Doomsayer was good, so this ought to be pretty good too. Probably needs to be in a deck full of lifesteal though, to make up for all the face damage you'll take when your opponent sees this come down.
You don't need the full value of the battlecry to make this worth it. Between secrets, Quick Shot, and Lock and Load there's already plenty to pull at the 1- and 2-cost slots. Barak Kodobane looks like a very strong card.
If you can play this guy with Outcast active, he's great. Otherwise, kind of weak. Ultimately probably more of an aggro mirror tech card than anything else.
Wrong "Hunter" class? Seems like this doesn't make much sense in Demon Hunter, where there are very few good, cheap deathrattles today. Maybe they'll change that in this set, but this card just seems pretty bad.
Reckless Apprentice looks like an auto-include in any deck trying to trigger Mordresh Fire Eye, but it may not be very good outside of that. (Frankly, it may not be that good in those decks either, since it will be pretty poor as a trigger against small boards or big minions.)
Outside of those Mordresh decks, I can't see this showing up much. In some respects, this compares very favorably to Twilight Flamecaller, which saw some play. But a 1-damage AOE on turn 3 is way better than the same thing on turn 4. You could combine it with Fallen Hero for a worse version of Blizzard, but the freeze is much more relevant than the 2 damage, so that seems like a weak combo.
I don't care if Cannonmaster Smythe is good - he is freakin' awesome. With Broom you can turn your cheap secrets into a board clear, and the complexity around your opponent trying to clear these 3/3 units in combat is going to be wild as your 3/3s turn back into disruptive secrets.
I love to see the return of Kazakus, and I really like that Kazakus, Golem Shaper has a different build-around effect than the original. We've seen a ton of highlander decks, and it's time for something new.
How good this is will depend a lot on how valuable the abilities are, so it's kind of early to judge, but I liked the last cycle of "Has no X-cost cards" back in KotFT, so this should be a lot of fun.
Primordial Protector seems really powerful in the right deck, but it's not clear to me that a deck with huge spells also wants to run an 8 mana 6/6 - might just be too much top end to be viable.
This is the kind of Spell School card I'm excited to see - one that allows for a lot more interesting tech cards. Very bad weapon stats here to make sure it doesn't get to just show up in every deck.
You are right with you point that the 1 mana burst speed spell can be used for additional upside and that 6 x Flash Freeze is a pain in the ass for some decks yet you can't tell me that 2 mana is a justified manacost for this card because then you set yourself behind too much for the flexibility and when it comes to changing the speed: if this card is anything but burst speed it's easily on of the clunkiest spells in the game which would also proably kill the card.
While it might be that we might see a nerf to this card in the future I can't imagine any nerf that isn't outright killing the card...
For what it's worth, I agree it would be tough to change this in a way that doesn't nerf it out of existence. But I also think that's kind of what Riot does. They let broken combos exist long enough to be annoying, then they nerf them out of existence while buffing some other broken thing into existence.
What if we compare it to stone weaving. 1 mana grab a random landmark you can afford.
Sure it can be game winning but it's also a little clunky.
I think offering decks flexibility is good game design, but it comes at a cost.
Imagine if they created a 1 mana card that let you pick between vengeance, grasp, and withering like sure it would be strong but you're also paying an extra mana every time.
No one is arguing that offering flexibility is bad design, it's just a question of how much that "flexibility tax" should be. Also, Stoneweaving is a terrible comparison here, since Three Sisters provides combat tricks, while Stoneweaving offers some random value generation tool. Also, while Three Sisters can be relevant in any deck, Stoneweaving is pretty bad outside of Taliyah decks because so many of the Landmarks in the game feature build-around effects (making a random one pretty bad in a lot of cases).
My whole point here is that the way you're setting up the cost is ignoring something more important, because you're not necessarily "also paying an extra mana every time." This card makes it possible to consistently run 4+ copies of Flash Freeze, Fury of the North, or Entomb. That kind of flexibility is trickier to balance than just a basic "discover" effect because it provides a way to consistently break a fundamental rule of deckbuilding (i.e. the 3 copy limit).
Perhaps, because these are signature spells for champions, Riot believes they've already dealt with this problem. (That is to say, you can already kind of have more than 3 copies of these spells if you include their champions too.) But I don't think those two examples are quite the same, and this kind of design sits on a very narrow line between fine and totally busted.
Three Sisters may not be a balance issue today, but as a 1 mana burst spell, it's probably right on the border of a nerf. The framing on this thread is that this is that the 1 mana is a reasonable tax for its flexibility, but I think that misses a few things:
If your deck benefits from access to two or more of these spells, but doesn't need a lot of them, this flexibility can save you several deck slots to spend on other, more valuable cards
If your deck wants to have access to extra copies of one of these spells - perhaps because Flash Freeze is a great tool with Ashe - it can now do that with only a 1 mana penalty on the extra copies. (By contrast, Hearthstone prices this at 2 mana with Shadow Visions, and while MTG has no perfect corollary, it regularly prices this type of effect at around 2 mana - e.g. Doublecast.)
