Pretty good card; however I think people are over-estimating how often they are going to be able to clone the dragon they want. Still: just the threat is going to make opponents need to clear big threats like Dragonqueen Alexstrasza and Veranus ASAP.
I'm in the same boat. If you drop it on Turn 3, it's a 2/5 body which has the potential to generate a 5/5 or two if unanswered--that's not bad! However, you basically need to run a Sorcerer's Apprentice / Mana Cyclone deck to make use of that threat, and those decks just too inconsistent to compete. I would say its better than "fringe experimentation", but that's probably just the semantics between how you and I label off-meta decks. Long story short: it will win some games but not enough to affect the meta.
Definitely a strong card. The only problem is: warlock has really struggled to make anything other than zoolock work lately, and zoolock doesn't want this at all. I'm guessing Blizzard is finally trying to offer warlock a control option; it remains to be seen how viable it is.
Have to say I don't think I ever found Anivia to be a problem - in my opinion, if Anivia is causing issues you didn't pack enough removal. Her effect isn't even that powerful really, so long as she's not allowed to level before you can deal with her.
That's the crux of the discussion: in the final product, how difficult will it be to find defensive cards versus how easy will it to be pick runaway cards that create huge value if not dealt with? The whole gist of this mode is that deck building options are constrained, so the specifics are going to be critical to whether or not its enjoyable once everyone figures out the successful strategies. E.g. (and please forgive me for referring back to other games; I wasn't able to get into this beta) for Hearthstone, Vicious Fledgling is banned in Arena because it is so powerful yet almost a nonfactor in Constructed. The difference is that HS Arena decks often struggle to find viable defensive options where as Constructed every successful deck has some way to answer early board threats. A lot of Quest Druids have started running Pounce just so they can kill an early EVIL Totem or Lightwarden, for Pete's sake.
Has there been any foreshadowing of how/if they'll try to manipulate balance? E.g., you mention Anivia as standing out: in Hearthstone Arena, Blizzard had been "bucketing" such that you'd have to chose between her and a few other powerful cards, then restrict your subsequent offerings to much lower power level. For MtG paper draft, every physical card in the tournament is offered to some player every round so the "balance" is that all the super-valuable cards like Anivia are swooped after the first couple of rounds.
I just want them to keep making cohesive themes. When I first heard of this, I thought "Oh great, this is going to be like Dota AutoChess and TFT where nothing is going to be intuitive unless you play the associated MOBAs", but they actually did an EXCELLENT job in creating distinct and memorable identities for each region. Ionia is martial arts themed and all about stuns, recalls, and controlling your opponent's minions; Shadow Islands is spooky themed and all about having your own minions die; Frejlord is ice themed and all frost bite and enrage mechanics... And since there's no neutral cards, deciding which regions you'll play is a huge decision. I'm still not 100% sold on the naming and the weird icons, but otherwise I love what they are doing here.
Dont understand why they didnt ban oko from everything else.
The general consensus is that WotC considers this to be a flagship card for the expansion, wants it to feel impactful/meaningful, and is extremely reluctant to diminish its value so soon. I kinda get it: they want customers to be really excited for and value their new products, and the more you nerf a card that's barely a month old the more you're going to counteract that effort. I think they would do things differently if they had to do over again--e.g., limit his token ability to only cards with low CMCs, or make it -2 instead of +1, etc--and I think they are going to ban it eventually after they move onto other expansions, but for the foreseeable future I think they're going to try to just ride this out for as long as they can.
I stopped spending gold towards classic packs, so I'm missing a lot of classic cards and blademaster has always been one of those "well, he's nice, but he's not must-have" cards for a while now...
I dont think anything like that was revealed yet. I would say probably not. At least not yet.
But i dont see how this wont become extremely popular, so i think they will build upon it, might even make some tournaments later.
Will it really though? With all the recent autobattlers being released already the market for them seems rather oversaturated.
