^The pertinent thing about Killer Queen is that it's not just shuffling a bomb in, it's *replacing* a card in the deck with a bomb. Obviously a high roll scenario, but imagine hitting the opponent's Shirvallah in OTF paladin, that's just game right there. The potential to kill key cards in the opponent's deck is definitely worth more than just the generic 5 damage bomb, so it justifies the statline. Heck, I'd say the card is generous with its stats/mana considering what it does. It's a combo-killer in a class that naturally wants to play control and thus is vulnerable to comboes. Oh and let's not forget that the effect repeats itself if the Queen sticks, so there's that as well.
Of the bunch I think it's the most well-designed card in that it compliments Warrior's natural game plan.
Sticky Fingers seems underpowered. On average you're putting more stats into play than you're removing, so unless you're killing a giant Edwin or a utility minion, chances are this doesn't improve matters all that much. Barring narrow scenarios like the opponent already having a full board or being resurrect priest, i don't really see much utility in the card.
Black Sabbath I dislike simply because I dislike Stealth in general. The card is underpowered, but any deck that could make him work wouldn't be fun to play against: bunch of stealths going face until you die, meh.
Star platinum is neat. Might be one mana too cheap but the card has obvious synergy between its attributes as well as decently representing Star Platinum as a character. Would play over Icehowl ten times out of ten.
I dislike the wording on Aerosmith, not sure if it could even be made to work. Just have it battlecry to remove taunt, divine shield and stealth from all minions instead.
Hierophant Green just seems bad. Even if you're ahead on board after it kills the opponent's stuff, you're all in on what you have because you're back to one mana next turn.
I get what Metallica is trying to do, but I dislike the wording and suspect that hero power: draw a card & deal 2 damage to enemy minion is ridiculously OP. If it were a minion like Garrison Commander that only provided the upgraded hero power while in play I'd be a lot more comfortable with it.
King Crimson seems both too powerful and confusing as worded. If you negate your opponent's 3 actions, were the cards still spent? Suppose your opponent performed 2 actions and you end up negating your own flamestrike as well, does that return any minions killed to the game? etc.
How many cards would hermit purple reveal? The full hand? 3? Either way the card seems fine, if a bit underwhelming for a legendary spell.
I've only really been active on HPwn since the shutdown scare, although I used it as a resource for card searching and theorycrafting decks etc. a lot back in the day. I can't say if it's always been this way, but the discussions over there right now are pretty shallow and hostile in tone, certainly not what you'd expect to find on a message board with an established userbase and experienced mods. It's still the best place to get eyes on a new deck for the moment, but that'll probably change too, especially if/when the card search engine on OOC gets an upgrade.
Class cards show up 4 times more often than neutrals for discover effects. I also distinctly remember having read that the latest expansion enjoys additional weighting in discover compared to prior ones, but I can't seem to find documentation on that.
Either way, do you have any evidence for this, a source on those stats, something other than just your own impressions based on bad outcomes?
I complained about this in another thread. Flux said that visual improvements were planned, so hopefully this'll get addressed. They know about the problem, at least.
On a related note, I'd really like to be able to search for card text at some point. Had to go back to hearthpwn just for that D:
I don't agree with your opinion of Smoke Bomb being powerful, but I do agree that perhaps Blizzard would not print it. However, Conceal was far stronger and probably will be than a Smoke Bomb. In my opinion, it probably would be safe to print, as stronger AoE effects and spells have been created as of recent.
I think the card is arguably stronger than conceal. Sure, if you have a board, it's potentially weaker, but even back in the day conceal usually had one crucial minion that it was concealing, a giant Edwin or an Auctioneer typically, and any other minions were just a bonus. Having the card cost one less is a clear benefit if you're only interested in concealing the one minion, especially if it's an auctioneer.
On the note of the Ram, I totally agree that the Battlecry is far less relevant in some situations. However, I thought it would be far healthier than Quick Shot. Even though many people do not have a problem with Quick Shot, many people do. I do think that with a card like Master's Call and even the Twinspell, Unleash the Beast, it would be a lot worse now than ever. I like the proposal of giving it Charge, but I do not believe the newer development/design team would give any card that ability again. (Though Mega-Windfury did resurface so who knows!!?) Perhaps the Ram would be good in the scenario of two aggro/midrange decks getting into topdeck mode in a meta without the efficient card draw we see in Mage/Hunter/Paladin today.
