Good shout. I guess Grim Patron -> Elven Archer -> Spammy Arcanist should do the job, assuming it never clogs up the board too much to break the loop. That only needs 1 mana discount in any class we like. Should be pretty damn trivial then.
You have more control over the Trogg one. It's no more difficult to achieve than triggering Mogu Cultist's battlecry, so I'd do it with the help of Tak Nozwhisker + Togwaggle's Scheme in Wild.
Third Cousins Twice Removed: End your turn with a Coldtooth Yeti and a Chillwind Yeti.
That's not even achievement worthy. They just wanted people to play Chillwind Yeti :P Meanwhile:
Teamkill (2): Trigger a single Spammy Arcanist's effect 14 times
is so close to impossible to set up that it's surely just a bait to get people to waste a lot of time. It'll be interesting to see if anyone ever actually manages it though.
Inspire's issue is that at the time (and even now) hero powering is usually a sign of a "bad turn". And often the card would have a weak inspire effect. Take for example take Recruiter.
...
Right, and none of that is a problem with the keyword as much as with the balancing of specific cards (which happened to be nearly all inspire cards specifically :P). But Phase Stalker and Dragonbane demonstrated the effectiveness of the keyword when applied to appropriately powerful minions.
Using the hero power doesn't generally equate to a bad turn though. A low tempo turn, yes, but even then only really with base 2-cost hero powers, and even then it's not rare for that to be part of your overall game plan... well, back when we had some long games anyway. Besides, there are so many ways good ways to change hero powers or make them cheaper now, and we have DH which begins with a hero power that is designed to be easily slotted into turns. Both Lowly Squire and, more importantly, Spawn of Shadows have shown TGT was just lacking the actual hero powers to make inspire worthwhile. So I've long felt like inspire is a keyword that has aged really well, even though most of the cards it's attached to haven't. It was just ahead of its time I guess.
I'd argue twinspell is better than echo for being made evergreen because it isn't limited to 1-3 mana cards and hence has much larger design space worth exploring over a long period of time. While echo has popped up a few times outside Witchwood, its too narrow to really be common.
That being said, I'd expect either inspire or magnetic to be the one being made evergreen. Inspire is open-ended enough to make sense in the game when there is a lot more support for hero powers than back in TGT, while magnetic is the only thing that distinguishes mechs from other tribes, so they probably should have it long term.
Looking at all the new cards and how I'm reacting to them, I'm realising I've been playing for too long for much of it to be interesting to me. For example, Big Pally or Big Spell Mage look cool, but they looked cool before and I still didn't play them enough for it to really matter that I owned the cards for them. Blizz can dress old decks up in different clothing, and that's great for the players who truly loved those decks before or for whom they are genuinely new, but I'm not going to get much out of it myself. Similarly there are some cards that are super cool but in a class that I know I never get on with, so I'd end up never really using them.
With that in mind, I have a very narrow wish list. I'd love all the rogue stuff, but I'll autocraft the legendaries golden anyway so that doesn't need putting on the list. All that really leaves is Freeze Shaman stuff (i.e. their whole set, although I don't care much for Bru'kan of the Elements) since that being functional would be a new experience, plus Korrak the Bloodrager so I can try it in deathrattle rogue.
That's pretty much it honestly. I'm happy to cobble together decks out of rares and commons otherwise, crafting a few things if needed. Hmm, I'm pretty sure this is a sign I should go back to F2P and only focus on rogue going forwards. Good thing I haven't pre-ordered yet then :)
I'd have to replay the Rokara story (and maybe the Guff and Kurtrus ones too since I think Varden appears in those) before I can counter to your first paragraph, so for now I'll assume you're right that the apparent inconsistency exists. Though I suppose we do know they were spying on Kazakus, so we can infer they are adept at putting on a behavioural mask, which might be a wise thing to do in the middle of a band of Horde-supporting characters. We also know they are non-binary. I have no idea what prejudices exist on Azeroth over that, but if it mirrors our world that's another reason they might be good at masking what they really feel.
The thing with masking, is it leads to outwardly inconsistent behaviour in the very real people who do it for various reasons (e.g. to hide sexuality, gender non-conformity or autism). Make a character wear a mask and handle it well, and that's great character design, but it is easy for it to just appear inconsistent. As of yet we haven't had the chance to see Varden from their own point of view, which is the only time we'd be able to tell if they are masking or are just badly written.