You have to remember: the question isn't "will this become as popular as TFT/Underlords/etc?", its "if we invest more development towards this, will we see a worthy return on investment? " I suspect the answer will ultimately be yes...but only if they announce that post-beta, there will be an entrance fee a la Arena.
I mainly play paladin and just open Sir Finley of the Sands from a pack, always wondering should i also craft Zephrys the Great for all of highlander paladin variation out there..
Zephrys the Great is probably the most all-around craft-worthy legendary from the set--it's used in 28% of all decks right now. Unless you already have that dust earmarked for something else, you probably wouldn't regret crafting it.
If you want control: then you probably want to look more like a classic freeze mage, with Frost Novas, Doomsayer, Tortollan Pilgrim, etc and focus on stalling the game out until the Murloc deck runs out of gas.
I recently tried to defend Hearthstone as not "Play-to-Win", but the increase in the meta with Highlander decks makes the argument futile.
I don't think it was any better pre-UoS. Meta decks have been >8k dust for as long as I can remember. Granted, that's not to say you can't make a budget off-meta deck and still make it to legend through skill and perseverance...
I generally think of Hearthstone as "Pay-to-Not-Lose". The difference between a good budget deck and a meta deck is usually a handful of legendaries and epics which will cost you the game ~10% of the time if you don't have them, but if you do already have them then there is effectively nothing you can pay to win even more.
Why Witchwood Piper? I assume you don't really care about tutoring Thalnos or Loti--is it just for thinning the deck, or are you holding it until after you draw the latter and hoping to hit Floop?
I've always been kinda curious where midrange decks fall in this division. Intuitively, you might say they're halfway between aggro and control, but I feel like they tend to have a lot more in common with the former than the latter.
Lately, I've been feeling that "midrange" isn't a useful qualifier. To me, "midrange" means being able to make strong proactive plays turns 5-10, and that's most decks other than maybe pure aggro like Combo Priest or pure control like RoS-era Control Warrior. Nowadays most decks fall into this category, and the pivotal decision comes with evaluating your opponent and deciding for that specific match whether you need to play beatdown or value.
Am I the only one that sometimes wishes this information wasn't out there? Don't get me wrong--I'd never fault any player for wanting to know how to play better or any service for wanting to inform players. It's just that in Hearthstone, the mulligan is so powerful and most serious players will either use sites like HsReplay or just imitate their favorite streamers so the end result is that doing a less-than-optimal mulligan will often cost you the game. Compare this with other games like MtG, where mulligan'ing is still important but since you have to cycle your entire hand its a lot harder for both you and your opponent to create the perfect opening hand.
Now your deck is looking more and more like the Whizbang highlander recipe plus Undatakah. ;-) I play that sometimes; it actually can be surprisingly effective; only has a 47% win rate on HsReplay, though.
For the sake of completeness, here are a few differences between that deck and this which you might want to consider:
(and of course -your Undatakah package which I assume you want to keep)
Please note that these are just the differences I see; I can't really say they're improvements. For example, Scorcher seems really meh on paper, but in practice I've had a couple of games when its been a clutch tempo play they also cleans up lackeys / reborns / Sn1P-Sn4P / etc. MCT sounds great on paper, but most of the time I just tempo that out for a 3/3 body. Also I'm not sure how any of this would effect your Undatakah package--for example, I think Khartut is overall superior to Applebaum, but then you're either holding off on any other deathrattles until you play prelate + undatakah once or you're rolling the dice. Which maybe is OK?
Or conversely, if you want to play into the UT package harder: maybe you want to add in Crystology + 1 Bronze Gatekeeper to help draw out the prelate more consistently, and maybe 1-2 Annoy-o-Module and maybe even a Kangor's Endless Army to help stall out the game until you find your full combo?
Whatever you do: best of luck. I love it when people try to homebrew off-meta decks.
That's what I was just thinking: this on quest priest is going to be insane.
Pretty good card; however I think people are over-estimating how often they are going to be able to clone the dragon they want. Still: just the threat is going to make opponents need to clear big threats like Dragonqueen Alexstrasza and Veranus ASAP.
