Botface - Its a value card, intended to provide you with stuff to do while you get to your win con. Because realistically, with odyn being the primary win con for most if not all warriors, you dont need a card like this. Suited for reno decks, or otherwise just plain value. At very least unlike the old Rotface, it's practically guaranteed to give you something.
Chemical Spill - Doesnt matter how you look at it, its a poor card. When you consider cards like Sigil of Reckoning, Big Dreams couldnt make it in competitive, even in big decks, there's just no reason to believe that this would work as well. Perhaps you'll get lucky, get botface off this and gain 4 mini cards from it, that's about the best this card can hope for. Likely wont see play.
Lab Patron - Laughable to say the least. 4 mana 3/3, of which you can only dupe once a turn. Yeah, no chance it'll ever see competitive play. Monster in arena perhaps, nowhere else.
Boom Wrench - So far perhaps the best warrior card. Curves right into Testing Dummy, dealing 8 damage out of nowhere and you get to do it again.
Testing Dummy - I know hearthstone power levels have gone way past charts nowadays, but really? Is it even remotely fair for warrior to have a 4/8 taunt on 6 which deals 8 damage? Practically maims paladin, or any tempo deck, on its own. Fact that its a deathrattle, and with so many deathrattle support, its practically a must kill or you win the game.
Li'Na, Shop Manager - Its clearly a build around card that's likely more relevant to rogue and druid than any other class. But will it be a good, competitive card? Well, I kinda rate this around the same as The Scourge. Its kinda good when it goes off well, but there are just so many games where it spawns you no taunts/rush minions and completely screw your match.
Playhouse Giant - Prob more giants for a hypothetical handlock deck which kinda does really well with something like Gaslight Gatekeeper. Really nothing much else. Perhaps it'll find itself in druid and rogue which conventionally draws their entire deck most of the time anyway.
Nostalgic Clown - To me, this is a combo card. Prob for rogue. Its really too slow for anything else more conventional. Perhaps later reveals would make more sense of this card but at the moment, its hard to see this as anything more than a potential combo piece.
Giggling Toymaker - Its Giggling Inventor but worse. Why? Well because if you cant pop it then it cant save you. So in addition to playing the card you need to spend another card/option to also trigger it. Still, got to respect it if nothing else. Anything that can spawn two annoyatrons cannot realistically be ignored.
Rumble Enthusiast - Its practically s'theno, but worse. Not sure what can be made of this, but the random nature of the damage makes this hard to see competitive play.
Clearance Promoter - I dont know what can be made of this. But Id be surprised if this doesnt contribute to something toxic in the next 2 years.
Sing-Along Buddy - Probably the most interesting of the lot. Makes anything that refresh hp incredibly busted. I can see plenty of potential for this card to actually see competitive play.
Well, here's my opinion on the more interesting cards.
Factory Assemblybot - In my opinion, this card will never see play outside of a big deck and even then Id contend this is not good enough. 10 mana cards need to either win you the game, threaten to win you the game, or easily cheated out. This card does none of those things, and ironically cheating this out without playing it from hand means you miss out on the most important thing this card does.
Origami Dragon - Depending on the meta this card can be incredibly busted. It flips the board for you, and heal you back. Only problem is that against reactive decks this card is just useless. So a better Zilliax then I guess.
Plucky Paintfin - Played only for the tutoring effect which for a neutral card might be important. Poisonous is just a bonus, never realistically a feature youd put this card into your deck for.
Cosplay Contestant - If you can remember one of the worse legendaries ever printed, Harbinger Celestia. Yeah, this is that card. Will it see play? No.
Bucket of Soldiers - Not gonna lie, this card is scary. Deceptively innocent but when you consider that you have a high chance of getting taunt, divine shield and reborn 1/1s on board for cracking this egg, and the fact that certain decks punishes you heavily for leaving things on board, this card is an easy win. Only problem is how to crack it consistently. But Id imagine thats not a big issue for those that would play it.
Tar Slime - Will prob never see play because a 2/3 on 1 is no longer special. Just like how Tar Creeper itself has not seen play since ungoro, there's no reason to believe this card will.
Giftwrapped Whelp - Cute little thing. But really, its a Flame Imp. Good in midrange dragon decks and nothing else.
Team5 is clever. They know very well the average amount of turns games tend to end so they specifically designed this to only really work versus specific kinds of matchup i.e. control decks. Because really, against any other archetype the game would end way before turn 13 anyway.
