I commented on cards specifically in response to Alfi below, but I also want to make a wider point about this kind of act by WotC or any other company/government/etc.
To everyone who was never offended by these cards and never became racist because of them, these moves can seem unnecessary and almost like hopping on the band-wagon just to improve reputation. But while that cynical viewpoint has a shred of validity to it, it also completely misses the point.
The statue of a slave trader
I grew up in Bristol, UK, where a week ago protesters tore down a statue of a prominent slave trader who left much of his wealth to the city when he died, hence why there was a statue of him. People had been kindly asking for its removal for decades, but while the city council was publicly sympathetic it was never removed. The council would say things to the effect of "it's important to not censor the past when it is not actively hurting anyone today", which is basically the same argument as you might have for not banning the cards in MtG.
In the end the simple presence of the statue told people the city is not ashamed enough of its involvement in slave trading to do something as trivial as take down the image of a slave trader. When it finally came to the public tearing it down themselves the police chose not to stop them and the mayor even said he wasn't at all upset about it. So if no one had a problem with it, why did it not happen beforehand?
Diversity and museums
It is clear to me there are 3 types of people:
Those who do find this material offensive,.
Those who don't find it offensive but also disagree with the possible racist messages and connotations.
Those who agree with the possible racist messages and connotations, and may use their public presence as justification for their views.
Importantly all 3 types of people still exist, and racist imagery is only harmless to those in category 2. Thankfully there are places racist imagery belongs without being censored: museums and history books. People should absolutely learn about the crusades, the slave trade and the Nazis, but only in a way that rightly puts it in the past. What we shouldn't be doing is keeping this imagery in public life in a way that suggests it is still part of modern society, because if you do that it will be part of modern society.
The better question
Does this all mean these MtG cards should be banned? I'd answer that with another question: what do we lose if the cards are removed or replaced with something mechanically the same but without racist connotations? Given the historical background is still readily available in places like museums and Wikipedia: nothing but a risk of a few people finding false justification for racist beliefs.
Cleanse's artwork depicting demonic creatures, and not humans of any race, would mean that card's problems are in the combination of the word 'cleanse' and destroying blacks, which is problematic given the foul racist idea that black people are unclean.
As for Crusade, the crusades were a European religious endeavour that, so far as I ever saw in England, no one is ashamed of. Of course no one would support them these days, so I'm sure the 1000 year gap has something to do with the lack of shame. Were they racist? Yeah, they were actively anti-Islam. My understanding is that they were trying to reclaim the holy land rather than directly trying to wipe out Islam, but at the same time I would be amazed if most of the soldiers involved wouldn't have done so if they had the means to.
The even more religious Jihad just should never have been made in any form. Jihads are things that are very poorly understood by most in the West because we only hear the military side and then rarely seek to understand them better than the media's limited portrayal. Add to that the card's text, which in context basically says "choose which colour you want to wage a race war against", and yes you have a stupid design.
I'm pretty sure 'gypsies' is an offensive derogatory term, which incidentally has its origins in the country name Egypt which is itself a misunderstanding of the people it labels.
'Stone-throwing devils' is apparently a racial slur, albeit one I had never encountered personally. I'd guess it relates to the practice of stoning as a punishment, but I won't comment further because I am clearly not qualified to.
Then the easy ones are Invoke Pejudice -> KKK, and Imprision -> black slave, which is wearing a black mask to make it even worse.
I like her. I hope she has some nice lines. Especially for the Greeting - Illidan's sux
I hope she is not as silly as annoy or nemsy. That was a little to much for me.
I expect her to be similar to Elise (for obvious reasons), at least in tone and vocabulary, so she's not likely to be especially silly. All she has to do is provide a less serious alternative to Illidan, which is hard to fail at.
Um. OK. I guess from that we learn humans tend to find more human-looking things attractive. Who knew?
Fortunately for us the hero skins are not taking part in a beauty pageant, so the demon hunter skin that looks like a demon hunter rather than a questing librarian will do just fine. On a side note, I could totally see the HS team making a questing librarian card one day.
