If there is a way to cheat him out earlier, then it will be worth it as long as the minion it swings at with it's Rush ability isn't the same one you you swing at with your hero
There is. Raging Felscreamer survived the purge. And this one happens to be a demon.
It'll certainly be a challenge to do it now. Unlike pokemon TGC or the actual game itself, hearthstone was never designed with 'weakness and resistance' in mind and hence why a vanilla stated minion is only 1 or 2 stat point away from another minion 1 mana away from it. That is also why most board clears does just enough damage to minions around its cost and its often weaker to minions farther away from its cost.
If we were to imagine that since most warlock spells are 'fel' and most priest/paladin minions are usually 'holy', assigning a weakness/resistance for fel towards holy would give warlock an undue advantage in these matchups. Similarly, to counter warlock all I would have to do is to play minions resisting fel spells and suddenly my minions become nigh invincible because, as mentioned, most cards are designed only slightly weaker/stronger than cards 1 mana away from it. It creates this format where certain decks simply cannot beat others, like how control warrior hasn't a snot's chance on a sheet of kleenex against quest rogue. Sure they can tech their deck with different cards, but then this evolves into that familiar rng bs that we've been suffering from, an example in recent memory would be against evolve shaman (draw stickyfingers and win, otherwise why bother playing)
In my opinion, the best way to move forward with this spell tribes is for it to have very specific effects, detailed nicely in the card description, like Bru'kan's effect is clearly stated to only affect nature spells. So you may have a minions that benefit more from certain spells, and conversely certain minions that suffer negative effect from others. Either way, it should be stated specifically in the card description, and in no way should be generalized to all cards.
It really depends. Coerce doesn't develop any board, while Plague Scientist is a 2/3 at least. That means if you're trading a minion smaller than the scientist, its essentially buffing your board while removing a minion. Of course, that is if you have a board to begin with, which I predict token rogue (if at all viable) would not be lacking.
There's also another factor. Your chosen subject might survive the trade and now you have a poisonous minion on board. Coerce doesn't get a free pass simply because it requires no board to work, it would really depend on how the deck work to decide on the two cards.
That said, Im not entirely sold on the Samuro combo with poison, because I do think its too slow. But since it also works decently with Cold Blood, it at very least wont be a one trick pony in your deck.
I'd like to think that a 7 mana board clear is okay for a class like rogue, but its probably too slow. But then again with the loss of so many cards, you could just slot Plague Scientist in anyway, and samuro still works with Cold Blood on 6, or 4 with prep.
Yeah, now that I think about it, token miracle rogue could actually be a good tier 1/2 deck.
Well, just finished this one and I have to say that that Cho'Gall fight has got to top the charts as one of the most difficult and bs laden battle I've encountered so far in book of heroes. We still have 4 more heroes to go, but lord save us if it can ever top this one.
So what happened exactly? First, your mulligan, draws and your opponent's draws are always 100% the same. Your only wiggle room here is your mulligan, which basically you get to decide on what three cards out of six you will start with. Your opponent has the exact number of removals, and exact play style which will usually end with a turn 11, 12/12 old cthun. The only random aspect (which baffles me, considering that everything else is controlled) is the demon you get when you hp after turning into a demon, which can range between completely useless (flame imp) to extremely powerful (voidlord). That random aspect here is what will decide whether you actually win or lose, because you're basically playing on a timer, with ChoGall's hp doing 2 damage to you every turn. I lost track of the number of times I lost simply because I couldn't race his hp, and considering that ChoGall starts with 100 health, its shirt-rendering to lose one turn too late.
Everything else is really meh. Just steam roll everything because its just how it is. One massive two-headed roadblock that chewed up time and that's about it.
And now we have rogue, whos classic set have been nerfed so many times I couldn't keep up. Well, now most of the cards are gone, the most significant of which is Eviscerate. I'll be honest that I wasn't at all happy to see eviscerate gone, but now thinking about it, if there was going to be a card to get HoF, it was always going to be either edwin, Shadowstep, or eviscerate. Happy to know that at least one of those survived to the core set.