Still, Im getting some vibes that this card is going to get nerfed, or will cause another card to get nerfed because any form of discounting would immediately turn this from meme to competitive and this card is just toxic if viable.
Its a good card, very nearly guarantees that the damage goes to face and being able to essentially board clear while doing it is just amazing.
The main problem though? Well, the battlecry basically means you'll never want to cheat this guy out and isnt that what really made King Krush good in the first place? Played as a 9 drop, this card is just...well, normal. Maybe not even that great considering that most matches rarely ever get to a point where a board clear and 6 damage to face wins you the game.
Prob would see play, but Id say old krush is more interesting to build around than plush krush.
Alright, its a hero card so it must be busted as hell. Certainly at 6 mana, remove one minion, and then having a hp that deals 3 damage. What more can you ask for?
Well, having a perfectly reasonable card that doesnt have such a bs rune restriction would be nice.
When will team5 finally notice that the rune restrictions is basically making it so every DK deck is more or less 90% decided by them instead of discovered by the community? So if the decks are useless then this perfectly good card would simply never see play. Reminds me of sindragosa, where the card just gets ignored not because the card is bad but because its trapped in a deck that'll never work.
Id love to play this in blood DK, or just as an option in unholy DK. But no. Its either rainbow, a theoretical unholy/blood midrange deck, or go bust. Wouldnt be the last time we've seen yet another card like these get ignored until team5 inevitably buffs the entire archetype.
Its definitely one of those cards that can only be judged after playtesting. But from my own impression, it really looks like something that simply cannot be relied on.
So your opponent has two big minions + several smaller ones. This thing may well just cast polymorph, hit the wrong target and get you screwed. Or it'll cast flamestrike, killing the smaller dudes while leaving two giants on board. And in any case, since it activates at the end of the turn, it'll always be a coin toss as to whether you can trust it to do the right thing, or dealing with the threats yourself.
My own opinion is that it'll see play, because of course it would. Even having random spells is better than nothing but it'll never be as good as it seem. Even if it does, we can pretty much expect vipers to be everywhere anyway.
Is there no more individual card postings in the forum anymore?
But the card itself? Well, its fine. Im almost certain this card will see play, and in fact it wouldnt surprise me if all mage archetypes play it. As for how good it'll be, likely not very good, because we've all been burned by wisdomball before.
Prob at best the card is good enough to clear board, most of the time. But really, if you're relying on this thing to save your arse you'd prob be left disappointed more often than not.
Sure theres always a chance they trigger brann early but then that's obscuring the fact that most games they dont. And if you face DK then that's usually about it for your chances.
Odyn warrior is by far the superior warrior archetype. And even then its not perfect in any respect. Most of the time youd win just putting up tempo consistently and playing around their removal.
Having preorder provide an exclusive card, even if on a limited timeframe, is just a poor move in my opinion.
The game itself is already going on a downtrend as it is. If ever these limited cards be part of the meta it'll almost certainly piss a large segment of the population off. Whether correct or not, no one likes to see others getting a headstart on new stuff.
Have to say, that a lot of these gifts are just plain bad and its hard for me to imagine them seeing any competitive play outside of highlander.
Nowadays hearthstone tends to be so fast that spending 1 extra mana to do something is usually not very good. Not to mention that these are temporary cards so I'd assume you cant just pick a card and save it for later use, ensuring that the 1 mana premium needs always be paid to use those cards.
Yes, its basically powercreeping so hard that manatide totem would be nothing more than a meme.
However, this card would likely still never see play because why would it? Drawing a card and gaining 2 armor for 2 mana? Why not just play Shield Block instead? Only real niche it has is a shaman card because of synergies and even then i'd still be leering at it from a corner.
The only card from paladin/shaman related to excavate that's good, and that includes the payoff.
Because this card would find itself into any aggro-based deck never mind the excavate effect, which is a neat bonus. You'd probably try to build an excavate aggro/elemental shaman around this card because why not? Unlike Digging Straight Down, at very least this card synergizes with what an excavate shaman/paladin probably would want to do anyway.
Just a terrible card. But in the end, youre probably forced to play it regardless if you aim to play excavate in shaman, not that Im all that optimistic about that prospect outside of highlander, because if I have to be honest the payoff in azerite murloc is not only weak, its probably unplayable.
