Call to Arms is a card that's extremely polarizing to me as a Paladin main. I've been playing variants of midrange and control Paladin ever since I unpacked a golden Tirion and a Deathwing in the first week of playing the game, and those two inspired me to play very slow and value oriented decks. As I got more into Magic the Gathering over the years, in parallel to Hearthstone, I've become less interested in Hearthstone's game design and how Blizzard chooses how mechanics should work.
This brings us back to Call to Arms. Call is an extremely similar card to a well known Magic card called Collected Company. Collected Company cost the same mana, and was a staple for both aggro-midrange, board-centric decks, as well as "toolbox" decks, which played other cards like Chord of Calling to deliver specific threats or answers in the form of creatures that hope to respond to what the opponent is doing.
If you're unfamiliar with how Magic works, don't let the green mana symbols confuse you--these two cards have and continue to see play in decks typically of three of the five colors (Green/Black/White and Green/Blue/White being the most common), basically allowing for the most "toolbox" a deck can realistically have. For those more familiar with Magic and its decks, I'm specifically thinking of decks like Angel Pod, if Angel Pod used Coco as a replacement to Pod's banning (because something like Pod would never exist in Hearthstone).
So, just by looking at it, there's definitely similarities between Collected Company and Call to Arms. However, because of how the Recruit mechanic works, the cards are EXTREMELY different. Yes, Coco allows you to pull generally slightly bigger or slightly better creatures, and you tend to have a little bit of choice in exchange for limitation from Coco that you don't have with Call. What's the big difference here, that doesn't really reflect on the cards?
In Magic the Gathering, there's no keyword equivalent to Battlecries. Creatures will simply say "when this enters the battlefied" or "when this comes into play," which means that when you put creatures onto the battlefield, those effects will trigger, as they're entering the battlefield or play. Recruit, however, doesn't at all care about Battlecries whatsoever, and will not trigger them. When it comes to Coco, the card is commonly seen in midrange decks that have anywhere between a few to many, many tech answers in their creatures. They have cards that target and remove threats your opponent have, cards that let you look at your opponent's hand and remove a card from it until the creature leaves play, and cards that prevent cards or abilities from being played or triggering as long as they're in play. This makes for some pretty interesting deck design and play patterns, which involves Cocoing specifically to dig for certain cards you need to beat your opponent's deck. Yes, the card is also often seen in decks purely looking to put a lot of creatures into play quickly, but because of how the card and the game is designed, it allows for these more complex decks to exist (Chord of Calling is also very essential for a deck like this, though I'm afraid it's both something we won't see something like in Hearthstone, and most likely wouldn't exist in Paladin if it ever did).
What does Call to Arms enable on the other hand? Well, if you want to use it as a way to slow down your opponent, you could play cards like Mana Wraith, Dirty Rat, Stubborn Gastropod, perhaps Nerub'ar Weblord as tech in Wild, maybe even Pint-Sized Summoner to capitalize off of your Mana Wraiths slowing down your opponent! Notice a problem? Aside from perhaps Dirty Rat, which is already good in control decks, this strategy is both limited and not exactly worth it if you're planning to use the card to disrupt. If you play the card, you might as well be using it to flood wide and play aggressively. There's no using it to chain Battlecries with stuff like Hydrologist, Novice Engineer, Jeweled Scarab, or Sunfury Protector (could you imagine pulling her and two Shielded Minibots, giving both taunt somehow?!). These cards that generate strong card advantage and defensive board presence aren't super prominent, and in general, there aren't many cards that do these cool controlling effects like there are in Magic. Let's look at some cards typically played in Collected Company decks just to compare.
In Hearthstone's defense, a lot of these cards (those with flash, those that involve lands/artifacts/enchantments, etc.) don't really translate well into Hearthstone's core design, which is a very realist one for an exclusively online game. Secrets are essentially Hearthstone's equivalent to Instants, the graveyard works a lot different in Hearthstone than it does in Magic, and Thoughtseize type of effects (looking at your opponent's hand and removing a card from it) seem to be against what Blizzard has in mind for a card game, and it's a pretty understandable one.