Well Demon Hunter has a bit of a problem there: they are pretty much ALL elves because only blood elves and night elves are trained as Illidari. That doesn't mean they cannot use associates of DH who are not DHs themselves, or make a joke character like Furious Felfin, but you should expect to see a LOT of elves in that class.
I really hope that is coming soon, but didn't they ask whether people would be interested in rotating Wild sets after the Year of the Phoenix announcement (along with the news there would be a new game mode coming)? That wouldn't rule it out and perhaps I am misremembering the order things happened in, but I have been thinking the new game mode would be more unique.
Regardless, they definitely did say it would be good for those with large Wild collections, so I'm hopeful either way.
Not just female, but lighthearted too I hope. Illidan is great and all but he kind of kills the friendly tavern vibe right from the get-go when his greeting is "Evil draws close". Sure that is serious old Illidan down to a T, but I'd rather use a friendlier face to help ease my conscience for playing Demon Hunter in the first place.
Hmm. I think we can infer from the absence of any funnel cake references in sets since RR that there is a huge void in the market for the Tuskarr Bros. to fill in Dalaran and Outland.
I always play home-brew, off-meta decks so friend requests come much more frequently from people genuinely curious about what I was playing than from salty kids. Because of that I always accept friend requests expecting a decent, friendly conversation to come out of it.
On the flip side, the occasional salt-driven friend requests are amusingly perplexing, and I always respond as politely as possible as I try to find out what exactly their problem was. Often they unfriend me before I can quiz them on it though, which is a shame.
Here's something I have found works particularly well for getting genuine friend requests: play a full golden 30 legendary deck. It's jolly expensive but it pays for itself in friendship...
Yeah, it's especially frustrating because it is only ETC's flavour text that links them. Unless you have crazy good memory and remember the flavour text when you happened to read it once years ago, you cannot get here by actually thinking about the clue.
I suspect Sen'jin coming off Power of the Horde is how most people will find their way here, but even that 'short' route has nothing to do with the novice or Rag so chumps like me will stumble here the long way...
On the bright side, it's nice to be reminded of ETC; he still has possibly the best intro animation.
OK, so I finally got HS #8, and while it definitely works, the fact it only really makes sense when you already have the answer means I really don't like that clue. I'm sure a few people with exceptional memory could have actually worked it out, but everyone else is just clicking on pages until they accidentally get there.
The other 16 are fine though, with a few great ones to put your noggin to work.
I can understand your fears, but is Murloc Paladin that threatening in Standard, considering other better aggressive decks like Zoolock or DH himself are allowed there? And considering Finley is a legendary?
...
Yeah I'm not really expecting murloc pally to be any worse than DH, but the especially snowball-y nature of murlocs adds to the feeling of not being able to do anything if they get a good start and yours is merely OK. At least with DH you know if you can't kill an early minion right now it will be no tougher to kill next turn, which is not a luxury you have with murlocs.
Again, it probably wouldn't be all that bad but I just don't like murlocs*.
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* That is not quite true. I liked the Rise of Shadows murlocs in shaman alongside Hagatha the Witch for some serious late-game value generation alongside a board fill. So it is not a grudge against murlocs so much as it is against the traditional curve-and-snowball decks that haven't changed their face since the game released because it mostly works off the back of neutral Classic cards.
That makes me wonder how much more interesting murlocs could be made if Coldlight Seer was HoF'd and the tribe could be taken in different directions each Standard cycle. I'm not suggesting it should be, just musing on it.
Well, the last time I found murloc-heavy decks interesting was during GvG, so I am a bit biased against buffs to murloc decks.
Attempting to overlook that bias, I suppose the OG Sir Finley Mrrgglton never caused murloc decks to sky-rocket, though at the time murloc paladin was based on Anyfin Can Happen BS which didn't want a 1/3 in the pool. Vilefin Inquisitor was much the same.
