turn 6 play. Because the token is also an Elemental in itself, you can also use that for the synergies as well. Full evaluation will require what all Elemental synergy cards we get, but this is a very promising start.
And here we have another card to give us that Flame Elemental token. This time a Mage spell that also deals 2 damage in the process, and as stated by Mike Donais, Mage and Shaman are the main Elemental classes, but other classes will get a small taste of the Elementals (we've already seen Crystalline Oracle), and we already have some Neutral ones too.
But on to the card, it's a little bit worse than Fire Fly in the sense that it only gives you a single Elemental as opposed to two. It does however allow you to get rid of a threat at the same time which Fire Fly doesn't do (which is why Lava Shock saw more play than Eternal Sentinel even though it doesn’t have as much value on paper). This means that this card is actually probably around the same power level as Fire Fly even if it doesn't look like it on first glance. A problem however is that Mage has both Sorcerer's Apprentice and Frostbolt, both also 2 mana and commonly run by Mages everywhere which may make it really awkward for building an Elemental Mage deck. I imagine though that if Elemental Mage because good, it would be happy to run this over Frostbolt, and may even run Pyros as well.
Well, if you thought a 4 mana 7/7 was too much, we now have a 7 mana 4/4. Memes aside, if you saw Fire Fly (not Flame Geyser though because this is a Shaman card), you know what you do with this card. The Fire Fly and its Flame Elemental token both serve as cheap ways to enable this. But not only that but because Fire Elemental is becoming an Elemental, you can easily play Fire Elemental on turn 6, then curve into this on turn 7 to get a 4/4 and two 2/3 Taunt minions, just like Feral Spirit's effect. If Feral Spirit's effect is anything to go off of, playing two 2/3 minions is worth somewhere between 4 and 5 mana, which means getting the minions from this can make this card roughly a 2 to 3 mana 4/4, which is pretty decent in itself, but the tokens are also Elementals too so there will be some bonus synergy there (that is if we get a card that buffs Elementals on your board.
In addition to that though, you also have Evolve synergy. As revealed by Hearthstone's Facebook page, the tokens cost 2 mana. This means you can Evolve and get an 8-drop and two 3-drops. You'll probably get something good and it will no longer make Stone Sentinel weak to Flamestrike which is one of this card's downsides. True that if you can’t play any Elementals, it’s just a 7 mana 4/4, but we will see more Elementals and cards that produce the Flame Elemental, so I don’t think that will be a real problem. It's good.
Here, we have the huge, big, scary Elemental Legendary, Ozruk. It's effect ties into cards like Stone Sentinel. You play Elementals last turn, you gain a benefit. Rather than just playing an Elemental on your last turn however, this card has a stackable effect which gets bigger and better the more Elementals you have, and this effect is very easy to abuse with these conditions. We already talked about why Fire Fly is good, and this card will easily take advantage of that. Play the Fire Fly, then the Flame Elemental and you have a 5/15 Taunt. There's no doubt that that's a massive Taunt minion, but then you look at Soggoth the Slitherer who's a very similar card, couldn't be hit by removal and he only occasionally sees/saw play, but to be fair, part of that is because of the meta and not the card, but it's stats were also a bit weak.
Despite the card's potential to become massive, it being able to die to hard removal is definitely a problem. It will be devastating to build a MASSIVE Taunt wall for your opponent, only to have it destroyed or nullified by a 3 mana card. This is why I don't think the card will see any play. Yes, it's amazing when your opponent doesn’t have removal, but so is The Ancient One. If Control, or even Midrange Elemental decks become meta, people will just simply start running hard removal rendering this guy useless.
If you're the guy who tries to make this card work in an Elemental deck, good luck.
Well, here's the Shaman Quest. I thought it would either have something to do with Overload or Elementals, but it's instead what third place probably would’ve been, Murlocs. Only two Murlocs that Shaman's can play are rotating out of Standard, Murloc Tinyfin and Sir Finley Mrrgglton. Shaman is also losing Everyfin is Awesome, but that card really wasn't played so it isn’t really too much of a lose, but it would be cool to use Megafin's effect.
What's important, and also extremely useful is that the Quest only requires the Murlocs to be summoned and not played. This means that the tokens from cards like Murloc Tidehunter or Call in the Finishers will contribute to the Quest, which is of course very useful (sadly Bilefin Tidehunter only counts as one, because the Ooze isn't a Murloc). Finja's effect also works nicely with this to instantly place two Murlocs on the field which will overall contribute to 3 of the Quest since Finja himself is a Murloc. The ideal curve of this card is:
Turn 6: Attack with Finja, summon two Murlocs, and you're Quest is done (you summoned exactly 10 Murlocs). Now you can play Megafin.
But of course, that's kind of a dream situation. Murlocs are really easy to swarm up, but at the same time, it's probably one of the harder Quests to fulfill so far which I think is going to be the main downside of this card. This card however will become better with more Murlocs released in the expansion.
We haven't even gotten to Megafin himself (or herself, not assuming genders) yet. Just like Amara, he's a 5 mana 8/8. Its effect is to fill your hand with random Murlocs, essentially a more powerful Neptulon. It will be possible to get Murlocs from other classes and it may not be that unlikely to get a Seadevil Stinger into Finja, the Flying Star. Because most Murlocs are cheap, it filling your hand isn't a big deal because you can easily play some of your Murlocs in your hand to clear up some space. There's also some combo potential with Gentle Megasaur. Because it fills your hand, you will need to empty your hand a bit to make use of it, but as a Murloc deck, that's basically second nature. Overall, it does have some potential, but I think it's one of the weaker Quests we've seen so far because it requires more commitment and the Quest requires more to complete. However, it could easily become better with more cards.
Speaking of Murlocs, we have a spectacular tool for Murlocs here to Discover them at will. Don't have Finja in your hand? Here you go, this card lets you do that. One of the main weaknesses of Murlocs is that you tend to empty your hand a lot, unless you're playing Anyfin Paladin. Then this card comes in and gets you some additional cards. It's condition that you need another Murloc to play is almost negligible because Murlocs are masters of board swarming (only in a really bad topdecking situation can it really be relevant). Gorrilabot A-3 saw play before Naxx and GvG rotated out, and it’s a lot easier to spam Murlocs than it is to spam Mechs.
In addition to that, it contributes as two Murlocs for Unite the Murlocs because you have this as a Murloc itself whatever you Discovered from this. A cool, but rather unreliable and somewhat inefficient trick you can do is Discover another copy of this, and the more times you can do it, the more you apply to the Quest. The only Murloc deck you wouldn’t play it in is Anyfin Paladin as this is a Murloc itself. Definitely an include for every other type of Murloc deck though.
This is the first Shaman Legendary with a comma in its name.
Over time in Hearthstone, the Shaman Legendary cost started at 8 (Al'Akir) and went down by 1 each expansion (Neptulon, Mistcaller, Hallazeal). White Eyes in MSoG broke this trend, and this card reset it back to 8.
Despite elements supposedly being one of the main themes of the Shaman class, this is the first card in the game that focuses on all four of the main elements.
In fact, all four elements can be seen in action in the card's artwork.
In the previous expansion, MSoG, the HearthPwn exclusive card reveal went to Dirty Rat.
Well we just reviewed the Shaman Legendary Quest not too long ago, and now we get to do the actual Legendary minion now, and this is one interesting minion. Sure some people may have been disappointed that we still don’t have Therazane in the game yet, but I think this definitely makes up for that. Basically when you play it, if you played an Elemental last turn (which you probably have), you get a choice of which element to use to your advantage. Although the card text doesn’t explicitly state it, you do indeed get to choose which one you cast. This is where the card comes in very handy because the card is VERY versatile. It's like Choose One on steroids.
You can choose the Invocation of Air when you need to do AoE damage to clear the board and get back in the game. If you have Hallazeal the Ascended on the board, then it's possible that this will work with that (it's rare that you'll get to be able to do this, but it would still be pretty cool if it worked). You can choose Invocation of Earth if you want/need additional board presence, plus it works well with Evolve. You can choose Invocation of Water if you're in a desperate situation and need to heal. You can choose Invocation of Fire to finish your opponent off. It essentially allows you to run four different cards crammed into one, only taking one deck slot and you get to choose which four to use when you play. More or less, every single option is useful for something and will come into play. You can ideally get a turn 6 Fire Elemental into turn 7 Stone Sentinel, and turn 8, this. You do need to play an Elemental last turn to activate it, but with stuff like Fire Fly, the Flame Elemental token, Tar Creeper, and all of the other Elemental minions we're getting, I don't think that’s a problem.
Well, here we have another card to add to the list of Elemental synergy cards. It's not an Elemental itself as it's a Tol'vir (though if you really wanted to, you probably could debate if Tol’vir should count as Elementals). Regardless of that though, this is yet another really strong Elemental synergy card, especially when you look at Sen'jin Shieldmasta, which is arguably one of the better Basic minions in the game. Interestingly, this does make Magma Rager better, as you’ll be able to play Magma Rager on turn 3, then this on turn 4. If your Magma Rager SOMEHOW didn’t die on your opponent’s turn, this card would do a good job at protecting it once again, as it both Taunts and will be safe from damage for one time. Really though, just play Tar Creeper instead though.
It isn't an Elemental itself, so it won't trigger Elemental synergies, but if it did, it would be WAY too powerful (Wyrmrest Agent not being a Dragon didn't prevent it from seeing play in every Dragon Priest). Once again, we look back at Fire Fly and its Flame Elemental token. Both of which provide extremely cheap ways to trigger this, so I don’t think fulfilling the condition will be a problem. An absolute auto-include in all Elemental decks.
Hydrology is the study of water, and a Hydrologist is someone who works in that field of science. This makes it very fitting for the minion to be a Murloc.
This is the first Paladin Discover card with any additional benefits (unless you want to get really technical and say Grimestreet Informant is a Paladin card), as A Light in the Darkness gave the minion you Discover +1/+1, and Ivory Knight restores Health to your hero.
This and Finders Keepers are interesting examples of Discover cards in which the choices are only findable in certain classes, which raises some questions over what happens in different classes.
Here is the card that Savjz revealed to us. In addition to being adorable, it's also a very interesting card. The very first two things people think of when they see the card is probably the following: "But Paladin Secrets suck, so why play this?" and "What happens if you get this in a non-Secret class?" (and there are a LOT of ways to do that). While that is a fair thought, that without Mysterious Challenger, most Paladin Secrets suck, this is where the flexibility of the Discover mechanic comes in and where it's really useful because it doesn't take up a deck slot. For example, you would never run Goldshire Footman in your Constructed deck, but you may Discover it from Dark Peddler if you really need a Taunt minion.
This card is the same way. Discovering the right Paladin Secret for a given situation is a really nice advantage since you don't use bad cards in your deck and wait for the time they're good. Instead you can pick it when it's the time they're good, and it basically allows you to play a 31 card deck with the consistency of a 30 card deck. Normally you would never play around Eye for an Eye or Sacred Trial, but when a player Discovers a card from a card effect, all of a sudden, you may have to start playing around cards you normally don’t play around because no one runs them. You'll feel bad when you have a Deathwing on board and you’re opponent Discovered Eye for an Eye from this.
Another thing to note is that there's a very small Secret pool in Standard. With Competitive Spirit and Sacred Trial rotating out, we only have Eye for an Eye, Noble Sacrifice, Redemption, Repentance, Getaway Kodo, and any Paladin Secret we may get from this expansion (which is probably going to happen). This means that your card pool is very predictable and you need a certain Secret, you have a 60% chance to get it (50% if another Secret is introduced). It will be predictable for your opponent too, but naturally you already play around a lot of Secrets when your opponent has one.