As for whether it is believable that Varden would be central to uniting the two sides, I'd say it's plausible on the assumption that it isn't held together by Varden's charisma alone. They are clearly more academic than charismatic, which is fine (I'm a physicist so I know plenty of those people!), though it means they are probably better at convincing a handful of people via logic than 2 warring armies. Luckily for Varden, we have 8 such mercs (I'm discounting Tamsin for obvious reasons) they can convince, and who between them possess more charisma and sway among the Frostwolves and Stormpikes to make up the difference. We'll have to see if it happens that way, but if it does, there is no problem here :)
In fairness, we already saw them being happy to help Scabbs escape the Stockades and subsequently get the still-living Horde crew to help in the Deadmines. It sounds like they are just going to be continuing that role to get presumably Rokara and Tavish to look past their clans' fight for AV to deal with Onyxia and Kazakus. It even makes some sense that a blood elf mage would take that role, what with the blood elves previously being high elves and part of the Alliance of Lordaeron, and Dalaran being neutral, so I doubt Dawngrasp was ever invested in the whole Horde vs Alliance thing anyway.
None of that makes Dawngrasp "the most bestest and important character evarrrrr UWU"; it just makes them rational. Besides, the flavour text says "for one who", not "for THE one who", so it is quite likely Dawngrasp won't be alone in taking that stance. Given his own chapter, Scabbs is probably focused on Onyxia/the naaru shards rather than the faction war too, even if he's less naturally inclined to.
I love that the art and flavour text references the briefcase in Pulp Fiction, which is as close to Tess' "You have no idea what I'm capable of" as a spell can come since it won't have voicelines of its own.
Mechanically, I have noticed it has potential to be HS' first true infinite loop (which isn't dependent on apm and the turn timer). Most cards cannot generate themselves anymore, but Tess is an exception and she will summon copies of herself if you have a) played her before and b) changed class. (I guess it's because there is no RNG involved in what she replays.) With Tess that isn't overly helpful because she doesn't activate minion's battlecries, but Contraband Stash doing the same thing would replay its whole effect because it is a spell. So as long as you have not played more than 5 rogue cards at the time you play the second Stash, it should loop effects infinitely when it replays the first copy.
Obviously infinite loops are bad news for code, so I expect a cap will be introduced if it doesn't already exist. But for all we know at the moment you should be able to get practically infinite damage from looping, say, Sinister Strikes.
Changing class from rogue is normally far from trivial and requires a lot of luck to steal a hero card (Maestra won't help here). With Vanessa VanCleef and people using hero cards a lot at the start of the expansion, that should actually be quite easy when the expansion launches.
Of course the deck would never be meta viable, not least because the opponent just has to not play a hero card and then you're stuck relying on whatever 24+ neutral cards you run, but it is neat from a theorycrafting perspective so I thought I'd share it.
I guess my favorite would be the Red Mage. It has a combination of good magic selection and hit power. When it upgrades to Red Wizard it can even learn useful spells like Life.
*Sigh* You'll obvious keep up the trolling if we continue with this, but you could at least have told us why Red Mage has the best character/story/personality rather than mechanics :P
Well I for one have had a lot of fun with SI drawing Lilian or Ticket Master, then playing the weapon and making the opponent cry that the Forsaken Lilians and teddies never end :P The thought that SI was designed specifically for Loan Shark is exactly what I was referring to when I said "People who only ever play meta decks might not notice it...": YOU may have only played it that way, but any "trigger a deathrattle" effect is as open-ended as the number of compatible deathrattles is.
Edit: I re-read what you wrote and think I got the wrong end of the stick here. Sorry for implying you're a filthy net-decker :P
Regarding SI's interaction with Counterfeit Blade: it won't draw the weapon because the weapon gives itself a deathrattle as part of its battlecry, but isn't actually a deathrattle card naturally. I suspect Loan Shark decks didn't use both because you end up with way more coins than you need (I certainly did). SI does whiff with Necrium Blade though, so maybe that's what you were thinking of?
As I see it, the biggest issue with Recon as an important component in the deathrattle package is that it does absolutely nothing for Sketchy Information (SI), so it's always going to be plan B. SI doesn't want you to run many deathrattles, so for now that's OK, but once Ticket Master and Lilian rotate out the only thing we really have left is coin generation, which is an enabler for something else, not a plan in itself. People who only ever play meta decks might not notice it, but that lack of diversity for how to use rogue cards would be very unusual.
Of course the Core set rotation can help without them needing to print new things, and I am dismissing neutrals a bit too lightly. I'm certainly interested in how SI works with Korrak the Bloodrager: if it decides there wasn't an Honorable Kill involved, then that might summon a Korrak, which would be really strong. Or it does nothing of course...
It certainly works, but when two such players meet it is literally a coin flip for who goes first (with only minor corrections for the chance of not getting 2xEmbiggen + 1xPatches for turn 1). Needless to say I went second :(
They really need to use their ban system more in Tavern Brawls. Patches and Pogo-Hopper are allowed way more often than they should be.
