Obviously I can't know before playing around with it but just from the looks of things I'm not sure these tribal changes are all that great. A lot of the tribes just get kinda worse for not much gain on other fronts. It seems they're trying to give each tribe two distinct ways to play but a lot of these new introductions feel like they're just straight outmatched by what is already available.

The whole Start of Combat Dragon package will take so long to put together properly for middling results that a simple Battlecry Kalecgos build, which seems untouched, will outpace it in terms of permanent scaling.

For some reason they're still convinced that Tavern scaling Elementals are a thing. Removing Master of Realities will not make that build any more palatable.

They've once again kneecapped Menagerie both early and late by removing Yrel, Motley Phalanx and several Tavern Spell providers (the tier 6 dragon and the deathrattle Beast) for Nalaa the Redeemer. All the strategy gets in return is a pretty terrible tier 4 Chimera and a decent tier 5 Elemental. In a non-elemental game a Nalaa Menagerie has like 4 cards total that help you get more Tavern spells and they're all tier 5 and up. Maybe the Odd + Even build can do something but it seems pretty meh.

I have no idea what Beasts are supposed to do now. Banana Slamma should have never been a card but with how they've reworked the tribe I don't see them keeping up with any of the others. The self-damage Beasts have all atrocious payoffs to scale off of, and while Goldrinn is still around, without Slamma, Mama Bear, Feathermane or the tier 6 bird I have no clue how that build is supposed to achieve anything. Reborn Goldrinn + Rivendare ain't cutting it and Octosari was never THAT good to carry a whole tribe.

Overall, Murlocs, Nagas and Pirates seem the least affected, with Quillboar and Demons possibly gaining some interesting options. Tavern Elementals and Beasts overall are a mess though and I think a lot of the newly introduced cards seem pretty meh.

I find that hard to believe. Unless you're playing against nothing but Even Shamans, Shadow Priests and Pirate Rogues back to back, you will have seen a real player. Even Warriors, Reno decks of all varieties, Mine Rogues, Quest Mages, Shudderwock Shamans, Questline Warlocks, Big Shamans, these are all decks played by real people. Me go face is basically all bots are good for.

Gnomeregan Infantry actually saw a good bit of play as a finisher for Wild Inner Fire Priest. No need to rely on opponent leaving a minion on the board for you to steal with Potion of Madness, just drop this and charge them for 32. Also, Flying Machine was a frequent inclusion in Mech Decks, primarily in Paladin when it included handbuffing. If you didn't kill the Flying Machine the turn it came into play (often as a 2/5 or a 3/6), you were usually dead next turn. So for Wild, the list would look very, very different.

Can someone enlighten me as to why they'd be nerfing Order in the Court? Is there something broken it's doing in Standard?

Well, good thing I got my Wild Excavate Warlock games in now, I knew before release the playstyle wasn't going to last the month but I didn't expect it to go this fast.

On the plus side they can't exactly kill the card without killing Warlock in Standard (I imagine) so the nerf might be fairly tame. But, pretty much any nerf in Wild is likely to kill the deck there.

Kinda wish they banned Thaddius alongside it. What it's doing in Questline Warlock is not particularly healthy. The deck may not be top of the meta but that's definitely a bannable gameplay pattern.

Wait wait wait. Are you telling me Wild is almost becoming fair with one patch? With Mechwarper FINALLY gone all mech decks actually have to pay mana for their shit instead of spamming out 8+ mana worth of stuff on turn 3. Gadgetzan and Frog removal/nerf should force people to again pay fair mana for card draw. Flurgle and Scargil, depending on the way they're nerfed, should stop giving Shaman just free wins and complete board dominance off of a single universal package. And Discardlock (hopefully) gets obliterated. Not sure what's gonna happen to Res Priest, depends heavily on how they nerf Shadow Essence. Might kill Res Priest, might at least slow it down enough that strategies other than absurd aggro get to have a shot against them. So many design mistakes fixed, assuming those nerfs are actually done in a meaningful way. Off the top of my head, the only major decks unaffected by these are Kingsbane (which should make a comeback after these nerfs) and Secret Mage, which will depend on how the Kabal Lackey nerf goes. We might just have a brand new meta overnight.

