Hearthpwn

Priest might love this card. Using hero power early game to stall (even healing your opponent on turn 2 for 0 has an upside now!). Shadow form late game could have some crazy plays, Hero power heal, shadow form, shadow form hero power then frost giant for 0. They can also keep the board clear for long games.

I just played a game myself as a hunter vs a paladin. I went first, he went 2nd. Turn 5 he coins out mekkatorque, my turn 6 i mekkatorque. he then plays mekkatorque turn 6. I play mekkatorque turn 7. later on I brewmastered mekkatorque and played him again. Ultimately i lost but LOL

*Edit* I was debating throwing him away my turn 1 tracking, best decision of the game to pick him over deadly shot

Been playing the deck and it's quite fun and rather effective. Face hunter is a nightmare match up though. Unless you draw perfect early game cards for the board or fan of knives you will lose. What would you suggest to sub out for a 1 of heal bot. I imagine it'd help with the freeze mage match up too. The smith is surprisingly helpful so I considered either a yeti or a sky golem.

So far in Shaman he's utterly amazing. While your card draw is limited you usually have to save cards for combos or value plays. He feels like he was purposely put in the game above the power curve just to allow mid range / control a tempo lead to catch up to aggro which in theory is nice because it allows deck diversity but I'll be sad if every single control deck is forced to run this card because it's necessary to catch up. Obviously vs other control decks you get a huge tempo lead just for playing him right away. 

I'm still swaying to he's OP but maybe after a few tournaments we'll know for sure. I doubt blizzard will  nerf him though and when they eventually do months later it will be a huge over nerf liking making his effect a battle cry and costing him at 7 to compete with the 7 slot. I really hope blizzard will slightly nerf this card and make it just a battle cry or tweak the stats, I miss seeing Starving buzzard at all. I hate when cards are OP and in every deck but making them so unplayable they disappear forever isn't right either :(. Maybe one day buzzard will be 3 or 4 mana.

Maybe they could redesign him, the old pagle was just too strong/OP and RNG based. Making him 100% draw at the start of your turn or giving him less health with an end turn draw might help. He's in a pretty poor spot now sadly and rather a disappointment when he pops out of your shredder, aka the only play you will ever see him played from. He went from always played to never played, that's a pretty big problem.

Pretty much any card nerf discussion has sparked heavy debate and resistance where I'm surprised a large volume of people no matter what the card was have claims that they were blantly broken or weren't overpowered. it's not very black and white either, even cards like envenom from alpha, 0 mana unconditional backstab, 2/3 defias ringleader, 2 mana unleash, under taker or the classic defender of argus had heavy resistance to being nerfed. After reading countless pages of debate on Dr. Boom being Op or not, nat pagle being Op or not. Thaurassian is just the new card to debate about. I'm starting to question what I thought might have been OP really was if so many people truly back blizzards original concept maybe I'm not very savvy at spotting what is over powered as I once thought I was, has there ever been an over powered card?

I agree it's annoying :( but the only incentive in this game is to win, both in ranked and casual. You only get gold for winning and dailies usually require wins. There's no incentive for people to use anything other the few best decks currently available, aside form rewards most people find winning fun. The game design promotes certain decks and cards to just be better based on many factors such as tempo, consistency or volume of games playable in a brief period of time. Fast decks work well since 30 life nowadays is pretty much nothing, I imagine every expansion to make games last even shorter with higher attack stickier minions. These decks are cheap in cost and very strong so you have to build decks around specifically beating them. Perhaps you can make a turtle grim patron deck with a lot of healing and hopefully you draw well, although the game will be over before you even play grim patron seeing as if you're alive turn 5 with board control and enough health to play him the rush deck lost already.

The only other way is to have a friend who will mutually use a fun deck.

Hey hearthpwn, at the moment I generally play heavy control shaman or heavy control druid but after laddering for some time last season I tend to see much of the ladder playing face hunter or mech mage (about 50% of the games I play are against either of these decks). I still see some oil rogues, control wariors, combo druids and the occasional freeze mage or priest. This kind of repetition on ladder as made me ask the question, of these decks I've never bothered to play because I find them boring, how do they match up vs eachother.

I imagine mech mage is the defender in the match up while the face hunter puts the pressure on the mech mage. Annoy tron and mech warper are likely vital but idk how the mage is supposed to win this match up even with blast mages. Unless they tech heal bots, mech mage prefers to trade as it has better late game while face hunter just zergs the mage.

I'm also curious with how control warrior vs control priest goes

I'd prefer to run a similar deck like this in a crusher shaman style, much more defensive with a healing totem or heal bot. Might need 2 lightning storms if you aren't hyper agro and 2 hexes are necessary in any non face shaman deck. Earth Elemental is an extreme case of playing vs BGH, you can't run 1 because the opponents single BGH will kill it for value and all you have left to capitalize on is neptulon. You either run Earth Elemental in a deck with many 7+ attack minions to bait it out BGH early for safe big drops or you avoid them all together.

All that said I love the concept and am excited to see overload heavy decks. If the game is looking very agro centric maybe storm forged axe could see a 1 of play.

