Hearthstone Patch 19.6 Notes went live during Blizzcon and brought news to the Standard meta! High Abbess Alura, one of the cornerstone cards of the infamous Cheese Paladin, which has wreaked havoc since the release of Darkmoon Races back in late January, just received a nerf.

For those few who live under a rock and don't know what we're talking about, Cheese Paladin was a deck whose goal was playing either Nozdormu the Timeless or High Abbess Alura as early as possible and the quickly snowball the game by playing big hitters turn after turn or filling the entire board with Murlocs thanks to Tip the Scales from Alura's Spellburst trigger.

The deck was able to high roll with way too much consistency, especially thanks to Redscale Dragontamer's ability to tutor out Nozdormu, and not many heroes had the necessary tools to withstand waves and waves of stats. Therefore, here's what we think of this change.


High Abbess Alura Card Image

Cost increased from 4 to 5 mana.

Possibly not the only nerf people of Standard (and Wild) were asking for, but surely a welcome one. While in Hearthstone's eternal format Alura is less of a problem, in Standard it created quite a back-breaking swing together with Tip the Scales - thanks to her Spellburst effect, you were able to fill your board with Murlocs as early as turn 4. It doesn't need to be said that very few classes have an answer for that, and the chances of winning the game on the spot are very high. 

With this change, Alura's functionality remains exactly the same, but the increase in mana cost brings the consequence that it will take a bit more time to exploit her swingy effect, so that other decks will have a larger breathing room to build a board and, therefore, to win the game.

All in all, a good change - however, it's quite sad that Alura is getting touched mainly because of a rotating card like Tip the Scales, which was able to break the meta not once but even twice. On the other hand, Paladin is not in a bad spot at all, so Uther should definitely survive this change.


What do you think of this nerf? Did you want to see any other changes in the meta? Let us know in the comments below!