So where do we go from here? I'm afraid that for the most part rogue decks are going to have a mountain to climb. Because their cards are no longer efficient at removal, there's no place for a generic 'midrange' deck coming out from rogue but instead we look towards familiar archetypes. Secret rogue would likely be at the forefront of things, due to the very powerful Shadowjeweler Hanar, and with most of the secrets being removed from classic, its going to be shorter list of getting what you want. No more Redemption though, so that's annoying, but not necessarily bad as for every discover of redemption there's also Eye for an Eye. Aggro stealth rogue will likely make it, most of their core is still here, but losing eviscerate and Southsea Deckhand means they have to start looking for more burst damage elsewhere. A good chance we start seeing new Alex in this deck with shadowstep.
Here's a slight, but not impossible, possibility. The return of token rogue. There's no longer any Questing Adventurer or edwin, and without burst damage miracle rogue is a cutlass short from returning, but with many cheap spells still at its disposal as well as Violet Teacher, we may be seeing something from the past make a comeback.
First off, nice deck building. There's a good deal of things I would agree, but here's some suggestion for changes;
- No Argent Squire? That's near sacrilege considering its legacy in classic. And this core set is even less powerful than old classic. Combos well with Abusive Sergeant for the early game.
- Probably want to make space for Dark Iron Dwarf as well. That's practically one of the best cards for tempo back then.
- Defender of Argus is probably also too important to ignore. There's plenty of early game and tokens, and this card used to dominate classic back then as well.
- At the cost of being called an idiot, I would genuinely suggest putting either jaraxxus or new Alex in this deck as a final finisher. Let's not forget that leeroy is no longer core, so you'll run out of options really fast. Given that its a tempo based game, its not entirely impossible for zoo to last as far as turn 7-8 before running out of juice, so having a finisher isn't too bad an option.
- I would seriously consider Mortal Coil. But that's just me.
Suggestions for removal:
- Cogmaster, spidertank, and annoyotron is a cute idea, but zoo would never mulligan everything just to get this curve. In most cases, you'll just never assemble the needed cards to make these stuff work.
- Probably only ever need 1 ooze. If we're theorycrafting from a core only perspective, there's only 2 weapons that's seriously contesting your deck; Headhunter's Hatchet and Truesilver Champion. Both are fairly deadly unremoved on curve, but that's only 2 classes. No need double ooze unless its literally everywhere.
- Ritual of Doom suffers from the same problem above. Zoo can't afford dead cards in hand, and ritual of doom is dead card to me most of the time.
- Raid leader is a little iffy in my opinion, given that direwolf alpha will do the job better 90% of the time. But there are tokens to take advantage of this. I'll leave this one to you. Similarly, I don't like the idea of lakarri felhound, but I'll leave it for now since zoo is one of those classes that can reliably get rid of their hand so the discards don't hurt as much.
Its reasonable to expect Nordrassil Druid to not be as impactful as it seems. It doesn't have taunt, needs to be played first (and therefore you actually need to have that card in hand prior to playing your spell) unlike Anubisath Defender, and crucially still costs mana. So while we can stare with bloodshot eyes over that 1 mana 3/5 aspect of that card, drawing it and then playing it with a spell that cost 3 or more is quite another thing entirely.
This is something that will be good depending on the cards we see in Barrens and beyond. If there's something that draws cards absurdly for druid in the early game, it might make the cut because at the end its still a 1 mana 3/5 most of the time. But without taunt or rush, its always going to be an uphill climb for any druid card.
Aside from maly and highlander druid, I don't remember seeing Swipe being placed into a druid deck for the last 1 year. I think the exact timing was when Overgrowth was released in AoO that swipe quietly got shelved.
Druid always had problems coming from behind, which is why its also the first class I can remember that successfully played Animated Broomstick when it released (If memory serves, both spell druid and guardian druid iterations didn't start with broom in it). Most druid tech for early game removal to prevent an early game snowball and that's about it.
Prediction: Barrens will have a Druid card that damages the enemy board based on the Hero's Attack. They can't just delete Swipe and Starfall and expect Druid to survive without any board clear whatsoever. They have hinted that most Druid damage spells will be coming from the face now (like Pounce), and this is the most straightforward way to accomplish that.
