Dealing 3 to a minion has pretty much always cost 2, even when coupled with another effect (Darkbomb, Frostbolt, Penance, Quick Shot, Wrath). This is straight up bad, unless paired with Kael'thas, as others have noted above.
Based on other cards (and I know they're not always consistent), this should definitely give you an Excess Mana, but only one. Remember Astral Communion? One Excess Mana card.
Great card. Earthquake has seen surprisingly little play, despite being super strong against Reborn and Deathrattle minions. Maybe the cost? This is way cheaper for less damage, but it's the second round of damage that really counts, isn't it?
Solid card. Powercreep is unfortunate, but since Sen'jin is neutral (and Basic too), I guess this is fine. DH is going to need both the taunt and healing.
That's a pretty interesting question. I agree that for a lot of deck archetypes, two regions immediately spring to mind. But I'm not sure if that puts the game in such a bad spot. Plus there are a lot of inventive players out there who come up with new spins on tried ideas.
Like how Spiders are included in Shadow Isles and Noxus, but one of the most favorite Spider decks uses Demacia with Dawnspeakers. Or how Fiora decks seem to combo naturally with Ionia, but I'm currently running a Fiora & Ashe deck with Frostbite effects quite successfully (unranked, though). And I'm fairly confident that you can construct big-spell decks around Lux and Karma instead of Heimerdinger, too.
I guess if too much of each region's identity ends up being tied up in specific two-region-combo decks, then that would hurt the creative deckbuilding potential. But I don't see any reason to panic yet. In my opinion, we should hold off at least until the 1st expansion releases.
You could use this with mana reservoir and shadow step for a cheap finisher in Rogue or you can get spell damage x 6 for 8 mana in druid I know I will try to make this work.
Actually the more I think about it there are dozens of way you can make a threat out of these for almost every class
Its basically an aggro deck counter to res priest. All you need to do is to give this minion rush and your res priest days are over. Just use a Magic Carpet, an already established good enough card for zoo type decks.
Other than that, this minion gets obviously dangerous as the game progresses since even the biggest card just turns to a 1/2 minion if even so much touched by it. But the difficulties in giving this minion rush (and not saddle yourself with minions like Rocket Augmerchant) balances it out.
Oh, and embiggen druid can barely interact with this thing without transforming one of its minions, so it counters that too. But obviously if we start seeing too many of this thing then 2 damage dealers will become meta very quickly.
And then next turn they destroy your carpet for "free" and then they AOE you and keep destroying you with the spore.
You can't really buff this card either, if you buff it and transform enemies to this.. then they destroy your buffs as well.
Its a tech card, albeit very clunky one that sometimes work. Transform effects should not be underestimated, and against res priest that is more so the case. I'm not saying this card is the greatest card in the world and we're going to see this everywhere, just stating some obvious use of the card. Its certainly unique in what it does.
As the old tale said, "Fight Fire with Fire". Demon Hunter consists of Aggro Minions and threat to attack directly to face. You could also play aggro with Galakrond Shaman and Quest Hunter as both has many Rush minions, just need to hold them off. Because taunt is not the answer when facing Kayn Sunfury. Lifesteal would be good addition.
EDIT. It doesn't have to be Shaman or Hunter, as long as the deck is aggressive too.
Also, since we don't know how the meta will stand, I think Control Armor Warrior and Quest Priest (Priest rework has more heals) can handle plenty of damage pretty good. But this is just a theory.
I think that GoliathTheDwarf's article about Illidari's story should have its own article on the front page. I don't think it gets good reach in here... AND IT DESERVES MORE.
Its basically an aggro deck counter to res priest. All you need to do is to give this minion rush and your res priest days are over. Just use a Magic Carpet, an already established good enough card for zoo type decks.
Other than that, this minion gets obviously dangerous as the game progresses since even the biggest card just turns to a 1/2 minion if even so much touched by it. But the difficulties in giving this minion rush (and not saddle yourself with minions like Rocket Augmerchant) balances it out.
Oh, and embiggen druid can barely interact with this thing without transforming one of its minions, so it counters that too. But obviously if we start seeing too many of this thing then 2 damage dealers will become meta very quickly.
And then next turn they destroy your carpet for "free" and then they AOE you and keep destroying you with the spore.
You can't really buff this card either, if you buff it and transform enemies to this.. then they destroy your buffs as well.
It wrecks nobody. Maybe slightly annoys res priest but not much more. I once played as a control shaman against a res priest. I transformed two of his minions into frogs, three minions into murlocs. He resurrected only his good minions anyway, mass res gave him 2\3 normal minions and only one frog. It's useless. Thank god they didn't print any new res cards for priest. Maybe this archetype will finally die.
