Hearthpwn

Corporal is the most interesting card I've seen in a while. 2-mana Deal 5 as a spell would be broken good. As a minion, it's slowed down sufficiently to not be broken (probably...). The wicked slow options for silencing or taunting it are neat, but probably not actually feasible. Toss in the synergy this set has with minions that die, and it's a really interesting.

Onyxia, meet Tauntyxia.

Wudijo's favorite weapon. Diablo 3 fans will understand.

Is it great? Not really. Is it worse than conventional HS? Not really.

A common DEs for 5 dust, right? Crafting a Legendary is 1600 dust. Takes 320 commons to make a Legendary in constructed. Extreme example, but you'd have to DE 16 Epics for 100 dust each to make a Legendary. That's not really any better, plus the cards rotate out.

Flipside, you can actually grind for coins in Mercenaries with PVE, but can't grind for dust in constructed.

Renathal hasn't been like Genn and Baku. Maybe he's not fine or good for the game, but whatever he does, it isn't in the same way that Genn and Baku did it. The Stormwind Quests have been somewhat, but what made Genn and Baku really different was the way it wasn't just a settled meta with their decks, but very predictable turns, due to the strength of the hero powers. The Odd/Even decks always played their early turns in roughly the same ways, with very little variety. Quests wound up being quite similar, with the immense power of the rewards to just win games, and clear fastest ways to accomplish the rewards.

More than Renathal there are a few other causes. We now have a much faster-ossifying metagame. Analytics have made nearly every deck into functionally a netdeck. The power inflation has crowded out room for variety, as decks need to be razor-honed to compete with the high power level of recent Hearthstone. Decks crystalize into their best forms more quickly, with less originality and experimentation. The move towards active win conditions and away from grind has exacerbated the problems of a polarized meta and decks hard-countering others.

Meanwhile, the biggest thing Renathal has changed isn't increasing the turn-by-turn predictability of decks, but a massive sledgehammer to aggro. I know for years folks have been hoping that the upcomming expansion would finally be the one to kill aggro, but now that it's happened, perhaps it hasn't been a good thing. I kinda didn't think it'd happen, but all it took was +10 health for 0 mana.

Not sure where you're getting "double" from. Twice as many choices doesn't mean twice as good results.

The math's not hard on this. If we look at order statistics, two picks would result in a player choosing a hero around the 67th percentile, and four picks you'd typically have the 80th percentile. Or thinking about things as coin flips (that is, with a binomial distribution), where you get a 50% chance of either a good or bad hero, two flips will yield a 25% chance of two bad heroes, but four picks will have an 8.25% chance of four bad choices.

That's meta-indepentent: it might not be a 50% chance of good against 50% of bad on a per-hero basis. Old Guardian has a recent video out, and his breakdown with the current meta: with 2 picks, you'll have a 62% chance for a better than average hero, with 4 picks you have a 86% chance or so for an above average hero. Flipped the other way, 14 vs 38 games out of 100 with a bad hero.

So an additional 24 games out of 100, or 1 out of 4, approximately, a F2P player will have a bad hero that a subscription player wouldn't have.

Don't get me wrong, I think this is bullshit from Bliz, and probably kills the game mode for me, but that's not an excuse for bad math.

So the no-upside version is nearly Argent Horserider. 2-attack minion for 3, does 2 damage to face when you play it. 1 health divine shield is typically better than 4 HP, but it's fairly close in practice.

But like... that's the no-upside version of *A TECH CARD*. What tech card is a 3 mana 2/4 deal 2 when it's a dead draw?

Thwart Ice Block, discourage or prevent big draw turns, yeah, seems solid. Now, not in every deck, and it isn't really a build-around and I think it'll be trash in control decks, but toss this into any deck that's keeping pressure on your opponent, and it just works.

Best one yet, IMHO. Secret Destruction is dead against most classes, but this is always at least a bit useful. A tech card that's a 3-mana 2/4 that does 2 to face could be a lot worse, but the upside is huge.

There's no Coldlight interaction. This only works on "next turn" and not "until the end of your next turn." Once your opponent passes the turn, Ashen Elemental is done.

I mean, Landscaping has seen play at times when spell-token druid works. This is just better.

The only way that this starts to make sense to me is Infuse. That's a decent number of minions from one card to infuse something, at least for Warrior.

That said, there hasn't yet been revealed enough of a payoff for Warrior Infuse. They just won't be better than Druid or such for a Sire Denathrius deck, and there aren't yet any class cards with Infuse.

Priest was the original card stealing class. Rogue is encroaching on Priest identity, not the other way around.

I hate it. On the one hand, it'll be really bad, since it's so incredibly slow, requires a tonne of set-up, and absurd RNG to actually work. On the other, when the stars align and something meaningful happens with it, it'll be epic-ly tilting. I don't think a card which is mostly bad but rarely incredibly frustrating for the opponent is a good kind of card to print.

I like thief priest in general. Copying cards from an opponent is a really neat way to do long-term value, as well as skill testing, since you're trying to get the most out of cards which don't synergise with your deck.

This, however... I just wish it didn't exist.

I wish cards like this just didn't exist. I just don't think they're fun, regardless of how good or bad they are.

But that's just like, my opinion, man.

What strikes me is how modest Renethal is. 40 HP is a nice buffer against aggro, but it doesn't auto-win against aggro, and there's a cost in terms of inconsistency and the dead draw of the 3/4.

But there's just more of an equilibrium. You can play Murloc Shaman and Pirate Warrior. You can also play Curse Warlock.