Probably not. Druid's identity is ramp and playing big minions, not board clears or removal. Most druids don't even play board clears, because why play removal when you can just play big things 4 turns earlier than its possible?
Its going to be difficult. Mage secrets are often too expensive to play standalone, hence why losing Kirin Tor Mage is a big deal because the tempo from that 4/3 on top of a secret makes it worth putting more than 2-3 secrets in your deck. You could just put more burn or tempo cards in its place, but then wouldn't it be simply better to just play tempo mage with 1-2 secrets in it?
Of all the core changes, druid's is probably a mixed bag. They lost all their AoE and spell damage cards like Swipe and Wrath, and instead reverted to the face method of removing board. A few buffs here and there (because who'd want to play a 4/6 taunt for 5 these days) but crucially druid has lost one of its greatest cards in Savage Roar. And I shall be singing praises about this move until the following year because that is one card that seriously needs a break.
So where does druid go from here? Unlike the other classes, druid actually has an identity beyond the generic title 'midrange'. Ramp menagerie druid might actually just be good enough to see play now that most of the other classes got neutered in terms of removal options. Guardian druid is still up since the vast majority of its cards is still intact, with Twilight Runner neatly substituting the loss of Overflow and Rising Winds, but its likely to be too weak to make an impact on the meta. Clown druid is still viable despite the loss of overflow, on the back of Guess the Weight and maybe even Nourish as its draw engine. And finally token spell druid which, despite losing savage roar, still retains a majority of its early game and can still be a force to reckon with, given that most other classes had their AoE either rotated or taken away from them (Rogue in particular has none) and they still have Solar Eclipse into Power of the Wild and Arbor Up.
Expect druid to be the new snowball class. You either ramp and snowball from there, or you lose board from turn 1 and never get it back. Those druid mirrors, I predict, will be one of the most one sided match you'll ever see, because ironically with the loss of Swipe, Moonfire, Crystal Power, BEEEES!!! and Starfall, combined with a propensity to play no early game, druid simply can't deal with druid things.
Alright, so I'm not a fan of what they did to mage, but its not really too bad, and mostly because Fireball still exist. Unfortunately, one card does not alter the fact that mage as we know it is more or less dead. It used to be that mage was considered one of those classes that can basically ignore tempo because it can stall for days and isn't really short on draw. Now with Frost Nova, Blizzard, Doomsayer, and Frostbolt gone, the stall tactics are all but over.
Combo mage took a hell of a beating and I simply can't see it make a comeback. Losing apprentice is bad enough, but also losing the majority of its stall, Violet Spellwing, and Arcane Missiles means mozaki mage will have to go back to the drawing board. Something tells me that Barrens will introduce more freeze cards for mage, and maybe some other way to make use of those spell damage increases, or we just simply don't play any combo mage for a year.
Mage looks very one sided in what it can do. Then again, so do most of the other classes after the core set shift.
Actually now that I think about it, this change is actually less beneficial for aggro. Most aggro list are typically filled with at least six 1 drops, and a whole slew of early game cards that in the late game comes as completely worthless. Old tracking would enable you to remove at least 2 useless topdeck cards while giving you an opportunity to search for lethal, or a much better card.
New tracking is better for the mid game, or slower hunter variants. In a way, I like the change because I usually dont play face hunter, but I can't help but feel that being able to thin down a deck by 2 cards may come across as more significant that we once thought.
Well well, here comes the class that has largely benefited from all the core changes, perhaps more so than other classes. Unsurprisingly, that's because paladin's main game plan hasn't really changed much. Just about anything that's important to paladin is still here, Tirion Fordring, Truesilver Champion, Blessing of Kings, Equality, and Consecration, while losing its relatively interesting but for the most part worthless cards like Blessed Champion, Eye for an Eye, and Holy Wrath
Shouldn't be surprising that dude pally is likely to be the most popular, and perhaps best archetype, in the next meta. Card draw continues to plague paladin with the removal of Blessing of Wisdom and the now rotating Salhet's Pride, and it wouldn't surprise me too much if none is to be had in Barrens to draw paladin some cards. Tempo-wise, their cards are simply just better than the other classes. We should count ourselves lucky that Lightforged Crusader is rotating as well, or its likely to be unbearable.
