We continue our fantastic, completely correct rating of cards with the Hunter cards! We really got a hell of a lot of them this time around - it remains to be seen how this larger than normal initial batch of cards will affect reveals going forward, but hopefully it means less cards in that final Facebook dump. Anyway, nevermind that; let's see what our experts had to say.
Turns out when you can kill Dragons, you can kill everything else too.
Quote From linkblade91 Someone has been watching Game of Thrones! It's obviously too early to say with confidence how Dragonbane will turn out in Standard, but in Wild my thoughts immediately drift to Genn Greymane. At 4-mana, Dragonbane can slot into any Even Hunter deck for additional face pressure and/or board control, and should be a fun deck; maybe not a ladder-stomper but at least halfway decent enough to be enjoyable. To maximize our meme potential, we can combine our new Mech friend with Garrison Commander, Steamwheedle Sniper, and Frost Giant to all-in on the Hero Power. Secrets are an obvious choice to round out the deck, which leads me to…
He's an inspiration to budding secret keepers.
Quote From linkblade91 Phase Stalker can go in my theoretical Wild Even Hunter deck quite readily, pulling out Secrets while I continue to shoot them in the face. An Even Hunter's ideal gameplay pattern would be to pressure with the Hero Power and stall with Secrets while the main threat (Kathrena Winterwisp, maybe? Savannah Highmane, Violet Wurm, and Charged Devilsaur are all Even-costed) comes online. Playing Secrets from your deck thins it out, allowing you to reach your required cards faster. Again probably not Tier 1 material, but I own all the pieces anyway so I might as well try it lol.
Twitch chat has entered the battle.
Quote From Demonxz95 Toxic Reinforcements is the first of the Sidequests we’re talking about. Sidequests are a cool mechanic with interesting design space. Flavorfully, Toxic Reinforcements is amazing, but in practical gameplay, it’s a bit… awkward. The effect supports Aggro exceptionally well, although playing a 1 mana card that does nothing by itself supports Aggro the exact opposite of “exceptionally well”. Pressing the button and going face is fun, but it’s not so much fun when you draw into what’s essentially a completely dead draw. For other Hero Power-centric Hunter builds, completing this will be easier, although because it won’t be as aggressive, it perhaps doesn’t help your game plan as much. The reward also seems underwhelming compared to Learn Draconic, but perhaps it could be better than we think if we get the right Hero Power support. For now though, I’m not really feeling it.
That said though, as the Leper Gnomes are Deathrattle minions which are a field Rexxar is known to be able to take advantage of, Deathrattle synergies may give this card a bit more shining potential.
Gets her supplies through Azeroth Prime.
Quote From FearGralex I love this card. As someone who halfheartedly tried to make Dragon Hunter work after The Witchwood came out, I'm sure I'll be playing this card a lot. I also unironically think it's very good, although it may lack a home depending on how much good neutral Dragon support there is. Will probably find a spot in Highlander Hunter lists at the very least. Being able to trade with anything while also generating a strong Discovered card is quite good. Also, expect this card to be strong in Arena of course, as is the case with most of the new Dragons.
If she breathes, things will rot.
Quote From Cable Knight This looks like the kind of card that will go into every Hunter deck. Cobra Shot memes aside, dealing 3 for 2 mana has always been a strong play (see Quick Shot). You can kill almost any one or two cost minion for only 2 mana, and that's not even considering the dragon synergy. This is a great card for midrange decks that want to control the early game board while still chipping away at the opponents health. I don't think this and Primordial Explorer are enough to make Dragon Hunter competitive, but there are still 4 Hunter cards to be revealed.
Dwarves are faster on the draw than Goblins, I guess.
Quote From Cable Knight Another amazing early game play for Hunter. The 3 health means that he'll usually live for at least one turn, and if you're going first your opponent will have no way to stick a minion on the board for fear of an easy trade. He'll fit into almost any deck that cares about the early game, without a doubt. Other than the obvious synergy with Dragonbane, I could see this being an auto-include for Odd Hunter in Wild - remember how I said dealing 3 damage on turn 2 was awesome?
Comments
In my opinion Dragonbane is an insane addition to Mech Hunter: as you can see, if we don't consider Galvanizer shenanigans the only possible options for turn 4 are Explodinator (proactive, since it doesn't immediately affect the board), Replicating Menace (needs a Mech in play, which isn't impossible, but you'd want to make it stick for a while) or 3 drop + 1 drop/2 drop + hero power.
Dragonbane has good chances to survive, immediately affects the board and is a great base to magnetize stuff on: Wargear is good, Venomizer is cool, Zilliax is a nice combo that will see play in Highlander Hunter too.
I think this is a 4 star card: a good addition to every hunter deck even without insane synergy.
Seems like a natural replacement to Explodinator that was always sub-par and only included because it meant 3 mechs on the board from one card. This is strictly better even without the 6 mana 7 damage to the hero fringe possibility.
Well played Shadows with that Toxic Reinforcements caption.
I'm a little grumpy that no one has talked about Blizzard's choice to ditch "Inspire" as a keyword on these cards... it's inconsistent at best. Worst case, change the other cards to not include the word (a la, Enrage)... But come on. Ugh.
I love the new cards. The breakdown is great- keep the content up!
they're once again consistent in their inconsistency.
Apparently Keywords are expansion specific, as we've seen with Echo (unless of course you're Sn1p-Sn4p then the rules don't apply to you)
That being said, apparently Hunter is the only class to get Hero Power specific support cards and it would be weird to reintroduce a keyword that's just a used by one out of nine classes
The reason SN1P-SN4P has Echo whereas Unstable Evolution and Witch's Brew don't is because SN1P-SN4P is in the same year (and thus, will also rotate out at the exact same time) The Witchwood does, whereas the latter two cards are part of different years, and rotated at different times.
I wouldn't mind adding Echo and Inspire where applicable after the cards rotate out of Standard, but when it's not an evergreen keyword like Discover, Lifesteal, and Rush are, it becomes a bit of an issue for the design team.
I mean, if I'd taken them I'd have talked about how much I agree with the decision, and how I think it's a good design choice, so... =P
They're not ditching Inspire, they're consciously choosing not to use it when it would only appear on a couple of cards, and isn't a theme of the set. I prefer it to random keywords popping up in expansions where they don't make sense.
It was probably due to Inspire having flavor with The Grand Tournament and calling it "inspire" on these minions wouldnt be very flavorful. I mean it was a design decision at the time that is now coming to bite them in the ass. I guess they just decided to go one way, rather than another. Cant say they couldnt have done something better, but at the same time, cant blame them either.
I like all the comments here, for sure... I just feel like they're (in the long term) making it harder to search through the cards they've made. A keyword is greater than a small phrase, right? we'd think?
I know they've been counter that opinion and Inspire is a *bit* of a weird way of saying "using your hero power* but I kinda get what they were seeing at the time, and now.
What makes sense moving forward though? A new keyword?
I definitely agree with the searching, but they've actually been improving that recently - including things like 'Snip' allowing you to search for SN1P-SN4P, for example.
I'd be all for showing these cards when you search for "Inspire", even if the cards don't actually use the word.
I absolutely agree with Even Hunter opinions.
However, i think the new cards really push for the Face side of Even Hunter, hence going for "lategame threat" is actually redundant: hero power is the real threat for the whole game.
I already adjusted my Grimm Face Hunter in that direction, and i can't wait to try.