Edit: ooph, forgot about Totem Shaman. That might be the new meta overlord.

I don't see how this effect can possibly bring in new players. Hearthstone is already notorious among CCGs as an RNGfest, and this just doubles down on that. People who weren't interested in the shitshow that is Hearthstone RNG definitely won't be interested now. People who are interested in Hearthstone and want to try and learn it will be getting swamped by random effects screwing with their learning experience. And if, god forbid, they run into an actual good deck and that deck happens to get a favourable Anomaly to boot, those new people are gone, uninstalling, never coming back. Entrenched players, in the meantime, will be losing every single ounce of their shit when their decks randomly turn off. Forget "competitive play", some of these effects straight up make "play" a problem.

I think team5 misjudged this massively. They wanted to bring more excitement to the launch, possibly because they're aware the miniset itself might not be all that exciting. Instead, I think people will be actively avoiding playing the game after miniset lauch just so they don't have to flip tables because of Anomalies.

I'm calling it now, the Anomalies will not last until patch 28.0. They'll either scrap them entirely way sooner, or massively rebalance them. Cause right now...holy shit. Let's go over some of the juiciest examples:

Light in the Dark: against Even Shaman. Good luck.

Upgraded hero power: hard to say how that interacts with Genn. Might completely screw over some even decks if it overrides the discount.

Driven to Greed and Driven to Excess: Tony Druid's wet dream. They don't have much to do early, so they sit back for 2 turns, and then OTK you with ease with the extra mana/cards.

Discover a new basic Hero Power: every single Genn/Baku deck immediately concedes. If you have any deck with major synergy with your hero power, you're done. Questline Druid, Questline Hunter, every single Warlock deck, any dude Paladin enjoyers, Control Warriors.

This will generate so many non-games I wouldn't be surprised if the one week 100 % anomaly chance doesn't even last the week.

EDIT: forgot to mention a big one:

The first card drawn on a player’s turn is one they can afford to play.

If you're playing a deck reliant on a specific high cost card to go off, like Rommath or Odyn, you will NEVER even have a chance to draw the card before the turn you can play it. Not unless you play additional card draw. So aggro decks will be rolling you with their curve-out plays, while control and combo decks will not even have a chance to draw their key combo pieces or board clears until they have the mana to play them. Imagine only getting the first chance to draw Hysteria against an aggro deck on turn 4. And only a chance. You're not guaranteed to start drawing 4 mana cards on 4 mana. You can draw your 1 mana trash. This is mind-bogglingly dumb design.

Keeper's Strength is definitely interesting, if nothing else. If buff Paladin akin to Libram Pally ever becomes a thing, this could be really fun in there, especially with Lynessa Sunsorrow, which becomes both a massive threat and a boardclear for 7 mana. As a standalone, it ain't awful but you need to be ahead on the board for it to do much, or need enough mana to play it alongside the target minion. AoE that requires board advantage is not exactly a great thing, so a proactive buff Paladin that's just trying to sweep away taunts/opposition so that it doesn't have to trade seems like the only viable option.

Are you implying that Druid will bother ramping to 10 mana and beyond in Wild when they're already OTKing people on turn 4?

Huh, that's just a better Reckless Flurry and arguably a better Bloodsworn Mercenary for OTKs (where the Mercenary body is irrelevant and in fact may take up valuable space on the board).

The anomalies sound like fun little Yoggy bit of randomness at first glance, but I think it's actually going to get really, really old, really fast. Because while the effects are symmetrical, the playstyles and win cons of the two opposing decks won't be. Some decks will benefit massively from some anomalies while they'll do barely anything for the opponent. A few illustrative examples for wild:

2 extra cards for both players. The Even Warrior or whatever attempt at a control deck someone might be playing won't benefit nearly as much as the aggro/tempo deck that tends to vomit its hand out by turn 3. Giving that deck extra fuel makes it much more dangerous than getting the Warrior a small shot at an additional piece of removal. Same goes for combo decks, like Thaddius Treachery Warlock or Frog Shaman. They'll be able to land their early combos much more reliably than honest decks.