What else can pally do? Murlocs are conclusively out of the way, with Murloc Warleader gone. Managerie paladin is a possibility, libram paladin suffers from card draw and since you can no longer tutor out Pen Flingers, it might be too inconsistent for the top meta. There's a small place for some kind of midrange paladin with Rally! as a centerpiece, so we forgo the dudes and bring in the usual stuff with rally for reload.
One thing is for sure. Paladin is likely to still be in the top 3 of the meta. Unless rogue and dhunters get some really powerful tempo tools, I can't see otherwise.
If you ever have doubts about team5 trying to push tempo priest into the spotlight, then the core set changes will be the most blatant and obvious attempt yet. Basically, if Shadow Word: Death have been nixed as well you could conceivably be fooled into thinking that you've stumbled onto a list of paladin cards. There's literally no other removal option other than the conditional shadow word death, ruin, and the only borderline acceptable Holy Nova. At least we still have Holy Smite, guess christmas came early in 2021.
The consequence of this is that control priest has taken a beating it might never recover until the following year. Cards like Sethekk Veilweaver is now more likely to grant you tempo cards as opposed to reactive cards, so you can't just run veilweaver and Nazmani Bloodweaver along with Rally! because all you're going to end up with are a bunch of tempo cards. I look forward to seeing the priest cards for Barrens, and if I spot anything less than 2 removal options and a board clear I'm calling control priest truly dead and gone.
So what are we stuck with? Midrange priest, with a hard emphasis on getting board as early as possible, because if you lose it you'll never get it back, what with priest's draw potential being somewhere between the ground and the height of an ant. Face priest? That's not even a joke. You go shadowform and then pray your opponent's not warrior. Since priest lost so many of its control options, you can't rely on spiking your opponent's face for long, because now any minion that's not 5 or more attack just gets free reign.
Its not entirely gloom and doom. Silence priest in the form of Humongous Razorleaf and Arcane Watcher might just be enough, what with most classic removal cards being gone. Its literally now or never; silence priest has never really looked better since its height during Ungoro, so if it fails now then it will never be good.
ETC only costs 2 mana. What's the point of going through all that just to save 2 mana?
That 30 damage combo seems really iffy. With 2 ETC, you're doing 4 damage per minion. I don't think the math adds up to 30, since even with your combo, you only have 5 mana remaining, which means you're pushing only 7 minions with rush at best, which should add up to max of 28. Im no math expert, so Im fully open to having my math dissected here.
When I saw the released list of warrior core cards I found myself surprised at two things; Shield Slam and Brawl were still part of core, and that Shield Block and Battle Rage didn't make it. It still baffles me that shield block was taken away. Is this really a problem card to begin with? Yes it has been played since forever, but what kind of design space is now freed up by its removal?
I'm a bit skeptical about combo warrior's chances in the next meta. Ancharrr is now gone, and so is Risky Skipper, and the loss of both of those cards also drastically reduces Armorsmith and Shield Slam's relevance. Draw is also harder to come by, with only Cutting Class remaining as the sole card card draw option along with Ringmaster Whatley, both of which are conditional draw effects, and thus may not be entirely suitable for a combo deck.
A small note. Warsong Commander is likely not an aura effect like how Houndmaster Shaw used to be. Its description reads 'give', unlike shaw's 'have'. A minor thing for sure, but it does mean that you can't just vomit stuff on board then play this, it has to be played first before everything will get rush after. I agree that Animated Broomstick is basically the better sweeper here, but if team5 had the audacity of changing warsong commander to what it will be, I will take that as a signal that broomstick's time as a 1 drop may be over.
But if you wanted to play classic at all, its going to be because of hunter, one of the most overpowered class in classic history. 1 mana Flare, +2+2 hyena, 2 mana Starving Buzzard, 8 mana King Krush, and the all powerful Savannah Highmane.
There is. Raging Felscreamer survived the purge. And this one happens to be a demon.
It'll certainly be a challenge to do it now. Unlike pokemon TGC or the actual game itself, hearthstone was never designed with 'weakness and resistance' in mind and hence why a vanilla stated minion is only 1 or 2 stat point away from another minion 1 mana away from it. That is also why most board clears does just enough damage to minions around its cost and its often weaker to minions farther away from its cost.
