Hearthpwn

Quiriff, you make a fair argument in principle, but I still don't see how this loss of tempo, card advantage and mana would justify the advantage you get only in the long run with a deck that is so fast and almost never gets to fatigue. I guess there is no way to know for sure until we get a chance to try this card out for real - and I would love to see you prove me wrong and make a Gang Up rogue murloc deck viable - but I remain skeptical.

As for your examples:

Hammer of Wrath actually sees very little constructed play. In fact the last time I saw it competitively was as a one-of in a pre-GvG paladin deck that Kolento played. On top of that, the reason to play it would be because it is the only reliable way for paladin to deal 3 damage (the next best thing is Truesilver Champion which does 4 instead of 3, requires you to attack with your hero and requires you to have a free weapon slot. That is the same reason I wouldn't consider Starfire a cycle card: the primary effect is its main point and it is expensive enough that it takes up a significant part of your mana and your turn, the card draw is there to make sure you don't run out of cards while also allowing you to affect the board, not to simply cycle.

Wild Growth is played as a ramp card. It has the cycle mechanic so that it doesn't become completely dead in the late game. No druid would ever run this card - even for 1 mana - if it didn't have the ramp component. In fact, except for some edge cases with Violet Teacher or Gadgetzan Auctioneer, a turn 10 wild growth basically says: loose 2 mana, get to fatigue faster.

Bloodmage Thalnos is played mostly in rogue and shaman as much because of the cheap spell power as the card draw. Of course both matter, but it is more than just a cycle.

Loot Hoarder is indeed pretty close to a cycle, but even there, the fact that hardly anybody ever plays Novice Engineer in its place illustrates it's not just that. Novice engineer does the same thing faster, more reliably and without a risk of getting silenced, but the loss of 1 attack (and possible deathrattle synergy) is deemed so important that people still opt for Loot Hoarder instead. That in fact is a pretty clear illustration of the main point: even a small amount of value, even 1 point of attack on a minion, can be very important, and that is exactly why a card that does absolutely nothing at all on board is so much worse than a card that has a small effect like 1 damage or destroying a secret.

Hey Ghost, thanks for clarifying, that makes a lot of sense. It is hard to judge without having played with the card, but you may be right that neither Alexstrasza nor Malygos is too strong at 7 mana. In fact, it may be that even in druid combining cards like Dragon Consort, Wild Growth and Innervate to allow things like a turn 5 Ysera might not be too bad, because it does indeed require a dream hand to pull off. I guess the only way to find out would be to play it in all classes, which we won't get a chance to do.

So I guess my question is: if you don't even believe Dragon Consort would be overpowered in the classes that can use it to pull off crazy things, why do you think it is so strong in paladin that it will make paladin the best class to build a dragon deck with?

PS I agree that a petition to nerf an unreleased card (Emperor Thaurissan) is insane, but it does show you how wary people are of any card that gives you a mana advantage, rightfully or not.

Quote from Ghost7x »

those are paper thin excuses at best. there are plenty of ways to deal with ramped dragons at this point. in fact, with this card being exclusive to paladin only, it makes paladin pretty much the best place to build a dragon deck. you can still use emperor in druid decks as well, but no one is complaining about it lowering druid cards costs by 1 more mana. In fact, that card makes druids combo cost 1 less at the very least, meaning they can now kill you on turn 6-8.

Ghost, you can't have it both ways. Either there are plenty of good ways to deal with ramped dragons, making this card not overpowered. Or it is so insanely good that it single-handedly makes paladin the best class to build a dragon deck, even though it has no other obvious dragon synergies (like cheap high-value buffs for Dragonkin Sorcerer, cheap draw to combine with Chromaggus or a natural spot for existing dragons like Twilight Drake or Alexstrasza).

If the first is true and the card isn't all that strong, then there isn't a problem and it's just some card that some class got and we should expect to see dragon decks for other classes be just as viable.

If the second is true and even without other synergies this already makes paladin the go-to dragon class, imagine what it would do in other classes that do have additional synergy and reasons to use this card!

As for nobody complaining about Emperor, there is already a petition to nerf Emperor Thaurissan without the card having even been released yet! And almost everyone agrees it is insane to the point of possibly being broken. In fact, the uproar over that card illustrates just how careful Blizzard has to be with releasing mana-changing cards to all classes.