I don't think Quick shot was unhealthy in terms of power level, at most it rewarded a playstyle that was not fun to play against and felt particularly bad to lose against (or with, for that matter).
In that sense I don't disagree that rewarding players for dumping their hands and mindlessly going face is unfortunate design.
I don't agree much with your opinion of Dreadhound Scamp. It is a reward for discard yes, but not an absolute smash on board if discarded. All your examples except for Silverware Golem are, in my opinion, totally correct in seeing play very rarely. However, upon release, Silverware Golem was seen in every single Zoo Warlock deck as two-of most of the time. Now that Doomguard has been shoved out, it is not as prominent. Many players though Silverware Golem was far too strong and oppressive (I being one of them if I'm being honest). But the main point of Dreadhound Scamp is to help Zoo flood the board primarily and sometimes be discard fodder if not accomplishing both at the same time.
Silverware Golem very briefly saw play in Disco Zoo after Kharazan was released(I should know, it was my only vaguely competitive deck at the time). IIRC that archetype died out completely when The Grand Tournament rotated out at the end of that year, costing the deck Tiny Knight of Evil and Fist of Jarraxxus. This despite the fact that Un'goro had quite a bit of support for the deck in clutchmother Zavas, Lakkari Felhound, Cruel Dinomancer and the warlock quest.
To me, the lesson here, and with Jeklik, is that you need a critical mass of high-tempo cheaty discard synergies to make the disco-zoo worthwhile or just won't be better than the normal variety. My problem with the Scamp is purely power level. I think it'd have to be at least a 2/2 rush for 2 to even tempt someone toward discard zoo, especially considering the power creep we've experienced since kharazan. I think the only time you'd be happy to sacrifice a deck slot/card in hand for a free 1/2 is on turn one, and do you really want to soulfire face instead of just playing the damn thing?
Remember, during KotFT we had zero mana 3/3s in Zoo as a reward for healing face.
Rot and Decay is neat, isn't it? I, however, do not agree at all with the idea of giving your minions Poisonous with it. Poisonous is not really a keyword in Warlock's flavor or identity. Your idea of having Weenies and other tokens on board to maximize value is absolutely what I'm looking for here, and I totally agree. I find Poisonous to be majorly Rogue and Hunter in theme. Though your phrasing may be more elegant, it isn't text Blizzard hasn't done before and I personally don't think it would be befitting for Warlock to deal with Poisonous.
I hadn't really considered it from a thematic perspective, but even then I don't really agree. It may be the case that WL hasn't had class specific poisonous cards yet, but they exist in neutral and I think that it absolutely does fit in with the class thematically. Certainly more than, say, Druid, who have Loti now. I suppose you could have the card give *all* minions poisonous to make it more in line with Warlock's self-damaging nature but it would amount to the same thing in most cases: tiny tokens trading off big minions for an uneven exchange of resources.
I think the card would just be too narrow, too situational if it only doubled the attack of minions against other minions, for one turn. Bloodlust and the like are played because they can push face damage. If you're going to make a card that encourages trading instead, I think it has to be pretty damn rewarding to be run over Grim Rally, which effectively permanently doubles attack and health for a 1/1 (and can go face).
For Gutterspark, I intended on making a card that would/could synergize with a lot of the newly added minion-focused Mage class cards such as Arugal or Conjurer's Calling (which even would kill your own minion sometimes!). It would most likely end up in some sort of stalling/grindy Malygos combo deck. Though it is flexible, as many minions die over the course of the game on both sides, meaning it could also be useful in triggering other effects such as Mana Cylcone, Mana Addict, Violet Teacher or even Arcane Giant or Flamewaker in Wild, which both see play in the most powerful Mage decks of that format.
I'm going to have to continue to disagree on this one. Sure, a deck like conjurer mage does generate a bunch of stuff on board, and it likes to play a bunch of spells in one turn as well, but it usually plays the cheap spells before it summons the minions, and by the time you have five minions die, again, you're probably not that excited about 0 mana 2 damage, or even the free spell.
