Man, the fact that the battlecry and colossal's trigger first followed by the sack means this secret is actually far far worse than I'd imagine.
So you play this secret, your opponent guesses correctly and completely arse you over by playing one of their key battlecry minions and then get a chance to play it again. Imagine playing Sira'kess Cultist or Za'qul into this, break the sack and then playing it again. Its almost like assisted suicide.
I really dont understand why didn't they just make it 'when' instead of 'after'. The whole point of this secret is as some kind of pseudo-counterspell for minions. Now its just likely to be nothing more than a liability half the time, and the other half it'll just stuff a 1 drop or some other useless minion into the sack. What is this card even supposed to be doing?
Let's hope things go better for secret rogue in the midset, because Sticky Situation cannot hold up the entire archetype on its own.
The ideal would be for this to pick out something big, kill a minion and then you have 2 big things on board. But is this really a game winning play? Unless one of them happens to be Rattlegore, there's no reason to expect either of them landing any hits, never mind do anything useful.
Had this been 5 mana it would have been slightly viable, but nevertheless too inconsistent. And this card is currently 8 mana.
Arena stuff. In standard, not only is it inconsistent, but also most good minions tend to be battlecry minions, i.e. not big dudes. So you'll more likely just fling something that's infinitely better with the battlecry than not. And plus, even if you hypothetically summoned a high value minion, its not like standard is running out of answers for two big things on board.
The mana cost is also too high to cheat anything but 10 drops, and aside from neptulon there's not really alot of stuff you want to fling that you cant actually just play yourself.
In standard this card is just useless for mage, currently.
There's not a single secret support card that makes this card even remotely worth it. If Kirin Tor Mage was still in standard then maybe, because there is a good tempo secret in Explosive Runes, but otherwise you'd be hard done trying to keep a secret up on turn 3.
Even in aggro, currently being mech mage, this card can't hold itself up because there's no room for secrets to push out.
Probably something for the future, because currently this card is shit. Rogues may dream that this card belongs to them but getting shafted is probably weaved into the design document.
Because why not? This guarantees a minion on board every turn for three turns. All the minions are good. And 3 turns later you have a 5/4 with a 4 attack weapon.
The only reason we dont see more of this card is because hunter as a class suck. Otherwise, I cant see any downside fitting this one card that does so many things in.
This will likely see play because Im not seeing druid drop renathal anytime soon. The fact is that druids' feast and famine playstyle, plus the plentiful cards they can draw, means its all pluses not minus with 40 health and 40 cards.
But whenever druid drops the 40 cards, Im not optimistic this card will see any play in ramp. The problem is that druids tend to do only a few things in the first 5 turns, and that formula is solid enough that I dont think there's any room for cards like this one, powerful as it is. And there's so many nature spells worth playing that this card can never realistically draw the thing you want it to draw.
That said, being able to tutor cards can never be underestimated, and this card helpfully tutors Convoke the Spirits and Composting, which is very useful in both aggro and prestor druids.
I hope team5 realises what they are doing. Adding consistency in druids usually means something is getting nerfed. Probably not this one though; a balanced card in an unbalanced class.
As good as it looks, I dont think it'll see play in the current celestial, prestor, or ramp druid. The current way to ramp is Wild Growth -> guff, or just play Nourish because Jerry Rig Carpenter helpfully tutors it. But this card does have one thing going, and that's the fact that it tutors a card, and that card can easily be Convoke the Spirits, which may be the only nature spell in the deck for consistency.
Maybe aggro druid with convoke end game? But more likely somehow someway someone will make this card work in a celestial alignment deck. Because why not? Survive until play broken card and win. That's practically druid's identity.
I would agree that cards are largely designed to fit with the 'identity' of the class; hence why mage cards always find a way to piss me off. But I would disagree with precise, controlled shenanigans. Most of the time rogue cards have elements of rng, cards from other classes, scaling effects with number of cards played, or does shuffling/drawing/copying.
But there are also cards like Infiltrator Lilian, Crabatoa, etc. singular legendaries that just do what they do, as mundane as it is effective.
Point is, just because the class has an identity, doesn't mean you can't have solid stuff like orion. And if its player agency you're asking for they could easily have designed it with a combo to discover and play a secret. Besides, this card doesn't really strike me as something you design for mage neither; feels more like something for paladin.
