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 of 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 definitely not 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:
- The Cards We're Going to Miss Plenty When Ashes of Outland Rotates
- The Cards We're Going to Miss Plenty When Scholomance Academy Rotates
- The Cards We're Going to Miss Plenty When Madness at the Darkmoon Faire Rotates
- The Cards We're NOT Going to Miss When Ashes of Outland Rotates
Avalon - Wand Thief
While I was choosing what card I was going to pick from Scholomance Academy, I wrote down a list while scrolling through the expansion page, and I noticed it had some kind of redundancy. In fact, it went like this: Tour Guide, Devolving Missiles, Brain Freeze, Wand Thief.
Basically, three of the cards I am not going to miss from this set can be summed up in one: Wand Thief. While it was not that problematic for its Mage half (in the end, it was just a Discover effect like many others), the same cannot be said about its Rogue half. Why? I can't even count the number of times that Wand Thief gave my opponent lethal or prevented me from winning the game with cards they had no right to play. Breaking class identity to its fullest, we can say.
Fireball, Ignite, Frostbolt, Frost Nova, Flamestrike, Puzzle Box of Yogg-Saron (yep, I still have nightmares from that spell), Fire Sale, Mask of C'Thun , the stupid Evocation into Secret Passage combo: Wand Thief allowed for way too many scenarios, to the point where you didn't even know what you should have played around. Is there only one card that screws you over and your opponent just played Wand Thief? Well, guess you're screwed!
If we want to exaggerate, Wand Thief allowed Rogue to play Shaman spells, meaning that you could face Devolving Missiles while playing against three different classes!
The only thing I'd save from Wand Thief is that it allowed for some Burgle shenanigans, but other than that... yeah, see ya.
BloodMefist - Lightning Bloom
Scholomance is filled with cards I despise. Devolving Missiles, Mozaki, Master Duelist, Blessing of Authority, but Lightning Bloom gets the edge. I hate the instant Mana ramp decks could get and the crazy plays involved. Just when I think I'm safe and the enemy can't play more, they pull an extra 2-4 mana out of their ass and I have to deal with whatever fresh mess they decide to Mana-cheat out. Whether it's bypassing Overload downsides, ramping into more ramp in Druid, or enabling some OTK (f**k you Bolner OTK), I cannot wait see this card removed from the Standard rotation.
Demonxz95 - Flesh Giant
Oh boy, this stupid card!!! I hate this card so much. How often do you play against a Warlock and things are going smoothly until they just heal everything back up and casually play two 0 mana 8/8s? And if you can't kill them, they follow it up with a Battleground Battlemaster and you just lose the game because of both stupid cards. Even if you get rid of them, then you still may not be in the clear. No matter how many of their minions you kill during the game, they will always without fail, get at least one of these assholes back with a Raise Dead. EVERY DAMN TIME!!!
You think you've got the game in the bag when your Warlock opponent is down to less than half-Health and have no board. And then this shit happens.
Echo - Raise Dead
0 mana cards are either worthless or incredibly strong, and Raise Dead definitely falls into the latter. Ignoring the mess it caused with stuff like Darkglare and Flesh Giant, where the card was literally an Innervate, 3 damage is not enough of a downside to get back minions that will either help your removal, heal you, is a massive body, or draw you cards. Combine that with the fact that this card is almost never played 'fairly' and it culminates a card that I just hate playing against and will be glad to never see again.
GoliathTheDwarf - Blessing of Authority
I like Buff Paladin, I really do, but this card was a real fun-squasher for me when I had to play against it. It seems balanced at first, but once you realize the "can't attack right away" aspect doesn't matter as much as it seems to, such as just playing it on a new minion who can't attack anyway and/or hiding it behind some beefy Taunts, this becomes an OTK tool that, to me at least, just doesn't feel as earned as some others. I've had frustrating losses to it multiple times and won't miss it when it's gone.
Linkblade91 - Secret Passage
It's not enough to fear what obnoxious gimmicks the Rogue has access to in her hand: you have to also figure they can just swap out their hand at any moment to cast more spells or play more minions. I always hated that you could "draw" via stuff like Swindle and keep those cards after Secret Passage's effect ends; I never saw that as particularly intuitive, because you should only get back what you put away in the first place. Rogues are annoying enough without this card.
Sule - Pen Flinger
Pen Flinger was much more despised back before he was nerfed in the early goings of Forged in the Barrens and has taken a bit of a backseat in recent metas. But I don't want that little shit to think for one second that, just because we currently don't have to hear him on constant loop, doesn't mean that he's gotten off the hook because we all know he's just biding his time until he can find another opportunity to weasel his terrible recurrent voice line into the meta. I have nothing but contempt for this minion. He has no respect for anyone and will cross any boundaries available to him. I hate him with all of my heart.
Do you agree with our choices? Which cards from Scholomance Academy are you NOT going to miss the most after rotation? Let us know in the comments!
Comments
Definitely one of the most influential expansions ever, and my personal favorite. I get why a lot of people hate it (most of its cards are major meta players even to this day), but I just think it has some of the most creative design that the game has seen, such as Lorekeeper Polkelt, Sphere of Sapience, the Soul Fragments package in DH, Jandice Barov, Mindrender Illucia, Secret Passage, Instructor Fireheart, Rattlegore, and even Transfer Student.
I enjoyed playing so many cards from this expansion. I'll definitely miss it in standard.
How is there no mention of Cram Session? Mage may not be top dog right now, but this card often feels like an unearned amount of card draw. It was absolutely soulcrushing to play against before the quest mage nerf. Mozaki would probably have felt far more balanced without it too.
I can't wait to see this expansion rotate. So bored of it already, even more so than AoO. Didn't like the theme and boring decks like face hunter are basically a third Scholomance cards. Funny thing though is I can't really pin point one or a few cards I dislike, it's just the expansion as a whole I want gone from standard already.
Is it April yet, guys?
Honestly, the whole Guardian Animals package (Teacher's Pet and Twilight Runner). It wasn't so insane and it has been a while since I have come across anyone running it. I just got really tired of looking at the art. TBF, I was kinda neckbearding the game when Scholomance came out so that might have something to do with it.
With burgle rogue existing, and having received tools all the way back to GvG, I would say rogue has every right to play any card. That IS part of their class identity and Wand Thief was a super elegant merger of how rogue and mage's value generation works.
However, those two forms of value generation are very different. Burgle rogue is like rolling a D100 and embracing how often the value changes, while casino mage is like rolling a D6 and injecting some randomness, but in a fairly repeatable way. That sort of consistency is not really part of burgle rogue, and hence why Wand Thief straddles the line of rogue's class identity. (Note it is not so much the size of the pool of mage spells - I'm pretty sure Keywarden Ivory's discover pool is smaller - as the amount of redundancy in it, making specific effects easy to find even if specific cards are not.)
FWIW: as a burgle main I love Wand Thief, but agree her time in Standard should come to an end.
Yes and no. Wand Thief is a Burgle Rogue card, but not only: it's a generally good card, which means that it saw play even outside those decks. On top of it, it's a very good card, meaning that it is not bound to Burgle Rogue's success by any means.
I meant 'burgle rogue' as a class identity feature as well as the archetype itself. Nothing says a burgle card cannot be independently strong and used outside of a dedicated burgle deck, and it won't be creating new class identity issues for doing that.