Ironically in decks where you would want to play excavate to take advantage of the murloc payoff, which is a cheap aggro deck 90% of the time, you probably would be spitting bile at this card's direction because its even more terrible there than it would otherwise be.
Wouldn't be surprised if this gets buffed to 3. Because its unplayable otherwise.
Its gonna see play, but it'll never realistically be a good card that can carry a class the same way cards like Bellowing Flames can
As it stands, even Immolation Aura sees no play in dhunter even when they are good. Not to mention that aggro these days tend to be fairly absurd in terms of reload, and give you little to no time to prepare your AoEs.
In other words, its a decent card that will make highlander lists and control tryhards but in practice would perhaps never justify its inclusion.
Would have been better if it has rush/taunt, would be better if it was discover a bonus effect.
Instead what we have here is a card thats only really playable should you somehow choose to play excavate cards in pally. Outside of that, I cant see it. Playing a 4 mana card that 50% of the time does nothing on board doesnt fill anyone with confidence, let alone in a class that lives and dies by the state of the board.
Its playable in shaman because shaman doesnt really have lots of removal options that basically nuke the opponent's board regardless of conditions. In pally however, its a hit and miss simply because I cant see a world where paladin plays excavate cards nor can I see a world where they need removal as strong as this one.
Still a strong card that needs to be respected, but I feel its not good enough a payoff to start playing excavate in both classes, but allowances would be made to shaman more so than paladin.
Its relevant in the current iteration of spell damage hunter but once all those cards rotate, this card would probably be dead.
On its own its just too weak, almost comparable to On the Hunt. Even Wound Prey is more relevant than this card because you simply dont know what pops out of this card.
Im not even definitely sure its better than Arcane Shot, because most of the time you'll put this in your deck to hit face, and most minions these days have at least 2 health.
Probably a very strong card in pally, but just meh in DK.
Paladin needs early game, and this is suitably sticky and comes with added rush support. DK would only ever contemplate this card for corpses, because Crop Rotation is just better in just about every manner, except for mana cost.
One thing to mention though, this card has no rune restrictions, so it might actually see more play than I perhaps think it would.
Botface - Its a value card, intended to provide you with stuff to do while you get to your win con. Because realistically, with odyn being the primary win con for most if not all warriors, you dont need a card like this. Suited for reno decks, or otherwise just plain value. At very least unlike the old Rotface, it's practically guaranteed to give you something.
Chemical Spill - Doesnt matter how you look at it, its a poor card. When you consider cards like Sigil of Reckoning, Big Dreams couldnt make it in competitive, even in big decks, there's just no reason to believe that this would work as well. Perhaps you'll get lucky, get botface off this and gain 4 mini cards from it, that's about the best this card can hope for. Likely wont see play.
Lab Patron - Laughable to say the least. 4 mana 3/3, of which you can only dupe once a turn. Yeah, no chance it'll ever see competitive play. Monster in arena perhaps, nowhere else.
Boom Wrench - So far perhaps the best warrior card. Curves right into Testing Dummy, dealing 8 damage out of nowhere and you get to do it again.
Testing Dummy - I know hearthstone power levels have gone way past charts nowadays, but really? Is it even remotely fair for warrior to have a 4/8 taunt on 6 which deals 8 damage? Practically maims paladin, or any tempo deck, on its own. Fact that its a deathrattle, and with so many deathrattle support, its practically a must kill or you win the game.
My review of the reveals, interesting cards only;
Li'Na, Shop Manager - Its clearly a build around card that's likely more relevant to rogue and druid than any other class. But will it be a good, competitive card? Well, I kinda rate this around the same as The Scourge. Its kinda good when it goes off well, but there are just so many games where it spawns you no taunts/rush minions and completely screw your match.
Playhouse Giant - Prob more giants for a hypothetical handlock deck which kinda does really well with something like Gaslight Gatekeeper. Really nothing much else. Perhaps it'll find itself in druid and rogue which conventionally draws their entire deck most of the time anyway.
Nostalgic Clown - To me, this is a combo card. Prob for rogue. Its really too slow for anything else more conventional. Perhaps later reveals would make more sense of this card but at the moment, its hard to see this as anything more than a potential combo piece.
Giggling Toymaker - Its Giggling Inventor but worse. Why? Well because if you cant pop it then it cant save you. So in addition to playing the card you need to spend another card/option to also trigger it. Still, got to respect it if nothing else. Anything that can spawn two annoyatrons cannot realistically be ignored.