This card has gotten very mixed feedback. I can see how it's worse than other 2-drops because Paladin Secrets are usually something you can scoff at, but it’s definitely an interesting card nonetheless. It may not be as good as Dark Peddler, but it still has its moments. For those of you wondering what happens if a non-Secret class gets it, I really don’t know what happens. We'll need to ask someone about that.
Crystal Core is the first Quest reward in which the effect is not strictly advantageous, since a minion with more stats than a 5/5 will be dropped to a 5/5 by this effect.
Crystal Core is the first spell in the game with a continuous spell effect that lasts for the rest of the game (though technically Nether Portal would also count).
COMPARABLE CARDS:
I got nothing.
REVIEW:
Well here is the Rogue Quest revealed to use by Peter Whalen. Unlike something like "play X Stealth minions" or "play X cards from your opponent’s class" which is something we may have thought of, instead it's something completely different that makes usage of returning minions to your hand and using additional copies of your minions to play 4 copies of one minion. Fortunately Rogue has a number of different ways to use this with cards like Shadowstep, Gadgetzan Ferryman, Kidnapper, Thistle Tea, Shadowcaster, Vanish, as well as a card I'll review in section 3, Mimic Pod. So Rogue definitely has all of the tools to make this Quest work (but unfortunately, Gang Up is rotating out of standard). This Quest however does require more effort to complete than other Quests, as you will need to copy or return something to the hand at least 2 times on one given minion to complete it. Lots of commitment to the Quest has to be done, because you'll need a lot of bouncing effects and/or copying effects to complete the Quest, which will most likely make the deck lose some of its consistency or playability.
Though it wouldn't necessarily be terrible, you probably wouldn't play this in Mill Rogue because Mill Rogue ideally wants to kill their opponent with overdraw, and making your minions 5/5, although nice, doesn’t help you achieve your win condition other than making your minions more powerful.
What's also interesting to note about the Quest is that unlike the other Quest, this can be done with multiple different types of cards. Since you could easily play 2 different copies of one minion, then 3 of another, how is the Quest going to keep track of all of that? Is it just whichever one is higher, or does the effect stack up with each extra duplicate, even if they're different cards? You can ask a question about the Crystal Core itself, being that does it make the minions in your hand 5/5, or make them 5/5 when they hit the board? This actually does matter because if it's applied in your hand, it works well with Edwin VanCleef. Otherwise though, it's bad. Making all of your minions 5/5 can be really good because you normally don’t run minions with that much stats in Rogue, but in the event that you are, it's going to take a toll. Even then though, most of the time, you're probably safe. It's an average Quest in my opinion because it's harder to activate than the others and the effect can still be significantly argued. It however is a very cool Quest with a very interesting effect that buffs Sherazin, Corpse Flower. I imagine people will try to make this work, and have quite a bit of fun with it.
So, do you remember how we just reviewed the Rogue Quest, The Caverns Below? Well, revealed along with that is this card to help with that. When you compare this to Thistle Tea, this costs half as much mana and gives you two third as many cards (Thistle Tea draws one, then puts two copies of it into your hand. This draws one, then puts one copy of it into your hand). Drawing one card and copying it has both advantages and disadvantages over drawing 2 cards, ala Arcane Intellect.
Drawing one, and copying it allows you to essentially run 3 copies of a certain card without diluting your deck. It's always really nice to have a third Preparation ready for when you need it, or whatever you're running. Being able to get a second copy of a Legendary can not only be really powerful, but it can also throw people off guard. If you play one, they won't play around another. It also doesn't get you as close to fatigue as Arcane Intellect, but it will still give you the same card amount of card advantage.
For the disadvantages however, what you copy is going to be based on what you draw via the effect and it’s unpredictable as to what the result will be. This is a similar problem to cards like Flame Leviathan (although not nearly as destructive, nor does it have the potential to massively backfire). In addition to that, if you really need to draw for answers, it would be better to draw 2 cards for 2 different options, rather than just one card and copying it once.
All things considered, it's roughly on the same power level as Arcane Intellect, and Arcane Intellect is good, so therefore this will see play. The disadvantages I mentioned earlier probably won’t be too bad since you'll always have good cards in your deck unless you're playing Tavern Brawl. It does also have some synergy (albeit unpredictable) with the Rogue Quest card, The Caverns Below.
As both Rexxar and his partner in crime (literally), Uther, are MIA for the most part at the moment, people want to see them get good cards. Oh, how the tables have turned around. As we people all probably know, Hunters have always been about Beasts and being aggressive. Team 5 however has always wanted a Control Hunter to exist in the meta, evident with cards like Giant Sand Worm. While I don’t either of us would mind a Control Hunter existing, it's really difficult for Hunter to get the tools for it, as its Hero Power is quite literally just "go face". But alas, Team 5 is still trying.
What Hunter however has been able to do is have a Tier 1 or 2 Midrange deck. This card does slide into that position, but does it do it well enough? Well, Hunters normally tend to run lots of cheap minions in their deck. In any given Hunter deck, you'd probably run Fiery Bat and/or Alleycat as your 1-drops, or if you want to be really weird, Timber Wolf is seeing more play in Hunter than it did before. So, the 1-drops you’d want to play in your deck are more or less already sorted. In terms of Neutrals, you could grab a Mixtures of Mixtures with this for healing, or if you just wanted to goof off, you could run Shifter Zerus with this (which to be fair, actually wouldn't be too bad because he could actually turn into something with better board presence).
It's a 5-cost card which is a very lacking spot for Hunters right now. They have Tundra Rhino, Princess Huhuran, Knuckles, and that's it… (and Ram Wrangler is rotating out) Having more options (especially better ones) is certainly a plus. Hunters are also very lacking in card draw. They have Tracking, and then that's really it. Tracking isn't bad, but it’s better to run Neutral card draw (i.e, Loot Hoarder) so you don’t lose core parts of your deck. Neutral card draw is also something Hunters have to rely on (specifically Quick Shot is rotating out, and was used more for the 3 damage than the draw).
In essence, it takes two aspects Hunter’s very much lack (5-drops and card draw), and combines both into one card. It has roughly a 3 mana statline, so you're paying about 2 mana for an Arcane Intellect that only draws 1-drops. 1-drops tend to not be very useful in the late game, so playing this can force you to draw them so you don’t dilute your deck with bad draws later. There of course is also the likelihood that Hunters get another 1-drop in this expansion. Overall, it has potentially to fill in the draw spot for Hunters and I think it’s a better card than it might seem. I’m going to give it a "Good", but this alone won’t make Hunter rise up to meta.
This and Frost Elemental are the only Neutral forms of Freezing in the game. As of now, only Mage and Shaman have their own class-specific Freezing cards (and Shaman only has 1).
Pop Quiz! When was the last time we had any Neutral Freezing in the game? If you guessed Frost Elemental, you are right. Did that card see any play? Well, occasionally in Renolock to combo with Corruption. But other than that, no, it didn't see any play, because its cost was too high and its stats were too low. This card on the other hand doesn't have either of those issues, because it’s a 1 mana 2/1. If there’' something people don’t want to see, it's aggressive or really over-statted 1-drops. Fortunately, this is intended to be anti-Aggro and I think it accomplishes being an anti-Aggro card quite well. However, I feel it may suffer from the Flame Juggler syndrome. In which, despite being an anti-Aggro card, Aggro will probably use it themselves too.
It's a 1-drop which can actually be really useful late-game, which is rare enough as is. If you're opponent has a really, big, scary minion on the board, you can just Freeze it and it can't attack next turn. Speaking of 1-drops being useful late game, it is a really nice 1-drop to get from the new Hunter card, Tol'vir Warden because you can actually draw it when you need it, and it can almost always be useful. What shouldn’t be overlooked is that the Battlecry can Freeze your opponent's Hero as well, which can be used to prevent your opponent from attacking with their weapon (ESPECIALLY useful against Pirate Warrior).
While, it can be pretty good for any deck, especially one planning to run anti-Aggro, the two classes that can use this card best are Mage and Warlock. Mage because of Freeze synergy with Shatter and Cryomancer (and Ice Lance, which is being put into the Hall of Fame), and Warlock because of Corruption. I stated before that Corruption has sometimes been used in Renolock with Frost Elemental. Say goodbye to that 6-drop because we now have a 1-drop which does the same thing way better. With Corruption, you can easily a 2 mana kill on anything and get a 2/1 minion on the board. It's especially going to be really good in Arena as well, and as an anti-Aggro card with good stats and a nice ability, this is definitely a nice card to have. Just to top it all off, it's also an Elemental so it's a fantastic and cheap trigger for cards like Tol'vir Stoneshaper and Kalimos, Primal Lord.
This is the first card in the game with the word "curious" in it.
This card uses the Discover interface, but doesn't use a Discover effect. This effect is shared with Tracking, Kalmios, Primal Lord and the Shaman’s upgraded Hero Power via Justicar, Totemic Slam.
Before the reveal stream on the 24th, Firebat has revealed to us one last card and it’s one of the coolest, most unique effects we've seen in the entire game. It's like a card you'd expect someone to make for a Fan Creation competition. Blizzard is really stepping up their game with creativity and making more complex cards than they otherwise would be comfortable with, which is a good thing.
Basically it shows you three random cards, one of which will be in your opponent’s deck, and the other two won’t be. You then have to guess which of the 3 is in your opponent's deck. If you're right, you get a copy of it, and you also get knowledge of what your opponent hasn't drawn yet. It rewards meta knowledge and overall game knowledge. As confirmed by Mike Donais here, only class cards will show up unless the deck had no class cards to begin with. I don't really know why your opponent's deck wouldn't have any class cards, but just in the obscure off chance that'll probably never happen, you can get Neutrals that way. Let's say you’re against a Druid, and your choices are either Swipe, Savagery or Bite (and yes, this is based off of Firebat's example), you can pretty easily guess that it's Swipe. In the event that you get a pick wrong however, you now know that one of the other two is in your opponent’s deck and can start playing around either of those two.
The card is good as it's a 3/3 for 3 that draws you a card from your opponent’s deck because most of the time, you'll get it right. Even if you do get it wrong though, you can at least get an idea of what your opponent has. It’s a rare example of a card that’s better in Constructed than it is in Arena, where decks are much more decided.
This is the very first card that was revealed in the HTC stream in the Bahamas.
This is the first Adapt minion that can Adapt itself multiple times. It's been leaked but not officially confirmed that the effect of Galvadon will be like this as well.
About damn time we got another Adapt card, and this one is a lot more exciting than the boring old Verdant Longneck. Here, you actually get to Adapt twice without the use of Brann Bronzebeard, and the value you get for choosing more than one adaptation is actually pretty insane. You can pick Massive and Liquid Membrane, or Massive and Crackling Shield, to get a huge defensive minion to keep you in the game, or you can pick up something like Shrouding Mist + Lightning Speed to give a finisher that’s likely to stick on the board because your opponent will likely have to do some really weird means to actually be able to kill it. Even if you pick up something like +3 Attack and +3 Health, that’s still an 8/9 for 7. Obviously that wouldn’t be for Constructed, but this card will be absolutely AMAZING in Arena because of what you can do with it and almost every adaptation is good. How good this will be in Constructed will depend on how often you can get a good combo of self-protection (i.e Massive + Liquid Membrane, or Shrouding Mist + Whatever).
In short: Absolute god tier Arena card. Might have some place in Constructed.
This is the first Neutral card in the game that give Armor. Previously, the only classes that had any access to Armor through regular means were Warrior, Druid and Mage.
Well, we already saw Golakka Crawler as one counter for Pirate Warriors, and here's another. When you destroy your opponent's weapon, you gain Armor equal to its attack. This essentially means that if your opponent hit you in the face with the weapon already, you basically heal up all of the damage you just took. The best part too is that it does it in Armor instead of healing, so you can heal along with it to gain even more health.