But in a class like mage, where secrets haven't been relevant for some time, would it be the clincher for aggro mage to shine? Technically it can happen, because Explosive Runes is in standard, but without any further support this card would likely be unplayed until more arrives.
It really does look like a rogue legendary to be honest, and ironically would have been the card that actually pushes secret rogue up a tier. Is this really just team5 shitting on rogue card design, because it seems like for every archetype they're pushing the best cards for that archetype always seem to land into another class.
The fact that it has stealth is the real clincher here. That means this card will almost always result in 3 damage to face along with a 3/4 or a value trade in your favor. And the trigger being spells makes it highly unlikely it wont trigger early.
Probably just play it, even outside secret decks, because why not? Even if the opponent can see it coming, they can't possibly play no spells until the right time to strike.
Its just a standard, decent card that will likely only see play if secret rogue is up.
Because there's simply not that many secrets currently available, and the fact is that rogue never really suffers from draw, so this card is just redundant. Had it have vanilla stats it may be just an autoinclude, but being a turn too small, it may just see no play whatsoever.
I wasn't too into this card at first, but then the more I think about it, this card is simply just a counterspell for minions. And for two mana it can be fairly devastating most of the time.
But its minions, and that's a million miles away from spells, something which practically made Oh My Yogg! as good as it was. The problem is that most good decks these days dont tend to rely on that many minions, and since this card doesn't actually remove the minion, its naturally weaker as the game progresses.
For what its worth, it at very least makes cards like Private Eye better. And like most secrets, its most dangerous quality is simply by existing, not necessarily being played.
Probably not good, but will still see play assuming secret rogue is good.
The problem is interactivity. At its best your opponent will trigger the secret and be unable to kill this, but that's highly unlikely. More likely is that they'll either trigger the secret before killing this, or trigger one and then kill it to ensure it can never do anything useful.
And of course, if you dont control a secret you can never play it on curve, which is another problem. In may ways this may simply be a much weaker Korrak the Bloodrager, at very least that can be played on curve regardless of what happens and require your opponent to have an answer. This card relies so much on your opponent that I simply dont think it'll be any good.
I like it because it deals direct damage, which hunters always like. Unfortunately, it would likely also end up in quest hunter, a major negative to me, but notwithstanding that makes the card even more flexible than Spirit Poacher or Wild Spirits.
Nothing really much to say. The wildseeds are good, and this card deals 3 damage. Just what hunters need.
Between this and Spirit Poacher, I think that's all the wildseeds you need. The fact is that the wildseeds are all good, but their power level diminishes as more of them are played. You dont need two stags taking up space for 3 turns on your board, or two spirit foxes when one will do.
Still, this card is good. Two good minions for 3 mana, and at most you'll need to wait is two turns. Probably played in most hunters, for that reason alone.
Attracting new and old players back to the game is probably difficult. Hearthstone is simply no longer fresh, no matter how many expansions you dropped, and suffers from comparison with the casual nature of battlegrounds. It may not be as complex (both to watch and play) as LoR, but these auto-chess like games are simply just much easier to pick up.
And then there's the cost. Let's say that the game isn't easy to approach because the game is expensive. Metas can change about 4 times per expansion, and dust compensation may not always be sufficient to pick up the next big thing. Of course, we can argue that for these players they can stay around bronze-gold where most players suffer the same handicap, but here's where it hits hard; in battlegrounds we can repeatedly win/lose and there's no real benefit or gain. In ordinary hearthstone, going on a losing streak hurts, and the wound bite deeper when you're beaten by the many bs cards/strats available.
Which brings me to the point about disruption effects, as mentioned by Dean. As much as we all hate seeing our strats being disrupted by cards like mad duke, mutanus, or dirty rats, there is nothing as silly or as aggravating as losing to bs like Celestial Alignment, Wildheart Guff on 4-5, superb rng Jackpot!, or quest hunters. Even control decks can be countered by being more greedy and playing around their removals. In what shape and fashion does one do against a 40 health druid, knowing you only have 6 or less turns to win or you auto lose.
