I have a bit of a bold prediction about this next expansion. The Shaman deathknight card, Thrall, Deathseer, is being hyped up as the big, meta-breaking card of this expansion, and some are already calling for it to be nerfed, but I believe the community is overestimating its impact and that this card will turn out to be The Marsh Queen all over again.
For reference, when The Marsh Queen was initially announced, more than 50% of the users on this site voted it as meta-defining, and as we all know... it wasn't. I was one of the few people who called that it wouldn't be good, and I'm doing it once again for Thrall, Deathseer. The hype trains for Thrall, Deathseer and The Marsh Queen have similar rationale: Hunters really want to play 1-drops, and Shamans really want to evolve their minions. Seems like it should work then, right? Not that simple.
Why did The Marsh Queen fail?
It turns out that, although Hunter decks have historically enjoyed playing 1-drops, The Marsh Queen is still a bad card. This is not due to Hunter being a bad class or the quest having too little support. It's just bad by design. A deck that plays enough 1-drops to satisfy the quest cannot win the long game. It can only hope to win through tempo-ing out your opponent early, but because you have to play the quest on turn 1, you cannot do this either. It's a catch-22. The quest has anti-synergy with the deck it was intended for.
Why will Thrall, Deathseer fail?
Because, like The Marsh Queen, Thrall, Deathseer doesn't actually have synergy with Evolve Shaman. That might come as a surprise, considering the battlecry is literally to cast evolve twice on all of your minions, but there are other factors that have to be considered.
1. The battlecry is not actually that great
Yeah, you play two copies of it in the deck, but in a vacuum, it's just all right. You get a couple additional stats on most of your minions, while one or two of them hilariously become weaker, and it's like sure whatever. This is not an effect you would ever pay more than 3 mana for, and Thrall, Deathseer has you paying 5.
Going off of the first point, the real reason to play Evolve in constructed is for the synergy with Doppelgangster, since Doppelgangster plus Evolve gives you three 6-drops for 6 mana. That's a lot of development, and is often enough to warrant a board clear on its own. Comparatively, three 7-drops for 10 mana: not that great. It's far too slow and, in fact, because of the low quality of the average 7-drop, the total stats produced by each of these combos is roughly the same. If it's better, it's only by a marginal amount, and still gets answered by exactly the same things. Doppelgangster is not enough reason to run Thrall.
3. The hero power contradicts the deck's plan
Don't get me wrong; it's not bad. If Thrall, Deathseer sees any constructed play at all, it will be because of the hero power. A totally new deck will have to be built around it though, as this hero power does not compliment the gameplan of Evolve Shaman. As an Evolve Shaman, your strategy is not to trade for the opponent's minions and then fully heal your own. You simply do not have the tools to play control. Your strategy is to flood the board and cast Bloodlust for a million damage, and the loss of the basic Shaman hero power actually hurts that strategy. Without your hero power, your deck goes from being a tier 1 force of nature to a considerably above average Priest arena, and that's not good enough for constructed.
It's also possible that, if you could run three Evolves in Evolve Shaman, you wouldn't because it hurts your draw too much to run three of these along with two copies of Bloodlust, but that's a difficult call to make without heavy speculation. Anyway, those are my thoughts. Brb dinner.
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Though I agree with your evaluation on Thrall, The Marsh Queen failed due to the fact the quest reward was insignificant and not the large amount of 1 drops in the deck.
Whispers of the Old Gods is rotating into Wild next year, right? That means Evolve and Master of Evolution are on their way out the door. Kind of a bummer to create an Evolve-related Heroic power only to lose the Evolve-related cards soon after. Personally, I was hoping/expecting DK Thrall to be Freeze related; after all, Freeze Shaman seems to be what they're selling in KFT.
Still, I think the card is really cool so hopefully it won't suck too much :/
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I think that you WANT to be right, and you have some valid points. It's always fun to be the one who is right amongst a swarm of rabid "omg pls nerf," characters that we have lurking around.
I think the card will be somewhere in the middle. Not really game breaking but not weak, either. I don't think playing thrall after doppelgangsters is really that doable (as you said, it's really slow), but after a turn 4 jade spirit with her fellow jade and such it could be solid. And your opponent will have to play around it all game. Your novice engineers (which already did its job), is now a 4 drop, or really any battlecry that you got value off of. A flood deck could use this potentially pretty well.
