Hello everybody! Welcome to my first installment of my Hearthstone Top 10 set reviews. Each section will include the card image, its rank within my top 10 picks of the set, a description of the card, and my final verdict on where I believe the card will fall in the meta.
DISCLAIMER
While reading this, please remember that this is just my speculation and my educated guess on what I believe will be the most impactful top 10 cards of an expansion. Many cards not discussed in this post may end up being quite good, and some in my top 10 may end up being quite bad. This list is intended to be an enjoyable speculation on what cards I think will have the largest impact upon set release, and maybe even have some readers think about cards they may have not otherwise considered, and offer some different perspective.
Rastaskhan's Rumble is upon us, and as the third expansion set of the year it promises to offer us a fresh burst of power to the Standard Hearthstone format. This set offers a lot of unique cards to explore, from potential Overkill combos, to completely different archetypes for many of the classes.
While Grave Horror might not seem like a very exciting card, it is a card that Priest has been lacking for a while now. For a class that often plays a slower game and even considers fatigue as a real win condition, Grave Horror has the potential to be a free 7/8 Taunt creature a decent amount of the time. It is unlikely that you will ever pay cost for the stats and the value is akin to Flamewreathed Faceless as a slower counterpart. I have little doubt that this card will see play in the Standard meta, and I expect it to breath new life into Priest decks for as long as Shadowreaper Anduin is in the format, and maybe well beyond.
I find this card to be one of the most impressive from the entire set. The only reason I did not give it a higher ranking is because there is some uncertainty in how it interacts. The mechanics are pushed with this card and I fully expect it to see play in some capacity. We are already seeing the Deathrattle keyword crop up more in both Standard and Wild formats and even without the likes of Sylvanas Windrunner, there is plenty of value to be had. Most notably for Taunt Druid, where it can copy effects of Rotten Applebaum and Hadronox. Da Undatakah can slot into multiple classes which all have some sort of support for Deathrattle, but I feel it will best find use in Taunt Druid where the 8 mana is less of a hill to climb. But getting multiple 5/5's from Eggs seems pretty solid as well.
Now this is a card I see a lot of potential in. Rastakhan's Rumble has brought a lot of opportunity for a Heal Paladin build and with plenty of strong options for gaining life already in the card pool, I think this card offers some serious stats for 4 mana. Time will tell if 10 life is too steep, but with Truesilver Champion, Flash of Light, Zilliax, Lay on Hands, Uther of the Ebon Blade, and others - there are plenty of efficient ways to gain 10 life for Paladin.
2 mana to draw a card is pretty decent. When you consider the ability to tack on a hefty 4 life in a set where healing mechanics are offered a stronger presence, this card offers a lot of value for its low cost. Stepping in as an enable for Zandalari Templar and Lesser Pearl Spellstone, the value starts to snowball and the option to restore health anywhere means that it also offers efficient flexibility in early, mid, and late game. While not the flashiest card in the set, it has format staple potential and that is enough for me to feel comfortable ranking it at rank 7 for Rastakhan's Rumble.
This card seems absolutely insane. Originally, I was not all that impressed with it. My mind had started thinking about Evolution mechanics and wondering if there is really that much value in it, but what I seemed to initially overlook is the burst potential of this card. Pump effects like Rockbiter Weapon, Earthen Might, and Windfury mean you can gun down an opponent out of nowhere and it will be interesting to see if this card heralds the return of Doomhammer Midrange Shaman decks. Additionally, you get heavy removal options with Zentimo, which means something like Crushing Hand can offer some pretty solid removal options for a crazy low cost, and unlike with Electra Stormsurge - you don't have to overload additional times! This legendary offers a lot of options for a low cost and is one of the most exciting cards for an otherwise struggling class.
