Review #2 continues looking at (almost all) the remaining neutrals! I'm gonna be really honest this time, we're veering into pack filler territory here, so while our reviews are as always the one and only truth, they may also be a bit... less excited than normal. Hey, at least the jokes don't care if a card is good or not!
Favourite flavour of ice cream? Ravanilla.
Quote From Nudewookie This battlemage is cute as can be, but I imagine it will become a terror to see on turn 1. Enchanted Raven in a neutral form without a tribe improves almost all aggro decks instantly, this fits well in any deck that is trying to curve out. I like this card with an Embiggen Druid deck quite a bit, assuming that there is enough draw in it to flood the board continually. This card is going to find it's place in the metagame at one point or another, let's just hope the voicelines are as cute as the art.
If your Bat isn't Fiery, lighting your own is fine.
Quote From ShadowsOfSense Well, this is certainly a card.
Let's see, what can we say about this? Well, the most obvious comparison is Fire Plume Phoenix; you lose out on the ability to choose your target, Elemental synergy and the ability to hit face… for one extra damage. I mean, yikes. Fire Plume Phoenix was already relegated to being Arena-relevant only - though to be fair it is quite a good card there - and this is just so much worse in so many ways. The extra damage just isn't worth the myriad of downsides.
I can guess that this might see some play in Arena, where boards get less complicated and the 3 damage will more frequently land where you want it to. Outside of that? Pack Filler bingo officially checked off.
I don't know how the fuck it hides either.
Quote From ShadowsOfSense I'm imagining the future where this card just has two keywords on it. It looks real nice, very clean.
In looking up the roster of Poisonous minions to compare this card to, I was initially surprised by how many are Beasts, but I suppose it makes the most sense thematically. To throw out a comparison, Pit Snake was unplayable at 1 mana less because of how easy it is to remove a 1 Health minion. This gains a great defensive ability in exchange for that 1 mana, but it only removes one of the three Hero Powers that can kill it outright from the equation, not even mentioning Paladin and Shaman.
Warrior and Mage have various small AoEs, and Warlock just received Rain of Fire. Even Priest has Holy Ripple. Any of the many 1/1 tokens in the game can bump into this for a more than fair trade, such as Hunter's Springpaw and its Lynx.This card is just destined for failure. I can't see it even doing that well in Arena, honestly.
YOU... SHALL NOT... PRESS!
Quote From ShadowsOfSense Okay, bear with me.
You're in Wild. You're facing one of those bastard Death Knights, and they've got a really cool Hero Power. You want their Hero Power, so you Sideshow Spelleater it. That's great and all, but they still have the Hero Power, so this isn't unfair enough. You play a Grizzled Wizard, swapping your Hero Powers so now you… both still have the same Hero Power. But wait! The combo is almost complete. In the final, devastating act, you play Sir Finley Mrrgglton, exchanging your cool Hero Power for one of those boring Basic ones. At the end of the turn, you both swap back. You've successfully stolen your opponent's awesome Hero Power and given them a Basic one.
And then they kill you next turn, because you wasted 9 mana essentially doing nothing.
"There's no such thing as too many rockets!" -Gyrocopter pilot, last words
Quote From Demonxz95 The problem with Windfury minions is that they need to stay alive for a turn to be able to use their effects. In a game like Hearthstone, that's not exactly the most reliable thing to do, when they will prioritize killing those minions and they have worse stats to make that job easier.
Gyrocopter here has Rush to alleviate that problem. Rush and Windfury is a good combination to allow you to take advantage of the double attacks quite easily. It's also a Mech, which is a good tribe with a lot of support for about 4 months until The Boomsday Project rotates out of Standard. It'll be able to enjoy its time though. A Windfury minion that you can Magnetize stuff to can do some serious damage. It powercreeps over Windfury Harpy quite heavily, although that's not exactly saying much.
Is this card good enough to see play though? Probably not, but it might be possible. It's incredibly good if you can kill 2 minions with it and keep it on the field, although depending on what you killed, even trading it off for 2 minions can be pretty good. Siamat can become a 7 mana 6/6 with Rush and Windfury which you might sometimes choose, although you can also choose quite a few other combinations.
So it's probably not a good card for high-level Constructed play, but it seems like a pretty good card for really new players and Arena. It also might be pretty good to get from outside sources. Otherwise, probably not. But who knows? Maybe this card will surprise us.
Remember remember the Hawk made of Embers.
Quote From ShadowsOfSense This is a cute little tech card against Control decks. I mean, all of them will be able to kill it using one of the many cards in their hand, because 3 Health is laughable to them, but still. Cute!
Seriously, the more Attack this gains the more likely it is to be killed, because your opponent has more potential answers in hand. There's something to be said that this comes down the turn before the usual Mountain Giant turn, I guess, and would have enough Attack to take one out, but… why would they play their Giant when they can just delay a turn and kill your bird instead? Is that worth wasting a card slot on this instead of furthering your own game plan?
The most interesting use of this card, I guess, is as some minor board presence in Mill decks, to threaten your opponent's life total as well as their card management.
Oh, and I guess in Arena your opponent is less likely to have answers, but also less likely to be hoarding cards, so it's like… okay. Probably like a 4/3 or a 5/3 on turn 3, which is acceptable.
Less of a glide, more of a delayed crash.
Quote From linkblade91 Goboglide Tech is functionally similar to Tinkertown Technician of yesteryear, only trading a random Spare Part for Rush. While I don't think TT really sees play anymore, Goboglide Tech's Rush is far more appreciated and could be useful in a Mech-Rush hybrid deck. Never underestimate the usefulness and immediate impact of Rush. Don't think it supports Clear the Way, though; it's not like Da Undatakah works with N'Zoth, the Corruptor, having the Keyword located in the Battlecry. Another thing to consider is the number of Mechs in Standard, which will decline significantly come April when The Boomsday Project rotates to Wild. Use it while you can, I guess.
