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I'm utterly shocked at the hatred for this card. As an experienced grinder/fatigue/mill player, I'd rate this card really high. Compare it to Argent Watchman and other big 2 drops that have downsides. You get the 1 extra hp which is huge because he can kill 3 2s and live. But on top of the extra hp, you get a BENEFICIAL ability (in certain types of decks). It's a win/win. Bonus stats + great ability. And there's still a 50 50 chance that he won't even draw for them. This is honestly my favorite card out of the expansion. Mill decks don't have access to good 2 drops. They have a lot of good 3 drops, but never 2. It makes me sad though that there's no more Deathlord :(. And it also makes me sad that everyone's too stupid to realize that mill is a thing and that my boy Nat is hated so.
oh yeah and most badass artwork in the set
I think everybody looks at this card and realizes 100% that is the purpose of this card. But when mill is a niche deck AT BEST (maybe pre-Naxx it was sort of a serious deck? Nowadays? Every aggro deck in existence will run you over) and fatigue decks are horribly slow to grind Ranked with (and usually not even that great in serious play; you're incredibly limited on win options without running Elise and trying to draw her aggressively in a Control vs Control situation in the modern meta), and then, just to top it off, he's not even guaranteed to make your opponent draw a card while giving you a measly 1 extra health in return? That's why over half the community voted, "Dust it!"
So I'm kind of shocked you're "utterly shocked at the hatred for this card."
Re-read my post; mill is a niche deck (that whole gigantic list of conditions you listed is precisely why mill is a niche deck nobody plays seriously past rank 15), not fatigue. Fatigue decks can work to a point; they're definitely not Tier 1/Tier 2 quality. They're just so limited in what they can do that once you start teching in options to increase their win conditions, what you actually did was create a modern Control deck (stuff like Elise, better cycling, Doomsayers). Thanks to Elise, almost NO game ends in fatigue when you go Control vs Control, so that's 1 entire archetype you flat out can't beat with a true Fatigue deck. THAT was what I said.
I read you homie. I thought this expansion didn't have a lot for mill, then laughed hard when I saw this card. Here's the problem as I see it. This two drop really isn't a two drop at all in a fair amount of situations, If you play it against a Priest, he's just going to Shadow word pain it, a net zero mill if his active doesn't work on the turn after you put him down. It'd be far better to plop him down in the usual hyper-mill scenario, you know, cold light, youthful, then this guy. That is, after the guy's shadow word pains are exhausted. It's sad that this doesn't get the opportunity to share the limelight with Deathlord. Then priests would have to choose, take out this guy with their pains, miss out on a grove tender or a death lord.
One thing you missed though, is that there are a lot of scenarios in which feeding your opponents cards without drawing them yourself can backfire hard. Face Hunter's the big example, the entire deck is designed to play two or three cards every turn, and I can honestly see such a deck going out of it's way not to kill this card. We've also got Tempo mage too, that Essentially stacks low cost spells and kills you not with board control, but rather an abundance of damage from cheap spell synergies with creatures. In the traditional mill you may draw the answers as they get the damage in healing and counter-spells. Relying on this card to mill your opponent maybe not.
So I think those are the three problems with the card:
1. Countered by early game control spells during the ideal time to play it, has a lot of new counters with over budgeted minions and shadow word horror this expansion
2. In no way serves as an adequate replacement for gang up, death lord, poison seeds, and a lot of the mill cards that will be unplayable in standard.
3. Milling both decks is not always the same as opponent card draw.
Mill deck beat fatigue deck any day. I have all class golden and one time even climbed to legend with mill before. It is a tier 4 deck, but not limited to rank 5. It is at same tier as midrange shaman before this WOTOG expansion, so does that mean all Midrange Shaman cards are shit? Just because it support a tier 4 deck, yet not strong in the current meta mean it is not a archetype or that it is niche. It is still powerful, and beat noob. It just doesn't have strong winrate against what most people are queueing with nowadays, but you can make people play around stuff and when you make consistent perfect play. It is possible to hit very high rank with it. Yes it is not strongly competitive in current meta., but it is still not a niche deck and an archetype to watch out for. Just because this card support a non-dominant deck type does not mean that it is weak.