That said, the other thing that makes me uncomfortable about the card is that if it were buffed to standard-playable stats, the potential for abuse would be huge, because mage, like rogue and priest, is class that can exploit cheap spells enormously, especially in wild. I suppose a case study could be made out of Volcanic Lumberer vs Corridor Creeper, whereby the latter's ability to store discounts made it far more powerful than the Lumberer. In this analogy, your card would be the Creeper to hearthstone's Dragon's Breath.
In conclusion I think you've made some very solid and valid points despite not seeing eye-to-eye. I 100% agree with the notion that in future videos I describe the plans/decks that these cards would fit in or be slotted into. Thank you so so much for the response and criticism. I'm sorry I didn't reply sooner. I've had to think about what to say and how to say it. I hope this doesn't make you feel attacked or shamed in any way. Thank you!
- Scarlet
It's all fine. What are message boards for if not disagreement and debate? If I couldn't handle criticism myself I wouldn't be handing it out to others. IMO an honest critique is a lot more helpful than insincere flattery.
Might post a more in-depth comment here later, there's a lot of stuff to go over, but I just had to point out that the money-lenders don't really work they way they ought to RN.
There's simply no downside to casting them, either you can use the coin in which case it's a clear win-win, or you can't in which case you burn a coin you didn't have to begin with. It also poorly matches the flavour of a debt, where you typically are stuck paying back the creditor more than you initially borrowed. If they read: "Battlecry: Gain a coin. At the end of turn discard the lowest cost card in your hand", they'd still work the same if you choose not to spend the borrowed money, *but if you do*, you have to pay up and discard a different card. Or you could have these be special coins that overload you for one.
Either way, IMO these cards aren't real loan sharks unless they punish the player in some way for spending borrowed money. Really like the concept though.
I strongly dislike the idea of a keyword that does different things on different cards. IMO that fundamentally contradicts the purpose of a keyword, which is to provide a shorthand reference to a single consistent action. Health, armor or weapon charges are somewhat analogous, but they're not the same thing, and a mechanic that tries to treat them as such will run into a lot of problems.
I see what you're trying to do; the design reminds me a lot of the now-abandoned Fading/vanishing mechanics in Magic the Gathering. And I suppose that could be one way to address the issue I raised above: add a unified "time counter" for the mechanic that counts turns similarly to how Quests, The Darkness, etc. keep track of their various triggers. However, this would significantly reduce the design space of the mechanic because you can no longer buff weapons, heal minions, gain armor, etc. to manipulate the decay effect. Not only that, as in Magic, having strong-but-temporary cards is hard to balance and will leave a lot of players unsatisfied.
Honestly though, the main reason I dislike this mechanic *as a keyword* is that the game would become a nightmare of end-of-turn triggers (Ever had your board cleared by a poisonous missile launcher? Now imagine that every turn. D:). I'm fine with having a few minions like this, and I certainly appreciate having a negative trigger like self-damage interact with other effects that EG spawn minions or whatever, but I think any more than a couple of such minions in a set would make the game horrible to play, in terms of interactivity, complexity and time wasted staring at the game play itself.
If you look at the card sets being printed today, you'll notice that they have 2-3 minions with end of turn triggers per release. That seems very deliberate. There's a lot of design space to be explored there but boy does it come with unfortunate baggage.
Most classes have access to mass removal for 5-and-up mana, Brawl, mass hysteria, Hagatha's scheme, etc. That's why lategame build-a-board cards aren't nearly as scary as comboes that can pull it off earlier. Astromancer can cheat an obscene amount of mana/stats onto the board but it's fine because she costs 7 mana. Big Priest is a bit of an exception because it not only cheats mana (barnes-> resurrect), it has a seemingly endless supply of boards with mass resurrect and spellstone. If it were just one huge board a la kangor's or Zul'jin it wouldn't be nearly as much of a problem.
I was extremely disappointed when RoS was revealed and it was just yesteryear's leftovers warmed over. Twinspell is just an Echo variant, Schemes are just Spellstones and most of the themes are just Boomsday's scraps. Having a nostalgic throwback set once in a while is fine, I guess, but that set was Boomsday. Now we're reminiscing about reminiscing about the past, and this is the first set of the year!