Compare this to Harrison Jones. Despite his lackluster stats, he still saw play because metas were slower, and drawing cards is indeed a powerful effect. In a faster meta (especially with a deck as fast as Pirate Warrior), I can see this card possibly being better for the Armor gain and because it's not as bad if you don’t hit a weapon (3/3 for 3 is better than 5/4 for 5). If you choose to destroy an Arcanite Reaper, then you'll probably get somewhere between 5 to 7 Armor. It's hard to say whether or not that Armor will actually be significant enough to make a difference. Of course though, getting a 3/3 for 3, 5 Armor and getting rid of your opponent’s weapon.
Of course, as with most tech cards, if they don’t hit it right, then well they kinda suck. So, honestly, it's very difficult to say how good this will be. I think people will definitely try it out, and there’s the possibility that it works.
We all knew that Mage would get a new Secret in this expansion as we already got Arcanologist. Your opponent casts a spell, you get it for 0, but unlike Conterspell, the spell your opponent casts will still go through (unless you were to combo this card with Counterspell). The problem I see with this card is that you around it the same way you play around Counterspell. I think the best way to introduce new Mage Secrets would be to give them different triggering conditions than other Secrets do.
I will however say this. This is better in the early game that Counterspell is and is probably one of the better Quests you can play after a turn 2 Arcanologist. Your opponent casting a 1, 2 or 3 cost spell, even if not worth much value of paper, won't affect you that badly. It costing 0 is better. As stated by Peter Whalen on the Bahamas stream, a 0 mana Wrath is still nice to get.
I don't however think this card will see play, seeing as how you play around both this and Counterspell at the same time (very much like Mirror Entity and Potion of Polymorph). It's not a terrible Secret and if you could Discover it, it could come in handy in some spots, but I don’t think people will put into their deck because it’s about as reliable (possibly a bit more or a bit less) as Counterspell, which we don't really see.
Well, people wanted good Rogue cards and it looks like they got their wish because this card is insane, like actually INSANE. Look at Assassinate, then look at this card. Need I say more? Well, I'm going to anyway. The combo of course is easy to pull off because of cards like Backstab, Preparation, Counterfeit Coin, etc. You still have other ways if you need them too. You get 3 mana stats at 3/4, and for 2 mana, you get to destroy any minion, ANYTHING, even something Elusive because it's a Battlecry and not a spell. You basically assassinate with a free 3/4 body attached to it. Not to mention, you can easily Shadowstep it, bounce it back with a Panda, or if it lives a turn, you can use Shadowcaster with it. More easy destroy effects. This is such a good target for those kinds of effects too as it becomes cheaper and therefore even easier to combo with. You could use this as the ultimate minion to complete The Caverns Below with.
What I'm reviewing here may possibly be the most creative card in the entire game so far. If you thought Curious Glimmerroot was extra-creative, that was just the start of it for we have this extremely crazy card. Basically, what happens is that you destroy all of your mana (yeah), and for each crystal destroyed, you summon a 2/2 Mana Treant as displayed next to the card. When one of them dies, you gain one of your mana crystals back. It's a very weird card, but despite the absurdity, there are some interesting things to note about the card.
As we saw in the stream, it will only destroy mana crystals up to the amount of Mana Treants you summon. So, if you summon 5 of them, you only destroy 5 mana, and that mana can be full or empty. When they die, you get an empty mana crystal back and not a full one. This is important because if they die on your opponent's turn, you gain all of that Mana back readily usable on your next turn, essentially turning this into a Force of Nature that could summon any amount of Treants up to 7. If you were to kill them on your turn though, the mana would be empty and you will still be absolutely starving for it. Ideally what you really want is for your opponent to have to kill them on their own turn.
Notably, if you Innvervate this out, the 2 mana crystals you gained becomes permanent if you destroy enough of them because you now destroyed those 2 mana crystals from Innervate to summon more Mana Treants (UPDATE: This does not work) and when they die, they give you a fresh, new (albeit empty) mana crystal.
And something that people have been noting (halfway as a joke, halfway as serious) is that Mass Dispel and Devolve (or even Vanish) completely shits on these cards. Which is true, there are quite a few Shamans that run Devolve. But I don't think one card in one class is going to be that big of a problem.
As of now, I honestly have now idea how to rate this card. It could be either REALLY amazing or REALLY terrible, and only time will tell.
Well, we know that Team 5 has been going for a Deathrattle theme, and that they’re rotating out Sylvanas Windrunner for more interesting Deathrattle build-around cards. Here is one of them right here and when they see it's interesting, they actually meant it. You choose a minion, you summon a 1/1 copy of it. Naturally, if we look at Herald Volazj (why is that even a Priest card anyway? I honestly don't see why it couldn’t have been Neutral), no one's really played him. Mostly because he just costs too much to combo with. If he costed less, he would actually be much more playable because it would be a lot easier to combo him with other stuff.
That my friends, is where this card comes in. Because he only costs 3, you easily combo him with other cards and you can do it earlier. If you copy a minion, you've at least gotten a 3/4 for 3, so you at least have vanilla stats going for it. If you copy a minion with a Deathrattle or end of turn effect, etc., then you're getting value of it. This is very useful with the Priest Quest, Awaken the Makers as the 1/1 minion you get from this will advance the Quest by 1 if it’s a Deathrattle minion. A really good play would be to play this on turn 4 with Crystalline Oracle, then copy the Oracle. It's already a 1/1 anyway, so the stats don’t really matter. From that, you just play 4/5 worth of stats for 4 mana spread across 3 bodies, and have the ability to essentially draw 2 cards from the Crystalline Oracle’s Deathrattle. It's just a really awesome card for the new Deathrattle Priest.
This is a VERY interesting card that’s been going through a lot of discussion over its power level. Naturally, this card is being compared to Doomsayer amongst card discussion. Doomsayer essentially acts as a 0/7 Taunt (ala Public Defender) with an additional effect of clearing the board. With this card, you can essentially cast a Twisting Nether for 2 mana, but many have stated that why Corruption wasn't played for a long time is that if you have a minion you need to destroy, you need to destroy it right away. Same can be said about this card. If your opponent has a large enough board that you would want to use Corrupting Mist on, you want to get rid of it right away, and obviously, Warlocks don't have Frost Nova. They can just hit your face right away with this card because Doomsayer is basically a Taunt as I said earlier.
That said, there are some interesting things to point out. Namely that there's no way to counter this except by Silencing or Evolving (only possible as Shaman) your own minions, so once this is on, it's on for good and those minions WILL get destroyed. However, it doesn't prevent either player from summoning minions afterwards since unlike Doomsayer, it only affects minions that were already on the board when you played it. So both you and your opponent can play as much as you want as not have to worry about a single thing. Which, can be a good and bad thing at the same thing. It however will work very well against Pirate Warrior as it's actually not uncommon for Doomsayer to die on turn 2, or even turn 1, against Pirate Warrior.
I may be copping out here, but just like Living Mana, this is another card that's difficult to evaluate so I’m giving it the "Other" rating. That said, I do think it can work very well against Pirate Warrior instead of Doomsayer.
Here we have a cool little Paladin card here. It's essentially two fifths of a Stand Against Darkness for one fifth of the mana cost. Really shows how bad Stand Against Darkness is. If Living Roots is something to go off of, this card is pretty good. Not only is it basically the same as the Saplings option of Living Roots, but Paladins also lack options on turn 1. They have Smuggler's Run and… and, that's about it actually, except for the Quest which is yet to be revealed, and maybe Selfless Hero if you really want to stretch it.
So I think this is really nice because it gives Paladins more options to do something on turn 1. That early board presence really makes a difference as it has the ability to kill one of your opponent's Pirates (hur-de-dur) or some other 1-drops your opponent is playing. You can also combo this with Steward of Darkshire to give them both Divine Shield. If you want to be really weird, you could combine it with Sword of Justice, and if you’re in Wild, you could use it with Quartermaster.
It's really simple, but it's actually a pretty nice Paladin card.
This is the second 1-Durability weapon in the game, preceded by Gorehowl.
The wording of this card is slightly different compared to Shifter Zerus which says "random" instead of "new" as it says on this card. This may mean that this card cannot turn into itself, or it may be just a wording inconsistency.
COMPARABLE CARDS:
I don't know.
REVIEW:
Well, here is one of the weirdest cards of the set. It's basically a Shifter Zerus weapon for Warrior. At the start of your turn, it turns itself into a random collectable weapon from any class. In the event that you don’t like the weapon you get, you can just not play it and wait for another weapon to take its place. The card's eligible pool is a LOT smaller and actually somewhat predictable unlike Shifter Zerus. Of course, you can't exactly guess the weapon you’ll get (without extreme luck at least) but you can actually get a reasonable guess somewhere around the ballpark. Obviously, you would never play something like Rallying Blade in Warrior (partially because normally, you can't), so there are bad weapons to get, but you can actually reasonable pass it and maybe get something better. Something that Warrior's can use much better.
Unlike Shifter Zerus, it's a Rare so you can actually play two copies of this in your deck for two completely random weapons. With Cursed Blade rotating out, you never have to worry about this becoming that, and this will become the new worst weapon from Malkorok. I think it's a fun card, but I don't think serious competitive decks will actually run it because they already have Fiery War Axe and getting the weapon you actually want is pretty unreliable. Though the thought of getting Doomhammer from this is pretty amusing.
Along with The Caverns Below, the Quest requirement number for this card is written in word form instead of numeric form as seen on other Quests such as Awaken the Makers. This may be because the text "play 7 1-cost minions" may be a bit awkward.
One of our HearthPwners, DumplingIsNice, made a very similar Hunter Quest before this card was revealed. It can be seen here.
Queen Carnassa is a queen, whereas Swamp King Dred is a king. It has been confirmed if this was intentional, or just a coincidence.
Here we have the final card revealed from the Bahamas stream, and it's the Hunter Quest. It's the Quest that absolutely everyone is losing their minds over as we see here in the poll.
How you activate it is that you simply just play seven 1-cost minions. You can't just summon them via card effects, you do actually have to play them from your hand. This card may first seem underwhelming and I thought it was at first, but then I remembered two things. One is that this is Hunter, and playing 1-cost minions is their nature. There's already quite a few of them to play. The other one is that Fire Fly exists. One Fire Fly makes up for 2 points of the Quest. Play another and you already have more than half of the Quest done. There's a lot more of them in your deck when you have this card. Then there's also Tol'vir Warden. The deck is most likely aggressive, so would Tol'vir Warden fit in a deck that runs The Marsh Queen? Well, the possibility is still here.
As soon as you play 7 of those little pests, you get the ultra-dino herself, Queen Carnassa. She's a 5 mana 8/8 (just like all of the other minions you get from these) that puts 15 'Raptors' into your deck? If you didn’t see the stream (and hopefully you did), you may be asking what the raptors are. Good news is that they aren’t Bloodfen Raptors. Instead you get 15 copies of Carnassa's Brood into your deck. It’s a 1 mana 3/2 Beast that draw a card when you play it. As we saw in the stream, you have the potential to several of those things at one time and just keep drawing and playing 3/2's (obviously what happened in the stream was scripted, but it could still happen).
However the downsides of this card are that you have to put A LOT of 1-drops into your deck. You'll need to have about 12 of them in your deck to make this work correctly, and you'll need some additional draw besides the Carnassa's Brood because you only get those after playing the Queen Carnassa herself. This means that later in the game, you'll most likely find yourself drawing 1-cost minions which will advance your Quest but won’t advance your game outside of that. This however is where Tol’vir Warden will come in handy, but it’s going to need more than just that to make it. Although you have a very high chance of doing so, you actually do have to draw into the Carnassa's Brood to make it worthwhile. So, I think this is a very strong Quest with a few downsides, I think it has quite a lot of potential, but ultimately I don’t think it will be as broken as many others think it will be.