Finally, let me repeat that I agree the choice makes little sense lorewise and a case could be made to have put the card in other classes like - as CasmX mentioned - Shaman or Priest; the 'solution' to make it a neutral card though, would absolutely lead to problems.

Quote from Quirriff »

I actually think most people misunderstand the use of this card, it's a pity it's not gained through a class challenge so we're not introduced to how it should work, so I think most people will try out mill decks and be inferior to druid mills and try it in other decks and just cut it out.

There are cycle cards in hearthstone, they make your deck thinner....so you can get more important cards out and makes it more likely for you to draw the cards you want, maybe not the turn you use them but maybe the next turn.

In a way this is a bit like that, you cast it on a minion you want to draw, but instead of getting you closer to fatigue it puts more of what you want in your deck so the chance of getting what you want with each draw is increased.

Quite possibly the best minion to use with this deck is Coldlight Oracle which has a racial tag that benefits from swarming your opponent. So using shadowstep to re-use the oracles battlecry will draw you cards (Murlocs maybe), you play shadow step on your coldlight to gain more cards including low cost high impact minons that have been the target of gang-up the previous turn.

Hey Quiriff,

Let's look at current cycle cards:

Wrath for 1 damage. This card is used in constructed almost exclusively for 3 damage. People use it for the cycle when they have a horrible hand and nothing else to do, it almost always feels poor. It is, admittedly a bit more reasonable in arena, where it can be hard to get card draw.

Tracking cycles in a way that almost guarantees a high quality draw and thins out your deck at the same time in a class that almost never gets to fatigue (with any chance to still win). Nevertheless, this card has seen hardly any play in hunter decks for months.

Flare is sort of a cycle, but was really just powerful because it countered secrets, hasn't seen any play since the cost increased to 2 mana.

Blessing of Wisdom could be used as a 1-mana cycle with possible multi-card-draw upside, but nobody uses it; even in arena it hardly sees any play.

Shiv as a cycle card was last seen used effectively in miracle rogue, where it was needed because you had to draw your entire deck to guarantee your win condition and it synergized well with gadgetzan auctioneer. Even then, it saw less and less play in the later iterations of miracle rogue.

Fan of Knives used to famously be played on an empty board sometimes in miracle rogue just for the cycle, but I haven't seen that happen in a long time. The reason it is still played now is to counter token decks like muster-paladin or token druid or to combine with spellpower from something like Bloodmage Thalnos. Even then, many rogues have been phasing this out, relying instead on double Blade Flurry.

Mortal Coil may be the only cycle card that really sees play as a cycle card, but then it is only one mana; it always gets value by killing a minion when you cycle with it; it is for a class that has no easy way to deal one damage; and it is for a deck that uses hand size to win the game (handlock).

So while cycle cards are cheap and often have an immediate impact on the board, they still don't see much play. On top of that, gang up does not work to cycle on an empty or 'boring' board when you have nothing else to do, since you need a good minion in play to cast it on.

Now I think everyone agrees that in special decks built around effective use of this card and drawing through most or all of your deck, it might see play; but in swarm decks like you mentioned this card seems way too slow. In fact, the weakness of almost all swarm decks (murlocs, mech mage, fast hunter) is running out of steam with lack of card draw, not running out of good cards to draw. The exception of course is zoolock, since it has the warlock hero power, but even if Gang Up was a warlock card, I couldn't see myself running it in zoo.

Like many class cards, the reason Dragon Consort isn't neutral is because it would be too strong in certain classes. For example:

• Any deck that uses Alexstraza to set up its end game (freeze mage and control warrior for example) could get a boost from this that leaves opponents no chance to react.
• Any deck that already has other ramp options (druid in particular) could spin out of control too quickly.
• In general, the more decks that have access to a card that breaks the game in some way (this one by cheating the mana curve) the harder it is to balance around that card going forward as more cards are released.

The reason they chose paladin instead of any of a number of other classes does indeed feel arbitrary lore-wise though. Even in terms of in-game flavor the paladin is the class that relies on armies of human soldiers and great protectors of truth and justice Tirion Fordring and Bolvar Fordragon being their class legendaries, making dragons a weird choice.

In terms of balance though, I can see paladin being a safe place for this card in terms of deck building options without making the card go completely against the way the class works, like it would have in, say, hunter.