With more and more support for Paladin decks straying away from the usual Odd Paladin, A New Challenger... is yet another card that has me quite excited. Being able to discover your 6 drop is certainly better than getting a random one, and the extra mana cost of the spell tacks on both Taunt and Divine Shield which afford you a lot of time to do other things in the following turns. Acting as a means to remove smaller minions and keep your life total stable, this take on Free From Amber looks quite promising. Pulling something like Blackguard can allow you to double down on healing capability, but there are also plenty of other great 6 drops to pull from this card. There is a lot of value rolled into this card and enough peripheral support that I expect this card to put a fair dent in the meta.
Token Druid decks have been inbound for a while now, and this card might just be enough to make some people pull their hair out. Combined with much of the resiliency that Soul of the Forest offers, being able to follow up your opponents sweeper with bigger, tougher minions than simply 2/2's means you also have the ability to alpha strike your opponent even harder. This card largely seems straight forward, but earns the rank 4 slot out of sheer ability to battlecruiser you through certain matches.
A 5 mana potential sweeper is something Priest has been wanting for a while now. Gone is the pinnacle of Spiteful Priest and Control Priest has fallen off the wagon to the likes of Combo Priest. Mass Hysteria offers Control Priest decks a chance for redemption and while it might not always clear a board, the opportunity to drastically shrink the potential of oncoming damage may be enough. Not to mention this card pips the cost reduction on Grave Horror. It will be interesting to see how this card interacts, but it seems pretty straight forward for the most part.
This is a really interesting card. At first, I did not think that Scorch was all that impressive. Mage has a plethora of removal options at its disposal and on the cheap. But after thinking about it for a while, a lot of the time it can be a challenge to play your Elementals and curve and have a removal spell slot in somewhere to help maximize your plays. Having a 4 damage removal spell for 1 mana helps ease the burden of having to play your elementals off curve and that is actually a huge boon for the Elemental Mage archetype. The ease of getting to Frost Lich Jaina has gotten easier with this card and I fully expect to see the deck start to shine a bit more with such a nudge in flexibility.
Arguably the most controversial card of the expansion. Many are pretty disappointed with Zul'jin, understandably so. But I think what most are missing is the value this card offers in the way of Secrets, which are almost the primary removal option for Secret Hunter. They cannot target you or your minions, and you can bring all of them back at once. Furthermore, your endgame cards like To My Side! and Lesser Emerald Spellstone get huge replay value in multiples. The hero power leaves much to be desired, but being able to snipe off some minions that survive your secrets is a nice option to have and you can still start shipping your hero power to the face. There have been many games where I have seen a Deathstalker Rexxar plateau on damage and have to cycle through a hero power a hefty number of times and even then they don't always get there. I expect Zul'jin to assuredly bring Secret/Spell Hunter to the forefront of the format that it has been lingering ever so slightly behind these past few months.
Honorable Mentions
Overall, Rastakhan's Rumble has begun to look like a great 3rd set and looks to promise offering a very interesting take once rotation hits us in early 2019, with plenty of unique cards that don't appear to have a home just yet.
How is everyone else feeling about this expansion? What has you excited or what hopes did you have dashed? Sound off in the comments below!
I going to assume that people who are reading comments will already have read the top post, so I'm not going to bother using spoiler tags here.
Grave Horror: I watched a lot of card reviews in the last two weeks, so I forgot who compared it to Arcane Giant, but that is a good comparison. Having taunt is absolutely worth one less attack, so I'd say this is a better card. I mostly remember Arcane Giant from Mage and Druid decks though, not Priest, so the question is whether Priest can discount it fast enough. You don't necessarily need to discount it to 0 though; I'd say anything below 8 mana is OK (for 8 you'd rather play The Lich King).
Da Undatakah: Most likely this has anti-synergy with Carnivorous Cube: it can copy the deathrattle but then doesn't summon anything when triggered. You mention Taunt Druid, but Hadronox is the only deathrattle that matters in that deck and not all decks run two copies of Witching Hour, so I don't think a fourth taunt wave is really needed. I see more perspective in egg decks, but then it would be mainly useful in decks that have trouble triggering Cube, so probably Paladin.
