It's been two weeks since the release of TGT. We had plenty of time to play and tinker with the new cards.
Which cards you thought were good but didn't quite make it? Also, which ones you thought were awful at first glance but now you think they are good, viable or broken in some way?
Also, what are your thoughts on Inspire and Joust mechanic?
Unless one skews one's entire deck design to take advantage of it, there is barely a joust card worth playing. At this stage, I'm not sure that a dedicated Joust deck is competitive, although there are rumours about a Shaman build which might get there.
Inspire has more potential. It is pretty strong in Arena with Murloc Knight being the poster boy. Inspire offers a snowball effect to a fast start and can sew up a game if you dominate the board early.
Some would label this as win more, but M:tG has shown that win more can be a misapplied criticism if it pushes a fast deck over the edge to give a couple more turns of dominance and hence the win itself.
Indeed, my Dragon Priest deck was handily beaten by a Murlocadin deck yesterday which converted the traditional early board dominance of a Murloc deck into a strong enough mid-game to close the deal.
The only jouster card that I liked so far is King's Elekk in a tempo hunter.
If you win the joust, you get an extra card early on the game. If you lose, chances are that you are facing a slower deck, which can be exploited with a Tempo deck.
Well I see that everyone just went back to the exact same decks, except for secrets paladin.
But everything else is basically the same deck, with 2-3 cards added from TGT, if that. By and large face hunter and secret paladin are the two decks you face on ladder. I think secret paladin is actually kind of crap too so people will catch on and stop playing that soon enough. The upside of mysterious challenger is just not worth playing 10 garbage cards in your deck it seems. Same reason why Jeeves and Hobgoblin are sort of bad.
We'll see I guess. Some people have even stopped running Divine Favor in that deck, the best card lol.
Joust is just too badly designed imo because it's so inconsistency its base card should be more...like healing wave...3 mana heals for 7 is slightly worst than Druid that heals 8 but if you win joust then u get 14 instead...this is the correct way of designing these cards.
I've already switched back from Tuskarr Jouster to Healbot in my midrange pally deck just because the healing is so inconsistent...either 7 hp or none...so why wouldn't you just do 8 hp 100% of the time.
Inspire turns out better than expected i think...it is budgeted reasonably and acts as soft taunt perfectly...you can't leave any inspire minion unchecked.
But it's time to really question Blizz's development team .....what the heck are they thinking with Rogue....they clearly didn't test any of these rogue cards straight garbage and I hope people stop defending blizz on this one....not one new archetype comes out for Rogue
It's been a lot of fun to be honest. After not playing hunter at all before TGT, playing with Lock&Load and Dreadscale has been a blast. Druid got some insane help with Living Roots and Darnassus. I'm still waiting for the verdict on Mulch, still a lot better than naturalize in my opinion. TGT also brought Paladin to the spot light for the moment being, which has been a task but Murloc Knight is such a fun card to run. Rogue and priest are still in a pretty awkward position sadly. Rogue can be a blast to play and was hoping for some better help than what we got but hopefully the next expansion/adventure can bring rogue back from the dead. The foundations for a good pirate deck is there, it just needs the extra push that dragons got from BRM + Twilight Guardian. I haven't encountered any Taunt warriors yet even though it was pushed so hard with the new cards. Though Bolster + Annoytron can make for a shitty situation. I can actually count on 1 hand the times I have seen Varian come out even though he is clearly the strongest Legendary to come out of the set. Warlocks got the discard variation which I tried so hard to make work and when it did it was a lot of fun but way too rng dependent and not enough gain for the loss. Dreadsteed has started to make an appearance and is beyond annoying. Hopefully it will be craft worthy but gotta see where it goes. Shaman got some great tools to become ladder worthy imo. Once you fall behind on board control, clearing those buffed totems really becomes a task. Mist Caller is pretty underwhelming but it does make for new BGH targets in a pinch. Mage got a lot of fun cards this time around with Effigy and Spellslinger. Rhonin is great combined with a lot game Malygos. Polymorph Boar is in a weird spot with so many 3 mana spells for Mage but I do see a lot of fun to be had with it.
