New Priest Card Reveals - Bwonsamdi, the Dead & Spirit of the Dead
Two new Priest cards have been revealed by Dave Kosak. Come talk about the new reveal over on Discord.
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What is a rogue card doing in a priest deck?
Ok... all we need now is a Weasel Tunneler reprint
In wild tho, monkaS
Another card where you build your entire deck around, blizzard is more or less making the decks for us. They know exactly how the meta will be and whats good and bad.
Everyone will show of their decks with this few days before launch, and every deck is 99% alike.
the thing is this card can be a card that you dont play around too but its there to support your deck
as example if someone manage to create agro priest this card can be good "last push" play where you draw 10 cards to try to finish enemy 1 last time. if you want to you can do it by coboing surrender to madness
from cards they relased up to now blizzard want to give priest a agro deck... that can do someting at late game too? its weird design but 3 cards isnt enought to know :D
If they knew the meta exactly, no nerfs would have been needed at all. Blizzard does not know how the meta will be, otherwise, we wouldn't have The Caverns Below, Patches, Raza + Shadowreaper, Jade Idol and such.
I've already posted this comment on the Spirit of the Dead thread, but I figured I'd get more of a discussion going over here.
I like Spirit of the Dead and Bwonsamdi, the Dead because they are both high-value cards for Priest which reinforce the combo priest archetype. But unlike the heavy-handed combo enablers of previous expansions (I'm looking at you Juicy Psychmelon) these cards reward interacting with your opponent and their board: in my opinion, any card which encourages interaction (especially in combo decks) is good for the state of the game, whether it breaks the meta or not.
Of course, they have extremely high synergy with each other: Spirit of the Dead generates massive value but requires you to play, trade, and draw a minion in order to gain said value, a powerful but inconsistent effect. Meanwhile Bwonsamdi, the Dead has a consistent but underwhelming Battlecry which can draw you 3 or 4 1-cost minions, effectively improving the card quality of your deck by filtering out cards which might otherwise be dead draws on subsequent turns (and a 7/7 body is pretty decent). Both cards compensate for each other's weak points: Bwonsamdi, the Dead lends consistency to Spirit of the Dead's effect, which in turn boosts the power of his effect. Sounds good right?
However, I don't think most people are looking at these two cards in the right way. At least in terms of consistency.
Spirit of the Dead has one of the least useful "whenever/after a friendly minion dies..." effects in the entire game. Allow me to explain. Cards which trigger their effect when a friendly minion dies can be easily divided into two categories: cards which benefit more from small minions dying, and cards which benefit more from big minions dying. Generally speaking, cards which rely on big minions dying in order to work are less consistent, and by extension, are usually on a lower power level than cards which take advantage of a wide board.
A noteworthy example of this is the difference in playstyle between Necrotic Geist and Kel'Thuzad. Both minions have an effect which rewards sacrificing your own minions by generating value on the board, but where Kel'Thuzad's effect scales to the power of whatever minion you sacrifice, Necrotic Geist always summons a 3/3. Kel'Thuzad might appear to be an objectively better card, but there are several situations where you would rather have a Necrotic Geist on your board, specifically, a situation where having a 3/3 is better than having whichever minion you are sacrificing. Also worth noting that small minions are easier to kill off than big ones, making it easier to consistently trigger Necrotic Geist's effect.
Another aspect of these cards worth paying attention to is where they generate their value. Most of them generate value on the board (Avenge, Redemption, Effigy, Necrotic Geist, Kel'Thuzad) or in the hand (Getaway Kodo, Cheat Death, Spirit of the Bat, Duplicate, Cult Master, Siltfin Spiritwalker), but there are two exceptions. Floop's Glorious Gloop which provides a temporary mana advantage, and Usher of Souls which provides value in the long term by buffing the stats of C'Thun (wherever it is).
There is a lot to go over here but I'll just skip to the important bit: the only card on the above list which interacts with your deck in any way is Usher of Souls which also happens to be by far the worst card on the list. The reason for this is obvious: because the effects of these cards require you to trade away value on the board in order to trigger, the reward must compensate for the loss in tempo immediately otherwise the sacrifice isn't worth it. In the case of Spirit of the Dead there is no immediate reward, which makes it pretty much unplayable in any deck that isn't a combo deck.