I'm in the same boat. If you drop it on Turn 3, it's a 2/5 body which has the potential to generate a 5/5 or two if unanswered--that's not bad! However, you basically need to run a Sorcerer's Apprentice / Mana Cyclone deck to make use of that threat, and those decks just too inconsistent to compete. I would say its better than "fringe experimentation", but that's probably just the semantics between how you and I label off-meta decks. Long story short: it will win some games but not enough to affect the meta.
Most of the time, this will just be a vanilla 5-drop. It has a nice battlecry and a great tribal, but I'm guessing they won't be relevant most games.
Definitely a strong card. The only problem is: warlock has really struggled to make anything other than zoolock work lately, and zoolock doesn't want this at all. I'm guessing Blizzard is finally trying to offer warlock a control option; it remains to be seen how viable it is.
That's the crux of the discussion: in the final product, how difficult will it be to find defensive cards versus how easy will it to be pick runaway cards that create huge value if not dealt with? The whole gist of this mode is that deck building options are constrained, so the specifics are going to be critical to whether or not its enjoyable once everyone figures out the successful strategies. E.g. (and please forgive me for referring back to other games; I wasn't able to get into this beta) for Hearthstone, Vicious Fledgling is banned in Arena because it is so powerful yet almost a nonfactor in Constructed. The difference is that HS Arena decks often struggle to find viable defensive options where as Constructed every successful deck has some way to answer early board threats. A lot of Quest Druids have started running Pounce just so they can kill an early EVIL Totem or Lightwarden, for Pete's sake.
Has there been any foreshadowing of how/if they'll try to manipulate balance? E.g., you mention Anivia as standing out: in Hearthstone Arena, Blizzard had been "bucketing" such that you'd have to chose between her and a few other powerful cards, then restrict your subsequent offerings to much lower power level. For MtG paper draft, every physical card in the tournament is offered to some player every round so the "balance" is that all the super-valuable cards like Anivia are swooped after the first couple of rounds.
So do I go
...I predict this brawl isn't going to be much fun.
EDIT: even worse...
It runs 8. The Holy Wrath paladin above it runs 9. Nomi Priest usually runs 10-11. Murloc Paladin would run 12.
I just want them to keep making cohesive themes. When I first heard of this, I thought "Oh great, this is going to be like Dota AutoChess and TFT where nothing is going to be intuitive unless you play the associated MOBAs", but they actually did an EXCELLENT job in creating distinct and memorable identities for each region. Ionia is martial arts themed and all about stuns, recalls, and controlling your opponent's minions; Shadow Islands is spooky themed and all about having your own minions die; Frejlord is ice themed and all frost bite and enrage mechanics... And since there's no neutral cards, deciding which regions you'll play is a huge decision. I'm still not 100% sold on the naming and the weird icons, but otherwise I love what they are doing here.
The general consensus is that WotC considers this to be a flagship card for the expansion, wants it to feel impactful/meaningful, and is extremely reluctant to diminish its value so soon. I kinda get it: they want customers to be really excited for and value their new products, and the more you nerf a card that's barely a month old the more you're going to counteract that effort. I think they would do things differently if they had to do over again--e.g., limit his token ability to only cards with low CMCs, or make it -2 instead of +1, etc--and I think they are going to ban it eventually after they move onto other expansions, but for the foreseeable future I think they're going to try to just ride this out for as long as they can.
Is it sad that I'll be happy just to get a 2nd Injured Blademaster period?
I stopped spending gold towards classic packs, so I'm missing a lot of classic cards and blademaster has always been one of those "well, he's nice, but he's not must-have" cards for a while now...
You have to remember: the question isn't "will this become as popular as TFT/Underlords/etc?", its "if we invest more development towards this, will we see a worthy return on investment? " I suspect the answer will ultimately be yes...but only if they announce that post-beta, there will be an entrance fee a la Arena.
