Well, it'll be less masochistic for those of us who don't feel like spamming lackeys at least. I personally like to play functional decks that aren't part of the meta, so it's a win for players like me.
Besides, while the Apothecary can be pretty worthless in the wrong deck, the other two you mention can be a lot more functional than people expect (yes, even Kidnapper!). You can assume you are at 7+ mana when you've had a Whirlkick turn, so you don't have to worry about the downside of them being unusable in the early stages of the game, and they're probably fairly easy to activate if you have a deck designed to make use of lots of combo cards.
This and Wand Thief might make a big difference for Whirlkick Master, whose biggest problem has always been that all the combo cards cost 2 or more, greatly limiting how much you can do and how early you can do it.
Even in wild the only other 1 mana combo card is Bladed Cultist. Not that I'm expecting the Whirlkick to suddenly be a meta card in wild, but it's nice for people who just want to mess around with it.
Might be better to leave this question until we actually see all the cards. Team5 usually leave the best for the final reveal.
Agreed, but they have been aggressively revealing legendaries and epics. Rares and commons are important and often strong, but perhaps not the sorts of things you anticipate will get you excited when the leg.s and epics have failed in that job.
Oooh. That looks right up my control hunter alley.
It doesn't actually affect very many cards in Standard, though I'm sure we'll see a spell or two to go along with it. I assume there will be something along the lines of Explosive Shot, Powershot and Grievous Bite, and not one that hits all minions.
Right, but are those spells actually helpful to play, or are you just throwing them out because it gives you another discover? I can picture people always picking the cheapest option, and ending the turn with 5 overloaded mana crystals while doing less good than a single Earthquake or other expensive spell would have done.
OK, so I previously argued Diligent Notetaker didn't violate shaman's class identity weakness of card generation. Apparently I shouldn't have bothered because this was going to come along and throw it out of the window anyway.
Is the card good? It can be, but with a jack-of-all-trades class like shaman, there's just so many directions spells can go in that you cannot count on being offered something immediately useful.
Even the most complex things feel simple when you have done them enough times, and even the most intelligent among us find simple things complex at first.
Anyway, yes, I hope it is fairly weak. Partly because I don't feel like having DH in S tier again, and partly because I want to play with it without feeling dirty.
I'm reminded of the main problem with Galakrond Shaman on release: the invoke cards were solid enough in their own right that you pretty much got the payoff cards for free, as though they had no restriction on them.
We'll have to see how this mechanic plays out, but all the soul shard generators look a little too solid by themselves to justify the size of the payoffs you get.
Edit: on a bright note, I see an awful lot of commons and rares in there, so at least they are making it cheap to play.
I think it is just this year they are getting extras. The extra 15 this year will make up for not having a classic set, so at the next rotation they'll have the same number of cards in standard as everyone else.
Not necessarily. If you don't expect the opponent to have the ability to damage both, then picking the larger one might end up keeping both of them alive a turn, because your opponent targets the obvious choice.
It might not happen often, but there is a genuine upside to it being secret.
Stalladris will give you cards that do the same thing as if you chose that option. Since when you choose the overload route you summon the minions, the Stalladris card for this should too.
The wording on the choose one card is as succinct as it can be while being clear, but the two options truly are distinct things and one does not modify the other in actual game terms.
I personally think the effect is very flavourful. In WoW she is known for summoning illusions and this captures that very well.
We'll also see how easy it is to deal 1 damage for most classes. Before now only warrior has really tried to lightly damage minions, while everyone else tends to make sure they die completely before trying.
It's always 2 weeks after the nerfs go live. There is no reason to think there's a conspiracy about them timing it purely to deny a bit of dust a few players.
Agreed. Alexandros Mograine (who Baron Rivendare later took the place of) would have been perfect since Kel'Thuzad himself turned him into a death knight.
Perhaps they had the card mechanics in mind first and felt it was best applied to someone who isn't best known for becoming an undead. Oh well.
