I've played it myself, and against it, enough to see that it is definitely an interesting card. it is meta-defining in anti-aggro/control setups for classes like warrior, shaman, or any other class that just wants to go long instead of develop a game-ending strategy. How as the community do you all feel about her? I searched for an existing thread and didn't see anything that addressed her balance or playstyle outside of a "she is boring" thread.
I don't want to say she is boring, she is a great card. Well-balanced in her design- so definitely not needing of a nerf. I suppose its more so that this card exists in the current state of the game that I have a problem with. It seems strange to me that we are awarding a "go to the end of our decks" strategy with something that adds even more value. In the past the good old fashion Tank Up Warrior in the days of Justicar Trueheart was the true go to the end setup. It was boring to play some would say, but at least it was a true fatigue deck that was difficult to pilot and, to me, entertaining to watch in the mirror. I think one of the biggest issues with Elysiana is the fact that the expansion still just launched. We don't know if she is in control decks or not, especially Warrior since they have options. Some games it goes to fatigue and the Warrior concedes, others Elysiana gets dropped. She is replacing either a legendary or a board clear in most circumstances, so from a hand-tracking perspective you have to just assume they have her. Luckily her answer is combo, but I'm not seeing too much combo in the early meta currently. I think the issue is most OTK style decks are package-draw depending, in a sense that if you don't get cards in a certain order you are likely screwed. Don't get me wrong I'm not against a control meta with strong control (even fatigue) options. I just think making a legendary that enforces a longer game goes against the goal of Hearthstone's average game times. Will the answer one day be we all run a her?
I played control Shaman from rank 3 to legend, most of the matches against control warrior lasted over 30 minutes, some were pretty epic with awesome cards drawn from Elysiana.
One game even ended as a draw from turn timer, after 2 elysianas played from both sides and both players on fatigue already.
My final stats was 26-10 and average game time of 26 minutes, thats way slower than the average rogue/druid/hunter games I did from rank 5 to 3 that lasted 7 minutes on average...
And I agree the only counter to her would be OTK decks... This deck I played was only weak against khadgar/dragon mage... everything else I dominated most of the games (10-2 against rogues, for example)
I played control Shaman from rank 3 to legend, most of the matches against control warrior lasted over 30 minutes, some were pretty epic with awesome cards drawn from Elysiana.
One game even ended as a draw from turn timer, after 2 elysianas played from both sides and both players on fatigue already.
My final stats was 26-10 and average game time of 26 minutes, thats way slower than the average rogue/druid/hunter games I did from rank 5 to 3 that lasted 7 minutes on average...
And I agree the only counter to her would be OTK decks... This deck I played was only weak against khadgar/dragon mage... everything else I dominated most of the games (10-2 against rogues, for example)
Great feedback! So I’m curious does the excitement of Elysiana in the control mirror at fatigue make the game exciting enough to overshadow the 25-30 minute match? Can you reflect on those games, win or lose, and say for certain you enjoyed Elysiana being involved? For me if I was in your shoes it would probably feel cool to win the extra fatigue mirror, but then crushing to look back on upwards of 30 minutes and say: “that was one game and I didn’t even win it..”
I felt the same way and have been looking for a thread about this.
Im a fan of her in concept. Im a control player at heart and my favorite tavern brawl was the hallucinations discover every turn one.
Ive lost control mirrors to them getting archivist off archivist even though i archivist shudderwocked. Its terrible to play a 30 min game and lose to 1 rng roll because i only ended up with 50 cards in my deck instead of 60 like they did. Feels like days of yog in a very small way.
Like someone said before It is a well-balanced card. I have encountered her several times now and I never found her "unfair" to play against. She can be a win condition card but on the other hand, it is not a guaranteed win. I wish there were more cards like this.
First I thought „what an interesting card to build control decks around“.
It definitely is, but as a player who mostly grinds between legendary ranks 400 to 1.000 I‘m conceding as soon as I‘m sure that my opponent plays Elysiana Ctrl Warrior and the first 10 minutes are over without the warrior under pressure.
Played the first games until the end, but if you are not able to put early pressure on him (not possible with Mage for example) they are just super boring.
Mill decks are at least tempo oriented, but Ctrl Warrior with half of his deck full of removals with fatigue as the only win condition easily crack the 25 minutes game clock.
I believe that as soon as the game gets faster with a larger card pool, this kind of deck will not be that strong anymore.
IF!!! warrior doesn‘t get any further removals. 😅
Like someone said before It is a well-balanced card. I have encountered her several times now and I never found her "unfair" to play against. She can be a win condition card but on the other hand, it is not a guaranteed win. I wish there were more cards like this.