Thrall is good enough to create a new archtype. It doesn't need to have synergy with evolve Shaman. Basically, evolve has found a home in token decks that are extremely aggro, but use evolve to recharge after they would normally run out of gas. DK Thrall is too slow for that deck, but it can find a home in a control deck.
You have to keep in mind you're playing token shaman with a 3rd evolve effect. If any of your Doppelgangster survive through 1 Evolve, chances are you'll get an 8 cost minion the next round after he trades with something. So there is a lot of value there. You also now have an effect where after you trade a minion you can keep evolving it. It will take some skill to get used to, but I believe with the other effects, we're going to see some cards that synergize well with this. So let's say you don't run Doppelgangster + Evolve, you can still pick some other minion generator. You just need to have some type of minion generator to keep the Hero power going. Take quest rogue for example, it didn't seem too powerful at first, but once people learned the right cards, it became the one deck nobody enjoyed playing against. Same thing will happen here, just like back in the day when we saw the Tunnel Trogg / Totem Golem opener from Shaman. You will see Shaman clogging up the ladder. I think the Shaman Hero can take the place of 1 Bloodlust card, and make token Shaman stay Tier 1. You could probably trade the other Bloodlust for Moorabi, and add 2 Voodoo Hexxer and there you go. Minion Generator. Who knows, we'll have to see what the other heroes end up as. There will also be plenty of counters to play. Heck, even if you put a DK hero card in your deck your likely to get burned seeing that Priest is going to be stealing plenty of cards. Combo Priest is still going to be strong next month. Hopefully this will be the last we see of Jade Druid. I think with the addition of Control Warrior, we're going to see more midrange decks, and less aggro. Pirate warrior will become more of a 50/50 deck, and Warlock will have some kind of viable handlock deck.
You might be right about what you say but don't forget about the cards like Moat Lurker and Bomb Squad. The hero card gives you an opportunity to get rid of its harmful effects like a cheaper version of Master of Evolution and you don't have to waste your Evolve for only one Moat Lurker. There are also good battlecry cards with bad stats like Bonemare, Big-Time Racketeer and variaties which i don't remember now.
You can use a Darkspeaker for buffing some cheap taunt minion and after that you can evolve it.
You can also try this hero card with a type of a C'Thun deck, which contains a lot of battlecry minions.
Also it is a good card with a murloc deck which Shaman has already a quest about it. You can boost your murlocs and some murlocs like Corrupted Seer can evolve well.
This card is bringing more things then we thought. It has a potential for the existing cards which never find some place in constructed. Also the cards which were well at constructed and no more find a place like Tinkmaster Overspark can be seen in ranked plays again.
Ofcourse they all are in paper. As you said, we shouldn't overestimate any card but what I'm trying to say is we shouldn't underestimate them too.
I'm trying to direct your attention to other techs than evolve-based decks. This card is more complicated than it seems.
Memedeck-seeker. Always tries to build new decks. Hates tournements, streamers, netdecks and poor-o players. ah, but a tournement mode could be great !!!
I have to agree with you that Marsh queen was indeed had anti synergy because it was weak in the long run. But here's the big difference: When you completed Marsh queen, it didn't do anything immediately, while DK thrall does something right away. You can have a super efficient trade when you play thrall, supposing you're ahead. If you're behind you just don't play him.
Another thing is that Hunter is supposed to be a quick deck, and it ran out of steam really quick. Though in shaman you have Jade golem and elemental shaman. Both decks are slower than Marsh queen decks, and you can keep hand/board control through your elementals/Jade golems.
You don't need dopplegangster to make it work, most Jade golems and elementals will have different cost of Mana when on the field, so the evolve will be strong (imagine a 7 Mana 5/5 turning into ysera)
Jade Shaman is the deck I expect to use DKThrall in, not Evolve Shaman.
While I understand the OPs arguments, I agree with you that Thrall, Deathseer will be great in Jade Shaman. Here is my idea of a Jade/Elemental hybrid (now that Jade Spirit is an elemental) that has the best of both worlds and still a formidable early game. This deck might be OP:
The main criticism of the OP is that the deck doesn't have to be the typical Dopplegangster deck.