I hope I'm wrong, but I took it as confirmation that Blizzard is cutting costs and winding down operations for certain games. It'd certainly explain why we got what feels like Boomsday's rejects instead of a new set with new mechanics and themes.
I noticed that visually it looks like they're only taking one tick of 2 damage but if you compare the before/after life totals it's clearly dealing four.
It's one of the few schemes that does see play because of Nomi priest. Being a zero cost spell is a powerful thing by itself and priest has a million ways to exploit attack reduction effects.
If anything I'd say boom and rafaam's schemes are pretty pathetic.
I like the fact that most portraits represent some of the most famous and heroic characters in Warcraft lore. I realise there are exceptions, like Sir Annoy-o and Murgl, and I'm fine with joke portraits if done in moderation. Adding nine in one go seems waaay overkill, especially since many of these aren't even particularly funny or memorable.
I'm glad they're in the single player content to add spice to the game but I'm also glad they're not a part of normal HS.
I think a crucial distinction between those examples is that the murlocs don't magic themselves onto the board with charge and bloodlust, you actually have to spend at least one turn developing them. That's totally fair if you ask me, provided the murlocs themselves aren't too efficient. A Wispering Woods that made Murloc Tinyfins might be a bit of a problem, for example.
I don't have too much of a problem with Giant + Conjuring either, because mages typically have to split up the combo early on (Giant on four, hope it survives), and even the dream scenario where you play them on the same turn comes down on turn six and requires a full hand. That said, I really dislike the interaction with Elemental invocation effectively reducing the MG's cost by one, precisely because it allows the mage to cheat a turn out of their aggro opponent.
Of the three examples given Cleef is by far the worst offender because he just comes down too early, too hard. Playing a giant minion for cheap during the mid-game is much more fair because at that point most decks will have some sort of answer, but on turn 3 you're screwed in most cases. What's worse trying to build your own board in anticipation of Cleef often just creates a bigger problem by providing backstab and prep/eviscerate targets.
I wouldn't mind seeing the card bumped up to four, maybe even become 3/3 to compensate. That might seem like a minor nerf, but I believe delaying Edwin by one turn and making him more awkward to play alongside other stuff would be significant in a lot of circumstances. I don't want him gone for good, but a bit less unfair and game-deciding would be nice.
TL;DR, I think turn 4 is roughly where single big cheaty minions should start coming out and turn 6 and beyond is when decks should start spawning huge boards out of hand. If the "combo" requires prior board setup (like the opponent leaving up a Vargoth or Khadgar) I think that makes it a ton more fair and deserves 1-2 turns discount.
I don't think the card needs it. Whirliglider is by no means a powerhouse and yet it has shown up even in high level competitive play simply because there aren't that many good mechs for two mana for mech hunter to play. I also don't like the idea of giving that archetype so many early mechs that it becomes impossible for the opponent to reasonably clear all of them to prevent magnetise shenanigans. I think it's important that even decks with a heavy tribal theme play a few non-tribe cards because it makes the game that much more dynamic and increases the amount of relevant decisions for both players. For example, if every card in the mech hunter deck were a mech, there'd never be a question of leaving up this or that minion because it can't be magnetised. If every card in bomb warrior were a mech you'd never have trouble landing your Dyn-o-Matics, etc.
OP, why do you hate Curse, if you don't mind my asking? I'd never even heard of them prior to the HearthPwn fiasco, but I'm always on board for hating on evil corporationey corporations.
^The pertinent thing about Killer Queen is that it's not just shuffling a bomb in, it's *replacing* a card in the deck with a bomb. Obviously a high roll scenario, but imagine hitting the opponent's Shirvallah in OTF paladin, that's just game right there. The potential to kill key cards in the opponent's deck is definitely worth more than just the generic 5 damage bomb, so it justifies the statline. Heck, I'd say the card is generous with its stats/mana considering what it does. It's a combo-killer in a class that naturally wants to play control and thus is vulnerable to comboes. Oh and let's not forget that the effect repeats itself if the Queen sticks, so there's that as well.
Of the bunch I think it's the most well-designed card in that it compliments Warrior's natural game plan.
