New Priest Minion - Najak Hexxen

I hope this gives summoning sleepness 

4-mana [Hearthstone Card (Mind Contro) Not Found]l, what the actual fuck.

And yes, I am going to run Brewmaster to abuse this, who the fuck wouldn't?

It will give summoning sickness. Every mind control effect does.  

My take on this card is if priest is good, and if Battleground Battlemaster is still how Warlock wins games, then this will see play.

1. Play Cera'thine Fleetrunner to transform a minion in your hand into Najak Hexxen

2. Play Najak Hexxen + Shadowstep

3. R1 Legend

On the standpoint of power, this is near the pinaccle

But in terms of practical use in standard/wild. Probably not that great. Or rather to say that its good, but don't expect this to be a meta breaker.

Still, its 4 mana Mind Control. Do we need subtitles here? Against certain decks, this card can single handedly win you the game. Not to mention getting this back from Raise Dead, which should be illegal all things considered.

At first view, 4 mana Mind Control seems good. However, this is way too easy to remove, and as such is only really helpful if you manage to snag a big taunt or rush minion which you can immediately trade away. Of course you can Focused Will it, but Priest and 2 card combo's that kinda suck on their own never go well. Lastly, it interferes with Amulet of Undying for slower priest strategies. So all in all, it has some small potential but I'm really not feeling it.

Quote From aposteljoe

1. Play Cera'thine Fleetrunner to transform a minion in your hand into Najak Hexxen

2. Play Najak Hexxen + Shadowstep

3. R1 Legend

It's easier to play priest and some bounce/silence effects like Focused Will, Silence or Youthful Brewmaster.

Even with this, the card looks weak.

Arena: Maiev Shadowsong is better in most cases as the 1/4 body of Najak Hexxen isn't much of a threat and can easily be dealt with. Best use case for this is to steal a taunt minion so your Najak Hexxen is protected behind it or a deathrattle minion you can kill off yourself in the same turn.

Constructed: In constructed where you can synergize with Najak Hexxen much more easily this becomes much stronger. Silence or bounce him back to your hand and your opponent can say goodbye to his minion.

The take I'm seeing again and again here is that as powerful as Najak Hexxen is in the abstract, he's automatically bad because taking full advantage of him requires playing bad cards like Youthful Brewmaster or Focused Will. This seems like an incredibly bad take.

For one, this reads a lot like the community falling into the Purify trap again. Synergy matters, and with enough support for self-silence or something of that nature then you might see a card like Focused Will rise in value and flip the script on the cost of supporting Najak to his fullest.

But more to the point, he can stall your opponent considerably even without extra support. If you drop him on turn 4 and steal your opponent's biggest minion, they now have to kill off Najak to get their minion back with summoning sickness. So at worst he's effectively a "4 mana 1/4 Taunt. Battlecry: freeze an enemy minion." with a ton of upside if your opponent fails to address him. Played on curve that could easily mean you've just stopped three minions (a couple of 2-Attack minions and whatever you stole) from going face. Seems pretty strong. Toss in the fact that you get pick up extra copies from Raise Dead and Call of the Grave, and can easily generate Focused Will from other good Priest cards and I think you'll be seeing this disrupting a lot of games.

Very cheap Mind Control effect, and there's enough cheap Silences available that it wouldn't be too hard to use one of those. But let's pretend that you don't even run Silences with Najak, and use him only as a temporary steal: it's still good as a stall tool against faster decks. Stealing a Taunt from Aggro Druid or Pirate Warrior should be very annoying as, most of the time, they'll have to kill the Taunt to get to Najak (Shiver Their Timbers! notwithstanding). I don't think Control Priest will be a huge part of the meta, but I think this is a decent tool for a slow Priest deck if someone wanted to play Priest.

On thing I'd like to see from this is a sacrifice effect.  That would be really cool.

It is an interesting design, which open the door for abuse wide open.
I'm looking forward to ruin someone's game plan with this guy

Cheap Mind Control and wants to be played in Silence decks. This might be alright as a stand alone as well, as even if they get the card back, they had to expend resources to kill Najak Hexxen to get a minion back.

I assume the minion keeps whatever stats it has as it switches players, so if it dies the other player won't get it back. I'm guessing it won't work out that well, but taking control of some threat and trading it away could be nice.