Just to add some numbers to the discussion of how fast this card is, two graphs.

The first shows the number of copied cards you can expect to find in your hand after a number of draws, given how full your deck was when you cast Gang Up:

We see that if you cast Gang Up on curve (25 cards left in deck) you'll need to draw almost 10 more cards to get an expected single copy of the card you targeted, while if you wait until you have just 10 cards left in deck, you'll find one copy on average in under five draws.

Possibly more interesting is to look at the chance to have drawn your first copy of the card you copied after a certain number of draws.

Here we see that once again on curve the chance of getting at least one copied cards is about 45% in the next 5 draws, going up to about 75% in 10 draws, while with just 10 cards left before casting Gang Up, the chance is up over 80% within the first 5 draws. Even in pretty close to the dream scenario of having just 5 cards left when you cast it though, it is far from a guarantee that you will see any of those cards in the next one (38%), two (64%) or three (82%) cards you draw.

Kexaru, you make a really good point: the value of rogue cards is very dependent on whether you draw them early game or late game. That means if you get Gang Up late and you haven't drawn most of your early game cards yet, it can improve your deck quality quite significantly. Not just because later in the game you have less cards - improving the chance of drawing one of your copies - but also because you can guarantee these cards have late-game value, far outshining the early game killers like Backstab.

I'm still not sure if this makes it worth running in anything but a fancy full-deck-combo deck, since it also takes up a deck slot and can be drawn instead of one of those early cards you'd want in the early game, but this at least makes the relative value of Gang Up compared to the rest of your deck stronger, since it guarantees you late-game cards in the late game if you don't get it too early.

I will agree with everyone that Fireguard Destroyer will be insane. I also believe that radikalist made a good point with Resurrect being a potentially insane card for priest, and Dark Iron Skulker also has a lot of potential as hintM and mastersuperfan pointed out. Similarly, as many of you pointed out Drakonid Crusher is even playable as a 6/6 and if it gets its bonus a third of the time, that brings its average stat-line up to 7/7, making it a better Boulderfist Ogre (or cheaper War Golem).

There are some other cards though that I am really curious about:

Volcanic Drake may be good in arena because of how focused it is on minion trading. It is not at all unusual to have 3 or 4 minions die in a turn, which would make this card amazing.

Blackwing Corruptor has the pretty hefty price of needing to hold a dragon, which is very hard to guarantee in arena, but the battlecry is so good, that it might be worth grabbing if you have just a few Faerie Dragons, Azure Drakes or common BRM dragons. Even if you only get the battlecry value half the time, that still makes it way better than Stormpike Commando which is an acceptable (if unimpressive) arena card.

Dragonkin Sorcerer may be very good in priest, where Power Word: Shield and Velen's Chosen are auto-picks in arena.

Lava Shock is very hard to evaluate, but unlike in constructed, Forked Lightning, Stormforged Axe, Dunemaul Shaman and Earth Elemental all see a fair amount of play (on top of Lightning Bolt, Crackle, Lightning Storm, Feral Spirit and any Doomhammer you might be lucky enough to get). Add in the Fireguard Destroyer auto-pick and this card may be better than we think.

Flamewaker is hard to evaluate, but I do know that mage has a lot of often picked spells in Flamecannon, Frostbolt, Unstable Portal, Fireball, Polymorph as well as secrets and the board clears of Blizzard and Flamestrike; so this card certainly has enough activators.

Finally, probably the most overrated in this thread is Gang Up. The problem with gang up isn't just that it costs mana, takes up a card slot and doesn't get immediate effect, but that even when it does get effect, it is fairly minor. Even if you draw far enough into your deck that you get to one of the cards you copied, the gained value is not the value of the card, but how much stronger that card is than what you would have drawn otherwise. That is, you don't gain any card draw from gang up, so if you draw a copied SI:7 Agent you draw that instead of the Eviscerate, Chillwind Yeti or even another SI:7 Agent you might have drawn. So not only don't you get any value until you get deep enough into your deck, even then the value is only how much better your copied card is than what you drafted in the first place. So basically when you are playing the card you are saying: the value of most things in my deck is so low that I want to pay mana and a card to get a chance to in the long run get other cards that are higher value instead. This is certainly more reasonable than in constructed, especially if you have a poor draft. But if the cards in your deck are weak overall, do you really have the time to give up tempo and try to draw things out to the late game? And if the cards in your deck are already good in the late game, why do you need to copy other cards to put in instead?

