Hearthpwn

Funny how people thought he would be a garbage card when revealed. Either way, he is a great card that opens doors to new archetypes of decks and this is something we sourly need in hearthstone!

And he is definitely not OP. I ran this deck for 3 days straight to get to legend and I had plenty of different types of decks beat it. It just has a positive win rate, for now.

you guys. comes a new deck a long the way. people dont know it, so it gets some wins, fine. but that does not change the truth: it is not a top tier deck. it may cause a grin now, but in a month it will be forgotten.

it would be op if you didn't need them in your deck.  But it is offset by required 1/3 of your deck to its effect.  So the card may be op, but is the deck that uses it op?  Probably not.  

The card is OP period. The paladin secrets are not bad, just not amazing but it doesn't matter when you're getting them put into play for free at the same time because they synergize together. Noble sacrifice stops a big attack from killing mysterious challenger, gets revived, procs avenge on something, forces your opponent to have a suboptimal turn because they need to play around repentence then buffs everything with competitive spirit.

If you have seen this deck in action at high ranks, you would know that playing this very often just straight up wins you the game even if you were behind leading up to turn 6. Your opponent basically gives up all tempo and board control in order to deal with all the secrets and clear the board.

How people react to cards before the add-on is released: OH BLIZZARD THERE ARE ALMOST NO PLAYABLE CARDS WHAT YOU DO TO US PLZ BLIZZARD MAKE BETTER CARDS.
How people react when a new card allows you to build a new deck around it which includes some new ideas: HOLY CRAP BLIZZARD WHY YOU RELEASE OP CARDS HOW COULD YOU ADD CARDS LIKE %name%.

op??? LOlzzzz

Quote from Emogirly jump

If you have to run 7-10 'bad' cards in your deck for a card to be good, it's definitely not broken.

Also this card gets easily countered by Big Game Hunter.

If Avenge or Competitive Spirit hit's Mysterious Challenger.

Quote from Emogirly jump

If you have to run 7-10 'bad' cards in your deck for a card to be good, it's definitely not broken.

Also this card gets easily countered by Big Game Hunter.

If by countered you mean bgh kills it the next turn after it already hit you for 7, drew 5 cards and put them into play then sure, I guess bgh counters it.

Quote from DerivativePox jump

Quote from Astrohawke18 jump

Quote from Emogirly jump

If you have to run 7-10 'bad' cards in your deck for a card to be good, it's definitely not broken.

Also this card gets easily countered by Big Game Hunter.

If by countered you mean bgh kills it the next turn after it already hit you for 7, drew 5 cards and put them into play then sure, I guess bgh counters it.

You attack with a thing- Noble Sacrifice activates. This causes Avenge to trigger on the challenger and the defender comes back with Redemption. Then you get the beast in your sights. Repentance triggers, setting BGH to 1 hp. You pass the turn and Competitive Spirit triggers on the lone defender.

All the secrets have now triggered- They dealt 1 damage to your BGH and 2 damage to a random creature you had lying around, and made a 3/2.

Now, countering Mysterious Challenger when you're behind on the board is a huge challenge. But the same can be said for Savannah Highmane.

Well that assumes the paladin has no board whatsoever going into turn 6 which is a good joke because the deck plays nothing but sticky minions that you can't fully remove unless you draw into the perfect hand to counter them.

Do you play on EU? I think it was me you met... turn 6 all secrets up...you get rid of secrets...turn 7 all secrets up agian... am I right :D? 

Dedicating 6-12 Card slots to get good use of a card isn't OP.

It's Powerful, but not OP. Personally, i'd rather have more cards than some deck slot expensive once-per-game combo.

Quote from DerivativePox jump

Quote from Astrohawke18 jump

Well that assumes the paladin has no board whatsoever going into turn 6 which is a good joke because the deck plays nothing but sticky minions that you can't fully remove unless you draw into the perfect hand to counter them.

So what, I have to go through a bunch of different scenarios on how to play around Mysterious Challenger based on what the board looks like? Might as well write a book at that point: "How to counter Mysterious Challenger".

Secret Paladin does not contest the board better than any other deck that tries to control the board, since your deck is diluted by crappy secrets. So yeah, control Warrior cries in a corner while you plop down Mysterious Challenger turn 6, get 3-4 secrets and have a board. But that's like your best matchup.

Once again, the card is not much different than Savannah Highmane: it more or less wins you the game if you're ahead on the board.

You don't have to go through all the scenarios, just don't use the most unlikely one where the paladin has 0 board allowing you to easily bgh his mysterious challenger. 

The deck has no problem having early board control even with a bunch of secrets. Its early game is very similar to aggro paladin. Even if you draw your secrets, avenge, noble sac, redemption are all decent enough to play for 1 mana. Avenge and redemption in particular make your opponent not want to trade with your minions because they can't immediately deal with a buffed minion or a revived creeper/minibot/harvest golem/shredder. This pretty much ensures you will have board going into your mysterious challenger turns.

If you want to see how much early board control this deck can have despite filling your deck with "shitty" secrets, just go watch Kolento play it in ONOG.

