How many pirates would you need in a deck to make this card playable? My estimate is that even with 5 pirates, it would be worthwhile, since most of the time you'd draw at least 2.
So if you include Captain Greenskin (which is already in my Quest Warrior deck) and two Dread Corsair (which I dropped but is not terrible in the deck), you only need one good additional pirate that you can include two copies of.
I'm not so worried, in Standard at least. Without Patches the Pirate and N'Zoth's First Mate a Pirate Warrior will have a slower start. At the same time, we now have rush minions as removal, so it's harder for the Warrior to deal repeated damage with the pirates.
One of the problems of Dragon Soul is that you have to build your deck around it, but have no guarantee you'll draw it in time. Mage has more other cards that generate or synergize with cheap spells, so the problem is less severe than for Priest. But I'm not sure that this one card gives Cycle Mage the critical mass to become viable again in Standard.
It is one mana cheaper than Zola the Gorgon though, so easier to play on the same turn as the dragon itself. If you're playing a dragon deck, most of the cards you might want to copy are dragons anyway. I think it is playable.
No, "fluffy" is the site's traditional placeholder text when the card name wasn't revealed in English yet and there is no reliable translation available.
It is hard to evaluate when we don't yet know the full pool of dragons it can offer, but while there are a few really good picks such as Deathwing, Ysera and Kalecgos, you also run the risk of being offered a choice between Faerie Dragon, Brightwing and Twilight Drake. Overall, I think a card this expensive and slow has to be more reliable to be worth it.
Since you'd be playing this in a deck that draws a lot of cards, it's not a problem if it's not playable in every matchup: you won't have enough mana to play all your cards anyway.
I think Flik is versatile enough to include in pretty much every Rogue deck, so playing him and Waxadred in the same deck is not that much of a meme. Whether it makes sense to include Shadowstep in the same deck as well is questionable though.
A huge taunt isn't just for protection against aggro, it's also very useful to kill your opponent. Handlock doesn't have to be defensive: I've been experimenting with an aggressive handlock built around Mountain Giant and Expired Merchant and while it's not quite there yet, with cards like this it may well become viable.
Also... isn't greed the essence of handlock? You take a risk by tapping often in the hope of a big pay-off.
...Unless you shadowstep Flik to reduce his cost, then play your own Waxadred and kill it with Flik.
(Only works if you draw both Flik and Waxadred before your opponent's Waxadred has his deathrattle triggered, but that's going to happen in some games.)
It could be used as an aggro tool as well, since it protects other minions in two ways: after completion as a taunt and before completion by inviting the opponent to deal face damage instead of dealing with the minions on the board.
The more I think about it, the more situations I see in which this is good.
If your opponent has a wide board of small minions (Quest Shaman, Lackey Rogue), this doesn't give them the full three minions, while you do get a cheap big taunt with enough attack to take out small minions when traded into.
If you don't play this on curve, you could immediately kill off the summoned minions with one-sided AoE; even on turn 6 or 7, a 3/9 taunt is useful.
In Quest Hunter, this progresses your quest by 4 ticks early game and has synergy with Unleash the Hounds late game.
And of course other advantages that were already mentioned, like messing up resurrect pools and discounting Sea Giant.
Maybe an opponent can delay the quest completion, but it is going to make their turns more awkward. For example hero powers are not mana efficient, so in the early to mid game, you don't want to be using your hero power every turn. And if you have to go face with a minion to prevent the quest completion, that minion is not trading, which leaves the Paladin's minions alive to deal face damage or get better trades.
Why not? One or two good dragon class cards can make a dragon deck viable. For example Dragon Priest was played because of Drakonid Operative and later Duskbreaker, not because the Priest class has particular synergy with dragons.
The class that would in theory have the most dragon synergy would be Shaman, because dragons often use battlecries. But Dragon Shaman has never been particularly good because there were no class-specific dragon cards.
Lack of healing is what is keeping Neferset Thrasher and Diseased Vulture back at the moment. But I don't know how many dragons you'd be able to fit into a deck with those cards. Crowd Roaster would fit into a tempo deck. Perhaps Twilight Drake is good enough as a tribal Yeti, but to get Yeti stats you have to draw or at least skip on some of your early turns if you go first. Dragonmaw Scorcher is a good card in more defensive decks, but maybe not if you're a tempo deck that wants to go wide. So I guess it depends on what new dragons we'll see. I don't think Crazed Netherwing would fit, since it would be a bad play if you're ahead and in a tempo deck you probably don't have the ability to draw a lot of cards early to allow for situational cards.
The obvious comparison is Duskbreaker, which was extremely good. This comes one turn later, which could be a concern, but provides much better stats to make up for it. The self-damage could be an issue, but Nether Breath helps there. And in Wild, Lesser Amethyst Spellstone turns the self-damage into an upside.
We might see seasonal shifts, where ladder is more popular after an expansion launches and Battlegrounds more popular when an expansion has been out for a while. I guess it's still better for Hearthstone though if people play/stream BG when they're bored of ladder instead of playing a different game entirely.
There is too much randomness to be sure of a draw, but they let the player with the stronger board would keep buffs in their hand to play after the round, to increase the chance of a draw or at least avoid dealing too much damage. I guess positioning as well, but I don't know the details there, since I watched the overall stream mostly and not specific streamers. Also they would often level up on turns before same-team fights.