For our last card of Section 3, we're taking a look at yet another card everyone is excited about, including me because this card is awesome. Basically what you do is you give a friendly Beast of your choice, besides itself of course, an adaptation. Now this card is awesome because every single adaptation is really, really good to get as most of them are worth about 1 mana, and it comes with a 3/2 Beast for 2 along with it. In reality, you’ll get about 3 mana worth of value almost every time you use the effect. In particular, there are a lot of ways to use the effect. You can play a Fiery Bat, Alleycat, etc., on turn 1, then this on turn 2 and give it a really useful adaptation. Divine Shield or + 3 Health will make pretty much all of them survive next turn. If you manage to get this curve, you're in a VERY good spot. Later in the game, you can also give one of these small Beasts a Poisonous adaptation to make them a lot more threatening.
No matter which adaptation you choose, you’re always getting a really good value from this card. Giving Elusive (the Faerie Dragon effect) to a minion is probably best in Hunter anyway as very few spells that you actually want to target your own stuff with (the only one I can think of is Bestial Wrath). The card is very flexible and there is very rarely a bad time to draw it. It can be used early game to give one of your cheaper minions the edge against your opponent, or it can be used late game to give a minion you have Windfury or a power boost to finish your opponent off, or Taunt to save a minion or yourself. You can also give a minion Stealth, Divine Shield or Elusive to help protect a minion. The stat boots basically speak for itself.
So if there's one card that I think will define Hunters, I think it will be this more than The Queen Marsh because this card has a lot more flexibility to be used on more archetypes. The downside of having a Beast on board to activate it isn’t that of a deal because remember, you're playing Hunter. When King's Elekk doesn’t draw you a card, it's a 3/2 for 2 that gave both players information about their respective opponents deck's. When Houndmaster doesn't work, it’s a 4/3 for 4 but Hunters still play it.
Hey man, another good review. I do disagree on one of your reviews though.
If you compare Primalfin Lookout to Kabal Courier, which is the only other 3 mana discover card, I think it is much worse. The courier has 1 less attack, but on average it will discover a better card. I think we can all agree that the average Warlock, Mage or Priest card is better than the average Murloc, right? On top of that you have to already have a Murloc on the board, which can make this card unreliable after your opponent clears the board or when you are running low on cards. Of course it is possible that they will reveal an insane class specific Murloc that will make Primalfin really good because of the class card occurrence bonus. It could be pretty good in Paladin in Wild to get extra copies of Murloc Knight which is a very good card. I checked and there are 15 collectable Murlocs, so you chance of being offered a Finja in your discover is 1/15+1/14+1/13=.215 or just over 20%. That might be good enough. It's worth noting though that any class Murlocs that might be coming will reduce these odds. With what we know right now though, I'd rate the card as average.
It would allow Shadow Priests to get an extra copy of Shadowform and/or allow for a switch quicker in the game along with the 3-damage hero power, as well as offer an extra key spell to highlander deck players.
Hey man, another good review. I do disagree on one of your reviews though.
If you compare Primalfin Lookout to Kabal Courier, which is the only other 3 mana discover card, I think it is much worse. The courier has 1 less attack, but on average it will discover a better card. I think we can all agree that the average Warlock, Mage or Priest card is better than the average Murloc, right? On top of that you have to already have a Murloc on the board, which can make this card unreliable after your opponent clears the board or when you are running low on cards. Of course it is possible that they will reveal an insane class specific Murloc that will make Primalfin really good because of the class card occurrence bonus. It could be pretty good in Paladin in Wild to get extra copies of Murloc Knight which is a very good card. I checked and there are 15 collectable Murlocs, so you chance of being offered a Finja in your discover is 1/15+1/14+1/13=.215 or just over 20%. That might be good enough. It's worth noting though that any class Murlocs that might be coming will reduce these odds. With what we know right now though, I'd rate the card as average.
To be honest, the only reason I put Kabal Courier in the Comparable Cards was because it just had very similar stats. I think the requirement of having a Murloc on board isn't really a big deal because Murlocs are very easy to spam on board. I see what you mean though when you compare the two cards though. Kabal Courier does allow you to get removal, damage, good minions, whereas Primalfin Lookout is just Murlocs which ultimately will probably not be as useful. I don't mind that you're opinion is different than mine at all, and I'm still glad you liked the review.
It would allow Shadow Priests to get an extra copy of Shadowform and/or allow for a switch quicker in the game along with the 3-damage hero power, as well as offer an extra key spell to highlander deck players.
That's actually a very interesting application. I could definitely see people trying the card for this purpose. Nice job catching that.
Not sure what you would want to compare it too though. I don't recall anything that does 6 damage targeting face only.
Placing Justicar there was actually intentional, as the mechanic used in the upgraded Shaman Hero Power is exactly the same as the one Kalimos uses when you play him. I do agree it kinda looks out of place there. As for a comparison to Invocation of Fire, I really don't know what makes sense to put there. The closest thing I can think of is Ragnaros.
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Ah, like that. I'd place Justicar at the top or somehow separated then and say there isn't anything to compare Invocation of Fire to. I think Rag is a decent enough comparison to put there though and better than nothing. Or possible you could compare it to King Krush, as that would typically be going face :p
edit:
Best comparison might be Nightblade, though it's obviously cheaper and does less damage (and sees no play whatsoever). I think the Invocation of Fire is easily the weakest option, but can provide some "surprise" burst. Typically you wouldn't want to drop too low against shamans anyway, as they have so many burn-spells at their disposal, so I think this will be the least picked option from the 4.
Mimic Pod is going to be in Section 3, as each section has 15 cards in it. As there will be a handful of cards revealed in tomorrow's stream, Section 3 will probably come tomorrow or the day after.
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Read this last night on my phone and forgot my password, so not sure if the post was updated. But, there were quite a few spelling or grammar mistakes in the post. Other than that, god damn amazing. Can't wait for the next part.
Alright, Section 3 has been posted. For everyone who reads and comments on my reviews, I would like to thank you all for your feedback and thank you for reading my review. I appreciate all of what you say.
@MrZNF, so I just changed the positioning and I agree, it does look better.
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You definitely put a lot of work. I was also not lazy and skimmed though some of your previous reviews. And I noticed one common thing - you tend to overvalue bad cards that require a lot of setup. Just a suggestion for future reviews - when a card has a lot of prerequisites to function well, it is usually bad in Hearthstone. Please examine such cards closer and stay away of giving them high ratings unless the synergy is already present in the set.
I'll illustrate my observation by an example - you rating of Rogue quest - The Caverns below. For an experienced HS (or CCG in general) player it is obvious that this card is Very Bad to Bad unless there is some strong synergy which has not been yet revealed. I'll prove that as a theorem: Let's imagine Rogue got new Spell: 5 mana, your minions are 5/5 for the rest of this game. This spell should be rated as Average to Good, because in HS all that matters is Tempo, and paying 5 mana to do nothing on current turn is very big loss of tempo.
How add one prerequisite: to cast this spell, you have to play specific deck wich also includes cards that gimp your main strategy (the shadowsteps, pandas, whatever). It makes the spell rating from Bad to Average.
Finally, add another prerequisite - you have to actually complete the quest which is not easy. And if you fail to do so, deck that you build specifically to abuse the reward is almost worthless. And that makes final rating of a Quest "Very Bad to Bad".
You definitely put a lot of work. I was also not lazy and skimmed though some of your previous reviews. And I noticed one common thing - you tend to overvalue bad cards that require a lot of setup. Just a suggestion for future reviews - when a card has a lot of prerequisites to function well, it is usually bad in Hearthstone. Please examine such cards closer and stay away of giving them high ratings unless the synergy is already present in the set.
I'll illustrate my observation by an example - you rating of Rogue quest - The Caverns below. For an experienced HS (or CCG in general) player it is obvious that this card is Very Bad to Bad unless there is some strong synergy which has not been yet revealed. I'll prove that as a theorem: Let's imagine Rogue got new Spell: 5 mana, your minions are 5/5 for the rest of this game. This spell should be rated as Average to Good, because in HS all that matters is Tempo, and paying 5 mana to do nothing on current turn is very big loss of tempo.
How add one prerequisite: to cast this spell, you have to play specific deck wich also includes cards that gimp your main strategy (the shadowsteps, pandas, whatever). It makes the spell rating from Bad to Average.
Finally, add another prerequisite - you have to actually complete the quest which is not easy. And if you fail to do so, deck that you build specifically to abuse the reward is almost worthless. And that makes final rating of a Quest "Very Bad to Bad".
I do see your point. I'm by no means an expert HS player (or in any CCG for that matter), and in reality, we won't know how good most of these cards are until they're actually released, as cards we initially think are bad end up being good (Dr. Boom, Mysterious Challenger, etc.) and vice-versa (Troggzor the Earthinator, Varian Wrynn, etc.).
What you say about The Caverns Below is definitely worth taking note of though. Out of every Quest we've seen so far, it probably is the one that requires the most commitment to fully complete. Playing 4 copies of any one given minion definitely takes a lot of effort, which is why I rated it lower than most other Quests. As you said though, hidden synergy later in the set could very well be a thing. It makes sense that they would print it, then print a card that actually goes with it (Mimic Pod kinda goes with it, but I think there should be at least one other card) all in the same set as they've done so with the other Quests.
Yeah, this does make sense. But I didn't do it because of how small the card pool is compared to Shifter Zerus. There are currently 25 collectable weapons in Standard, 5 of them will be rotating out of Standard out of the expansion hits. I'm guessing that there will be 3 or 4 weapons in this set (Old Gods and Gadgetzan both had 3 weapons), so let's assume that after rotation, Molten Blade has a possible 24 weapons. Then compare that to about 500 minions that Shifter Zerus can transform into (including itself). This is why I didn't put it on the list, but I think looking back, I should've done that.
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On living mana any mana that you will gain and lose for the end of your turn does not effect it and when the 2 2 dies it gives you an empty mana which means you can't use it on the same turn in other words only use it for OTK
On living mana any mana that you will gain and lose for the end of your turn does not effect it and when the 2 2 dies it gives you an empty mana which means you can't use it on the same turn in other words only use it for OTK
What source did you find that confirms that Innervate won't work with Living Mana, and at what point did I mention an OTK?
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Link to Part 1 + 2017 Rotation Reviews
Link to Part 3
Link to Part 4
Made because of the 100,000 character limit threads have.
SECTION 2 (Posted March 22nd)
Swamp King Dred
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Didn't take too long as we already have the Hunter Legendary, and it's a very interesting card. We've never seen a card like this in any part of Hearthstone before, not even Tavern Brawls or boss encounters, NOTHING! The effect quite frankly is also very interesting as your opponent effectively can't play any minions with this on board or this will come and (most likely) kill it. This effect can really screw up your opponent's plays and make it very awkward for them to take their turn as any minion they play will die, which will force them to either use hard removal on it, or just play minions to get rid of it, which will end up killing about 2 or 3 minions in the process. It doesn’t matter if its Stealthed or behind a Taunt, Dred just says "fuck it" and chomps at them.
Now, with Poisonous minions being a thing, that can act as an immediate counter to this card as Dred will just attack it, eat it and die. Now none of the Poisonous minions see any play, and after the rotation hits, there will only be 2 of them in the game (Patient Assassin and Emperor Cobra). Hilariously enough though, through Adapt effects, Adapt minions have a 1/10 chance to get the Poisonous effect (if you don't get it, it becomes a 1/9 chance for the second option, then a 1/8 chance for the third option), thought this will only apply for Adapt minions which buff themselves. Alternatively, it's also weak against Divine Shield minions.
Of course, it's worth noting that the card says "play" and not "summon", so Dred will only attack minions your opponent plays directly from their hand. Also Sylvanas Windrunner is rotating out so you won't have to worry about her in Standard (I can't help but thinking this card was part of why). Also, it's a nice curve play after Savannah Highmane on turn 6.
