There must be at least one other card that puts more than 1 curse into your opponent's hand for this card to even be remotely worth it.
The problem with this style of play is interaction. Curse of Agony can work because under normal circumstances your opponent cannot practically prevent getting hit by the curse as they draw them. This one however, can be dispelled (seemingly anyway) by simply paying 2 mana, so its highly unlikely it'll ever do enough damage to kill, since the warlock deck playing it is unlikely to put up enough tempo to force awkward turns.
So how much damage are we expecting? I'd say 6 damage is realistic. Is it good enough? I doubt it. Unless the abyssal curses cannot be removed, it'll never make an entire deck on its own.
As for this card, its entire viability is determined by the performance of these abyssal curses. If there are more support for it, it could work. But until then its likely never living up to its potential.
Assuming of course that we even see mech mage at all. Something tells me we'll be seeing a lot of nagas, wildfires, and spell mage before mech mage even gets a chance at that top tier meatball and spaghetti
Just don't bet your house that this card would snowball out of control. The amount of things that has to happen before this minnow start gulping down killer whales, you'd have a better chance at having a chess game with a donkey wearing a tie.
There's Aquatic Form, Tuskarrrr Trawler, and Excavation Specialist. Both tuskarrrr trawler and excavation specialist are pretty standard vanilla cards, and unlike aquatic form you can't play the card immediately unless you have a draw option.
Trawler maybe still within the realms of possibility in aggro druid, but excavation specialist is too expensive for what it does. And either way, I still think you'd much rather save it for sunken gardens whenever possible. The only reason why'd you pick the fish is because you're in a tempo game and your hand is weak.
That's not to say the card is unplayable. I just think its a good card that will be played for what it is, a 1/3 on 1. The deathrattle is just an option available.
Its not a bad card, but there's only two Aquatic Forms and dredge isn't exactly printed on many cards to take advantage of the snowballing stats of this card. If I have to dredge something, I'd much rather get Sunken Gardens, rather than this card anyday.
At best you'd play this card simply because its a 1/3 that can scale with both Azsharan Gardens buff, something of which Druid of the Reef cannot do. As for the deathrattle, you can just forget about it, or use up aquatic form as and when tempo is more important than the gardens. Or alternatively you just run finley to sometimes get you both the gardens and the buffed up fish.
Just a good 2 drop for a class that really requires it if the idea if to make mech mage work.
Is also an efficient card to get Sunken Sweeper up, but I doubt any tempo deck would purposefully keep a 2 mana card in hand just to do that instead of playing it outright.
This is a card that'll break the meta for mage, not mech mage despite all the support it got.
Basically there are two functions for this card. The first would be obviously as a tempo setup. Play School Teacher on 4, and play this + 1/1 naga on 5, play cheap spell, play Amalgam of the Deep, etc. You get the idea. You can unload your entire hand on turn 5 circumstances permitting. At some point you'd even be able to put out Naga Giant for 0 mana, or at least get it close to 0 mana for a turn 6 board swing should the need arise.
And the second function is as OTK setup. Turn 10, play Spitelash Siren into Faceless Manipulator, drop 1 mana naga (school teacher student, or just naga giant), play cheap spell, then play Commander Sivara, brewmaster sivara followed by Ignite, then rinse and repeat sivara+ignite until opponent dies. Setup requires 6 cards, so its unlikely, but possible. Some pro would probably invent a better sequence than mine.
So, in summary. This card is broken and will probably get some other card nerfed if not itself. It has a baffling 5 health for godsake, and this card absolutely needs to die or you lose. The first scenario of hand dumping on turn 5 is scary enough.
The naga requirement is probably the only thing stopping this card from completely taking over. There's just a limited pool of nagas around to fully take advantage of the 2 extra mana, and while you're playing nagas you're probably not having a bs hand filled with spells.
But something tells me that there's some OTK setup somewhere here, with two of these, a brewmaster, and Commander Sivara. Go infinite with Fireballs or Ignite perhaps.
If theres a massive draw engine, this card will take over the entire meta.
But as it stands, its just a middling card that'll see play for the memes. Murlocs being so frail themselves doesn't help much too. But sometimes you can get a +3+3 on your hand and a tearful smile on your face seeing your opponent get ganged on by bunch of giant fish.
Looks like they really, really want murlock to be a thing. I can only imagine the enthusiasm during design meetings.
The only thing that can make this card work is a card draw engine, since Backfire and Hand of Gul'dan are rotating off. Without it, this card is likely buffing about 3 murlocs at most, and murlocs being what they are chances are good you'll only be 2 ticks of this card.
