I've been playing Jade Quest Shaman with Eater of Secrets instead of Kezan and without Healbot (double Lifedrinker though) and I don't think it's a good matchup. Even with healbot, the issue is most frequently both completing the quest before you die (you essentially have to get both Sludge Slurper and Cable Rat in order to do so in time) and, above all, controlling the board. You can Antique Healbot all you want but they're not really spending that many spells burning you down, they just beat you up reoeatedly with minions and nothing you play sticks. Secret Mage has an absurdly fast early game while Quest Shaman barely does anything impactful until turn 4. Once they start landing their Crystal Runners and Cloud Princes, all you got is a hope and a prayer that you've had your Hagatha's Scheme in hand from turn 1 and that the secret they have up isn't Counterspell (cause you don't really have that many cheap, throwaway spells, nor the time to play them). My Jade Shudder Shaman has been doing very well a day or two ago and over the entirety of its existence it has lost exactly one game to Warlocks (and I play against them all the time, so that's an amazing statistic), but Paladins (mech handbuff, Flying Machine variety) and Secret Mages started appearing a lot more now and keep holding me down. My Mage winrate with that deck is tear-inducing, despite beating up on Reno Mages.
Depends on what you're playing. Some decks, such as Reno decks, or Quest Shaman, can easily accomodate some anti-secret tech, as can Spell Hunters (just make sure your Flare doesn't get countered or it won't go into your Zuljin pool). As a bonus, it also helps against Odd Pallies and Reno Mages, since those also run some key secrets. Ziliax and weapon removal aren't particularly intrusive tech and also sorta work against Secret Mage. But in general, if you're playing a deck that has a straight up bad matchup against Secret Mage, no amount of tech is going to save you. The majority of the ranking up I've done this season (from 7-2) was done with spell hunter, and you're just straight up dead to Secret Mages no matter what you do. You don't run enough minions to pop their Mirror Entities/Explosive Runes, so they always have something up for Cloud Princes, you run absolutely no healing outside of Zuljin's 5 armor, you got a bad time recovering mid-sized minion boards from behind. It's not pretty. At that point, switching is really the only way. It's simply not a deck that can be countered with one or two techs, like say a Shudderwock deck can with clutch Dirty Rats/Deathlords or Jade Druid can with a single Geist. In that respect, Secret Mage shapes the meta at high ranks in the same way Res Priest does at ranks 5-4. If you're playing a deck that has no answer to Res Priest at those ranks, don't even bother. On the plus side, Secret Mage isn't nearly as prevalent past Legend, so it's not the whole meta, mostly the climb.
Hex Lord is more of my own little flair (I can't play a meta deck without a bit of personal touch), there are so many possible Reno Mage builds that I'm sure you'd be able to put together a budget list for a fraction of the cost and find similar success. Though in that case, I'd say going the N'Zoth + Taunts + Pyros route might be necessary, as it's both the cheapest to craft and you get the most bang for your buck per card. But sometimes, if your opponent doesn't go too greedy, you can just include Elysiana and be done with it, let them die in fatigue. There's really a lot of options, you just change 3-4 cards and the deck can feel very different.
Secret Mage is a counter to greediness in a way. The thing is, what beats secret mages isn't the greed. The later, slower section of your deck (say 7+ mana) doesn't really matter against Secret Mage. What beats Secret Mages is healing, ability to pop all their secrets (Zephrys does a great job with that), simply outlasting them or taking the tempo from their hands. Reno Mage does a really good job at duplicating Kazakus, Zephrys and Reno Jackson, and Reno the Relicologist can often sieze the board on his own. Add to that Ice Block and Arcane Artificer and you actually have a pretty decent suite of tools to split their attention. Artificer + Frost Nova or Kazakus Potion alone can already heal you up a little bit and force them to use their burn on your board instead of your face, they can't rightly risk leaving Reno Jackson, Kazakus or Zephrys up either out of fear you bounce or copy them, so that's more burn deflected...and then there's Malacrass to give you another Reno/Zephrys/Kazakus if you've survived their initial burst and Renoed, and they're trying to burn you down all over again through Aluneth. So really, you're fighting them mostly through the Highlander payoff cards more than anything else. Since these cards do a decent enough job at that that you can afford to have a few dead cards for the matchup, the remainder of your deck can be heavily dedicated to combating other Reno decks. I've seen greed at rank 1 you wouldn't believe (Echo of Medivh, Kalecgos, N'Zoth, Janalai, Dirty Rat, Deathlord, Conjurer's Calling and Elysiana all in the same deck, all of which are awful against aggro) and it positively spanks other Reno Mages that are less greedy.