Rating: Good
Crystalline Oracle
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If you think 2-drops are rare in Priest, 1-drops are even rarer. There's currently only 3 of them in the game, Northshire Cleric, Shadowbomber and Twilight Whelp. One of which has already rotated out, and another is rotating out when this expansion hits. The 1-drop slot however has never been very problematic for Priests as Northshire Cleric is a very good card for any type of Priest decks, and Twilight Whelp was a fantastic opening 1-drop for Dragon Priest. Without the whelp rotating out, it makes sense to make another 1-drop so people have another option.
Fortunately, this card does that justice amazingly well. While Northshire Cleric is a really good Priest card, you can't always play it on turn 1 and get value out of it, and it does require a set-up to make use of it. This card suffers from none of those problems whatsoever. You just plop it on the board on turn 1 (or whenever), and it’s going to do its job. The effect of giving you a card from your opponent's deck will tell you information about your opponent's deck and will allow you to see any key cards they haven't drawn yet (therefore don’t need to be played around). It also effectively draws a card without getting yourself closer to fatigue (unless you end getting something like a Shield Slam). Compared to Swashburglar or Babbling Book, you don't get the immediate impact, but instead you get a better card overall since you're getting something you’re opponent put into their deck rather than just a random card created from outside the game (and if your opponent has played Elise the Trailblazer, you have a chance of getting the Un'Goro Pack). But, no one is going to Silence this thing, especially early on in the game so that downside is almost completely negligible.
Also, it's an Elemental so it does have the upcoming Elemental synergies we’re awaiting to see. It just looks like a really awesome Priest 1-drop.
Rating: Very Good
Sunkeeper Tarim
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Well, here is a really weird Paladin Legendary, and I mean REALLY weird. It's essentially a very strange mashup of Keeper of Uldaman and Eadric the Pure, two Paladin cards which are both rotating out. I suppose Blizzard wanted make a replacement for Eadric. Compared to him, this guy costs 1 less and has Taunt with the same statline. That's quite the improvement so far. He does have the same problem as Eadric in which your opponent needed a big enough board to justify using it to weaken it, but unlike Eadric, this card can be used to buff your own stuff as well, utilizing the flexibility which made Keeper of Uldaman a good card.
However, it loses some of those points it gained because the ENTIRE board will be effected meaning there may be some minions either player controls that you don’t want to apply the enchantment to, which ultimately makes this card inconsistent and situational. There will be times where you will want some minions effected, but others you don't want effected. To get the dream situation in which you buff your own minions and nerf all of your opponent’s minions is a bit of a far stretch.
Notably though, since ALL other minions are now 3/3, this allows you to easily be able to trade minions you otherwise would have a really hard time taking care of. Changing their Health means they also now easier to kill, which is something Eadric lacked. The card could potentially be used as a Jade Golem counter, but Eadric could do that exact same thing, arguably better and it still didn't see much play. There's the possibility that Paladin does get a card which greatly combos with this (like their own Hellfire), but as it stands, I think the card is too inconsistent to really work out too well.
Rating: Average
Shadow Visions
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Reveals aren't stopping now as we've just received a very interesting Priest card. If the Fun Fact cards are anything to go by, 2 mana to Discover something isn't really too good (A Light in the Darkness was a 2 mana Discover with an addition benefit, and that card didn't really see any play). However, because you are Discovering something in your deck, your card pool is going to be both, and smaller (therefore more predictable). In the card’s reveal video, we saw as an example, Discovering a Shadow Word: Pain in a clutch situation to destroy a Frothing Berserker. This situation isn't actually too unrealistic and very well could happen in a real game.
The card does allow you to Discover a spell you may really need in your deck at this instance or to save it for later. It can also be very useful for Reno decks to get a second copy of a useful spell in your deck without destroying the deck consistency. Though because the spell you played will say "Created by Shadow Visions", your opponent may then assume that they no longer have to spell since it's most likely going to still be in your deck. You can also do fun things with Elise the Trailblazer and get another Un'Goro Pack and get it right away. Because you have 3 choices, that's actually a very real possibility. Could also be used in an OTK Priest with Prophet Velen to Discover a copy of one of the combo pieces, which you may draw later, though do be aware that Emperor Thaurissan is rotating out which will make this deck Wild only.
The card in interesting and may be worth trying out, however I don’t necessarily think it would’ve been too overpowered at 1 mana, since this is better than cards like Journey Below and I Know a Guy. The former of which has seen/sees niche play, whereas the Latter didn't really see any play at all.
Rating: Average/Good
Clutchmother Zavas
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So here is the card revealed to us by Reynad, it's the Warlock Legendary minion. Surprise, surprise, it's related to discarding cards. This in unlike other Warlock Legendaries which tend to have the highest cost out of every class in the game, but instead is a very cheap one, only costing 2 mana. In terms of discard synergy however, this card is actually insane. Just like Fist of Jaraxxus and Silverware Golem, this is a card that you actually want to discard. There's never a bad time to discard it, and unlike Fist, you'll never get an unsatisfactory result from it. You discard it one time, and it becomes a 2 mana 4/4. Any more times after that and you're going to be ballin’. It also works awesomely with Lakkari Sacrifice because you can just keep discarding this and get your Quest done much easier.
Along with Malchezaar's Imp, you can repeatedly discard this and get free cards and give this +2/+2 at the same time. With Deathwing, you can discard this and all of a sudden, you can easily have a REALLY big, scary creature in your creature to play for a cheap price to make up for what you lost with Deathwing.
It's also a Beast, which means absolutely nothing for Warlocks. I suppose it's tagged as a Beast because it's a Silithid (like Princess Huhuran). If for some reason, you decide to run The Curator in your Discolock, then I guess there's value there. Even if it isn’t a Demon though, the card is still exploding with potential. In a Discolock, I don't think the Demon synergy really even matters that much.
Rating: Very Good
Fire Fly
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Well, here we have a new Elemental minion. A basic 1/2 for 1 that adds another 1/2 Elemental to your hand. Despite what one might think, it doesn't add a copy of itself to your hand, but instead adds a vanilla token to your hand called Flame Elemental which is a 1/2 Elemental for 1. Now, if we look at this card, then look at 1 mana 1/2's, 2/1's or even 2/2's, this card doesn't seem to exciting at first glance. In reality though, the card just brews with potential because of two newly revealed cards at the moment: Stone Sentinel and Ozruk. The synergy Elementals have is with playing Elementals on the previous turn, which is perhaps the most interesting tribe synergy in the game as of now.
From there, we see why this card is actually pretty good, as both itself and the Flame Elemental token provide very cheap ways to buff up your next Elementals. For example, in Shaman, you can play a 5-drop (White Eyes for example), then this, and then you just made a really cheap trigger for Stone Sentinel and still made a very optimal turn 6 play. Because the token is also an Elemental in itself, you can also use that for the synergies as well. Full evaluation will require what all Elemental synergy cards we get, but this is a very promising start.
Rating: Good
Flame Geyser
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And here we have another card to give us that Flame Elemental token. This time a Mage spell that also deals 2 damage in the process, and as stated by Mike Donais, Mage and Shaman are the main Elemental classes, but other classes will get a small taste of the Elementals (we've already seen Crystalline Oracle), and we already have some Neutral ones too.
But on to the card, it's a little bit worse than Fire Fly in the sense that it only gives you a single Elemental as opposed to two. It does however allow you to get rid of a threat at the same time which Fire Fly doesn't do (which is why Lava Shock saw more play than Eternal Sentinel even though it doesn’t have as much value on paper). This means that this card is actually probably around the same power level as Fire Fly even if it doesn't look like it on first glance. A problem however is that Mage has both Sorcerer's Apprentice and Frostbolt, both also 2 mana and commonly run by Mages everywhere which may make it really awkward for building an Elemental Mage deck. I imagine though that if Elemental Mage because good, it would be happy to run this over Frostbolt, and may even run Pyros as well.
Rating: Average/Good
Stone Sentinel
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Well, if you thought a 4 mana 7/7 was too much, we now have a 7 mana 4/4. Memes aside, if you saw Fire Fly (not Flame Geyser though because this is a Shaman card), you know what you do with this card. The Fire Fly and its Flame Elemental token both serve as cheap ways to enable this. But not only that but because Fire Elemental is becoming an Elemental, you can easily play Fire Elemental on turn 6, then curve into this on turn 7 to get a 4/4 and two 2/3 Taunt minions, just like Feral Spirit's effect. If Feral Spirit's effect is anything to go off of, playing two 2/3 minions is worth somewhere between 4 and 5 mana, which means getting the minions from this can make this card roughly a 2 to 3 mana 4/4, which is pretty decent in itself, but the tokens are also Elementals too so there will be some bonus synergy there (that is if we get a card that buffs Elementals on your board.
In addition to that though, you also have Evolve synergy. As revealed by Hearthstone's Facebook page, the tokens cost 2 mana. This means you can Evolve and get an 8-drop and two 3-drops. You'll probably get something good and it will no longer make Stone Sentinel weak to Flamestrike which is one of this card's downsides. True that if you can’t play any Elementals, it’s just a 7 mana 4/4, but we will see more Elementals and cards that produce the Flame Elemental, so I don’t think that will be a real problem. It's good.
Rating: Good
Ozruk
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Here, we have the huge, big, scary Elemental Legendary, Ozruk. It's effect ties into cards like Stone Sentinel. You play Elementals last turn, you gain a benefit. Rather than just playing an Elemental on your last turn however, this card has a stackable effect which gets bigger and better the more Elementals you have, and this effect is very easy to abuse with these conditions. We already talked about why Fire Fly is good, and this card will easily take advantage of that. Play the Fire Fly, then the Flame Elemental and you have a 5/15 Taunt. There's no doubt that that's a massive Taunt minion, but then you look at Soggoth the Slitherer who's a very similar card, couldn't be hit by removal and he only occasionally sees/saw play, but to be fair, part of that is because of the meta and not the card, but it's stats were also a bit weak.
Despite the card's potential to become massive, it being able to die to hard removal is definitely a problem. It will be devastating to build a MASSIVE Taunt wall for your opponent, only to have it destroyed or nullified by a 3 mana card. This is why I don't think the card will see any play. Yes, it's amazing when your opponent doesn’t have removal, but so is The Ancient One. If Control, or even Midrange Elemental decks become meta, people will just simply start running hard removal rendering this guy useless.
If you're the guy who tries to make this card work in an Elemental deck, good luck.
Rating: Somewhat Bad/Average
Unite the Murlocs and Megafin
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Well, here's the Shaman Quest. I thought it would either have something to do with Overload or Elementals, but it's instead what third place probably would’ve been, Murlocs. Only two Murlocs that Shaman's can play are rotating out of Standard, Murloc Tinyfin and Sir Finley Mrrgglton. Shaman is also losing Everyfin is Awesome, but that card really wasn't played so it isn’t really too much of a lose, but it would be cool to use Megafin's effect.
What's important, and also extremely useful is that the Quest only requires the Murlocs to be summoned and not played. This means that the tokens from cards like Murloc Tidehunter or Call in the Finishers will contribute to the Quest, which is of course very useful (sadly Bilefin Tidehunter only counts as one, because the Ooze isn't a Murloc). Finja's effect also works nicely with this to instantly place two Murlocs on the field which will overall contribute to 3 of the Quest since Finja himself is a Murloc. The ideal curve of this card is:
But of course, that's kind of a dream situation. Murlocs are really easy to swarm up, but at the same time, it's probably one of the harder Quests to fulfill so far which I think is going to be the main downside of this card. This card however will become better with more Murlocs released in the expansion.