Quote from DerivativePox jump

Quote from Astrohawke18 jump

You don't have to go through all the scenarios, just don't use the most unlikely one where the paladin has 0 board allowing you to easily bgh his mysterious challenger. 

The deck has no problem having early board control even with a bunch of secrets. Its early game is very similar to aggro paladin. Even if you draw your secrets, avenge, noble sac, redemption are all decent enough to play for 1 mana. Avenge and redemption in particular make your opponent not want to trade with your minions because they can't immediately deal with a buffed minion or a revived creeper/minibot/harvest golem/shredder. This pretty much ensures you will have board going into your mysterious challenger turns.

If you want to see how much early board control this deck can have despite filling your deck with "shitty" secrets, just go watch Kolento play it in ONOG.

I don't need your snark: I've played this deck quite a bit myself. The secrets are crappy, I seriously don't know what else to say. When you draw any of them other than maybe avenge, your board game is suffering heavily since your opponent gets to draw good cards like Piloted Shredder and Spectral Spider and and what have you.

We're more or less reiterating our positions here, so unless something new comes up in your reply I'll probably disengage this line of conversation.

If I end up doing that, I hope you'll continue to have a nice day. /DP

Just go watch Trump and Kolento. They are both playing it in the tournament right now and you get to see how dominant it is and how much the game swings around when mysterious challenger is played. Who cares how much you have played it. For all I know you are rank 20.

I disagree, this deck with the inclusion of MC will be tier one because people will refine it just like patron. Turn 6 MC with at least 3, often 5 secrets, into turn 7 dr. Boom is the strongest two turn swing in the game I've seen and I've played since early beta

most classes can't deal with that sequence.. A luck brawl maybe

I just got killed by this card. The guy played it, and had 5 secrets put into play. At that point, you know what everything is, but it didn't make it any easier to play around. This card reminds me a little bit of decks that are built around Malygos. They feel super unfair when everything works out exactly like you planned, but if you don't draw the cards you need, it ends up being pretty bad.

if anything, there should be MORE cards like mysterious challenger.

what i mean by this is cards that make you construct your deck differently. there should be cards that push the actual totem theme. these cards wouldnt be just overall good cards, they would shine in certain deck types. without cards like these, the game is very linear for every deck. you just play the obvious best card at X mana cost.

with that said, with paladin basically just being overall better than most classes, that is a problem, and hopefully blizzard bumps up the other classes and gives them unique competitive strategies. i played secret pally before it caught on, went from rank 19 to rank 2 in less than a day, might have lost like 2 games on the way. i go to sleep only to wake up to see everybody playing the deck. and sadly the mirror match isnt very skill intensive so i spent most my time building a deck that beats it and the other popular decks, but couldnt do it.

i really just wish the mirror match was skill intensive or something, because really thats the only problem i have with the deck outside of blizzard not properly supporting other strategies and classes.

I think it is funny when people talk about "watch Trump or Kolento". I mean these are some of the best players in the world of course they will do well with good cards (Challenger is great but I don't think OP). I have watched Many of the top players in the world do well with crazy decks that no one argues are OP (hell Dog hit legend this month with mech druid).

Challenger is a great card but like said before its not OP as it forces you to use below average cards to make it great. Everyone talks about how hard it is to remove all of the secrets but if you don't have a board and the paladin has several minions your already losing anyway and would be in almost as bad of shape if he had played a sylvanis or emperor.

The big draw back like Derivative mentioned is although the secrets are OK if you play them early they certainly don't have the value of most other early game cards (or they would be used on their own) and it can cause you to fall behind. Also since most people run 2 of these it is very likely that the 2nd one will have very little value and playing a 6/6 for 6 is fairly dreadful.

Patron Warrior is very powerful because of the 1 turn KO something this deck doesn't have and it still requires one specific card but without the stall or draw mechanics of Patron. Really it is just another cancer deck with a twist and from what I see playing against it and watching others play it good players will have a +50% win rate and will climb the ladder but you can say that about almost every other cancer deck. I think it will get slightly worse as people actually learn to play around the secrets (something you cant really do against Patron).

This is one of several new decks that could bring back removal such as polymorph. Most decks with removal can play around this well if done correctly and ping classes fair even better.

Yes the card is strong and yes the deck seems good at least for the time being but we don't need to scream OP every time something new comes up that is good.

I'm Rank 3 (using a version of Secret Pally myself) and all I see in Ranked during 6+ hours of play are mostly Secret Pallys (because of the hype / and the deck is really crazy, no kidding), Hunters (Probably because they're the best counters to it), and Mages (Good control and tempo). And all 3 have one thing in common - SECRETS! S E C R E T B O Y S!

Quote from HaruteMarute jump

I'm Rank 3 (using a version of Secret Pally myself) and all I see in Ranked during 6+ hours of play are mostly Secret Pallys (because of the hype / and the deck is really crazy, no kidding), Hunters (Probably because they're the best counters to it), and Mages (Good control and tempo). And all 3 have one thing in common - SECRETS! S E C R E T B O Y S!

And that's why Kezan Mystic is a sub in tech for the current meta.