I think you'll see things very differently once you're around rank 2 3-4 stars. That's where Reno Mages REALLY take off. It's hard to tell whether they're stronger than Secret Mage or not in a vacuum, but I can assure you, ranks 2-1 are about outhealing secret mages with Reno and Jaina and then competing in who has a filthier, greedier Reno Mage. The greedier the deck, the better it seems to do against other Reno Mages, which end up being about 50 % of the meta in that rank section. It is downright vulgar how good Reno Mage is right now, and I don't think the Galaxy nerf is going to change that much in the near future.
I've climbed to Legend over the last week and from my experience, Mages rule the field right now. Res Priests completely disappeared at around rank 3, I encounter only a handful of Odd Rogues, Even Shamans, Mech Hunters and Odd Paladins between 3 and legend, which indicates that they likely just cannot keep up with Secret Mage's damage output and tempo, and from there, it's essentially just Secret Mages battling Reno Mages, and the occasional Control Lock (Reno or otherwise) trying to outlast/outvalue them both. Once you get to legend, it's obviously a different story, and people play all sorts of weird shit like Snip-Snap Zoo Lock or Inner Fire Prist, but in general, the same decks still float to the top. SoU definitely contributed to the renewed power of both types of Mages, and Zephrys alone seems to be enough of an incentive for some Warlocks to go highlander as well.
But as far as the quests go...they leave much to be desired. The Warlock, Warrior, Paladin, Priest, Hunter and Mage ones are either absolutely awful (most of them) or simply not good enough (Paladin), the Shaman quest is highly debatable, as I've tested my preexisting Shudderwock Shaman with it and it seems to perform about as poorly as it did before (as in, not even clawing its way to 50 % winrate because aggro eats you and you're too slow to outpace combo). I've seen the Rogue Quest used a handful of times by some tempo decks, but in all honesty, nobody plays weapon removal in Wild anymore, so a tempo version with Cutlass seems to do way better from my experience (at around 63 % winrate for my list, though the sample size is only around 40 games at ranks 5-3 and Legend). The majority of the wins are solely thanks to Cutlass, so the quest doesn't seem worth it here either. The only quest I'd say has some major potential and is being completely misused is Druid. I've built a "draw your whole deck" Jade Quest Druid and the amount of defense, removal and lategame power that deck has is insane. Never before have I had my Jades go over 20/20 in size in an actual competitive game, but with this deck, it happens all the time. Geist obviously completely annihilates the deck, so it can't get too popular, but seeing as most decks don't currently run it, Jade Druid has some serious surprise potential and can generate insane boards on the same turn it has spent 7 mana drawing (Overflow makes UI look like a joke). I think playing the deck as a token, board-flood version like it is in Standard is strictly incorrect. Being able to make your Jades 30 % bigger thanks to the Quest and having much more efficient card draw and removal in Nourish, Wrath, Raven Idol and Starfall seems to do the deck major favours and enable it to really tick.
Stalagg and Feugen are for some reason my favourite deathrattles out there. I've built over 6 different decks revolving around them over the course of their existence and they even got me to legend twice in the past (in Hunter and in Priest). There's just something really satisfying about getting out like 6 of these guys and watching the opponent sweat as they realise clearing your board only makes things worse.
Mmmmmeh. Fiery War Axe was a powerful weapon because you played it turn 2 and it shut down the opponent's turn 2 and many turn 3 plays, giving you uncontested control of the board. This becoming active somewhere around turn 5-6 at best means all the potential control you could have had with it is gone, you spent your first turn questing, so you lost tempo, and you're on the catch-up, unless you got your Fence/Vendetta off. Once you have the weapon, sure, you got a cheap ping for 3 damage. But you don't have the early control that made Fiery War Axe or Odd Rogue so dominant. They ensured you stick on the board first and don't let go of control until they're dead. It bears no comparison. Plus, it screws up your curve, because ideally, you'd burgle up a card turn 1 so you got your Underbelly Fence active turn 2. So one of your most powerful plays is made worse just by including this. It might be ok in Standard but Wild laughs at this. I'll stick to cutlass and go deal 20+ damage with that while my opponents regret they don't play weapon removal, thank you very much.