Yogg in hand. Absolutely, completely irrelevant in Wild as an actual card. But, clogs the hand for draw heavy decks, absolutely fucking annihilates DH trying to get Outcast off (jesus fucking christ), provides some degree of protection against Dirty Rat/Mutanus for toxic combo decks such as Tony Druid. There is zero upside to having a Yogg in hand for anyone other than OTKs that run just one or two key minions.

Reduction of starting hand by 1 mana: Tony Druid now kills you on turn 3 with the right hand. Mech Paladins no longer pay for anything after turn 2 if their opener is Radar Detector, Mech Warper + Galvanizer, which is what they mulli for. Frog Shaman kills on turn 3, turn 2 with coin, Discard Warlock snowballs Tiny Knight starting turn 1. Anything slow like Even Warrior looks like an absolute idiot in the meantime, cause their efficiency doesn't increase nearly as much as aggro decks getting their 1 drops for free and being able to developing snowballing 2 drops right at the start of the game.

I sincerely hope that this isn't the long awaited Wild-focused patch we were promised cause wow does it feel out of touch. Have the people designing the Wild changes actually played Wild recently? In what universe is C'Thun, even with all these minor buffs, even remotely a consideration? Who in their right mind is even going to experiment with the Grimy Goons cards for Hunter and Warrior in the current meta? Or with Jades, outside of Jade Druid playing Jade Idol to avoid fatigue? Even with things as they are currently these changes would bring no new decks into the meta. But it's worse. Cause they also buffed several of the most oppressive decks in the format at the same time. Secret Mage is getting a buff on one of its most annoying cards, Shadow Priest is getting a buff on Shadowbomber, like it needed that, Even Shaman is getting a new option in Tuskarr Totemic, so that's a totem along with a 3/2 for early board presence, Small-Time Buccaneer is likely joining the Pirate Rogue roster. So all the aggressive decks are getting buffed for some insane reason. And here we are with Grimy Goons or Beast Druid cards stuck in our hand. The newly added cards would have to be absolutely gamechanging for these "returning" playstyles to be anything other than free wins for the opponent. And they only have 31 cards to do it because the 3 they showcased here don't do anything useful.

As for the Battlegrounds changes, I get the same feeling. When the last big minion dump came in with the tribe overhaul it was very exciting, almost every tribe was getting a whole new playstyle to work with. But this feels like changes for the sake of changes with no clear goal in mind. Like, how are Dragons going to be playable when Nadina the Red is leaving the pool for endgame and Tarecgosa + Promo Drake is leaving the pool for midgame? They're not actually getting anything good to replace what they're losing. Razorgore doesn't count, he's been here with Nadina for a long time. And what in the world is Niuzao supposed to do for Beasts when the only playstyle they have is tokenbuffing? There's no stats to be had on it. You're not gonna play it in Murlocs with Bassgill, not when you'll have a big Bream Counter in hand since tier 4. If you're instead supposed to include Bassgill in beasts for Niuzao to get buffed by Banana Slamma, then you have a tier 6 for beasts that only does anything when Murlocs are in the game. Huh? No other tier 6 is this conditional. They've also entirely killed any hope of Menagerie maybe making a comeback cause without Lightfang there's nothing to work with. Single minion stacking with Mythrax has been dead for a long time. The removal of Menagerie makes Niuzao even more questionable cause now it's not even useful as a pseudo cleave for that. They should have buffed Lightfang if they wanted Menagerie to stay, instead they removed it entirely.

I wasn't expecting a big Battlegrounds shakeup to begin with and even then I'm kinda disappointed by it. I was expecting a major Wild shakeup this expansion, and if this is it, then disappointed doesn't even begin to cover it.

I think they'll just nerf its cost. When it becomes slow enough the effect is no longer such an issue as it can't snowball without instantly running into an effective answer.

I'm pretty sure they've always been at least one week late. I've been keeping an eye out for that for the last year and a half at least.