Still, probably will be played anyway for the first few weeks, regardless of how good or not it may be.
High marks from me simply because its going to see play, and it'll probably be an important part of the deck.
For the moment, its seemingly a paladin card because there's not many mechs that can take full advantage of this card. But we'll have to reevaluate once core set is revealed.
Mage has currently one really powerful use with it, which is Mecha-Shark. It gets better if there's more deathrattle mechs around
In theory this card is insane. But in practice it'll require a sticky mech or a turn 4 stealth mech like Coppertail Imposter to really reach its full potential.
A must have for mech builds, not because it'll often win the game, but by simply threatening to do so it has probably accomplish its wicked task. Sort of like a cheaper and better Battleground Battlemaster. I'd imagine seeing this mostly in paladin, mostly because I dont think mage's gameplan involves board as much as paladin does.
We'll have to see the full set of mechs, and whether magnetic comes back, to fully evaluate this card.
They're playing it right now in questlock. Bloodshard bristleback and barrens scavenger are powerful enough payoffs that I think its worth considering even after rotation.
Have to agree with YourPrivateNightmare on this one. The fact is that druids are regularly 4-5 mana ahead of its competitors, that's the real reason why Scale of Onyxia looks incredibly OP.
Whenever druids dont ramp that far, scale of onyxia simply comes out too slow and really doesn't do more than remove 3 minions at best.
Its not about identity, its just team5 designing cards to give druid reasons to ramp up at all. If ramping up fast still results in druid getting buried then the whole class simply stops, as we have seen during stormwind. Team5 made an erroneous blunder in printing (and then refusing to nerf) cards like Overgrowth and Lightning Bloom, resulting in nearly every good midrange card for druid like Druid of the Plains getting stuffed because efficient plays requires druids to play overgrowth into immediate tempo swing to get anywhere. Scale of onyxia isn't good, but it fits the blueprint and allows druid to get away with greed, that's why its seemingly overpowered to play against.
Maybe, just maybe, after rotation we'll see a druid class that doesn't get destroyed by a turn 1 Irondeep Trogg, and doesn't just win the game if they play overgrowth or guff on curve. We'll probably see less of scale of onyxia then as well.
Too slow to do anything remotely useful. There's just simply better cards like Soul Rend and Full-Blown Evil.
The card lives and dies by the curse it gives to the opponent. But it seems like you can discard the curse the same way as rafaam's curse works. So what is this card supposed to do at the end?
Since warlock cards are pretty much withheld until the very end of the reveal line I have to assume that this is all for some very big effect, like something happening if the curse ticks high enough. Perhaps this card will, at the end, win the coveted lady liadrin award for most underestimated until later. Or perhaps it looks like what it is; trash.
The AoE effect is just slow, very slow. And in fact since Blood Shard Bristleback and Barrens Scavenger is still in standard, I cannot see any warlock running this over Soul Rend, which deals more damage and cost 2 less.
So if you're running this card at all it'll be for the curse. But the curse ticks so slowly its almost negligible as an offensive card, unless you can maintain tempo while doing so, which this card prevents, because you're going to nuke your side too. I would assume that your opponent can remove the curse by spending 2 mana playing it, the same way rafaam's curse works.
Pretty sure we'll be seeing more cards that ticks more fluffly curses, because otherwise this card is just hot garbage.
There's a chance that team5 have made an mistake trying to cover for both the colossal minions and the evidently powerful Snowfall Guardian. Because if shaman is everywhere next meta, this is practically a must have card which also unfortunately counters many things that under normal circumstances no one will be prepared for.
Deathrattle decks for example gets shafted pretty hard just because snowfall guardian's shit. Should've just given us [Hearthstone Card (living dragonflame) Not Found] instead. Its not like standard doesn't already have a good silence, tradeable minion around.
Nevertheless, silence effects are like weapon destruction. It'll always see play one way or another. So I'd expect this one will certainly do as well.
Its only good enough to see some play, but I'd imagine its too costly to actually do more than clearing aggro boards. In most cases, it compares unfavorably to Felrattler, which comes out earlier and deals 4 damage to a single target.
Definitely a card to consider though, given that dhunter has lost a lot of its AoE.
There must be at least one other card that puts more than 1 curse into your opponent's hand for this card to even be remotely worth it.
The problem with this style of play is interaction. Curse of Agony can work because under normal circumstances your opponent cannot practically prevent getting hit by the curse as they draw them. This one however, can be dispelled (seemingly anyway) by simply paying 2 mana, so its highly unlikely it'll ever do enough damage to kill, since the warlock deck playing it is unlikely to put up enough tempo to force awkward turns.
