Hearthpwn

Seems really expensive, 2 mana to deal 2 damage to a minion compares very poorly to any normal AOE spell.

Of course Hunter doesn't have normal AOE spells, just UtH... We'll have to see if this is strong enough to be run. I have my doubts.

(One thing it will be good at is defending an existing board state, which Hunters so far were not particularly good at. So there's that.)

I just had a look at what Shaman spells remain and which rotate out, to see how good this will (roughly) be.

I'm shocked at how much Shaman will lose (not just spells), and how unlikely it is that this set will bring the class back to life.

From Gadgetzan: Devolve, Jade Claws, Jade Lightning, Jinyu, White Eyes (neutral: Aya)

From Karazhan: Maelstrom Portal (neutral: Doppelgangster)

From Old Gods: Evolve, Flamewreathed Faceless, Thing from Below

That's a large part of the core of the current best deck (which is low Tier 2 at best). Wow.

Unless something else is released that makes this playable , surely this is bad.

As control playing against Aggro, chances are your opponent is simply running out of cards by the time you get to play this - and then playing a 3/3 without Taunt to get a couple of low-value cards is suicidal.

Vice versa if you're Aggro it sounds superficially good - get a hand full of valuable Big Priest cards! - but the problem is you only get the hand which you can play once, while your opponent just keeps drawing from a much more valuable deck. You are also very likely to get no burst damage to finish your Aggro job. And drawing into this early it's just a dead card which is not what you want at all.

Yeah I count approximately 7 cards that it shares with "Aggroadin", a very strange archetype description here.

On a related note, any news on the card backs for attending?

I'm gonna leave my packs unopened, hopefully after the patch update there will be another bug that resets the pity timer.

Nerf to Free From Amber kappa.

Glad I kept all my copies, anticipating a nerf. Over 10x 40 gold incoming!

It's actually a miscalculation from the original rules:

The Contest shall commence on 9:00 a.m., Pacific Standard Time (PST) on February 1, 2018 (the “Start Date”), and shall continue in duration until 9:00 p.m. PST February 14, 2018 (the "Deadline").

This makes more sense, although yes, 1 through 14 of Feb goes across 14 days even though the total period is 13 days.

Would be nice if the post was updated to reflect this.

This is awkward wording to the point of being incorrect:

starting at 17:00 GMT on February 1 and up until 17:00 GMT on February 14, each daily Quest* you complete

*Entries limited to a maximum of fourteen (14) per Battle.net account and one (1) entry per day.

From the 1st through the 14th is only thirteen (13) full days, and with a maximum of one (1) entry per day, that means only thirteen (13) entries maximum. Not sure what I am missing.

The Warrior class gets rammed even harder into the ground, Pirate Warrior was barely playable up til now (pretty decent winrate but only in the right meta) but this nerfs 2 more of its core cards.

Blizz better print some good Warrior cards or we might all as well disenchant our Garrosh portraits.

I'd love to at some point, but I realistically don't see how I'm ever going to get there. With a full-time job and IRL life the time investment is just too high, even without me being a good-but-not-great player.

If I feel ambitious and have a few extra hours I try for rank 10, else 15 is really as far as I need to go.

She is quite important due to the synergy with the other Jade cards and Evolve mechanic.

However I imagine a cheap replacement that fits on the same curve and has similar stats is just Flame Elemental. Legendary-wise, Cairne Bloodhoof would fit and also has the deathrattle.

I also don't imagine you can go far wrong with one of the OP neutrals, Scalebane or Bonemare.

I have seen a very healthy mix of classes and deck styles. In my last 11 ranked games I have seen Priest, Paladin, Druid, Mage, Warlock, Hunter, Rogue, and Warrior. Shaman is missing, in part because everyone is bored of Evolve Shaman and because whatever other viable archetype can be made with the new cards is a Control archetype that will take time.

Even the "aggro" across these classes is highly variable. Recruit Paladin, Burn Mage, Midrange Hunter, Zoolock, Aggro Druid, are all quite different. Maybe except Corridor Creeper, which should be nerfed, but other than that, each has their own flavour.

And of course as has been said, Aggro is much much easier to get to work at the start of any expansion, by its nature. Control needs a meta to counter - Aggro just needs fast cards to go face with. Give it time.

I'd say CC is the issue - it's a lot worse than Azure Drake ever was in being an auto include in virtually every deck because every deck loves playing 0 mana 5/5s.

Bonemare wasn't as bad...until CC showed up and playing around Bonemare by clearing the board doesn't work anymore. But with 14/14 worth of stats on t7 Bonemare isn't even a big problem as the Spiteful Summoner or Grand Archivist which can highroll even more. So Bonemare is fine, relatively.

Worse than Bonemare is Scalebane but even that is a 5/5 for 5 mana with snowball potential. Statwise it's massively outgunned by many of the new cards.

Patches is dumb and has limited the design of Aggro decks and pirate cards like no tomorrow, but nothing will happen now because nothing has happened to it so far.

The Slayer is fine. 5 mana need an activator destroy only 1 minion, that's no problem. It's bad before turn 5, it's bad against Aggro, bad against spell-based decks, etc.

The main problem with Explosive Runes is that it can be cheated out for 0 mana. For 3 mana it isn't really OP; it's the play a 3 mana 4/3 with battlecry "deal an extra 6 damage across your opponent's next minion and their face" that is a problem.

Decent combo if you can live until t9:
In your deck: 2x Drakkari Enchanter (as only 1-attack minions), 2x Dragonhatcher (as only 2-attack minions), 2x Silver Vanguard (as only 3-attack minions), 2x Primordial Drake, 2x Sleepy Dragon, some other Dragons including Ysera, Lich King.

Play Oakheart on t9. Enjoy the fireworks.

Logging out & back in again (and killing all the BATTLE tasks) did not work for me, perhaps suprisingly.

Still stuck with only the old quest of two days ago, yesterday's not added.