Fel Reaver
Card Text
Whenever your opponent plays a card, remove the top 3 cards of your deck.
Flavor Text
So reaver. Much fel. Wow.
Card Sounds
Additional Information
Name | Type | Class | Cost | Attack | Health |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Argent Squire | Minion | 1 | 1 | 1 | |
Argent Squire | Minion | 1 | 1 | 1 | |
Ancestral Spirit | Ability | Shaman | 2 | 0 | 0 |
Noble Sacrifice | Ability | Paladin | 1 | 0 | 0 |
Silence | Ability | Priest | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Mindgames | Ability | Priest | 4 | 0 | 0 |
Mortal Strike | Ability | Warrior | 4 | 0 | 0 |
Gorehowl | Weapon | Warrior | 7 | 7 | 1 |
Avenge | Ability | Paladin | 1 | 0 | 0 |
Fel Reaver | Minion | 5 | 8 | 8 | |
Gnomeregan Infantry | Minion | 3 | 1 | 4 | |
Toshley | Minion | 6 | 5 | 7 | |
Powermace | Weapon | Shaman | 3 | 3 | 2 |
Rhonin | Minion | Mage | 8 | 7 | 7 |
Warhorse Trainer | Minion | Paladin | 3 | 3 | 4 |
Warhorse Trainer | Minion | Paladin | 3 | 3 | 4 |
Ancestral Knowledge | Ability | Shaman | 2 | 0 | 0 |
Warhorse Trainer | Minion | Paladin | 3 | 3 | 4 |
Dread Infernal | Minion | Warlock | 6 | 6 | 6 |
Ancestral Knowledge | Ability | Shaman | 2 | 0 | 0 |
Dread Infernal | Minion | Warlock | 6 | 6 | 6 |
Holy Light | Ability | Paladin | 2 | 0 | 0 |
Dread Infernal | Minion | Warlock | 6 | 6 | 6 |
Argent Squire | Minion | 1 | 1 | 1 | |
Ancestral Spirit | Ability | Shaman | 2 | 0 | 0 |
Holy Light | Ability | Paladin | 2 | 0 | 0 |
Noble Sacrifice | Ability | Paladin | 1 | 0 | 0 |
Silence | Ability | Priest | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Mindgames | Ability | Priest | 4 | 0 | 0 |
Mortal Strike | Ability | Warrior | 4 | 0 | 0 |
Gorehowl | Weapon | Warrior | 7 | 7 | 1 |
Dread Infernal | Minion | Warlock | 6 | 6 | 6 |
Argent Squire | Minion | 1 | 1 | 1 | |
Holy Light | Ability | Paladin | 2 | 0 | 0 |
Noble Sacrifice | Ability | Paladin | 1 | 0 | 0 |
Avenge | Ability | Paladin | 1 | 0 | 0 |
Gorehowl | Weapon | Warrior | 7 | 7 | 1 |
Mortal Strike | Ability | Warrior | 2 | 0 | 0 |
I've defended this card a lot in the past, and I still absolutely love this card and will still defend it.
But there's one thing I really missed in my analysis of the card's downside further down on the page, which I've learned from experience playing this card religiously. This card's discard effect actually does matter a lot before fatigue if you're running Mad Scientist and perhaps other cards that pull specific cards from your deck. (Captain's Parrot and your enemy's Deathlord as well.) Think of it like this: when you play Loot Hoarder, so long as you still have ANY card in your deck, you still have targets for the deathrattle. But if you run out of secrets, Mad Scientist doesn't have a target for the deathrattle.
Everything else I said about ex ante knowledge of the deck state, blah blah blah... that's all still true for vanilla draw, because the order of the cards in your deck is indeterminate. But it DOES matter for fishing cards like Mad Scientist specifically because "fishing" cards don't care about the order of your deck; Mad Scientist will always pull a secret whether it's the top card or bottom card in your deck. If you really want to get technical and mathematical about it, think instead about the subset of cards that Loot Hoarder can target compared to the subset of cards that Mad Scientist can target. Loot Hoarder can target all cards (i.e. the subset is equal your whole deck), so on average, as long as the subset is nonempty, discarding doesn't matter. Mad Scientist works the same way: so long as the subset of your deck is nonempty, discarding doesn't matter on average. But Fel Reaver has a nontrivial chance of making that subset empty before fatigue sets in.
Just something to think about if you're playing Fel Reaver alongside Mad Scientist. For example, I really want to run Mad Scientist+Mirror Entity in my Mech Mage deck because I think that combo is borderline broken, but I also want to run Fel Reaver. Problem is, they don't work well together.
"They discarded my cards... I discarded their face. "
That made my day good sir :) Thank you!
I love this card one of my favorite card in Goblins vs Gnomes expansion
Only use I have for him is in my Priest Silence deck. He can combo well with the 0-cost Silence for a turn 5 8/8. First time I ever saw it was in arena where it cost my opponent many, many cards where I quickly learned Reaver should NEVER be in play without silence on him, unless you can somehow invent a strategy that involves burning cards.
Things like Wailing Soul work real well (though expensive) if you're packing an Ancient Watcher too.
imagine playing this vs miracle..
Worked best for me so far when I can silence it, or when the opponent has only 0-2 cards in hand. Alternatively, it can encourage them to commit to using all their cards to try to burn your deck, opening up a board clear opportunity for you which they can't come back from.