We haven't even gotten to Megafin himself (or herself, not assuming genders) yet. Just like Amara, he's a 5 mana 8/8. Its effect is to fill your hand with random Murlocs, essentially a more powerful Neptulon. It will be possible to get Murlocs from other classes and it may not be that unlikely to get a Seadevil Stinger into Finja, the Flying Star. Because most Murlocs are cheap, it filling your hand isn't a big deal because you can easily play some of your Murlocs in your hand to clear up some space. There's also some combo potential with Gentle Megasaur. Because it fills your hand, you will need to empty your hand a bit to make use of it, but as a Murloc deck, that's basically second nature. Overall, it does have some potential, but I think it's one of the weaker Quests we've seen so far because it requires more commitment and the Quest requires more to complete. However, it could easily become better with more cards.
Rating: Average
Primalfin Lookout
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Speaking of Murlocs, we have a spectacular tool for Murlocs here to Discover them at will. Don't have Finja in your hand? Here you go, this card lets you do that. One of the main weaknesses of Murlocs is that you tend to empty your hand a lot, unless you're playing Anyfin Paladin. Then this card comes in and gets you some additional cards. It's condition that you need another Murloc to play is almost negligible because Murlocs are masters of board swarming (only in a really bad topdecking situation can it really be relevant). Gorrilabot A-3 saw play before Naxx and GvG rotated out, and it’s a lot easier to spam Murlocs than it is to spam Mechs.
In addition to that, it contributes as two Murlocs for Unite the Murlocs because you have this as a Murloc itself whatever you Discovered from this. A cool, but rather unreliable and somewhat inefficient trick you can do is Discover another copy of this, and the more times you can do it, the more you apply to the Quest. The only Murloc deck you wouldn’t play it in is Anyfin Paladin as this is a Murloc itself. Definitely an include for every other type of Murloc deck though.
Rating: Good/Very Good
Kalimos, Primal Lord
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Well we just reviewed the Shaman Legendary Quest not too long ago, and now we get to do the actual Legendary minion now, and this is one interesting minion. Sure some people may have been disappointed that we still don’t have Therazane in the game yet, but I think this definitely makes up for that. Basically when you play it, if you played an Elemental last turn (which you probably have), you get a choice of which element to use to your advantage. Although the card text doesn’t explicitly state it, you do indeed get to choose which one you cast. This is where the card comes in very handy because the card is VERY versatile. It's like Choose One on steroids.
You can choose the Invocation of Air when you need to do AoE damage to clear the board and get back in the game. If you have Hallazeal the Ascended on the board, then it's possible that this will work with that (it's rare that you'll get to be able to do this, but it would still be pretty cool if it worked). You can choose Invocation of Earth if you want/need additional board presence, plus it works well with Evolve. You can choose Invocation of Water if you're in a desperate situation and need to heal. You can choose Invocation of Fire to finish your opponent off. It essentially allows you to run four different cards crammed into one, only taking one deck slot and you get to choose which four to use when you play. More or less, every single option is useful for something and will come into play. You can ideally get a turn 6 Fire Elemental into turn 7 Stone Sentinel, and turn 8, this. You do need to play an Elemental last turn to activate it, but with stuff like Fire Fly, the Flame Elemental token, Tar Creeper, and all of the other Elemental minions we're getting, I don't think that’s a problem.
Rating: Very Good
Tol'vir Stoneshaper
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Well, here we have another card to add to the list of Elemental synergy cards. It's not an Elemental itself as it's a Tol'vir (though if you really wanted to, you probably could debate if Tol’vir should count as Elementals). Regardless of that though, this is yet another really strong Elemental synergy card, especially when you look at Sen'jin Shieldmasta, which is arguably one of the better Basic minions in the game. Interestingly, this does make Magma Rager better, as you’ll be able to play Magma Rager on turn 3, then this on turn 4. If your Magma Rager SOMEHOW didn’t die on your opponent’s turn, this card would do a good job at protecting it once again, as it both Taunts and will be safe from damage for one time. Really though, just play Tar Creeper instead though.
It isn't an Elemental itself, so it won't trigger Elemental synergies, but if it did, it would be WAY too powerful (Wyrmrest Agent not being a Dragon didn't prevent it from seeing play in every Dragon Priest). Once again, we look back at Fire Fly and its Flame Elemental token. Both of which provide extremely cheap ways to trigger this, so I don’t think fulfilling the condition will be a problem. An absolute auto-include in all Elemental decks.
Rating: Very Good
Hydrologist
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Here is the card that Savjz revealed to us. In addition to being adorable, it's also a very interesting card. The very first two things people think of when they see the card is probably the following: "But Paladin Secrets suck, so why play this?" and "What happens if you get this in a non-Secret class?" (and there are a LOT of ways to do that). While that is a fair thought, that without Mysterious Challenger, most Paladin Secrets suck, this is where the flexibility of the Discover mechanic comes in and where it's really useful because it doesn't take up a deck slot. For example, you would never run Goldshire Footman in your Constructed deck, but you may Discover it from Dark Peddler if you really need a Taunt minion.
This card is the same way. Discovering the right Paladin Secret for a given situation is a really nice advantage since you don't use bad cards in your deck and wait for the time they're good. Instead you can pick it when it's the time they're good, and it basically allows you to play a 31 card deck with the consistency of a 30 card deck. Normally you would never play around Eye for an Eye or Sacred Trial, but when a player Discovers a card from a card effect, all of a sudden, you may have to start playing around cards you normally don’t play around because no one runs them. You'll feel bad when you have a Deathwing on board and you’re opponent Discovered Eye for an Eye from this.
Another thing to note is that there's a very small Secret pool in Standard. With Competitive Spirit and Sacred Trial rotating out, we only have Eye for an Eye, Noble Sacrifice, Redemption, Repentance, Getaway Kodo, and any Paladin Secret we may get from this expansion (which is probably going to happen). This means that your card pool is very predictable and you need a certain Secret, you have a 60% chance to get it (50% if another Secret is introduced). It will be predictable for your opponent too, but naturally you already play around a lot of Secrets when your opponent has one.
This card has gotten very mixed feedback. I can see how it's worse than other 2-drops because Paladin Secrets are usually something you can scoff at, but it’s definitely an interesting card nonetheless. It may not be as good as Dark Peddler, but it still has its moments. For those of you wondering what happens if a non-Secret class gets it, I really don’t know what happens. We'll need to ask someone about that.
Rating: Average/Good
The Caverns Below and Crystal Core
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Well here is the Rogue Quest revealed to use by Peter Whalen. Unlike something like "play X Stealth minions" or "play X cards from your opponent’s class" which is something we may have thought of, instead it's something completely different that makes usage of returning minions to your hand and using additional copies of your minions to play 4 copies of one minion. Fortunately Rogue has a number of different ways to use this with cards like Shadowstep, Gadgetzan Ferryman, Kidnapper, Thistle Tea, Shadowcaster, Vanish, as well as a card I'll review in section 3, Mimic Pod. So Rogue definitely has all of the tools to make this Quest work (but unfortunately, Gang Up is rotating out of standard). This Quest however does require more effort to complete than other Quests, as you will need to copy or return something to the hand at least 2 times on one given minion to complete it. Lots of commitment to the Quest has to be done, because you'll need a lot of bouncing effects and/or copying effects to complete the Quest, which will most likely make the deck lose some of its consistency or playability.
Though it wouldn't necessarily be terrible, you probably wouldn't play this in Mill Rogue because Mill Rogue ideally wants to kill their opponent with overdraw, and making your minions 5/5, although nice, doesn’t help you achieve your win condition other than making your minions more powerful.
What's also interesting to note about the Quest is that unlike the other Quest, this can be done with multiple different types of cards. Since you could easily play 2 different copies of one minion, then 3 of another, how is the Quest going to keep track of all of that? Is it just whichever one is higher, or does the effect stack up with each extra duplicate, even if they're different cards? You can ask a question about the Crystal Core itself, being that does it make the minions in your hand 5/5, or make them 5/5 when they hit the board? This actually does matter because if it's applied in your hand, it works well with Edwin VanCleef. Otherwise though, it's bad. Making all of your minions 5/5 can be really good because you normally don’t run minions with that much stats in Rogue, but in the event that you are, it's going to take a toll. Even then though, most of the time, you're probably safe. It's an average Quest in my opinion because it's harder to activate than the others and the effect can still be significantly argued. It however is a very cool Quest with a very interesting effect that buffs Sherazin, Corpse Flower. I imagine people will try to make this work, and have quite a bit of fun with it.
Rating: Average
SECTION 3 (Posted March 26th)
Mimic Pod
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So, do you remember how we just reviewed the Rogue Quest, The Caverns Below? Well, revealed along with that is this card to help with that. When you compare this to Thistle Tea, this costs half as much mana and gives you two third as many cards (Thistle Tea draws one, then puts two copies of it into your hand. This draws one, then puts one copy of it into your hand). Drawing one card and copying it has both advantages and disadvantages over drawing 2 cards, ala Arcane Intellect.
Drawing one, and copying it allows you to essentially run 3 copies of a certain card without diluting your deck. It's always really nice to have a third Preparation ready for when you need it, or whatever you're running. Being able to get a second copy of a Legendary can not only be really powerful, but it can also throw people off guard. If you play one, they won't play around another. It also doesn't get you as close to fatigue as Arcane Intellect, but it will still give you the same card amount of card advantage.
For the disadvantages however, what you copy is going to be based on what you draw via the effect and it’s unpredictable as to what the result will be. This is a similar problem to cards like Flame Leviathan (although not nearly as destructive, nor does it have the potential to massively backfire). In addition to that, if you really need to draw for answers, it would be better to draw 2 cards for 2 different options, rather than just one card and copying it once.
All things considered, it's roughly on the same power level as Arcane Intellect, and Arcane Intellect is good, so therefore this will see play. The disadvantages I mentioned earlier probably won’t be too bad since you'll always have good cards in your deck unless you're playing Tavern Brawl. It does also have some synergy (albeit unpredictable) with the Rogue Quest card, The Caverns Below.
Rating: Good
Tol'vir Warden
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As both Rexxar and his partner in crime (literally), Uther, are MIA for the most part at the moment, people want to see them get good cards. Oh, how the tables have turned around. As we people all probably know, Hunters have always been about Beasts and being aggressive. Team 5 however has always wanted a Control Hunter to exist in the meta, evident with cards like Giant Sand Worm. While I don’t either of us would mind a Control Hunter existing, it's really difficult for Hunter to get the tools for it, as its Hero Power is quite literally just "go face". But alas, Team 5 is still trying.
What Hunter however has been able to do is have a Tier 1 or 2 Midrange deck. This card does slide into that position, but does it do it well enough? Well, Hunters normally tend to run lots of cheap minions in their deck. In any given Hunter deck, you'd probably run Fiery Bat and/or Alleycat as your 1-drops, or if you want to be really weird, Timber Wolf is seeing more play in Hunter than it did before. So, the 1-drops you’d want to play in your deck are more or less already sorted. In terms of Neutrals, you could grab a Mixtures of Mixtures with this for healing, or if you just wanted to goof off, you could run Shifter Zerus with this (which to be fair, actually wouldn't be too bad because he could actually turn into something with better board presence).
It's a 5-cost card which is a very lacking spot for Hunters right now. They have Tundra Rhino, Princess Huhuran, Knuckles, and that's it… (and Ram Wrangler is rotating out) Having more options (especially better ones) is certainly a plus. Hunters are also very lacking in card draw. They have Tracking, and then that's really it. Tracking isn't bad, but it’s better to run Neutral card draw (i.e, Loot Hoarder) so you don’t lose core parts of your deck. Neutral card draw is also something Hunters have to rely on (specifically Quick Shot is rotating out, and was used more for the 3 damage than the draw).