Its not really about us hating disruption. Its more on team5's design decisions making one sided metas, filled with uninteractive bs. At this point if Mutanus the Devourer discovers two cards to eat from hand and is 1 mana I think the whole community would be in rapture. Ive been facing nothing but quest hunters and celestial alignment/prestor druids for the last week and it sucks. I think I'll just finish up my quest and then close down hearthstone until next week.
I think its fair to say, if their aim is to address the losing player count, focus on making the game fun should be the first, followed by cost and then accessibility. Looking at the new cards though; if druid is anywhere near the top 4 tiers then they've just failed the first objective.
Probably still good, even if a little too slow for the wildseeds. That it does 3 damage might as well be the highlight, because quest hunter can use it.
But in midrange decks, there might just be too many wildseeds that you'll probably want something that would help on board sooner, so perhaps you can cut this one.
Anti deathrattle synergy? Looks very much like it. This is the level where deathrattle support for rogue has sunken to.
As for the card itself. Its fairly bad, but with so few secrets if you're playing secret rogue you'll probably just play this in your deck to mess with your opponent's play rather than rely on the card itself.
The point is that much like Blademaster Okani and cards of the like, no player worth their salt would gamble on it so its only main job is preventing your opponent from playing efficiently. Unfortunately, they can easily just play a spell to test for Sticky Situation and will then know exactly what this is. Or alternatively, just let you kidnap a useless minion and thereafter forget about it, and you're one slot smaller on board, on top of having your deathrattle synergy completely ruined.
Sticky Situation will see play even in non secret decks. Having a 3/4 that cannot be interacted for 2 mana early on is fairly good. At very least it'll likely deal 3 damage, or take a value trade.
Private Eye however, is iffy. There's likely 3 secrets, which makes it 6 cards. In other words, the moment you draw more than 2, and that is fairly likely given that rogue can actually draw cards, then the second copy is just a liability, and that's if you decide to play all 6 of them. Of course, this can change if the secrets are particularly good (disruption secrets like Counterspell or Ice Trap would do), but Im not holding my breath.
Because you can have active more than 1 secret, and only one will get this card back to life. So they used the word store, and the word soul perhaps refer to what you see when you scroll over the secret
Man, the fact that the battlecry and colossal's trigger first followed by the sack means this secret is actually far far worse than I'd imagine.
So you play this secret, your opponent guesses correctly and completely arse you over by playing one of their key battlecry minions and then get a chance to play it again. Imagine playing Sira'kess Cultist or Za'qul into this, break the sack and then playing it again. Its almost like assisted suicide.
I really dont understand why didn't they just make it 'when' instead of 'after'. The whole point of this secret is as some kind of pseudo-counterspell for minions. Now its just likely to be nothing more than a liability half the time, and the other half it'll just stuff a 1 drop or some other useless minion into the sack. What is this card even supposed to be doing?
Let's hope things go better for secret rogue in the midset, because Sticky Situation cannot hold up the entire archetype on its own.
Probably just shit to be honest.
The ideal would be for this to pick out something big, kill a minion and then you have 2 big things on board. But is this really a game winning play? Unless one of them happens to be Rattlegore, there's no reason to expect either of them landing any hits, never mind do anything useful.
Had this been 5 mana it would have been slightly viable, but nevertheless too inconsistent. And this card is currently 8 mana.
Arena or bust.
Arena stuff. In standard, not only is it inconsistent, but also most good minions tend to be battlecry minions, i.e. not big dudes. So you'll more likely just fling something that's infinitely better with the battlecry than not. And plus, even if you hypothetically summoned a high value minion, its not like standard is running out of answers for two big things on board.
The mana cost is also too high to cheat anything but 10 drops, and aside from neptulon there's not really alot of stuff you want to fling that you cant actually just play yourself.
In standard this card is just useless for mage, currently.
There's not a single secret support card that makes this card even remotely worth it. If Kirin Tor Mage was still in standard then maybe, because there is a good tempo secret in Explosive Runes, but otherwise you'd be hard done trying to keep a secret up on turn 3.
Even in aggro, currently being mech mage, this card can't hold itself up because there's no room for secrets to push out.
Probably something for the future, because currently this card is shit. Rogues may dream that this card belongs to them but getting shafted is probably weaved into the design document.
I'd play it in all hunters.
Because why not? This guarantees a minion on board every turn for three turns. All the minions are good. And 3 turns later you have a 5/4 with a 4 attack weapon.