I like the Fel Reaver. I have it in my current Arena deck and was able to summon him on my 2nd turn with Innervate and Coin. I used him to establish board control by killing his little creatures while throwing down a Chillwind Yeti and Defender of Argus until Fel was at 2 health. Then I used Youthful Brewmaster to return it, resummoned next turn and finished him off my opponent a couple turns later. He did put in me in fatigue for 2 turns, but it didn't matter. Well worth burning through the rest of my deck!
Played this card and the Paladin i was playing against used Humility on it... Thought I was screwed but next turn I drew Ancient Brewmaster. I returned the Reaver, and played it the next turn.
Won the game. It was badass.
I already saw Reynad lose a game because he burnt too many threats away from his deck while his priest opponent was at 2 life. Not playing this card would have likely won him the game.
He didn't go into fatigue that game though so it didn't actually matter. It's all psychology. Imagine if Fel Reaver's text read: "Whenever your opponent plays a card, discard the bottom 3 cards of your deck." Then he wouldn't have drawn any of those cards anyway, so it wouldn't have mattered. But the thing is, because at the moment there are no ways to see the top cards of your deck before you draw them, Fel Reaver would actually be the exact same card even if its text read that. How is that?
Say there's a card you want to draw in your deck. Specifically we want to know the probability of drawing that card conditional on the game state. We want to know E(card|game). For example if you have 10 cards left in your deck and you already drew one Kill Command earlier, the odds of drawing kill command is E(card|game) = E(Kill Command|current deck state) = 10%.
But it's just as likely to be the first card on top of your deck as it is to be the bottom card. By the law of total expectations, we have E(card) = E(E(card|game)). So over all games, at any point, the probability of drawing Kill Command off the top is unconditional on the game. The expected value of the conditional probability is equal to the unconditional probability. Fancy that!
Let's put this another way: say there are 5 dead cards they Reynad did not want to card, denoted D, and 10 good cards, denoted G. The order of your deck is just as likely to be GGGGGGGGGGDDDDD as it is to be GGDGGDGGDGGDGGD or DDDDDGGGGGGGGGG. Yes conditional on the game, if you play Fel Reaver and discard those 10 good cards off the top, then the conditional probability changes and becomes E(D|game) = 100%. But the total expectation does not change. Ex ante, he was just as likely to have those good cards on the bottom and all he'd discard would be bad cards!!! If Reynad had discarded bad cards off the top then it would definitely be a good thing that he played Fel Reaver, so he could get down to the bottom of the deck where his good cards are. See what I'm saying? That's why the conditional probability is misleading, because we don't have ex ante knowledge of the deck state, so we need to rely on the unconditional probability via the law of total expectations.
Fel Reaver's effect matters only when you hit fatigue. It also matters when it tells your opponent what you have/don't have in your deck--which is why it might be a good reason to mill your opponent before you destroy this card even if you don't expect the game to go long enough to go into fatigue. If you discard two Kill Commands and an Ironbeak Owl off the top, your opponent knows you don't have them anymore. That can change how your opponent plays.
I understand those arguments. But if your deck only has 15% threats, and if you randomly burn away those threats, especially the top ones, and all you have left is stuff that won't win you the game... and on top of this, it puts a clock on you to lose the game... then the card is the reason you lost.
The card has some merits, but it seems to be a very big gamble that doesn't pan out all of the time. Why take on such a liability for? If you're zoo, then fine, but if you're not zoo, then your deck is less redundant and you shouldn't run this card.
I'll reiterate: You're just as likely to "randomly burn away those threats" as you are to... never draw them in the first place. It's also just as likely that Fel Reaver only burns away bad cards, letting you get to the good cards in your deck that you would have otherwise never drawn before the game ends. Exact same probability of all those scenarios happening. :)
Again, Fel Reaver's burn doesn't matter for your unconditional probability of drawing specific cards until you hit fatigue. (That is, unconditional on the cards you've already drawn/burned, but still conditional on the number of card draws you've had.) The only way Fel Reaver could have actually hurt him (without ex ante knowledge of the deck state) is if burning away all those aggro cards changed the way his opponent played when his opponent saw that all his threats were gone. That is very much a possibility and I'll admit that maybe his opponent played more aggressively when he saw those cards go away.
I think that's what happened actually. I mean, Reynad was devasted as all of the threats were burned away. We don't know what happened from his opponent's side, but if it were me, I certainly would have been very aggressive.
I am not a fan of the card personally. I do get the argument that you burn away bad cards or cards you wouldn't draw anyway. I guess the emotional impact on losing because of the card is very high for me. I've seen many games where if the Fel Reaver was something else - like another big minion that was just slightly worse - the game would have gone better.
I suppose it's all about the amount of variance you want to accept with your deck. I really do try to play low variance and consistent decks, but I also see the merit of going big at the risk of losing more games.
You can turn one an 8/8 with druid.
Druid dream:
Turn 2: Ancient Watcher
Turn 3: Innervate + Fel Reaver
Turn 4: Wailing Soul
I saw Noxious playing this on Arena and the result... Fel Reaver = Fatigue before turn 10.
You're right, I didn't remember it correctly.
Haha, this could be fun.....
Could be a good finisher for Warrior, adding Charge to it.