In essence, it takes two aspects Hunter’s very much lack (5-drops and card draw), and combines both into one card. It has roughly a 3 mana statline, so you're paying about 2 mana for an Arcane Intellect that only draws 1-drops. 1-drops tend to not be very useful in the late game, so playing this can force you to draw them so you don’t dilute your deck with bad draws later. There of course is also the likelihood that Hunters get another 1-drop in this expansion. Overall, it has potentially to fill in the draw spot for Hunters and I think it’s a better card than it might seem. I’m going to give it a "Good", but this alone won’t make Hunter rise up to meta.
Rating: Good
Glacial Shard
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Pop Quiz! When was the last time we had any Neutral Freezing in the game? If you guessed Frost Elemental, you are right. Did that card see any play? Well, occasionally in Renolock to combo with Corruption. But other than that, no, it didn't see any play, because its cost was too high and its stats were too low. This card on the other hand doesn't have either of those issues, because it’s a 1 mana 2/1. If there’' something people don’t want to see, it's aggressive or really over-statted 1-drops. Fortunately, this is intended to be anti-Aggro and I think it accomplishes being an anti-Aggro card quite well. However, I feel it may suffer from the Flame Juggler syndrome. In which, despite being an anti-Aggro card, Aggro will probably use it themselves too.
It's a 1-drop which can actually be really useful late-game, which is rare enough as is. If you're opponent has a really, big, scary minion on the board, you can just Freeze it and it can't attack next turn. Speaking of 1-drops being useful late game, it is a really nice 1-drop to get from the new Hunter card, Tol'vir Warden because you can actually draw it when you need it, and it can almost always be useful. What shouldn’t be overlooked is that the Battlecry can Freeze your opponent's Hero as well, which can be used to prevent your opponent from attacking with their weapon (ESPECIALLY useful against Pirate Warrior).
While, it can be pretty good for any deck, especially one planning to run anti-Aggro, the two classes that can use this card best are Mage and Warlock. Mage because of Freeze synergy with Shatter and Cryomancer (and Ice Lance, which is being put into the Hall of Fame), and Warlock because of Corruption. I stated before that Corruption has sometimes been used in Renolock with Frost Elemental. Say goodbye to that 6-drop because we now have a 1-drop which does the same thing way better. With Corruption, you can easily a 2 mana kill on anything and get a 2/1 minion on the board. It's especially going to be really good in Arena as well, and as an anti-Aggro card with good stats and a nice ability, this is definitely a nice card to have. Just to top it all off, it's also an Elemental so it's a fantastic and cheap trigger for cards like Tol'vir Stoneshaper and Kalimos, Primal Lord.
Rating: Good/Very Good
Curious Glimmerroot
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Before the reveal stream on the 24th, Firebat has revealed to us one last card and it’s one of the coolest, most unique effects we've seen in the entire game. It's like a card you'd expect someone to make for a Fan Creation competition. Blizzard is really stepping up their game with creativity and making more complex cards than they otherwise would be comfortable with, which is a good thing.
Basically it shows you three random cards, one of which will be in your opponent’s deck, and the other two won’t be. You then have to guess which of the 3 is in your opponent's deck. If you're right, you get a copy of it, and you also get knowledge of what your opponent hasn't drawn yet. It rewards meta knowledge and overall game knowledge. As confirmed by Mike Donais here, only class cards will show up unless the deck had no class cards to begin with. I don't really know why your opponent's deck wouldn't have any class cards, but just in the obscure off chance that'll probably never happen, you can get Neutrals that way. Let's say you’re against a Druid, and your choices are either Swipe, Savagery or Bite (and yes, this is based off of Firebat's example), you can pretty easily guess that it's Swipe. In the event that you get a pick wrong however, you now know that one of the other two is in your opponent’s deck and can start playing around either of those two.
The card is good as it's a 3/3 for 3 that draws you a card from your opponent’s deck because most of the time, you'll get it right. Even if you do get it wrong though, you can at least get an idea of what your opponent has. It’s a rare example of a card that’s better in Constructed than it is in Arena, where decks are much more decided.
Rating: Good/Very Good
Volcanosaur
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About damn time we got another Adapt card, and this one is a lot more exciting than the boring old Verdant Longneck. Here, you actually get to Adapt twice without the use of Brann Bronzebeard, and the value you get for choosing more than one adaptation is actually pretty insane. You can pick Massive and Liquid Membrane, or Massive and Crackling Shield, to get a huge defensive minion to keep you in the game, or you can pick up something like Shrouding Mist + Lightning Speed to give a finisher that’s likely to stick on the board because your opponent will likely have to do some really weird means to actually be able to kill it. Even if you pick up something like +3 Attack and +3 Health, that’s still an 8/9 for 7. Obviously that wouldn’t be for Constructed, but this card will be absolutely AMAZING in Arena because of what you can do with it and almost every adaptation is good. How good this will be in Constructed will depend on how often you can get a good combo of self-protection (i.e Massive + Liquid Membrane, or Shrouding Mist + Whatever).
In short: Absolute god tier Arena card. Might have some place in Constructed.
Rating: Average/Good
Gluttonous Ooze
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Well, we already saw Golakka Crawler as one counter for Pirate Warriors, and here's another. When you destroy your opponent's weapon, you gain Armor equal to its attack. This essentially means that if your opponent hit you in the face with the weapon already, you basically heal up all of the damage you just took. The best part too is that it does it in Armor instead of healing, so you can heal along with it to gain even more health.
Compare this to Harrison Jones. Despite his lackluster stats, he still saw play because metas were slower, and drawing cards is indeed a powerful effect. In a faster meta (especially with a deck as fast as Pirate Warrior), I can see this card possibly being better for the Armor gain and because it's not as bad if you don’t hit a weapon (3/3 for 3 is better than 5/4 for 5). If you choose to destroy an Arcanite Reaper, then you'll probably get somewhere between 5 to 7 Armor. It's hard to say whether or not that Armor will actually be significant enough to make a difference. Of course though, getting a 3/3 for 3, 5 Armor and getting rid of your opponent’s weapon.
Of course, as with most tech cards, if they don’t hit it right, then well they kinda suck. So, honestly, it's very difficult to say how good this will be. I think people will definitely try it out, and there’s the possibility that it works.
Rating: Good/Other
Mana Bind
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We all knew that Mage would get a new Secret in this expansion as we already got Arcanologist. Your opponent casts a spell, you get it for 0, but unlike Conterspell, the spell your opponent casts will still go through (unless you were to combo this card with Counterspell). The problem I see with this card is that you around it the same way you play around Counterspell. I think the best way to introduce new Mage Secrets would be to give them different triggering conditions than other Secrets do.
I will however say this. This is better in the early game that Counterspell is and is probably one of the better Quests you can play after a turn 2 Arcanologist. Your opponent casting a 1, 2 or 3 cost spell, even if not worth much value of paper, won't affect you that badly. It costing 0 is better. As stated by Peter Whalen on the Bahamas stream, a 0 mana Wrath is still nice to get.
I don't however think this card will see play, seeing as how you play around both this and Counterspell at the same time (very much like Mirror Entity and Potion of Polymorph). It's not a terrible Secret and if you could Discover it, it could come in handy in some spots, but I don’t think people will put into their deck because it’s about as reliable (possibly a bit more or a bit less) as Counterspell, which we don't really see.
Rating: Average
Vilespine Slayer
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Well, people wanted good Rogue cards and it looks like they got their wish because this card is insane, like actually INSANE. Look at Assassinate, then look at this card. Need I say more? Well, I'm going to anyway. The combo of course is easy to pull off because of cards like Backstab, Preparation, Counterfeit Coin, etc. You still have other ways if you need them too. You get 3 mana stats at 3/4, and for 2 mana, you get to destroy any minion, ANYTHING, even something Elusive because it's a Battlecry and not a spell. You basically assassinate with a free 3/4 body attached to it. Not to mention, you can easily Shadowstep it, bounce it back with a Panda, or if it lives a turn, you can use Shadowcaster with it. More easy destroy effects. This is such a good target for those kinds of effects too as it becomes cheaper and therefore even easier to combo with. You could use this as the ultimate minion to complete The Caverns Below with.
Rating: Very Good
Living Mana
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What I'm reviewing here may possibly be the most creative card in the entire game so far. If you thought Curious Glimmerroot was extra-creative, that was just the start of it for we have this extremely crazy card. Basically, what happens is that you destroy all of your mana (yeah), and for each crystal destroyed, you summon a 2/2 Mana Treant as displayed next to the card. When one of them dies, you gain one of your mana crystals back. It's a very weird card, but despite the absurdity, there are some interesting things to note about the card.
As we saw in the stream, it will only destroy mana crystals up to the amount of Mana Treants you summon. So, if you summon 5 of them, you only destroy 5 mana, and that mana can be full or empty. When they die, you get an empty mana crystal back and not a full one. This is important because if they die on your opponent's turn, you gain all of that Mana back readily usable on your next turn, essentially turning this into a Force of Nature that could summon any amount of Treants up to 7. If you were to kill them on your turn though, the mana would be empty and you will still be absolutely starving for it. Ideally what you really want is for your opponent to have to kill them on their own turn.
Notably, if you Innvervate this out, the 2 mana crystals you gained becomes permanent if you destroy enough of them because you now destroyed those 2 mana crystals from Innervate to summon more Mana Treants(UPDATE: This does not work) and when they die, they give you a fresh, new (albeit empty) mana crystal.And something that people have been noting (halfway as a joke, halfway as serious) is that Mass Dispel and Devolve (or even Vanish) completely shits on these cards. Which is true, there are quite a few Shamans that run Devolve. But I don't think one card in one class is going to be that big of a problem.
As of now, I honestly have now idea how to rate this card. It could be either REALLY amazing or REALLY terrible, and only time will tell.
Rating: Other
Mirage Caller
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Well, we know that Team 5 has been going for a Deathrattle theme, and that they’re rotating out Sylvanas Windrunner for more interesting Deathrattle build-around cards. Here is one of them right here and when they see it's interesting, they actually meant it. You choose a minion, you summon a 1/1 copy of it. Naturally, if we look at Herald Volazj (why is that even a Priest card anyway? I honestly don't see why it couldn’t have been Neutral), no one's really played him. Mostly because he just costs too much to combo with. If he costed less, he would actually be much more playable because it would be a lot easier to combo him with other stuff.
That my friends, is where this card comes in. Because he only costs 3, you easily combo him with other cards and you can do it earlier. If you copy a minion, you've at least gotten a 3/4 for 3, so you at least have vanilla stats going for it. If you copy a minion with a Deathrattle or end of turn effect, etc., then you're getting value of it. This is very useful with the Priest Quest, Awaken the Makers as the 1/1 minion you get from this will advance the Quest by 1 if it’s a Deathrattle minion. A really good play would be to play this on turn 4 with Crystalline Oracle, then copy the Oracle. It's already a 1/1 anyway, so the stats don’t really matter. From that, you just play 4/5 worth of stats for 4 mana spread across 3 bodies, and have the ability to essentially draw 2 cards from the Crystalline Oracle’s Deathrattle. It's just a really awesome card for the new Deathrattle Priest.
Oh, and also dank Purify synergy.
Rating: Good/Very Good
Corrupting Mist
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This is a VERY interesting card that’s been going through a lot of discussion over its power level. Naturally, this card is being compared to Doomsayer amongst card discussion. Doomsayer essentially acts as a 0/7 Taunt (ala Public Defender) with an additional effect of clearing the board. With this card, you can essentially cast a Twisting Nether for 2 mana, but many have stated that why Corruption wasn't played for a long time is that if you have a minion you need to destroy, you need to destroy it right away. Same can be said about this card. If your opponent has a large enough board that you would want to use Corrupting Mist on, you want to get rid of it right away, and obviously, Warlocks don't have Frost Nova. They can just hit your face right away with this card because Doomsayer is basically a Taunt as I said earlier.
