My guess is that 'Keymaster Alabaster', the professor of replication seen in the Scholomance announcement trailer around 9 minutes in, is the rogue/mage legendary.
If we only knew his name and hence association with keys, I would jump at saying he is secret or burgle related (it could go either or both ways like Shadowjeweler Hanar does). But since he's professor of replication, which by the way is something both rogue and mage have a long history of doing, it might do something completely different. Certainly secrets seem like one of the least useful card types to replicate, second only to quests.
Does it technically count as card generation though? If it was phrased instead as "Give your next spell twinspell", or "Your next spell does not leave your hand" it would have the same effect but you would not consider it card generation. I would personally treat it more like Headcrack or Anub'arak than anything else, which I consider to be the same card rather than being generated each time (even if in the code it might be the latter).
The thing is, you're still generating a resource. Even if it is the same resource you had before, being able to use it again is an additional new resource.
Agreed, but there is nevertheless a huge distinction between this effect and the usual card generation effects: you only get what you already had. Nothing is being generated from outside the game and your hand is not being filled with more copies than you had before. It is arguably closer akin to Shadowstep than it is to the usual card generation effects.
Looking at it from another angle: nowhere does it say a class weakness should mean they have absolutely none of it. Only that their tools are significantly more limited than other classes get. Only being able to generate a card you already have, and only 1 copy too, sounds exactly like the limited version Shaman should get, since it does not let them get anywhere near to clogging their hands with value like rogue, mage and priest can.
That's not inconsistent since that is exactly what it says it will do. It would only be inconsistent with itself if it decides to do the same thing on some boards, or if it changes what it does on a given board.
You might consider it unreliable if you are relying on it to fill a specific role, but that is an entirely separate matter.
Regardless, 'inconsistently consistent' was about having different wording for the same effect as something else, not the variability of the effect. It is possible the wording of the effect on one (or more) specific boards is inconsistent with what has come before, but I have not checked that.
I believe that is a murloc plush toy, in the mouth of a Feral Gibberer. I wouldn't be surprised if the toy is just a generic stuffed toy in the Warcraft universe, but I'm glad to see the gibberer again.
People are saying that Warrior/Rogue might get a weapon, although personally, I think Paladin/Warrior is more likely and makes more sense.
The flavor design of Rogue and Warrior weapons are simply not compatible. Rogue tends to use daggers or very short swords, usually something easy to conceal. Warriors use more "open combat" weapons from swords, maces, axes, really just about anything. Hell, we have an achor and tentacles of all things. I don't see how the two can overlap flavorfully and still make sense.
For Paladin/Warrior though, that'll be no problem since Warrior and Paladin weapons tend to be very similar to each other in terms of their combat flavor.
It is true that paladins are basically warriors + light magic, and so weapons are easier to align here. Indeed I expect there to be a warrior/paladin weapon.
However, rogue has had a cutlass and scimitar before, neither of which are the sort of thing you conceal, and in wider fantasy they are also associated with rapiers, which are notably longer than shortswords. The very concept of a fantasy rogue is so broad that the available weaponry is not limited to daggers and shortswords. Of course they cannot use heavy axes and greatswords effectively, but they can absolutely use 2-handed longswords and anything smaller.
In any case, my overly optimistic hope is that they finally worked out a way to incorporate dual wielding into the game, and the only pair of classes that can both do this in WoW is rogue/warrior. It'll probably never happen, but now would be the perfect time to give it to both the classes that have been hoping for it for years.
In my understanding of the WoW lore, before Scholomance was a vile cesspit of necromancy it was a nobleman's home, and never had a phase where it pretended to be an innocent school of witchcraft and wizardry. That's just an embellishment by the HS team, for which I am glad because there's only so many scourge expansions you can have before they repeat themselves aesthetically.
These reveal seasons are getting shorter and denser. I'm thinking doing it all in 1 week might be a bit too short, but it might be been affected by Covid-19 so I won't judge.
