If this were it the minion text would be the battlecry. The second part would be a hovering over the Magic Bomb minion. Still may need tweak, but yeah... similar to Living Bomb from Blackrock adventure (I think?).
So I got it 2 or 3 months ago. I quite enjoyed the pace of growing your collection, you don't get handed everything asap, but you also grow at a very steady pace. You can cast things at different spell speeds to have windows of interaction like MTG, but the pace of the game didn't suffer for it. Game aesthetics are on point, it feels well made and well polished.
But the immediate issue I ran into was 95% of my opponents were playing basically the same thing every game: Aggro.
- Elise + Fearsome
- Noxus free damage vomit
- Elusive + Autofill
- Aggro Champion with Quick Attack + Autofill
- Usually some fusion of two of the above
This meant I could literally only ever play Shadow Isles + Stuff myself, because Black Spear was a painful necessity against all the constant aggro swarms, Shadow Isles also has some of the only good card draw to dig with, and even Grasp of the Undying (which is overcosted) was also kind of necessary.
Doesn't help that, on top of this, the "control" deck's cheese of choice with Heimdinger and Karma also pretty much required a cheap 3 damage spell so you could cast 2 removals in a turn, or just get overrun by their endless value. And "answer me or basically lose immediately" gameplay is VERY polarizing and not fun. Any delay means too much damage or too many generated cards for the opponent, and you'll lose to THAT even if you find an answer after a short delay.
ALL OF THIS COULD BE ADDRESSED WITH MORE CHEAP CONDITIONAL REMOVAL OPTIONS.
Instead they nerf Black Spear. It was already balanced and difficult to utilize without filling your deck with a bunch of 1-cost garbage which already can't block Fearsome, can't block Elusive, and is too weak to even BE called a roadblock against the Aggro decks.
So now literally only Culling Strike exists to deal with SOME of the overwhelming number of Aggro cards, and it doesn't work on several. Noxian Guillotine is worthless because you can't EVEN do damage in the early game at all to units with Fearsome and Elusive going unblocked or Quick Attack not taking damage on attack. Most games just degenerate into a game of chicken between who can vomit the most Elusive+Fearsome cards or some overpowered Champion like Zed not being immediately answered, starting at "only" 6 damage per turn for 3 and ramping up after.
Legends of Runeterra was already plagued by Aggro being overpowered, Combo being overpowered, and Control pretty much not existing. For an online card game that FINALLY offered some promise of Mutually InteractiveGameplay (without the toxicity of unlimited value Planeswalkers), instead windows of interaction are being closed. Almost every low-cost Champion in this game now cannot be meaningfully interacted with, Elusive and Fearsome based aggression is even more dominating, and decks have even less variety in builds and gameplay than before because CONTROL isn't allowed to exist to balance the meta. (And even on Control's end, I don't want an unlimited value engine like Heimerdinger to exist in his current state either. That's the SAME issue MTG has. The card goes a minimum of 2 or 3 for 1 if he even gets answered or just oppressively wins without an immediate answer.)
There's no decisions or variety in deck-building or gameplay. You play Aggro of some flavor and vomit cards at the opponent and whoever can vomit harder wins. I don't care that there's 4 or 5 flavors of THE SAME EXACT THING WITH THE SAME FUNDAMENTAL GAMEPLAY, it's still the same deck with the same playstyle. Vomit difficult-to-block guys, go aggro. Mostly, it's just whichever aggro deck in the aggro mirror draws more of their unanswerable aggro Champions first and can attack with them first to snowball the game. Some combat tricks can shift this but those are again just standard aggro cards for standard aggro decks.
Do I really care if it's Shadow Isles, Noxus, Ionia, or Demacia? Nope. It's all the same deck doing the same thing.
And that's why I want to put the game down. It has a fun core, it has promise. But it's like the developers only like Aggro and Combo and hate Control, like the usual kids in other card games who whine whenever anything Control based is viable. Instead of playing better, balancing threat output, not overextending, finding ways to increase value generation... these kinds just whine that the other guy's Control cards need nerfs. It's a childish way to play, wanting to treat the game like a singleplayer race and then complaining that you hit a speedbump instead of asking what you could do to play around your opponent. And it's a childish and self-defeating way to build a game.
I disagree. The vast majority of mage spells are either direct damage, card generation or secrets. Extremely few spells can screw you since they all target enemies. Yes, you might not clear the board and you might overdraw, but most of the time you'll kill a few enemy minions and deal some face damage.
It doesn’t matter if it can cast them against enemies, all the spells are still ‘random’ and they can screw you. Anything can happen so that means it’s not consistent and you ain’t gonna win games with something inconsistent.
Conjurer's Calling is a low roll I suppose... "Conj my opponents big guy 5 times, exactly what I wanted, and now my hand is full too and I burn my next card"
We'll go more in-depth on this next week, but the tl;dr on it is to https://firesidegatherings.com/en-us/ and select Host a Gathering. You fill in the form, the time your private gathering takes place, and then you're good to go!