The rare case where you run out of cards and get to fatigue is the only time this really shines - since then you actually have three extra cards instead of drawing into fatigue - but out of the hundreds of rogue arena games I've played, I can count on one hand the number of times I got to a fatigue stage where a few more cards in my deck would have made the difference.

The meta is changing pretty quickly with people trying to get new deck ideas in at the end of the month and before the BRM release, but tempostorm's March 28th meta snapshot is still a pretty decent overview of top decks. They list as tier 1:

• Midrange druid with ramp cards and force + savage.
• Oil Rogue with tinker's sharpsword oil and blade flurry as core cards.
• Control Warrior the classic high removal, big legendaries deck.
• Face Hunter with lots of charge minions.
• Demon Handlock that combines the strong handlock card with voidcaller + demon synergy.
• Midrange Paladin with a balanced curve from turn 2 up through the very end game.

Alexstraza can indeed be the highest value, but only if you play it in a deck that synergies strongly with her battlecry, those include:

• Essential: Control warrior with Grommash Hellscream + activators.
• Essential: Freeze or spell mage with direct damage burn like Fireball and Frostbolt + Ice Lance (I have seen some rare mages with Archmage Antonidas + Pyroblast cut this card, but not recently).
• Optional: druid with Force of Nature + Savage Roar
• Optional: handlock (especially if you don't have Lord Jaraxxus for late-game)
• Optional: the rare control priest with direct damage finishers like Mind Blast.
• Optional: the rare combo finishing rogue without early pressure (was more of a thing when Gadgetzan Auctioneer was still strong).

If you play one of the first two decks, I would absolutely recommend Alexstraza. If you don't play any of the decks in this list, I would go with any of the other cards over Alexstraza because the popularity of Big Game Hunter makes her weak in any deck that cannot immediately benefit strongly from her battlecry.

I absolutely agree that Dragon Consort is potentially a strong card, but my question is: how insane is it really? For a comparison its effect is basically a weaker innervate since:

• It isn't available on the first few turns, when innervate can be extremely powerful.
• It can only be used for playing dragons.
• Your opponent knows you have the effect available as soon as you play Dragon Consort.
• It doesn't allow any synergies with playing spells/cards from your hand or with hand size (a minor point for current paladins builds, but not getting value from something like Twilight Drake can be potentially relevant depending on how you build your deck).

So since you get a weakened version of an existing and very strong (druid) card, I would say the effect is about on par with drawing a card. On the one hand what you get is not as strong as an actual card (innervate), but on the other hand, the card we are comparing it to is so strong that it is run twice in almost every late-game druid deck. On top of that, Dragon Consort is more reliable and predictable than a card draw: you know what you are going to get and that can allow you to play with that information and for example hold on to the card until you actually draw into a dragon you can use the effect for.

Now this gives us an easy comparison, since we already have a 5-mana dragon that draws us a card: Azure Drake; a card that was considered strong even before the dragon tag was a thing, seeing play in a number of constructed decks and being an auto-pick in arena. So how much better is a 5/5 than a 4/4 with +1 spell damage? Well, we have that comparison too, since we know that Chillwind Yeti a 4/5 blows Ogre Magi a 4/4 with +1 spell power out of the water. Getting a 5/5 is even stronger, so the gap is huge. This makes Dragon Consort way better than the already playable Azure Drake.

Some might argue that a dragon-innervate is not worth the equivalent of a card draw because of its limits, but even if it isn't quite that good, the added stats compared to Azure Drake and the value of the dragon tag in BRM for enabling cards like Blackwing Technician and Blackwing Corruptor make this card great regardless.

Yes, it seems that Dragon Consort truly is amazing.

senti, that makes a lot of sense. I was just thinking of existing rogue decks, but there may indeed be new ways to build a more draw-oriented rogue deck where this card can really shine, I'd love to see the experimentation with those after the expansion is released.

Son of Loke,

How would you feel if about Quick Shot saying deal 3 damage to a minion. If your hand is empty, draw a card. Following the design of cards like Shadow Bolt, Wrath or Starfall?

