Let's Lighten the mood, shall we? The Paladin cards are here to cleanse the Faire of its wicked corruption... we hope...
These reviews have actually been passed down from generation to generation, just waiting for the right moment to share them with the world. We thought about revealing them once in the 1600s or so, but after the third witch burning we decided it probably wasn't the right time for this sort of all-knowing truth. Fingers crossed we got it right this time!
"She's totally tamed, watch - uhh, keep burning that tent down! Good dragon!"
Quote From Demonxz95 First thing's first: This thing is a Murloc, although for almost all practical gameplay purposes, it basically isn't one. You're running this in a Dragon deck, and you're not going to run cross-tribal synergy with Murlocs and Dragons as their typical gameplans are almost entirely antithetical. This thing is purely a Dragon tutor, and in other cases, basically acts as an average result for random Murloc pulls.
For all of its Constructed applications though, this is a good Dragon tutor and surely a card that I'd see in Dragon Paladin. That may not be a thing in Standard in this set, but it can also be quite good at just tutoring a few specific Dragons in your deck. Tutor effects are always good, and this pulls a good card from your deck, so I expect it to see play. In Menagerie Paladin, it draws a Dragon and it even gives you a 2/3 for N'Zoth. That may not seems like much, but you most likely have empty space for a tribe, so why not have an extra 2/3? In any Paladin deck that runs Dragons, I expect this to be a consideration.
That other Recruit must feel awkward third-wheeling George and Karl...
Quote From linkblade91 Muster for Battle has returned, run for your lives! It's Odd-costed, too, so…AHHH fear the Odd Paladin AHHH! Sure there's no weapon attached, but you can upgrade Day at the Faire into a cheaper Stand Against Darkness, which is just excellent. You can give them +1 Attack and Divine Shield with Balloon Merchant, or make them 2/3s with Carnival Barker. Play Lothraxion the Redeemed to Corrupt the card, and you've got yourself a powerful follow-up play. I don't know if it's all enough for Dude Paladin to see play in Standard, but surely the card will see a home in Wild.
Thanks to some clever rule-bending, Darkmoon Faire actually has the busiest flight paths on Azeroth.
Quote From Demonxz95 Carousel Gryphon is a strong card, no question about it. Unlike many other Corrupt cards, this card is actually not bad to play in its base form. Honestly, a 5 mana 5/5 with Divine Shield is already quite solid by itself, so it's good that it doesn't need to worry about this issue that affect other Corrupt cards. Corrupted, it's a 5 mana 8/8 with Taunt and Divine Shield. This is obviously very good, even though this does come with the drawback that your opponent is more likely to have removal for it at that point. It's still by no means something to scoff at.
This has strong synergy with two of the Old Gods in this set: N'Zoth and Y'Shaarj. Both because it will give you a strong defensive Taunt minion after you spend 10 mana. Normally, you'd be all defenseless as you would have played 10 mana without a Taunt minion (Infested Tauren used to be run specifically so the original N'Zoth would resurrect a Taunt minion), and this helps you cover that. Between this and Hammer of the Naaru, these two contribute two decently sized minions for two of the tribes you'd summon with N'Zoth, God of the Deep. Both happen to be Taunt minions too!
I expect this to be a very strong card in Menagerie Paladin decks, although outside of that, it's still pretty good too. It'll also be very strong in Arena.
"I'm popping down to Karazhan, you want anything?"
Quote From Avalon Does anyone remember Ivory Knight back from One Night in Karazhan? Snack Run has the same effect, but it loses the 4 mana body in exchange of being way cheaper. That said, I think this is actually an improvement: if you want an effect like this in your deck, all you care about are the healing and the card generation, with a chance of Discovering a board clear or even further healing like Libram of Hope. The 4/4 body of Ivory Knight is not bad (yes, it is: the stats for the cost are terrible and it has no immediate impact on the board), but it's just something you don't need and that slows down the card.
I think this is a solid card that will see plenty of play and that will help Pure Paladin, which has lost popularity compared to the much more flexible and powerful Pen Flinger Libram version, to come back.
"This place has really gone to the Gods..."
Quote From Echo One of the returning subthemes for Paladin this expansion is Silver Hand Paladin, with Carnival Barker being one of the payoff cards. While turn 5 being able to play this and hero power for 5/5 is not the worst play, the card synergizes great when combined with any of the existing cards that summon recruits. More importantly, the card also buffs a lot of other cards that see play in paladin currently, such as Animated Broomstick, Murgur Murgurgle, Salhet's Pride, etc. As for whether you would want to run Carnival Barker in a more dedicated "1 health Paladin" deck or just slot it into the current Pure Paladin/Broom Paladin, it feels like it can put on tremendous pressure by itself on the opponent. Something else that this card has going for it is the mana cost. Odd Paladin is having a field day with this card as that hypothetical turn 5 goes from 5/5 worth of stats to 6/8 worth of stats. It also synergizes heavily with other great cards in the deck, such as Tour Guide and Lost in the Jungle. Will this bring Odd Paladin back into the top tier meta contender? I don't really know to be honest given my lack of experience in the format, but Carnival Barker definitely is a solid buff for the deck.
They're helium-filled, so you know they're really Light.