So how much damage are we expecting? I'd say 6 damage is realistic. Is it good enough? I doubt it. Unless the abyssal curses cannot be removed, it'll never make an entire deck on its own.
As for this card, its entire viability is determined by the performance of these abyssal curses. If there are more support for it, it could work. But until then its likely never living up to its potential.
3/2 draw a card. Yes this will see play.
Assuming of course that we even see mech mage at all. Something tells me we'll be seeing a lot of nagas, wildfires, and spell mage before mech mage even gets a chance at that top tier meatball and spaghetti
Decent 1 drop with a tiny upside that can be buffed by both sides of Azsharan Gardens. Something Druid of the Reef cannot do.
Just don't bet your house that this card would snowball out of control. The amount of things that has to happen before this minnow start gulping down killer whales, you'd have a better chance at having a chess game with a donkey wearing a tie.
There's Aquatic Form, Tuskarrrr Trawler, and Excavation Specialist. Both tuskarrrr trawler and excavation specialist are pretty standard vanilla cards, and unlike aquatic form you can't play the card immediately unless you have a draw option.
Trawler maybe still within the realms of possibility in aggro druid, but excavation specialist is too expensive for what it does. And either way, I still think you'd much rather save it for sunken gardens whenever possible. The only reason why'd you pick the fish is because you're in a tempo game and your hand is weak.
As for tutoring. I wouldn't play or contrive my deck just so Capture Coldtooth Mine or Living Seed (Rank 1) will fetch me a Bottomfeeder any day.
That's not to say the card is unplayable. I just think its a good card that will be played for what it is, a 1/3 on 1. The deathrattle is just an option available.
Its not a bad card, but there's only two Aquatic Forms and dredge isn't exactly printed on many cards to take advantage of the snowballing stats of this card. If I have to dredge something, I'd much rather get Sunken Gardens, rather than this card anyday.
At best you'd play this card simply because its a 1/3 that can scale with both Azsharan Gardens buff, something of which Druid of the Reef cannot do. As for the deathrattle, you can just forget about it, or use up aquatic form as and when tempo is more important than the gardens. Or alternatively you just run finley to sometimes get you both the gardens and the buffed up fish.
Its clearly the last one if we speculate on the small pic shown. Unsurprising, since team5 likes to leave a few good ones for the final reveal video.
Just a good 2 drop for a class that really requires it if the idea if to make mech mage work.
Is also an efficient card to get Sunken Sweeper up, but I doubt any tempo deck would purposefully keep a 2 mana card in hand just to do that instead of playing it outright.
This is a card that'll break the meta for mage, not mech mage despite all the support it got.
Basically there are two functions for this card. The first would be obviously as a tempo setup. Play School Teacher on 4, and play this + 1/1 naga on 5, play cheap spell, play Amalgam of the Deep, etc. You get the idea. You can unload your entire hand on turn 5 circumstances permitting. At some point you'd even be able to put out Naga Giant for 0 mana, or at least get it close to 0 mana for a turn 6 board swing should the need arise.
And the second function is as OTK setup. Turn 10, play Spitelash Siren into Faceless Manipulator, drop 1 mana naga (school teacher student, or just naga giant), play cheap spell, then play Commander Sivara, brewmaster sivara followed by Ignite, then rinse and repeat sivara+ignite until opponent dies. Setup requires 6 cards, so its unlikely, but possible. Some pro would probably invent a better sequence than mine.
So, in summary. This card is broken and will probably get some other card nerfed if not itself. It has a baffling 5 health for godsake, and this card absolutely needs to die or you lose. The first scenario of hand dumping on turn 5 is scary enough.
The naga requirement is probably the only thing stopping this card from completely taking over. There's just a limited pool of nagas around to fully take advantage of the 2 extra mana, and while you're playing nagas you're probably not having a bs hand filled with spells.
But something tells me that there's some OTK setup somewhere here, with two of these, a brewmaster, and Commander Sivara. Go infinite with Fireballs or Ignite perhaps.
If theres a massive draw engine, this card will take over the entire meta.
But as it stands, its just a middling card that'll see play for the memes. Murlocs being so frail themselves doesn't help much too. But sometimes you can get a +3+3 on your hand and a tearful smile on your face seeing your opponent get ganged on by bunch of giant fish.
Looks like they really, really want murlock to be a thing. I can only imagine the enthusiasm during design meetings.