How many pirates would you need in a deck to make this card playable? My estimate is that even with 5 pirates, it would be worthwhile, since most of the time you'd draw at least 2.
So if you include Captain Greenskin (which is already in my Quest Warrior deck) and two Dread Corsair (which I dropped but is not terrible in the deck), you only need one good additional pirate that you can include two copies of.
I'm not so worried, in Standard at least. Without Patches the Pirate and N'Zoth's First Mate a Pirate Warrior will have a slower start. At the same time, we now have rush minions as removal, so it's harder for the Warrior to deal repeated damage with the pirates.
One of the problems of Dragon Soul is that you have to build your deck around it, but have no guarantee you'll draw it in time. Mage has more other cards that generate or synergize with cheap spells, so the problem is less severe than for Priest. But I'm not sure that this one card gives Cycle Mage the critical mass to become viable again in Standard.
It is one mana cheaper than Zola the Gorgon though, so easier to play on the same turn as the dragon itself. If you're playing a dragon deck, most of the cards you might want to copy are dragons anyway. I think it is playable.
No, "fluffy" is the site's traditional placeholder text when the card name wasn't revealed in English yet and there is no reliable translation available.
It is hard to evaluate when we don't yet know the full pool of dragons it can offer, but while there are a few really good picks such as Deathwing, Ysera and Kalecgos, you also run the risk of being offered a choice between Faerie Dragon, Brightwing and Twilight Drake. Overall, I think a card this expensive and slow has to be more reliable to be worth it.
Since you'd be playing this in a deck that draws a lot of cards, it's not a problem if it's not playable in every matchup: you won't have enough mana to play all your cards anyway.
I think Flik is versatile enough to include in pretty much every Rogue deck, so playing him and Waxadred in the same deck is not that much of a meme. Whether it makes sense to include Shadowstep in the same deck as well is questionable though.
A huge taunt isn't just for protection against aggro, it's also very useful to kill your opponent. Handlock doesn't have to be defensive: I've been experimenting with an aggressive handlock built around Mountain Giant and Expired Merchant and while it's not quite there yet, with cards like this it may well become viable.
Also... isn't greed the essence of handlock? You take a risk by tapping often in the hope of a big pay-off.
Yes, it goes up to 11!
:)
Also in today's news, the weasel was added to the endangered species list.
...Unless you shadowstep Flik to reduce his cost, then play your own Waxadred and kill it with Flik.
(Only works if you draw both Flik and Waxadred before your opponent's Waxadred has his deathrattle triggered, but that's going to happen in some games.)
It could be used as an aggro tool as well, since it protects other minions in two ways: after completion as a taunt and before completion by inviting the opponent to deal face damage instead of dealing with the minions on the board.
The more I think about it, the more situations I see in which this is good.
If your opponent has a wide board of small minions (Quest Shaman, Lackey Rogue), this doesn't give them the full three minions, while you do get a cheap big taunt with enough attack to take out small minions when traded into.
If you don't play this on curve, you could immediately kill off the summoned minions with one-sided AoE; even on turn 6 or 7, a 3/9 taunt is useful.
In Quest Hunter, this progresses your quest by 4 ticks early game and has synergy with Unleash the Hounds late game.
And of course other advantages that were already mentioned, like messing up resurrect pools and discounting Sea Giant.
Maybe an opponent can delay the quest completion, but it is going to make their turns more awkward. For example hero powers are not mana efficient, so in the early to mid game, you don't want to be using your hero power every turn. And if you have to go face with a minion to prevent the quest completion, that minion is not trading, which leaves the Paladin's minions alive to deal face damage or get better trades.
Why not? One or two good dragon class cards can make a dragon deck viable. For example Dragon Priest was played because of Drakonid Operative and later Duskbreaker, not because the Priest class has particular synergy with dragons.
The class that would in theory have the most dragon synergy would be Shaman, because dragons often use battlecries. But Dragon Shaman has never been particularly good because there were no class-specific dragon cards.
Lack of healing is what is keeping Neferset Thrasher and Diseased Vulture back at the moment. But I don't know how many dragons you'd be able to fit into a deck with those cards. Crowd Roaster would fit into a tempo deck. Perhaps Twilight Drake is good enough as a tribal Yeti, but to get Yeti stats you have to draw or at least skip on some of your early turns if you go first. Dragonmaw Scorcher is a good card in more defensive decks, but maybe not if you're a tempo deck that wants to go wide. So I guess it depends on what new dragons we'll see. I don't think Crazed Netherwing would fit, since it would be a bad play if you're ahead and in a tempo deck you probably don't have the ability to draw a lot of cards early to allow for situational cards.
The obvious comparison is Duskbreaker, which was extremely good. This comes one turn later, which could be a concern, but provides much better stats to make up for it. The self-damage could be an issue, but Nether Breath helps there. And in Wild, Lesser Amethyst Spellstone turns the self-damage into an upside.
We might see seasonal shifts, where ladder is more popular after an expansion launches and Battlegrounds more popular when an expansion has been out for a while. I guess it's still better for Hearthstone though if people play/stream BG when they're bored of ladder instead of playing a different game entirely.
There is too much randomness to be sure of a draw, but they let the player with the stronger board would keep buffs in their hand to play after the round, to increase the chance of a draw or at least avoid dealing too much damage. I guess positioning as well, but I don't know the details there, since I watched the overall stream mostly and not specific streamers. Also they would often level up on turns before same-team fights.