Except for full face agro, this card is an absolute must for any mid range/ control deck for any deck regardless of class. Auto include without question, if you have more than 2 cards in hand this card gives more value than an innervate on top of a 5/5 body for only 6. Allows to use of 8 mana minions on turn 7 following this card or Dr.boom/ 7 drops if coined on turn 5. With more than 5 cards in your hand when played this card gets insane tempo! Also any above 10 mana power plays such as a malygos deck will allow insane combos to be played that would normally be unusable. Innervating this card out as a druid essentially insures an instant win through tempo snowball (it's like a wild growth every turn if unanswered). The only down side is top decking this card with nothing in hand.

That being said, even if it's the best card in hearthstone by the looks and will be in all non face decks regardless of class, we have to see it played before we can call this OP. Maybe a full face meta game or the tempo of the game being so fast now that games end on turn 4 or 5 will make this card obsolete. Like the Dr. Boom comments from Blizzard, if Blizzard says it's not OP we should take their word for it, it took months of internal testing to make the card. Releasing a card that looks very broken(yea I think it looks broken but I'm not a game designer with no experience using it) might not be the case, if it turns out to be overpowered, don't expect it to be nerfed until months later after the next expansion . I guess we'll learn how to adapt and play around this card until then.

Very strong for shaman especially for having no good 4 drops prior. Even in non overlaod decks, it's basically a water elemental with attack instead of a freeze. As a shaman player I'm happy to see at least one card be very strong. It's actually bad to get +4 attack because you can get BGHed unless you have an earth elemental ready to follow it up.

How Dunemaul shaman can even compete with this card just makes me sad though :/. Yea it has wind fury but seriously this card makes the other obsolete, silencing the ogre effect makes you lose the windfury. Almost better in every situation except for piloted golem spawn.

As far as constructed goes, if you're paying 8 or more mana (9 and 10 mana are even stricter since you can't hero power that turn) the card has to win you the game by itself. Alex does this as a win condition, Rag can win or get insane value (he's like an 8 mana deal 8 damage and trade a card 1 for 1 if removed right away). Nefarian while cool is a disappointment because he does not win you the game at such a steep cost. An 8/8 body isn't worth skipping a turn and spending 9 mana, Giants are good because they come out quickly. Neptulon and Dr. Boom can get away with board setup because they are turn 7 plays, a turn you're much more likely to live (turn 7 hits before druids can combo, warriors can combo among other classes). At this point of the game you can't afford to skip your turn. Ysera also wins you the game if unchecked with a better body.

Yea you draw 2 cards but you'd be better of with ancient of war as a druid, and non weapon or armor classes make this neigh unplayable if you get blade flurry or shield slam among the sea of garbage spells. With it's inconsistanty and steed price removal is a problem for such a fragile body. BGH ruins your day because you skip your turn to get nothing but card value and lose insane tempo, losing dr boom or neptulon to bgh doesn't let them drop thier own dr boom the same turn, they can only drop a 4 drop with the BGH. In Nefarian's best case scenario a 6 drop will follow, it could be piloted sky golem, high mane or fire elemental and you're just so far behind in tempo by then. Even if you draw amazing spells with him you lose more tempo playing them, neptulon nearly gaurentees 1-3 drops.

I love the card concept but the stats and cost are very poor. I would have liked them to make Nefarian a 7 Mana 7/7 (still in BGH range) so he'd be comparable to Neptulon or ancient of lore since you don't get to pick the cards, the 7 mana drop slot needs more good cards. If he is kept the way he is he needs to be at least an 8 mana 8/8 to be considered playable. At 9 mana he'd have to be a 6/10 (different body than other dragons) while drawing an enemy spell from a random pool of 3 spell cards similar to tracking at end of turn effect, similar to Ysera's but different enough. (which also follows the boss fight lore better, you gradually change class to class ability over the fight).

If you never intend to use the battle cry and plan on just getting a 4/4 beast for say for mid range or control hunter, you're almost always better of playing Lost Tallstrider for the 5/4 beast. That said the best way to capitalize off this card is making it playable as a turn 4 4/4 but in a deck designed to achieve hellbent (no hand), ideally face hunter. Exceptions may be if you face many priests the 4 attack might be better with the gamble for a big drop on occasion.

Perhaps Mid range (control should always have cards) Top deck wars would be interesting, but by then (when you run out of cards) you wouldn't care if it costed 4 mana or as much as8 mana, you'd draw a card, cast it and hero power (assume turn 8-10). Unless you played a gnomish for draw into this card with hero power for maximum effectiveness during top deck wars, but that's such an oddly specific situation you might see it occur only in very seldom arena runs.

That said the interaction with this card indirectly with the game is interesting however, it changes web spinner as it's another option, likely going to slightly make the card worse as this beast will lower the probability of higher value beasts such as Krush, Highmane, or Malorne. This card will likely not make Hemit any more playable and makes BGH better, as even face hunters may use a 7/7. Piloted Sky Golem gets another average outcome as a 4/4 could be better than a 3/5 say against priests or if you want more damage.

It feels like Blizzard wants EVERY DECK to run BGH since the only decks that didn't run Dr. Boom or 7 attack big creatures were face hunter or hyper agro decks. 1 is always a safe bet now, 2 isn't bad.