I am asking because I think most players are not frustrated with the strength of hunter, but rather with those hunter decks that prioritize face damage over board interaction and minion trading. A card with wording like this would actively encourage hunter players to focus on board control and in fact I would not be surprised if non-hunter players would be fine with this, even if the card got slightly stronger, maybe dealing 3-4 damage instead of 3.

senti, you make an interesting point about a Tempo loss for a long-term gain. The problem with this card though, is that your potential gain is really slow and situational. There are currently three types of value-gain tempo-loss cards:

Ramp cards

Wild Growth, Emperor Thaurissan, Dragon Consort, Nourish for the mana crystals etc. These cards force you to overpay in the short term, but it is clear how they pay this back: what you loose on that one turn, you gain back many-fold over the turns to come, getting more available mana, or a mana discount, for more than what you paid, spread out over later turns, but with the return starting the very next turn (or sometimes in the case of dragon consort, that very same turn)

Card draw cards

Arcane Intellect, Nourish for the draw or Sprint are obvious examples, but Loot Hoarder, Hammer of Wrath or Acolyte of Pain also fall into this category. You don't affect the board at all, or you overpay for an effect, with the added bonus of getting more cards in your hand. The payback is clear here as well: you have more options the following turns so that you can make stronger plays, spend your mana more efficiently and don't run out of cards in hand as quickly.

Delayed effect cards

These are edge cases, but I would argue cards like Nat Pagle, Pint-Sized Summoner, Alarm-o-Bot and Demolisher are also a tempo loss, in that you overpay for a body that only gets value if your opponent doesn't have an answer before the next turn. And these already illustrate the problem I am getting to: these cards don't see any play, unless you combine them with something that guarantees their value. All gimmicky Alarm-o-Bot decks add in a stealth mechanic so the card actually survives a turn and the truly great example of a card like this is Doomsayer, which only works when combined with freeze effects that stop your opponent from destroying it easily.

Super-delayed effect

Gang Up is the ultimate example of a delayed effect card in this last category, but it is even worst in the short term, although you eventually get value from it at two levels.

First, if you draw far enough into your deck that you get one of the cards you copied, the gained value is not the value of the card, but how much stronger that card is than what you would have drawn otherwise. That is, you don't gain any card draw from gang up, so if you draw a copied SI:7 Agent you draw that instead of the Eviscerate, bloodmage thalos or even another SI:7 Agent you might have drawn. So not only don't you get any value until you get deep enough into your deck, even then the value is only how much better your copied card is than what you decided to put into your deck in the first place. So basically when you are playing the card you are saying: the value of most things in my deck is so low that I want to pay mana and a card to get a chance to in the long run get other cards that are higher value instead. This seems pretty poor to me, unless the value of the cards you copy is truly earth-shatteringly insane.

The second bit of value though, is where things get interesting: if you draw through your entire deck, the value goes up to the full value of the cards you copied plus the avoided fatigue damage. In that case you are saying: I drew these three SI:7 agents instead of getting three steps into fatigue. That is where the value is crazy: paying 2 mana and a card for 3 extra high value cards and avoiding 6 points of fatigue is a great deal. This only works though, if you play a deck that wants to draw through its entire deck and can take the tempo loss and the card slot loss from playing a 2-mana card that does nothing at first. This is the only kind of deck where I see Gang Up having enough value to justify it. Luckily for rogue, these decks do exist. Mill decks work like this, some combo decks that harken back to the old-school miracle work like this and it is imaginable to build a really slow rogue control deck.

Unless you draw through your entire deck though, I don't see this ever gaining enough value to justify running it.

I think everyone can agree that Rend is a weak card in a fast and aggressive meta-game. It won't get any value against decks full of fast, small creatures.

The question is though how slow the meta-game has to be for it to become a good card. In particular, cards like Loatheb and Dr. Boom are being played even in faster midrange decks. Mech mage has Archmage Antonidas for you to deal with and the value is decent even when hitting something techy like Harrison Jones or The Black Knight. On top of that, Emperor Thaurissan is likely to see a lot of play and at least for the first few weeks after release, people will be trying to fit Chromaggus, Nefarian and Ysera into decks that they have no business being in.

As the meta speeds up and gets less control heavy, the card will definitely not see any play, but it may be a good tech card for those times when the meta slows down enough that you can get good value from it in most match-ups.