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    posted a message on Legendary Priest Card Reveal - Madame Lazul

    Ultimately, Madame Lazul is a pretty interesting card, but I don't love it. Given that the body is totally useless for its cost, and all the value is knowledge and card advantage, the best comparison is clearly to Chameleos.

    Madame Lazul can get you a lot more instantaneous knowledge about your opponent's hand, and you're guaranteed to learn about three cards in their hand (assuming they have three or more cards in hand). With Lazul you get to maintain your hand size when you get their card, which is valuable for cards like Twilight Drake, and if you get a good card that you can't play immediately, you'll still have that card later. Chameleos, might not enable you to learn about a lot of their cards, and you might not get the card you need when you need it, but you have the advantage of surprising your opponent.

    I don't think that element of surprise is all that valuable compared to more consistent value, so I expect Madame Lazul to be way more playable than Chameleos. That said, she's no Drakonid Operative, and in a control vs. aggro match up her weak statline is a liability, so I expect she'll need a very slow meta to be worth teching into a deck.

    Posted in: News
  • 2

    posted a message on New Card Revealed - Swampqueen Hagatha

    Saman spells tend to be a bit all over the place in terms of value, but now is a great time to introduce Swampqueen Hagatha. All of the three spells Shaman got in Knights of the Frozen Throne were bad, and there were a couple of others in rotating sets (I'm thinking of Tidal Surge in Un'goro and Primal Talismans in K&C, but Volcano and Lesser Sapphire Spellstone are both situationally weak.)

    On the other hand, the Classic Shaman spells all make for great battlecries (except maybe Ancestral Spirit), about half of the Basic spells are great, and having access to cards like Rain of Toads or Eureka! or Elementary Reaction make this 5 mana 5/5 an excellent value play.

    If you have the time to play Swampqueen Hagatha, she's going to be a very powerful card. Of course, a 7 mana 5/5 is very bad tempo, so we'll have to see how fast the meta is before making a final determination. She's clearly a great in a Control heavy meta, and if Shaman gets one or two good AOEs, maybe she'll even be playable in a midrange meta. She's probably a little too slow for an Aggro-heavy meta, but that's okay.

    Posted in: News
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    posted a message on Freeze Shaman forgotten?

    The fundamental problem with Freeze Shaman is that its big payoff - Moorabi creating copies of other cards - isn't a strong enough win condition to merit running so many low tempo freeze effects, and because the whole archetype is tied up in a legendary card, it's not even a consistent payoff. The only card that has been added to support the archetype is Ice Cream Peddler, which probably doesn't do enough in a class that already has access to plenty of healing, and the cards that might help the archetype (like Zentimo) are probably just better in other Shaman archetypes.

    Posted in: Shaman
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    posted a message on Arena Treasure Chest

    Arena Treasure Chest is obviously really bad, but assuming it's awful isn't as much fun as imagining ways you might be able to make it playable. So, how might you be able to make this work?

    • Play it with Reckless Experimenter to turn it from a 4 mana slowly draw 2 cards to a 1 mana draw two at the end of your turn. Maybe (if you run 2x Experimenter) this can speed up a Mecha'Thun Priest deck.
    • Use Meat Wagon to tutor it out...maybe?

    That's basically all I can think of...this card is really slow, and really weak

    Posted in: Arena Treasure Chest
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    posted a message on Auchenai Phantasm

    To be clear, I agree that the effect is better on a spell than a minion, but it's better because after Embrace the Shadow rotated out of standard, there was a major investment in spell synergies in Priest (like Shadow Visions, which we've both mentioned). All I'm saying is that because Embrace the Shadow was playable in decks back before those spell synergies were introduced, Auchenai Phantasm is likely playable as well.

    Posted in: Auchenai Phantasm
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    posted a message on Stolen Steel

    The weapon pool is probably too large for this card to be useful. After Rastakahn is released, there will be 35 "other class" weapons in the pool for standard alone, and a lot of them expect decks to be built around their effects. Some examples include Skull of the Man'ari, Dragon Soul, Ice Breaker, Bladed Gauntlet, and Light's Sorrow. Others, like Likkim and Bloodclaw and Eaglehorn Bow would be decent results, but are hard to fully utilize outside of their class synergies, and hard to justify with a 2 mana tax on them.

    Posted in: Stolen Steel
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    posted a message on Devastate

    Between this, Scorch, and Wing Blast, it's cool to see so many "1 mana deal 4 to a minion" cards being developing in ways that are thoughtfully fitted/conditioned to the class they're in.

    Posted in: Devastate
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    posted a message on Drakkari Trickster

    Drakkari Trickster could have applications in a deck like Burgle Rogue, where pulling class cards from your opponent's deck is more likely to mean good cards than the typical "random from their class" effects.

    Posted in: Drakkari Trickster
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    posted a message on Ornery Tortoise

    Not that it's going to be a thing, but Ornery Tortoise could be run in Odd Priest to help create opportunities to leverage the buffed hero power. The minor tempo boost over a typical 3 drop isn't that much, though.

    Posted in: Ornery Tortoise
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    posted a message on Dozing Marksman

    Dozing Marksman looks like a worse version of Redband Wasp, which already sees little to no play in a class that's well suited to activating the enrage effect. Can't imagine this will be stronger.

    Posted in: Dozing Marksman
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