None of the three hero cards we have seen force a deck too much. They seem like powerful options for many different types of decks rather than cards you absolutely have to build the whole deck around.
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you drop your standard turn 6 dopple+evolve. Trade on turn 7, then drop your DK to trade up to 8 mana minions with the chance to also grab a 9 mana minion. I think that this is going to be the standard evolve play going forward, especially if you have any other minions already on the board when you drop your dopple.
Ok i expected something a boit more constructed, but MORE Rng? I mean, were gonna see play of this card (probably), but it will be one of those "i have a 50% chance of become fucking broken or a 50% of having another piece of crap). It's a good hero, but... Meh.
Jade Shaman makes more sense as a home for this card, but doesn't strike me as a deck that actually needs it. Jade Shaman is currently meh, and Thrall, Deathseer makes it, at best, no more powerful than it already is. As a tool for generating value, Spirit Echo seems better.
It might become good I guess, pending on how the meta pans out and what other cards you get... but it does replace your hero-power, making it tougher to play tokens decks. Maybe we'll some kind of heavy m/r-shaman or control-shaman that is battlecry-centric.
I also think that a lot of the time when he is good to play and give a lot of value, a bloodlust would won the game outright... and I think you'll have a lot of dead hands if you play this card, double bloodlust and double evolve.
It remains to be seen I guess, but right now it looks to me like it suffers from slight win-more complex.
Good analysis and I think you may be right, One thing I'd like to add about your dopplegangster + DK Thrall point is that you have a significant chance of getting baron geddon which destroys a lot of the value that you just got through the double evolve, especially if your opponent has a damage-based aoe removal in hand.
I'm excited to try out this card in other decks like jade, elemental,and maybe even a control shaman (because of the hero power) and see how it does.
I have a bit of a bold prediction about this next expansion. The Shaman deathknight card, Thrall, Deathseer, is being hyped up as the big, meta-breaking card of this expansion, and some are already calling for it to be nerfed, but I believe the community is overestimating its impact and that this card will turn out to be The Marsh Queen all over again.
For reference, when The Marsh Queen was initially announced, more than 50% of the users on this site voted it as meta-defining, and as we all know... it wasn't. I was one of the few people who called that it wouldn't be good, and I'm doing it once again for Thrall, Deathseer. The hype trains for Thrall, Deathseer and The Marsh Queen have similar rationale: Hunters really want to play 1-drops, and Shamans really want to evolve their minions. Seems like it should work then, right? Not that simple.
Why did The Marsh Queen fail?
It turns out that, although Hunter decks have historically enjoyed playing 1-drops, The Marsh Queen is still a bad card. This is not due to Hunter being a bad class or the quest having too little support. It's just bad by design. A deck that plays enough 1-drops to satisfy the quest cannot win the long game. It can only hope to win through tempo-ing out your opponent early, but because you have to play the quest on turn 1, you cannot do this either. It's a catch-22. The quest has anti-synergy with the deck it was intended for.
Why will Thrall, Deathseer fail?
Because, like The Marsh Queen, Thrall, Deathseer doesn't actually have synergy with Evolve Shaman. That might come as a surprise, considering the battlecry is literally to cast evolve twice on all of your minions, but there are other factors that have to be considered.
1. The battlecry is not actually that great
Yeah, you play two copies of it in the deck, but in a vacuum, it's just all right. You get a couple additional stats on most of your minions, while one or two of them hilariously become weaker, and it's like sure whatever. This is not an effect you would ever pay more than 3 mana for, and Thrall, Deathseer has you paying 5.
2. Doppelgangster + Thrall =/= Doppelgangster + Evolve
Going off of the first point, the real reason to play Evolve in constructed is for the synergy with Doppelgangster, since Doppelgangster plus Evolve gives you three 6-drops for 6 mana. That's a lot of development, and is often enough to warrant a board clear on its own. Comparatively, three 7-drops for 10 mana: not that great. It's far too slow and, in fact, because of the low quality of the average 7-drop, the total stats produced by each of these combos is roughly the same. If it's better, it's only by a marginal amount, and still gets answered by exactly the same things. Doppelgangster is not enough reason to run Thrall.