No for sure I wouldn't call it unfair! I think my issue is a lot of the replies so far say the games are going too long/she is supporting fatigue, but in a way that may be slightly too much rng. How do you feel about those aspects? 100% agree that she is not "unfair" by the regard of her design.
The games were Elysiana were played were truly epic...
My last game to legend was against a control warrior, and he took out my shudderwhock with a hecklebot on turn 5 and emoted a "well played"... I didnt give up and got Da Undertakah on my elysiana that helped me close the match with some of the deathrattles that I got around the game... He ran out of resources to clear my board after he played his second elysiana and I was 3 turns into fatigue already closing the game at 6 hp...
I did win like 6 out of 8 games against a fatigue control warrior, so I guess the long games did pay out for me!
Now, this may sound like a stupid question, but is there a reason to play elysiana over a Mechathun and that 1/2 mech that reduces the cost of mechs in your hand? If your're playing ely for fatigue matchups, why not just otk your opponent without having to rely on rng?
She's just a nice tech card for any control deck, and I say tech card cause while there's no reason to not run her on literally any control deck, she's also not needed unless there's a heavy control meta or if there's a deck that has high win-rates and plans for fatigue (Which is the case now with control warrior). The thing is that Control Warrior is such a passive deck that it can't kill another Control Warrior just with the stuff on their deck, one of the first games I had this expansion was a Control Warrior Mirror and my opponent played Dr. Boom, Mad Genius on curve and mine was literally the last card and yet I ended up winning, all because my Archivist Elysiana discovered another Archivist Elysiana so I ended up with 20 extra cards. My opponent got like at least 20 more turns of Boom value and not even with that were they able to beat me.
The mirror match-up just comes down to who has more cards and thus takes less fatigue, for that reason people are starting to run single copies of either Youthful Brewmaster or Baleful Banker and they became staples on Control Warrior. Unless your opponent heavily missplays or you get the absolute nuts of your Elysiana, it's almost impossible that you will win just via the discovered cards so the important part is just having the biggest pile of cards available. If the meta changes and Control Warrior becomes the unchallenged king (Either because of some nerfs or because they get some insane cards next expansion) you'll even start seeing multiple copies of Youthful Brewmaster or Baleful Banker or more important, the raise of Mecha'thun as a win condition on the mirror (which is more likely cause if you just keep playing Elysianas you'd just meet the turn cap and end most games on a draw).
Overall she's a good card with a clear purpose, well balanced and will continue to see play until she's rotated unless all control options are absolutely butchered or a bunch of solid combo decks rise and push control out of the meta.
First I thought „what an interesting card to build control decks around“.
It definitely is, but as a player who mostly grinds between legendary ranks 400 to 1.000 I‘m conceding as soon as I‘m sure that my opponent plays Elysiana Ctrl Warrior and the first 10 minutes are over without the warrior under pressure.
Played the first games until the end, but if you are not able to put early pressure on him (not possible with Mage for example) they are just super boring.
Mill decks are at least tempo oriented, but Ctrl Warrior with half of his deck full of removals with fatigue as the only win condition easily crack the 25 minutes game clock.
I believe that as soon as the game gets faster with a larger card pool, this kind of deck will not be that strong anymore.
IF!!! warrior doesn‘t get any further removals. 😅
warrior has a lot of tools at the minute. they can tank up as well which makes them perfect for fatigue.
we're fighting an uphill battle as control shaman, but the games are great so when you do win it's awesome.
I agree with what everybody is saying about Elysiana's power level. She's quite good but very clear and specific in her usage. A good design that supports a specific archetype and encourages strategizing and smart decision making.
I do think you shouldn't be able to discover more copies of her with her own ability, though. If you have other ways of copying her/her ability (Shudds, Baleful, etc), great. That's why they exist, to let you get away with crazy stuff. Even if you get her off Rafaam, great. But she shouldn't be able to duplicate herself; that's RNG on top of RNG and can decide a match through no fault of either player.
At first I thought she was interesting, but she definitely isn't healthy for the control game. For control to beat control you HAVE to have her in your deck, and then after 26 cards are drawn it's up to RNG whether your remaining 10 cards were better discovers than your opponent's. Feels like a pretty crap way to win or lose.