Okay this seems absolutely broken on first glance. Mind Control for only 4 mana?!? But if you look a bit closer you see how utterly GARBAGE this card is. Najak Hexxen ruins your deathrattle ress pool for Amulet of Undying, which means it wont see play in control/ress decks. The only "good" thing about it, is that it doesn't ruin the Xyrella, the Devouts battlecry. There are im.o. only 2 possible decks could run Najak Hexxen without screwing themself over. First off: Shadow Priest. They can use Najak Hexxen to steal an taunt minion and go face. that's it. 2nd deck: Questline priest, so they have another 4 drop. that's it. The only reason i would see Najak Hexxen unironically played, is if there are a lot of BIG deathrattle minions around. Which could happen, but even then it doesn't really have a deck to call home right now.

I don't see Najak Hexxen getting played that much in standard, just because there generally are better options. 

And in wild, even with cards like Awaken the Makers i dont see it getting played. Awaken the Makers decks prefer deathrattles that either draw cards, or have good deathrattles for their resses. And Najak Hexxen is an AWFUL ress target. Not only that but it can ruin N'Zoth, the Corruptor ress pools as well.

So in short, Najak Hexxen is the HOTTEST of HOT GARBAGE. I wish they gave priest ANYTHING that's better in terms of deathrattles, this looks like the "pack filler" of all the legendaries this expansion. Oh wait i just remembered.... Najak Hexxen also ruins the Call of the Grave pool, just by existing. 

Silence priest.

Note to self: avoid Rush against Priest if you have another minion that can kill the Rusher.

I'd just like to to remind everyone that Shadow Madness used to be played and that card had a much bigger restriction, imo. Because just a 1/4 for 4 mana to kill off a Rusher and another minion is decent enough. And while fringe synergy is there (Focused Will, Youthful Brewmaster), just as a standalone card, Najak Hexxen can also put a ton of work. And as far as Deathrattle synergies go, old Big Priest ran Barnes despite Barnes itself being anti synergystic with ressurrect effects.

And when the best payoff to Deathrattle Priest in Xyrella, the Devout just doesn't care about Najak Hexxen, the antisynergy seems to matter less. The only reason I see for this not to see play is that we are in an anti-minion meta, even with a nerfed Questline mage.

Quote From meisterz39

The take I'm seeing again and again here is that as powerful as Najak Hexxen is in the abstract, he's automatically bad because taking full advantage of him requires playing bad cards like Youthful Brewmaster or Focused Will. This seems like an incredibly bad take.

For one, this reads a lot like the community falling into the Purify trap again. Synergy matters, and with enough support for self-silence or something of that nature then you might see a card like Focused Will rise in value and flip the script on the cost of supporting Najak to his fullest.

But more to the point, he can stall your opponent considerably even without extra support. If you drop him on turn 4 and steal your opponent's biggest minion, they now have to kill off Najak to get their minion back with summoning sickness. So at worst he's effectively a "4 mana 1/4 Taunt. Battlecry: freeze an enemy minion." with a ton of upside if your opponent fails to address him. Played on curve that could easily mean you've just stopped three minions (a couple of 2-Attack minions and whatever you stole) from going face. Seems pretty strong. Toss in the fact that you get pick up extra copies from Raise Dead and Call of the Grave, and can easily generate Focused Will from other good Priest cards and I think you'll be seeing this disrupting a lot of games.

As usual meisterz, you hit the nail on the head.  People focus entirely too much on synergy and "ultimate value" and not nearly as much on tempo plays.

On it's own it doesn't feel that good - of course 4 mana MC is powerful - but still it mostly depends on the minion. If you take Rush minion and instantly kill it, then it's great but it feels just OK without any bounce, silence or transform effect. And priest does have those, yes. Will those be run in pl;ayable deck is entirely different question.

lol, this is a good silence priest synergy card

I"m just not sure how I feel about this card. It could be a busted 4 mana Mind Control or it could just be an annoyance of stalling your minion for a turn while you get it back. I suppose even a one turn stall is valuable for a control deck to get closer to the big control tools. We shall see how it works out.

In Deathrattle decks, this becomes just a dud on revivals. Otherwise? A 4 mana Mind Control sounds pretty annoying to deal with.

Absolutely stellar card, couldn't agree more with the analysis on why it's good even without comboing it. The fact that there are plenty of combo options to permanently steal a minion is just gravy.

Cheap mind control and might actually be played in Aggro decks. Why bother with the deathrattle downside if the opponent is already dead?

Seems like a pretty solid card. If you can silence it in any way, it becomes absolutely bonkers!