You can give 1x Zul'Drak Ritualist a try in your deck if you have a space for it! But it's pretty bad against every other decks though. It is very effective one against Resurrection Priest.
Open the bundle, then see where you are at, I mean.. the answer to this question doesn't change your course of action, hoard gold open 90 packs, see what you are missing, craft what's left of interest to you.
If you're ready to keep some cards in your hand you can do 20 with Kael'thas Sunstrider in one turn. Add Sorcerer's Apprentice you can possibly OTK. I've tried some of those decks, desperately trying to make it work, but mage spells are too reactive, and there's very little you can do when the board gets too thick and you run out of freezes.
Maybe you can afford an Alexstrasza + 1 mana frost nova (courtesy of Incanter's Flow, one the best cards in AoO). But it might just be that mage draws are too weak in a minionless deck to do this consistently enough. Now that Acolyte of Pain is gone, that's another void unfilled in AoO.
Think you can't run ANY minion in such deck I mean with duplicates you can run a few, cause on average you will get rid of them in your last 10 cards or so.. but ONE minion really ruins your deck and if it's the last card in your deck you have 4 worse cards in your hand (you can still play them but they kinda suck).
You can still run Incanter's Flow in any deck tbh you can have 20 spells and it's around 10 mana of saving to play the card so.. but it's a different deck of course.
Malygos/Alextraza dragon spell heavy mage, maybe also add around 4 more dragons for tempo and value (6 dragons can constantly activate synergies) and run the OTK along with tempo or stall tools. SO that's another deck that you could run.. and if you are Trump make it highlander as well.
Utter failure 6 times with random opponents. All of them were cooperating with me well. The brawl is just that hard.
Finally beat it after 2 attempts with my wife across the room, planning every turn with full knowledge of what the other person has. And it still took two tries that way. Holy cow, way too hard.
If you already have the 90 pack bundle, why not decide for yourself when you have finished opening those? It will be much easier to judge when you know what you have already opened and how much is left that interests you.
Certainly you want to spend the dust at some point, with a sensible long-term goal being to open just the right number of packs each expansion to cover the dust costs. But what that actually means depends on how lucky you are with epics and lengedaries, hence my advice to decide after opening the 90.
New Druid Spell - Bogbeam
Dealing 3 to a minion has pretty much always cost 2, even when coupled with another effect (Darkbomb, Frostbolt, Penance, Quick Shot, Wrath). This is straight up bad, unless paired with Kael'thas, as others have noted above.
New Druid Spell - Overgrowth
Based on other cards (and I know they're not always consistent), this should definitely give you an Excess Mana, but only one. Remember Astral Communion? One Excess Mana card.
New Demon Hunter Minion - Netherwalker
Great 2-drop. And it's not a demon itself, so you can't just chain them (like we've all seen with Stonehill Defender and Frightened Flunky).
New Demon Hunter Spell - Immolation Aura
Great card. Earthquake has seen surprisingly little play, despite being super strong against Reborn and Deathrattle minions. Maybe the cost? This is way cheaper for less damage, but it's the second round of damage that really counts, isn't it?
Hall of Fame Crafting Guide for Hearthstone's Year of the Phoenix Rotation & Ashes of Outland Expansion
So I should have crafted a golden Leeroy instead of prophet Velen? I may not get the full dust value back?
New Demon Hunter Minion - Ashtongue Battlelord
Solid card. Powercreep is unfortunate, but since Sen'jin is neutral (and Basic too), I guess this is fine. DH is going to need both the taunt and healing.
New Mage Spell - Deep Freeze
Might see play in a more spell heavy Reno mage variant but it's a bit slow and might not make the cut without any support.
Does each region have enough of an identity?
That's a pretty interesting question. I agree that for a lot of deck archetypes, two regions immediately spring to mind. But I'm not sure if that puts the game in such a bad spot. Plus there are a lot of inventive players out there who come up with new spins on tried ideas.
Like how Spiders are included in Shadow Isles and Noxus, but one of the most favorite Spider decks uses Demacia with Dawnspeakers. Or how Fiora decks seem to combo naturally with Ionia, but I'm currently running a Fiora & Ashe deck with Frostbite effects quite successfully (unranked, though). And I'm fairly confident that you can construct big-spell decks around Lux and Karma instead of Heimerdinger, too.
I guess if too much of each region's identity ends up being tied up in specific two-region-combo decks, then that would hurt the creative deckbuilding potential. But I don't see any reason to panic yet. In my opinion, we should hold off at least until the 1st expansion releases.
How to beat Demon Hunters?
