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Hey,
so now after the release of the new expansion Forged in the Barrens it's worth looking a bit closer at card interactions and natural synergies emerging from a simple game mechanic: gaining one mana crystal each turn.
There are cards that are quite versatile and are only archetype bound. Twilight Drake and Doomsayer are good examples.
While Twilight Drake is useless in Aggro since it's usually out of cards at turn 6 and Control as it doesn't provide any Hero protection or immediate board impact on turn 4 it specifically shines in any Combo deck that wants to draw cards early at turn 3 with 3 Mana cards like Arcane Intellect, Sense Demons or Thoughtsteal. Doomsayer is great in any Control deck that wants to stall and reach later turns for more powerful cards.
Twilight Drake and Doomsayer can both be played in almost any class as they are not really class-bound or specific.
However, there are neutral cards that are clearly intended to be played in very specific classes and archetypes. Parade Leader is a good example. While it's only a common minion from the Darkmoon Faire expansion I was really surprised when I played it in a token Demon Hunter deck with a bunch of Rush cards like Coordinated Strike, Renowned Performer, Magehunter, Command the Illidari and Expendable Performers. (along with Nethrandamus, Wrathscale Naga, Feast of Souls, Blood Herald). It performed extremely well.
I wanted to discuss this in a forum thread since I believe we can find hidden, vey efficient combos much easier as a community. Such combos often times come up in the same expansion but also just emerge after multiple expansions. These of course require your first minion not to be destroyed before enabling that mini-combo. Here are some examples of Neutral-to-Class card synergy:
But this also sometimes works within a class itself, like Imprisoned Celestial on turn 3 and Stand Against Darkness on turn 5 in Paladin.
I found that in Deathrattle Demon Hunter the 5 mana Burning Blade Acolyte is the only 5 mana Deathrattle card (apart from Al'ar) that can work with Death Speaker Blackthorn and is prbly designed for this specific deck (as it also summons a demon). Also Barrens Trapper is a great card to play on turn 3, followed up by Burning Blade Acolyte on turn 4. Kindling Elemental seems to be good in Mage with Arcane Luminary (and also Arid Stormer in Shaman). Also the only 5 mana Taunt that could make sense as a follow-up to Razormane Battleguard seems to be Gold Road Grunt (apart from Greybough and Teacher's Pet), also because it shares it's "Armor Gain"-effect with the class card Thickhide Kodo. I'm curious, what are your observations/findings?
The new core legendary Taelan Fordring is another 5-mana deathrattle card that DH can use. But overall very interesting analysis!
The one I'm enjoying this cycle is Circus Amalgam in Shaman. A few reasons it works:
1) Kindling Elemental (I guess this is another example, actually!) to get out a turn 3 (or coin + turn 2) Chillwind Yeti.
2) Totemic Reflection
3) Nofin Can Stop Us
While you may not run the latter two in an elemental deck, you will likely still have some spell discovery that can generate those cards. In theory pretty much every class can make use of a tribal synergy, but Shaman effectively has three of them between Murlocs, Totems, and Elementals, so they tend to benefit most from this card imo.
Outrider's Axe -> Mor'shan Elite
Terrorguard Escapee -> Earth Revenant
Headhunter's Hatchet -> Ratchet Privateer
Sword of the Fallen -> Northwatch Commander or Crossroads Gossiper
Death's Head Cultist -> Plaguemaw the Rotting
Frankly, I think there's a reason this line of exploration is hardly explored. I'm pretty sure it's better just to have a good three drop and a good four drop than a mediocre three drop that likes to be followed up by a specific mediocre four drop.
This was a good read, ty
Updating this thread with another find. There is a swarmy token combo Warlock deck that I'm testing right now, and an obvious synergy is this:
Fiendish Circle Turn 3 -> Rustsworn Cultist Turn 4 -> Shady Bartender Turn 5
It also runs all the "Destroy your own minion"- cards like Ritual of Doom and Grimoire of Sacrifice in combination with Headmaster Kel'Thuzad. Wicked Whispers and Boneweb Egg are also in there (for obvious sacrifice/board buff reasons), just need to find the rest of the deck parts.
Will post the deck once I'm done with testing.
Honestly, this is very smart. I really appreciate what you're doing here.
I wish that decks with these kind of unique ideas could compete with the stuff people have already discovered.
Imagine a warlock deck that isn't using the new questline?! Unheard of!
I'm interested to see what the final decklist looks like. :)
Thanks! Yes, this stuff is super interesting.
I'm doing some analysis on the Classic Set as well and it's funny that the archetypes never really changed over the years. There was a Swarmy Combo Spell Damage Deck for Warlock in Classic as well.
If you look at the Reward cards of Warlock, there is Kobold Geomancer and Ogre Magi. And there are two cards in the Classic Set that benefit from Spell Damage, Mortal Coil and Bane of Doom. Both have a condition that is easier met if boosted by Spell Damage (also Ogre Magi Turn4, Bane of Doom Turn5). We also have two Turn3 Spells as a follow-up for Kobold Geomancer (which isn't the case in Mage for example).
In later expansions this deck was buffed by Imp Gang Boss (in combination with Blood Imp), Imp-losion (which also benefits heavily from Spell Damage) and Mal'Ganis. This Swarmy theme is in every class btw. (Druid has Treants for example).
The other is the "BIG" theme, in the Warlock case it's Big Demons with another Reward card that just fits great in a Combo Big Deck, Gurubashi Berserker (followed up by Dread Infernal). This deck has Pint-Sized Summoner and the Combo Summoning Portal + Felguard as well, which is the only way to make Felguard work tbh. Also Sense Demons Turn3 + Pit Lord Turn4 is a thing in there.
Both deck types are Combo because they exploit the weaknesses of a Control Deck, board clears and Hard removals. Vs. a "Big" deck a Control deck wil simply run out of hard removals, and a swarmy deck that can fill the board with tokens over and over can overcome any amount of boardclears. After a while Deathrattle decks came into play as well to beat Control.
Funnily enough, if you try to make an aggro deck with Warlock and look at the reward cards, there is also Grimscale Oracle for a level 53 and 54 Warlock Class. Guess what the Aggro deck looks like? :D It's a murloc deck. Suddenly a Felstalker works great with so many 1-drops. Also not all Discard cards are played in the same deck, I'm trying out Soulfire in the Spell Damage/Swarmy deck and it just kills. A 6-damage Soulfire with that amount of Spell Damage (along with Bloodmage Thalnos) isn't that rare.
The real challenge is to find the appropriate Neutral cards to fill in the missing spots to 1. still have a great curve and 2. have enough synergy to be able to compete. With the Swarmy Deck I'm playing around in Standard right now, I have won some games vs. Quest Decks already, still refining though as I'm sure I'm missing the last bit. Rustsworn Initiate though works great with it already (it summons a Spell Damage Imp which helps with board buffing and Grimoire of Sacrifice. Also it's another minion from the "Rustsworns" (like Rustsworn Cultist) so I guess that's no coincidence.
What's worth mentioning here is that usually Combo minions have even stats (or close to) much like Ogre Magi or Kobold Geomancer as they are neither aggressive nor passive, but rather situational in combination with Spells. You see that with most Combo minions which sacrifice stats for a better ability.
Love this kind of topic, thanks fam