However, is Call to Arms truly doomed to be only for aggro decks? Is it applicable to controlling playstyles? Is the Recruit mechanic lacking the ability to trigger battlecries, even if they're only non-target ones, limiting the card's flexibility as future cards are released? Or is the sparse card pool of low-cost answer/tech/value creatures what prevents Call from being a slower midrange/control card? I've considered using Mistress of Mixtures, Plated Beetle, and Loot Hoarder along with Dirty Rat, and hoping the deck could get by without Wild Pyromancer or Doomsayer, and though it seems powerful in terms of value, is it something that really helps Control Paladin? Lastly, do you think Blizzard was directly inspired by Collected Company when designing Call to Arms?
Interesting... Now I really like the idea of Recruit triggering battlecrys... The thing is, it may limit future design space if they care about wild but I think It is sth I would give away in order to get complex strategies going on.
The other problem is that Blizzard wants the game to be as simple as possible so that might be out of their design philosophy.
I dont think they could do it, but I +1 the idea
Edit: Maybe they will introduce the "when this enters the board" mechanic as a future bold Word?
The main problem, as you mentioned, is that Wild Pyromancer and Doomsayer are almost mandatory in Control Pally.
Triggering battlecries on Summon would cause many bugs. (I won't mention any Italian pasta names here).
In HS, many cards labelled as "great in a Control deck" before expansion finish in the "oppressive in aggro decks" category.
I feel Call to Arms is a just a pseudo card draw in Control decks, thinning your deck. Like a Spell Hemet, Jungle Hunter that would read "... and Summon 3 random 2-drops".
I would definitely say Pyro and Doom are mandatory but I'm not sure if they would be if there's better potential gains. 4-mana for two 2/6 Taunts and a 1/2 Taunt with Divine Shield, for instance, is pretty great value even in Wild, but it doesn't really give the deck room to run cheap tech cards, only to put stats on the field. I think the most realistic way Recruit triggering Battlecries to work is that it wouldn't care about targeted ones, only non-targeted ones. Unfortunately, that means you can't do things like run the crabs in Pirate and Murloc heavy metas, but you can at least do some stuff that nets you a lot of value rather than purely stats on board. And yeah, I agree, there's a ton of things that have potential to be controlling cards that are just better in aggro, and Call definitely is pseudo-card draw, since it's basically "draw 3 one or two cost creatures and put them on the battlefield."
The other problem is that Blizzard wants the game to be as simple as possible so that might be out of their design philosophy. Maybe they will introduce the "when this enters the board" mechanic as a future bold Word?
That's basically the cut and dry of it. But I would argue that yes, while playing a card that suddenly requires you to do several other things before doing anything else could be confusing, I would say 1) there's technically already cards like that, like Kazakus, and 2) it's rare that someone is going to put these cards into their deck, play Call, and then get freaked out when the multiple interactions trigger and never want to do that again. If you play Call to Arms, and Hydrologist, Dirty Rat, and Elven Archer get pulled out, and each battlecry is triggered in the order they randomly enter (though the order is how I listed them out), they should have to first discover their secret, then have the opponent's minion come into play if any, and then deal 1 damage. I don't think it's really all that confusing. Maybe Battlecries aren't triggered from Recruit for different reasons, though, like Gather Your Party or Woe Cleaver pulling out something like an Alexstrasza to set a players health to 15 while developing an 8/8 for cheap. Or, it really is just to keep things simple.
I forgot to mention, but the "other" Coco card of Hearthstone, imo, is Master Oakheart, though he's just so slow to be played like a Coco. His effect is even more specific than Call and could potentially enable some really interesting decks, but, again, he's slow, and the 30-card, 2-of-each-except-for-legendaries format of HS decks is probably the most limiting aspect for Recruit as a mechanic overall, Battlecry triggers or not.
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Call to Arms is a card that's extremely polarizing to me as a Paladin main. I've been playing variants of midrange and control Paladin ever since I unpacked a golden Tirion and a Deathwing in the first week of playing the game, and those two inspired me to play very slow and value oriented decks. As I got more into Magic the Gathering over the years, in parallel to Hearthstone, I've become less interested in Hearthstone's game design and how Blizzard chooses how mechanics should work.
This brings us back to Call to Arms. Call is an extremely similar card to a well known Magic card called Collected Company. Collected Company cost the same mana, and was a staple for both aggro-midrange, board-centric decks, as well as "toolbox" decks, which played other cards like Chord of Calling to deliver specific threats or answers in the form of creatures that hope to respond to what the opponent is doing.
