Hearthstone - Descent of Dragons Card Review/Reaction #3

 Well, uh, this was kinda late. I really didn't have much time to play Hearthstone, and while I did do my daily quest and opened packs and stuff, I really haven't played much of the game. And I see threads everywhere talking about the top decks and how the meta's figured out and like, shit, they've even announced a nerf? It's barely a week, calm down, Hearthstone! Apparently it's Faceless Corruptor and Shaman decks that's fucking up Standard's meta? Jeez.

There's also some Battlegrounds news and changes which I straight-up just ignore because I really don't care about that game mode, but it's been doing successfully and I'm happy for the dev team. That's mostly what I can say about?

Anyway, a huge chunk of this was written last week, so I genuinely don't know if any of these suddenly turned out to be great in Standard or whatever, but I did correctly call out the Shaman cards for being powerful. Just probably not that powerful that it ends up causing a week-one nerf.


A bunch of Treant cards, and... they all look great. I just am not sure if they're strong enough to stand up against the rest of the set, y'know? Acroponics is basically Arcane Intellect that gets discounted depending on each treant you control. With one Treant, it's exactly Arcane Intellect, and with two it's a one-mana-draw 2 cards. It's a great reloading tool, which I feel treant druids would tend to want. It looks like a decent card, and a pretty powerful one. Likewise, Shrubadier isn't half-bad, a 2-mana 1/1 that summons a 2/2 Treant, which isn't the most powerful card out there but it puts bodies on board, and Treant decks tend to have a board-buff theme going on. Pretty neat.

Goru the Mightree, in addition to having a dad-joke punny name, is pretty powerful, basically an Ancient of War (7-mana 5/10 Taunt) that gives a permanent buffs to all treants you summon from here on out. Which is pretty damn powerful, even if turn 7 might be a bit too late. He does curve perfectly into the Forest's Aid, though, which seems pretty great!

Treenforcements, fun pun aside, doesn't seem to be that powerful. It's a 1-mana choose one spell that either gives you a 2/2 treant or to add +2 health to a minion, and you'll probably almost never choose that +2 health choice outside of very specific circumstances. It sure is cheap, but I don't think it's powerful enough to be worth a slot in your deck, y'know?


Embiggen is an interesting card. In addition to the glorious name, it's a 0-mana spell that buffs your entire deck with +2/+2, but also makes your minions cost 1. The key word, I feel, is that this doesn't stack above 10, so you could make a big druid deck work, theoretically, by just giving every single 10-cost minion in your deck +2/+2. Maybe in wild with Astral Communion, somehow? It seems kind of awkward for a more general druid deck, though. It's something that certianly has a potential to become a powerful asset for druid, but probably not in this meta, I don't think. (Or maybe it already has, and I'm just making a fool of myself. I genuinely don't know.

Secure the Deck and Strength in Numbers are the two druid side-quests. Secure the Deck is a bit awkward to complete. Sure, three Claw spells is neat, but what're you going to do with Claw? Make a Gonk deck? I don't think so, not in this meta. Strength in Numbers is basically a Recruit mechanic, and all you have to do is to spend 10 mana to summon minions. Maybe in that Embiggen 'big druid' deck?


Mage! Mage's sidequest Elemental Allies is... it's just kinda neat? You have to play an elemental 2 turns in a row, which is pretty easy (this set even includes Violet Spellwing, a cheap elemental), and the reward is tutoring 3 spells from your deck. It's a pretty powerful card, and if you have elementals and spells, you want this spell. The problem, of course, is whether that specific combination of themes is powerful enough in standard, which is going to be one of the biggest limiting factors for many of the cards here.

Violet Spellwing is just kinda neat. A 1-mana 1/1 that always adds an Arcane Missiles to your hand. It's a slower Babbling Book that always gives you a known spell. It's not as powerful as Babbling Book, but it does synergize with things like Elemental Allies and Mana Giant and whatnot. It's not the most powerful card for mage in this expansion, but a versatile one, I feel.