The only reason we dont see more of this card is because hunter as a class suck. Otherwise, I cant see any downside fitting this one card that does so many things in.
This will likely see play because Im not seeing druid drop renathal anytime soon. The fact is that druids' feast and famine playstyle, plus the plentiful cards they can draw, means its all pluses not minus with 40 health and 40 cards.
But whenever druid drops the 40 cards, Im not optimistic this card will see any play in ramp. The problem is that druids tend to do only a few things in the first 5 turns, and that formula is solid enough that I dont think there's any room for cards like this one, powerful as it is. And there's so many nature spells worth playing that this card can never realistically draw the thing you want it to draw.
That said, being able to tutor cards can never be underestimated, and this card helpfully tutors Convoke the Spirits and Composting, which is very useful in both aggro and prestor druids.
I hope team5 realises what they are doing. Adding consistency in druids usually means something is getting nerfed. Probably not this one though; a balanced card in an unbalanced class.
Ah shit. Team5 just cant help themselves.
As good as it looks, I dont think it'll see play in the current celestial, prestor, or ramp druid. The current way to ramp is Wild Growth -> guff, or just play Nourish because Jerry Rig Carpenter helpfully tutors it. But this card does have one thing going, and that's the fact that it tutors a card, and that card can easily be Convoke the Spirits, which may be the only nature spell in the deck for consistency.
Maybe aggro druid with convoke end game? But more likely somehow someway someone will make this card work in a celestial alignment deck. Because why not? Survive until play broken card and win. That's practically druid's identity.
I would agree that cards are largely designed to fit with the 'identity' of the class; hence why mage cards always find a way to piss me off. But I would disagree with precise, controlled shenanigans. Most of the time rogue cards have elements of rng, cards from other classes, scaling effects with number of cards played, or does shuffling/drawing/copying.
But there are also cards like Infiltrator Lilian, Crabatoa, etc. singular legendaries that just do what they do, as mundane as it is effective.
Point is, just because the class has an identity, doesn't mean you can't have solid stuff like orion. And if its player agency you're asking for they could easily have designed it with a combo to discover and play a secret. Besides, this card doesn't really strike me as something you design for mage neither; feels more like something for paladin.
Its Crossroads Gossiper, except more dangerous and cost 1 more.
But in a class like mage, where secrets haven't been relevant for some time, would it be the clincher for aggro mage to shine? Technically it can happen, because Explosive Runes is in standard, but without any further support this card would likely be unplayed until more arrives.
It really does look like a rogue legendary to be honest, and ironically would have been the card that actually pushes secret rogue up a tier. Is this really just team5 shitting on rogue card design, because it seems like for every archetype they're pushing the best cards for that archetype always seem to land into another class.
The fact that it has stealth is the real clincher here. That means this card will almost always result in 3 damage to face along with a 3/4 or a value trade in your favor. And the trigger being spells makes it highly unlikely it wont trigger early.
Probably just play it, even outside secret decks, because why not? Even if the opponent can see it coming, they can't possibly play no spells until the right time to strike.
Its just a standard, decent card that will likely only see play if secret rogue is up.
Because there's simply not that many secrets currently available, and the fact is that rogue never really suffers from draw, so this card is just redundant. Had it have vanilla stats it may be just an autoinclude, but being a turn too small, it may just see no play whatsoever.
I wasn't too into this card at first, but then the more I think about it, this card is simply just a counterspell for minions. And for two mana it can be fairly devastating most of the time.
But its minions, and that's a million miles away from spells, something which practically made Oh My Yogg! as good as it was. The problem is that most good decks these days dont tend to rely on that many minions, and since this card doesn't actually remove the minion, its naturally weaker as the game progresses.
For what its worth, it at very least makes cards like Private Eye better. And like most secrets, its most dangerous quality is simply by existing, not necessarily being played.
Probably not good, but will still see play assuming secret rogue is good.
The problem is interactivity. At its best your opponent will trigger the secret and be unable to kill this, but that's highly unlikely. More likely is that they'll either trigger the secret before killing this, or trigger one and then kill it to ensure it can never do anything useful.
And of course, if you dont control a secret you can never play it on curve, which is another problem. In may ways this may simply be a much weaker Korrak the Bloodrager, at very least that can be played on curve regardless of what happens and require your opponent to have an answer. This card relies so much on your opponent that I simply dont think it'll be any good.