When it comes to Jousting, Kings Elekk and Gadgetzan Jouster are absolutely great. GJ has replaced Zombie chow for me in a lot of control decks. Plopping out a 2/3 for 1 Mana and no drawback sounds pretty good to me. Drawing into synergy for the next turn with Kings Elekk has been a nice but there is no point including him in face hunter.
Inspire minions have the potential to get out of hand very fast. Muklas champion is a prime example of this. Sneaking him out late game behind a couple minions only to inspire right after can be a very easy way to seal the game. Kodo Rider seems really clunky but has the potential to fill your board quickly with sticky 3/5's all over the place with Garrison Commander. I feel like in another 2 weeks the inspire mechanic could start to shine with some cool combo's coming out. Argent Watchmen gets great value 9 out of 10 times in arena as your opponent usually doesn't want to spend the resources to get rid of it until it's too late.
I can't remember all the cards but overall I'm pretty happy with what TGT brought to the table. Nothing extravagant, but a lot of fun cards.
I'm curious which rank you have to be to play garbage like Muklas champion or Kodo Rider.
Anyway I am really disappointed. If you want to win Jousts you have to cripple your early game because that means you wont be running 1 or 2 drops, if you do run 1 or 2 drops that means you can miss that important 7 heal with Tuskar even if you go against aggro decks. Some people seem to think that missing 7 heal vs control doesn't matter, but I would argue that it does matter a lot, for example vs a control warrior that just used Alexstraza on you. Joust is a failure imo. Kings Elekk is the only decent Joust card.
As for Inspire, well there are about 3 inspire cards that people run, Murloc knight, savage combatant and the new priest legendary. I think that in a few weeks the only Inspire card that people will still run is Murloc Knight. Overall Inspire cards are just too slow like most people predicted they were.
And finally I want to talk about some legendaries I've opened and tried out,
Aviana - Bad. Honestly against control I don't want to have 2 or more big creatures out, so the fact that they cost 1 mana doesn't mean anything. Rhonin - Wow is this guy slow. I can never seem to play this guy and be satisfied. I mean it's like playing an 8 mana War Golem. I always seem to have better plays that give me more tempo. Justicar - I am very happy about this legendary, I think it might be the best one in the set. Icehowl / Sky cap n kragg - I can't imagine Icehowl will ever be good. Sky cap n kragg will probably be used when we get more pirates.
I think it's still too early to draw many conclusions. If you look back at old articles (e.g. this one from Liquidhearth or this one from Tempostorm) about the post-GvG meta, you'll see that, four or five weeks after that expansion launched, the game was still dominated by Naxx decks. People added Piloted Shredder, Dr. Boom, and Antique Healbot to their old decks and just kept on keepin' on—the top-tier decks were still zoolock, handlock, face hunter, midrange hunter, and control warrior. For a while, a ramp druid was very popular that ran zero GvG cards. Mech mage and midrange paladin were the only archetypes that people quickly perfected that turned out to have real staying power on the ladder—other early-GvG decks, like mech druid and tempo rogue, never really caught on.
It took a couple of months for people to develop other archetypes, including some of the decks that really defined the GvG ladder: oil rogue, mech shaman, grinder mage, 9/4 priest (a.k.a. Chinese priest), demonlock, etc. Some strong cards and synergies hadn't been discovered yet (nobody was using Tinker's Sharpsword Oil at all; no deck was running Explosive Sheep, Illuminator, and Echo of Medivh together), and people had very high opinions of some cards that have since disappeared completely from the meta (like Sneed's Old Shredder).
I think Reynad was right about Inspire and had insight into it better than I heard from any of the other pros. Inspire cards are low/mid game cards that have additional value in the late game for control decks by providing a mana sink.
I wish that they had a little more hp because I think control deserved them to survive on average 2 turns instead of 1 given the insane power of aggro in this game, but still, it's a great mechanic and I'm very happy with it.
I think Joust is ok but depends on the card. Healing Wave is brilliant, Tuskarr is ok, the rest is a bit meh. The viability of Joust probably correlates pretty closely with the viability of control, so it's pretty unusable in most classes given most classes have no viable control archetypes.
except for dragons and dragon synergistic cards, most cards in this expansion suck balls. super slow, impossible to compete with the always aggressive meta.
It's been two weeks since the release of TGT. We had plenty of time to play and tinker with the new cards.
Which cards you thought were good but didn't quite make it? Also, which ones you thought were awful at first glance but now you think they are good, viable or broken in some way?