As a burgle rogue main I fully approve of all the burgle stuff, but where the hell are the deathrattles? It's impressive that a class can have 2 sets in a row with so much deathrattle synergy, yet so very little to use it with. Oh well, we can get by with Ticket Master and Infiltrator Lilian shenanigans for now, but they had better have plans to replace them when they rotate out in April.
Lol. It makes sense they could get a pandaren to claim to be on both sides (even if it is a little anachronistic since Pandaria hadn't been found yet and the few pandaren roaming Azeroth wouldn't yet have had either affiliation).
Power-wise, I think the battlecry resolves before Maestra would turn you back into a rogue, in which case it would be pretty easy to trigger this on turn 3 with practically zero set-up required. Doing that is obviously pretty solid, and a good backup plan for when you don't have a burgle card on turns 1 and 2.
None. This mode sucks. It a bad version of FF1 that came out in 1987 : )-
OK. Now you've successfully ignored OP's very first sentence and assumed they were asking about the game mode, can you address the actual question and give your opinion on the mercenary characters (as represented in the Book of Mercenaries solo mode)?
Weirdly, Blizzard's own database bothers to list Chillwind Yeti as a related card for Coldtooth Yeti. I mean, yeah, it IS related, but they normally only list generated tokens (and very occasionally generated collectible cards) here, not thematically linked cards. That's not a bad thing, just unexpected.
As for the design, it reminds me of the early days of HS when they hadn't really settled on how to design minions for rogue. Back then (up to and to some extent including Whispers of the Old Gods) rogue actually got a lot of the most chonky midrange minions, even having combo versions of Boulderfist Ogre (Shado-Pan Rider) and River Crocolisk (Bladed Cultist). That never really worked for the class, even back then, so the new yeti has no hope in constructed now. Still, it is pretty good to play alongside a turn 3 Coin + Scabbs Cutterbutter, which would often love a yeti instead of an SI:7 Agent sending 2 damage to the face, so I'm sure I can find a use for it.
Thank goodness! The Skull was utter bs when weapon removal wasn't worth running against the rest of the meta.
It's a shame from a class and archetype standpoint that what they come up with to try to make big demon DH work is practically identical to what they've been doing with big demon warlock since Naxx. There must be another way than just cheating them out several turns early, surely? Any card designers out there got any ideas?
Good shout. I guess Grim Patron -> Elven Archer -> Spammy Arcanist should do the job, assuming it never clogs up the board too much to break the loop. That only needs 1 mana discount in any class we like. Should be pretty damn trivial then.
You have more control over the Trogg one. It's no more difficult to achieve than triggering Mogu Cultist's battlecry, so I'd do it with the help of Tak Nozwhisker + Togwaggle's Scheme in Wild.
Third Cousins Twice Removed: End your turn with a Coldtooth Yeti and a Chillwind Yeti.
That's not even achievement worthy. They just wanted people to play Chillwind Yeti :P Meanwhile:
Teamkill (2): Trigger a single Spammy Arcanist's effect 14 times
is so close to impossible to set up that it's surely just a bait to get people to waste a lot of time. It'll be interesting to see if anyone ever actually manages it though.
Right, and none of that is a problem with the keyword as much as with the balancing of specific cards (which happened to be nearly all inspire cards specifically :P). But Phase Stalker and Dragonbane demonstrated the effectiveness of the keyword when applied to appropriately powerful minions.
Using the hero power doesn't generally equate to a bad turn though. A low tempo turn, yes, but even then only really with base 2-cost hero powers, and even then it's not rare for that to be part of your overall game plan... well, back when we had some long games anyway. Besides, there are so many ways good ways to change hero powers or make them cheaper now, and we have DH which begins with a hero power that is designed to be easily slotted into turns. Both Lowly Squire and, more importantly, Spawn of Shadows have shown TGT was just lacking the actual hero powers to make inspire worthwhile. So I've long felt like inspire is a keyword that has aged really well, even though most of the cards it's attached to haven't. It was just ahead of its time I guess.
I'd argue twinspell is better than echo for being made evergreen because it isn't limited to 1-3 mana cards and hence has much larger design space worth exploring over a long period of time. While echo has popped up a few times outside Witchwood, its too narrow to really be common.
That being said, I'd expect either inspire or magnetic to be the one being made evergreen. Inspire is open-ended enough to make sense in the game when there is a lot more support for hero powers than back in TGT, while magnetic is the only thing that distinguishes mechs from other tribes, so they probably should have it long term.
