Hearthpwn

A reprint of pirate dh. I hope next expansion dh finds a way to reinvent itself. Feels like it's been stuck in one place for a while.

 It says "transforms if you've launched a starship 'this game'" so it doesn't need to be in hand.

The other cards are kind of w/e but Thor looks archetype defining. It combines with any board clear for a 1 card otk (The Ceaseless Expanse or any pricier board clear with New Heights). You don't store up, you cost reduce and launch often. Jim Raynor launches a handful by himself. Thor counts to 30 pretty fast, you get two, and it's flexible enough to play as a board clear or just pushing some extra face.

This looks like a really powerful mini-set to me. The protoss look strong to me too.

The thing I'm sitting here prowling in the bushes for is Raza the Resealed and Papercraft Angel + whatever Artanis's hero power is. Happy to have a tutor for Artanis.

If you had gotten past angry chicken rank before the patch, you would've encountered Pipsi paladin. It was roughly six times as popular as handbuff paladin at top 1k legend. Handbuff paladin only had 0.52% playrate at those ranks. These numbers were from the latest Vicious Syndicate data reaper report which pulled from over a hundred thousand games. I imagine these players, by virtue of their high rank, were substantially sweatier than anyone you could queue into.

Um

Uh

What?

Conniving Conman and Sea Shill are paladin cards. They are also mage cards. Some of the best. They'll probably be reverted which won't nerf them for rogue but will nerf both pipsi paladin and big spell mage.

I think nerfing the only decent deck that runs new expansion cards besides Ethereal Oracle would qualify as a mistake. The objective of this patch is to nuke old strategies off the map so it feels like we actually got an expansion.

Out of the 14 buffs, 8 of them directly impact starship rogue. It will be perhaps the most buffed deck of all time.

What do you even do to Reno? If you stop him from limiting board space, the card loses half its functionality. If he still limits board space but only removes minions, now he can fully board-lock enemies and it's arguably a buff. He's already 10 mana. Reducing the amount he limits board space removes the "one on one standoff" thing. My best guess is remove board limit but significantly reduce mana cost, but that feels kinda un-extravagant for the primary highlander payoff.

It still says "improved by different types that died this combat."

I don't really understand the purpose of the Atrocity change. "The stats are now permanent rather than buffs." So it's not a 7/7 golem with +14/+14, it's just a 21/21 for example. What card does this even interact with? Rafaam buddy? 

It's not something applied consistently. A lot of players will immediately roll their eyes and feel they've been taken advantage of the instant an opponent plays four or more cards in a turn. Any kind of swing turn or powerful play is a crime. In reality, that play is just what the opponent's deck does, and assuming that deck isn't SSSS tier, it's something other decent decks can deal with. Instead of policing mana cheat broadly, we should police specific powerful instances of it that actually constitute a problem.

There can be a problem if the game is too fast or too combo centric, or if a deck's high roll blowouts are too impossible to deal with. Mana cheating can create those situations. But removing anything classified as mana cheat would remove a lot of the push and pull, ups and downs of a good game. Some people might authentically enjoy a card game without it better, where you're playing 1-2 cards every turn and jockeying for small leads, and those are valid feelings. But gaming offers a wide variety of experiences, and this game is the way it is. And I happen to like this era.

I don't think it's realistic to expect quasar to not lead to otks in the current form. The angle of the card is "you can draw and play every card in your deck very fast." Having the cards in your deck add up to 30 damage just makes sense. I don't think we can wait for them to rotate, either. Rogue's class identity isn't being weak at direct damage. Even if we get rid of all the direct burn spells, there'd still be weapon buffs and Sonya combos for example.

I can see the vision of a quasar that's a much more neutral game piece, but I think the base design is way too feast or famine. Furthermore, I suspect it's the type of card that Blizzard accidentally prints support for and keeps popping up similar to The Caverns Below. Any card draw, a location tutor, spell tutors, any form of delayed card draw, and any shuffle mechanic might accidentally break the card.

I think one thing that might work is lowering the extremes. For example, a quasar that costs less and discounts less, but draws two cards after it shuffles. Less conducive to chaining infinite card draw and drawing your whole deck instantly, but still does some of that and doesn't instantly lose the game in decks not built for it.

Kil'Jaeden isn't as powerful as you think. Drawing and playing one increasingly large guy per turn isn't actually that great, as far as top-ends go. You spent a turn playing a War Golem and your next several draws will actually be worse on average than the cards that were in your deck. Many decks have stronger plans to outright kill you, or can just swing board and aggro you down if you don't draw a few specific defensive demons. He'll close out a game about as often as the Golden Kobold you shuffled in with Marin, which is like, I've seen it happen. But it's not usually how things go. He's substantially better in warlock because you get two demons per turn with lifetap + Foreboding Flame.

If you don't have a Knickknack Shack on board, you lose unless you top-deck and chain card draw. The fact you need both and can't tutor either puts a bit of a pin in that. If you have both, then the turn you play quasar you make an insane tempo swing, chain draw your whole deck, and do a Sonya otk the next turn. There's a deck that's broken if it draws both shack and quasar, but the consistency and its power level when it doesn't do that remain to be seen.

So far so good. Our last dance with combo rogue in festival of legends didn't go so hot, but pressure points and Eredar Skulker seem pretty stand alone good. I could see it. Knickknack Shack is the only card that makes Quasar playable. I could see it. I can see something cool coming out of this.