If we were to imagine that since most warlock spells are 'fel' and most priest/paladin minions are usually 'holy', assigning a weakness/resistance for fel towards holy would give warlock an undue advantage in these matchups. Similarly, to counter warlock all I would have to do is to play minions resisting fel spells and suddenly my minions become nigh invincible because, as mentioned, most cards are designed only slightly weaker/stronger than cards 1 mana away from it. It creates this format where certain decks simply cannot beat others, like how control warrior hasn't a snot's chance on a sheet of kleenex against quest rogue. Sure they can tech their deck with different cards, but then this evolves into that familiar rng bs that we've been suffering from, an example in recent memory would be against evolve shaman (draw stickyfingers and win, otherwise why bother playing)
In my opinion, the best way to move forward with this spell tribes is for it to have very specific effects, detailed nicely in the card description, like Bru'kan's effect is clearly stated to only affect nature spells. So you may have a minions that benefit more from certain spells, and conversely certain minions that suffer negative effect from others. Either way, it should be stated specifically in the card description, and in no way should be generalized to all cards.
It really depends. Coerce doesn't develop any board, while Plague Scientist is a 2/3 at least. That means if you're trading a minion smaller than the scientist, its essentially buffing your board while removing a minion. Of course, that is if you have a board to begin with, which I predict token rogue (if at all viable) would not be lacking.
There's also another factor. Your chosen subject might survive the trade and now you have a poisonous minion on board. Coerce doesn't get a free pass simply because it requires no board to work, it would really depend on how the deck work to decide on the two cards.
That said, Im not entirely sold on the Samuro combo with poison, because I do think its too slow. But since it also works decently with Cold Blood, it at very least wont be a one trick pony in your deck.
I'd like to think that a 7 mana board clear is okay for a class like rogue, but its probably too slow. But then again with the loss of so many cards, you could just slot Plague Scientist in anyway, and samuro still works with Cold Blood on 6, or 4 with prep.
Yeah, now that I think about it, token miracle rogue could actually be a good tier 1/2 deck.
Might be a blessing in disguise. Since rotation is like 3 weeks away, is there any reason to open it now?
Well, just finished this one and I have to say that that Cho'Gall fight has got to top the charts as one of the most difficult and bs laden battle I've encountered so far in book of heroes. We still have 4 more heroes to go, but lord save us if it can ever top this one.
So what happened exactly? First, your mulligan, draws and your opponent's draws are always 100% the same. Your only wiggle room here is your mulligan, which basically you get to decide on what three cards out of six you will start with. Your opponent has the exact number of removals, and exact play style which will usually end with a turn 11, 12/12 old cthun. The only random aspect (which baffles me, considering that everything else is controlled) is the demon you get when you hp after turning into a demon, which can range between completely useless (flame imp) to extremely powerful (voidlord). That random aspect here is what will decide whether you actually win or lose, because you're basically playing on a timer, with ChoGall's hp doing 2 damage to you every turn. I lost track of the number of times I lost simply because I couldn't race his hp, and considering that ChoGall starts with 100 health, its shirt-rendering to lose one turn too late.
Everything else is really meh. Just steam roll everything because its just how it is. One massive two-headed roadblock that chewed up time and that's about it.
And now we have rogue, whos classic set have been nerfed so many times I couldn't keep up. Well, now most of the cards are gone, the most significant of which is Eviscerate. I'll be honest that I wasn't at all happy to see eviscerate gone, but now thinking about it, if there was going to be a card to get HoF, it was always going to be either edwin, Shadowstep, or eviscerate. Happy to know that at least one of those survived to the core set.
So where do we go from here? I'm afraid that for the most part rogue decks are going to have a mountain to climb. Because their cards are no longer efficient at removal, there's no place for a generic 'midrange' deck coming out from rogue but instead we look towards familiar archetypes. Secret rogue would likely be at the forefront of things, due to the very powerful Shadowjeweler Hanar, and with most of the secrets being removed from classic, its going to be shorter list of getting what you want. No more Redemption though, so that's annoying, but not necessarily bad as for every discover of redemption there's also Eye for an Eye. Aggro stealth rogue will likely make it, most of their core is still here, but losing eviscerate and Southsea Deckhand means they have to start looking for more burst damage elsewhere. A good chance we start seeing new Alex in this deck with shadowstep.