Well, at least the Lackeys don't have Charge or create additional copies of themselves like Quest Rogue minions did. In addition, this is a one-of in your deck and doesn't start in your hand like the quest did, so often your lackeys will still just be 1/1 and you can't really build your entire strategy around this. Good zoolock has to exist first and when it does this will go right in. But this will not create a zoolock on its own.
I think you're up for disappointment. Warrior isn't particularly well positioned for the midrange gameplan right now, having essentially no good answer to Res Priest or the many variants of Quest Mage. Similarly, Odd Rogue and Even Shaman are likely to grab the board early and never let it go until you die. I wish midrange in general were more viable in Wild but currently, it doesn't look like it's going to be.
You're skipping over a pretty important point there. On turn 3 you play Cleric and trade your Mummy, then heal the Mummy? That's all assuming that you played a 1/2 on turn 2 and it lived, untouched, to your turn 3. Which is crazy talk if we're talking about two board-centric decks fighting it out. What will happen in real games is you play the mummy turn 2 into their Sorcerer's Apprentice or, hell, any 2 drop since the mummy has lousy stats, they use their 2 drop to kill your mummy (no +1/+1 for you unless you also stuck a 1 drop the turn before that), then they ping your Reborn mummy, and both halves of your +1/+1 go to waste. So in essence, it's like you played a 1/2 and a 1/1 with no additional effects, and you can't even kill their 2 drop because they can ping off the second half of your minion. You'd be better off playing a River Croc at that point cause that at least kills a Sorcerer's Apprentice on the first trade. Like I said, splitting the stats of the mummy means you get value traded into high hell and back. The fact that the +1/+1 is stuck on a deathrattle instead of a battlecry also means your opponent will often be the one deciding when it triggers. And you can rest assured your opponent will make it so that it triggers at the least convenient time for you. Look at Spawn of N'Zoth for an example of how "well" deathrattle board buffs work out. So no, it's not even close to a 4/5 for 2, because chances are at least 1/1 or 2/2 of those stats will go to waste, and the 2/3 of the minion itself can be easily value traded without any losses on your opponent's side.
Sadly, a card is a bit more than the sum of its stats. Numerically, this seems awesome, but in reality it doesn't work out particularly well. With the body's stats being split across two minions, a 1/2 and a 1/1, it's really hard to get any real value out of either of the halves in terms of trading. If you want to kill, say, a Sorcerer's Apprentice, a measly two health minion, it's going to take you two turns to do it (meanwhile Mage is merrily milking all the value it can get out of the mana discounts), and if you have another minion on board to receive the first +1/+1 buff, it's highly likely the Mage is either going to Frost Bolt it to death and ping off your remaining 1/1, keeping the Apprentice alive, or just kill the buffed minion with the now 3/1 Apprentice. If you play a minion on 1, then follow it up with this on 2, the 1 drop has to survive another turn for you to get something out of it, because the buff is a deathrattle instead of a Battlecry, and if instead you intend to follow the mummy with a 3 drop and have that receive the buff, you still have to sac the 1/2 into something to get the boost on cue. And a 1/2 isn't going to value trade into anything, so you're likely just throwing the 1/2 away for a +1/+1.
No...just...just no. If you split stats and bodies too many times, what ends up happening is you get value traded into oblivion and receive the absolute minimum amount of value you can.
Question is, how are they going to support flooding a board with copies of the same minion without making it absolutely broken. Because if you could just have a spell that says "copy target minion until your board is full", any big impactful minion you can stick will immediately win the game (Rag, anything with Charge, etc.). It can't be a coincidence that they'd make this and the Obelisk but how in the world they're going to support it I have no clue. Maybe, since this is a battlecry, they might make something that transforms all cards in your hand into copies of a minion on board? But then the Obelisk is still utterly atrocious cause it costs 5... Colour me perplexed.
Bundling this effect with a 3/2 weapon actually kinda hurts it because of the higher mana cost it demands. The totem that Shamans would like to copy the most is obviously Totem Golem but you really don't want it so bad that you'd wait for 6 mana to play it or defend your Totem Golem from turn 2 onwards so it lives until 4. However, it might be really powerful in combination with Thing from Below and Sea Giant, already common minions for Even Shaman. Even though you might copy a bunch of 0 attack garbage, the board flood might end up giving you the minion count you need to play the two above minions essentially for free along with a 3/2 weapon for clearing. In addition to that, such a flood of minions might be sufficiently tedious to clear that you could land a fairly solid Storm Bringer on 6 for a win.