I guess the difference right now is that murloc paladin is a by-the-numbers play-murlocs-on-curve-and-snowball deck, which already has 3 great murlocs to play on turn 1 (Imprisoned Sungill, Murmy and Murloc Tidecaller) so adding a plain 1-mana 1/3 might risk pushing things over the edge. I personally don't want that, but I accept that is just one person's opinion on a subjective matter.
As for making a singleton murloc deck, I don't think that would be consistently snowball-y enough for it to make a huge difference if he costs 1 or 2, especially in Standard. It is an extra nudge towards viability I suppose, though as is already clear I would not rejoice if it made it.
My point with all the C'thun stuff was that it wasn't a full neutral set: the class C'thun cards made a huge difference. Ultimately those decks were a balance of making the deck weaker with C'thun buffing cards and having a few pay-off cards in C'thun himself, Twin Emperor Vek'lor, and a few class C'thun synergy cards (the ones with 'if your C'thun has 10 or more attack...' battlecries). That is essentially identical to how highlander decks work, with decks being made weaker by having no duplicates, and a few pay-off cards in Zephrys, Alex, and a few class highlander cards (plus extras in Wild of course).
So in my mind any argument about C'thun decks being fine to be weak for some classes applies just the same with highlander decks, and vice versa. You can be OK with both or neither, but saying one is fine while the other isn't sounds inconsistent to me.
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For clarity regarding Finley's power-level, I personally never said anything about thinking he would be dangerous like Baku or Raza+Shadowreaper, so I am on the same page as you there. Nor would I complain if Blizz did buff him to a 1 mana 1/3.
My issue has always been that I think Finley is fair (if not outstanding like some of his colleagues) already, and his real problems lie in the class he is in rather than in himself. So since I am OK with weak C'thun classes and believe the same logic applies here, I don't see any need to buff him and I would rather see weak cards that should be the centrepiece of more unique decks buffed first. This is presumably why 2 libram cards have been buffed despite them also being 'fine' to begin with: libram paladin is something was supposed to special to paladin whereas highlander paladin is just 1 class' version of a neutral archetype.
This is largely why I brought up Tak before. No other class can do the sort of extreme shuffling and minion multiplication like rogue can, but at the moment that entire group of cards is being squandered because the centrepiece of the deck is also the worst card in there. The end result is that no one does lots of deck shuffling.
I guess if highlander paladin was particularly unique then I would absolutely argue for buffing Finley, but the no-duplicate constraint always hinders a deck's uniqueness and I'm not sure paladin has enough to take the deck off of the normal spectrum between aggro and slow-midrange. Maybe a secret highlander deck in Wild would be janky enough to interest me...
As you said, Reno here acts as an insurance vs Aggro games, when you fail to outtempo them.
My whole point about the "necessity" word was about making Sir Finley of the Sands as useful as his comrades from Uldum. Thos have immediate impact, Finley cannot, so he could use a better statline (1/3 at (1)), in order to have better chances of tutoring him, as well as having one extra turn on-curve to benefit from the HP (if you manage to mulligan him ofc). Basically ALL classes in Wild can have major benefits from a Highlander list (be it meta or offmeta), while the window for that in Paladin is extremely narrow (and will always be because of the design limitation in the class, ie. no efficient board clears). Paladin does not, despite receiving an additional Highlander card.
Ofc nothing in this game is necessary, not even the game itself.
I also made this thread before having the card, because I already was sure of his outcome. While, on the other hand, I would have crafted him long ago if he was a 1/3 for (1), not because of him being OP in that way, but because I like little cards that require deckbuilding and with subtle impact in the games. Subtle, but no marginal. At (2) he's still subtle, but ecceedingly marginal for a Highlander card. That's a pity.
I guess other obvious comparisons are with Inkmaster Solia, Raza the Chained and Krul the Unshackled, all of which were fine but not exceptional until Anduin DK turned up to break Raza, but I think for the context you have set it is better to look outside of highlander decks altogether and focus on other mechanics granted to several/all classes at once.