Also, what are your thoughts on Inspire and Joust mechanic?
Joust is just meh.
Unless one skews one's entire deck design to take advantage of it, there is barely a joust card worth playing. At this stage, I'm not sure that a dedicated Joust deck is competitive, although there are rumours about a Shaman build which might get there.
Inspire has more potential. It is pretty strong in Arena with Murloc Knight being the poster boy. Inspire offers a snowball effect to a fast start and can sew up a game if you dominate the board early.
Some would label this as win more, but M:tG has shown that win more can be a misapplied criticism if it pushes a fast deck over the edge to give a couple more turns of dominance and hence the win itself.
Indeed, my Dragon Priest deck was handily beaten by a Murlocadin deck yesterday which converted the traditional early board dominance of a Murloc deck into a strong enough mid-game to close the deal.
I was impressed.
The only jouster card that I liked so far is King's Elekk in a tempo hunter.
If you win the joust, you get an extra card early on the game. If you lose, chances are that you are facing a slower deck, which can be exploited with a Tempo deck.
Well I see that everyone just went back to the exact same decks, except for secrets paladin.
But everything else is basically the same deck, with 2-3 cards added from TGT, if that.
By and large face hunter and secret paladin are the two decks you face on ladder. I think secret paladin is actually kind of crap too so people will catch on and stop playing that soon enough. The upside of mysterious challenger is just not worth playing 10 garbage cards in your deck it seems. Same reason why Jeeves and Hobgoblin are sort of bad.
We'll see I guess. Some people have even stopped running Divine Favor in that deck, the best card lol.
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Joust is just too badly designed imo because it's so inconsistency its base card should be more...like healing wave...3 mana heals for 7 is slightly worst than Druid that heals 8 but if you win joust then u get 14 instead...this is the correct way of designing these cards.
I've already switched back from Tuskarr Jouster to Healbot in my midrange pally deck just because the healing is so inconsistent...either 7 hp or none...so why wouldn't you just do 8 hp 100% of the time.
Inspire turns out better than expected i think...it is budgeted reasonably and acts as soft taunt perfectly...you can't leave any inspire minion unchecked.
But it's time to really question Blizz's development team .....what the heck are they thinking with Rogue....they clearly didn't test any of these rogue cards straight garbage and I hope people stop defending blizz on this one....not one new archetype comes out for Rogue
It's been a lot of fun to be honest. After not playing hunter at all before TGT, playing with Lock&Load and Dreadscale has been a blast. Druid got some insane help with Living Roots and Darnassus. I'm still waiting for the verdict on Mulch, still a lot better than naturalize in my opinion. TGT also brought Paladin to the spot light for the moment being, which has been a task but Murloc Knight is such a fun card to run. Rogue and priest are still in a pretty awkward position sadly. Rogue can be a blast to play and was hoping for some better help than what we got but hopefully the next expansion/adventure can bring rogue back from the dead. The foundations for a good pirate deck is there, it just needs the extra push that dragons got from BRM + Twilight Guardian. I haven't encountered any Taunt warriors yet even though it was pushed so hard with the new cards. Though Bolster + Annoytron can make for a shitty situation. I can actually count on 1 hand the times I have seen Varian come out even though he is clearly the strongest Legendary to come out of the set. Warlocks got the discard variation which I tried so hard to make work and when it did it was a lot of fun but way too rng dependent and not enough gain for the loss. Dreadsteed has started to make an appearance and is beyond annoying. Hopefully it will be craft worthy but gotta see where it goes. Shaman got some great tools to become ladder worthy imo. Once you fall behind on board control, clearing those buffed totems really becomes a task. Mist Caller is pretty underwhelming but it does make for new BGH targets in a pinch. Mage got a lot of fun cards this time around with Effigy and Spellslinger. Rhonin is great combined with a lot game Malygos. Polymorph Boar is in a weird spot with so many 3 mana spells for Mage but I do see a lot of fun to be had with it.
When it comes to Jousting, Kings Elekk and Gadgetzan Jouster are absolutely great. GJ has replaced Zombie chow for me in a lot of control decks. Plopping out a 2/3 for 1 Mana and no drawback sounds pretty good to me. Drawing into synergy for the next turn with Kings Elekk has been a nice but there is no point including him in face hunter.
