Hearthpwn

There's a fun secret I use to countering meta decks: The hidden key lies in the same class that dominates. To give you a better understanding, I often used Control Shaman to defeat Midrange Shaman back in the old WoG meta. Tunnel Trogg? Lightning Bolt. Totem Golem? Stormcrack. And Midrange Shaman had absolutely no good options for dealing with Doomsayer other than Hex, which is an absolute waste of the card considering there's plenty more big drops in Control Shaman to use. Lava Burst could get rid of Thing from Below, and then your only real problem was Thunder Bluff Valiant - a very good target to save Hex for.

When Mean Streets of Gadgetzan dropped, I laughed my ass off every game I played my Taunt Warrior against Pirate Warrior. Of course I still ran into problems with Jade Druid, but we're talking about top of the meta decks here, not nearly top of the meta ones.

Now, there were some slight exceptions in KFT and Un'Goro. The secret powerhouse I actually used in Un'Goro to defeat Quest Rogue was Stampede Hunter, a hyper-fast aggro deck that, at least in the early stages of the game, could easily overpower Quest Rogue, Quest Mage and Pirate Warrior. But the deck got weaker as time went on, and I eventually dropped it. In KFT, I probably could've handled Jade Druid well enough with Aggro Druid if it wasn't for Spreading Plague.

So what it all comes down to is, I think the counter for Aggro Paladin this year comes in the form of Healadin. Paladin's Spellstone is a great anti-aggro tool, Benevolent Djinn is a good healing card, Call to Arms can be used for defense just as well as offense (especially if you pull Dirty Rat without needing to worry about the Battlecry,) along with Righteous Protector, Corpsetaker, Wickerflame Burnbristle, Spikeridged Steed, Consecration and all their other available tools.

Again, what is it with Hunter getting better neutral cards than class cards in this expansion? There's finally an actually good big-bodied beast other than Savannah Highmane and Corpse Widow that can be used in a deck! Its resistance to hard removal is really powerful, and there's value on top of value to be had when it's alive and dead.

Best card from every class:

For Priest, it's pretty obvious to everyone by this point. Psychic Scream beats the heck out of most Midrange decks by completely resetting the enemy's board and punishing any deck that overextends its hand to eternity. It's especially awesome in Purify Priest, because if you ever end up shuffling your own minions into the enemy's deck your enemy is just stuck with a ton of worthless junk (unless they can give those minions Taunt or silence them consistently.) It's also decently cheap compared to many other forms of hard board removal.

For Shaman, it's Unstable Evolution. Evolving a single minion twice can get you major amounts of value out of just two cards, and it makes up for Evolve Shaman's weakness to board clear effects. I mean, hey, we've all had those frustrating games where you fight a Control deck and watch miserably as your opponent just wipes out every minion you try to play before drawing Evolve at a super inconvenient time.

For Hunter, it's Lesser Emerald Spellstone. A lot of the Spellstone cards right now only give the most basic value in their current form, or just less value than what they're worth. This card, on the other hand, gets you 6 mana worth of stats on board for 5 when you play it in its basic form, and the boosting effect is incredibly easy to trigger with the wide range of Hunter secrets still entirely draftable. I'm not saying this card is gonna make Hunter viable again, I'm just saying that it has a lot of value and works very well as a 5-drop in Hunter decks (Corpse Widow is good too but it can be rather specific for Hunter decks mostly focused around Deathrattles. And the spellstone works well for both Midrange and Aggro decks, while Corpse Widow is much more of a Midrange Hunter card.)

For Mage, it's Leyline Manipulator. Not only does the card have awesome stats for the cost, its effect is incredibly powerful for OTK Mage and Mage in general. Used in tandem with Primordial Glyph, Cabalist's Tome and Lesser Ruby Spellstone, this card will get you so much more value out of your spells while also making it a breeze to trigger the Mage quest. All you even have to worry about is not over flooding your hand before the quest is completed.

For Rogue, it's actually Kingsbane imo. This new legendary weapon is so dang underrated, I honestly couldn't believe it. Not only is it a high value weapon when you play it in its base form in the early game, but if you give it enough power from buff cards it becomes a consistent healing tool, hard AND soft removal method with decently long-lasting power on board. As the game goes later and later, your opponent is going to hate it dearly when their enemy is constantly drawing a card that lets them heal for 5 HP each turn (from 2 Deadly Poisons, which is enough to make up for the health loss on a lot of minion's attack stats) and destroy any minion they want to that doesn't have Divine Shield. Now, I suppose there's some chance that you might end up using one of your weapon buffing cards on a hero power dagger for the sake of a tough situation, but all you need to do is run 1 copy of Leeching Poison and Envenom Weapon plus 2 Deadly Poisons and you've likely got enough tools to deal with your enemy's cards scaling into the late game.