Does it technically count as card generation though? If it was phrased instead as "Give your next spell twinspell", or "Your next spell does not leave your hand" it would have the same effect but you would not consider it card generation. I would personally treat it more like Headcrack or Anub'arak than anything else, which I consider to be the same card rather than being generated each time (even if in the code it might be the latter).
It is not objectively better. Serrated Tooth takes time to get ready, but you get 3 hits instead of the broom's 1, and you don't need to have 1 mana spare on the turn you give your other minions rush.
Epics and legendaries were just as important in the old days as they are now, so it's not really a great representation of what the metagame was like, especially since so many cards have changed or been replaced.
What this brawl does show well though how most decks didn't have enough tools in a specific direction to make the really focussed archetypes we see today. There were a couple of decks like Freeze Mage and Miracle Rogue that were an exception, but most things were a bit more midrange-y because you had to make up the 30 cards somehow.
You might find it quite interesting to watch a few Youtube videos from HS beta (late 2013 to April 2014). Kripp and Trump have plenty from back then, but there's lots more if you're not a fan of them.
I agree but I think most here are missing the main purpose of dual class cards. They will have multiple uses but their main strength will be to shore up or eliminate weaknessess in classes and make certain class archetypes possible that were previously not viable because of class limitations.
For instance I'm a rogue main and i'm excited about this card because it is one piece of hopefully more to come to allow for a true control rogue archetype to finally be viable.
If you look at the dual cards for rogue they are rogue/mage and rogue/warrior. Warrior and Mage have great control tools, and if Rogue has access to these tools they could actually create a true viable control deck.
I'm excited to see more of these dual/cards to see if this archetype will become a reality.
I am of the opposite mind to you here as I strongly believe class weaknesses should remain as weaknesses, otherwise classes become too homogeneous. I am a rogue main too and usually play slow value decks so would make good use out of control tools, but I still think if you want to play a traditional control deck you should just go to one of the control classes. You get a more diverse array of decks by making classes great at some things and rubbish at others, than by making all classes OK at everything.
I like to think of it this way: for every control card you give rogue there is a more uniquely rogue card you do not give them. So getting control tools might mean cards like Pogo-Hopper or Shadowcaster never exist, which would be a shame.
Bringing this back to dual class cards, I think they should be supporting what the classes are already good at, but with a flair from each class to make the same broad archetypes feel fresh. So rogue/warrior cards could be weapon related* with effects typical of each class, but not with a bunch of healing/armour, which would be more appropriate for a warrior/paladin card.
(* I'm quietly hoping they finally worked out how to make a dual wield weapon and it will be the rogue/warrior legendary).
"The entire reason I won that match, is because we were on the DoD game board."
I would say you are under-selling yourself and how much deterministic thought went into this. Yes the board was what presented you with the discover options, but you yourself read the situation well and chose a card that would lead to you winning. Good decisions won the game just as much as RNG did.
I think once people get a decent idea of what game boards lead to what effects (which is pretty easy to guess at since they are mostly based on the associated expansion's mechanics) then the board-determined RNG aspect vanishes as soon as you see what board you are on, which is before you even mulligan. From that point on the decisions on how to use the card or play around it are no different to anything else. It is not like a randomly generated card in your opponent's hand that you cannot guess at: you know what it will do and can adapt accordingly. That's a sign of a good player, and is perhaps the best example out there of where RNG actually rewards better players.
Okay, the card is great for Rogue. But for Mage it's actually not that good imo. It's a combo card which is fine for Rogue as it's their class mechanic and they have cards to support it (0-mana spells). But Mage doesn't really have that kind of support for this mechanic. It's a downside as it requires a card to be played first and that means it's not a 1 drop for Mage. Also, there's a problem with the flavor of the card. It makes sense for Rogue with all their burglary stuff but for Mage it's just a regular Discover a Spell. Nothing unique or special about it for them. Shouldn't this also discover Rogue spells for Mage? I don't get it. It looks extremely lame from the Mage's perspective.