Here's a slight, but not impossible, possibility. The return of token rogue. There's no longer any Questing Adventurer or edwin, and without burst damage miracle rogue is a cutlass short from returning, but with many cheap spells still at its disposal as well as Violet Teacher, we may be seeing something from the past make a comeback.
First off, nice deck building. There's a good deal of things I would agree, but here's some suggestion for changes;
- No Argent Squire? That's near sacrilege considering its legacy in classic. And this core set is even less powerful than old classic. Combos well with Abusive Sergeant for the early game.
- Probably want to make space for Dark Iron Dwarf as well. That's practically one of the best cards for tempo back then.
- Defender of Argus is probably also too important to ignore. There's plenty of early game and tokens, and this card used to dominate classic back then as well.
- At the cost of being called an idiot, I would genuinely suggest putting either jaraxxus or new Alex in this deck as a final finisher. Let's not forget that leeroy is no longer core, so you'll run out of options really fast. Given that its a tempo based game, its not entirely impossible for zoo to last as far as turn 7-8 before running out of juice, so having a finisher isn't too bad an option.
- I would seriously consider Mortal Coil. But that's just me.
Suggestions for removal:
- Cogmaster, spidertank, and annoyotron is a cute idea, but zoo would never mulligan everything just to get this curve. In most cases, you'll just never assemble the needed cards to make these stuff work.
- Probably only ever need 1 ooze. If we're theorycrafting from a core only perspective, there's only 2 weapons that's seriously contesting your deck; Headhunter's Hatchet and Truesilver Champion. Both are fairly deadly unremoved on curve, but that's only 2 classes. No need double ooze unless its literally everywhere.
- Ritual of Doom suffers from the same problem above. Zoo can't afford dead cards in hand, and ritual of doom is dead card to me most of the time.
- Raid leader is a little iffy in my opinion, given that direwolf alpha will do the job better 90% of the time. But there are tokens to take advantage of this. I'll leave this one to you. Similarly, I don't like the idea of lakarri felhound, but I'll leave it for now since zoo is one of those classes that can reliably get rid of their hand so the discards don't hurt as much.
Its reasonable to expect Nordrassil Druid to not be as impactful as it seems. It doesn't have taunt, needs to be played first (and therefore you actually need to have that card in hand prior to playing your spell) unlike Anubisath Defender, and crucially still costs mana. So while we can stare with bloodshot eyes over that 1 mana 3/5 aspect of that card, drawing it and then playing it with a spell that cost 3 or more is quite another thing entirely.
This is something that will be good depending on the cards we see in Barrens and beyond. If there's something that draws cards absurdly for druid in the early game, it might make the cut because at the end its still a 1 mana 3/5 most of the time. But without taunt or rush, its always going to be an uphill climb for any druid card.
Aside from maly and highlander druid, I don't remember seeing Swipe being placed into a druid deck for the last 1 year. I think the exact timing was when Overgrowth was released in AoO that swipe quietly got shelved.
Druid always had problems coming from behind, which is why its also the first class I can remember that successfully played Animated Broomstick when it released (If memory serves, both spell druid and guardian druid iterations didn't start with broom in it). Most druid tech for early game removal to prevent an early game snowball and that's about it.
Probably not. Druid's identity is ramp and playing big minions, not board clears or removal. Most druids don't even play board clears, because why play removal when you can just play big things 4 turns earlier than its possible?
Its going to be difficult. Mage secrets are often too expensive to play standalone, hence why losing Kirin Tor Mage is a big deal because the tempo from that 4/3 on top of a secret makes it worth putting more than 2-3 secrets in your deck. You could just put more burn or tempo cards in its place, but then wouldn't it be simply better to just play tempo mage with 1-2 secrets in it?
Of all the core changes, druid's is probably a mixed bag. They lost all their AoE and spell damage cards like Swipe and Wrath, and instead reverted to the face method of removing board. A few buffs here and there (because who'd want to play a 4/6 taunt for 5 these days) but crucially druid has lost one of its greatest cards in Savage Roar. And I shall be singing praises about this move until the following year because that is one card that seriously needs a break.