For Warlock, it's Kobold Librarian. A 1 mana draw tool with next to no downside - need I say more? And it's gonna be stupid in Arena.

For Druid, it's Lesser Jasper Spellstone. Now, I know there's other cards like the two legendaries which likely could have a lot of impact or just be fun combo triggers. But this thing makes up for one of the biggest weaknesses Druid has ever struggled through in its history as a deck: its lack of single target removal. Between Wrath, Swipe and Ultimate Infestation, most Druid players often rely on overpowering their enemy with larger bodied minions or slowing down their enemy's minions with Taunt creatures, which grew much harder to do after the Spreading Plague nerf. So, if Druid ever gets overtaken by the enemy's value on board or there's a single hard-to-kill minion causing problems, there often isn't much Druid can do. This card helps make up for that because of the massively high scaling damage off a relatively easy combo trigger. I mean, hero powering alone could easily get you up to 3 armor at some point, and cards like Feral Rage, Gnash, Claw, Branching Paths and Oaken Summons can do the job just as easily (not saying Gnash and Claw are viable, just that they trigger the effect nicely.)

For Paladin, it's either Call to Arms or Crystal Lion. Call to Arms is highly powerful in both Arena and Standard, and it's very likely going to give you at least 6 mana worth of stats on board as long as you draft your deck right. The only problem is, cards like Grimestreet Outfitter, Hydrologist and Argent Protector need their battlecries to be most effective and you waste a good amount of value if you pull them out of your deck. Similarly, Primalfin Champion needs its Deathrattle, but if Drygulch Jailor becomes viable it could work with this card. In terms of neutral cards, Knife Juggler is pretty good on a recruit draw but Wild Pyromancer is the kind of thing you want to save to combo with Equality or Adaptation. Also, you'd never want to play this card in a Prince Keleseth deck out of fear of losing his Battlecry, even if you can get buffed minions on the recruit draws. In terms of the 1-drops, Selfless Hero and Righteous Protector are both good, but Meanstreet Marshal needs its buffs for full effectiveness and Vilefin Inquisitor does lose some value, even if it stays pretty strong. As such, you'd have to run more strong-bodied 2 drops most likely and see if they really work in your bigger lineup to make the card work, even if some of the 1-drops can help. In Arena, though, these weaknesses are negated and the card is still most likely gonna be a must-draft. Just don't play it if your deck has Doomsayer in either case. And as for Crystal Lion, it all depends on how viable Silver Hand decks end up becoming in the future. Between Level Up!, Drygulch Jailor, Vinecleaver, Lightfused Stegodon, Lost in the Jungle, Stand Against Darkness and Crystal Lion, things aren't looking too bad for the prospect of a Silver Hand Paladin deck rising up. There's still a lot of competition in its way though.

For Warrior, it was a really tough choice because a lot of the better Warrior cards are comparable in terms of viability. Overall though, my favorite is Drywhisker Armorer because it has good stats for the cost and works incredibly well as a cheap defensive tool against Aggro and Midrange decks. It has heavy combo potential with all the other Armor-based cards and its value as a card peaks over everything else released so far imo.

Huh...very interesting card. If it gets pulled by a Recruit effect, you can pull off some serious combos, and that's not even going deep into the combo possibilities this thing has in Standard and in Wild.

For one thing, if you play this card and then play Faceless Manipulator on it, how many copies of itself would it then create?

It would have a lot of combo potential with Addled Grizzly, and could generally be a good card in Aggro Druid. Especially in Wild with Egg Druid where you can get all the Whelps!

If you kill this minion with Carnivorous Cube, would it still create 2 copies of Carnivorous Cube or just die before the effect triggers?

Holy Evolve value. Does anyone know how much the 6/6 summoned Elemental costs? Because I'd imagine it being around 6 mana or maybe 5, and that's just another boon. In addition, the fact that you can take any low-health minion on your board and just turn it into being a 6/6 allows you to likely retain all the value you had previously while also quite likely gaining even more. Not to mention this thing has a lot of potential power in Arena with the ability to take a low cost card drawn late in the game and turn it into an actual threat on board. And that fact has no less prevalence in Constructed, either!

Like Ice Block, except it can't prevent you from taking lethal damage and is much easier to trigger. With that being said, it makes sense that the card is 2 mana, and although it definitely could see play I'm not sure if this is the tool to bring Control Rogue into existence. Mill Rogues could use it well enough to drag out the game further, and if Secret Rogue becomes a thing then this card will be a staple in it. But this is one card where I really can't predict its viability at all...