Take C'Thun decks for example:
Show Spoiler
Like with highlander decks every class can make a C'Thun deck but some have more tools for it than others while some only have neutrals to work with. In my opinion the fact several classes were in principle put on an equal footing by being given 1 class C'Thun card does not mean there is any need to tweak said cards until they are all about equal in practice. Sure it is a shame that Cult Sorcerer wasn't enough to make C'Thun mage a thing - heck, with Shudderwock and Emeriss around shaman and hunter C'Thun decks might now be stronger than mage ones are despite them not receiving any C'Thun cards themselves - but that doesn't mean Cult Sorcerer is in need of a buff.
Cult Sorcerer looks very different to Sir Finley but there's actually quite a few similarities: both are vanilla-statted 2 drops with up-sides and therefore never actually bad to play. Their issues both stem from the decks surrounding them. For Finley you can only run 1 of each card, he is not reliably drawn early when you can get the most out of him, and when you do draw him paladin is not really best placed to get great long-term value out of him.
Meanwhile the Sorcerer is only great when you have lots of spells, but the entire neutral side of C'Thun decks pushes things in a midrange, minion-centric direction. On top of a delicate deck-building challenge balancing spells and minions, you then need to actually draw the Sorcerer when you have the spells and want to use them, and even then you need to draw C'Thun as well. Finally to top it all off mage card draw isn't any better than paladin's is and mage is just not well suited to making good use of the midrange half of the deck.
Putting it all together Cult Sorcerer and Sir Finley are both in the same boat: they are fundamentally good cards specific to archetypes that other classes just have better tools for. Now I have got here I feel doubly-sure that tweaking them doesn't really save them or their archetypes because their archetypes are the problem in the first place.
In particular for Finley: Paladin's reliance of 2-card removal (because the class de-buffs instead of killing things outright) will always hold back highlander decks which cannot reliably draw both pieces, or have enough of each piece to keep control strategies up for very long. That then pushes you to make something faster to be more reliable (as you did with your aggro/tempo deck) which then reduces Finley's effectiveness.
Soooooooo, in conclusion, if you want to buff Finley in a way that makes him effective you probably want to change him completely to have a fast effect, not just making him cost 1 so a few games you have the hero power on turn 2 because that flies in the face of aggro/tempo game plans anyway unless you get lucky and get the rogue hero power.
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I hope this all makes sense and sees things from a useful new viewpoint. I am sure it wants refining but this is what we have for now.
As a partial OT, following all the replies that argued that sir finley is fine, I actually crafted the card and built this Tempo Reno Paladin in Wild. It doesn't make me change my mind over the necessity of a buff on Sir Finley of the Sands, and the card itself performs quite poorly even in this deck, which is basically built around him (it's Aggro/Tempo because slower Midrange doesn't exist in Wild, not without OTK or so much Value that Paladin can only dream about), but overall the deck is quite good.
While lots of upgraded hero powers are useful for aggressive decks, the whole archetype fairly fundamentally goes against using your hero power lots of times so I'm not too surprised Finley wasn't that powerful in it. I am interested in whether Reno was useful most of the time; I suppose he is at least an insurance policy against aggro decks that get a better start.
The only part of your entire argument I have any real issue with is the use of the word 'necessity'. This may not have been meant too literally, but when discussing an objectively good card when played (vanilla stats with strong long-term up-side) in a game that has many cards that end up weak links even in decks built for them (e.g. Tak Nozwhisker) it is easy to see why few people are more than indifferent about it.
I also find it a bit peculiar that you made this thread before you even had the card to try him for yourself, but that's more of a quiet observation than a complaint.
I agree with Dapperdog's point that buffing Finley is too narrow: it only helps singleton and murloc decks, and I am not personally interested in making either more prevalent for a long time.
I have a hunch that paladin's real problem isn't even that it is especially weak, but rather that the strongest classes of the last few months are natural counters to it (I'm looking at you rogue and demon hunter). Admittedly, Finley giving you a different hero power that isn't dealt with more efficiently by theirs is helpful in this regard, but nevertheless I think it is healthier for paladin to wait for other classes with more favourable match-ups to take over.
I can considered the pros and cons of this in the past and always decided it is a worse idea than it sounds at first.
