The end of the Year of the Gryphon is at its final moments, and with it, Ashes of Outland, Scholomance Academy, and Madness at the Darkmoon Faire will leave the Standard format to join Wild. Therefore, it is time to look back and see what we're going to leave behind when the rotation hits.
For this exact purpose, we present you a series of articles in which the staff at Out Of Cards will share with everyone the cards we'll miss and the ones we'll be glad to not face anymore.
This time, we're taking a look at Scholomance Academy and what we're going to miss the most from that set - enjoy!
In case you missed them, here's what we going or not going to miss from the other Year of the Phoenix sets:
Avalon - Instructor Fireheart
Scholomance Academy was full of powerful and original cards, but I really struggled to choose one I am going to miss, mostly because I feel like a defining expansion like that was fun until it lasted, but it's now time to move on and leave space to other strategies. However, Instructor Fireheart is probably one of the cards that make an exception to me.
Fireheart came in a period when Shaman was really struggling as a class: it was often among the least played heroes, and there wasn't a single thing Thrall could do better than any other. For this reason, Instructor Fireheart allowed deckbuilders to think about only 29 cards when building a Shaman deck, as this Legendary unit was flexible (yet not overpowered) enough to be included basically anywhere. Things changed when the Year of the Gryphon started: Shaman started receiving decent cards and the class as a whole got more successful, but that wansn't enough to leave Fireheart on the bench.
Brilliant Macaw was the icing on the cake for me: being able to play up to three Fireheart's Hot Streaks in a single game was just too funny to pass on, and that's exactly what I did for a solid month after the Deadmines Mini-Set went live.
On a final note, the art: simply one of the best of the entire Scholomance expansion!
BloodMefist - Trick Totem
Soul Fragments were my favorite overall mechanic from Scholomance, but no single card put a smile on my face more than Trick Totem. As a lover of memes, you basically got a meme at the end of every turn. Kill some enemy minions with a random School Spirits, generate some random value with a Renew, put a random secret into play, Overload 2 with an end-of-turn Lightning Bloom: any outcome from this card is entertaining and I'm going to miss it.
Demonxz95 - Soulciologist Malicia
Malicia basically serves as a stand-in for the entire Soul DH archetype. Even if the archetype has fallen off over the past few sets, I had a lot of fun with it. While it is true that I would curb-stomp my opponent without doing so much as giving them a chance, there were also a lot of games where I was thrown into a challenging situation and had to use my judgement to determine what the best course of action was. This in turn made some wins feel pretty satisfying.
This was the decklist I used when I was playing in Madness at the Darkmoon Faire. Obviously you shouldn't be playing it now since it's a decklist made for a meta that was a year ago, but it was a really cool deck for the time. Altruis the Outcast might seem like he bricks quite a lot, but from practice, it actually didn't happen quite that often. In the deck, he was also capable of getting a lot of surprise lethals and an out to a lot of troublesome situations.
GoliathTheDwarf - Devolving Missiles
Scholomance had a mixed bag of cards for me, but I loved the Dual-Class cards concept and how it brought previously class-locked mechanics into other classes. With Devolve/Evolve cards existing in Shaman for a few years now, it was fun to have it briefly branch out into Mage (editor's note: and Rogue!) to mix with the assortment of spells and spell combos at the class' disposal. I found it very satisfyingly, although unpredictable, to use against a board of large buffed Taunts, constantly restricting minions or powerful Legendary cards. It was a useful tool in dark times and I'll miss having it in the Standard arsenal.
Linkblade91 - Lightning Bloom
Yeah, that's right: I went there. Soul Fragments were taken, so that leaves my favorite thing from Scholomance Academy being a turn-2/turn-1 with The Coin Wildpaw Cavern. It's a strong card in my Standard Freeze Shaman, jumping up in Mana so I can drop the Cavern early, of course, but also several other game-swingers like Bru'kan of the Elements or Snowfall Guardian. Most of the time the Overload doesn't mean much in the long run, which of course just added to the controversy. I never really used it much until this last expansion, so I'm making up for lost time.
Sule - Transfer Student
I'll miss Transfer Student because there isn't, and likely won't ever again be, a card like that in Standard. No other card interacts with the game board, and one of the best parts of a new expansion was wondering what Transfer Student was going to do with the new board. Add to that the fact that every player got it for free and that it was a fun card that I could justify putting into any deck if all I wanted was to have a new experience every game.
Do you agree with our choices? Which cards from Scholomance Academy are you going to miss the most after rotation? Let us know in the comments!
Comments
TBH, Scholomance didn't appeal to me that much, it was just another one of those whimsical HS expansions, with too many OP cards but the dual class mechanic was a breathe of fresh air. The only card I'll really miss is Vectus. He enabled some really spicy deathrattle archetypes but got overshadowed too quickly by better cards.
I"m going to be so glad to see Devolving Missiles go. I love Shaman, I love Mage, I freaking loathe this card from every way around.
There is not a single card from this set that I will miss. Good riddance.
That's a valid opinion - I felt similarly about Ashes, and Pit Commander saved me at the last moment
Very likely one of the most impactful expansion in the last 2 years. Every class has something special, and unusually there's alot of useful neutral cards in this set.
Its actually interesting to see what team5 would do in the next rotation, because cards like Cult Neophyte and Animated Broomstick have such broad applications that you can't really just print another one of these at a different mana slot. And yet this two cards are practically some of the more important tech cards available that makes board based, midrange decks work against the backdrop of bs from the usualn classes like mage, druid and rogue.
But the one card that I'll gladly buy its ticket out of standard would be Lightning Bloom, which can consider itself incredibly lucky to never get a nerf because in both classes it was incredibly tilting to suffer through.