Rumble Enthusiast - Its practically s'theno, but worse. Not sure what can be made of this, but the random nature of the damage makes this hard to see competitive play.
Clearance Promoter - I dont know what can be made of this. But Id be surprised if this doesnt contribute to something toxic in the next 2 years.
Sing-Along Buddy - Probably the most interesting of the lot. Makes anything that refresh hp incredibly busted. I can see plenty of potential for this card to actually see competitive play.
Well, here's my opinion on the more interesting cards.
Factory Assemblybot - In my opinion, this card will never see play outside of a big deck and even then Id contend this is not good enough. 10 mana cards need to either win you the game, threaten to win you the game, or easily cheated out. This card does none of those things, and ironically cheating this out without playing it from hand means you miss out on the most important thing this card does.
Origami Dragon - Depending on the meta this card can be incredibly busted. It flips the board for you, and heal you back. Only problem is that against reactive decks this card is just useless. So a better Zilliax then I guess.
Plucky Paintfin - Played only for the tutoring effect which for a neutral card might be important. Poisonous is just a bonus, never realistically a feature youd put this card into your deck for.
Cosplay Contestant - If you can remember one of the worse legendaries ever printed, Harbinger Celestia. Yeah, this is that card. Will it see play? No.
Bucket of Soldiers - Not gonna lie, this card is scary. Deceptively innocent but when you consider that you have a high chance of getting taunt, divine shield and reborn 1/1s on board for cracking this egg, and the fact that certain decks punishes you heavily for leaving things on board, this card is an easy win. Only problem is how to crack it consistently. But Id imagine thats not a big issue for those that would play it.
Tar Slime - Will prob never see play because a 2/3 on 1 is no longer special. Just like how Tar Creeper itself has not seen play since ungoro, there's no reason to believe this card will.
Giftwrapped Whelp - Cute little thing. But really, its a Flame Imp. Good in midrange dragon decks and nothing else.
It looks like a bad card.
Team5 is clever. They know very well the average amount of turns games tend to end so they specifically designed this to only really work versus specific kinds of matchup i.e. control decks. Because really, against any other archetype the game would end way before turn 13 anyway.
Still, Im getting some vibes that this card is going to get nerfed, or will cause another card to get nerfed because any form of discounting would immediately turn this from meme to competitive and this card is just toxic if viable.
Its a good card, very nearly guarantees that the damage goes to face and being able to essentially board clear while doing it is just amazing.
The main problem though? Well, the battlecry basically means you'll never want to cheat this guy out and isnt that what really made King Krush good in the first place? Played as a 9 drop, this card is just...well, normal. Maybe not even that great considering that most matches rarely ever get to a point where a board clear and 6 damage to face wins you the game.
Prob would see play, but Id say old krush is more interesting to build around than plush krush.
One of the weirdest buff patches Ive seen in a while.
Isnt most of those cards that are being buffed rotating away from standard in less than a month? Whats the overall plan here?
Alright, its a hero card so it must be busted as hell. Certainly at 6 mana, remove one minion, and then having a hp that deals 3 damage. What more can you ask for?
Well, having a perfectly reasonable card that doesnt have such a bs rune restriction would be nice.
When will team5 finally notice that the rune restrictions is basically making it so every DK deck is more or less 90% decided by them instead of discovered by the community? So if the decks are useless then this perfectly good card would simply never see play. Reminds me of sindragosa, where the card just gets ignored not because the card is bad but because its trapped in a deck that'll never work.
Id love to play this in blood DK, or just as an option in unholy DK. But no. Its either rainbow, a theoretical unholy/blood midrange deck, or go bust. Wouldnt be the last time we've seen yet another card like these get ignored until team5 inevitably buffs the entire archetype.
Its definitely one of those cards that can only be judged after playtesting. But from my own impression, it really looks like something that simply cannot be relied on.
So your opponent has two big minions + several smaller ones. This thing may well just cast polymorph, hit the wrong target and get you screwed. Or it'll cast flamestrike, killing the smaller dudes while leaving two giants on board. And in any case, since it activates at the end of the turn, it'll always be a coin toss as to whether you can trust it to do the right thing, or dealing with the threats yourself.
My own opinion is that it'll see play, because of course it would. Even having random spells is better than nothing but it'll never be as good as it seem. Even if it does, we can pretty much expect vipers to be everywhere anyway.