The more Aggro the DH goes, the less resilient their board is: if you can turn initiative on your side, they will have a hard time at recovering.
If they go for Tempo, you should still be able to Control them.
I am not sure they can effectively go for Midrange with the current cards.
PS: by Midrange I mean a deck with huge Tempo swings in later turns, eg. Galakrond Rogue.
Ashes of Outland
My bet is that Rogue is gonna use ALL new class cards in one deck, maybe except Cursed Vagrant, and will destroy everything.
Blizzard Reveals Four New Demon Hunter Cards - 2 Basic & 2 Legendary Initiates via a Hearthside Chat
aight, thanks :)
New Neutral Minion - Ethereal Augmerchant
You could use this with mana reservoir and shadow step for a cheap finisher in Rogue or you can get spell damage x 6 for 8 mana in druid I know I will try to make this work.
Actually the more I think about it there are dozens of way you can make a threat out of these for almost every class
Except priest lolz
Infectious Sporeling
just give it rush-> transform effect to any class, little bit clunky, but if you hate big priest in wild, you might consider
New Neutral Minion - Infectious Sporeling
Its a tech card, albeit very clunky one that sometimes work. Transform effects should not be underestimated, and against res priest that is more so the case. I'm not saying this card is the greatest card in the world and we're going to see this everywhere, just stating some obvious use of the card. Its certainly unique in what it does.
How to beat Demon Hunters?
Sacrificial Pact
New Demon Hunter Minion - Netherwalker
Wait isn't the demon hunter weakness is value generation?
How to beat Demon Hunters?
As the old tale said, "Fight Fire with Fire". Demon Hunter consists of Aggro Minions and threat to attack directly to face. You could also play aggro with Galakrond Shaman and Quest Hunter as both has many Rush minions, just need to hold them off. Because taunt is not the answer when facing Kayn Sunfury. Lifesteal would be good addition.
EDIT. It doesn't have to be Shaman or Hunter, as long as the deck is aggressive too.
Also, since we don't know how the meta will stand, I think Control Armor Warrior and Quest Priest (Priest rework has more heals) can handle plenty of damage pretty good. But this is just a theory.
Still. "The best defense is a good offense"
The Ultimate Ashes of Outland & Year of the Phoenix Recap
I think that GoliathTheDwarf's article about Illidari's story should have its own article on the front page. I don't think it gets good reach in here... AND IT DESERVES MORE.
New Neutral Minion - Infectious Sporeling
And then next turn they destroy your carpet for "free" and then they AOE you and keep destroying you with the spore.
You can't really buff this card either, if you buff it and transform enemies to this.. then they destroy your buffs as well.
New Neutral Minion - Infectious Sporeling
You can give 1x Zul'Drak Ritualist a try in your deck if you have a space for it! But it's pretty bad against every other decks though. It is very effective one against Resurrection Priest.
Hearthstone Economy Question
Open the bundle, then see where you are at, I mean.. the answer to this question doesn't change your course of action, hoard gold open 90 packs, see what you are missing, craft what's left of interest to you.
Spell Mage? Will the Archetype work?
Think you can't run ANY minion in such deck I mean with duplicates you can run a few, cause on average you will get rid of them in your last 10 cards or so.. but ONE minion really ruins your deck and if it's the last card in your deck you have 4 worse cards in your hand (you can still play them but they kinda suck).
You can still run Incanter's Flow in any deck tbh you can have 20 spells and it's around 10 mana of saving to play the card so.. but it's a different deck of course.
Malygos/Alextraza dragon spell heavy mage, maybe also add around 4 more dragons for tempo and value (6 dragons can constantly activate synergies) and run the OTK along with tempo or stall tools. SO that's another deck that you could run.. and if you are Trump make it highlander as well.
This Week's Tavern Brawl is "Return of Mechazod!" and Rewards a Classic Pack
Utter failure 6 times with random opponents. All of them were cooperating with me well. The brawl is just that hard.
Finally beat it after 2 attempts with my wife across the room, planning every turn with full knowledge of what the other person has. And it still took two tries that way. Holy cow, way too hard.
Hearthstone Economy Question
If you already have the 90 pack bundle, why not decide for yourself when you have finished opening those? It will be much easier to judge when you know what you have already opened and how much is left that interests you.
Certainly you want to spend the dust at some point, with a sensible long-term goal being to open just the right number of packs each expansion to cover the dust costs. But what that actually means depends on how lucky you are with epics and lengedaries, hence my advice to decide after opening the 90.
Hearthstone Ashes Of Outland Final Reveal Stream Live Recap
@ShadowsOfSense you forgot 1 thing.
April 1st
New Ladder System