If you're unfamiliar with how Magic works, don't let the green mana symbols confuse you--these two cards have and continue to see play in decks typically of three of the five colors (Green/Black/White and Green/Blue/White being the most common), basically allowing for the most "toolbox" a deck can realistically have. For those more familiar with Magic and its decks, I'm specifically thinking of decks like Angel Pod, if Angel Pod used Coco as a replacement to Pod's banning (because something like Pod would never exist in Hearthstone).
So, just by looking at it, there's definitely similarities between Collected Company and Call to Arms. However, because of how the Recruit mechanic works, the cards are EXTREMELY different. Yes, Coco allows you to pull generally slightly bigger or slightly better creatures, and you tend to have a little bit of choice in exchange for limitation from Coco that you don't have with Call. What's the big difference here, that doesn't really reflect on the cards?
In Magic the Gathering, there's no keyword equivalent to Battlecries. Creatures will simply say "when this enters the battlefied" or "when this comes into play," which means that when you put creatures onto the battlefield, those effects will trigger, as they're entering the battlefield or play. Recruit, however, doesn't at all care about Battlecries whatsoever, and will not trigger them. When it comes to Coco, the card is commonly seen in midrange decks that have anywhere between a few to many, many tech answers in their creatures. They have cards that target and remove threats your opponent have, cards that let you look at your opponent's hand and remove a card from it until the creature leaves play, and cards that prevent cards or abilities from being played or triggering as long as they're in play. This makes for some pretty interesting deck design and play patterns, which involves Cocoing specifically to dig for certain cards you need to beat your opponent's deck. Yes, the card is also often seen in decks purely looking to put a lot of creatures into play quickly, but because of how the card and the game is designed, it allows for these more complex decks to exist (Chord of Calling is also very essential for a deck like this, though I'm afraid it's both something we won't see something like in Hearthstone, and most likely wouldn't exist in Paladin if it ever did).
What does Call to Arms enable on the other hand? Well, if you want to use it as a way to slow down your opponent, you could play cards like Mana Wraith, Dirty Rat, Stubborn Gastropod, perhaps Nerub'ar Weblord as tech in Wild, maybe even Pint-Sized Summoner to capitalize off of your Mana Wraiths slowing down your opponent! Notice a problem? Aside from perhaps Dirty Rat, which is already good in control decks, this strategy is both limited and not exactly worth it if you're planning to use the card to disrupt. If you play the card, you might as well be using it to flood wide and play aggressively. There's no using it to chain Battlecries with stuff like Hydrologist, Novice Engineer, Jeweled Scarab, or Sunfury Protector (could you imagine pulling her and two Shielded Minibots, giving both taunt somehow?!). These cards that generate strong card advantage and defensive board presence aren't super prominent, and in general, there aren't many cards that do these cool controlling effects like there are in Magic. Let's look at some cards typically played in Collected Company decks just to compare.
In Hearthstone's defense, a lot of these cards (those with flash, those that involve lands/artifacts/enchantments, etc.) don't really translate well into Hearthstone's core design, which is a very realist one for an exclusively online game. Secrets are essentially Hearthstone's equivalent to Instants, the graveyard works a lot different in Hearthstone than it does in Magic, and Thoughtseize type of effects (looking at your opponent's hand and removing a card from it) seem to be against what Blizzard has in mind for a card game, and it's a pretty understandable one.
However, is Call to Arms truly doomed to be only for aggro decks? Is it applicable to controlling playstyles? Is the Recruit mechanic lacking the ability to trigger battlecries, even if they're only non-target ones, limiting the card's flexibility as future cards are released? Or is the sparse card pool of low-cost answer/tech/value creatures what prevents Call from being a slower midrange/control card? I've considered using Mistress of Mixtures, Plated Beetle, and Loot Hoarder along with Dirty Rat, and hoping the deck could get by without Wild Pyromancer or Doomsayer, and though it seems powerful in terms of value, is it something that really helps Control Paladin? Lastly, do you think Blizzard was directly inspired by Collected Company when designing Call to Arms?
Interesting... Now I really like the idea of Recruit triggering battlecrys... The thing is, it may limit future design space if they care about wild but I think It is sth I would give away in order to get complex strategies going on.
The other problem is that Blizzard wants the game to be as simple as possible so that might be out of their design philosophy.
I dont think they could do it, but I +1 the idea
Edit: Maybe they will introduce the "when this enters the board" mechanic as a future bold Word?