The only thing that can make this card work is a card draw engine, since Backfire and Hand of Gul'dan are rotating off. Without it, this card is likely buffing about 3 murlocs at most, and murlocs being what they are chances are good you'll only be 2 ticks of this card.
Still, probably will be played anyway for the first few weeks, regardless of how good or not it may be.
High marks from me simply because its going to see play, and it'll probably be an important part of the deck.
For the moment, its seemingly a paladin card because there's not many mechs that can take full advantage of this card. But we'll have to reevaluate once core set is revealed.
Mage has currently one really powerful use with it, which is Mecha-Shark. It gets better if there's more deathrattle mechs around
In theory this card is insane. But in practice it'll require a sticky mech or a turn 4 stealth mech like Coppertail Imposter to really reach its full potential.
A must have for mech builds, not because it'll often win the game, but by simply threatening to do so it has probably accomplish its wicked task. Sort of like a cheaper and better Battleground Battlemaster. I'd imagine seeing this mostly in paladin, mostly because I dont think mage's gameplan involves board as much as paladin does.
We'll have to see the full set of mechs, and whether magnetic comes back, to fully evaluate this card.
They're playing it right now in questlock. Bloodshard bristleback and barrens scavenger are powerful enough payoffs that I think its worth considering even after rotation.
Have to agree with YourPrivateNightmare on this one. The fact is that druids are regularly 4-5 mana ahead of its competitors, that's the real reason why Scale of Onyxia looks incredibly OP.
Whenever druids dont ramp that far, scale of onyxia simply comes out too slow and really doesn't do more than remove 3 minions at best.
Its not about identity, its just team5 designing cards to give druid reasons to ramp up at all. If ramping up fast still results in druid getting buried then the whole class simply stops, as we have seen during stormwind. Team5 made an erroneous blunder in printing (and then refusing to nerf) cards like Overgrowth and Lightning Bloom, resulting in nearly every good midrange card for druid like Druid of the Plains getting stuffed because efficient plays requires druids to play overgrowth into immediate tempo swing to get anywhere. Scale of onyxia isn't good, but it fits the blueprint and allows druid to get away with greed, that's why its seemingly overpowered to play against.
Maybe, just maybe, after rotation we'll see a druid class that doesn't get destroyed by a turn 1 Irondeep Trogg, and doesn't just win the game if they play overgrowth or guff on curve. We'll probably see less of scale of onyxia then as well.
Too slow to do anything remotely useful. There's just simply better cards like Soul Rend and Full-Blown Evil.
The card lives and dies by the curse it gives to the opponent. But it seems like you can discard the curse the same way as rafaam's curse works. So what is this card supposed to do at the end?
Since warlock cards are pretty much withheld until the very end of the reveal line I have to assume that this is all for some very big effect, like something happening if the curse ticks high enough. Perhaps this card will, at the end, win the coveted lady liadrin award for most underestimated until later. Or perhaps it looks like what it is; trash.
The AoE effect is just slow, very slow. And in fact since Blood Shard Bristleback and Barrens Scavenger is still in standard, I cannot see any warlock running this over Soul Rend, which deals more damage and cost 2 less.
So if you're running this card at all it'll be for the curse. But the curse ticks so slowly its almost negligible as an offensive card, unless you can maintain tempo while doing so, which this card prevents, because you're going to nuke your side too. I would assume that your opponent can remove the curse by spending 2 mana playing it, the same way rafaam's curse works.
Pretty sure we'll be seeing more cards that ticks more fluffly curses, because otherwise this card is just hot garbage.
There's a chance that team5 have made an mistake trying to cover for both the colossal minions and the evidently powerful Snowfall Guardian. Because if shaman is everywhere next meta, this is practically a must have card which also unfortunately counters many things that under normal circumstances no one will be prepared for.
Deathrattle decks for example gets shafted pretty hard just because snowfall guardian's shit. Should've just given us [Hearthstone Card (living dragonflame) Not Found] instead. Its not like standard doesn't already have a good silence, tradeable minion around.
Nevertheless, silence effects are like weapon destruction. It'll always see play one way or another. So I'd expect this one will certainly do as well.
Well, we didn't get Living Dragonbreath but we got next big counter to all that nasty Snowfall Guardians.
But its like all tech cards, all depends on meta. But it does mean that nearly all deathrattle decks get a massive middle finger to the face.
Its only good enough to see some play, but I'd imagine its too costly to actually do more than clearing aggro boards. In most cases, it compares unfavorably to Felrattler, which comes out earlier and deals 4 damage to a single target.
Definitely a card to consider though, given that dhunter has lost a lot of its AoE.