Mana Giant's a giant that costs less for each spell you cast that didn't start from your deck. I guess it can fit into an Open the Waygate deck? Open the Waygate in Wild probably benefits a lot more from Arcane Giant, though, which gets discounted from all spells you cast. This one seems awkward, but I wouldn't discount its power level just yet.

Rolling Fireball is great. It's such a Hearthstone card, y'know? It's comparable to a weaker Volcano, I guess, but man, I love the concept here so much. 5-mana deal 8 damage, but whatever excess damage rolls to the next minion. That's amazing. The spell itself is basically a better Flame Lance, and, again, I'm not sure if that means it's good enough to fit constructed's power level.


Scion of Ruin is easily one of the most powerful cards Warrior got this set. I wasn't super keen on Warrior Galakrond's hero power, but looking at Scion of Ruin, there might be something to say about an aggressive Galakrond Warrior deck that makes more use of the invoke triggers than the hero power itself. Scion of Ruin is Rushing 3/2 dragon, but if you Invoked twice, you get three rushing 3/2's. That's not likely to happen on turn 3, but if you manage to do so at early enough in the game, Scion of Ruin is definitely going to ruin your enemy's day.

Ritual Choper is a weapon that invokes Galakrond, essentially a 2-mana 4/2 weapon that becomes a 1/1 on its second turn. It's not terrible when you put it that way, but mostly it's just going to see play thanks to adding to the Invoke pool to trigger Scion of Ruin. Awaken is... a bit too expensive, I feel. You could say that it's combining Heroic Strike and Whirlwind together, and also having some Invoke synergies, but I dunno. It feels kinda awkward to me.


These two I'm not impressed by. Ramming Speed is a one-use, shittier Supercollider. Use that card instead, and even if Supercollider rotates out, you have better removal cards. EVIL Quartermaster is... it's decent, a Lackey-generating card that also gives you 3 armor, but Livewire Lance is far, far better for Lackey generation and I feel like while EVIL Quartermaster does a lot of things, it's not... that great?


Pirate Warrior's back, babies. Sky Raider's not the best pirate out there, but it's cheap, 1-mana 1/2 is solid, and it also adds a pirate to your hand. There are some pirates that might not be ideal (particularly in wild) but I think that it's a pretty great 'reload' card for Pirate Warriors? It's just such a shame its statline isn't offensive.

Skybarge's going to be one of Pirate Warrior's strongest asset, though, alongside that one 2/2 that jumps out of your hand. It's a 3-mana 2/5, a very solid statline, but it also just launches 2-damage cannonballs onto random enemies every time you summon a pirate. It's a buffed-up Ship's Cannon, and it's a mech to boot, meaning you can maybe finnagle in some Zilliax shenanigans into your Pirate Warrior deck. The main power of this deck's going to come from Anchaarrrr, the legendary weapon, or however you spell it, but Skybarge is certainly going to help out a lot!


Priest Priest Priest. We get three dragon cards! Muruzond the Infinite is such a cool effect, an 8-mana 8/8 dragon that replays all cards your opponent plays last turn, but I feel like it's sort of comparable to Tess Greymane since things like battlecries don't go off and spells cast hit random targets. You kind of really have to wait for a big-value turn your enemy has, and sometimes I guess that just means you wait until something that's super-valuable to you happens? It's a bizarre card, that I guess allows you to for-sure steal things like quest reward spells (in Wild) or cast giant minions that your opponent has or whatever, but I dunno. I feel like this card's going to fall by the wayside because it doesn't really duplicate battlecries and whatnot.

Mindflayer Kaahrj, meanwhile, seems a bit more powerful. It's sort of like an odd version of Sylvanas Windrunner or Faceless Manipulator, in a way, in that it's choosing an enemy minion and then when it dies, you get a copy of whatever enemy minion you choose. It's just kind of a solid 3-mana play. It's just kind of a shame that I don't think Priest has any obvious synergy with this just yet -- Kaarhj would be insane in a deathrattle rogue deck -- and ultimately I'm also not sure if this one's going to see much play.