Mage has a lot of good 1-mana spells and is probably not much worse than rogue at activating combos. It is also worth noting rogue won't often play it on turn 1 either, especially if they go first, because what other card can they play when there's nothing to Backstab or Shadowstep? And if they go second, mage gets the coin anyway.
Regarding flavour, mage's equivalent to rogue's burglary stuff has always been the generation of more mage spells. Sure it is less interesting, but why would mage even want rogue spells? They don't benefit from going outside the mage class, and mage spells are normally stronger (or at least less situational) than rogue ones. You'd surely rather have a selection of mage spells that are almost always useful, than risk things like Deadly Poison and Shadowstep when your deck is just not designed to make use of them.
You can expect the dual class cards to be a bit better in one class than the other, but if they are all designed well both classes will still benefit from them (and hopefully without breaking class identity after ignoring class-specific keywords like combo and overload).
Indeed, I did not say it won't be scary. But if it is powerful it will be a very different beast to UI, and one that will probably not feel so bad for the opponent.
I suspect if it is hated it will be because of massive turns with Kael'thas allowing you to flood the board and buff it at the same time. In that case the issue is with Kael'thas, who probably should never have been made to begin with.
Other than it's cost, it has nothing in common with Ultimate Infestation, and it won't reward you for speeding up to 10 mana with an empty hand an no board. So yes, it will be different this time around.
Seconding Starscreams question here: how often can you trigger the effect? And why is a paladin in a necromancy school?!
You can trigger it exactly once.
The fluffy answer to the second question is that they aren't at a necromancy school since the part of the school they are attending is teaching paladin/priest and paladin/warrior things, and has nothing to with necromancy. The mechanical answer is because they couldn't leave out every class that wouldn't use necromancy (which is nearly all of them).
Hearthstone 'lore' is just stories told in the tavern, rather than there being an alternate Azeroth where it actually happens. This was demonstrated very clearly in comics leading up to the Kights of the Frozen Throne expansion: a bard tells a story about the 9 basic heroes becoming death knights, but it doesn't actually happen even in the HS universe.
Essentially HS storytelling is like real films/books/TV shows/etc. that are "based on real life events": it is dramatised however the author likes and only needs to keep a tenuous link to the actual events. Also, these stories can be extended (e.g. what was done in the Year of the Dragon), or completely disconnected, but either way it is a fiction within the Warcraft universe.
My head-canon for the Scholomance expansion has a member of the Cult of the Damned telling the story in a way that makes it sound a LOT nicer than it actually was.
We'll see how well they handled it, but it is possible to make dual class cards that do what both classes do already just with shared mechanics. E.g. Wand Thief adding a mage/non-rogue card is in line with what both classes do, while Lightning Bloom looks like a druid card plus overload, but actually perfectly embodies what the overload mechanic is: get something out early by paying for it next turn.
So long as they make cards that would be fine as mono class cards (ignoring things like combo, choose one and overload) it need not break class identity. Now I've said that, I bet there's a rogue/warrior card that gives you a ton of armour...
That's my guess too. It looks like the dual class lengendaries will be the teachers, leaving the bosses from the WoW dungeon(s) to be mono class cards.
My guess is that 'Keymaster Alabaster', the professor of replication seen in the Scholomance announcement trailer around 9 minutes in, is the rogue/mage legendary.
If we only knew his name and hence association with keys, I would jump at saying he is secret or burgle related (it could go either or both ways like Shadowjeweler Hanar does). But since he's professor of replication, which by the way is something both rogue and mage have a long history of doing, it might do something completely different. Certainly secrets seem like one of the least useful card types to replicate, second only to quests.
Agreed, but there is nevertheless a huge distinction between this effect and the usual card generation effects: you only get what you already had. Nothing is being generated from outside the game and your hand is not being filled with more copies than you had before. It is arguably closer akin to Shadowstep than it is to the usual card generation effects.
Looking at it from another angle: nowhere does it say a class weakness should mean they have absolutely none of it. Only that their tools are significantly more limited than other classes get. Only being able to generate a card you already have, and only 1 copy too, sounds exactly like the limited version Shaman should get, since it does not let them get anywhere near to clogging their hands with value like rogue, mage and priest can.