Ture, Scholomance was around long before the 3rd war, but as Lord Alexei Barov's family home. I don't believe it had anything to do with any paladins or schools at all.
That said, I'm also happy for HS to completely twist the lore like this. HS should definitely unshackle itself from the details of Warcraft lore if it fits the HS aesthetic better. It's just that in this case Turalyon feels like the least thematic big paladin character they could have chosen.
Oh yes, there's a lot of fudging regarding the school: I don't think KT even tried to pretend it was anything other than the horrific school of necromancy that HS has tucked away in the basement.
I think it's impossible to say whether Turalyon and Alleria had joined the army of the light yet because they were in the twisting nether so time went all funny (squeezing 1000 years into 24, or something like it). I'm fine with him being here on the basis that HS 'lore' is just stories told in a tavern, so the possibly drunk story-teller might get their timelines mixed up. Even so, most important paladins actually did fight and/or end up joining the scourge, so there were surely better options.
Often yes, but actually no. Examples like Ragnaros the Firelord show why you still need to use something else to finish it off. Even if you just hit a big stat-stick, there is still the chance it gets silenced and you have to deal with it again.
Lore-wise, this is a strange choice of expansion to put Turalyon in. I was under the belief he was off-world fighting with the Army of the Light from the second Horde vs Alliance war through to the Legion expansion, meaning he had no interaction with Scholomance which was scourge affiliated (i.e. third war onwards).
Effect-wise, you have to consider that paladin does not have hard removal... at all. There's a few leftover damage dealing spells in classic and the extremely situational destroy effect in Sacred Trial, but that's it. They have to do everything through weapon and/or minion damage, alongside debuffs to bring big minions in reach. So the context for this card is very different to Natalie Seline who is in a class that can easily kill things using only 1 card. Therefore I expect Turalyon to be used in slow paladin lists, simply because it provides card efficiency the class simply doesn't have otherwise.
Also, this was a clever way to give the class hard removal while still doing it via debuffs and attacks. For that reason alone I like the design.
Well, it'll be less masochistic for those of us who don't feel like spamming lackeys at least. I personally like to play functional decks that aren't part of the meta, so it's a win for players like me.
Besides, while the Apothecary can be pretty worthless in the wrong deck, the other two you mention can be a lot more functional than people expect (yes, even Kidnapper!). You can assume you are at 7+ mana when you've had a Whirlkick turn, so you don't have to worry about the downside of them being unusable in the early stages of the game, and they're probably fairly easy to activate if you have a deck designed to make use of lots of combo cards.
This and Wand Thief might make a big difference for Whirlkick Master, whose biggest problem has always been that all the combo cards cost 2 or more, greatly limiting how much you can do and how early you can do it.
Even in wild the only other 1 mana combo card is Bladed Cultist. Not that I'm expecting the Whirlkick to suddenly be a meta card in wild, but it's nice for people who just want to mess around with it.
Agreed, but they have been aggressively revealing legendaries and epics. Rares and commons are important and often strong, but perhaps not the sorts of things you anticipate will get you excited when the leg.s and epics have failed in that job.
An elekk never forgets. I'm going to be honest, it never occurred to me that that proverb could be turned into a card.
Oooh. That looks right up my control hunter alley.
It doesn't actually affect very many cards in Standard, though I'm sure we'll see a spell or two to go along with it. I assume there will be something along the lines of Explosive Shot, Powershot and Grievous Bite, and not one that hits all minions.
Right, but are those spells actually helpful to play, or are you just throwing them out because it gives you another discover? I can picture people always picking the cheapest option, and ending the turn with 5 overloaded mana crystals while doing less good than a single Earthquake or other expensive spell would have done.
OK, so I previously argued Diligent Notetaker didn't violate shaman's class identity weakness of card generation. Apparently I shouldn't have bothered because this was going to come along and throw it out of the window anyway.
Is the card good? It can be, but with a jack-of-all-trades class like shaman, there's just so many directions spells can go in that you cannot count on being offered something immediately useful.