Inspire minions have the potential to get out of hand very fast. Muklas champion is a prime example of this. Sneaking him out late game behind a couple minions only to inspire right after can be a very easy way to seal the game. Kodo Rider seems really clunky but has the potential to fill your board quickly with sticky 3/5's all over the place with Garrison Commander. I feel like in another 2 weeks the inspire mechanic could start to shine with some cool combo's coming out. Argent Watchmen gets great value 9 out of 10 times in arena as your opponent usually doesn't want to spend the resources to get rid of it until it's too late.
I can't remember all the cards but overall I'm pretty happy with what TGT brought to the table. Nothing extravagant, but a lot of fun cards.
My opinions about constructed:
I'm curious which rank you have to be to play garbage like Muklas champion or Kodo Rider.
Anyway I am really disappointed.
If you want to win Jousts you have to cripple your early game because that means you wont be running 1 or 2 drops, if you do run 1 or 2 drops that means you can miss that important 7 heal with Tuskar even if you go against aggro decks. Some people seem to think that missing 7 heal vs control doesn't matter, but I would argue that it does matter a lot, for example vs a control warrior that just used Alexstraza on you.
Joust is a failure imo. Kings Elekk is the only decent Joust card.
As for Inspire, well there are about 3 inspire cards that people run, Murloc knight, savage combatant and the new priest legendary. I think that in a few weeks the only Inspire card that people will still run is Murloc Knight.
Overall Inspire cards are just too slow like most people predicted they were.
And finally I want to talk about some legendaries I've opened and tried out,
Aviana - Bad. Honestly against control I don't want to have 2 or more big creatures out, so the fact that they cost 1 mana doesn't mean anything.
Rhonin - Wow is this guy slow. I can never seem to play this guy and be satisfied. I mean it's like playing an 8 mana War Golem. I always seem to have better plays that give me more tempo.
Justicar - I am very happy about this legendary, I think it might be the best one in the set.
Icehowl / Sky cap n kragg - I can't imagine Icehowl will ever be good. Sky cap n kragg will probably be used when we get more pirates.
I think it's still too early to draw many conclusions. If you look back at old articles (e.g. this one from Liquidhearth or this one from Tempostorm) about the post-GvG meta, you'll see that, four or five weeks after that expansion launched, the game was still dominated by Naxx decks. People added Piloted Shredder, Dr. Boom, and Antique Healbot to their old decks and just kept on keepin' on—the top-tier decks were still zoolock, handlock, face hunter, midrange hunter, and control warrior. For a while, a ramp druid was very popular that ran zero GvG cards. Mech mage and midrange paladin were the only archetypes that people quickly perfected that turned out to have real staying power on the ladder—other early-GvG decks, like mech druid and tempo rogue, never really caught on.
It took a couple of months for people to develop other archetypes, including some of the decks that really defined the GvG ladder: oil rogue, mech shaman, grinder mage, 9/4 priest (a.k.a. Chinese priest), demonlock, etc. Some strong cards and synergies hadn't been discovered yet (nobody was using Tinker's Sharpsword Oil at all; no deck was running Explosive Sheep, Illuminator, and Echo of Medivh together), and people had very high opinions of some cards that have since disappeared completely from the meta (like Sneed's Old Shredder).
I think Reynad was right about Inspire and had insight into it better than I heard from any of the other pros. Inspire cards are low/mid game cards that have additional value in the late game for control decks by providing a mana sink.
I wish that they had a little more hp because I think control deserved them to survive on average 2 turns instead of 1 given the insane power of aggro in this game, but still, it's a great mechanic and I'm very happy with it.
I think Joust is ok but depends on the card. Healing Wave is brilliant, Tuskarr is ok, the rest is a bit meh. The viability of Joust probably correlates pretty closely with the viability of control, so it's pretty unusable in most classes given most classes have no viable control archetypes.
except for dragons and dragon synergistic cards, most cards in this expansion suck balls. super slow, impossible to compete with the always aggressive meta.
I find it to have only strengthened existing problems.
And overall: dud.
Priest (60) / Warrior (49) / Hunter (47) / Mage (45) / Warlock (36) / Druid (35) / Shaman (34) / Paladin (33) / Rogue (19)