Zandalari Templar: The obvious comparison is Hooked Reaver. I think the Templar is worse when it doesn't activate, since Reaver can be brought back with the DK but Templar doesn't have any additional value. It doesn't seem all that hard to reach 10 points of healing; just Zilliax + Truesilver already does it. So you can probably activate this card between turn 6 and 10. It could fit in a mid-range deck and give you a power spike when going into the mid-game. It could also be used in a control deck, but then the question is how you're going to win, since Paladin doesn't really have a finisher at the moment and winning in fatigue isn't a given either. All in all, an interesting card, but it's uncertain how strong the decks you can put it in are going to be.
Flash of Light: You start with "2 mana to draw a card is pretty decent", but that's only true if you pay just mana; in this case you pay 1 card plus 2 mana. In other words, the card replaces itself. It's useful if you want to cycle through your deck, which might be useful in DK OTK Paladin, but not in many other decks. It could be useful if heal synergy is valuable enough to spend mana on, which might be the case, but then this card would be support and not the star of the deck. Similarly, it discounts Shirvallah, the Tiger, but then again it would be support and not a core card. So in my opinion you rated this card higher than it deserves to be.
Zentimo: According to That's Admirable, the wording on this card will be changed to clarify that it does overload you multiple times when casting for example Zap! or Lightning Bolt. So I think the tempo loss from the low stats plus the overload on the next turn is going to make this a bad card in the mid-game. At 3 health, you can't summon it on-curve either, since it is likely to die before it gets any value. It might be usable as part of a finisher combo, but it would have to be better than Electra + Bloodlust, which I haven't seen played yet.
A New Challenger...: My estimate is that this card is a bit too expensive for what it does. While discover does help avoid the worst outcomes, there are a lot of mediocre cards, especially since you don't get the battlecry. It might be worth including if you have synergy with Shirvallah or Spirit of the Tiger, but that assumes you're already playing those cards, so like Flash of Light I think this is a possible support card, not a top card.
Treespeaker: In general cards that need something on the board tend to disappoint. However, Fungalmancer shows that if you can reliably fulfill the conditions, such cards can be very powerful. I'm not sure where this falls. You mention Soul of the Forest, but that is another card that needs a board before you can use it, even more so than Treespeaker. So this is a good card to keep the momentum going, but I'm not sure you can reliably start the chain of events.
Mass Hysteria: If this is "Brawl for Priest", it could be very good. It's not quite the same though: with Brawl you can flood the board with garbage minions to likely kill off a big opposing minion, while one big minion among small ones is going to survive Mass Hysteria. So it's good against Zoo, but not as useful against other decks. The discount on Grave Horror is just 1 mana, just like any other spell, so not a reason to run this particular spell.
Scorch: I think Elemental Mage gets a significant boost with this set, not just because of this card, but also Elemental Evocation and Arcanosaur. I'm not sure which of those cards is the most important though; I'm leaning towards Elemental Evocation. Which of these three gets played depends on the exact archetype: when using Book of Specters (Kibler's deck) you want as few spells as possible, so Arcanosaur is useful but the other two might not see the cut; when using Dragon's Fury you really don't want a 0-cost spell, but a 4-cost one is acceptable (many decks run Polymorph).
Zul'jin: The hero power is nice but not as good as other hero cards; you'd be playing this for its battlecry. So effectively it's a 10-mana spell. 10-mana spells that summon lots of stuff can be worth it, as Anyfin Can Happen has shown. However, as the Anyfin deck got refined, it only ran a select few murlocs so you'd know exactly what you'd revive. I don't know if such a precise approach is possible here as well. Call of the Wild saw little play after its nerf from 8 to 9 mana and I think that had less to do with the value of the minions summoned than with the decks running it having trouble to keep up the pressure on turn 8. Today's Hunter has more staying power, but we have to fill turn 8 and 9, which is quite a bit harder. On the other hand, Spell Hunter is already a good deck, so perhaps making a few minor tweaks to get the most out of Zul'jin is worth it. I can see it getting played, but nowhere near #1 for me.