The main issue is that HS designers have the luxury of designing class cards knowing no other class can abuse them except on rare occasions with random card generation that cannot influence the meta. As a result there's plots of cards that would become extremely frustrating to play against if another class was given access to them. Take Animated Armor in rogue, who can give it stealth (which the devs told us is why it was put out of reach of rogue in the first place).
Sure you get to do lots of fun and fair things, but the meta won't look like that. Like it is in constructed already it will be filled with the most degenerate things that you'll hate even more than the current single-class degenerate things and there will be no hope of balancing it because it works against the fundamental design of the game.
You bring up allowing hunter to play control, but I would ask why you want to? If you make a control hunter deck now it is weak but at least it feels like a hunter deck which is presumably the most important part since you've chosen hunter to do a thing that other classes are way better for. If you make a hunter/priest control deck, it will be so priest-heavy that you lose the hunter spirit you are aiming for in the first place.
I commented on cards specifically in response to Alfi below, but I also want to make a wider point about this kind of act by WotC or any other company/government/etc.
To everyone who was never offended by these cards and never became racist because of them, these moves can seem unnecessary and almost like hopping on the band-wagon just to improve reputation. But while that cynical viewpoint has a shred of validity to it, it also completely misses the point.
The statue of a slave trader
I grew up in Bristol, UK, where a week ago protesters tore down a statue of a prominent slave trader who left much of his wealth to the city when he died, hence why there was a statue of him. People had been kindly asking for its removal for decades, but while the city council was publicly sympathetic it was never removed. The council would say things to the effect of "it's important to not censor the past when it is not actively hurting anyone today", which is basically the same argument as you might have for not banning the cards in MtG.
In the end the simple presence of the statue told people the city is not ashamed enough of its involvement in slave trading to do something as trivial as take down the image of a slave trader. When it finally came to the public tearing it down themselves the police chose not to stop them and the mayor even said he wasn't at all upset about it. So if no one had a problem with it, why did it not happen beforehand?
Diversity and museums
It is clear to me there are 3 types of people:
Importantly all 3 types of people still exist, and racist imagery is only harmless to those in category 2. Thankfully there are places racist imagery belongs without being censored: museums and history books. People should absolutely learn about the crusades, the slave trade and the Nazis, but only in a way that rightly puts it in the past. What we shouldn't be doing is keeping this imagery in public life in a way that suggests it is still part of modern society, because if you do that it will be part of modern society.
The better question
Does this all mean these MtG cards should be banned? I'd answer that with another question: what do we lose if the cards are removed or replaced with something mechanically the same but without racist connotations? Given the historical background is still readily available in places like museums and Wikipedia: nothing but a risk of a few people finding false justification for racist beliefs.
Cleanse's artwork depicting demonic creatures, and not humans of any race, would mean that card's problems are in the combination of the word 'cleanse' and destroying blacks, which is problematic given the foul racist idea that black people are unclean.
As for Crusade, the crusades were a European religious endeavour that, so far as I ever saw in England, no one is ashamed of. Of course no one would support them these days, so I'm sure the 1000 year gap has something to do with the lack of shame. Were they racist? Yeah, they were actively anti-Islam. My understanding is that they were trying to reclaim the holy land rather than directly trying to wipe out Islam, but at the same time I would be amazed if most of the soldiers involved wouldn't have done so if they had the means to.
The even more religious Jihad just should never have been made in any form. Jihads are things that are very poorly understood by most in the West because we only hear the military side and then rarely seek to understand them better than the media's limited portrayal. Add to that the card's text, which in context basically says "choose which colour you want to wage a race war against", and yes you have a stupid design.
I'm pretty sure 'gypsies' is an offensive derogatory term, which incidentally has its origins in the country name Egypt which is itself a misunderstanding of the people it labels.
'Stone-throwing devils' is apparently a racial slur, albeit one I had never encountered personally. I'd guess it relates to the practice of stoning as a punishment, but I won't comment further because I am clearly not qualified to.