Looking at all the new cards and how I'm reacting to them, I'm realising I've been playing for too long for much of it to be interesting to me. For example, Big Pally or Big Spell Mage look cool, but they looked cool before and I still didn't play them enough for it to really matter that I owned the cards for them. Blizz can dress old decks up in different clothing, and that's great for the players who truly loved those decks before or for whom they are genuinely new, but I'm not going to get much out of it myself. Similarly there are some cards that are super cool but in a class that I know I never get on with, so I'd end up never really using them.
With that in mind, I have a very narrow wish list. I'd love all the rogue stuff, but I'll autocraft the legendaries golden anyway so that doesn't need putting on the list. All that really leaves is Freeze Shaman stuff (i.e. their whole set, although I don't care much for Bru'kan of the Elements) since that being functional would be a new experience, plus Korrak the Bloodrager so I can try it in deathrattle rogue.
That's pretty much it honestly. I'm happy to cobble together decks out of rares and commons otherwise, crafting a few things if needed. Hmm, I'm pretty sure this is a sign I should go back to F2P and only focus on rogue going forwards. Good thing I haven't pre-ordered yet then :)
I'd have to replay the Rokara story (and maybe the Guff and Kurtrus ones too since I think Varden appears in those) before I can counter to your first paragraph, so for now I'll assume you're right that the apparent inconsistency exists. Though I suppose we do know they were spying on Kazakus, so we can infer they are adept at putting on a behavioural mask, which might be a wise thing to do in the middle of a band of Horde-supporting characters. We also know they are non-binary. I have no idea what prejudices exist on Azeroth over that, but if it mirrors our world that's another reason they might be good at masking what they really feel.
The thing with masking, is it leads to outwardly inconsistent behaviour in the very real people who do it for various reasons (e.g. to hide sexuality, gender non-conformity or autism). Make a character wear a mask and handle it well, and that's great character design, but it is easy for it to just appear inconsistent. As of yet we haven't had the chance to see Varden from their own point of view, which is the only time we'd be able to tell if they are masking or are just badly written.
As for whether it is believable that Varden would be central to uniting the two sides, I'd say it's plausible on the assumption that it isn't held together by Varden's charisma alone. They are clearly more academic than charismatic, which is fine (I'm a physicist so I know plenty of those people!), though it means they are probably better at convincing a handful of people via logic than 2 warring armies. Luckily for Varden, we have 8 such mercs (I'm discounting Tamsin for obvious reasons) they can convince, and who between them possess more charisma and sway among the Frostwolves and Stormpikes to make up the difference. We'll have to see if it happens that way, but if it does, there is no problem here :)
In fairness, we already saw them being happy to help Scabbs escape the Stockades and subsequently get the still-living Horde crew to help in the Deadmines. It sounds like they are just going to be continuing that role to get presumably Rokara and Tavish to look past their clans' fight for AV to deal with Onyxia and Kazakus. It even makes some sense that a blood elf mage would take that role, what with the blood elves previously being high elves and part of the Alliance of Lordaeron, and Dalaran being neutral, so I doubt Dawngrasp was ever invested in the whole Horde vs Alliance thing anyway.
None of that makes Dawngrasp "the most bestest and important character evarrrrr UWU"; it just makes them rational. Besides, the flavour text says "for one who", not "for THE one who", so it is quite likely Dawngrasp won't be alone in taking that stance. Given his own chapter, Scabbs is probably focused on Onyxia/the naaru shards rather than the faction war too, even if he's less naturally inclined to.
I love that the art and flavour text references the briefcase in Pulp Fiction, which is as close to Tess' "You have no idea what I'm capable of" as a spell can come since it won't have voicelines of its own.
Mechanically, I have noticed it has potential to be HS' first true infinite loop (which isn't dependent on apm and the turn timer). Most cards cannot generate themselves anymore, but Tess is an exception and she will summon copies of herself if you have a) played her before and b) changed class. (I guess it's because there is no RNG involved in what she replays.) With Tess that isn't overly helpful because she doesn't activate minion's battlecries, but Contraband Stash doing the same thing would replay its whole effect because it is a spell. So as long as you have not played more than 5 rogue cards at the time you play the second Stash, it should loop effects infinitely when it replays the first copy.
Obviously infinite loops are bad news for code, so I expect a cap will be introduced if it doesn't already exist. But for all we know at the moment you should be able to get practically infinite damage from looping, say, Sinister Strikes.
Changing class from rogue is normally far from trivial and requires a lot of luck to steal a hero card (Maestra won't help here). With Vanessa VanCleef and people using hero cards a lot at the start of the expansion, that should actually be quite easy when the expansion launches.