Three Sisters is burst speed, and two thirds of the spells it can generate are burst speed, so it's generally uninteractive
Again, not saying that it's breaking the game today, but it wouldn't take much for this card to be way too good.
I'm not saying that the more salacious interpretation is the most common way to read it, but there are lots of ways to say this more clearly. The effort to shorten what Dean said only made it less clear.
I'm also a sucker for TOP X things video/editorial content.
Quick editorial note. The original quote from Dean Ayala makes it very clear that this refers to Ranked Listicles (e.g. Top 10 Year of the Phoenix Hearthstone Cards). Your rewrite seems to unintentionally imply a more pornographic nature to the quote, both by putting sucker in quotes and by adding "-style" to the X. It creates a valid reading whereby sucker is implied to have some double meaning, and Dean's preference is for the best "x-style" content. Taken together, that can easily be read as strongly suggestive.
There's no need for the quotes at all on the word sucker, you'd be better served by either capitalizing "top x" like Dean did, or putting it in quotes (i.e "top x" style content)
Seems like it might be run in decks like highlander hunter or maybe aggro decks aswell
This could be true if there were still going to be Highlander payoff cards in the Standard format. Today, all of those cards in standard come from Saviors of Uldum and Descent of Dragons, both of which will be rotating out, making Highlander styles of play way less attractive. There's still plenty of highlander in Wild, but Peon almost certainly gets outclassed in the Wild format.
(Technically it's possible that Highlander cards could come back in another set this year, but I think Team 5 has said they like to only do those once every couple of years to keep them from being omnipresent in the meta.)
I honestly don't understand the choice to have Azir swap your deck with a super powerful deck if/when you restore the Sun Disc. He seems like a champion with a lot of very obvious aggro synergies, so attaching this very high-value, late game mode just seems to make Azir decks too good at too many things.
"We originally pulled back on draw for Shaman but we're putting it back, along with any other classes that were draw restricted.
Draw is something that we'd like all classes to have some options in, while only a few classes excel at having full hands and mass draw cards like Sprint."
I don't read that as "Warrior will get replacements for all their good draw tools." Losing Battle Rage strongly implies that Team 5 is trying to remove Warrior from the list of "full hand/mass draw" classes. And the removal of Shield Block and Shield Slam in favor of Shieldmaiden and Warsong Outrider suggests that Control Warrior is moving away from spell-based armor/removal and towards more minion-based armor/removal. These two factors should weaken Brawl considerably. Not only will it be less likely to show up in your hand (because you have fewer mass draw tools), but you'll be developing a board and less excited about using Brawl to clear the enemy board because it will cost you considerably too.
Maybe the best secret tech ever - you get to know what to play around, you get a vanilla body for cost, and you get some extra value.
Doomsayer was good, so this ought to be pretty good too. Probably needs to be in a deck full of lifesteal though, to make up for all the face damage you'll take when your opponent sees this come down.
You don't need the full value of the battlecry to make this worth it. Between secrets, Quick Shot, and Lock and Load there's already plenty to pull at the 1- and 2-cost slots. Barak Kodobane looks like a very strong card.
Easy to trigger, solid stats for cost, and really interesting if they provide any more handbuff tools. All around, pretty good.
If you can play this guy with Outcast active, he's great. Otherwise, kind of weak. Ultimately probably more of an aggro mirror tech card than anything else.
Wrong "Hunter" class? Seems like this doesn't make much sense in Demon Hunter, where there are very few good, cheap deathrattles today. Maybe they'll change that in this set, but this card just seems pretty bad.
Reckless Apprentice looks like an auto-include in any deck trying to trigger Mordresh Fire Eye, but it may not be very good outside of that. (Frankly, it may not be that good in those decks either, since it will be pretty poor as a trigger against small boards or big minions.)
Outside of those Mordresh decks, I can't see this showing up much. In some respects, this compares very favorably to Twilight Flamecaller, which saw some play. But a 1-damage AOE on turn 3 is way better than the same thing on turn 4. You could combine it with Fallen Hero for a worse version of Blizzard, but the freeze is much more relevant than the 2 damage, so that seems like a weak combo.
A fully uninteractable Pyroblast to face that also AOEs the enemy board - seems crazy powerful.
I don't care if Cannonmaster Smythe is good - he is freakin' awesome. With Broom you can turn your cheap secrets into a board clear, and the complexity around your opponent trying to clear these 3/3 units in combat is going to be wild as your 3/3s turn back into disruptive secrets.