What I'm excited for is mainly new archetypes: Big Beast Druid, Savage Druid, Heal Paladin, Odd Mage, DIscolock (control-ish, not zoo like before), Dragon Warrior, some form of Hunter using 1-cost beasts (not necessarily Quest). Also some archetypes that were promising but not quite there, like Elemental Mage and Overload Shaman. And there are a lot of new 7-health minions, so new opportunities for Star Aligner.
I think the overall power level of the set is pretty high, like K&C, but I'm having a hard time identifying what the meta-defining cards could be.
Sharkfin Fan perhaps, although the most obvious class for it would be Rogue, but I don't think Pirate Rogue is going to be strong enough to become a meta deck. Maybe it will find a place in Paladin or Druid instead.
Springpaw could be key in either a fast Beast Hunter or a deck using 1-cost minions, or a combination of both. I don't have a clear picture of what the decks would be, but cheap + beast + rush + clone just seems very flexible for one card.
Oondasta is probably not too hard to fit into existing decks running beasts like Charged Devilsaur or Witchwood Grizzly, so while it may not define the meta, it may be a common support card.
Elemental Evocation might be the card that finally makes Elemental Mage strong enough in the mid-game to keep up with tempo decks. I think there are enough value generation cards to make up for the fact that you play two cards to summon one minion: for example Servant of Kalimos or Bonfire Elemental can generate or draw one card at a cost less than 2 mana.
Thunderhead was almost enough to make Overload Shaman work; Likkim could be just the thing it was missing: something to not fall behind on the board while overloaded.
Mojomaster Zihi is hard to evaluate, but it has the potential to significantly delay combo decks and as such could be meta-defining.
Hello everybody! Welcome to my first installment of my Hearthstone Top 10 set reviews. Each section will include the card image, its rank within my top 10 picks of the set, a description of the card, and my final verdict on where I believe the card will fall in the meta.
DISCLAIMER
While reading this, please remember that this is just my speculation and my educated guess on what I believe will be the most impactful top 10 cards of an expansion. Many cards not discussed in this post may end up being quite good, and some in my top 10 may end up being quite bad. This list is intended to be an enjoyable speculation on what cards I think will have the largest impact upon set release, and maybe even have some readers think about cards they may have not otherwise considered, and offer some different perspective.
Rastaskhan's Rumble is upon us, and as the third expansion set of the year it promises to offer us a fresh burst of power to the Standard Hearthstone format. This set offers a lot of unique cards to explore, from potential Overkill combos, to completely different archetypes for many of the classes.
So let's start the Top 10 countdown!
#10
Grave Horror
While Grave Horror might not seem like a very exciting card, it is a card that Priest has been lacking for a while now. For a class that often plays a slower game and even considers fatigue as a real win condition, Grave Horror has the potential to be a free 7/8 Taunt creature a decent amount of the time. It is unlikely that you will ever pay cost for the stats and the value is akin to Flamewreathed Faceless as a slower counterpart. I have little doubt that this card will see play in the Standard meta, and I expect it to breath new life into Priest decks for as long as Shadowreaper Anduin is in the format, and maybe well beyond.
#9
Da Undatakah
I find this card to be one of the most impressive from the entire set. The only reason I did not give it a higher ranking is because there is some uncertainty in how it interacts. The mechanics are pushed with this card and I fully expect it to see play in some capacity. We are already seeing the Deathrattle keyword crop up more in both Standard and Wild formats and even without the likes of Sylvanas Windrunner, there is plenty of value to be had. Most notably for Taunt Druid, where it can copy effects of Rotten Applebaum and Hadronox. Da Undatakah can slot into multiple classes which all have some sort of support for Deathrattle, but I feel it will best find use in Taunt Druid where the 8 mana is less of a hill to climb. But getting multiple 5/5's from Eggs seems pretty solid as well.