Sticky Fingers seems underpowered. On average you're putting more stats into play than you're removing, so unless you're killing a giant Edwin or a utility minion, chances are this doesn't improve matters all that much. Barring narrow scenarios like the opponent already having a full board or being resurrect priest, i don't really see much utility in the card.
Black Sabbath I dislike simply because I dislike Stealth in general. The card is underpowered, but any deck that could make him work wouldn't be fun to play against: bunch of stealths going face until you die, meh.
Star platinum is neat. Might be one mana too cheap but the card has obvious synergy between its attributes as well as decently representing Star Platinum as a character. Would play over Icehowl ten times out of ten.
I dislike the wording on Aerosmith, not sure if it could even be made to work. Just have it battlecry to remove taunt, divine shield and stealth from all minions instead.
Hierophant Green just seems bad. Even if you're ahead on board after it kills the opponent's stuff, you're all in on what you have because you're back to one mana next turn.
I get what Metallica is trying to do, but I dislike the wording and suspect that hero power: draw a card & deal 2 damage to enemy minion is ridiculously OP. If it were a minion like Garrison Commander that only provided the upgraded hero power while in play I'd be a lot more comfortable with it.
King Crimson seems both too powerful and confusing as worded. If you negate your opponent's 3 actions, were the cards still spent? Suppose your opponent performed 2 actions and you end up negating your own flamestrike as well, does that return any minions killed to the game? etc.
How many cards would hermit purple reveal? The full hand? 3? Either way the card seems fine, if a bit underwhelming for a legendary spell.
I've only really been active on HPwn since the shutdown scare, although I used it as a resource for card searching and theorycrafting decks etc. a lot back in the day. I can't say if it's always been this way, but the discussions over there right now are pretty shallow and hostile in tone, certainly not what you'd expect to find on a message board with an established userbase and experienced mods. It's still the best place to get eyes on a new deck for the moment, but that'll probably change too, especially if/when the card search engine on OOC gets an upgrade.
Class cards show up 4 times more often than neutrals for discover effects. I also distinctly remember having read that the latest expansion enjoys additional weighting in discover compared to prior ones, but I can't seem to find documentation on that.
Either way, do you have any evidence for this, a source on those stats, something other than just your own impressions based on bad outcomes?
I complained about this in another thread. Flux said that visual improvements were planned, so hopefully this'll get addressed. They know about the problem, at least.
On a related note, I'd really like to be able to search for card text at some point. Had to go back to hearthpwn just for that D:
I think the card is arguably stronger than conceal. Sure, if you have a board, it's potentially weaker, but even back in the day conceal usually had one crucial minion that it was concealing, a giant Edwin or an Auctioneer typically, and any other minions were just a bonus. Having the card cost one less is a clear benefit if you're only interested in concealing the one minion, especially if it's an auctioneer.
I don't think Quick shot was unhealthy in terms of power level, at most it rewarded a playstyle that was not fun to play against and felt particularly bad to lose against (or with, for that matter).
In that sense I don't disagree that rewarding players for dumping their hands and mindlessly going face is unfortunate design.
Silverware Golem very briefly saw play in Disco Zoo after Kharazan was released(I should know, it was my only vaguely competitive deck at the time). IIRC that archetype died out completely when The Grand Tournament rotated out at the end of that year, costing the deck Tiny Knight of Evil and Fist of Jarraxxus. This despite the fact that Un'goro had quite a bit of support for the deck in clutchmother Zavas, Lakkari Felhound, Cruel Dinomancer and the warlock quest.
To me, the lesson here, and with Jeklik, is that you need a critical mass of high-tempo cheaty discard synergies to make the disco-zoo worthwhile or just won't be better than the normal variety. My problem with the Scamp is purely power level. I think it'd have to be at least a 2/2 rush for 2 to even tempt someone toward discard zoo, especially considering the power creep we've experienced since kharazan. I think the only time you'd be happy to sacrifice a deck slot/card in hand for a free 1/2 is on turn one, and do you really want to soulfire face instead of just playing the damn thing?
Remember, during KotFT we had zero mana 3/3s in Zoo as a reward for healing face.
