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Eh, those dragons are really good value but the legendary payoff just feels like an epic. If this is all of the dragon support druid will get then it will suffer from the same problem elemental shaman has. If a certain archetype based around minions is currently non existent (e.g. elemental shaman, dragon druid) then they need to dedicate almost the entire set to that archetype in order to be in discussion for competitiveness. Kibler will be revealing the rest of the druid (I think?) cards so maybe it will really be all dragons.

That's exactly the reason i stopped playing years ago. I like long strategic games. Sure, i don't mind the odd quick ones here and there. But getting killed turn 4-6 is not what i call "a game". For me, the average number of turns per game should be 15, not 10.

Of course, health is the easiest to change. But considering how incompetent they are in managing power creeps (i.e. i'm definitely sure it can even be avoided, and have only slight power creep swings every few years, by adding different concepts into the game rather than something that makes the game faster or more luck-based than it already is), they'd probably botch it too.

I've said it previously - they need new designers and leads that want/are allowed to transform this into a real card game rather than an arcade fiasco.

There's always the posibility of updating older cards to match the new ones, yet, at this point, i think we're due for HS 2.0. A new game with proper new ideas. No more stupid filler cards either.

In the end, the game sucks for me, hero health increasing or not. I don't trust them anymore with anything. They clearly have a target audience of teenagers and kids, who apparently don't like to think strategically, thus they'll never do it, probably.

Well, the stealth makes it easy to buff them as much as you want before you attack (or your opponent plays a board clear). This would be an awesome card if the snakes were poisonous. I'm guessing in that case it would need to cost 2, maybe even 3 Mana.

Well, I guess if you don't need hard removal the turn you draw this (or does this count as hard removal since it won't kill something with divine shield?), you can play it when you do need it, but with the possibility that it dies in the process. Probably good either way, but much better if it can kill an 8/8 or something without dying in the process.

This looks alright, insofar as it could leave you with something if your opponent clears the board. 

So a card that wants both handbuffs and board buffs, eh? This could be good, but it really depends on the support it gets.

This, team5, is the problem with your idea of a sludgelock deck.

You print several cards that get better when this card is played but this is only 2 out of 30 cards in your deck. So you build your entire deck around two of a piece and call it synergy?

I would have preferred if all these sludge related cards simply discarded from the hand instead of bottom of the deck. At very least that way we know there's discard synergy already existing that can support this archetype. At present moment, this is the most important card in sludgelock and its not even that great. So why are we arsed to play sludgelock at all?

This is the kind of "lol, 4 mana 7/7" moments that we all know and love.

Unfortunately, this is 2023 and in this era even a 4 mana 8/8 is no longer considered good enough to suffer through its conditions, and this card comes with one major problem indeed. Fair enough its only destroying cards from the bottom of your deck, but imagine playing this against mage or DK and you can already see the problem.

Aggro decks nowadays tend to have plenty of reload options so there's just no reason to believe that burning 10 cards, for example, from your deck is inconsequential. Making things worse is that this card practically puts you on a timer, and its very nearly impossible to play two of these at the same time unless you really, really feel lucky that day.

Its not very good but the whole idea is for this card to be discarded/destroyed and never played on its own.

So the question is whether it is possible for this card to be discarded/destroyed with any consistency? My guess is no. There's at present no many discard cards and none of them presents a consistent method of discarding this specific card. Even if you play this in a sludgelock deck, there's just no way to guarantee it destruction. Imagine drawing this card, what then? Just do a hail mary? Making things worse is the fact that sludgelock presents more targets to be discarded so this card gets even less consistent.

Hand of Gul'dan it is not.

Personally I think the card is shit. Its the kind of thing that can only ever be good if you do some convoluted mexican hat dance so the card wont screw you.

The whole idea is of course to discard the sludges but what if you dont have any sludge at the bottom, will you risk it all and play this card regardless? Or more likely it'll just stay stuck in your hand until you can properly set it up.

There is only one silver lining, and is presently the only thing keeping me from downgrading this to 1 star, is that you can build an aggro deck and just pretend that you're playing Gone Fishing. But in 2023 nowadays, its increasingly difficult to justify building a deck filled with garbage even for aggro decks.

Its really not good. But if youre gonna play this is entirely because it puts a barrel into your deck's bottom.

Personally I think this card is bait. Unless youre playing aggro your opponent would likely manipulate this card to either overdraw you or to fill your deck with so much trash that when shuffled instantly makes your deck weaker on the draw.

And with options like Snake Oil Seller being very likely to see play throughout, forcing a shuffle will likely not be too difficult. Id avoid this card, but then you'll likely play it just for the synergy and pray.

The only good thing about it is that excavates, so you'll play this entirely for that reason alone. The nice stat and taunt is a bonus, though a good one at that.

It'll see play in excavatelock, because there's really no other reason to play this vanilla minion in your deck otherwise.

Its an excavate card so it'll see play if excavate warlock is playable.

