StanCifka's Top 10 Cards to Watch out for in Knights of the Frozen Throne
Hi guys! The Knights of the Frozen Throne cards have been fully revealed, so it’s time to go through the whole set and try to guess which cards we need to watch out for and which ones just look flashy but won’t make much of an impact.
Below you can find the Top 10 cards that should be on your radar while building new decks and brewing strategies. There are so many interesting cards, so let's start with an honorable mentions before getting to the actual list.
Honorable Mentions
- Runeforge Haunter - Can snowball a lot in the right meta-game
- Prince Valanar - Great anti-aggro tool if you can make it work
- Shadow Ascendant - might be hidden gem of the set
- Stitched Tracker - If Midrange Hunter exists this is the perfect card for him
- Frost Lich Jaina - New Jaraxxus for Mage that will help with closing games
#10 - Scourgelord Garrosh
Garrosh alone could mean the comeback of Control Warrior. Best you can do is to compare him with Gorehowl, as they both do very similar things when you really think about it, only Garrosh does it a little bit better and hence is more expensive. Losing the ability to armor up is actually a big deal, so I would say that your deck needs to have some good synergies with Whirlwind to make this Hero great.
#9 - Corpsetaker
While this minion is neutral, it could straight up be a Paladin one as that is the obvious home for this guy. Getting Divine Shield will be the easiest part, and if you can reliably get Taunt as well (and you can, see the next card), then you are basically good to go. With the Wickerflame Burnbristle wording change which gives him Lifesteal, you are good to go if you manage to play Corpsetaker before you draw this must include Paladin card. The only missing piece of the puzzle is a Windfury minion which would push this card over the top, but I am having trouble finding even one random minion with Windfury to put alongside this in a deck. Be on a lookout for future improvements in the upcoming sets as well!
#8 - Righteous Protector
Not flashy or extremely powerful, but gets the job done. This is a strictly better Argent Squire for Paladins, and in my opinion is as good as Shielded Minibot which saw a ton of play in the past; One could even say he was meta-defining. Protector also has good synergy with Corpsetaker as mentioned above. Expect to see this guy in any Paladin archetype.
#7 - Uther of the Ebon Blade
This card is very similar to Tirion Fordring, and will either be played alongside him or completely replace him. We start to run into a problem of having too many great weapons with Paladin and as such, these cards don’t work all that great together. Lifesteal might prove even better than expected here, as gaining an effective 20 life (5 armor and 15 from weapon) may be unbeatable for classes like Mage.
6# - Prince Keleseth
Prince Keleseth got a lot of hate when people first saw him, but the effect on this card is simply insane. I can just imagine this card just being played on turn 2 and winning the game right there at that point. It’s not that hard to build some sort of Warlock Zoo that would rely on 1-drops and 3-drops only, and after that you are playing a fair deck that would get almost a free win every time you get lucky enough for Prince Keleseth to make an appearance.
#5 - Mountainfire Armor
Every turn you keep this card alive, you're getting a ton of value. If your opponent decides to ignore Mountainfire Armor, it allows you to trade anyway you wish or go straight to the face with 4.
As far as archetypes go, I don't believe it will spawn one of its own, but this card will shine in some form of Midrange Warrior or end up in Control Warrior alongside Scourgelord Garrosh.
#4 - Valeera the Hollow
I really like the design of this Death Knight and it will undoubtedly impact the meta-game quite a bit. It changes the flow of the game completely, and you won't want to be at on the receiving end of this girl. Before Valeera the Hollow, Mages would play Alexstrasza against you with an Ice Block in play and you were done.
The tables have turned though because now if you can deal with the dragon, Mage won't be able to kill you in one turn as you'll be sitting at at an effective 20 life. Losing after that (against Mage or any other Class) is hard as your passive ability generates a ton of value every single turn.
#3 - Archerus Veteran
This might be quite a surprise for you, but I think we will see Archerus Veteran a lot in the metagame. It’s close to Abusive Sergeant, which needed to be nerfed in the past, it’s neutral so it fits right into any aggressive deck, and it manages to create a great board presence very early if you manage to play him with a 1-drop. Just imagine playing Fire Fly and then Archerus Veteran while attacking your opponent’s Fire Fly. You are left with 2/2 and 2/1 while fully seizing the board before your enemy even gets a second mana crystal.