Chronobreaker looks great at a glance, but then you realize that the AoE is a deathrattle and I don't know if Standard is so desperate for a board-clearing dragon, but I can guarantee you Wild Dragon Priest decks will never voluntarily put this in a dragon priest deck over Duskbreaker. It's just way too slow, there's a condition and it's a deathrattle to boot. One of the few cards here that I'd actually call out for being pretty trash, I think.


Grave Rune looks pretty fucking powerful. It's basically Carnivorous Cube, but without jumping through the extra hoops of destroying a minion first and then destroying the Cube. And in a way that does limit the power (since sometimes you do want the first deathrattle trigger when the Cube cubes your valuable minion) but man, 4 mana for the Cube effect? Pretty powerful.

Disciple of Galakrond is a very solid Invoke card. The problem is just that I really don't think Galakrond Priest's hero power is all that powerful, so I don't think this one will see much play. The same problem, to some extent, hits Whispers of EVIL. Rogue would wet themselves with a 0-mana Lackey generating spell, but Priest really can't use Lackeys too well, so this is a very powerful card in a class that can't really use it.


And now we come to Shaman! Two main archetypes are highlighted here, and I'll cover perhaps the less-interesting one. Overload Shaman, which... is probably going to be nightmarish in Wild. Tunnel Trogg still exists there! Squallhunter is basically Flamewreathed Faceless, only swapping out two attack for Spell Damage +2, which is going to be pretty damn powerful! And it's also a dragon! Definitely powerful enough by raw power alone, I feel.

Storm's Wrath is basically a neat board-buff. One mana, buff your entire board by +1/+1? Now all your totems can attack, without running totem-synergy specific cards. And Overload isn't necessarily a bad thing either, because of cards like Surging Tempest, which is a 1-mana 1/3 elemental that becomes 2/3 if you have Overloaded mana crystals. I feel like Shamans have got enough Overload-synergy cards like Likkim or whatever that this could become a neat deck in Wild. Not so much in Standard, though, because I feel like Battlecry Quest Shaman and Galakrond Shaman's going to be so much more powerful.


Galakrond the Tempest is our Galakrond, and its hero power/invoke effect is the extremely potent "summon a 2/1 elemental with rush". The tag doesn't matter, but casing spells and just gaining rushing 2/1's indefinitely? Galakrond's battlecry is perhaps also pretty dang powerful. Instead of just adding the amount of rushing 2/2 tokens that he summons, the bigger Galakrond versions summon two 4/4's and two 8/8's respectively, which is a lot better than just, say, four 2/2's because Shamans like to fill their deck up and just adding to the quantity of rushing tokens means that sometimes you'll overload your board!

Dragon's Pack is basically Feral Spirit, but you pay all the mana upfront instead of it being a 3-mana spell that overloads for 2. And that's fair enough of a price for two 2/3 taunts, I guess... but if you invoked twice? They become 5/6 Taunts, which is pretty damn great! And do Shamans get Invoke cards? Of course they do! Invocation of Frost is a 1-mana spell that freezes and enemy, and invokes Galakrond. In practice, that means you basically play Glacial Shard, except the 2/1 body has rush, and it also counts to the activation of cards like Dragon's Pack or Galakrond himself.

Corrupt Elementalist is probably the backbone of Galakrond Shaman, though, because it just straight-up invokes twice. 5-mana 3/3, summons two 2/1 rush creatures, and you immediately get Galakrond up to its next form? Yeah, that's just pure value, plain and simple. Fear the Elementalist.


Apologies if I do seem a bit rushed, because, well, I kinda just want to get this over with? I'm not sure, I'm just sort of not really enjoying the speculation and review/preview for Hearthstone as much as I did before. I still enjoy the game, but I don't feel like I have quite a good grasp of it as I did before. Depending on how I feel, I might not do too many reviews for the next standard year.

Hearthstone - Descent of Dragons Card Review/Reaction #2

 So the full card list for Descent of Dragons has been released over the past couple of weeks. Im not sure if it's just because I was super-busy and simply didn't pay attention, or if the reveal season this time around went super fast? Either way, it's probably the first Hearthstone set since League of Explorers that I essentially end up seeing what's basically the entire expansion in one go. It's going to be released today or tomorrow, I think?