Wow, we finally got there! After so many years and so many expansions, we made it. Recipe Brawl on the same week as the release of the set and not like, 2-3 weeks later when the meta is already solved.

A much better way to give Blitz Hearthstone some play time than that stupid Noz quest we get on 15th every month. Nobody I ever play against has Noz in their deck so whenever I try to do the quest I'm the idiot with a dead card while my opponent plays a T1-2 netdeck.

Really hard to assess how the game will play out with the removal of poisonous, but my early feelings about individual minion types:

Beasts: no more token start with Beasts in the game, cause Alley Cat is gone. With the removal of Goldrinn, Frogger tokens is now pretty much the only way to play Beasts, which is a shame, it means less variety. Beasts no longer have cleave but with the removal of Goldrinn that wouldn't have done anything unless you're really going nuts on the Felstomping (which has generally been a bad way to play the tribe). Not sure the whole Octosari thing is gonna float, but I guess I'm just too skeptical about One Big Giant Idiot playstyles, without poisonous in that might just work and Rivendare can always double dip on it if he doesn't get blown up early. I assume if you give Octo Reborn the summoned tokens still start huge and don't reset to basic size. I have absolutely no clue what Rylak Metalhead is supposed to achieve in beasts. There are barely any battlecries there, none of the minions with battlecry want to stay in your band (Bonemare, Rattler) and some are actively detrimental if triggered on the wrong thing (like having Bonemare taunt your Felstomper). Granted, since the Metalhead has taunt, if you give it reborn you are pretty much guaranteed to get two triggers on some battlecries, I'm just not sure what battlecries those are supposed to be. Maybe you splash it into murlocs or do something funky with Felemental? In beasts it seems out of place.

Murlocs: I...like...the fuck? With the removal of Toxfin, Swolefin, Seafood Slinger and Felfin Navigator, battlecry Murlocs feel kinda gutted. Some of the good cards that made you want to get Primalfin are gone and there are a whole lot more bad discovers without battlecry. That combined with the fact Murkeye didn't get unnerfed means battlecry Murlocs just tanked HARD. With the return of Honcho, the new Upbeat guy and the presence of Coldlight Seer Murlocs can stack up a lot of health but attack will be an issue. There's no more Warleader for earlygame safety, there's no way to grant Poisonous or Venomous on a Battlecry, and with Poisonous gone your big butt Murlocs may get one kill off of Venomous but then you'd want them to have some attack to work with afterwards and yet Bagurgle is currently the only way to grant your Murlocs any attack. This makes them feel pretty toothless. And the handbuff stuff...I...I don't even know. When is the last time we've been able to just waste gold sitting with minions in our hand so we can capitalise on them later? I can't recall that ever being the case. Now Bream Counter wants you to do just that and Bassgill rewards you for it, sure. But are you telling me we have to hold out for Scourfin to get any attack on our Murlocs before tier 5? That seems wishful. It feels to me like Murlocs are gonna be a lot about a bunch of supporting cast with some shopping phase effects and not a lot to show in combat, and then there's gonna be a bunch of giant morons like Bream Counter in hand, the new tier 6 that nabs its stats and a Magmaloc that you incidentally got to mediocre size along the way. Really hard to judge if this is gonna fly.

Dragons: all forms of firebreathing are gone so Divine Shields are again a thing against dragons. On the opposite end the Divine Shield-buffing dragon on 5 is gone so that makes Divine Shields on dragons and mechs less of a threat. The tier 3 attack buffer is gone but the Low-Flier just seems like a better version of it and if you have Stormbringer...hoooboy. I would say that makes the new Drakkari Enchanter an interesting inclusion in dragons, except Razorgore is gone...again...so probably less so. Otherwise, Dragons don't seem to have lost much and Tarecgosa is back on 3 so yay for them. The tier 1 Dragon generator seems kinda scary in terms of both board power and economy. Dragons might be able to power level pretty fast with that thing, which could get nutty. Oh and Sanctum Rester is simultaneously going to be responsible for absolutely terrifying blowouts when discovered off of an early triple on tier 4, while also being possibly the worst tier 5 card in the game cause...what the fuck are you supposed to do with that thing after like turn 10? You're not gonna be keeping it for your tarecgosas instead of Promodrakes. Maybe a filler before you find more Tarecgosas and Drakes?