#2 - The Lich King
Looks like the talk about the apocalypse is real, great job Arthas. This guy really delivers and I am sure we will see him almost everywhere in the months to come. If he would just draw a card every turn he would still be quite good, but that’s far away from what he actually does. Spawning cards out of thin air is very valuable in grindy matchups where fatigue becomes a real possibility, not even mentioning that his creations are way above the quality of cards that you can play by yourself.
You can see the power level of cards he creates right here.
#1 - Ultimate Infestation
Oh boy, what an impressively accurate name! Not only is the card Ultimate, but you can straight up expect Infestation of the meta-game. Just a pure existence of a spell like this has huge impact on the meta-game as I think we will see decks that are super aggressive with the sole purpose of killing your opponent before he can cast this card - Druid decks with 2 of these and their whole gameplan wrapped around it. All the ramp spells just got a lot better, Mire Keeper will probably see some play and Nourish will be used for crystals more often than before. I guess they really wanted something to be capable of winning a game even after your opponent plays a Death Knight, and this is the way to do it.
That's It For Today!
That’s it for today, thanks a lot for reading! Make sure to watch my Youtube video if you are looking for more, and if you enjoy this type of content then hit the Youtube subscribe button as it really helps me to bring you more content like this for free.
I am also already brewing a sweet Paladin deck so if everything goes according to plan, you guys will have deck guide available right when Knights of the Frozen Throne is released!
Cheers,
Stancifka
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Editors Note: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated Fallen Sun Cleric was the #3 pick when it should have been Acherus Veteran. This has been fixed.
Really enjoy this guy's content. One of the good guys in Hearthstone for sure. More people should watch his stuff, generally great insight into the meta and how to counter it.
Btw, number 3 is listed incorrectly here. The card is Acherus Veteran not Fallen Sun Cleric. Acherus is a one mana 2/1 that gives a permanent +1 attack to a minion.
I think that evolve shaman will be worse than now with DK Thrall... that card should be on #1
My problem with the shaman DK is in most situations where the DK will be good Bloodlust is better, and I can't see shaman running 2 Bloodlust and the DK. I guess we will see though.
My thoughts exactly. Why evolve twice when you can win?
I think the best card is Forge of Souls. Drawing the 2nd weapons doesn't matter but drawing a single weapon is Huge in Pirate Warrior. On an average every pirate warrior hero powers at least once in a game. You would better use Forge of Souls. If you don't draw any weapon by turn 3 and even on turn 4/5 you don't draw an Arcanite reaper after not having a weapon till now then you can hit the new red button.
Mark my words. people will be crying for nerfs. This card will be nerfed to 3 mana at least.
I think your comparison with DOOM! is a bit off, Ultimate Infestation it's more likely to be compared with Shield Block + Firelands Portal + Sprint a combined cost of 3 card slots and 17 mana into 1 single card and 10 mana
It will be great if PWNbois would reach pro-players, developers and HS influencers more often for interviews, opinions, reviews and so on. I think this is the only thing that lack for this awesome HS resource. Because this is the only uncovered area.. we have statistics, news, decks, and I personally would really like to know a bit more about guys behind it. Such collaboration with StanCifka maybe the first step though!!!
Honestly Lich King probably should have topped this list. Feels like a Dr. 8
I would argue that the only thing stopping this from being the case is that some of his effects are good but not great, and that unlike Ysera, The Lich King has 8 potential cards, so it's harder to get the great ones.
As awesome as the Lich King is, some people might stick to Primordial Drake since it can be more reliably drawn using The Curator. Some decks will run both, but not all decks can afford to run multiple 8-drops, so I don't think the Lich King will be an auto-include in as many decks as Dr. Boom was.
I would argue this point "it's harder to get the great ones", arguibly The Lich King has 2 bad outcomes (maybe 3), while Ysera has 2 and statistically speaking, a 62.5%-70%(The Lich King) chance is better than a 60%(Ysera)
Which Ysera card other than Laughing Sister is bad? The other 4 are usually pretty good. Even Laughing Sister isn't bad when compared with some of the Death Knight cards.
Lol Ultimate Infestation acutally made the top of this list? I think that's a good enough tell to not take lists like this so seriously.
"I think we will see decks that are super aggressive with the sole purpose of killing your opponent before he can cast this card" - people already run aggro and not because of any sort of powerhouse card? Aggro in itself is designed to end the game before late game. What a trash argument