So where does druid go from here? Unlike the other classes, druid actually has an identity beyond the generic title 'midrange'. Ramp menagerie druid might actually just be good enough to see play now that most of the other classes got neutered in terms of removal options. Guardian druid is still up since the vast majority of its cards is still intact, with Twilight Runner neatly substituting the loss of Overflow and Rising Winds, but its likely to be too weak to make an impact on the meta. Clown druid is still viable despite the loss of overflow, on the back of Guess the Weight and maybe even Nourish as its draw engine. And finally token spell druid which, despite losing savage roar, still retains a majority of its early game and can still be a force to reckon with, given that most other classes had their AoE either rotated or taken away from them (Rogue in particular has none) and they still have Solar Eclipse into Power of the Wild and Arbor Up.
Expect druid to be the new snowball class. You either ramp and snowball from there, or you lose board from turn 1 and never get it back. Those druid mirrors, I predict, will be one of the most one sided match you'll ever see, because ironically with the loss of Swipe, Moonfire, Crystal Power, BEEEES!!! and Starfall, combined with a propensity to play no early game, druid simply can't deal with druid things.
Alright, so I'm not a fan of what they did to mage, but its not really too bad, and mostly because Fireball still exist. Unfortunately, one card does not alter the fact that mage as we know it is more or less dead. It used to be that mage was considered one of those classes that can basically ignore tempo because it can stall for days and isn't really short on draw. Now with Frost Nova, Blizzard, Doomsayer, and Frostbolt gone, the stall tactics are all but over.
So where does mage go from here? Tempo mage will be losing Mana Giant, Mana Cyclone, and unless Evocation gets unnerfed its likely too slow to make any impact. Secret mage gained Arcanologist but bizarrely having also lost Kirin Tor Mage and Arcane Flakmage, there's really little reason to want a secret in hand anyway. Tempo-burn mage is probably where mage is heading towards next, with some really good cards like Imprisoned Phoenix, Firebrand, Jandice Barov, and Ras Frostwhisper still in standard. Its also where Aegwynn, the Guardian will most likely find a place in.
Combo mage took a hell of a beating and I simply can't see it make a comeback. Losing apprentice is bad enough, but also losing the majority of its stall, Violet Spellwing, and Arcane Missiles means mozaki mage will have to go back to the drawing board. Something tells me that Barrens will introduce more freeze cards for mage, and maybe some other way to make use of those spell damage increases, or we just simply don't play any combo mage for a year.
Mage looks very one sided in what it can do. Then again, so do most of the other classes after the core set shift.
Actually now that I think about it, this change is actually less beneficial for aggro. Most aggro list are typically filled with at least six 1 drops, and a whole slew of early game cards that in the late game comes as completely worthless. Old tracking would enable you to remove at least 2 useless topdeck cards while giving you an opportunity to search for lethal, or a much better card.
New tracking is better for the mid game, or slower hunter variants. In a way, I like the change because I usually dont play face hunter, but I can't help but feel that being able to thin down a deck by 2 cards may come across as more significant that we once thought.
Well well, here comes the class that has largely benefited from all the core changes, perhaps more so than other classes. Unsurprisingly, that's because paladin's main game plan hasn't really changed much. Just about anything that's important to paladin is still here, Tirion Fordring, Truesilver Champion, Blessing of Kings, Equality, and Consecration, while losing its relatively interesting but for the most part worthless cards like Blessed Champion, Eye for an Eye, and Holy Wrath
Shouldn't be surprising that dude pally is likely to be the most popular, and perhaps best archetype, in the next meta. Card draw continues to plague paladin with the removal of Blessing of Wisdom and the now rotating Salhet's Pride, and it wouldn't surprise me too much if none is to be had in Barrens to draw paladin some cards. Tempo-wise, their cards are simply just better than the other classes. We should count ourselves lucky that Lightforged Crusader is rotating as well, or its likely to be unbearable.