Considering a huge slowdown in the upcoming meta, malygos and nat the darkfisher will do way better even in ranked in the form of combo and fatigue decks respectively. Actually want to go for mill rogue now xD. I feel that the possibilty to mill your opponents old god can absolutely shatter their deck. Therefore, i feel that this card has potential. Definitely gonna put him in my mill deck.
well to the guys saying that aggro counters mill, it actually doesn't that much. Well it didn't before standard. I only say this because in a mill/fatigue deck, your goal is to survive a long game anyway so you always run a lot of healing/taunts anyway, which is your win condition vs face decks. Honestly, before they nerfed poisoned seeds again like a week and a half ago, I was actually farming people with mill druid. The only games I lost were due to RNG. The deck's actually really good in this meta. Vs said control decks, you don't give them the time to outvalue you with the golden monkey because you fatigue them like 8 turns faster than normal. Not to mention the fact that the monkey gets rid of MOST board clears, so when they play it, you just dump your hand and trading becomes easier, in addition to the fact that they can play 1 card a turn usually and they have the chance of getting bad legends.
Mill druid actually hard countered secret paladin as well simply because you don't care how many cards they draw, because they're not going to outvalue you anyway and the reason why secret paladin is so OP is because they always end up curving out really well from the secrets. When the deck's designed to reliably curve out really well, giving them more cards adds a lot of diminishing returns. Once you live past turn 6, the game just becomes a battle to get rid of tirion, dr boom, and the possible ragnaros and you're well equiped to do that. Plus, you want him to draw his secrets so he gets little value from challenger.
Vs decks like tempo mage, once you gain board control after turn 7, you can just heal past their burst, and then play justicar and it's gg.
Basically, you were only weak to combo druid. However just realizing now, they got rid of BGH, so deck's probably a lot worse anyway now so nvm.
mill druid's worse i mean
I actually crafted this bad boy and put him into a mill druid deck and I've been slaughtering people with it. I was so surprised at how good mill druid is right now. You'd think it'd suck because of all the cards that were lost in standard, but I've been wrecking people with it. Mainly because everyone's playing C'thun and you can annihilate them with your naturalizes and BGH. You just have to deal with the stupid twins. I threw in Nat the Darkfisher, and literally every time I played him, he was a super star. I was vs this one priest and he punched the priest in the face 10 times, and drew him 6 cards ahead into fatigue, because the 4 hp makes him sticky and with my giant factory of removal entering my hand, I can constantly just kill everything they play before they can attack him. I also played games where they spent 2 cards to kill him and he didn't even draw them any cards lol. I've won like 9/12 games with mill druid and I'm at like rank 8. (Im not a serious ladder grinder, I only play my own custom decks, and I get bored of a class fast, so I end up swapping decks a lot, so rank 8's pretty high for me. I think the real MVP for mill druid though is the spell that gives you 8 armor, plus the awesome class legendary. Mill druid's even viable without poisoned seeds, which was the best and most important card in the deck lol, so I'd honestly believe that it would be a tier 2 deck if that card was still playable.
Oh man, just imagine the milling you could do if you hit this with Master of D- oh wait
Dancing swords is three mana, this is two. BIG difference. Mill decks dont have access to good two drops but have MANY options for three drops, much better than dancing swords. A card that has a beneficial ability for you while being a 2/4 for two mana (a slot where you dont have much options to choose from) is amazing because it lets you trade with two 3/2s and maintain board control most likely. It stops aggro face stomping you basically in the early game without using other cards that might be incredibly useful later on.
Would be really cool in Mill rogue
Amazing artwork.
Metal fisherman.
This card is le epic good XD!!!
wait a sec this card can be playable in mill deck rogue or druid
Correct me if im wrong but the fact that people will be playing more control like decks in the standard format. And control decks usually have 8 cards in hand that are usually high cost. This means that it will force them to play cards they may not want to play and if they don't it will mill them. I will agree this is not your ideal legendary. But just reconsider before dusting it.
This card is actually just fine
Besides various applications in mill decks it can confuse your opponent wether to trade it (4 damage) or let it survive next turn and try to fish (if you won't trade)
Also in 50% cases it is just 2/4 for 2