Lelementals: No more Party Elemental, Garr (again?!), Rag or Master of Realities so the whole Elemental spamming thing with Magmaloc is gone. No more Lightspawn but Dancing Barnstormer just seems like a better Lightspawn that doesn't force stupid token shenanigans and doesn't turn off the moment you replace your board with big elementals. Seems like an overall buff to elementals to me, even though they lost their Mega-Windfury blowout against beasts and scam mech shenanigans. The Gusty Trumpeter seems like an absolutely atrocious card but the fact it can be tripled with the Elemental of Surprise means you can make it potentially huge with Divine Shield and then it just slots kinda nicely into the whole Nomi + Recycling Wraith thing. And the new Rock Rock seems on the whole like a better Rag (more stat gain overall regardless of minion tier) though a tier higher. Also no Gentle Djinni anymore. What a fall from grace. Broke the fucking game on release, now goes out with a whimper cause nobody even uses it in their Mental builds anymore. Oh, and the removal of Ball of Minions meganukes Nomi highrolls.

Nagas: Shoal Commander replaced with arguably better versions a tier higher and a tier lower (Reef Riffer, Deep Blue Crooner). Eventide Brute now more accessible for earlier permascaling, which is scary. Surprised Snail Cavalry survived the massacre, especially with the Deep Sea Angler buff, feels like the big butt aspect is pretty covered already. Not sure about Silent Swimmer, the Stealth doesn't seem to have much of a purpose other than the fact that it can protect your Lava Lurkers from Leeroys and Venom if you've taunted it early on. But it means you'd have to attack late with your Lava Lurker, which will generally be your biggest minion. Also, no more Windfury for Nagas which is a pretty damn massive nerf against deathrattle builds like Beasts, Undead or Mech. Hell it's probably a pretty big nerf against Nadina Dragons as well. Doesn't seem like much but I think Nagas just got pretty nerfed. Oh, also no Greta but that seems a bigger deal for Pirates...although...nah, Nagas could get good mileage out of that too, so that's another nerf.

Undead: Why are Undead suddenly stealing copies of enemy minions? I get it, we're digging up graves or something (not sure how it connects to the card flavour)  but what are Undead gonna do with that shit? The tier 1 Gnoll carry is gone. The Reborn flavour is getting amped up with Xylobones but not sure how far that's gonna go, you'd need a lot of permanent attack buffing for that to be worth anything. In fact I'd wager the removal of Jelly Belly, as bad as it was, a tier earlier has more overall impact on the tribe's performance than the introduction of this guy, cause lategame you'd much rather just have Abom anyway. Soulsplitter on the Venomous Undead Murloc is the new and much worsened Rattler + Maexxna scam. Taking up two slots on your board to get exactly two poison hits in...doesn't feel right. Well, actually it feels very right, cause screw the scam. Overall, seems like Undead came out on top, they lost some of the unnecessary fat, gained a little bit more unnecessary fat here and there, but the majority of the core stayed the same.