But what if you're playing a deck that doesn't care about tempo? What if you're playing a combo deck?
Well, this is an easy one. Because Spirit of the Dead only has 3 health, it can be killed by the vast majority of board-clears. So if you plan on playing it alongside a combo piece in the hopes of pulling off a mega OTK later down the line, don't be surprised if your combo gets ruined before it's even begun. Even if you already have a Malygos or Prophet Velen ready to attack on the board, their relatively high health makes it unlikely for you to be able to sacrifice them in one turn.
In other words, Spirit of the Dead is a LOT worse than people seem to realize, its lack of consistency is its downfall. Bwonsamdi, the Dead on the other hand, provides consistent value even when it isn't played alongside Spirit of the Dead. A 7 mana 7/7 that removes dead draws (pun intended) from your deck is actually pretty good, and I imagine he will be seeing play in a variety of Priest decks.
Thoughts?
Points for effort i'd say. I just don't exactly agree with some of the arguments you make. First of you categorize the effect and differentiate it to proc on big or small minions. Even though it helps you in the argument there is actually no real basis to say that bigger minions are less consistent than wide boards. That depends on the match-up you are in if it is or not. Based on the current meta only then you can make a prediction if it will be consistent.
Furthermore I think we have to take into account a card from last expansion, Academic Espionage , this card has spawned and improved the decks possible for rogues to climb the ladder with. In regards to your second opinion where you state that effects that only give away tempo without immediate return are bad.... this card proved differently. Because you can build a deck around it. One that might actually work in tandem with cards that give you tempo from your deck. And in regards to combo decks... you wont just slam it on the board and wait for your opponent to smash it with AOE. You use it when you know you get the value that you need from it.
Even though you make some good arguments I want to plead that the Spirit of the Dead is very hard to evaluate before a new meta settles in and people had the opportunity to experiment with it to come up with decks that synergize well with the effect. It is just your opinion on the card, nothing is set in stone : insert youtube link => Trump Reviews his review of the new Boomsday cards
Radiant Elemental and maly and velen in the deck.
Spirit + Legendary Spell + Spirit Lash.
Staple on Ress priest?
nah man, spirit lash would kill the spirit before it's effect triggered. Especially if maly is involved
Just play the spirit afterwards then.
It will trigger the death of other minions first. same thing.
People: this cards are too slow
Also people: oh man lets hope priest sucks because when combo decks become a little weak we dont want to play against control priest ever again
Nope. NO thanks, expansion. Too boring.
Hagatha the Disgruntled gets to be a Hero but the bat loa is a DOA meme card a Bwonsamdi fills your hands with 1-drops unless you build an entire deck around the hopes of drawing him.
Maybe next year, Hearthstone. Never have I regretted a purchase more than my Boomsday pre-order and I'm not about to be burned twice.
if the spirit saw play Bwonsamdi sure will be too.
legendary won't see play, but the 1 drop is absolutely insane. Why is it insane? It's a stealthed 1 mana 3 hp minion for priest which can be Divine Spirit + Inner Fire
I feel like everyone's too quick to jump on this. Anyone else remember [cardTo My Side![/card] and the rest of the spell hunter cards' reception? Pretty clearly they're going to (at the very least try to) support some form of "aggro priest" and considering there are already decent low cost minions for priest in the form of cleric and Shadow Ascendant I'm not going to doubt that there won't be any kind of playable aggro priest this meta until we see more cards. Bwonsamdi himself doesn't work for that, but spirit could be decent value.
yeah I also wish blizzard would focus on wild when half the playerbase doesn't play wild because you have to craft a bunch of legendaries you can't use in standard and the meta never changes. really great idea
Why someone will care about Wild ? i dont want to be aggresive but you know that no card game cares deeply abot their eternal format? is just imposible to balance. How many broken stuff exist right now in wild? they just nerfed one because it was the mooost unfair but there is for sure more things that need to be change. There is not value in balance wild (probably most of the wild players not even want the format to change).
Is this your first xpac release? most of the initial cards that they reveal have nothing to do with the overall power level of the set.
Big Priest laughs maniacally.