Did we make it? The final review of the last few neutral cards, just in time!
100% accurate, definitely correct, blah blah blah. Who cares? Ashes of Outland is almost here!
Gimme a big hug!
Quote From Noxious This is one of my favorite type of cards. I don't expect this lil' Sporeling to do well, but it does for me exactly what secrets do: It messes with your opponent's mind; and mind games are what I live for.
A 1/2 minion is certainly not hard to remove. But just in case your opponent doesn't have removal for it, they'll be unable to play minions with powerful effects like deathrattles, taunt or lifesteal. Imagine if our lil' Sporeling transformed a Sylvanas Windrunner or an Ysera into a mushroom; wouldn't that be awesome?
Sadly, I'm not sure this card will prove effective. It's too weak on its own, but giving it an effect like Rush would make it too strong. I look forward to this effect coming back two years from now, stapled on a more resilient minion. Until then, all I have to say to this cute, angry Sporeling is good luck, and see you probably never.
You definitely don't want to burst this guy's bubble.
Quote From FrostyFeet This is definitely a card that requires a specific kind of deck to function at all. The base stats, two 1/2s for 3, don't sound too good and I can't think of a deck in current or near future Standard that would like to include this card (no matter how cute the Living Rot token is). If the card is to see play, I would imagine it happens in Token Druid-style decks or with some weird handbuff shenanigans.
Echoing Ooze is probably the closest comparison to Blistering Rot for stats, effect, and flavor, and it outshines its new competitor greatly. Any buff you would use on Blistering Rot can be used on Echoing Ooze as well, and even though Blistering Rot has the potential to continue spawning tokens, it'll either get instantly removed or ignored by the decks which can afford to do so, and you ended up paying one mana more for the same stats. The value rises is if your opponent can't handle it and you can buff it further, creating even bigger tokens, but that's more of a win-more situation and I remain skeptical if the fast Wild Token decks will want this card either.
Keep Bianca away from it this time!
Quote From linkblade91 Unfortunately for him, Scrapyard Colossus will not be going in my Quest Taunt Warrior. I'd love to generate one from an outside source, perhaps, but a 10-mana minion needs to justify his/her/its existence in the deck, and "I'm a ball of stats" just doesn't really cut it. Every Taunt in the game is some combination of a ball of stats + Taunt, so what I really need is a third quality that can keep the game-plan flowing. That separates the okay Taunts from the great ones. Now, granted, the Colossus is a fairly sticky ball of stats, what with the Deathrattle and all, but that just means he can get double-tapped by smaller spells and the like instead. If the Quest said "summon 7 Taunt minions" instead of "play", then hell yeah I'll take a 2-for-1 card to get my Quest finished off. But just the one? And it costs my entire turn? Nah.
In regards to other potential use-cases, you really need to cheat the Colossus out if you want to have a good time with it. Maybe Deathrattle Rogue? Could finally see a Taunt in the class lel.
Everyone is going to eat their spells and you are going to like them!
Quote From Noxious Interesting card. Great stats for a 2-cost. I am not sure if there is space for it in any competitive deck, but it can definitely fit in gimmick decks that rely on lots of spells, especially for classes which lack strong board AOE, like Paladin. I think it could really fit in a Druid deck, though. Druids have received as many minions in Ashes of Outland as Mages, which means they received more spells! If "spell Druid" becomes a successful archetype, I do not doubt we will see the Mo'arg Artificer make an appearance in it. Double damage Swipe and Starfall can bring Druid to the same spell power level as Mage, and Druids are no strangers to generating minions from spells, so there is definitely a synergy waiting to be discovered here.
Well hi-diddly-ho neighbourino!
Quote From Noxious My first thought when I saw this card was "Grim Patron, is that you?". Then I realized that is false. It does, however, share a similar effect: Bit by bit, fill your board with 3/3 minions. If you let this little guy grow a couple of turns, you'll have a never-ending refresh of 3/3 minions. Remember, one Replicat-o-tron can transform another Replicat-o-tron into, you guessed it, another Replicat-o-tron! That means they can "heal" each other at the end of each turn - all you need it to keep supplying the replication with cheap minions that are worth nothing more than being vessels for this beautiful card.
Will it see play? Certainly. Remember, it transforms another minion into a copy of itself, taking any buffs it has with it! Priests should have a field day with this one.
Waste not, want not!
Quote From Noxious "Beautiful, it will see play." That's what I said to Platebreaker when it came out. I hope I am right this time. Waste Warden is every control deck's wet dream. Gotta wait for those high-cost cards to come through while you're assaulted by some Beast Aggro Hunter or some Murloc Shaman? Pop a Waste Warden and watch your opponent concede.
Whether this card actually sees play or not will heavily depend on the meta. If the meta is aggro-heavy, which might be possible with Demon Hunters and all their cheap demonspawns, Waste Warden would be worth including in any deck. If the meta is weighing towards Midrange or Control decks, my bet is this card will probably appear in Wild more than it will in Standard. Nonetheless, I love it. It's a prime example of what an Epic rarity card should be.
Death is merely a setback.
Quote From Noxious If you haven't heard of Teron Gorefiend, this bad boy has been around since the early days of Warcraft 2's expansion, Beyond the Dark Portal; and his most recent incarnation is a beast. Not a literal one, of course.