Then the easy ones are Invoke Pejudice -> KKK, and Imprision -> black slave, which is wearing a black mask to make it even worse.
I expect her to be similar to Elise (for obvious reasons), at least in tone and vocabulary, so she's not likely to be especially silly. All she has to do is provide a less serious alternative to Illidan, which is hard to fail at.
Um. OK. I guess from that we learn humans tend to find more human-looking things attractive. Who knew?
Fortunately for us the hero skins are not taking part in a beauty pageant, so the demon hunter skin that looks like a demon hunter rather than a questing librarian will do just fine. On a side note, I could totally see the HS team making a questing librarian card one day.
It is deeper than that because Elise is part priest too, so even Tyrande gets brought in to complete the trio.
Well Demon Hunter has a bit of a problem there: they are pretty much ALL elves because only blood elves and night elves are trained as Illidari. That doesn't mean they cannot use associates of DH who are not DHs themselves, or make a joke character like Furious Felfin, but you should expect to see a LOT of elves in that class.
I really hope that is coming soon, but didn't they ask whether people would be interested in rotating Wild sets after the Year of the Phoenix announcement (along with the news there would be a new game mode coming)? That wouldn't rule it out and perhaps I am misremembering the order things happened in, but I have been thinking the new game mode would be more unique.
Regardless, they definitely did say it would be good for those with large Wild collections, so I'm hopeful either way.
Not just female, but lighthearted too I hope. Illidan is great and all but he kind of kills the friendly tavern vibe right from the get-go when his greeting is "Evil draws close". Sure that is serious old Illidan down to a T, but I'd rather use a friendlier face to help ease my conscience for playing Demon Hunter in the first place.
Add Bob was cast out of Dalaran, so who's supplying the city with their funnel cakes? These are tough days indeed...
Hmm. I think we can infer from the absence of any funnel cake references in sets since RR that there is a huge void in the market for the Tuskarr Bros. to fill in Dalaran and Outland.
I always play home-brew, off-meta decks so friend requests come much more frequently from people genuinely curious about what I was playing than from salty kids. Because of that I always accept friend requests expecting a decent, friendly conversation to come out of it.
On the flip side, the occasional salt-driven friend requests are amusingly perplexing, and I always respond as politely as possible as I try to find out what exactly their problem was. Often they unfriend me before I can quiz them on it though, which is a shame.
Here's something I have found works particularly well for getting genuine friend requests: play a full golden 30 legendary deck. It's jolly expensive but it pays for itself in friendship...
Yeah, it's especially frustrating because it is only ETC's flavour text that links them. Unless you have crazy good memory and remember the flavour text when you happened to read it once years ago, you cannot get here by actually thinking about the clue.
I suspect Sen'jin coming off Power of the Horde is how most people will find their way here, but even that 'short' route has nothing to do with the novice or Rag so chumps like me will stumble here the long way...
On the bright side, it's nice to be reminded of ETC; he still has possibly the best intro animation.
OK, so I finally got HS #8, and while it definitely works, the fact it only really makes sense when you already have the answer means I really don't like that clue. I'm sure a few people with exceptional memory could have actually worked it out, but everyone else is just clicking on pages until they accidentally get there.
The other 16 are fine though, with a few great ones to put your noggin to work.
Yeah I'm not really expecting murloc pally to be any worse than DH, but the especially snowball-y nature of murlocs adds to the feeling of not being able to do anything if they get a good start and yours is merely OK. At least with DH you know if you can't kill an early minion right now it will be no tougher to kill next turn, which is not a luxury you have with murlocs.
Again, it probably wouldn't be all that bad but I just don't like murlocs*.
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* That is not quite true. I liked the Rise of Shadows murlocs in shaman alongside Hagatha the Witch for some serious late-game value generation alongside a board fill. So it is not a grudge against murlocs so much as it is against the traditional curve-and-snowball decks that haven't changed their face since the game released because it mostly works off the back of neutral Classic cards.
That makes me wonder how much more interesting murlocs could be made if Coldlight Seer was HoF'd and the tribe could be taken in different directions each Standard cycle. I'm not suggesting it should be, just musing on it.