#8
Zandalari Templar
Now this is a card I see a lot of potential in. Rastakhan's Rumble has brought a lot of opportunity for a Heal Paladin build and with plenty of strong options for gaining life already in the card pool, I think this card offers some serious stats for 4 mana. Time will tell if 10 life is too steep, but with Truesilver Champion, Flash of Light, Zilliax, Lay on Hands, Uther of the Ebon Blade, and others - there are plenty of efficient ways to gain 10 life for Paladin.
#7
Flash of Light
2 mana to draw a card is pretty decent. When you consider the ability to tack on a hefty 4 life in a set where healing mechanics are offered a stronger presence, this card offers a lot of value for its low cost. Stepping in as an enable for Zandalari Templar and Lesser Pearl Spellstone, the value starts to snowball and the option to restore health anywhere means that it also offers efficient flexibility in early, mid, and late game. While not the flashiest card in the set, it has format staple potential and that is enough for me to feel comfortable ranking it at rank 7 for Rastakhan's Rumble.
#6
Zentimo
This card seems absolutely insane. Originally, I was not all that impressed with it. My mind had started thinking about Evolution mechanics and wondering if there is really that much value in it, but what I seemed to initially overlook is the burst potential of this card. Pump effects like Rockbiter Weapon, Earthen Might, and Windfury mean you can gun down an opponent out of nowhere and it will be interesting to see if this card heralds the return of Doomhammer Midrange Shaman decks. Additionally, you get heavy removal options with Zentimo, which means something like Crushing Hand can offer some pretty solid removal options for a crazy low cost, and unlike with Electra Stormsurge - you don't have to overload additional times! This legendary offers a lot of options for a low cost and is one of the most exciting cards for an otherwise struggling class.
#5
A New Challenger...
With more and more support for Paladin decks straying away from the usual Odd Paladin, A New Challenger... is yet another card that has me quite excited. Being able to discover your 6 drop is certainly better than getting a random one, and the extra mana cost of the spell tacks on both Taunt and Divine Shield which afford you a lot of time to do other things in the following turns. Acting as a means to remove smaller minions and keep your life total stable, this take on Free From Amber looks quite promising. Pulling something like Blackguard can allow you to double down on healing capability, but there are also plenty of other great 6 drops to pull from this card. There is a lot of value rolled into this card and enough peripheral support that I expect this card to put a fair dent in the meta.
#4
Treespeaker
Token Druid decks have been inbound for a while now, and this card might just be enough to make some people pull their hair out. Combined with much of the resiliency that Soul of the Forest offers, being able to follow up your opponents sweeper with bigger, tougher minions than simply 2/2's means you also have the ability to alpha strike your opponent even harder. This card largely seems straight forward, but earns the rank 4 slot out of sheer ability to battlecruiser you through certain matches.
#3
Mass Hysteria
A 5 mana potential sweeper is something Priest has been wanting for a while now. Gone is the pinnacle of Spiteful Priest and Control Priest has fallen off the wagon to the likes of Combo Priest. Mass Hysteria offers Control Priest decks a chance for redemption and while it might not always clear a board, the opportunity to drastically shrink the potential of oncoming damage may be enough. Not to mention this card pips the cost reduction on Grave Horror. It will be interesting to see how this card interacts, but it seems pretty straight forward for the most part.
#2
Scorch
This is a really interesting card. At first, I did not think that Scorch was all that impressive. Mage has a plethora of removal options at its disposal and on the cheap. But after thinking about it for a while, a lot of the time it can be a challenge to play your Elementals and curve and have a removal spell slot in somewhere to help maximize your plays. Having a 4 damage removal spell for 1 mana helps ease the burden of having to play your elementals off curve and that is actually a huge boon for the Elemental Mage archetype. The ease of getting to Frost Lich Jaina has gotten easier with this card and I fully expect to see the deck start to shine a bit more with such a nudge in flexibility.