Fuck me if this wasn't tailor made for Wild Secret Burn Mage. I absolutely...hate it. Hopefully they turn out to be too slow/suboptimal to fit in that deck, cause I sure as hell don't want to have to face these with anything I play. Burn Mage is already plenty good and if these end up making it even better, it'll be trouble.
This might single-handedly make Deathrattle Rogue a thing in Wild. Normally you wouldn't have a hope in hell of keeping up in value with Res Priest, which is why a Control Rogue cannot really succeed at the moment, or if you tailored your deck to be chock full of value, you end up being too slow to compete with aggro or combo. But with this, you can vomit out your hand very quickly, playing minions that give you great bodies on the back end, such as Mechanical Whelp, Sneed's Old Shredder, Aya (if playing Jade), Feugen and Stalagg or Cairn, and then you can keep up with Priest through N'Zoth, Shadowstep and Gang Up. The only question is which Deathrattle minions to choose, because while something like Twilight Summoner does give you a good body in the end, you want your N'Zoth boards to be threatening both before and after AoE. Definitely something I'm going to try out, Deathrattle Rogue has always been one of my favourites.
I mean, I'll take an Eaglehorn Bow and a Secret with a rando beast on the side. But if you insist on giving me Rhok'delar, I ain't gonna say no to that either. Really nice card but not sure it's going to find a home. If you want value generation for Zul'jin, there are already plenty better options, such as Dire Frenzy or Unleash the Beast, and if hand refill is what you're after, Master's Call has you covered with more consistency. No doubt a great card but my guess is this will end up being card 29-30 in your deck quite often due to other options being more desirable.
A really good card but can't think of a deck that wants it with the cards we know of right now. That goes for both Wild and Standard. Evenlock in Wild is not in the best place and not for the lack of ability to damage itself or remove things (the issue is, I don't care how many times you remove things, Res Priest still eats you alive), and as I understand it, Control Lock in Standard is lacking in both healing and win conditions. This aggravates issue no. 1 and does nothing for issue no. 2. A great card without a home.
I've been playing Jade Quest Shaman with Eater of Secrets instead of Kezan and without Healbot (double Lifedrinker though) and I don't think it's a good matchup. Even with healbot, the issue is most frequently both completing the quest before you die (you essentially have to get both Sludge Slurper and Cable Rat in order to do so in time) and, above all, controlling the board. You can Antique Healbot all you want but they're not really spending that many spells burning you down, they just beat you up reoeatedly with minions and nothing you play sticks. Secret Mage has an absurdly fast early game while Quest Shaman barely does anything impactful until turn 4. Once they start landing their Crystal Runners and Cloud Princes, all you got is a hope and a prayer that you've had your Hagatha's Scheme in hand from turn 1 and that the secret they have up isn't Counterspell (cause you don't really have that many cheap, throwaway spells, nor the time to play them). My Jade Shudder Shaman has been doing very well a day or two ago and over the entirety of its existence it has lost exactly one game to Warlocks (and I play against them all the time, so that's an amazing statistic), but Paladins (mech handbuff, Flying Machine variety) and Secret Mages started appearing a lot more now and keep holding me down. My Mage winrate with that deck is tear-inducing, despite beating up on Reno Mages.
Depends on what you're playing. Some decks, such as Reno decks, or Quest Shaman, can easily accomodate some anti-secret tech, as can Spell Hunters (just make sure your Flare doesn't get countered or it won't go into your Zuljin pool). As a bonus, it also helps against Odd Pallies and Reno Mages, since those also run some key secrets. Ziliax and weapon removal aren't particularly intrusive tech and also sorta work against Secret Mage. But in general, if you're playing a deck that has a straight up bad matchup against Secret Mage, no amount of tech is going to save you. The majority of the ranking up I've done this season (from 7-2) was done with spell hunter, and you're just straight up dead to Secret Mages no matter what you do. You don't run enough minions to pop their Mirror Entities/Explosive Runes, so they always have something up for Cloud Princes, you run absolutely no healing outside of Zuljin's 5 armor, you got a bad time recovering mid-sized minion boards from behind. It's not pretty. At that point, switching is really the only way. It's simply not a deck that can be countered with one or two techs, like say a Shudderwock deck can with clutch Dirty Rats/Deathlords or Jade Druid can with a single Geist. In that respect, Secret Mage shapes the meta at high ranks in the same way Res Priest does at ranks 5-4. If you're playing a deck that has no answer to Res Priest at those ranks, don't even bother. On the plus side, Secret Mage isn't nearly as prevalent past Legend, so it's not the whole meta, mostly the climb.