Anyway, I'm gonna split this into two parts (and I'll try to release the second part in a more timely fashion), although I'm not sure if I'll be able to get the two out before the expansion itself releases. Oh well, let's at least try, yeah? I'm not sure if I'll do a ratings-retrospective for Saviors of Uldum becuase I didn't actually play ladder a whole ton this expansion. Maybe I'll open a Hearthstone stats list or something? Either way, Descent of Dragons is liable to blow it all away. This is like the reverse-TGT, there's so much power in this set.

Anyway, this one will have me go through Hunter, Paladin and Warlock, plus the huge amount of neutral cards.


The final Hunter card to be revealed is Stormhammer, and it's... a 3-mana 3/2 that doesn't lose durability as long as you have a dragon. It's equivalent to Eaglehorn Bow, and arguably better than Eaglehorn since you can contrl if you have a dragon on the battlefield, whereas with the Bow sometimes you're just stuck with a 3/1 weapon that you're saving because you just wait for your enemy to trigger your secrets. Hunter does have a decent amount of dragon support cards (as do most of the classes) and I sure do like the idea of a dragon hunter deck. I'm not 100% sure if it's going to be better than the other hunter archetypes, but the sheer power level of the dragon cards in this set makes me really think that the dragon decks will really take off in this expansion.


Paladins get their Explorer, the Bronze Explorer... and I kind of think it's the worst one out of the bunch? It's a 3-mana 2/3 discover-a-dragon, but the keyword it has is Lifesteal, which... isn't super good by itself. All the Lifesteal minions that see play always combine it with rush, taunt, divine shield or some other thing, and I'm pretty sure that the power level of the cards in this set alone is going to make Bronze Explorer (which honestly is a decent card) see no play outside of arena.

The little theme that Paladin has in this set is... "Pure" Paladin. None of these filthy neutral cards! And that's going to be a condition that's not going to be too hard to complete, particularly in Wild. Lightforged Crusader is a 7-mana 7/7 that basically acts as a reload, adding 5 random paladin cards to your hand. I would definitely play a War Golem that reloads my hand! The caveat is I guess sometimes you just get a bunch of Secrets and synergy minions or whatever, but it's still a pretty powerful card nonetheless.

The other Pure Paladin card is Lightforged Zealot, a 4-mana 4/2 that equips a Truesilver Champion. A Truesilver Champion is a card you're already happy to play at turn 4, and one of the more reliably powerful classic cards that still see some play even in Wild. And now you get a bonus 4/2 for absolutely no cost at all? It's pretty neat. I'm not sure if Crusader and Zealot is enough to incite someone to make a no-neutral Paladin deck, but honestly I can see a control paladin deck popping up very easily, and these are just incidental cards that make it into the deck. Now the question is whether this deck's going to be powerful enough to stand up against the Galakrond invasion that's about to come.


Sky Claw is... it's hideously powerful. Mech Paladin is a pretty powerful deck particularly in Wild since they've got Mechwarper and Shielded Minibot, and this is just pretty horrifying. Simply generating tokens isn't powerful enough (which is why that Microtech Controller card saw no play) but having an effect attached to it? Sky Claw is a 3-mana 1/2 that buffs all your other mechs with +1 attack, and also summons two 1/1 mech tokens, meaning that at the turn you play the Sky Claw it's a 1/2 that summons two 2/1's for 3 mana... but also buffs all mechs you have in play. With the way Mechs are played nowadays, it's pretty scary to have a mech that shows up on board in multiple bodies thanks to Magnetic. Pretty powerful card, honestly, and it's going to allow Mech Paladins to more reliably buff their board.

Righteous Cause is the paladin sidequest, and for 1 mana and you summoning 5 minions (summon, so something like Sky Claw counts as 3 out of 5) you get a +1/+1 board buff for free. And unlike Competitive Spirit, you have some measure of control when you want the effect to go off and the state of the board when it goes off. I still do feel that Paladin has a lot of better buff effects than Righteous Cause, but Paladins' buff cards tended to be targeted at single targets instead of the entire board (Level Up aside), so this might see play in the swarm-style Paladin decks. I like it.