Is there no more individual card postings in the forum anymore?
But the card itself? Well, its fine. Im almost certain this card will see play, and in fact it wouldnt surprise me if all mage archetypes play it. As for how good it'll be, likely not very good, because we've all been burned by wisdomball before.
Prob at best the card is good enough to clear board, most of the time. But really, if you're relying on this thing to save your arse you'd prob be left disappointed more often than not.
Because brann warrior is not very good.
Sure theres always a chance they trigger brann early but then that's obscuring the fact that most games they dont. And if you face DK then that's usually about it for your chances.
Odyn warrior is by far the superior warrior archetype. And even then its not perfect in any respect. Most of the time youd win just putting up tempo consistently and playing around their removal.
Having preorder provide an exclusive card, even if on a limited timeframe, is just a poor move in my opinion.
The game itself is already going on a downtrend as it is. If ever these limited cards be part of the meta it'll almost certainly piss a large segment of the population off. Whether correct or not, no one likes to see others getting a headstart on new stuff.
Have to say, that a lot of these gifts are just plain bad and its hard for me to imagine them seeing any competitive play outside of highlander.
Nowadays hearthstone tends to be so fast that spending 1 extra mana to do something is usually not very good. Not to mention that these are temporary cards so I'd assume you cant just pick a card and save it for later use, ensuring that the 1 mana premium needs always be paid to use those cards.
RIP Mana Tide Totem
Yes, its basically powercreeping so hard that manatide totem would be nothing more than a meme.
However, this card would likely still never see play because why would it? Drawing a card and gaining 2 armor for 2 mana? Why not just play Shield Block instead? Only real niche it has is a shaman card because of synergies and even then i'd still be leering at it from a corner.
The only card from paladin/shaman related to excavate that's good, and that includes the payoff.
Because this card would find itself into any aggro-based deck never mind the excavate effect, which is a neat bonus. You'd probably try to build an excavate aggro/elemental shaman around this card because why not? Unlike Digging Straight Down, at very least this card synergizes with what an excavate shaman/paladin probably would want to do anyway.
Just a terrible card. But in the end, youre probably forced to play it regardless if you aim to play excavate in shaman, not that Im all that optimistic about that prospect outside of highlander, because if I have to be honest the payoff in azerite murloc is not only weak, its probably unplayable.
Ironically in decks where you would want to play excavate to take advantage of the murloc payoff, which is a cheap aggro deck 90% of the time, you probably would be spitting bile at this card's direction because its even more terrible there than it would otherwise be.
Wouldn't be surprised if this gets buffed to 3. Because its unplayable otherwise.
Its gonna see play, but it'll never realistically be a good card that can carry a class the same way cards like Bellowing Flames can
As it stands, even Immolation Aura sees no play in dhunter even when they are good. Not to mention that aggro these days tend to be fairly absurd in terms of reload, and give you little to no time to prepare your AoEs.
In other words, its a decent card that will make highlander lists and control tryhards but in practice would perhaps never justify its inclusion.
Would have been better if it has rush/taunt, would be better if it was discover a bonus effect.
Instead what we have here is a card thats only really playable should you somehow choose to play excavate cards in pally. Outside of that, I cant see it. Playing a 4 mana card that 50% of the time does nothing on board doesnt fill anyone with confidence, let alone in a class that lives and dies by the state of the board.
Its playable in shaman because shaman doesnt really have lots of removal options that basically nuke the opponent's board regardless of conditions. In pally however, its a hit and miss simply because I cant see a world where paladin plays excavate cards nor can I see a world where they need removal as strong as this one.
Still a strong card that needs to be respected, but I feel its not good enough a payoff to start playing excavate in both classes, but allowances would be made to shaman more so than paladin.
Its relevant in the current iteration of spell damage hunter but once all those cards rotate, this card would probably be dead.
On its own its just too weak, almost comparable to On the Hunt. Even Wound Prey is more relevant than this card because you simply dont know what pops out of this card.
Im not even definitely sure its better than Arcane Shot, because most of the time you'll put this in your deck to hit face, and most minions these days have at least 2 health.
Probably a very strong card in pally, but just meh in DK.
Paladin needs early game, and this is suitably sticky and comes with added rush support. DK would only ever contemplate this card for corpses, because Crop Rotation is just better in just about every manner, except for mana cost.
One thing to mention though, this card has no rune restrictions, so it might actually see more play than I perhaps think it would.