Hearthpwn

Whether it's good or not, one thing is certain: Soggoth is crying in a corner somewhere. And that's terrible.

How is it a nerf to Guldan? It's an adorable little kobold, not a demon.

Mimic Pod doesn't draw you two cards. It draws you one card, and then puts a copy of that card into your hand. So it would draw one Ambush! which would activate instantly, summoning you a 4/4 spider and drawing a card. Then it would add a copy of Ambush! to your hand which would cost 4 mana, summon a 4/4 and draw you a card. People seem to think it'll be like the Nerubian Ambush or the Burrowing Mine in that they won't do anything from your hand, but those cards specify "When you draw this, do this" but have no effect when played from hand. Whereas this one just says "Summon a 4/4 spider, Draw a card. When you draw this, cast it" which means it'll actually do something from hand.

EDIT: I'M A MORON DISREGARD THE CROSSED OUT STUFF I DIDN'T REALIZE THERE WERE TIERS TO THE SPELLSTONES! Considering this, then yeah it makes sense that doing 6 mana crystals at once wouldn't jump you straight to the end. Likely because of the way events are stacked in hearthstone, you'd overload your 6 and the card would turn into the normal one. It wouldn't transform further because technically the card for the normal one didn't exist when you overloaded yourself so its effect wouldn't trigger. This does make the spellstones seem rather clunky (or at least this one) because that means you have to overload three to transform it. Any extra crystals overloaded are "wasted". So if you were to cast Elemental Destruction then it'd only become the normal spellstone and you'd still need to overload three crystals to make it the greater spellstone... Drakkari Defender buff! He overloads exactly the amount of crystals you need for the upgrade! EFFICIENCY!!!!!!!!!!!!! *barf*



RaptorWithWings Do you have a source? The two spellstones posted on this site don't have anything in their text that suggests you have to do their conditions one step at a time. The Druid one would be really painful if that were true and interpreting "Gain 3 armour" as "Gain armour three times" seems a stretch. If that is what it's supposed to do, then they worded the card poorly (Not that they haven't done so in the past). I think that considering this spellstone just says "Overload three mana crystals" then that has two possible interpretations. Either it means you must overload at least three crystals across potentially multiple turns, or you must overload at least three crystals in one turn in a pseudo Corpse Flower type effect. Not saying you must be wrong, just asking if you have a source to support that interpretation.

N'zoth doesn't bring back minions who were given deathrattle. Only those who have it in their vanilla card. Otherwise, Unearthed Raptor would get resurrected by N'zoth which it does not (probably for the best really). But yeah all in all I don't see Shaman having the sustain to pull off something as masochistic as overloading yourself for a really late game play that doesn't end the game instantly. As for comboing this in wild with Malygos or Al'akir with Ancestor's Call... As someone who's played a decent amount of Shaman Malygos combo decks, for every game that you manage to pull off having spells discounted by thaurissan and then drawing/playing Maly so that you can use those spells, there's at least 4-5 games where you end up getting forced to use a lot of your spells just to live, malygos never gets drawn...etc. Adding ancestor's call into the mix doesn't add that much either from what I've played with. Removing all minions except Malygos and Thaurissan means you're not running Azure Drakes, Earth Elementals (The variant I most often ran used ancestral spirit and reincarnate to get multiple earth elementals in order to stall/give the opponent targets for removal that aren't Malygos), also you can't run Mana Tide Totem which cuts out another essential card draw option for Shaman in wild, Thalnos needs to be cut along with Loot Hoarders. Essentially your only draw power would have to come from Far Sight (Which isn't great) or ancestral knowledge (Which really hurts unless you're playing it later). Not saying you shouldn't experiment, just that I think there are more effective ways to play a Malygos Shaman than relying on Ancestor's Call.

At the very least, good luck getting that 4 giants in one turn strat out before Raza Priest gets their 2-card combo.

The problem is that it's pretty difficult (apparently) to find a reward for overloading yourself that makes you want to overload, but doesn't break everything. For example, Unbound Elemental has been in the game since launch but even at times when overloading yourself was a good thing, it wasn't run because it's just not good enough. On the complete opposite end of the scale, you have Tunnel Trogg who turned out to be playable, but his effect was so good that shaman now wanted to run things with overload attached just to buff the trogg. Something with overload 2 essentially became "Cast a spell/minion two turns early and give your tunnel trogg +2 attack". I think this is probably a lot healthier than Tunnel Trogg though since it's much slower. Tunnel Trogg was for all intents and purposes an aggressive card and so you also ran other overload stuff aggressively, overload be damned. This doesn't give you on board benefit right away and is also very expensive. I think it needs to be in your hand to get upgraded as well so I don't think this will usher in a new era of overload text being positive text. Although the idea of that many giants kind of frightens me, you'd require a lot of setup to get that far. You have to have the giant down to 3 mana at least and a shaman deck overloading that many crystals may be harming his longevity too much. Maybe if there was a fatigue shaman, then that would be a pretty decent very late game-ending threat.