3. The hero power contradicts the deck's plan
Don't get me wrong; it's not bad. If Thrall, Deathseer sees any constructed play at all, it will be because of the hero power. A totally new deck will have to be built around it though, as this hero power does not compliment the gameplan of Evolve Shaman. As an Evolve Shaman, your strategy is not to trade for the opponent's minions and then fully heal your own. You simply do not have the tools to play control. Your strategy is to flood the board and cast Bloodlust for a million damage, and the loss of the basic Shaman hero power actually hurts that strategy. Without your hero power, your deck goes from being a tier 1 force of nature to a considerably above average Priest arena, and that's not good enough for constructed.
It's also possible that, if you could run three Evolves in Evolve Shaman, you wouldn't because it hurts your draw too much to run three of these along with two copies of Bloodlust, but that's a difficult call to make without heavy speculation. Anyway, those are my thoughts. Brb dinner.
Jade Shaman is the deck I expect to use DKThrall in, not Evolve Shaman.
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Would this card work with murloc shaman, since murlocs are zoo?
Though I agree with your evaluation on Thrall, The Marsh Queen failed due to the fact the quest reward was insignificant and not the large amount of 1 drops in the deck.
That's Incredible!
Whispers of the Old Gods is rotating into Wild next year, right? That means Evolve and Master of Evolution are on their way out the door. Kind of a bummer to create an Evolve-related Heroic power only to lose the Evolve-related cards soon after. Personally, I was hoping/expecting DK Thrall to be Freeze related; after all, Freeze Shaman seems to be what they're selling in KFT.
Still, I think the card is really cool so hopefully it won't suck too much :/
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elemental focus on the if you "play" an elemental last turn
so you can play elemental, activate it battlecry , trade, hero power evolve
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I think that you WANT to be right, and you have some valid points. It's always fun to be the one who is right amongst a swarm of rabid "omg pls nerf," characters that we have lurking around.
I think the card will be somewhere in the middle. Not really game breaking but not weak, either. I don't think playing thrall after doppelgangsters is really that doable (as you said, it's really slow), but after a turn 4 jade spirit with her fellow jade and such it could be solid. And your opponent will have to play around it all game. Your novice engineers (which already did its job), is now a 4 drop, or really any battlecry that you got value off of. A flood deck could use this potentially pretty well.
Thrall is good enough to create a new archtype. It doesn't need to have synergy with evolve Shaman. Basically, evolve has found a home in token decks that are extremely aggro, but use evolve to recharge after they would normally run out of gas. DK Thrall is too slow for that deck, but it can find a home in a control deck.
As far as i know the hero power hasn't been revealed. We will see then, probably some token bullshit.
Also, Queen Carnassa is my favorite midrange quest, probably the most underrated card of the game (and this seems so far a playable midrange card)
You have to keep in mind you're playing token shaman with a 3rd evolve effect. If any of your Doppelgangster survive through 1 Evolve, chances are you'll get an 8 cost minion the next round after he trades with something. So there is a lot of value there. You also now have an effect where after you trade a minion you can keep evolving it. It will take some skill to get used to, but I believe with the other effects, we're going to see some cards that synergize well with this. So let's say you don't run Doppelgangster + Evolve, you can still pick some other minion generator. You just need to have some type of minion generator to keep the Hero power going. Take quest rogue for example, it didn't seem too powerful at first, but once people learned the right cards, it became the one deck nobody enjoyed playing against. Same thing will happen here, just like back in the day when we saw the Tunnel Trogg / Totem Golem opener from Shaman. You will see Shaman clogging up the ladder. I think the Shaman Hero can take the place of 1 Bloodlust card, and make token Shaman stay Tier 1. You could probably trade the other Bloodlust for Moorabi, and add 2 Voodoo Hexxer and there you go. Minion Generator. Who knows, we'll have to see what the other heroes end up as. There will also be plenty of counters to play. Heck, even if you put a DK hero card in your deck your likely to get burned seeing that Priest is going to be stealing plenty of cards. Combo Priest is still going to be strong next month. Hopefully this will be the last we see of Jade Druid. I think with the addition of Control Warrior, we're going to see more midrange decks, and less aggro. Pirate warrior will become more of a 50/50 deck, and Warlock will have some kind of viable handlock deck.
cheers.