Rogues get two final cards revealed, and they are... interesting? Stowaway has you tutor out two cards that didn't start out in your deck. They did throw in some 'card shuffle' counters in this expansion, but Stowaway is going to help out those Sathrovarrs, Waxadreds and Pogohoppers and what-have-you. Rogues have a decent history of being moderately successful to obnoxious with shuffling cards into their deck, and a 5-mana 4/4 that tutors said cards is actually not that bad.

Bloodsail Flybooter is basically equivalent to Fire Fly, except this is a 1/1 that adds two 1/1's. And 1/1's are certainly far more fragile than 1/2's, but Rogues certainly like the added extra 1-mana card, which is a combo activator. And it's a pirate! A very solid card, even if I don't think any pirate rogue decks are being particularly good at the moment. Both of these are decent cards, but I really do think that both the shuffle rogue and the pirate rogue archetypes are just going to be outshone by the Galakrond Rogue archetype.


Warlocks now! Zzeraku the Warped is a pretty mighty legendary dragon indeed, having Ysera's 4/12 stat distribution, costing 8 mana... and summoning 6/6 tokens any time your hero takes damage. And most importantly, it's not the masochistic kind of damage either. Zzeraku will keep pumping out drakes even if it's the enemy damaging you, which means that he essentially ends up being a soft-Taunt against more aggressive decks. I'm not sure which specific deck Zzeraku can find a spot in, and while part of me thinks that it's a pretty generic 'maybe you fit this in your deck because it's a solid, cool effect, but you cut it out as you streamline your deck', but... I dunno, it does look like a pretty decent card!

Dark Skies is sort of another card that plays to the handlock theme, and for 3 mana you just machinegun random damage to enemy minions. With 6 cards, it's a more random fireball in incremental damage. The dream is of course to use Valdris Felforge with this and unleash 12 damage with 3 mana or something, but honestly sometimes you just unleash a mini-AoE on a token board. It's not the best board clear spell out there, but certainly an interesting one and pretty punishing against token boards!

Rain of Fire is sort of comparable to Whirlwind, except it damages heroes too. Wild Warlock has far, far better AoE spells and self-damaging spells, so it won't see play there for sure, but Standard... maybe? It's still not a terrible card, though, which really speaks to the power level of this expansion in general. You don't get any Demonhearts or Ice Breakers or Spreading Madnesses that are just utter duds. Even weaker cards like Rain of Fire would be perfectly fine cards in arena or out of random effects.


Neutral cards now, and we'll start off with a huge bang -- the dragon package! I had thought that the new Alexstrasza is going to be the huge dragon support that the neutral side of things is going to get, but turns out we're also getting Frizz Kindleroost, a random 4-mana 5/4 goblin that reduces all the cost of dragons in your deck by 2. What the fuck. It's not instant value, of course, and you might just not draw her until the end of your deck, but just like Keleseth it's just such an insanely powerful effect if you do draw her. And you don't even get a deck-building restriction like Keleseth, with the only real restriction is "hey, play these already powerful and synergistic dragon cards". Y'know, as if you needed more reason to play any of those other huge dragons! Easily one of the powerhouses in the set, I feel.

Big Ol' Whelp is a 5-mana 5/5 that draws a card. It's Azure Drake, but without the spell damage and extra stats... and that's definitely playable. Remember that Azure Drake was so ubiquitous that he was rotated to the hall of fame because everyone used him in the 5-mana slot. And sure, Azure Drake might not stand up to the current power level anymore, but Big Ol' Whelp is swooping in at an expansion where dragons are super-powerful. Definitely see this one seeing play.

Scalerider isn't a dragon herself, but if you're holding a dragon she becomes an SI:7 Agent. Which is pretty dang powerful! I really don't have much to say here other than to note that, shit, a neutral SI:7 that only has "hold a dragon" as a requirement? That's a pretty powerful neutral card for sure. I'm not sure if not being a dragon's going to be too much of a drawback, and maybe different decks will have to choose between putting in Scaleriders or Scalewyrms or whatnot.