The mirror match-up just comes down to who has more cards and thus takes less fatigue, for that reason people are starting to run single copies of either Youthful Brewmaster or Baleful Banker and they became staples on Control Warrior. Unless your opponent heavily missplays or you get the absolute nuts of your Elysiana, it's almost impossible that you will win just via the discovered cards so the important part is just having the biggest pile of cards available. If the meta changes and Control Warrior becomes the unchallenged king (Either because of some nerfs or because they get some insane cards next expansion) you'll even start seeing multiple copies of Youthful Brewmaster or Baleful Banker or more important, the raise of Mecha'thun as a win condition on the mirror (which is more likely cause if you just keep playing Elysianas you'd just meet the turn cap and end most games on a draw)
I have won control warrior mirrors with cards off Elysiana - you just have to plan ahead and pick accordingly. If you don't let your opponent stack a lot of armor, before you both reach the end of your normal decks, and then pick some high health threats (in my case, I've picked Boulderfist ogres and Omega devastator to remove his minions) and then went for his face and won. So, it's possible. But you need to switch from fully control to tempo tactic with the 5 Elysiana picks (ofc, RNG is a factor), but I knew I will lose the long game, cuz he used Baleful banker on his Elysiana and I didn't.
You just need to adapt.
I like her overall. She makes the control matchups even more interesting, because you have to plan ahead. You can't just rely on managing your resources correctly, you need to find a way to exert pressure on your opponent.
“If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.” ― George Bernard Shaw
EU Legend: S52 (ZooHeal Lock); S76 (Highlander Hunter);
I do not have her, but played many matches against her with my control decks (rogue/shaman). I play on Wild.
In a match-up of my burgle rogue against deathrattle priest he got himself 3 copies of elysiana. In the end I would have fatigued a little bit faster.
I think what is best against them (if you are using a control deck), is to wait out until he played all significant value cards (in this case a n'zoth and a copy of my tess- and much earlier in the game already his psychic screams). Then I waited until the end of his second elysiana deck in which I saw he did not have any big removals or other annoying cards.
up until that point my 14 copies from his priest quest I togg schemed + my 9 dmg spectral blade kept me alive.
I then played my tess that I had held back all that time. it gave me the acceleration to set up a semi-otk at a time of my choosing, which I analysed as being the one with the least amount of risk.
My shaman has quite a few cards to go wide and evolve them, making the swing necessary in a game to shift the balance.
Edit.
My opinion about the card is that it is fun when playing control yourself because it is a fun challenge how to outlast/outwit the other player. But I can see it being annoying for player who don't like drawn-out games. I like her, might craft her. still considering disenchating my first golden -Scargil :P- for Elysiana. Sentimental value vs well...value. lol
The card is fine but it is also a good reason why I don't think I'll be playing too many controls decks this year. My time is limited and I'm not interested in playing 30+ minute games consistently.
Cool card but horrible in practice. They have to nerf to at least 9 mana You can easily bounce four times with Baleful and Youthful if you wanted and hit the turn limit. Brutally bad miss on design
The card is 'bad' for tournaments. It extends the game and if both players are playing her, turns the end game into who had a better 5 card selection. It has a very Yogg feel to it, but much slower and far more drawn out.
The card for normal play is just fine. There are potential counters to the card in Hecklebot. And even if you get 10 extra turns of non fatigue, it doesn't mean you win either. You still have to draw those cards you shuffled into your deck.
I think the easiest solution is to ban the card from tournaments and no other changes need to be made to the card. Nerfing the card or changing it in any other way seems silly and does nothing to stop the complaints. 9 mana still means it can stall the games 10 extra turns.
Archivist Elysiana
I've played it myself, and against it, enough to see that it is definitely an interesting card. it is meta-defining in anti-aggro/control setups for classes like warrior, shaman, or any other class that just wants to go long instead of develop a game-ending strategy. How as the community do you all feel about her? I searched for an existing thread and didn't see anything that addressed her balance or playstyle outside of a "she is boring" thread.
I don't want to say she is boring, she is a great card. Well-balanced in her design- so definitely not needing of a nerf. I suppose its more so that this card exists in the current state of the game that I have a problem with. It seems strange to me that we are awarding a "go to the end of our decks" strategy with something that adds even more value. In the past the good old fashion Tank Up Warrior in the days of Justicar Trueheart was the true go to the end setup. It was boring to play some would say, but at least it was a true fatigue deck that was difficult to pilot and, to me, entertaining to watch in the mirror. I think one of the biggest issues with Elysiana is the fact that the expansion still just launched. We don't know if she is in control decks or not, especially Warrior since they have options. Some games it goes to fatigue and the Warrior concedes, others Elysiana gets dropped. She is replacing either a legendary or a board clear in most circumstances, so from a hand-tracking perspective you have to just assume they have her. Luckily her answer is combo, but I'm not seeing too much combo in the early meta currently. I think the issue is most OTK style decks are package-draw depending, in a sense that if you don't get cards in a certain order you are likely screwed. Don't get me wrong I'm not against a control meta with strong control (even fatigue) options. I just think making a legendary that enforces a longer game goes against the goal of Hearthstone's average game times. Will the answer one day be we all run a her?