Even the most complex things feel simple when you have done them enough times, and even the most intelligent among us find simple things complex at first.
Anyway, yes, I hope it is fairly weak. Partly because I don't feel like having DH in S tier again, and partly because I want to play with it without feeling dirty.
I'm reminded of the main problem with Galakrond Shaman on release: the invoke cards were solid enough in their own right that you pretty much got the payoff cards for free, as though they had no restriction on them.
We'll have to see how this mechanic plays out, but all the soul shard generators look a little too solid by themselves to justify the size of the payoffs you get.
Edit: on a bright note, I see an awful lot of commons and rares in there, so at least they are making it cheap to play.
I think it is just this year they are getting extras. The extra 15 this year will make up for not having a classic set, so at the next rotation they'll have the same number of cards in standard as everyone else.
Not necessarily. If you don't expect the opponent to have the ability to damage both, then picking the larger one might end up keeping both of them alive a turn, because your opponent targets the obvious choice.
It might not happen often, but there is a genuine upside to it being secret.
Stalladris will give you cards that do the same thing as if you chose that option. Since when you choose the overload route you summon the minions, the Stalladris card for this should too.
The wording on the choose one card is as succinct as it can be while being clear, but the two options truly are distinct things and one does not modify the other in actual game terms.
I personally think the effect is very flavourful. In WoW she is known for summoning illusions and this captures that very well.
We'll also see how easy it is to deal 1 damage for most classes. Before now only warrior has really tried to lightly damage minions, while everyone else tends to make sure they die completely before trying.
It's always 2 weeks after the nerfs go live. There is no reason to think there's a conspiracy about them timing it purely to deny a bit of dust a few players.
Agreed. Alexandros Mograine (who Baron Rivendare later took the place of) would have been perfect since Kel'Thuzad himself turned him into a death knight.
Perhaps they had the card mechanics in mind first and felt it was best applied to someone who isn't best known for becoming an undead. Oh well.
Ture, Scholomance was around long before the 3rd war, but as Lord Alexei Barov's family home. I don't believe it had anything to do with any paladins or schools at all.
That said, I'm also happy for HS to completely twist the lore like this. HS should definitely unshackle itself from the details of Warcraft lore if it fits the HS aesthetic better. It's just that in this case Turalyon feels like the least thematic big paladin character they could have chosen.
Oh yes, there's a lot of fudging regarding the school: I don't think KT even tried to pretend it was anything other than the horrific school of necromancy that HS has tucked away in the basement.
I think it's impossible to say whether Turalyon and Alleria had joined the army of the light yet because they were in the twisting nether so time went all funny (squeezing 1000 years into 24, or something like it). I'm fine with him being here on the basis that HS 'lore' is just stories told in a tavern, so the possibly drunk story-teller might get their timelines mixed up. Even so, most important paladins actually did fight and/or end up joining the scourge, so there were surely better options.
Often yes, but actually no. Examples like Ragnaros the Firelord show why you still need to use something else to finish it off. Even if you just hit a big stat-stick, there is still the chance it gets silenced and you have to deal with it again.
No. Zephrys only offers Basic and Classic cards. People will have to find out how good it is by putting the card in their decks
Lore-wise, this is a strange choice of expansion to put Turalyon in. I was under the belief he was off-world fighting with the Army of the Light from the second Horde vs Alliance war through to the Legion expansion, meaning he had no interaction with Scholomance which was scourge affiliated (i.e. third war onwards).
Effect-wise, you have to consider that paladin does not have hard removal... at all. There's a few leftover damage dealing spells in classic and the extremely situational destroy effect in Sacred Trial, but that's it. They have to do everything through weapon and/or minion damage, alongside debuffs to bring big minions in reach. So the context for this card is very different to Natalie Seline who is in a class that can easily kill things using only 1 card. Therefore I expect Turalyon to be used in slow paladin lists, simply because it provides card efficiency the class simply doesn't have otherwise.
Also, this was a clever way to give the class hard removal while still doing it via debuffs and attacks. For that reason alone I like the design.