Quote From Echo Speaking of Silver Hand Paladin, Balloon Merchant is another great payoff card. Being able to give all of your recruits shields, as well as making them be able to trade more easily into the opponent's minion is a great payoff, and so the only issue the card might face is the lack of support to make it work. Currently, in standard, there is Air Raid and Day at the Faire, both of which curves nicely into dropping this on four. In combination with Lothraxion the Redeemed and Carnival Barker, I wouldn't be surprised if this deck has legs to stand on against most decks. The issue comes in with other Paladin deck that is seeing play, that being Broom Paladin, which can just ping everything down and shut the deck down. In a meta where Broom Paladin is not at the top, I can see Silver Hand Paladin being great and in turn, Balloon Merchant putting in a lot of work, I'm just skeptical to say whether it will be able to survive an endless onslaught of Pen Flingers.
You can tip the odds in your favour by bumping the machine - it tickles his tentacles.
Quote From ShadowsOfSense Well, I do love a good random spell effect, so of course I had to take a look at this.
This is an incredibly awkward Secret, but I do think it has the potential to be quite disruptive in the right meta. The fact that it's so low-cost is a huge benefit, because it means you can weave it into a turn more easily, instead of having to sacrifice a full turn defending against a big spell as you would with something like Counterspell. Of course, the downside is that whatever spell ends up being cast instead could still significantly harm you - on the other hand, it could also backfire and do something terrible for the opponent. Seeing someone attempt a Fireball only to have it end up as a Cataclysm or Astral Communion would be amazing.
As with all Secrets, a clever enough opponent will be able to mitigate the damage to themselves, unfortunately. Especially right now, the heaviest spell-based decks in Standard are in Mage, and the spells they play are often so low-cost that what they change to will likely be of little consequence. In fact, frequently the actual spell doesn't matter too much, as it's merely a vehicle for empowering a Mana Cyclone or Chenvaala.
Interesting idea for a card, and could definitely lead to some wild swing turns if the opponent can't play around it and needs to cast their big splashy spell; unfortunately, I don't think that's where we're at right now in the meta, but this is still one to keep an eye on.
Sometimes the best way to spread the word is with a good hard whack.
Quote From linkblade91 Yrel's hammer is in the game, yay :D A 6/6 Elemental with Taunt for 6 is fairly vanilla, but adding a 3/3 weapon on top of it is great. Some consider it "power creep" over Fire Elemental, although you do need to take face damage if you're trading into a minion. Not much to say, really; it's a pretty strong card, but will it find a home? You could use N'Zoth, God of the Deep to bring the Elemental back, alongside all of the Dragons and Mechs…and Murlocs…the Paladin has access to. Worth a try, maybe.
Don't worry, you can trust him - would an evil demon be wearing such fetching yellow armour?
Quote From linkblade91 A confusing addition to the expansion, Lothraxion the Redeemed doesn't make much sense at the Faire. It's been a while since "Dude Paladin" was a thing in Standard, so I guess it's time to take another stab at it, eh? 5-mana means it can trigger Day at the Faire's Corrupt, leading into a strong turn-6 (or even turn 5, if you Coin out the Demon); combined with Carnival Barker, you can nearly create Silvermoon Guardians on the cheap. Lothraxion might be too slow for Wild, and it could be overkill with Steward of Darkshire, but I'm going to try it in Odd Paladin anyway.
She doesn't care what side you picked, so long as you picked one - at least that way she knows if she hates you or not!
Quote From linkblade91 I've been creating custom Yrel cards for a while now, so her existence in-game makes me smile :) That being said, she's "just" Shirvallah, the Tiger for a Pure Paladin deck, with Taunt and a different condition. Definitely powerful in the deck she's designed for, but…you couldn't come up with anything beyond "keyword soup", Blizzard? And what's she doing at the Faire? I'm so confused right now; happy and disappointed simultaneously, bummed that she's not more interesting, but I'm still going to craft her straight away. I wonder if she'll be worth it after Lightforged Zealot and Lightforged Crusader are no longer in Standard.
Comments
Oh My Yogg! is the first paladin secret in nearly 2 years. I really thought Secret Paladin was coming back after RoS released its truck load of sinergy, but it turns out Mysterious Challenger and Avenge had to come back for it to even be a consideration. Still glad to see it as I was starting to suspect blizz was giving up on pally secrets.
Oh My Yogg! is a very solid disruptor, I think. Not that strong against Mage, but against Priest, which will be counting on that one spell to activate their [Hearthstone Card (Sethekk Voidweaver) Not Found] and begin the discount train, it's deadly.
The same is true against Druids - blocking a Guardian Animals is ruinous, and blocking a Lightning Bloom can screw up their mana curve and delay the deck for a turn or two. If you have other secrets in your deck, you could even intimidate players into wasting an Innervate or Lightning Bloom before playing Guardian Animals, making Kael'thas weaker. Question is, what other secrets could you run?
All those can be easily done with Cult Neophyte at the right moment, a solid 3/2 body to boot with absolutely no way of backfiring. Disrupting priest may be a little difficult since the current iteration plays like 4 spell generators, easily more than that in practice, and priest plays quite a number of 1 mana spells.
I wonder if using the characters Yrel and Lothraxion here would mean that we wouldn't see anything related to the burning legion in later expansions. Both are rather big characters that can hold up entirely on their own, so its curious that we see them together in one expansion.
They did do multiple instances of the same character(s) in the past. I wouldnt read too much into it.
Murloc Paladin runs the dragon that gives divine shield to murloc. I can definitely see this card being played there.