Zephrys the Great is probably the most all-around craft-worthy legendary from the set--it's used in 28% of all decks right now. Unless you already have that dust earmarked for something else, you probably wouldn't regret crafting it.
My $0.02: I think you need to decide to either commit to aggro or control.
If you want aggro: take out everything that costs more than 4 mana except of Zilliax and look for more early board-control options like Magic Dart Frog, [Hearthstone Card (Sorcerer’s Apprentice) Not Found], Spellzerker, Arcane Missiles, Magic Trick, Ray of Frost, a 2nd Shooting Star, and then a couple of Fireballs to close plus Archmage Antonidas as a late-game Hail Mary.
If you want control: then you probably want to look more like a classic freeze mage, with Frost Novas, Doomsayer, Tortollan Pilgrim, etc and focus on stalling the game out until the Murloc deck runs out of gas.
I don't think it was any better pre-UoS. Meta decks have been >8k dust for as long as I can remember. Granted, that's not to say you can't make a budget off-meta deck and still make it to legend through skill and perseverance...
I generally think of Hearthstone as "Pay-to-Not-Lose". The difference between a good budget deck and a meta deck is usually a handful of legendaries and epics which will cost you the game ~10% of the time if you don't have them, but if you do already have them then there is effectively nothing you can pay to win even more.
Why Witchwood Piper? I assume you don't really care about tutoring Thalnos or Loti--is it just for thinning the deck, or are you holding it until after you draw the latter and hoping to hit Floop?
Lately, I've been feeling that "midrange" isn't a useful qualifier. To me, "midrange" means being able to make strong proactive plays turns 5-10, and that's most decks other than maybe pure aggro like Combo Priest or pure control like RoS-era Control Warrior. Nowadays most decks fall into this category, and the pivotal decision comes with evaluating your opponent and deciding for that specific match whether you need to play beatdown or value.
Am I the only one that sometimes wishes this information wasn't out there? Don't get me wrong--I'd never fault any player for wanting to know how to play better or any service for wanting to inform players. It's just that in Hearthstone, the mulligan is so powerful and most serious players will either use sites like HsReplay or just imitate their favorite streamers so the end result is that doing a less-than-optimal mulligan will often cost you the game. Compare this with other games like MtG, where mulligan'ing is still important but since you have to cycle your entire hand its a lot harder for both you and your opponent to create the perfect opening hand.
Now your deck is looking more and more like the Whizbang highlander recipe plus Undatakah. ;-) I play that sometimes; it actually can be surprisingly effective; only has a 47% win rate on HsReplay, though.
For the sake of completeness, here are a few differences between that deck and this which you might want to consider:
+Aldor Peacekeeper
+Mind Control Tech
+Khartut Defender
+[Hearthstone Card (A NEW CHALLENGER…) Not Found]
+Siamat
+Dragonmaw Scorcher
+Tirion Fordring
+Glowstone Technician
+Countess Ashmore
-Hammer of Wrath
-Novice Engineer
-Chief Inspector
-Rabble Bouncer
-Nozari
-Rotten Applebaum
(and of course -your Undatakah package which I assume you want to keep)
Please note that these are just the differences I see; I can't really say they're improvements. For example, Scorcher seems really meh on paper, but in practice I've had a couple of games when its been a clutch tempo play they also cleans up lackeys / reborns / Sn1P-Sn4P / etc. MCT sounds great on paper, but most of the time I just tempo that out for a 3/3 body. Also I'm not sure how any of this would effect your Undatakah package--for example, I think Khartut is overall superior to Applebaum, but then you're either holding off on any other deathrattles until you play prelate + undatakah once or you're rolling the dice. Which maybe is OK?
Or conversely, if you want to play into the UT package harder: maybe you want to add in Crystology + 1 Bronze Gatekeeper to help draw out the prelate more consistently, and maybe 1-2 Annoy-o-Module and maybe even a Kangor's Endless Army to help stall out the game until you find your full combo?
Whatever you do: best of luck. I love it when people try to homebrew off-meta decks.