You might be right about what you say but don't forget about the cards like Moat Lurker and Bomb Squad. The hero card gives you an opportunity to get rid of its harmful effects like a cheaper version of Master of Evolution and you don't have to waste your Evolve for only one Moat Lurker. There are also good battlecry cards with bad stats like Bonemare, Big-Time Racketeer and variaties which i don't remember now.
You can use a Darkspeaker for buffing some cheap taunt minion and after that you can evolve it.
You can also try this hero card with a type of a C'Thun deck, which contains a lot of battlecry minions.
It is also a good tech with Jade Golems
Also it is a good card with a murloc deck which Shaman has already a quest about it. You can boost your murlocs and some murlocs like Corrupted Seer can evolve well.
This card is bringing more things then we thought. It has a potential for the existing cards which never find some place in constructed.
Also the cards which were well at constructed and no more find a place like Tinkmaster Overspark can be seen in ranked plays again.
Ofcourse they all are in paper. As you said, we shouldn't overestimate any card but what I'm trying to say is we shouldn't underestimate them too.
I'm trying to direct your attention to other techs than evolve-based decks. This card is more complicated than it seems.
Memedeck-seeker. Always tries to build new decks. Hates tournements, streamers, netdecks and poor-o players.
ah, but a tournement mode could be great !!!
I have to agree with you that Marsh queen was indeed had anti synergy because it was weak in the long run. But here's the big difference: When you completed Marsh queen, it didn't do anything immediately, while DK thrall does something right away. You can have a super efficient trade when you play thrall, supposing you're ahead. If you're behind you just don't play him.
Another thing is that Hunter is supposed to be a quick deck, and it ran out of steam really quick. Though in shaman you have Jade golem and elemental shaman. Both decks are slower than Marsh queen decks, and you can keep hand/board control through your elementals/Jade golems.
You don't need dopplegangster to make it work, most Jade golems and elementals will have different cost of Mana when on the field, so the evolve will be strong (imagine a 7 Mana 5/5 turning into ysera)
The main criticism of the OP is that the deck doesn't have to be the typical Dopplegangster deck.
None of the three hero cards we have seen force a deck too much. They seem like powerful options for many different types of decks rather than cards you absolutely have to build the whole deck around.
Always looking for casual play and meeting new people. Hit me up at adampjr#1929 (NA).
I see it working out like this....
you drop your standard turn 6 dopple+evolve. Trade on turn 7, then drop your DK to trade up to 8 mana minions with the chance to also grab a 9 mana minion. I think that this is going to be the standard evolve play going forward, especially if you have any other minions already on the board when you drop your dopple.
Ok i expected something a boit more constructed, but MORE Rng? I mean, were gonna see play of this card (probably), but it will be one of those "i have a 50% chance of become fucking broken or a 50% of having another piece of crap). It's a good hero, but... Meh.
Jade Shaman makes more sense as a home for this card, but doesn't strike me as a deck that actually needs it. Jade Shaman is currently meh, and Thrall, Deathseer makes it, at best, no more powerful than it already is. As a tool for generating value, Spirit Echo seems better.
It might become good I guess, pending on how the meta pans out and what other cards you get... but it does replace your hero-power, making it tougher to play tokens decks. Maybe we'll some kind of heavy m/r-shaman or control-shaman that is battlecry-centric.
I also think that a lot of the time when he is good to play and give a lot of value, a bloodlust would won the game outright... and I think you'll have a lot of dead hands if you play this card, double bloodlust and double evolve.
It remains to be seen I guess, but right now it looks to me like it suffers from slight win-more complex.
Good analysis and I think you may be right, One thing I'd like to add about your dopplegangster + DK Thrall point is that you have a significant chance of getting baron geddon which destroys a lot of the value that you just got through the double evolve, especially if your opponent has a damage-based aoe removal in hand.
I'm excited to try out this card in other decks like jade, elemental,and maybe even a control shaman (because of the hero power) and see how it does.
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