#1
Zul'jin
Arguably the most controversial card of the expansion. Many are pretty disappointed with Zul'jin, understandably so. But I think what most are missing is the value this card offers in the way of Secrets, which are almost the primary removal option for Secret Hunter. They cannot target you or your minions, and you can bring all of them back at once. Furthermore, your endgame cards like To My Side! and Lesser Emerald Spellstone get huge replay value in multiples. The hero power leaves much to be desired, but being able to snipe off some minions that survive your secrets is a nice option to have and you can still start shipping your hero power to the face. There have been many games where I have seen a Deathstalker Rexxar plateau on damage and have to cycle through a hero power a hefty number of times and even then they don't always get there. I expect Zul'jin to assuredly bring Secret/Spell Hunter to the forefront of the format that it has been lingering ever so slightly behind these past few months.
Honorable Mentions
Overall, Rastakhan's Rumble has begun to look like a great 3rd set and looks to promise offering a very interesting take once rotation hits us in early 2019, with plenty of unique cards that don't appear to have a home just yet.
How is everyone else feeling about this expansion? What has you excited or what hopes did you have dashed? Sound off in the comments below!
I going to assume that people who are reading comments will already have read the top post, so I'm not going to bother using spoiler tags here.
Grave Horror: I watched a lot of card reviews in the last two weeks, so I forgot who compared it to Arcane Giant, but that is a good comparison. Having taunt is absolutely worth one less attack, so I'd say this is a better card. I mostly remember Arcane Giant from Mage and Druid decks though, not Priest, so the question is whether Priest can discount it fast enough. You don't necessarily need to discount it to 0 though; I'd say anything below 8 mana is OK (for 8 you'd rather play The Lich King).
Da Undatakah: Most likely this has anti-synergy with Carnivorous Cube: it can copy the deathrattle but then doesn't summon anything when triggered. You mention Taunt Druid, but Hadronox is the only deathrattle that matters in that deck and not all decks run two copies of Witching Hour, so I don't think a fourth taunt wave is really needed. I see more perspective in egg decks, but then it would be mainly useful in decks that have trouble triggering Cube, so probably Paladin.
Zandalari Templar: The obvious comparison is Hooked Reaver. I think the Templar is worse when it doesn't activate, since Reaver can be brought back with the DK but Templar doesn't have any additional value. It doesn't seem all that hard to reach 10 points of healing; just Zilliax + Truesilver already does it. So you can probably activate this card between turn 6 and 10. It could fit in a mid-range deck and give you a power spike when going into the mid-game. It could also be used in a control deck, but then the question is how you're going to win, since Paladin doesn't really have a finisher at the moment and winning in fatigue isn't a given either. All in all, an interesting card, but it's uncertain how strong the decks you can put it in are going to be.
Flash of Light: You start with "2 mana to draw a card is pretty decent", but that's only true if you pay just mana; in this case you pay 1 card plus 2 mana. In other words, the card replaces itself. It's useful if you want to cycle through your deck, which might be useful in DK OTK Paladin, but not in many other decks. It could be useful if heal synergy is valuable enough to spend mana on, which might be the case, but then this card would be support and not the star of the deck. Similarly, it discounts Shirvallah, the Tiger, but then again it would be support and not a core card. So in my opinion you rated this card higher than it deserves to be.
Zentimo: According to That's Admirable, the wording on this card will be changed to clarify that it does overload you multiple times when casting for example Zap! or Lightning Bolt. So I think the tempo loss from the low stats plus the overload on the next turn is going to make this a bad card in the mid-game. At 3 health, you can't summon it on-curve either, since it is likely to die before it gets any value. It might be usable as part of a finisher combo, but it would have to be better than Electra + Bloodlust, which I haven't seen played yet.
A New Challenger...: My estimate is that this card is a bit too expensive for what it does. While discover does help avoid the worst outcomes, there are a lot of mediocre cards, especially since you don't get the battlecry. It might be worth including if you have synergy with Shirvallah or Spirit of the Tiger, but that assumes you're already playing those cards, so like Flash of Light I think this is a possible support card, not a top card.