Of course the deck would never be meta viable, not least because the opponent just has to not play a hero card and then you're stuck relying on whatever 24+ neutral cards you run, but it is neat from a theorycrafting perspective so I thought I'd share it.
*Sigh* You'll obvious keep up the trolling if we continue with this, but you could at least have told us why Red Mage has the best character/story/personality rather than mechanics :P
I'm pretty sure everyone who has been gone since Darkmoon Faire will be saying that anyway :P
Well I for one have had a lot of fun with SI drawing Lilian or Ticket Master, then playing the weapon and making the opponent cry that the Forsaken Lilians and teddies never end :P The thought that SI was designed specifically for Loan Shark is exactly what I was referring to when I said "People who only ever play meta decks might not notice it...": YOU may have only played it that way, but any "trigger a deathrattle" effect is as open-ended as the number of compatible deathrattles is.
Edit: I re-read what you wrote and think I got the wrong end of the stick here. Sorry for implying you're a filthy net-decker :P
Regarding SI's interaction with Counterfeit Blade: it won't draw the weapon because the weapon gives itself a deathrattle as part of its battlecry, but isn't actually a deathrattle card naturally. I suspect Loan Shark decks didn't use both because you end up with way more coins than you need (I certainly did). SI does whiff with Necrium Blade though, so maybe that's what you were thinking of?
As I see it, the biggest issue with Recon as an important component in the deathrattle package is that it does absolutely nothing for Sketchy Information (SI), so it's always going to be plan B. SI doesn't want you to run many deathrattles, so for now that's OK, but once Ticket Master and Lilian rotate out the only thing we really have left is coin generation, which is an enabler for something else, not a plan in itself. People who only ever play meta decks might not notice it, but that lack of diversity for how to use rogue cards would be very unusual.
Of course the Core set rotation can help without them needing to print new things, and I am dismissing neutrals a bit too lightly. I'm certainly interested in how SI works with Korrak the Bloodrager: if it decides there wasn't an Honorable Kill involved, then that might summon a Korrak, which would be really strong. Or it does nothing of course...
It certainly works, but when two such players meet it is literally a coin flip for who goes first (with only minor corrections for the chance of not getting 2xEmbiggen + 1xPatches for turn 1). Needless to say I went second :(
They really need to use their ban system more in Tavern Brawls. Patches and Pogo-Hopper are allowed way more often than they should be.
As a burgle rogue main I fully approve of all the burgle stuff, but where the hell are the deathrattles? It's impressive that a class can have 2 sets in a row with so much deathrattle synergy, yet so very little to use it with. Oh well, we can get by with Ticket Master and Infiltrator Lilian shenanigans for now, but they had better have plans to replace them when they rotate out in April.
Lol. It makes sense they could get a pandaren to claim to be on both sides (even if it is a little anachronistic since Pandaria hadn't been found yet and the few pandaren roaming Azeroth wouldn't yet have had either affiliation).
Power-wise, I think the battlecry resolves before Maestra would turn you back into a rogue, in which case it would be pretty easy to trigger this on turn 3 with practically zero set-up required. Doing that is obviously pretty solid, and a good backup plan for when you don't have a burgle card on turns 1 and 2.
OK. Now you've successfully ignored OP's very first sentence and assumed they were asking about the game mode, can you address the actual question and give your opinion on the mercenary characters (as represented in the Book of Mercenaries solo mode)?
Weirdly, Blizzard's own database bothers to list Chillwind Yeti as a related card for Coldtooth Yeti. I mean, yeah, it IS related, but they normally only list generated tokens (and very occasionally generated collectible cards) here, not thematically linked cards. That's not a bad thing, just unexpected.
As for the design, it reminds me of the early days of HS when they hadn't really settled on how to design minions for rogue. Back then (up to and to some extent including Whispers of the Old Gods) rogue actually got a lot of the most chonky midrange minions, even having combo versions of Boulderfist Ogre (Shado-Pan Rider) and River Crocolisk (Bladed Cultist). That never really worked for the class, even back then, so the new yeti has no hope in constructed now. Still, it is pretty good to play alongside a turn 3 Coin + Scabbs Cutterbutter, which would often love a yeti instead of an SI:7 Agent sending 2 damage to the face, so I'm sure I can find a use for it.
Thank goodness! The Skull was utter bs when weapon removal wasn't worth running against the rest of the meta.
It's a shame from a class and archetype standpoint that what they come up with to try to make big demon DH work is practically identical to what they've been doing with big demon warlock since Naxx. There must be another way than just cheating them out several turns early, surely? Any card designers out there got any ideas?
If rogue players are lobotomites, I dread to think what happened to everyone else :P