I hadn't really considered it from a thematic perspective, but even then I don't really agree. It may be the case that WL hasn't had class specific poisonous cards yet, but they exist in neutral and I think that it absolutely does fit in with the class thematically. Certainly more than, say, Druid, who have Loti now. I suppose you could have the card give *all* minions poisonous to make it more in line with Warlock's self-damaging nature but it would amount to the same thing in most cases: tiny tokens trading off big minions for an uneven exchange of resources.
I think the card would just be too narrow, too situational if it only doubled the attack of minions against other minions, for one turn. Bloodlust and the like are played because they can push face damage. If you're going to make a card that encourages trading instead, I think it has to be pretty damn rewarding to be run over Grim Rally, which effectively permanently doubles attack and health for a 1/1 (and can go face).
I'm going to have to continue to disagree on this one. Sure, a deck like conjurer mage does generate a bunch of stuff on board, and it likes to play a bunch of spells in one turn as well, but it usually plays the cheap spells before it summons the minions, and by the time you have five minions die, again, you're probably not that excited about 0 mana 2 damage, or even the free spell.
That said, the other thing that makes me uncomfortable about the card is that if it were buffed to standard-playable stats, the potential for abuse would be huge, because mage, like rogue and priest, is class that can exploit cheap spells enormously, especially in wild. I suppose a case study could be made out of Volcanic Lumberer vs Corridor Creeper, whereby the latter's ability to store discounts made it far more powerful than the Lumberer. In this analogy, your card would be the Creeper to hearthstone's Dragon's Breath.
It's all fine. What are message boards for if not disagreement and debate? If I couldn't handle criticism myself I wouldn't be handing it out to others. IMO an honest critique is a lot more helpful than insincere flattery.
High school nickname that stuck.
Might post a more in-depth comment here later, there's a lot of stuff to go over, but I just had to point out that the money-lenders don't really work they way they ought to RN.
There's simply no downside to casting them, either you can use the coin in which case it's a clear win-win, or you can't in which case you burn a coin you didn't have to begin with. It also poorly matches the flavour of a debt, where you typically are stuck paying back the creditor more than you initially borrowed. If they read: "Battlecry: Gain a coin. At the end of turn discard the lowest cost card in your hand", they'd still work the same if you choose not to spend the borrowed money, *but if you do*, you have to pay up and discard a different card. Or you could have these be special coins that overload you for one.
Either way, IMO these cards aren't real loan sharks unless they punish the player in some way for spending borrowed money. Really like the concept though.
I strongly dislike the idea of a keyword that does different things on different cards. IMO that fundamentally contradicts the purpose of a keyword, which is to provide a shorthand reference to a single consistent action. Health, armor or weapon charges are somewhat analogous, but they're not the same thing, and a mechanic that tries to treat them as such will run into a lot of problems.
I see what you're trying to do; the design reminds me a lot of the now-abandoned Fading/vanishing mechanics in Magic the Gathering. And I suppose that could be one way to address the issue I raised above: add a unified "time counter" for the mechanic that counts turns similarly to how Quests, The Darkness, etc. keep track of their various triggers. However, this would significantly reduce the design space of the mechanic because you can no longer buff weapons, heal minions, gain armor, etc. to manipulate the decay effect. Not only that, as in Magic, having strong-but-temporary cards is hard to balance and will leave a lot of players unsatisfied.
Honestly though, the main reason I dislike this mechanic *as a keyword* is that the game would become a nightmare of end-of-turn triggers (Ever had your board cleared by a poisonous missile launcher? Now imagine that every turn. D:). I'm fine with having a few minions like this, and I certainly appreciate having a negative trigger like self-damage interact with other effects that EG spawn minions or whatever, but I think any more than a couple of such minions in a set would make the game horrible to play, in terms of interactivity, complexity and time wasted staring at the game play itself.
If you look at the card sets being printed today, you'll notice that they have 2-3 minions with end of turn triggers per release. That seems very deliberate. There's a lot of design space to be explored there but boy does it come with unfortunate baggage.
Most classes have access to mass removal for 5-and-up mana, Brawl, mass hysteria, Hagatha's scheme, etc. That's why lategame build-a-board cards aren't nearly as scary as comboes that can pull it off earlier. Astromancer can cheat an obscene amount of mana/stats onto the board but it's fine because she costs 7 mana. Big Priest is a bit of an exception because it not only cheats mana (barnes-> resurrect), it has a seemingly endless supply of boards with mass resurrect and spellstone. If it were just one huge board a la kangor's or Zul'jin it wouldn't be nearly as much of a problem.
