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.
Pretty sure Fallen Sun Cleric is a female. Unless he has really bad gynocomastia and has decided to embrace it by showing off his clevage...
jajajaja, Fallen Sun Cleric is awesome card and what about [card]Shattered Sun Cleric[/card] ? Why this basic card doesnt see a play??
It should have been Achenus Veteran as mentioned in the video, my bad guys, sorry for misleading info!
A list without Bonemare, epic fail.
Well then, just do your own Top 10 list, with
Blackjack&HookersBonemare & Bearshark ^^I can't believe everyone is agreeing on overating Ultimate Infestation. It is 10 mana, TEN MANA. It needs to swing the game immediately to be good, e.g. Yogg Deathwing N'Zoth. And draw 5 is way too much to be practical, if you played the Un'Goro pack from Elise you would know that for slow deck rarely your hand has space for 5 more cards, and it's TEN MANA meaning you can't play other cards to free your hand. You can't play it in aggro because it's TEN MANA.
I predict Ultimate Infestation will never be seen in constructed, probably not in arena either, but prepare for highlights of Yogg fatigue you out with 3 Infestations.
It's a druid card though. You can expect to be casting this on turn 7 or 8 if you play a lot of ramp. And that's not including when you add an innervate in the mix. Yes it's slow, and will loss you games when it's in your opening hand against aggro, but when you land this it's close to game winning.
My prediction: Lich King will be in every deck. There will be Aggro shaman Aggro Paladin Aggro druid, people will always be able to figure out how to use seemly non-aggro cards into aggro (freeze taunt divine shield). Midrange deathrattle Hunter will dominate, without new DK. There will be a Valeera combo deck with Leeroy and new DK. Corpse taker will be out of meta in a month. Control mage is good but without elemental or new DK. Warlock still sucks. Enrage warrior won't work. Dragon priest remains relevant but not tier 1 (without DK).
If it didn't do 5 damage OR 5/5 board presence OR draw 5 cards, your point has merit. But doing all three of those things AND giving you armor is easily more than enough to warrant 10mana especially in Druid. The card is most certainly a bit busted... maybe really busted.
And if this was only able to be dropped on turn 10 you'd probably be right (though it's impactful enough that control decks would still probably run 1) but Druids whole class identity is about cheating the mana curve, wild growth, nourish and dear god, inervate (turn 6 infestation please) you have the potential to be dropping this huge card way before your opponent is doing anything as impactful.
Also even though it's 10 mana and takes your whole turn it's doing a lot in that turn. Lets suppose you're a secret mage, you fireball an enemy minion, play your Kabal Crystal Runner, play Arcane Intellect and set up an ice barrier. That seems like a pretty good turn right? Well now you are pretty much doing that, as Druid, for the cost of only 1 card not 4. Absolutely bonkers.
You mean that a 5 damage, 5 heal and 5/5 on the board isn't swingy enough? People play plenty of 7-8 drops on T10 with a hero power and they don't immediately lose from doing it. Big druid plays Y'Shaarj which could pull just a regular body, and sometimes they play Ysera which has no immediate board impact. Hell, pallies used to play Lay on Hands which is an 8 heal and three cards for 8 mana. In a class that can ramp up its mana really fast to play this before shit hits the fan, it's definitely playable. I feel like two of these is overkill but this is a good card.
Strictly better as opposed to situationally better. E.g. Sludge Bultcher is situationally better than Sen'jin Shieldmaster, everyone agrees that it is a better card but in reality it is not better in every situation (e.g. turn 4)
"Strictly" here basically means "indisputable". In other words, if you had 28 cards in your Paladin deck, and you had to choose between 2 Argent Squires or 2 Righteous Protectors, you'd play two Righteous Protectors. Every time. No question. Absolutely no reason not to. It's strictly better than Argent Squire because it has everything Argent Squire has, plus Taunt.
A card that is merely better than another might not be the right choice because of other factors. Such factors don't exist with this comparison.
Strictly better means better in every situation.
Although that's actually not 100% true, if you want to get nitpicky your opponent can play The Black Knight on this guy...
Dear lord, thumb the guy down for asking an honest question.... sheesh.
I saw if a 1 drop can eat the The Black Knight removal, that's points for it
I said the exact same thing about the 2 mana prince on reddit yesterday:
https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/6sczk3/some_poor_soul_who_preordered_is_going_to_open_53/dlc2gjm/