When The Amazing Reno was first revealed I misread and thought he would only cast Mage spells so I checked all the Magespells in standard and it turns out there's a lot of good stuff there.
the fact that this will actually not snipe your own face or minions (if possible) is HUGE and then you also have to factor in that you get +1 spelldamage on everything.
The only downside to this is that if your opponent has an empty board and you play this he could accidentally kill himself prematurely
As for reverting Raza ... as fun as it is to be on the winning end of the machine gun combo, I don't miss its helpless uninteractivity play style of facing it.
I'm going to be totally fair and square on the matter: I'd like to see Raza reverted not because it would be good for Wild (like you said, it wouldn't be: just from from the top of my head, Radiant Elemental + Test Subject + Embalming Ritual + Topsy Turvy is an infinite damage combo together with 0 mana Voidform. Yeah, infinite damage, just like Sniplock capped around your turn's time limit), but rather because I can't stress enough how much I loved the deck back in the day and because Mages can take 3 turns in a row, Warlocks can play and win with Mecha'thun on turn 8 but we can't have some pew pew here and there. When I face those archetypes, my only thought is "I just wanna race them down with their own medicine".
Trump's Card Reveal Later Today is a Mage Legendary - Astromancer Solarian!
If this were it the minion text would be the battlecry. The second part would be a hovering over the Magic Bomb minion. Still may need tweak, but yeah... similar to Living Bomb from Blackrock adventure (I think?).
Hearthstone's Public Fireside Gatherings Have Been Cancelled by Blizzard Due to Coronavirus
Here ya go: https://firesidegatherings.com/en-us/create
Astromancer Solarian is a new Mage Legendary Revealed for Hearthstone's Ashes of Outland Expansion
tell the Yogg, his inconsistency got him nerfed
Solarian Prime
So, it casts spells against enemies, but if enemy minions run out, it will target itself with minion centered spells.
Hearthstone's Public Fireside Gatherings Have Been Cancelled by Blizzard Due to Coronavirus
Do we get preorder bonus golden legendaries when we open the first pack during prerelease or only on the day of release ?
Astromancer Solarian is a new Mage Legendary Revealed for Hearthstone's Ashes of Outland Expansion
This is actually reallly strong since book of specters and project are both rotating
This patch makes me want to quit this game.
So I got it 2 or 3 months ago. I quite enjoyed the pace of growing your collection, you don't get handed everything asap, but you also grow at a very steady pace. You can cast things at different spell speeds to have windows of interaction like MTG, but the pace of the game didn't suffer for it. Game aesthetics are on point, it feels well made and well polished.
But the immediate issue I ran into was 95% of my opponents were playing basically the same thing every game: Aggro.
- Elise + Fearsome
- Noxus free damage vomit
- Elusive + Autofill
- Aggro Champion with Quick Attack + Autofill
- Usually some fusion of two of the above
This meant I could literally only ever play Shadow Isles + Stuff myself, because Black Spear was a painful necessity against all the constant aggro swarms, Shadow Isles also has some of the only good card draw to dig with, and even Grasp of the Undying (which is overcosted) was also kind of necessary.
Doesn't help that, on top of this, the "control" deck's cheese of choice with Heimdinger and Karma also pretty much required a cheap 3 damage spell so you could cast 2 removals in a turn, or just get overrun by their endless value. And "answer me or basically lose immediately" gameplay is VERY polarizing and not fun. Any delay means too much damage or too many generated cards for the opponent, and you'll lose to THAT even if you find an answer after a short delay.
ALL OF THIS COULD BE ADDRESSED WITH MORE CHEAP CONDITIONAL REMOVAL OPTIONS.
Instead they nerf Black Spear. It was already balanced and difficult to utilize without filling your deck with a bunch of 1-cost garbage which already can't block Fearsome, can't block Elusive, and is too weak to even BE called a roadblock against the Aggro decks.
So now literally only Culling Strike exists to deal with SOME of the overwhelming number of Aggro cards, and it doesn't work on several. Noxian Guillotine is worthless because you can't EVEN do damage in the early game at all to units with Fearsome and Elusive going unblocked or Quick Attack not taking damage on attack. Most games just degenerate into a game of chicken between who can vomit the most Elusive+Fearsome cards or some overpowered Champion like Zed not being immediately answered, starting at "only" 6 damage per turn for 3 and ramping up after.
Legends of Runeterra was already plagued by Aggro being overpowered, Combo being overpowered, and Control pretty much not existing. For an online card game that FINALLY offered some promise of Mutually Interactive Gameplay (without the toxicity of unlimited value Planeswalkers), instead windows of interaction are being closed. Almost every low-cost Champion in this game now cannot be meaningfully interacted with, Elusive and Fearsome based aggression is even more dominating, and decks have even less variety in builds and gameplay than before because CONTROL isn't allowed to exist to balance the meta. (And even on Control's end, I don't want an unlimited value engine like Heimerdinger to exist in his current state either. That's the SAME issue MTG has. The card goes a minimum of 2 or 3 for 1 if he even gets answered or just oppressively wins without an immediate answer.)