That's about it really. The main factor is indeed just to trigger more excavate, because you're probably aiming to get to The Azerite Snake as soon as possible. Screw the card, its main function is for a higher purpose, and thus even if its effect is simply just to excavate it'll see play.

Personally I think this card is a miss because at current moment of writing there's just no good fel spells. Ironically had this card came out during alterac it would at very least be an impactful card, over the many fel spells that were introduced then.

But will this card see play? Probably yes, because lifesteal is a keyword you can never ignore and always must be respected. Even if I personally dont think its as good as it seem, you'll play this because of deck synergy. At very least the card grants you two 1 mana deal 3 damage fel spells so you can do something with it.

Its practically Soulciologist Malicia in all but name. Bizarrely this card has less stats by 1. Is that extra health and attack really that OP team5?

So, there's no real reason to review cards like these. Its gonna see play if excavate sees play. No reason not to play it, especially since you'll likely need that board swing option for playing so many excavate cards that probably dont do more than putting stats on board.

Its unlikely to ever win you games on its own, but then again neither did malicia and yet that card functioned pretty well with good win rates.

Playing 3 modes with less than 18 deck slots would not be fun either. I think the solution would be to filter decks by mode, not less deck slots.

I liked the meta when Prince Renathal gave you 40 health, so experimentally I'd say that for me the game is better with more health.

Maybe you only included it for humorous purposes, but going from Magma Rager to Ice Rager is not power creep, as neither card ever played a role in any past meta. A real example of power creep is Azure Drake, which used to be considered a good card included in many decks and now barely sees play despite being buffed. Or going from Sen'jin Shieldmasta to Saronite Tol'vir.

What happened in Wild is a particular kind of power creep: the main factor driving up the power level is not that people select the best cards from all past sets, but that synergies work much better if you have a larger pool of synergistic cards to pick from.

Old Hearthstone had a few OTKs and that sort of thing, but also three things you seldom find in modern Hearthstone:

• Less swings. No healing to full health 5 times a game. No 20 face damage a turn as a baseline for most decks.
• Stickier minions. When you placed a strong, expensive minion on the board, you didn't expect your opponent to have an answer for it 80% of the time.
• Games that would consistently last past round 10. This has become shorter over time.

I agree with your first two observations, but old Hearthstone games did not consistently last past round 10. Maybe if you go back to before Naxxramas or played a very control-heavy deck, but most games I played with mid-range decks took between 8 and 12 turns (I remember because I logged my attempts to play decks like Beast Druid). Going past turn 10 wasn't rare, but it wasn't a majority of games either. Dr. Boom was such a good card because he came down on turn 7, which was often just before games were decided.

Less swings has both upsides and downsides. It feels more fair when your efforts aren't easily erased, but it also means that if a deck snowballs, there is no hope of recovering. While I think Modern Hearthstone has a bit too much swing potential, I wouldn't want to go back to the old days either.

I fully agree with stickier minions. Minions are now so easily removed that you summon them to force your opponent spend resources on removing them, not because you expect them to still be there the next round. Again, I wouldn't want to go all the way back to the old days (games being decided by a turn 1 Mana Wyrm was no fun), but having stickier minions would be nice.

Giving a hero more health has two main effects:

• it gives you more time to stabilize versus aggro
• it raises the bar for OTKs

I think having more time to stabilize versus aggro is a good thing, because it makes games more interactive. It will force aggro decks to have a game plan that goes beyond just dumping the initial hand on the board and going face.

Raising the bar for OTKs is good up to a certain point: metas in which OTK decks are dominant aren't fun, as the first player to draw their combo wins. But metas in which control decks without win conditions are dominant become a slog. I think it's good that in modern Hearthstone control decks do have win conditions, although when a single card is a win condition, like Odyn, Prime Designate, it becomes too repetitive.

Tying health, archetypes and classes together sounds like a risky proposition:

• even though cards were designed with a particular archetype in mind, that is no guarantee they'll be played only in that archetype; cheap taunts have been used successfully in aggro decks as well, for example
• what about decks from previous expansions? do you tie a class and archetype together for an entire year? do you power creep so much from expansion to expansion that old decks become unplayable? if not, then some classes will have multiple archetypes
• for aggro decks, how much health the most common opposing decks have is more important than the amount of health the own hero has

In particular, if there is a viable aggro deck in a class that was predicted to not play aggro, that deck could beat all the aggro decks in the lower-health classes, because it wins damage races.

In Hearthstone a card has a significant intrinsic mana value. For example, we have 0-mana cards that do useful things. The Warlock hero power costs 2 mana and 2 health for a single card and still it's considered one of the better hero powers. Arcane Intellect gives you net +1 card for 3 mana, yet lots of decks include it. Faeria had a neutral card with the same cost and effect, but it saw almost no play, because in Faeria drawing cards just gives you more options, but the mana cost determines the power level of the card.

It is because of the intrinsic mana value of cards that we have aggro decks that dump their initial hand on the board and win or lose based on that momentum. It is the reason card draw and card generation are so good and that in turn is one of the main contributing factors to today's power creep: it is easier than ever to draw and generate cards and every card represents a mana discount.