Pirates: Ok, on the plus side, you no longer need to rent a second heart as a backup when playing full on Pirates, cause no more APM insanity. There's now a hard cap on how much you have to do per turn to play Pirates. On the other hand I'm not sure about the replacements. So a golden Record Smuggler can give us up to 14 extra gold. Golden Hoggar generally gave more, though potentially with less consistency, would be my guess. Issue is, we no longer have Southsea Strongarm to catapult ourselves forward in power after a good Pirate turn, there's no more free buffs off of a ball of minions and we no longer have Greta to instagold some of our boys (affects Nagas too but seemed bigger for Pirates). So to get our engine going we need to find a Record Smuggler and then either find another one and play it, or find another one and keep it in hand, find the Upbeat guy to gold the Smuggler and then the golden Smuggler doesn't do anything until the start of the next turn...seems a lot harder to put the thing together, and that's already been a problem for Pirates. Though, admittedly, making our Pirates golden in hand gives us discovers on the "triple" we play, so that's a plus, especially since the tier 6 pirate (the only one Pirates get, which is weird) seems to be pretty important. Removal of Salty Looter drops some scaling, but then we gain Gunpowder Courier on the same tier (which together with Cannoneer makes for some pretty glassy pirates) and Underhanded Dealer a tier higher, which has worse stats to start but I think it grows faster (not sure if it gains +1/+1 per gold you gain, or +1/+1 whenever you gain any gold). To make up for the glass cannon side, we got the Lovesick chick on 4 to buff health individually, but Southsea Strongarm seemed more well rounded. On the other hand, Lovesick works off of just any gold spent, while Strongarm required us to already be running Hoggar Pirates to do anything, so it's probably a buff overall. But the big thing...Pirates now have an actual effect on them!! Pirates have cleave instead of beasts! Yay! For the record, the last time Pirates had an effect was when Seabreaker Goliath was in the game (windfury + overkill). With the addition of cleave, all that glass cannon buffing makes a lot more sense for pirates and it's pretty flavourful that pirates would play aggresive.  On the other hand, Eliza is gone so there go any remnants of the Pirate deathrattle scam or early blowouts off of a lucky triple on 5 on an existing Pirate board. Oh and removal of Goldgrubber potentially nerfs menagerie but...oh we'll get to that.

Demons: Soul Rewinder is an absolute must have if you're doing anything with demons other than Felbat + tavernbuffing. Pretty much nothing in Demons happens prior to tier 6 without Rewinder. 7 other Demon cards now either require you to take damage or reward you for taking damage, so that's a whole build onto itself that requires Rewinder somewhere in the lineup. It looks like a helluva fun and thematic way to play demons though. Kinda wish they put Floating Watcher back in for nostalgia, Other than that, not sure why the token Demons stayed in the game. Bigfernal is gone, as is Soul Juggler (thank god), Impatient Doomsayer, and Kathranatir. The only reward remaining for demon tokens is Felstomper which...lol. They buffed Annihilan in theory but nerfed it in practice cause now Demon builds will not be sacrificing health to play their game cause of Rewinder. It's a poor man's substitute for Impulsive Trickster for menagerie. Overall seems like Demons are gonna be a lot more interesting and gonna have a lot more options. Also the fact that they don't have any effects doesn't really matter as much cause poisonous is gone.

Quilboar: Thorncaller moved down an replacing Roadboar is a buff, but the loss of Bristleback Brute hurts the early game. Agamaggan replaced by two permanent buffs frees up board space on one hand but pulls Quilboar in a strange direction on the other. One buff effect is on a deathrattle, the other on a battlecry. We're not gonna use both a Brann and a Rivendare so probably those minions are not gonna be as effective as, say, an Anub'arak is for Undead that already benefit from Deathrattles on other things. The rest of the stuff seems pretty much the same or not particularly noteworthy (yeah the tier 5 will be a decent big dumb idiot but Bristleback Brute already did that two tiers earlier) but the new Tier 6 is a damn joke. I'd rather they keep the Darkgaze Elder in so Quilboar menagerie has more to work off of. Now Aggem is kinda stuck with just spamming Quilboar with Prophets of the Boar on the board (or Scrapsmiths, if you're nuts). Removal of Groundshaker eliminates some midrange blowouts so that's a positive. Overall full on Quilboar seem better off but Quilboar menagerie lost some options.

Mechs: So much cool stuff here. Greasebot and Mecherel are gone, so on one hand a big sad and on the other a big yay (I'll let you guess which one goes where). But the magnetic shit is so cool now. Pretty much all magnetics are now a must buy, except it's not immediately very gold efficient, so it's an investment now for payoff later (if you find the tier 5 magnetize buffer, if you get the gold generating or growing magnetizer, etc.). On the other hand, starting to magnetise late is also good cause then you can double dip off of the tier 6. Very cool stuff. And the mech deathrattle scam is still intact (Kangor is still in, it's just included in neutrals and not mechs for some reason). It's a shame about the whole divine shield build with the dragon and Grease bot, but having Divine Shields is kinda payoff enough in itself so playing off of that any further probably didn't seem worth it when cooler stuff could be included in its place. Also, we will no longer curse the presence of Mechs in the game alongside murlocs cause while there is Mistake in place of Ball of Minions, there is no more divine shield + poison to be had. At worst we got Selfless + Venomous, which is a very different story.

