New Neutral Common Card Revealed - Slimescale Diver
RegisKillbin just revealed a new Voyage to the Sunken City card: Slimescale Diver
Voyage to the Sunken City Card List & Expansion Guide
Learn more and see all the cards in our dedicated Card List.
3 mana guaranteed to kill something next turn. Seems fine.
Warlock will play this. Maybe Shaman.
The only decent and playable card out of three rush cards revealed by Regis. The pirate one will never see any constructed play because it's not worth the card slot, even by Standard standards...! I mean, yeah, it's entirely possible that people will play the pirate diver out of pure desperation, should the upcoming Core set fail to provide adequate pirate support. Murloc diver, on the other hand, will function much in the same way the Abominable Lieutenant does with caveats. Some noticeable differences are:
1) Murloc has removal protection on the turn it gets played due to it being dormant, whereas Lieutenant has no spell (or minion) protection and can be dealt with,
2) Abominable Lieutenant can get out of hand pretty quickly if the opponent fails to take it down, and poses a major risk to the them getting game-ended. Murloc diver doesn't pose any threat in most cases, even in ones that can utilize murloc strategies (i.e., Wild Murloc Shaman) because this minion wasn't designed to go face. Dormant cards have always felt clunky to play and arena-specific keyword, and it's the same with this.
3) Lieutenant can destroy a minion without attacking, whereas Murloc has to navigate and has potential to miss its target of choice if there is a taunt in the way or they are in stealth.
4) Murloc comes down several turns early, and leaves the opponent with the choice of either skipping a turn to remove it the following turn; or sacrificing a card that's big enough to deal with the murloc. Abominable Lieutenant also has the same effect, but it comes down at a later stage unless cheated out earlier. Since Lieutenant requires minions with sizeable stats to be relevant, it's an inherently greedy choice for most control/mid-range decks. Murloc is strictly a control tech element that feels weak and miserable to play, and can still get punished by several mechanics that I mentioned in the previous point.
TL;DR, compared to Lieutenant, it's inexpensive, it doesn't gain stats, cannot go face for 2 turns, feels clunkier and can still get punished. Overall it's a less greedy control card that I doubt will find a home in either two formats. I hope I'm wrong, though, because it looks to have potential. And it's cool!
You really managed to write a long comparison between a cheap removal card and a late game thread.
Lieutenant is a big minion mainly used by ramp druid. You would never be torn between which if the two minions you'll pick, because they play very different roles in your deck, so your comparison makes very little sense.
You know, you may be right. In hindsight, they seemed more akin and comparable at the time than they are now. Neither of them are focused removals and have similar stats but the mechanics are different and the types of decks they fit into will surely differ. So, mine probably was not the best comparison.
They both have the "wtf! I can't play anything" effect, but Giant wasp may have been my closest shot ;)
Why did Dormant survive as a keyword when they refuse to do so for others?
From flavor context perspective, dormant works well with the "sunken city" atmosphere? Or it could represent the process of diving deep down into underneath?
This one is playable in standard but only after we see the base set. Usually there's a huge gap in the step up from 3 to 4 and this is impossible to remove so that well stated 4 minion might not be playable. Should be interesting to see if the board really becomes a thing again.
Another arena card.
The problem with cards like this, is that you only really get to feel how clutch this card is when playing against it. A removal card that can be played into nothing might be a lot better than we think :)
Seems useless outside of a very specific situation where you already have board control and you want to make your opponent's next turn very awkward
the good news is if murloc AoE buffs like Tidecaller in corset this is dominating early boards EZ
That card is nasty. High health and rush. But the opponent can prepare for it. Good card that could make it into some decks as removal.