There's no decisions or variety in deck-building or gameplay. You play Aggro of some flavor and vomit cards at the opponent and whoever can vomit harder wins. I don't care that there's 4 or 5 flavors of THE SAME EXACT THING WITH THE SAME FUNDAMENTAL GAMEPLAY, it's still the same deck with the same playstyle. Vomit difficult-to-block guys, go aggro. Mostly, it's just whichever aggro deck in the aggro mirror draws more of their unanswerable aggro Champions first and can attack with them first to snowball the game. Some combat tricks can shift this but those are again just standard aggro cards for standard aggro decks.
Do I really care if it's Shadow Isles, Noxus, Ionia, or Demacia? Nope. It's all the same deck doing the same thing.
And that's why I want to put the game down. It has a fun core, it has promise. But it's like the developers only like Aggro and Combo and hate Control, like the usual kids in other card games who whine whenever anything Control based is viable. Instead of playing better, balancing threat output, not overextending, finding ways to increase value generation... these kinds just whine that the other guy's Control cards need nerfs. It's a childish way to play, wanting to treat the game like a singleplayer race and then complaining that you hit a speedbump instead of asking what you could do to play around your opponent. And it's a childish and self-defeating way to build a game.
Astromancer Solarian is a new Mage Legendary Revealed for Hearthstone's Ashes of Outland Expansion
I disagree. The vast majority of mage spells are either direct damage, card generation or secrets. Extremely few spells can screw you since they all target enemies. Yes, you might not clear the board and you might overdraw, but most of the time you'll kill a few enemy minions and deal some face damage.
New Mage Minion - Astromancer Solarian
2/3/2 with Spell Damage +1 by itself is actually not bad at all. Cult Sorcerer used to see quite a bit of play.
The Prime for this card also just kinda sells it.
Astromancer Solarian is a new Mage Legendary Revealed for Hearthstone's Ashes of Outland Expansion
And it casts the spells with +1 spellpower! Awesome!
Astromancer Solarian is a new Mage Legendary Revealed for Hearthstone's Ashes of Outland Expansion
There’s a couple of low rolls but a big part of Hearthstone (for better or worse) is learning to harness the infinite power of RNG
Hearthstone's Public Fireside Gatherings Have Been Cancelled by Blizzard Due to Coronavirus
Can we use this to get the fireside back?
WILD PLAYERS ARISE !
Raiding Party will go back to 3 mana
Astromancer Solarian is a new Mage Legendary Revealed for Hearthstone's Ashes of Outland Expansion
Meh.
It doesn’t matter if it can cast them against enemies, all the spells are still ‘random’ and they can screw you. Anything can happen so that means it’s not consistent and you ain’t gonna win games with something inconsistent.
Hearthstone's Public Fireside Gatherings Have Been Cancelled by Blizzard Due to Coronavirus
I'ts easy, go to the following page, follow the instructions and select "unlisted event" a.k.a private ;)
https://firesidegatherings.com/en-us/create
Astromancer Solarian
This would be always good... If only not Conjurer's Calling
Astromancer Solarian is a new Mage Legendary Revealed for Hearthstone's Ashes of Outland Expansion
Conjurer's Calling is a low roll I suppose... "Conj my opponents big guy 5 times, exactly what I wanted, and now my hand is full too and I burn my next card"
Hearthstone's Public Fireside Gatherings Have Been Cancelled by Blizzard Due to Coronavirus
We'll go more in-depth on this next week, but the tl;dr on it is to https://firesidegatherings.com/en-us/ and select Host a Gathering. You fill in the form, the time your private gathering takes place, and then you're good to go!
New Mage Minion - Astromancer Solarian
that's actually pretty damn strong.
When The Amazing Reno was first revealed I misread and thought he would only cast Mage spells so I checked all the Magespells in standard and it turns out there's a lot of good stuff there.
the fact that this will actually not snipe your own face or minions (if possible) is HUGE and then you also have to factor in that you get +1 spelldamage on everything.
The only downside to this is that if your opponent has an empty board and you play this he could accidentally kill himself prematurely
Astromancer Solarian is a new Mage Legendary Revealed for Hearthstone's Ashes of Outland Expansion
Finally some (kind of) manipulated RNG fiesta!
The "enemies if possible" part is HUGE
Imprisoned Scrap Imp is a new Warlock Card Revealed for Hearthstone's Ashes of Outland Expansion
More hand-buff warlock. Not sure if this will ever take off.
Shadowjeweler Hanar is a new Rogue Legendary Revealed for Hearthstone's Ashes of Outland Expansion
Secret Rogue is definitely going to be a deck I try on day 1.
Marsh Hydra is a new Druid Card Revealed for Hearthstone's Ashes of Outland Expansion
And why does that equal "NOPE"?
Al'ar is a new Legendary Neutral Card Revealed for Hearthstone's Ashes of Outland Expansion
Yeah no. Don't call it "Phoenix", do you have any idea how many hours I wasted running tempest keep to get Ashes of Al'ar?
Al'ar is a major lore character and a highly cherished mount. I no way should this card be called "phoenix"
Standard Meta Report #27 - Top Hearthstone Decks March 8, 2020 - March 15, 2020
You got your wish :)