I was extremely disappointed when RoS was revealed and it was just yesteryear's leftovers warmed over. Twinspell is just an Echo variant, Schemes are just Spellstones and most of the themes are just Boomsday's scraps. Having a nostalgic throwback set once in a while is fine, I guess, but that set was Boomsday. Now we're reminiscing about reminiscing about the past, and this is the first set of the year!
I hope I'm wrong, but I took it as confirmation that Blizzard is cutting costs and winding down operations for certain games. It'd certainly explain why we got what feels like Boomsday's rejects instead of a new set with new mechanics and themes.
I noticed that visually it looks like they're only taking one tick of 2 damage but if you compare the before/after life totals it's clearly dealing four.
It's one of the few schemes that does see play because of Nomi priest. Being a zero cost spell is a powerful thing by itself and priest has a million ways to exploit attack reduction effects.
If anything I'd say boom and rafaam's schemes are pretty pathetic.
I like the fact that most portraits represent some of the most famous and heroic characters in Warcraft lore. I realise there are exceptions, like Sir Annoy-o and Murgl, and I'm fine with joke portraits if done in moderation. Adding nine in one go seems waaay overkill, especially since many of these aren't even particularly funny or memorable.
I'm glad they're in the single player content to add spice to the game but I'm also glad they're not a part of normal HS.
I think a crucial distinction between those examples is that the murlocs don't magic themselves onto the board with charge and bloodlust, you actually have to spend at least one turn developing them. That's totally fair if you ask me, provided the murlocs themselves aren't too efficient. A Wispering Woods that made Murloc Tinyfins might be a bit of a problem, for example.
I don't have too much of a problem with Giant + Conjuring either, because mages typically have to split up the combo early on (Giant on four, hope it survives), and even the dream scenario where you play them on the same turn comes down on turn six and requires a full hand. That said, I really dislike the interaction with Elemental invocation effectively reducing the MG's cost by one, precisely because it allows the mage to cheat a turn out of their aggro opponent.
Of the three examples given Cleef is by far the worst offender because he just comes down too early, too hard. Playing a giant minion for cheap during the mid-game is much more fair because at that point most decks will have some sort of answer, but on turn 3 you're screwed in most cases. What's worse trying to build your own board in anticipation of Cleef often just creates a bigger problem by providing backstab and prep/eviscerate targets.
I wouldn't mind seeing the card bumped up to four, maybe even become 3/3 to compensate. That might seem like a minor nerf, but I believe delaying Edwin by one turn and making him more awkward to play alongside other stuff would be significant in a lot of circumstances. I don't want him gone for good, but a bit less unfair and game-deciding would be nice.
TL;DR, I think turn 4 is roughly where single big cheaty minions should start coming out and turn 6 and beyond is when decks should start spawning huge boards out of hand. If the "combo" requires prior board setup (like the opponent leaving up a Vargoth or Khadgar) I think that makes it a ton more fair and deserves 1-2 turns discount.
AFAIK some people run it in mech-y token druid.
I don't think the card needs it. Whirliglider is by no means a powerhouse and yet it has shown up even in high level competitive play simply because there aren't that many good mechs for two mana for mech hunter to play. I also don't like the idea of giving that archetype so many early mechs that it becomes impossible for the opponent to reasonably clear all of them to prevent magnetise shenanigans. I think it's important that even decks with a heavy tribal theme play a few non-tribe cards because it makes the game that much more dynamic and increases the amount of relevant decisions for both players. For example, if every card in the mech hunter deck were a mech, there'd never be a question of leaving up this or that minion because it can't be magnetised. If every card in bomb warrior were a mech you'd never have trouble landing your Dyn-o-Matics, etc.
I hadn't encountered this bug. Very odd, especially since echo cards do work as you'd want them to with these buffs.
OP, why do you hate Curse, if you don't mind my asking? I'd never even heard of them prior to the HearthPwn fiasco, but I'm always on board for hating on evil corporationey corporations.
Cybertech Chip
Any 2 mana hunter spell.
Healing totem.
'Card' that isn't collectable.