Treespeaker: In general cards that need something on the board tend to disappoint. However, Fungalmancer shows that if you can reliably fulfill the conditions, such cards can be very powerful. I'm not sure where this falls. You mention Soul of the Forest, but that is another card that needs a board before you can use it, even more so than Treespeaker. So this is a good card to keep the momentum going, but I'm not sure you can reliably start the chain of events.
Mass Hysteria: If this is "Brawl for Priest", it could be very good. It's not quite the same though: with Brawl you can flood the board with garbage minions to likely kill off a big opposing minion, while one big minion among small ones is going to survive Mass Hysteria. So it's good against Zoo, but not as useful against other decks. The discount on Grave Horror is just 1 mana, just like any other spell, so not a reason to run this particular spell.
Scorch: I think Elemental Mage gets a significant boost with this set, not just because of this card, but also Elemental Evocation and Arcanosaur. I'm not sure which of those cards is the most important though; I'm leaning towards Elemental Evocation. Which of these three gets played depends on the exact archetype: when using Book of Specters (Kibler's deck) you want as few spells as possible, so Arcanosaur is useful but the other two might not see the cut; when using Dragon's Fury you really don't want a 0-cost spell, but a 4-cost one is acceptable (many decks run Polymorph).
Zul'jin: The hero power is nice but not as good as other hero cards; you'd be playing this for its battlecry. So effectively it's a 10-mana spell. 10-mana spells that summon lots of stuff can be worth it, as Anyfin Can Happen has shown. However, as the Anyfin deck got refined, it only ran a select few murlocs so you'd know exactly what you'd revive. I don't know if such a precise approach is possible here as well. Call of the Wild saw little play after its nerf from 8 to 9 mana and I think that had less to do with the value of the minions summoned than with the decks running it having trouble to keep up the pressure on turn 8. Today's Hunter has more staying power, but we have to fill turn 8 and 9, which is quite a bit harder. On the other hand, Spell Hunter is already a good deck, so perhaps making a few minor tweaks to get the most out of Zul'jin is worth it. I can see it getting played, but nowhere near #1 for me.
What I'm excited for is mainly new archetypes: Big Beast Druid, Savage Druid, Heal Paladin, Odd Mage, DIscolock (control-ish, not zoo like before), Dragon Warrior, some form of Hunter using 1-cost beasts (not necessarily Quest). Also some archetypes that were promising but not quite there, like Elemental Mage and Overload Shaman. And there are a lot of new 7-health minions, so new opportunities for Star Aligner.
I think the overall power level of the set is pretty high, like K&C, but I'm having a hard time identifying what the meta-defining cards could be.
Sharkfin Fan perhaps, although the most obvious class for it would be Rogue, but I don't think Pirate Rogue is going to be strong enough to become a meta deck. Maybe it will find a place in Paladin or Druid instead.
Springpaw could be key in either a fast Beast Hunter or a deck using 1-cost minions, or a combination of both. I don't have a clear picture of what the decks would be, but cheap + beast + rush + clone just seems very flexible for one card.
Oondasta is probably not too hard to fit into existing decks running beasts like Charged Devilsaur or Witchwood Grizzly, so while it may not define the meta, it may be a common support card.
Elemental Evocation might be the card that finally makes Elemental Mage strong enough in the mid-game to keep up with tempo decks. I think there are enough value generation cards to make up for the fact that you play two cards to summon one minion: for example Servant of Kalimos or Bonfire Elemental can generate or draw one card at a cost less than 2 mana.
Thunderhead was almost enough to make Overload Shaman work; Likkim could be just the thing it was missing: something to not fall behind on the board while overloaded.
Mojomaster Zihi is hard to evaluate, but it has the potential to significantly delay combo decks and as such could be meta-defining.
Great analysis! Thanks for putting together.
sorry for bad english.
i don't think Da Undatakah good in taunt druid. you have to set up taunt first than play spider, and than play Da Undatakah =>> to slow.
thank for sharing your thought!