Any class with fancy deathrattle synergy can make use out of this card. There's already plenty of deathrattle synergy in Wild and it would take hours to get through it all , so I'll just give my thoughts on Standard. Rogue can create an effective deathrattle deck revolving around Gorefiend. Sahket Sapper can keep the enemy's board empty once Gorefiend is played.
Priest, with its Convincing Infiltrator, convinces me it can make use of Gorefiend. Grandmummy, Chronobreaker and Dead Ringer are just the icing on the cake. Dragon Paladin can get a good power boost out of using Gorefiend on Dragonrider Talritha, and I'm sure Hunter's Oblivitron can get some really cool combos out of this unholy combination.
Wake up! Grab a brush and swipe away the table!
Quote From GoliathTheDwarf When Outland was revealed as the setting for this set, I hoped, but didn’t dare dream, that this major lore character would be included, as he is significant player in the story of outland, but not very well-known. Magtheridon is a powerful demon, a pit lord, who was the ruler of Outland. Illidan and his allies captured him and used his blood to help strengthen Illidan’s armies.
In terms of gameplay, I like the increased use of the Dormant mechanic. This card, along with the imprisoned demon cards, is a nice expansion on the concepts introduced with cards like Sherazin, Corpse Flower and The Darkness, finally making Dormant a keyword. I love how this card is both very strong and very weak depending on how you play him. Early-game setup for some great damage, board clear, and demon synergy, but you have to make sure that none of the wardens are transformed or returned to your opponent’s hand. I think that playing this card in a combo with another card or set-up to clear them all in one turn would be the ideal situation. Otherwise, you may take the penalty of losing a minion-spot on your board for the rest of the game.
It's only two turns (or 10,000 years for Control players).
Quote From Echo Out of all the cards revealed so far, this one is probably that will see the most play overall. For aggro decks, its great because shutting down someone's minion so you can get in for more damage without worrying about them being able to trade is massive. Take Dragon Hunter for example. One of the cards that made that deck function was Rotnest Drake, which aside from it being a dragon and Maiev not, is essentially just a larger Maiev. The whole "wake up in 2 turns" thing is irrelevant when the opponent is dead by the time it wakes up. Maiev's stats aren't even that bad so it's not like you are losing that much tempo for playing her.
Let's take a look at the role she would play in control decks, where while I'd argue she is basically still a 4 mana 4/3 that kills a minion, at least against aggro. Being able to establish some form of board state while also taking out a minion is huge against decks that often require some form of board control in order to win the game. Even when the minion comes back into play, due to how dormant creatures take an additional turn to attack after they have awoken, it's not like it'll be able to do much before it is swallowed up by some form of board clear. This card can slow down the game enough to let you get back into the game after being behind by a large amount.
On top of all that stuff, this card just forces people to make their decks much more focused on battlecries and getting value out of playing the minion and not letting the minion stay. Since I'm not sure I worded that the best way possible, here's an example. Let's say I'm playing against a Resurrect Priest and although I've gotten him low, he plays his Khartut Defender, using up his entire turn to develop what would normally be a decent minion. When it's my turn, I basically just tell him "No sorry you played this card two turns later", and while it's still dormant I just beat him up before it comes back into play. While minions that impact the board immediately have always been stronger than those that don't, Maiev exemplifies this to the extreme.
Just to wrap everything up, I think this will most likely be the strongest minion in the set unless an even bigger mistake gets printed as she just does something that every deck wants to do incredibly efficiently. There's a whole bunch of other niche things you can do with Maiev that I never mentioned, such as using her to get more value out of Imprisoned creatures, but that's are essentially just a cherry on top to an already incredibly strong card. I would be very shocked if this card does not see play when the expansion hits.
Don't be al'armed, he'll be back soon.
Quote From Avalon Quite representative of the new year's mascot. Even the effect is really flavorful: like a fully fledged phoenix, once Al'ar dies it will return to life from its ashes. I'm really sorry to say it and I'll gladly accept to be wrong on this one, but I think the pros of this card end here. The statline is pretty aggressive and may see some experimentation in aggressive decks, but all it takes to get rid of it is just 6 damage (3 of which to deal without negative aftermath) and that makes it not very sticky and, unfortunately, not a top tier card.
We can console ourselves with the fact that Al'ar has a stunning art and that will probably end up in some Trolden clips.
I used to think maybe you loved me, now Tyrande I'm sure!
Quote From Avalon We've got the chance to play with this card for a couple weeks and we all understood that this blood elf can be devastating in the right deck. Note that you'll receive a discount on every third spell you play and not just the third one, meaning that you can chain the effect multiple times in a single turn. If you manage to fill your hands with enough cheap spells, you'll be granted huge mana cheating and you'll be able to play even a total of 20 (or even more) mana worth of cards in a single turn. Some classes like Druid have both low and high costed spells, and Kael'thas is already part of a game-breaking deck in Wild.
Everyone got a copy for free, so we're encouraged to play and explore this unique effect.
On a fun note, this is the classic "order LUL" type of cards, so please pay attention to which cards you should play first!
Comments
After opening all my packs, I've been sitting on around 3k worth of dust of cards. I'm wondering how long I should wait to cash them in from all the erratas that are going to come though?
Man you should copyright this