I love to see the return of Kazakus, and I really like that Kazakus, Golem Shaper has a different build-around effect than the original. We've seen a ton of highlander decks, and it's time for something new.
How good this is will depend a lot on how valuable the abilities are, so it's kind of early to judge, but I liked the last cycle of "Has no X-cost cards" back in KotFT, so this should be a lot of fun.
Primordial Protector seems really powerful in the right deck, but it's not clear to me that a deck with huge spells also wants to run an 8 mana 6/6 - might just be too much top end to be viable.
This is the kind of Spell School card I'm excited to see - one that allows for a lot more interesting tech cards. Very bad weapon stats here to make sure it doesn't get to just show up in every deck.
For what it's worth, I agree it would be tough to change this in a way that doesn't nerf it out of existence. But I also think that's kind of what Riot does. They let broken combos exist long enough to be annoying, then they nerf them out of existence while buffing some other broken thing into existence.
No one is arguing that offering flexibility is bad design, it's just a question of how much that "flexibility tax" should be. Also, Stoneweaving is a terrible comparison here, since Three Sisters provides combat tricks, while Stoneweaving offers some random value generation tool. Also, while Three Sisters can be relevant in any deck, Stoneweaving is pretty bad outside of Taliyah decks because so many of the Landmarks in the game feature build-around effects (making a random one pretty bad in a lot of cases).
My whole point here is that the way you're setting up the cost is ignoring something more important, because you're not necessarily "also paying an extra mana every time." This card makes it possible to consistently run 4+ copies of Flash Freeze, Fury of the North, or Entomb. That kind of flexibility is trickier to balance than just a basic "discover" effect because it provides a way to consistently break a fundamental rule of deckbuilding (i.e. the 3 copy limit).
Perhaps, because these are signature spells for champions, Riot believes they've already dealt with this problem. (That is to say, you can already kind of have more than 3 copies of these spells if you include their champions too.) But I don't think those two examples are quite the same, and this kind of design sits on a very narrow line between fine and totally busted.
Three Sisters may not be a balance issue today, but as a 1 mana burst spell, it's probably right on the border of a nerf. The framing on this thread is that this is that the 1 mana is a reasonable tax for its flexibility, but I think that misses a few things:
Again, not saying that it's breaking the game today, but it wouldn't take much for this card to be way too good.
I'm not saying that the more salacious interpretation is the most common way to read it, but there are lots of ways to say this more clearly. The effort to shorten what Dean said only made it less clear.
Quick editorial note. The original quote from Dean Ayala makes it very clear that this refers to Ranked Listicles (e.g. Top 10 Year of the Phoenix Hearthstone Cards). Your rewrite seems to unintentionally imply a more pornographic nature to the quote, both by putting sucker in quotes and by adding "-style" to the X. It creates a valid reading whereby sucker is implied to have some double meaning, and Dean's preference is for the best "x-style" content. Taken together, that can easily be read as strongly suggestive.
There's no need for the quotes at all on the word sucker, you'd be better served by either capitalizing "top x" like Dean did, or putting it in quotes (i.e "top x" style content)
This could be true if there were still going to be Highlander payoff cards in the Standard format. Today, all of those cards in standard come from Saviors of Uldum and Descent of Dragons, both of which will be rotating out, making Highlander styles of play way less attractive. There's still plenty of highlander in Wild, but Peon almost certainly gets outclassed in the Wild format.
(Technically it's possible that Highlander cards could come back in another set this year, but I think Team 5 has said they like to only do those once every couple of years to keep them from being omnipresent in the meta.)
I honestly don't understand the choice to have Azir swap your deck with a super powerful deck if/when you restore the Sun Disc. He seems like a champion with a lot of very obvious aggro synergies, so attaching this very high-value, late game mode just seems to make Azir decks too good at too many things.
Okay, so I dug up the comments about card draw (https://outof.cards/hearthstone/2745-dean-ayalas-community-qa-8-social-features-future-of-shaman-charge-combos-top-legend-rewards-pre-release). The specific remark by Dean Ayala is:
"We originally pulled back on draw for Shaman but we're putting it back, along with any other classes that were draw restricted.
Draw is something that we'd like all classes to have some options in, while only a few classes excel at having full hands and mass draw cards like Sprint."
I don't read that as "Warrior will get replacements for all their good draw tools." Losing Battle Rage strongly implies that Team 5 is trying to remove Warrior from the list of "full hand/mass draw" classes. And the removal of Shield Block and Shield Slam in favor of Shieldmaiden and Warsong Outrider suggests that Control Warrior is moving away from spell-based armor/removal and towards more minion-based armor/removal. These two factors should weaken Brawl considerably. Not only will it be less likely to show up in your hand (because you have fewer mass draw tools), but you'll be developing a board and less excited about using Brawl to clear the enemy board because it will cost you considerably too.