That's not inconsistent since that is exactly what it says it will do. It would only be inconsistent with itself if it decides to do the same thing on some boards, or if it changes what it does on a given board.
You might consider it unreliable if you are relying on it to fill a specific role, but that is an entirely separate matter.
Regardless, 'inconsistently consistent' was about having different wording for the same effect as something else, not the variability of the effect. It is possible the wording of the effect on one (or more) specific boards is inconsistent with what has come before, but I have not checked that.
I believe that is a murloc plush toy, in the mouth of a Feral Gibberer. I wouldn't be surprised if the toy is just a generic stuffed toy in the Warcraft universe, but I'm glad to see the gibberer again.
It is true that paladins are basically warriors + light magic, and so weapons are easier to align here. Indeed I expect there to be a warrior/paladin weapon.
However, rogue has had a cutlass and scimitar before, neither of which are the sort of thing you conceal, and in wider fantasy they are also associated with rapiers, which are notably longer than shortswords. The very concept of a fantasy rogue is so broad that the available weaponry is not limited to daggers and shortswords. Of course they cannot use heavy axes and greatswords effectively, but they can absolutely use 2-handed longswords and anything smaller.
In any case, my overly optimistic hope is that they finally worked out a way to incorporate dual wielding into the game, and the only pair of classes that can both do this in WoW is rogue/warrior. It'll probably never happen, but now would be the perfect time to give it to both the classes that have been hoping for it for years.
In my understanding of the WoW lore, before Scholomance was a vile cesspit of necromancy it was a nobleman's home, and never had a phase where it pretended to be an innocent school of witchcraft and wizardry. That's just an embellishment by the HS team, for which I am glad because there's only so many scourge expansions you can have before they repeat themselves aesthetically.
Starts 22nd July and ends on the 29th, according to the timetable on https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/cards?set=scholomance-academy
These reveal seasons are getting shorter and denser. I'm thinking doing it all in 1 week might be a bit too short, but it might be been affected by Covid-19 so I won't judge.
Does it technically count as card generation though? If it was phrased instead as "Give your next spell twinspell", or "Your next spell does not leave your hand" it would have the same effect but you would not consider it card generation. I would personally treat it more like Headcrack or Anub'arak than anything else, which I consider to be the same card rather than being generated each time (even if in the code it might be the latter).
It is not objectively better. Serrated Tooth takes time to get ready, but you get 3 hits instead of the broom's 1, and you don't need to have 1 mana spare on the turn you give your other minions rush.
What is it inconsistent with?
Epics and legendaries were just as important in the old days as they are now, so it's not really a great representation of what the metagame was like, especially since so many cards have changed or been replaced.
What this brawl does show well though how most decks didn't have enough tools in a specific direction to make the really focussed archetypes we see today. There were a couple of decks like Freeze Mage and Miracle Rogue that were an exception, but most things were a bit more midrange-y because you had to make up the 30 cards somehow.
You might find it quite interesting to watch a few Youtube videos from HS beta (late 2013 to April 2014). Kripp and Trump have plenty from back then, but there's lots more if you're not a fan of them.
I am of the opposite mind to you here as I strongly believe class weaknesses should remain as weaknesses, otherwise classes become too homogeneous. I am a rogue main too and usually play slow value decks so would make good use out of control tools, but I still think if you want to play a traditional control deck you should just go to one of the control classes. You get a more diverse array of decks by making classes great at some things and rubbish at others, than by making all classes OK at everything.
I like to think of it this way: for every control card you give rogue there is a more uniquely rogue card you do not give them. So getting control tools might mean cards like Pogo-Hopper or Shadowcaster never exist, which would be a shame.
Bringing this back to dual class cards, I think they should be supporting what the classes are already good at, but with a flair from each class to make the same broad archetypes feel fresh. So rogue/warrior cards could be weapon related* with effects typical of each class, but not with a bunch of healing/armour, which would be more appropriate for a warrior/paladin card.