He'll leave you a little hot under the collar.
Quote From Demonxz95 Hey, anti-Freeze tech. We had Ice Cream Peddler in Rastakhan's Rumble, which was kind of the closest thing we had to this type of effect, although I don't think it was used against Freeze as much as it was to Freeze your own things on purpose and gain 8 Armor.
But now we have a proper anti-Freeze effect in the game. This effect is really neat, although it's not great. Preventing Freezes can be nice, although your opponent will be able to kill this first, then use their Freeze effects a lot of time. In addition to that, Freeze is almost exclusively a Mage thing, so it's basically an anti-Mage tech card. Otherwise, it's basically an Elemental Spider Tank. Granted, that isn't BAD. You wouldn’t be upset to play that normally, but it’s probably not as useful as it could be especially without Elemental synergies in Standard.
So, as much as I like the idea of this card, the effect is quite difficult to use. It would be so much better and easier to use if its effect was a Battlecry.
Remember to bow if you want to keep your arm.
Quote From Demonxz95 Goodbye Stegodon. You're not needed anymore. Bye bye.
That said, Stegodon didn't exactly see play, and I'm not sure that giving it Rush will change that. Rush and Taunt is not a terrible combination of keywords (although they're typically not synergistic either). You can kill one thing, and then get in the way of another. You might play it in Taunt Warrior where you can buff it with Into the Fray or [Hearthstone Card (Armegadillo) Not Found], and the Rush becomes a much bigger impact when you buff it enough. It's a smaller Amani War Bear, which saw some play, so I guess that's why I'm a bit more hopeful in this card. Honestly, it's a perfectly fair card, although 95% of the time, "perfectly fair" cards don't see play.
Comments
While (as always) there's a fair bit I disagree with here, the main point I want to bring out is the Evasive Chimaera review comparing it to Pit Snake. While I see the logic in that comparison given the statline, I think a better comparison would be with Stubborn Gastropod given the mana cost and (more importantly) neutral tag. Gastropod saw some niche play when the meta was shifting towards a 'big stuff' position, and I don't think it's unreasonable to expect the same of Chimaera here. Pit Snake saw no play less because of its statline, and more because it was sat in Rogue - a class with decent single-target removal and a lot of options at the bottom end.
To be clear, I'm not saying it will see play right away, nor that it will be played heavily, I'm just saying it shouldn't be written off as a tech card depending on the meta.
Stubborn Gastropod having Taunt and an additional Health makes an enormous difference. I compared it to Pit Snake because it's as pitifully easy to remove as Pit Snake was.
Any incidental AoE or 1/1 can remove it from the board - compared to Gastropod, which could stand up against Rogue, Druid and Mage Hero Powers at least once, forcing more of an investment, I just don't see it ever being a tech choice.
Well, Mage hero power isn't really in-point given that it can't target Chimaera. I would also argue Rogue hero power is fairly irrelevant as a tech card choice as there's no current Rogue deck that focusses on large minions, nor anything in the expansion that really points towards it.
Druid is a weakness of Chimaera over Gastropod, I agree - but equally, Chimaera is proof against any small targeted removal. As to 1/1 chaff, that's true of any small anti-large tech (Gastropod dies to Springpaw almost as easily as anything else, albeit at the expenditure of one more resource).
None of which is really the point I'm trying to get at, though. The point I was trying to make was that this isn't a Pit Snake because it's specifically a harder-to-remove Poisonous minion in the same way Gastropod was. The decks you'd tech this in to fight are ones that aren't going to be running much in the way of 1/1 chaff, and - Druid hero power notwithstanding - will usually deal with on-board threats with targeted removal, trades or expensive AoE.
AoE is usually going to be the last resort (a deck revolving around big minions will prioritise board-clears to stabilise the early game over low-grade AoE in most cases, making it a disproportionate use of resource). Trades are unlikely due to the poisonous tag. Therefore, being proof against targeted removal is a much bigger boon than it seems, in my opinion. In any matchup you're specifically teching for, Chimaera is substantially more likely to consume a valuable resource than a non-valuable one because of the untargetable effect.
I opened 8 packs of DoD yesterday and I got the worst legendary Shu'ma :(
Grizzled Wizard + old Sir Finley alone stills work though as a hero power destroyer, right?
If this actually works, I'm going to add this every game in wild format, high potential as cheapest and best disruption card.
its sad that Grizzled Wizard is not good in standard :(
About Living Dragonbreath, it was confirmed on reddit by one of the devs that it immediately unfreezes our minions on the board.
Remember ROS meta, when CC mages used to freeze our board while developing giants? He would be a good inclusion back then.
Oh, then the card is a lot better than I thought it was, although because it's a tech card that only works against 1 class for the most part, it's still a bit "eh" on its playability.
15/10 review on Grizzled Wizard
If there was an upvote button, I would upvote it to heavens.
It's simple it's so ugly no one wants to look at it thus making it hidden.
Not that simple when no one knows what you are actually referring to ^^
It makes us confuse
oh yeah should have mentioned I was talking about the chimera whoops
I recognize this is the wrong place to post this, but I’m not sure where to post it. Does anyone know how to open preorders today
edit: Dekkster has a video that explains it andmakes it super easy.
You either have to join a fireside gathering or create one yourself. I created one for myself several expansions ago and, while it wasn't the most intuitive thing ever, it was doable and worked. Just follow Blizzard's instructions and you'll do fine.
There was one thing I ran into that required me to host the gathering with my computer (on another account) and then join using my phone. Again, that was several expansions ago, so I'm not sure if you still need to do that or if I was just doing something wrong. Good luck to you!