What do y'all think?
I played control Shaman from rank 3 to legend, most of the matches against control warrior lasted over 30 minutes, some were pretty epic with awesome cards drawn from Elysiana.
One game even ended as a draw from turn timer, after 2 elysianas played from both sides and both players on fatigue already.
My final stats was 26-10 and average game time of 26 minutes, thats way slower than the average rogue/druid/hunter games I did from rank 5 to 3 that lasted 7 minutes on average...
And I agree the only counter to her would be OTK decks... This deck I played was only weak against khadgar/dragon mage... everything else I dominated most of the games (10-2 against rogues, for example)
Great feedback! So I’m curious does the excitement of Elysiana in the control mirror at fatigue make the game exciting enough to overshadow the 25-30 minute match? Can you reflect on those games, win or lose, and say for certain you enjoyed Elysiana being involved? For me if I was in your shoes it would probably feel cool to win the extra fatigue mirror, but then crushing to look back on upwards of 30 minutes and say: “that was one game and I didn’t even win it..”
I felt the same way and have been looking for a thread about this.
Im a fan of her in concept. Im a control player at heart and my favorite tavern brawl was the hallucinations discover every turn one.
Ive lost control mirrors to them getting archivist off archivist even though i archivist shudderwocked. Its terrible to play a 30 min game and lose to 1 rng roll because i only ended up with 50 cards in my deck instead of 60 like they did. Feels like days of yog in a very small way.
Like someone said before It is a well-balanced card. I have encountered her several times now and I never found her "unfair" to play against.
She can be a win condition card but on the other hand, it is not a guaranteed win. I wish there were more cards like this.
First I thought „what an interesting card to build control decks around“.
It definitely is, but as a player who mostly grinds between legendary ranks 400 to 1.000 I‘m conceding as soon as I‘m sure that my opponent plays Elysiana Ctrl Warrior and the first 10 minutes are over without the warrior under pressure.
Played the first games until the end, but if you are not able to put early pressure on him (not possible with Mage for example) they are just super boring.
Mill decks are at least tempo oriented, but Ctrl Warrior with half of his deck full of removals with fatigue as the only win condition easily crack the 25 minutes game clock.
I believe that as soon as the game gets faster with a larger card pool, this kind of deck will not be that strong anymore.
IF!!! warrior doesn‘t get any further removals. 😅
No for sure I wouldn't call it unfair! I think my issue is a lot of the replies so far say the games are going too long/she is supporting fatigue, but in a way that may be slightly too much rng. How do you feel about those aspects? 100% agree that she is not "unfair" by the regard of her design.
The games were Elysiana were played were truly epic...
My last game to legend was against a control warrior, and he took out my shudderwhock with a hecklebot on turn 5 and emoted a "well played"... I didnt give up and got Da Undertakah on my elysiana that helped me close the match with some of the deathrattles that I got around the game... He ran out of resources to clear my board after he played his second elysiana and I was 3 turns into fatigue already closing the game at 6 hp...
I did win like 6 out of 8 games against a fatigue control warrior, so I guess the long games did pay out for me!
Now, this may sound like a stupid question, but is there a reason to play elysiana over a Mechathun and that 1/2 mech that reduces the cost of mechs in your hand? If your're playing ely for fatigue matchups, why not just otk your opponent without having to rely on rng?
I like her. she makes for an interesting dynamic I've not seen before. she makes fatigue gameplay a lot more intersting as well.
She's just a nice tech card for any control deck, and I say tech card cause while there's no reason to not run her on literally any control deck, she's also not needed unless there's a heavy control meta or if there's a deck that has high win-rates and plans for fatigue (Which is the case now with control warrior). The thing is that Control Warrior is such a passive deck that it can't kill another Control Warrior just with the stuff on their deck, one of the first games I had this expansion was a Control Warrior Mirror and my opponent played Dr. Boom, Mad Genius on curve and mine was literally the last card and yet I ended up winning, all because my Archivist Elysiana discovered another Archivist Elysiana so I ended up with 20 extra cards. My opponent got like at least 20 more turns of Boom value and not even with that were they able to beat me.