That said, there are some interesting things to point out. Namely that there's no way to counter this except by Silencing or Evolving (only possible as Shaman) your own minions, so once this is on, it's on for good and those minions WILL get destroyed. However, it doesn't prevent either player from summoning minions afterwards since unlike Doomsayer, it only affects minions that were already on the board when you played it. So both you and your opponent can play as much as you want as not have to worry about a single thing. Which, can be a good and bad thing at the same thing. It however will work very well against Pirate Warrior as it's actually not uncommon for Doomsayer to die on turn 2, or even turn 1, against Pirate Warrior.
I may be copping out here, but just like Living Mana, this is another card that's difficult to evaluate so I’m giving it the "Other" rating. That said, I do think it can work very well against Pirate Warrior instead of Doomsayer.
Rating: Other
Lost in the Jungle
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Here we have a cool little Paladin card here. It's essentially two fifths of a Stand Against Darkness for one fifth of the mana cost. Really shows how bad Stand Against Darkness is. If Living Roots is something to go off of, this card is pretty good. Not only is it basically the same as the Saplings option of Living Roots, but Paladins also lack options on turn 1. They have Smuggler's Run and… and, that's about it actually, except for the Quest which is yet to be revealed, and maybe Selfless Hero if you really want to stretch it.
So I think this is really nice because it gives Paladins more options to do something on turn 1. That early board presence really makes a difference as it has the ability to kill one of your opponent's Pirates (hur-de-dur) or some other 1-drops your opponent is playing. You can also combo this with Steward of Darkshire to give them both Divine Shield. If you want to be really weird, you could combine it with Sword of Justice, and if you’re in Wild, you could use it with Quartermaster.
It's really simple, but it's actually a pretty nice Paladin card.
Rating: Good
Molten Blade
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Well, here is one of the weirdest cards of the set. It's basically a Shifter Zerus weapon for Warrior. At the start of your turn, it turns itself into a random collectable weapon from any class. In the event that you don’t like the weapon you get, you can just not play it and wait for another weapon to take its place. The card's eligible pool is a LOT smaller and actually somewhat predictable unlike Shifter Zerus. Of course, you can't exactly guess the weapon you’ll get (without extreme luck at least) but you can actually get a reasonable guess somewhere around the ballpark. Obviously, you would never play something like Rallying Blade in Warrior (partially because normally, you can't), so there are bad weapons to get, but you can actually reasonable pass it and maybe get something better. Something that Warrior's can use much better.
Unlike Shifter Zerus, it's a Rare so you can actually play two copies of this in your deck for two completely random weapons. With Cursed Blade rotating out, you never have to worry about this becoming that, and this will become the new worst weapon from Malkorok. I think it's a fun card, but I don't think serious competitive decks will actually run it because they already have Fiery War Axe and getting the weapon you actually want is pretty unreliable. Though the thought of getting Doomhammer from this is pretty amusing.
Rating: Average/Other
The Marsh Queen and Queen Carnassa
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Here we have the final card revealed from the Bahamas stream, and it's the Hunter Quest. It's the Quest that absolutely everyone is losing their minds over as we see here in the poll.
How you activate it is that you simply just play seven 1-cost minions. You can't just summon them via card effects, you do actually have to play them from your hand. This card may first seem underwhelming and I thought it was at first, but then I remembered two things. One is that this is Hunter, and playing 1-cost minions is their nature. There's already quite a few of them to play. The other one is that Fire Fly exists. One Fire Fly makes up for 2 points of the Quest. Play another and you already have more than half of the Quest done. There's a lot more of them in your deck when you have this card. Then there's also Tol'vir Warden. The deck is most likely aggressive, so would Tol'vir Warden fit in a deck that runs The Marsh Queen? Well, the possibility is still here.
As soon as you play 7 of those little pests, you get the ultra-dino herself, Queen Carnassa. She's a 5 mana 8/8 (just like all of the other minions you get from these) that puts 15 'Raptors' into your deck? If you didn’t see the stream (and hopefully you did), you may be asking what the raptors are. Good news is that they aren’t Bloodfen Raptors. Instead you get 15 copies of Carnassa's Brood into your deck. It’s a 1 mana 3/2 Beast that draw a card when you play it. As we saw in the stream, you have the potential to several of those things at one time and just keep drawing and playing 3/2's (obviously what happened in the stream was scripted, but it could still happen).
However the downsides of this card are that you have to put A LOT of 1-drops into your deck. You'll need to have about 12 of them in your deck to make this work correctly, and you'll need some additional draw besides the Carnassa's Brood because you only get those after playing the Queen Carnassa herself. This means that later in the game, you'll most likely find yourself drawing 1-cost minions which will advance your Quest but won’t advance your game outside of that. This however is where Tol’vir Warden will come in handy, but it’s going to need more than just that to make it. Although you have a very high chance of doing so, you actually do have to draw into the Carnassa's Brood to make it worthwhile. So, I think this is a very strong Quest with a few downsides, I think it has quite a lot of potential, but ultimately I don’t think it will be as broken as many others think it will be.
Rating: Good
Crackling Razormaw
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For our last card of Section 3, we're taking a look at yet another card everyone is excited about, including me because this card is awesome. Basically what you do is you give a friendly Beast of your choice, besides itself of course, an adaptation. Now this card is awesome because every single adaptation is really, really good to get as most of them are worth about 1 mana, and it comes with a 3/2 Beast for 2 along with it. In reality, you’ll get about 3 mana worth of value almost every time you use the effect. In particular, there are a lot of ways to use the effect. You can play a Fiery Bat, Alleycat, etc., on turn 1, then this on turn 2 and give it a really useful adaptation. Divine Shield or + 3 Health will make pretty much all of them survive next turn. If you manage to get this curve, you're in a VERY good spot. Later in the game, you can also give one of these small Beasts a Poisonous adaptation to make them a lot more threatening.
No matter which adaptation you choose, you’re always getting a really good value from this card. Giving Elusive (the Faerie Dragon effect) to a minion is probably best in Hunter anyway as very few spells that you actually want to target your own stuff with (the only one I can think of is Bestial Wrath). The card is very flexible and there is very rarely a bad time to draw it. It can be used early game to give one of your cheaper minions the edge against your opponent, or it can be used late game to give a minion you have Windfury or a power boost to finish your opponent off, or Taunt to save a minion or yourself. You can also give a minion Stealth, Divine Shield or Elusive to help protect a minion. The stat boots basically speak for itself.
So if there's one card that I think will define Hunters, I think it will be this more than The Queen Marsh because this card has a lot more flexibility to be used on more archetypes. The downside of having a Beast on board to activate it isn’t that of a deal because remember, you're playing Hunter. When King's Elekk doesn’t draw you a card, it's a 3/2 for 2 that gave both players information about their respective opponents deck's. When Houndmaster doesn't work, it’s a 4/3 for 4 but Hunters still play it.
Rating: Very Good
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Keep up the good work man!
Thanks for your time and effort mate. I really appreciate.
Dead but dreaming
I can't imagine the time it takes to put all this together. :CLAP:
**i love the fun facts you put in there. Like the Shaman legendary stuff, you have to be pretty OCD just to pick up on that :D
Hey man, another good review. I do disagree on one of your reviews though.
If you compare Primalfin Lookout to Kabal Courier, which is the only other 3 mana discover card, I think it is much worse. The courier has 1 less attack, but on average it will discover a better card. I think we can all agree that the average Warlock, Mage or Priest card is better than the average Murloc, right? On top of that you have to already have a Murloc on the board, which can make this card unreliable after your opponent clears the board or when you are running low on cards. Of course it is possible that they will reveal an insane class specific Murloc that will make Primalfin really good because of the class card occurrence bonus. It could be pretty good in Paladin in Wild to get extra copies of Murloc Knight which is a very good card. I checked and there are 15 collectable Murlocs, so you chance of being offered a Finja in your discover is 1/15+1/14+1/13=.215 or just over 20%. That might be good enough. It's worth noting though that any class Murlocs that might be coming will reduce these odds. With what we know right now though, I'd rate the card as average.
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Beat your opponent to a pulp with Revenant Warrior or outlast them with Demon Reno Warlock.
I would say Shadow Visions belongs in a Shadowform Priest deck, especially if they're running a highlander Kazakus and/or Raza the Chained (or wild Reno Jackson).
It would allow Shadow Priests to get an extra copy of Shadowform and/or allow for a switch quicker in the game along with the 3-damage hero power, as well as offer an extra key spell to highlander deck players.
Your kalimos compare section has an error in it with one of the comparisons, other than that nice work :D
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Justicar Trueheart (Totemic Slam) is mentioned where it should instead show a comparison to Invocation of Fire
Not sure what you would want to compare it too though. I don't recall anything that does 6 damage targeting face only.
Should you craft/disenchant (Golden) Sylvanas or Ragnaros?
Find out in the: ULTIMATE dust guide for Hall of Fame cards
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Ah, like that. I'd place Justicar at the top or somehow separated then and say there isn't anything to compare Invocation of Fire to. I think Rag is a decent enough comparison to put there though and better than nothing. Or possible you could compare it to King Krush, as that would typically be going face :p
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Best comparison might be Nightblade, though it's obviously cheaper and does less damage (and sees no play whatsoever). I think the Invocation of Fire is easily the weakest option, but can provide some "surprise" burst. Typically you wouldn't want to drop too low against shamans anyway, as they have so many burn-spells at their disposal, so I think this will be the least picked option from the 4.
Should you craft/disenchant (Golden) Sylvanas or Ragnaros?
Find out in the: ULTIMATE dust guide for Hall of Fame cards
Is it just me or is Mimic Pod missing?
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Read this last night on my phone and forgot my password, so not sure if the post was updated. But, there were quite a few spelling or grammar mistakes in the post. Other than that, god damn amazing. Can't wait for the next part.
Alright, Section 3 has been posted. For everyone who reads and comments on my reviews, I would like to thank you all for your feedback and thank you for reading my review. I appreciate all of what you say.
@MrZNF, so I just changed the positioning and I agree, it does look better.
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Good reviews, it was fun reading them.
You definitely put a lot of work. I was also not lazy and skimmed though some of your previous reviews. And I noticed one common thing - you tend to overvalue bad cards that require a lot of setup. Just a suggestion for future reviews - when a card has a lot of prerequisites to function well, it is usually bad in Hearthstone. Please examine such cards closer and stay away of giving them high ratings unless the synergy is already present in the set.
I'll illustrate my observation by an example - you rating of Rogue quest - The Caverns below. For an experienced HS (or CCG in general) player it is obvious that this card is Very Bad to Bad unless there is some strong synergy which has not been yet revealed. I'll prove that as a theorem: Let's imagine Rogue got new Spell: 5 mana, your minions are 5/5 for the rest of this game. This spell should be rated as Average to Good, because in HS all that matters is Tempo, and paying 5 mana to do nothing on current turn is very big loss of tempo.
How add one prerequisite: to cast this spell, you have to play specific deck wich also includes cards that gimp your main strategy (the shadowsteps, pandas, whatever). It makes the spell rating from Bad to Average.
Finally, add another prerequisite - you have to actually complete the quest which is not easy. And if you fail to do so, deck that you build specifically to abuse the reward is almost worthless. And that makes final rating of a Quest "Very Bad to Bad".
For comparable cards to Molten Blade, I'd suggest Shifter Zerus. Awesome review!
Edit: I just noticed you included Zerus in fun facts, sorry. I'm still not sure why you didn't include him in comparable cards as well though.
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On living mana any mana that you will gain and lose for the end of your turn does not effect it and when the 2 2 dies it gives you an empty mana which means you can't use it on the same turn in other words only use it for OTK
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