Well, the last time I found murloc-heavy decks interesting was during GvG, so I am a bit biased against buffs to murloc decks.
Attempting to overlook that bias, I suppose the OG Sir Finley Mrrgglton never caused murloc decks to sky-rocket, though at the time murloc paladin was based on Anyfin Can Happen BS which didn't want a 1/3 in the pool. Vilefin Inquisitor was much the same.
I guess the difference right now is that murloc paladin is a by-the-numbers play-murlocs-on-curve-and-snowball deck, which already has 3 great murlocs to play on turn 1 (Imprisoned Sungill, Murmy and Murloc Tidecaller) so adding a plain 1-mana 1/3 might risk pushing things over the edge. I personally don't want that, but I accept that is just one person's opinion on a subjective matter.
As for making a singleton murloc deck, I don't think that would be consistently snowball-y enough for it to make a huge difference if he costs 1 or 2, especially in Standard. It is an extra nudge towards viability I suppose, though as is already clear I would not rejoice if it made it.
My point with all the C'thun stuff was that it wasn't a full neutral set: the class C'thun cards made a huge difference. Ultimately those decks were a balance of making the deck weaker with C'thun buffing cards and having a few pay-off cards in C'thun himself, Twin Emperor Vek'lor, and a few class C'thun synergy cards (the ones with 'if your C'thun has 10 or more attack...' battlecries). That is essentially identical to how highlander decks work, with decks being made weaker by having no duplicates, and a few pay-off cards in Zephrys, Alex, and a few class highlander cards (plus extras in Wild of course).
So in my mind any argument about C'thun decks being fine to be weak for some classes applies just the same with highlander decks, and vice versa. You can be OK with both or neither, but saying one is fine while the other isn't sounds inconsistent to me.
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For clarity regarding Finley's power-level, I personally never said anything about thinking he would be dangerous like Baku or Raza+Shadowreaper, so I am on the same page as you there. Nor would I complain if Blizz did buff him to a 1 mana 1/3.
My issue has always been that I think Finley is fair (if not outstanding like some of his colleagues) already, and his real problems lie in the class he is in rather than in himself. So since I am OK with weak C'thun classes and believe the same logic applies here, I don't see any need to buff him and I would rather see weak cards that should be the centrepiece of more unique decks buffed first. This is presumably why 2 libram cards have been buffed despite them also being 'fine' to begin with: libram paladin is something was supposed to special to paladin whereas highlander paladin is just 1 class' version of a neutral archetype.
This is largely why I brought up Tak before. No other class can do the sort of extreme shuffling and minion multiplication like rogue can, but at the moment that entire group of cards is being squandered because the centrepiece of the deck is also the worst card in there. The end result is that no one does lots of deck shuffling.
I guess if highlander paladin was particularly unique then I would absolutely argue for buffing Finley, but the no-duplicate constraint always hinders a deck's uniqueness and I'm not sure paladin has enough to take the deck off of the normal spectrum between aggro and slow-midrange. Maybe a secret highlander deck in Wild would be janky enough to interest me...
I guess other obvious comparisons are with Inkmaster Solia, Raza the Chained and Krul the Unshackled, all of which were fine but not exceptional until Anduin DK turned up to break Raza, but I think for the context you have set it is better to look outside of highlander decks altogether and focus on other mechanics granted to several/all classes at once.
Take C'Thun decks for example:
Like with highlander decks every class can make a C'Thun deck but some have more tools for it than others while some only have neutrals to work with. In my opinion the fact several classes were in principle put on an equal footing by being given 1 class C'Thun card does not mean there is any need to tweak said cards until they are all about equal in practice. Sure it is a shame that Cult Sorcerer wasn't enough to make C'Thun mage a thing - heck, with Shudderwock and Emeriss around shaman and hunter C'Thun decks might now be stronger than mage ones are despite them not receiving any C'Thun cards themselves - but that doesn't mean Cult Sorcerer is in need of a buff.