I like it because it deals direct damage, which hunters always like. Unfortunately, it would likely also end up in quest hunter, a major negative to me, but notwithstanding that makes the card even more flexible than Spirit Poacher or Wild Spirits.
Nothing really much to say. The wildseeds are good, and this card deals 3 damage. Just what hunters need.
Between this and Spirit Poacher, I think that's all the wildseeds you need. The fact is that the wildseeds are all good, but their power level diminishes as more of them are played. You dont need two stags taking up space for 3 turns on your board, or two spirit foxes when one will do.
Still, this card is good. Two good minions for 3 mana, and at most you'll need to wait is two turns. Probably played in most hunters, for that reason alone.
Attracting new and old players back to the game is probably difficult. Hearthstone is simply no longer fresh, no matter how many expansions you dropped, and suffers from comparison with the casual nature of battlegrounds. It may not be as complex (both to watch and play) as LoR, but these auto-chess like games are simply just much easier to pick up.
And then there's the cost. Let's say that the game isn't easy to approach because the game is expensive. Metas can change about 4 times per expansion, and dust compensation may not always be sufficient to pick up the next big thing. Of course, we can argue that for these players they can stay around bronze-gold where most players suffer the same handicap, but here's where it hits hard; in battlegrounds we can repeatedly win/lose and there's no real benefit or gain. In ordinary hearthstone, going on a losing streak hurts, and the wound bite deeper when you're beaten by the many bs cards/strats available.
Which brings me to the point about disruption effects, as mentioned by Dean. As much as we all hate seeing our strats being disrupted by cards like mad duke, mutanus, or dirty rats, there is nothing as silly or as aggravating as losing to bs like Celestial Alignment, Wildheart Guff on 4-5, superb rng Jackpot!, or quest hunters. Even control decks can be countered by being more greedy and playing around their removals. In what shape and fashion does one do against a 40 health druid, knowing you only have 6 or less turns to win or you auto lose.
Its not really about us hating disruption. Its more on team5's design decisions making one sided metas, filled with uninteractive bs. At this point if Mutanus the Devourer discovers two cards to eat from hand and is 1 mana I think the whole community would be in rapture. Ive been facing nothing but quest hunters and celestial alignment/prestor druids for the last week and it sucks. I think I'll just finish up my quest and then close down hearthstone until next week.
I think its fair to say, if their aim is to address the losing player count, focus on making the game fun should be the first, followed by cost and then accessibility. Looking at the new cards though; if druid is anywhere near the top 4 tiers then they've just failed the first objective.
Probably still good, even if a little too slow for the wildseeds. That it does 3 damage might as well be the highlight, because quest hunter can use it.
But in midrange decks, there might just be too many wildseeds that you'll probably want something that would help on board sooner, so perhaps you can cut this one.
Anti deathrattle synergy? Looks very much like it. This is the level where deathrattle support for rogue has sunken to.
As for the card itself. Its fairly bad, but with so few secrets if you're playing secret rogue you'll probably just play this in your deck to mess with your opponent's play rather than rely on the card itself.
The point is that much like Blademaster Okani and cards of the like, no player worth their salt would gamble on it so its only main job is preventing your opponent from playing efficiently. Unfortunately, they can easily just play a spell to test for Sticky Situation and will then know exactly what this is. Or alternatively, just let you kidnap a useless minion and thereafter forget about it, and you're one slot smaller on board, on top of having your deathrattle synergy completely ruined.
Sticky Situation will see play even in non secret decks. Having a 3/4 that cannot be interacted for 2 mana early on is fairly good. At very least it'll likely deal 3 damage, or take a value trade.
Private Eye however, is iffy. There's likely 3 secrets, which makes it 6 cards. In other words, the moment you draw more than 2, and that is fairly likely given that rogue can actually draw cards, then the second copy is just a liability, and that's if you decide to play all 6 of them. Of course, this can change if the secrets are particularly good (disruption secrets like Counterspell or Ice Trap would do), but Im not holding my breath.
Because you can have active more than 1 secret, and only one will get this card back to life. So they used the word store, and the word soul perhaps refer to what you see when you scroll over the secret