Hex Lord is more of my own little flair (I can't play a meta deck without a bit of personal touch), there are so many possible Reno Mage builds that I'm sure you'd be able to put together a budget list for a fraction of the cost and find similar success. Though in that case, I'd say going the N'Zoth + Taunts + Pyros route might be necessary, as it's both the cheapest to craft and you get the most bang for your buck per card. But sometimes, if your opponent doesn't go too greedy, you can just include Elysiana and be done with it, let them die in fatigue. There's really a lot of options, you just change 3-4 cards and the deck can feel very different.
Secret Mage is a counter to greediness in a way. The thing is, what beats secret mages isn't the greed. The later, slower section of your deck (say 7+ mana) doesn't really matter against Secret Mage. What beats Secret Mages is healing, ability to pop all their secrets (Zephrys does a great job with that), simply outlasting them or taking the tempo from their hands. Reno Mage does a really good job at duplicating Kazakus, Zephrys and Reno Jackson, and Reno the Relicologist can often sieze the board on his own. Add to that Ice Block and Arcane Artificer and you actually have a pretty decent suite of tools to split their attention. Artificer + Frost Nova or Kazakus Potion alone can already heal you up a little bit and force them to use their burn on your board instead of your face, they can't rightly risk leaving Reno Jackson, Kazakus or Zephrys up either out of fear you bounce or copy them, so that's more burn deflected...and then there's Malacrass to give you another Reno/Zephrys/Kazakus if you've survived their initial burst and Renoed, and they're trying to burn you down all over again through Aluneth. So really, you're fighting them mostly through the Highlander payoff cards more than anything else. Since these cards do a decent enough job at that that you can afford to have a few dead cards for the matchup, the remainder of your deck can be heavily dedicated to combating other Reno decks. I've seen greed at rank 1 you wouldn't believe (Echo of Medivh, Kalecgos, N'Zoth, Janalai, Dirty Rat, Deathlord, Conjurer's Calling and Elysiana all in the same deck, all of which are awful against aggro) and it positively spanks other Reno Mages that are less greedy.
I think you'll see things very differently once you're around rank 2 3-4 stars. That's where Reno Mages REALLY take off. It's hard to tell whether they're stronger than Secret Mage or not in a vacuum, but I can assure you, ranks 2-1 are about outhealing secret mages with Reno and Jaina and then competing in who has a filthier, greedier Reno Mage. The greedier the deck, the better it seems to do against other Reno Mages, which end up being about 50 % of the meta in that rank section. It is downright vulgar how good Reno Mage is right now, and I don't think the Galaxy nerf is going to change that much in the near future.
I've climbed to Legend over the last week and from my experience, Mages rule the field right now. Res Priests completely disappeared at around rank 3, I encounter only a handful of Odd Rogues, Even Shamans, Mech Hunters and Odd Paladins between 3 and legend, which indicates that they likely just cannot keep up with Secret Mage's damage output and tempo, and from there, it's essentially just Secret Mages battling Reno Mages, and the occasional Control Lock (Reno or otherwise) trying to outlast/outvalue them both. Once you get to legend, it's obviously a different story, and people play all sorts of weird shit like Snip-Snap Zoo Lock or Inner Fire Prist, but in general, the same decks still float to the top. SoU definitely contributed to the renewed power of both types of Mages, and Zephrys alone seems to be enough of an incentive for some Warlocks to go highlander as well.