(* I'm quietly hoping they finally worked out how to make a dual wield weapon and it will be the rogue/warrior legendary).
"The entire reason I won that match, is because we were on the DoD game board."
I would say you are under-selling yourself and how much deterministic thought went into this. Yes the board was what presented you with the discover options, but you yourself read the situation well and chose a card that would lead to you winning. Good decisions won the game just as much as RNG did.
I think once people get a decent idea of what game boards lead to what effects (which is pretty easy to guess at since they are mostly based on the associated expansion's mechanics) then the board-determined RNG aspect vanishes as soon as you see what board you are on, which is before you even mulligan. From that point on the decisions on how to use the card or play around it are no different to anything else. It is not like a randomly generated card in your opponent's hand that you cannot guess at: you know what it will do and can adapt accordingly. That's a sign of a good player, and is perhaps the best example out there of where RNG actually rewards better players.
Mage has a lot of good 1-mana spells and is probably not much worse than rogue at activating combos. It is also worth noting rogue won't often play it on turn 1 either, especially if they go first, because what other card can they play when there's nothing to Backstab or Shadowstep? And if they go second, mage gets the coin anyway.
Regarding flavour, mage's equivalent to rogue's burglary stuff has always been the generation of more mage spells. Sure it is less interesting, but why would mage even want rogue spells? They don't benefit from going outside the mage class, and mage spells are normally stronger (or at least less situational) than rogue ones. You'd surely rather have a selection of mage spells that are almost always useful, than risk things like Deadly Poison and Shadowstep when your deck is just not designed to make use of them.
You can expect the dual class cards to be a bit better in one class than the other, but if they are all designed well both classes will still benefit from them (and hopefully without breaking class identity after ignoring class-specific keywords like combo and overload).
Indeed, I did not say it won't be scary. But if it is powerful it will be a very different beast to UI, and one that will probably not feel so bad for the opponent.
I suspect if it is hated it will be because of massive turns with Kael'thas allowing you to flood the board and buff it at the same time. In that case the issue is with Kael'thas, who probably should never have been made to begin with.
Other than it's cost, it has nothing in common with Ultimate Infestation, and it won't reward you for speeding up to 10 mana with an empty hand an no board. So yes, it will be different this time around.
You can trigger it exactly once.
The fluffy answer to the second question is that they aren't at a necromancy school since the part of the school they are attending is teaching paladin/priest and paladin/warrior things, and has nothing to with necromancy. The mechanical answer is because they couldn't leave out every class that wouldn't use necromancy (which is nearly all of them).
Hearthstone 'lore' is just stories told in the tavern, rather than there being an alternate Azeroth where it actually happens. This was demonstrated very clearly in comics leading up to the Kights of the Frozen Throne expansion: a bard tells a story about the 9 basic heroes becoming death knights, but it doesn't actually happen even in the HS universe.
Essentially HS storytelling is like real films/books/TV shows/etc. that are "based on real life events": it is dramatised however the author likes and only needs to keep a tenuous link to the actual events. Also, these stories can be extended (e.g. what was done in the Year of the Dragon), or completely disconnected, but either way it is a fiction within the Warcraft universe.
My head-canon for the Scholomance expansion has a member of the Cult of the Damned telling the story in a way that makes it sound a LOT nicer than it actually was.
We'll see how well they handled it, but it is possible to make dual class cards that do what both classes do already just with shared mechanics. E.g. Wand Thief adding a mage/non-rogue card is in line with what both classes do, while Lightning Bloom looks like a druid card plus overload, but actually perfectly embodies what the overload mechanic is: get something out early by paying for it next turn.
So long as they make cards that would be fine as mono class cards (ignoring things like combo, choose one and overload) it need not break class identity. Now I've said that, I bet there's a rogue/warrior card that gives you a ton of armour...
That's my guess too. It looks like the dual class lengendaries will be the teachers, leaving the bosses from the WoW dungeon(s) to be mono class cards.