Cult Sorcerer looks very different to Sir Finley but there's actually quite a few similarities: both are vanilla-statted 2 drops with up-sides and therefore never actually bad to play. Their issues both stem from the decks surrounding them. For Finley you can only run 1 of each card, he is not reliably drawn early when you can get the most out of him, and when you do draw him paladin is not really best placed to get great long-term value out of him.
Meanwhile the Sorcerer is only great when you have lots of spells, but the entire neutral side of C'Thun decks pushes things in a midrange, minion-centric direction. On top of a delicate deck-building challenge balancing spells and minions, you then need to actually draw the Sorcerer when you have the spells and want to use them, and even then you need to draw C'Thun as well. Finally to top it all off mage card draw isn't any better than paladin's is and mage is just not well suited to making good use of the midrange half of the deck.
Putting it all together Cult Sorcerer and Sir Finley are both in the same boat: they are fundamentally good cards specific to archetypes that other classes just have better tools for. Now I have got here I feel doubly-sure that tweaking them doesn't really save them or their archetypes because their archetypes are the problem in the first place.
In particular for Finley: Paladin's reliance of 2-card removal (because the class de-buffs instead of killing things outright) will always hold back highlander decks which cannot reliably draw both pieces, or have enough of each piece to keep control strategies up for very long. That then pushes you to make something faster to be more reliable (as you did with your aggro/tempo deck) which then reduces Finley's effectiveness.
Soooooooo, in conclusion, if you want to buff Finley in a way that makes him effective you probably want to change him completely to have a fast effect, not just making him cost 1 so a few games you have the hero power on turn 2 because that flies in the face of aggro/tempo game plans anyway unless you get lucky and get the rogue hero power.
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I hope this all makes sense and sees things from a useful new viewpoint. I am sure it wants refining but this is what we have for now.
While lots of upgraded hero powers are useful for aggressive decks, the whole archetype fairly fundamentally goes against using your hero power lots of times so I'm not too surprised Finley wasn't that powerful in it. I am interested in whether Reno was useful most of the time; I suppose he is at least an insurance policy against aggro decks that get a better start.
The only part of your entire argument I have any real issue with is the use of the word 'necessity'. This may not have been meant too literally, but when discussing an objectively good card when played (vanilla stats with strong long-term up-side) in a game that has many cards that end up weak links even in decks built for them (e.g. Tak Nozwhisker) it is easy to see why few people are more than indifferent about it.
I also find it a bit peculiar that you made this thread before you even had the card to try him for yourself, but that's more of a quiet observation than a complaint.
I agree with Dapperdog's point that buffing Finley is too narrow: it only helps singleton and murloc decks, and I am not personally interested in making either more prevalent for a long time.
I have a hunch that paladin's real problem isn't even that it is especially weak, but rather that the strongest classes of the last few months are natural counters to it (I'm looking at you rogue and demon hunter). Admittedly, Finley giving you a different hero power that isn't dealt with more efficiently by theirs is helpful in this regard, but nevertheless I think it is healthier for paladin to wait for other classes with more favourable match-ups to take over.
I can considered the pros and cons of this in the past and always decided it is a worse idea than it sounds at first.
The main issue is that HS designers have the luxury of designing class cards knowing no other class can abuse them except on rare occasions with random card generation that cannot influence the meta. As a result there's plots of cards that would become extremely frustrating to play against if another class was given access to them. Take Animated Armor in rogue, who can give it stealth (which the devs told us is why it was put out of reach of rogue in the first place).
Sure you get to do lots of fun and fair things, but the meta won't look like that. Like it is in constructed already it will be filled with the most degenerate things that you'll hate even more than the current single-class degenerate things and there will be no hope of balancing it because it works against the fundamental design of the game.
You bring up allowing hunter to play control, but I would ask why you want to? If you make a control hunter deck now it is weak but at least it feels like a hunter deck which is presumably the most important part since you've chosen hunter to do a thing that other classes are way better for. If you make a hunter/priest control deck, it will be so priest-heavy that you lose the hunter spirit you are aiming for in the first place.