Neutral: Menagerie is dead but not really. The inclusion of Drakkari Enchanter (which I'm surprised didn't happen ages ago) makes Lightfang better (along with bunch of other stuff like The Walking Fort, Magmaloc, Rag (the hero)...not sure how it works with Patient Scout and all the upbeat guys). But with Teamaster gone the high end on Menageries has taaaaanked. And Quilboar menagerie is now more limited in options too. Overall seems like menagerie has powered down but seemingly so have some of the other builds, so maybe it's balanced? The tier 4 Upbeat dude, especially in multiples, could make some hilarious things happen with Fireworks Fanatics and will be a really good find for heroes with early access to high tier minions (like Galakrond or Toki). As long as they can stay alive they can potentially print a golden tier 6 before other players even get their first. Not sure about the Boogie Monster, it can theoretically slot into anything but if it only goes up and never goes down, you'll eventually get stuck on having to keep buying tier 6 minions to get any buffs and then the build kinda turns off. Otherwise it could be a decent-ish replacement for Teamaster, except it gives you no reason to actually run menagerie. So it might just become a thing you slot into your complete build as minion number 6 and then you just cycle through the tiers to buff what you already have. Maybe. The downside is, in that respect it kinda works like a non-tribal Kalecgos, except Kalecgos has the benefit of being in the same tribe as Nadina. With no tribal association I'm not sure Boogey Monster has the payoffs it needs. Other than that, a bunch of new battlecries and deathrattles have been added across the tribes, with a bunch of Deathrattle Murlocs and Battlecry Demons and Deathrattle + Battlecry Quilboar. It's gonna be a lot harder to decide whether or not Brann and Titus are a good keep off of an unlucky triple cause a lot more tribes will be able to find some use for them. Might make for a whole mess of weirdass builds, or it might just end up being a failed experiment, we'll see. And yes, the bastards did make sure Mantid Queen can still become a goddamn 2 for 1 cause now it can get reborn instead of divine shield. Fuck. But at least Tavern Tipper is gone! Screw that card. Goddamn midrange players sitting on tier 2 by 8 gold with 2 Tippers in play...

DK is supposed to be balanced around the fact they have to sacrifice access to the majority of DK cards in favour of having access to more specific powerful rewards. In that way, they're supposed to be somewhat predictable and be very defined in what they can and can't do. So you play against a Frost DK and being aware of how they play, you use your boardclears for the little stuff to mitigate incoming damage cause they won't be playing for board lategame anyway. And then they play two Scourges back to back because of discovers and that whole philosophy crumbles.

Though they have not been top of the meta or anything, I've seen so many control DKs in Wild just cramming in literally every discover card that exists just to abuse stuff outside of their runes. Like chain-discovering Patchwerks when they're triple Frost and winning a combo matchup they have no business winning. Or getting multiples of Blood Boil against a proactive opponent. That shit violates the entire philosophy of DK's design. Let them laser focus on what they do best and prohibit their access to stuff they're not supposed to be able to do at all.

Cause what is the purpose of this triple rune ban, really? Which cards are we super scared of DKs discovering in multiples? Sure there's Mograine, Vampiric Blood and Soulstealer. But as far as I see it, it's pretty much just Frostwyrm's Fury that really drives people up the wall. So just...nerf it? It's not like Snowfall Guardian is a fun and interactive card to play against (I play Wild, I should know...fucking Shudderwock Shamans). Snowfall for 1 extra mana with 5 damage battlecry isn't any more fun, let alone in a rune combination that has so much out of hand face damage.

I'm not particularly attached to the ability to spam Mograines or anything. By all means, ban triple rune cards if you don't want to balance them properly. But if they design DK to be hyper-focused and restrictive in deck building, the least they can do is enforce that restriction. This was their opportunity to do so.