What else can pally do? Murlocs are conclusively out of the way, with Murloc Warleader gone. Managerie paladin is a possibility, libram paladin suffers from card draw and since you can no longer tutor out Pen Flingers, it might be too inconsistent for the top meta. There's a small place for some kind of midrange paladin with Rally! as a centerpiece, so we forgo the dudes and bring in the usual stuff with rally for reload.
One thing is for sure. Paladin is likely to still be in the top 3 of the meta. Unless rogue and dhunters get some really powerful tempo tools, I can't see otherwise.
If you ever have doubts about team5 trying to push tempo priest into the spotlight, then the core set changes will be the most blatant and obvious attempt yet. Basically, if Shadow Word: Death have been nixed as well you could conceivably be fooled into thinking that you've stumbled onto a list of paladin cards. There's literally no other removal option other than the conditional shadow word death, ruin, and the only borderline acceptable Holy Nova. At least we still have Holy Smite, guess christmas came early in 2021.
The consequence of this is that control priest has taken a beating it might never recover until the following year. Cards like Sethekk Veilweaver is now more likely to grant you tempo cards as opposed to reactive cards, so you can't just run veilweaver and Nazmani Bloodweaver along with Rally! because all you're going to end up with are a bunch of tempo cards. I look forward to seeing the priest cards for Barrens, and if I spot anything less than 2 removal options and a board clear I'm calling control priest truly dead and gone.
So what are we stuck with? Midrange priest, with a hard emphasis on getting board as early as possible, because if you lose it you'll never get it back, what with priest's draw potential being somewhere between the ground and the height of an ant. Face priest? That's not even a joke. You go shadowform and then pray your opponent's not warrior. Since priest lost so many of its control options, you can't rely on spiking your opponent's face for long, because now any minion that's not 5 or more attack just gets free reign.
Its not entirely gloom and doom. Silence priest in the form of Humongous Razorleaf and Arcane Watcher might just be enough, what with most classic removal cards being gone. Its literally now or never; silence priest has never really looked better since its height during Ungoro, so if it fails now then it will never be good.
ETC only costs 2 mana. What's the point of going through all that just to save 2 mana?
That 30 damage combo seems really iffy. With 2 ETC, you're doing 4 damage per minion. I don't think the math adds up to 30, since even with your combo, you only have 5 mana remaining, which means you're pushing only 7 minions with rush at best, which should add up to max of 28. Im no math expert, so Im fully open to having my math dissected here.
When I saw the released list of warrior core cards I found myself surprised at two things; Shield Slam and Brawl were still part of core, and that Shield Block and Battle Rage didn't make it. It still baffles me that shield block was taken away. Is this really a problem card to begin with? Yes it has been played since forever, but what kind of design space is now freed up by its removal?
I'm a bit skeptical about combo warrior's chances in the next meta. Ancharrr is now gone, and so is Risky Skipper, and the loss of both of those cards also drastically reduces Armorsmith and Shield Slam's relevance. Draw is also harder to come by, with only Cutting Class remaining as the sole card card draw option along with Ringmaster Whatley, both of which are conditional draw effects, and thus may not be entirely suitable for a combo deck.
My guess is that some kind of midrange aggro warrior will come out, with Ringmaster Whatley as a centerpiece. Nitroboost Poison + weapons into Cutting Class is already a decent enough play, and with whatley you'll always be guaranteed to draw your choice of finisher in Alexstrasza the Life-Binder or Ysera the Dreamer. We might actually see Stranglethorn Tiger back in standard unironically. Wouldn't that be a sight?
A small note. Warsong Commander is likely not an aura effect like how Houndmaster Shaw used to be. Its description reads 'give', unlike shaw's 'have'. A minor thing for sure, but it does mean that you can't just vomit stuff on board then play this, it has to be played first before everything will get rush after. I agree that Animated Broomstick is basically the better sweeper here, but if team5 had the audacity of changing warsong commander to what it will be, I will take that as a signal that broomstick's time as a 1 drop may be over.
Back in the day when Mind Control was 8 mana, and Circle of Healing + Injured Blademaster on 3 was an actual powerhouse play.
But if you wanted to play classic at all, its going to be because of hunter, one of the most overpowered class in classic history. 1 mana Flare, +2+2 hyena, 2 mana Starving Buzzard, 8 mana King Krush, and the all powerful Savannah Highmane.