Cobalt Spellkin is... she's a fair card, I guess. A 5-mana 3/5 dragon that adds two 1-cost spells from your class into your hand. Some classes (druids, rogues and wild mages, particularly) obviously can utilize this better than others thanks to their selection of 1-mana spells, and... and it's not the most exciting card in this set, but it's honestly a pretty solid one. I'm sorry if that's not super-descriptive but that's basically how I feel about it.


Evasive Wyrm is a 6-mana 5/3 with Divine Shield, Rush and the very unwieldy Faerie Dragon ability, which I'm assuming that they're essentially considering renaming "Evasive" based on some of the neutral cards here. It's a pretty decent combination of powers, basically becoming one of the Siamat combinations in conjunction to forcing your opponent to trade into the Wyrm to remove it. Not the most powerful card in the set, but a solid one.

Utgarde Grapplesniper is... it's a decent, cute card, a 6-mana 5/5 that draws a card for both players, and summons any dragons drawn. It's cute for the one time you get a 12/12 dragon out of your deck for free, but otherwise it can backfire really really badly. I would hold off on calling this an outright meme card, though, because who knows, maybe your deck's just that stacked in your favour that you would risk playing Utgarde, or maybe you play this at turn 10 with a removal spell to draw a card at worst, and polymorph your enemy's big dragon if you do roll poorly? A bit too convoluted for my tastes.

Evasive Feywing is a bigger Faerie Dragon. Great in arena or off of random dragon-generating effects, but otherwise I feel like there are better dragon and dragon-synergy cards available. Wing Commander is a cute dragon synergy card, and it can gain a scary amount of stats depending on the number of dragons you have in your hand. I originally thought that this wasn't super impressive, but realized that at turn four, something like a 8/5 is pretty damn scary if your enemy doesn't have a way to remove it. A bit too mundane, I feel, but definitely has potential.


Skyfin's cute, combining dragon and murloc synergy, but I feel like it's trying to do too much and the 5-mana 3/3 stat line in addition to two random Murlocs (and there are a lot of vanilla murlocs out there) isn't the most impressive. Tasty Flyfish is a Murloc that hand-buffs a dragon in your hand... and that's not a terrible card, but so much dragon cards both in this set and in other sets outclass this so badly. It's cute, but not particularly useful.

You gotta have your dragon counters, and Dragonmaw Poacher is an insanely punishing one. If your enemy has a dragon? This is a 4-mana 8/8 with Rush. What the fuck! Any dragon you summon at turn 4 is going to freaking die to this thing (except maybe the odd 4/9 Twilight Drake), and it even is able to deal a significant dent against a lot of the larger dragons, trading favourably with the 8/8's and at least crippling the 4/12's. And even if you don't fight a dragon deck it's a 4-mana 4/4, which is bad but not the worst thing in the world. A pretty scary card and probably going to be omnipresent everywhere in the first day of the expansion.

Platebreaker is insane. Since the days of death knight druids and odd warriors have I seen cards that instantly remove 20 armour or bypass armour or deal direct damage or whatever, and now that the problem of insanely powerful armour has sort of simmered down in both standard and wild... we get Platebreaker, a 5-mana 5/5 that just straight up fucks up your opponent's armour. Okay! That's an interesting counterplay card in the same way that Skulking Geist was such a punishing counter for Jade Druid.


Two pirates in the neutral set. Parachute Brigand is a 2-mana 2/2 that summons itself from your hand whenever you play a Pirate, which is like a shittier Patches. It consumes a card in your hand, which is significantly worse than getting it played from your deck at no cost. It might be pretty powerful nonetheless, and Warrior got a fair amount of pirate tools, and will definitely see play in standard.

Hoard Pillager is a 4-mana 4/2 pirate... that equips one of your destroyed weapons, because what the hell, let's grab that Kingsbane or that Ancharrr or just a good ol' Arcanite Reaper back from the graveyard to whack your opponent in the face again. It's not as powerful as people make it out to be, I feel, but it's a pretty interesting little tech card for decks that really revolve around a couple of powerful weapons, a neat incidental inclusion in something like a pirate warrior or pirate rogue.