The mirror match-up just comes down to who has more cards and thus takes less fatigue, for that reason people are starting to run single copies of either Youthful Brewmaster or Baleful Banker and they became staples on Control Warrior. Unless your opponent heavily missplays or you get the absolute nuts of your Elysiana, it's almost impossible that you will win just via the discovered cards so the important part is just having the biggest pile of cards available. If the meta changes and Control Warrior becomes the unchallenged king (Either because of some nerfs or because they get some insane cards next expansion) you'll even start seeing multiple copies of Youthful Brewmaster or Baleful Banker or more important, the raise of Mecha'thun as a win condition on the mirror (which is more likely cause if you just keep playing Elysianas you'd just meet the turn cap and end most games on a draw).
Overall she's a good card with a clear purpose, well balanced and will continue to see play until she's rotated unless all control options are absolutely butchered or a bunch of solid combo decks rise and push control out of the meta.
warrior has a lot of tools at the minute. they can tank up as well which makes them perfect for fatigue.
we're fighting an uphill battle as control shaman, but the games are great so when you do win it's awesome.
it's the "dark souls" of hearthstone :D
I agree with what everybody is saying about Elysiana's power level. She's quite good but very clear and specific in her usage. A good design that supports a specific archetype and encourages strategizing and smart decision making.
I do think you shouldn't be able to discover more copies of her with her own ability, though. If you have other ways of copying her/her ability (Shudds, Baleful, etc), great. That's why they exist, to let you get away with crazy stuff. Even if you get her off Rafaam, great. But she shouldn't be able to duplicate herself; that's RNG on top of RNG and can decide a match through no fault of either player.
At first I thought she was interesting, but she definitely isn't healthy for the control game. For control to beat control you HAVE to have her in your deck, and then after 26 cards are drawn it's up to RNG whether your remaining 10 cards were better discovers than your opponent's. Feels like a pretty crap way to win or lose.
I have won control warrior mirrors with cards off Elysiana - you just have to plan ahead and pick accordingly. If you don't let your opponent stack a lot of armor, before you both reach the end of your normal decks, and then pick some high health threats (in my case, I've picked Boulderfist ogres and Omega devastator to remove his minions) and then went for his face and won. So, it's possible. But you need to switch from fully control to tempo tactic with the 5 Elysiana picks (ofc, RNG is a factor), but I knew I will lose the long game, cuz he used Baleful banker on his Elysiana and I didn't.
You just need to adapt.
I like her overall. She makes the control matchups even more interesting, because you have to plan ahead. You can't just rely on managing your resources correctly, you need to find a way to exert pressure on your opponent.
“If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.” ― George Bernard Shaw
EU Legend: S52 (ZooHeal Lock); S76 (Highlander Hunter);
I do not have her, but played many matches against her with my control decks (rogue/shaman). I play on Wild.
In a match-up of my burgle rogue against deathrattle priest he got himself 3 copies of elysiana. In the end I would have fatigued a little bit faster.
I think what is best against them (if you are using a control deck), is to wait out until he played all significant value cards (in this case a n'zoth and a copy of my tess- and much earlier in the game already his psychic screams). Then I waited until the end of his second elysiana deck in which I saw he did not have any big removals or other annoying cards.
up until that point my 14 copies from his priest quest I togg schemed + my 9 dmg spectral blade kept me alive.
I then played my tess that I had held back all that time. it gave me the acceleration to set up a semi-otk at a time of my choosing, which I analysed as being the one with the least amount of risk.
My shaman has quite a few cards to go wide and evolve them, making the swing necessary in a game to shift the balance.
Edit.
My opinion about the card is that it is fun when playing control yourself because it is a fun challenge how to outlast/outwit the other player. But I can see it being annoying for player who don't like drawn-out games. I like her, might craft her. still considering disenchating my first golden -Scargil :P- for Elysiana. Sentimental value vs well...value. lol
The card is fine but it is also a good reason why I don't think I'll be playing too many controls decks this year. My time is limited and I'm not interested in playing 30+ minute games consistently.
Cool card but horrible in practice. They have to nerf to at least 9 mana You can easily bounce four times with Baleful and Youthful if you wanted and hit the turn limit. Brutally bad miss on design
The card is 'bad' for tournaments. It extends the game and if both players are playing her, turns the end game into who had a better 5 card selection. It has a very Yogg feel to it, but much slower and far more drawn out.
The card for normal play is just fine. There are potential counters to the card in Hecklebot. And even if you get 10 extra turns of non fatigue, it doesn't mean you win either. You still have to draw those cards you shuffled into your deck.
I think the easiest solution is to ban the card from tournaments and no other changes need to be made to the card. Nerfing the card or changing it in any other way seems silly and does nothing to stop the complaints. 9 mana still means it can stall the games 10 extra turns.
Control warrior vs control warrior got pretty boring after 30min - he won because he was lucky enough to get Chef nomi with his archivist.