Super powerful in Arena, and could see play in some Control decks just for the Taunt body. I mean, you don't want to summon a Doomsayer or Patient Assassin for your opponent, but by that point in the game it probably won't be too much of a threat whatever it is. This thing definitely has potential as a card, I can see it.

Well...I guess if you REALLY need something to slow down your opponent late game, this won't be the worst thing to have. It's still a very slow card though, and the stats don't help when dealing with other cards that have higher stats at that same point in the game. Not to mention it can also have somewhat negative synergy with Warlock's DK because the summoned Voidwalkers can fill your board with junk demons instead of the big bodied powerhouses you really want. Not to mention that Warlock needs more good low cost demons.

Is this a meme generator or the force to change Hearthstone's meta? Who knows, really. I sure don't. The raw amount of possible combos people could pull off with this thing is beyond my imagination, and I'd much prefer if it became a force of fun than a force of the meta. Anyone with me on that?

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Man, this thing has a lot of potential power. It allows you to reverse the effects of a bad Evolve roll by taking a summoned minion that doesn't have much power without its battlecry, returning it to your hand so the battlecry can trigger again AND making the card cost 1 freaking mana. Not to mention that it also saves any high-value Legendary minions or minions you want on board for the presence from dying to damage alone just so you can spit them all back out onto the board again the next turn. The only thing is that you don't want to play this card immediately after you get a good Evolve board, because then you end up losing a lot of the value. I can't even begin to imagine how people are gonna mess around with this card in Wild...and the combo potential still scares me in Standard. Here comes a game changer people.

 Maybe I'm blind but I don't see all this combo potential. I don't think that's a bad card, but it seems just made to "recycle" the battlecries of your elementals (and kind of heal them) for 1 mana each. You can't combo it with stuffs like malygos or idk what else, because you can't have 15 mana in a turn. Maybe I'm missing something, tell me if that's the case.

 Coincidentally, your response just opened my eyes to the true combo potential this card has. When you recycle the Battlecries of your elementals, you can use Kalimos, Primal Lord to deal 15 damage to the enemy hero for 1 mana alongside two 1 mana Blazecallers that deal 5 damage - combine that with two Lava Bursts and you have a 30 damage OTK combo right there for 9 mana. Not to mention that you could use things like Faceless Manipulator, Moat Lurker and the new Carnivorous Cube [/card] to gain more copies of those cards alongside the effects of [card]Spiritsinger Umbra and Ancestral Spirit (plus Reincarnate in Wild) - all of which get thrown back into your hand for 1 mana so that the death-dealing Battlecries can rain down upon your helpless opponent's face. The aforementioned combo triggers would also work really well with Malygos and spells like Lightning Bolt that would do stupid amounts of damage alongside an army of 1 mana Malygoses. I mean, yeah you can't have 15 mana in a turn, so the combo would be pretty slow with you having to play Malygos on one turn, the combo triggers on the following turn and then Grumble, Worldshaker on the turn after that to get all the summoned copies back into your hand. So I think the Elemental combo I mentioned first would probably work better because, although it's entirely possible that your opponent could remove those cards from the board before you drop Grumble, Worldshaker, Blazecaller and Kalimos, Primal Lord both do a good job of removing enemy minions and giving your opponent less options to deal with the board. I'm kinda just spitballing right now honestly, but thanks for the help in coming up with ideas.

 That is nice in theory (although kalimos does only 6 face damage, I think). But how often do you think you will have Kalimos and two blazecaller on your board to get them back with Grumble? And if you have them on the board, that is two 6/6 and one 7/7, shouldn't you just have won the game right there?

 Yeah...like I said, kinda just spitballing at the moment. I think I got Kalimos' face-damage effect confused with the effect that heals your hero, so it would only be 26 damage or something like that (I also got the math wrong on the first one, it would have been 35 damage from what I mentioned.) Thinking about other things beyond that, I noticed someone mentioning Fire Plume Harbinger as a good combo trigger for the card, and I like the prospect of that. You can play two of them  to reduce Grumble, Worldshaker's cost to 4 (that uses up 3 mana), and when Grumble, Worldshaker is played (another 4 mana, so that's 7) at that cost you can just play the two Fire Plume Harbingers again to make every Elemental in your hand cost (4) less (that's 9 mana). And you can even play another 1 mana card after that, maybe roll for something off of Servant of Kalimos. On the turn after that, you could play Kalimos, Primal Lord for 4 mana, two Blazecallers for another 6 mana total, so that's 16 damage in one turn. Not too bad, I guess...

Anyways, if you guys can think of anything else, let me know.

 okay.. play the harbinger, next turn Leeroy into grumble, into leeroy + spellstone + rockbiter weapon, flametongue totem, or windfury. Just takes a little set up.