Nah. All you need to gather a party is a megaphone and shout "NEED HEALER PLOX" in the closest general chat.

Doesn't help that this card is absolutely unplayable unless you want to try using it with Treachery. Whether it's good or not, Blizzard probably planned on this synergy which means they've done a complete 180 on their statement that they will never print cards that discard your opponent's hand or deck because it creates a very unfun game for whoever's on the other side. This is why Illidan went from "Battlecry: Both Players discard 3 cards then draw 3 cards." to its current battlecry. Blizzard didn't want to enforce a playstyle where a player has their hand/deck crippled with no say in the matter.

Not saying it's going to be a thing. But if this and Treachery somehow manage to find themselves in a competent deck then it will be the most toxic experience. What deck is fine with having their hand destroyed without a say in the matter? Decks that don't have a large hand size past turn 3 wouldn't care, and decks with no reliance on any specific handful of cards would probably be fine... So that leaves hard aggro decks and zoo. Any other deck would be absolutely crippled if a feasible warlock combo occurs.

Except that a spell drawing two cards has been costed at 3 mana. As long as Arcane Intellect is an auto-include in every mage deck, we can't say a 2 mana card needs to draw two cards in order to even be mediocre. If this card draws twice, then you've cheated the system and cast Arcane Intellect for one less mana (and considering Mage is THE class with highly mana efficient spells, that's pretty damn impressive). Wrathion was just really slow partially due to his body not being fantastic for the cost, as well as not being a card that you can play until turn 6. Also being 6 mana makes a card impossible to weave easily into your gameplan for a turn. The strength of low mana draw cards is that you can toss them out at the beginning of your turn and THEN formulate a gameplan while still having a decent chunk of mana. Also, Dragon decks didn't actually run a ton of dragons back then, just enough to justify having the dragon synergy cards. I mean, Dragon Warrior ran a grand total of two dragons. Also back then, all the cards that said "If you're holding a dragon" were not themselves dragons so it was impossible to build a dragon deck with a high percentage of dragons (The fact that most dragons were also pretty heavy on the mana curve didn't help the idea of a deck consisting even 50% of dragons either). The bottom line being that a deathrattle rogue would probably be running more deathrattles than dragon decks ran dragons and this card being two mana is much easier to weave into your turns than Wrathion ever was.

We also have to consider how desperate Rogue is for card draw. Aside from Auctioneer, Rogues have Shiv and Fan of Knives for "playable" card draw. They have mild board control uses, but they're not often used that way. The only bad thing about this card is how polar its value is. If you draw two cards, you've done something that costs mages one more mana. If you draw one card, then you did a Shiv without getting that one damage ping. I think it'll all come down to how many deathrattles a rogue can feasibly stuff into a deck because if you draw a deathrattle, you've hit paydirt.

I think it needs to be equipped. It's text (and new bolvar's) are laid out like Flesheating Ghoul's and that card only gets the attack buff if it's on the field so...Yeah. Also it's 4 mana cost means it not only needs to be okay to see play, it needs to be AMAZING in order to get paladins to throw out a different 4-drop. Paladin's have and have always had a choked 4-drop slot and it baffles me that Blizzard keeps giving Paladin interesting cards, but then makes them four mana thus guaranteeing they'll never be played effectively. At the very least, WHY WOULD YOU RUN THIS WHEN TRUESILVER CHAMPION EXISTS!

Well, if you think about it... Double the cost of Ironhide and gives double the armour. Also I feel like 10 armour is a pretty ludicrous amount to gain for 2 mana from one card. I think it could make a one-of as a tech card for that midrange warrior deck that doesn't exist yet. Control has enough armour gaining abilities from cards that are too slow for a midrange to play well, but a midrange warrior probably can't afford to use hero power, armour smith, backalley smith or shield block as they are very slow. This card, I imagine, would be for the midrange warrior to use agains aggro or midrange decks. Due to spending mana playing on curve, the midrange warrior probably doesn't have a lot of armour and if they get to the point where they have the aggro deck top decking they may be pretty low on HP and all it takes is hunter hero power or top decking a Leroy to die. It's situations like this where I feel spending 2 mana to gain 10 armour will close out the game in your favour as aggro and midrange decks have to resort to ignoring the board state and just going face eventually. At that point, it often doesn't matter if the midrange player has stabilized their board condition if they're sitting on 4 hp. Gaining 10 armour could ruin the other player's hopes of widdling you down those last few points.

Edit: I don't think this hypothetical midrange deck will dethrone Control Warrior or Pirate Warrior, just give players a midrange option for warrior if they like that playstyle and need to do warrior quests. Niot every deck needs to be tier one for someone to want to play it.

At the very least, everything that's been revealed so far for the class is unplayable in aggro/midrange shaman. So... those won't be getting better.