But as far as the quests go...they leave much to be desired. The Warlock, Warrior, Paladin, Priest, Hunter and Mage ones are either absolutely awful (most of them) or simply not good enough (Paladin), the Shaman quest is highly debatable, as I've tested my preexisting Shudderwock Shaman with it and it seems to perform about as poorly as it did before (as in, not even clawing its way to 50 % winrate because aggro eats you and you're too slow to outpace combo). I've seen the Rogue Quest used a handful of times by some tempo decks, but in all honesty, nobody plays weapon removal in Wild anymore, so a tempo version with Cutlass seems to do way better from my experience (at around 63 % winrate for my list, though the sample size is only around 40 games at ranks 5-3 and Legend). The majority of the wins are solely thanks to Cutlass, so the quest doesn't seem worth it here either. The only quest I'd say has some major potential and is being completely misused is Druid. I've built a "draw your whole deck" Jade Quest Druid and the amount of defense, removal and lategame power that deck has is insane. Never before have I had my Jades go over 20/20 in size in an actual competitive game, but with this deck, it happens all the time. Geist obviously completely annihilates the deck, so it can't get too popular, but seeing as most decks don't currently run it, Jade Druid has some serious surprise potential and can generate insane boards on the same turn it has spent 7 mana drawing (Overflow makes UI look like a joke). I think playing the deck as a token, board-flood version like it is in Standard is strictly incorrect. Being able to make your Jades 30 % bigger thanks to the Quest and having much more efficient card draw and removal in Nourish, Wrath, Raven Idol and Starfall seems to do the deck major favours and enable it to really tick.
Stalagg and Feugen are for some reason my favourite deathrattles out there. I've built over 6 different decks revolving around them over the course of their existence and they even got me to legend twice in the past (in Hunter and in Priest). There's just something really satisfying about getting out like 6 of these guys and watching the opponent sweat as they realise clearing your board only makes things worse.
Mmmmmeh. Fiery War Axe was a powerful weapon because you played it turn 2 and it shut down the opponent's turn 2 and many turn 3 plays, giving you uncontested control of the board. This becoming active somewhere around turn 5-6 at best means all the potential control you could have had with it is gone, you spent your first turn questing, so you lost tempo, and you're on the catch-up, unless you got your Fence/Vendetta off. Once you have the weapon, sure, you got a cheap ping for 3 damage. But you don't have the early control that made Fiery War Axe or Odd Rogue so dominant. They ensured you stick on the board first and don't let go of control until they're dead. It bears no comparison. Plus, it screws up your curve, because ideally, you'd burgle up a card turn 1 so you got your Underbelly Fence active turn 2. So one of your most powerful plays is made worse just by including this. It might be ok in Standard but Wild laughs at this. I'll stick to cutlass and go deal 20+ damage with that while my opponents regret they don't play weapon removal, thank you very much.
Make it 4 mana and I might be slightly interested. Making this 5 is team 5 being way too cautious.
Well, at least the Lackeys don't have Charge or create additional copies of themselves like Quest Rogue minions did. In addition, this is a one-of in your deck and doesn't start in your hand like the quest did, so often your lackeys will still just be 1/1 and you can't really build your entire strategy around this. Good zoolock has to exist first and when it does this will go right in. But this will not create a zoolock on its own.
I think you're up for disappointment. Warrior isn't particularly well positioned for the midrange gameplan right now, having essentially no good answer to Res Priest or the many variants of Quest Mage. Similarly, Odd Rogue and Even Shaman are likely to grab the board early and never let it go until you die. I wish midrange in general were more viable in Wild but currently, it doesn't look like it's going to be.
You're skipping over a pretty important point there. On turn 3 you play Cleric and trade your Mummy, then heal the Mummy? That's all assuming that you played a 1/2 on turn 2 and it lived, untouched, to your turn 3. Which is crazy talk if we're talking about two board-centric decks fighting it out. What will happen in real games is you play the mummy turn 2 into their Sorcerer's Apprentice or, hell, any 2 drop since the mummy has lousy stats, they use their 2 drop to kill your mummy (no +1/+1 for you unless you also stuck a 1 drop the turn before that), then they ping your Reborn mummy, and both halves of your +1/+1 go to waste. So in essence, it's like you played a 1/2 and a 1/1 with no additional effects, and you can't even kill their 2 drop because they can ping off the second half of your minion. You'd be better off playing a River Croc at that point cause that at least kills a Sorcerer's Apprentice on the first trade. Like I said, splitting the stats of the mummy means you get value traded into high hell and back. The fact that the +1/+1 is stuck on a deathrattle instead of a battlecry also means your opponent will often be the one deciding when it triggers. And you can rest assured your opponent will make it so that it triggers at the least convenient time for you. Look at Spawn of N'Zoth for an example of how "well" deathrattle board buffs work out. So no, it's not even close to a 4/5 for 2, because chances are at least 1/1 or 2/2 of those stats will go to waste, and the 2/3 of the minion itself can be easily value traded without any losses on your opponent's side.