Two mech-support cards here. Gyrocopter is a Rush/Windfury combo with a 6-mana 4/5 stats. Interesting, but outclassed by so many other mechs out there. I don't think you ever pick that specific combination of keywords with Siamat unless you're really desperate in clearing two things? Probably won't see play. Goboglide Tech is a 3-mana 4/4 with Rush but only if you control a mech. Pretty solid card, and one that's probably a decent tech choice in some of the more tempo-oriented mech decks. I'm just not sure if one exists right now.


Blazing Battlemage is basically going to be like the Dire Mole of the set, a 1-mana 2/2 vanilla card that's a pretty powerful play at turn 1 for aggro decks. Not much to say here, it's the first vanilla card we've got in a long time and it's a pretty decent one.

Everyone makes up neat little combos with Wyrmrest Purifier and it's cute to think that this could basically do things like counter bomb warrior (which isn't such a huge threat now, surely? I'm not sure about standard) and make Hakkar into a one-sided win condition, but it's just so fringe that I don't think this will ever see actual ladder play.

Hippogryph is a Stegodon with Rush! It's decent and pretty great in arena, but probably won't see play in constructed. Blowtorch Saboteur is basically Saboteur from TGT that has a weaker hero power reduction but it guarantees that your opponent's next hero power is going to be sabotaged. It's cute, but I don't think it's going to be that useful.


Faceless Corruptor is interesting. It's a 5-mana 5/4 with Rush that transforms another minion into a 5/4 with Rush. Which is actually not bad for shamans with their totems, or paladins with their dudes, or just any deck that utilizes lackeys a lot. You can even target which minion gets turned into a 5/4 with Rush. And you would totally play 5-mana "summon two 5/4's with Rush". It's sort of similar to that EVIL Recruiter dude from Saviors of Uldum, I think, except the Rush keyword on Faceless Corruptor and his buddy's going to be far more tempo-oriented than just having a big fat vanilla demon.

Tentacled Menace is... interesting. The more optimistic fans out there call it as the next Dirty Rat, where it's a risky play but sometimes you just completely fuck up your enemy's combo... but sometimes you make their Malygos or Galakrond or Alexstrasza cost 2 mana by mistake or something. I dunno. Maybe there's a way to guarantee a combo and have this, like discount your Shirvallah or Mountain Giant or something? There's way more ways to fuck up with Tentacled Menace. It's an interesting card, though!

Depth Charge is a less reliable Doomsayer, but it doesn't die at your turn and it deals damage instead. Play Doomsayer instead, I think? Troll Batrider is a 4-mana 3/3 that deals 3 damage to a random enemy minion. Like Flame Juggler, but far more potent in its battlecry. It's probably decent in arena.


And here are the stragglers. Evasive Chimera is an interesting card, combining the pretty lethal Poisonous with an immunity to pings, which I guess forces your enemy to trade a minion into it. Pretty similar to Giant Wasp, though, which mostly saw arena play... and that's probably where Evasive Chimera will reign, I feel.

Living Dragonbreath is a bit too fringe of a case. It's a revived version of a card they cut out from Alpha, but with the elemental tag, but there are better elementals out there to use than what's essentially a vanilla card. Grizzled Wizard is... cute. There are mumblings out there where you can deny your opponent of a hero power by playing this in an Untapped Potential Druid deck and essentially transform your opponent's hero power into one that's a dud, but other than the memes, it's probably not a playable card.

Fire Hawk is an anti-handlock card that doesn't look super-impressive, but your opponent's definitely going to have a fair amount of cards at turn 3 unless it's an ultra-aggressive aggro, at which point, what, the Fire Hawk's going to be a 3-mana 3/3 or 4/3? Which isn't that terrible. But if you're fighting a handlock suddenly you have a 9/3 at turn 3. It's the same sort of situation as Wing Commander where sometimes you just luck out and snowball with such a high-attack minion so early in the game.

That's it for today, tune in tomorrow or in a couple of days for the rest of the class cards... at which point, Descent of Dragons is probably already going to be out!