Sadly, a card is a bit more than the sum of its stats. Numerically, this seems awesome, but in reality it doesn't work out particularly well. With the body's stats being split across two minions, a 1/2 and a 1/1, it's really hard to get any real value out of either of the halves in terms of trading. If you want to kill, say, a Sorcerer's Apprentice, a measly two health minion, it's going to take you two turns to do it (meanwhile Mage is merrily milking all the value it can get out of the mana discounts), and if you have another minion on board to receive the first +1/+1 buff, it's highly likely the Mage is either going to Frost Bolt it to death and ping off your remaining 1/1, keeping the Apprentice alive, or just kill the buffed minion with the now 3/1 Apprentice. If you play a minion on 1, then follow it up with this on 2, the 1 drop has to survive another turn for you to get something out of it, because the buff is a deathrattle instead of a Battlecry, and if instead you intend to follow the mummy with a 3 drop and have that receive the buff, you still have to sac the 1/2 into something to get the boost on cue. And a 1/2 isn't going to value trade into anything, so you're likely just throwing the 1/2 away for a +1/+1.
No...just...just no. If you split stats and bodies too many times, what ends up happening is you get value traded into oblivion and receive the absolute minimum amount of value you can.
For that 6 mana of yours just play Thaurissan ;-) Saves you a card, and gives you a body on the board insteado of the opponent.
Question is, how are they going to support flooding a board with copies of the same minion without making it absolutely broken. Because if you could just have a spell that says "copy target minion until your board is full", any big impactful minion you can stick will immediately win the game (Rag, anything with Charge, etc.). It can't be a coincidence that they'd make this and the Obelisk but how in the world they're going to support it I have no clue. Maybe, since this is a battlecry, they might make something that transforms all cards in your hand into copies of a minion on board? But then the Obelisk is still utterly atrocious cause it costs 5... Colour me perplexed.
Bundling this effect with a 3/2 weapon actually kinda hurts it because of the higher mana cost it demands. The totem that Shamans would like to copy the most is obviously Totem Golem but you really don't want it so bad that you'd wait for 6 mana to play it or defend your Totem Golem from turn 2 onwards so it lives until 4. However, it might be really powerful in combination with Thing from Below and Sea Giant, already common minions for Even Shaman. Even though you might copy a bunch of 0 attack garbage, the board flood might end up giving you the minion count you need to play the two above minions essentially for free along with a 3/2 weapon for clearing. In addition to that, such a flood of minions might be sufficiently tedious to clear that you could land a fairly solid Storm Bringer on 6 for a win.
Fuck me if this wasn't tailor made for Wild Secret Burn Mage. I absolutely...hate it. Hopefully they turn out to be too slow/suboptimal to fit in that deck, cause I sure as hell don't want to have to face these with anything I play. Burn Mage is already plenty good and if these end up making it even better, it'll be trouble.
This might single-handedly make Deathrattle Rogue a thing in Wild. Normally you wouldn't have a hope in hell of keeping up in value with Res Priest, which is why a Control Rogue cannot really succeed at the moment, or if you tailored your deck to be chock full of value, you end up being too slow to compete with aggro or combo. But with this, you can vomit out your hand very quickly, playing minions that give you great bodies on the back end, such as Mechanical Whelp, Sneed's Old Shredder, Aya (if playing Jade), Feugen and Stalagg or Cairn, and then you can keep up with Priest through N'Zoth, Shadowstep and Gang Up. The only question is which Deathrattle minions to choose, because while something like Twilight Summoner does give you a good body in the end, you want your N'Zoth boards to be threatening both before and after AoE. Definitely something I'm going to try out, Deathrattle Rogue has always been one of my favourites.
I mean, I'll take an Eaglehorn Bow and a Secret with a rando beast on the side. But if you insist on giving me Rhok'delar, I ain't gonna say no to that either. Really nice card but not sure it's going to find a home. If you want value generation for Zul'jin, there are already plenty better options, such as Dire Frenzy or Unleash the Beast, and if hand refill is what you're after, Master's Call has you covered with more consistency. No doubt a great card but my guess is this will end up being card 29-30 in your deck quite often due to other options being more desirable.
A really good card but can't think of a deck that wants it with the cards we know of right now. That goes for both Wild and Standard. Evenlock in Wild is not in the best place and not for the lack of ability to damage itself or remove things (the issue is, I don't care how many times you remove things, Res Priest still eats you alive), and as I understand it, Control Lock in Standard is lacking in both healing and win conditions. This aggravates issue no. 1 and does nothing for issue no. 2. A great card without a home.