I really like mimic pod, thistle tea always felt too clunky, and shrinking it down a bit makes it more usable.
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As far as I know the game doesn't keep track of individual cards at any time. Hence why you can kill off a card, resurrect it, kill it off again, then resurrect two of the same card. So bounce mechanics should work fine, and I'm thinking that's what this quest is aimed at.
Whether it's good or not is...hard to say. Bounce mechanics are pretty anti-tempo and Rogue doesn't currently utilize it much a all. They have the tools, the question is whether the meta will be slow enough to pull it off.
Crystal Core also has some anti-synergy if it works the same way as Lightspawn. Get the quest early and cards like Van Cleef, Cold Blood, and Questing Adventurer all become dead cards.
I'm pretty sure it would count. I'm less certain that running a bunch of brewmaster effects makes sense unless there's a lot of values out of battlecry/combo in the new set. We'll have to see. I also don't quite know what to make of the quest reward. Does it mean you should run aggro with a bunch of charge minions you can bounce and copy? Should the deck run a bunch of cheap taunts that stall out the early game and then become bigger/better taunts when your quest is done?
So my first thought on seeing the quest spell is "This will make for terrifying jade decks".
Then I saw the reward and was like "Oh. Well played, Blizzard"
Interesting question. It's not entirely clear how the portal works, but my guess is that it acts like a one-time Keeper of Uldamon effect applied to anything you play or summon. It could potentially also affect cards in hand (for effects that care about the power of something you're playing or the various force out of hand stuff like Dirty Rat). If that's case, following the principle of effects resolving in order of play (e.g. older Sylvanus deathrattle happens before newer Sylvanus deathrattle), what should happen when you play a Van Cleef with the Crystal Core already on the table is that the Core sets Van Cleef to 5/5 and then his battlecry resolves, setting him to, I dunno, like 9/9 or 11/11.
On the other hand, if you've already got anything big on the field, playing Crystal Core would for sure set them 5/5, so could be negative for you.
One thing to consider might be the 1/2 Flame Elementals from Fire Fly and Flame Geyser. If there's a second (or third) Rogue-accessible way to generate them, it could be possible to finish the Rogue quest without cluttering your deck with bounce effects. The dream then would be to have four 1/2s in hand along with a Prep on Turn 6.
(Naturally, this is also the expansion where Anub'arak and Skeleton Knight rotate out, but you wouldn't want to trigger Crystal Core by playing either one of them. :smalltongue:)
I'm really happy about the rogue quest.
Thematic and fitting.
Also, after thinking it over a bit, the Paladin quest guy is indeed insane. Taunt Shroud + Health buffs is gamewinning.
As well as Stealth windfury +Attack buffs.
I officially take back my previous remarks.
To this day, the only *compltely* wrong prediction I've posted was about Muster for Battle, which I called "barely OK" when I first saw it. And I caught flak for that until the damn card rotated out of standard :P
It doesn't work with Jade anyways. Unlike the others, this one says 'play' and not 'summon,' so it'll only trigger off stuff cast from hand. Card seems fun, though, and there's some decent support for it in Rogue. Especially with the new card. Mimic Pod is basically arcane intellect for rogues, and can be prepped. Turn 2 coin/counterfeit coin + prep + mimic + VanCleef is a turn 2 8/8 that doesn't put you too far behind on cards.
I think it's real unlikely that it prevents the minions' stats from being modified once they hit the board, considering that would make them immune to damage.
Whether (e.g.) VanCleef hits the board with stats of 5/5+2/2*however many cards you played before, or just plain 5/5, is less certain.
Literally in the same post I mention how the card is actually legit :P
It's probably been buried in the discussion, and I'm on mobile so it's not easy to look it up, but I remembered I never answered to the fellow Playgrounder who was asking about that arena pick.
Hungry crab was the right choice. Renounce is OK but not amazing (and has a chance to completely whiff), the crab is something at least.
Also, you're warlock, which means you can just tap and get more cards. A bad draw doesn't hurt you that much.
In a vaguely related tangent, back when the arena thread was active, I used to have frequent (constructive and friendly) disagreements over card picks, with my choices criticised for leaning too much on "value" and not enough on "tempo".
For a couple months, I've been making an effort to play more aggressively in Arena (giving significant weight t 1-drops in draft, for example) and here are a few thoughts:
- "the opponent missed his 2-drop" becomes a very powerful win condition : I've stolen a lot of wins from people who probably had a much better deck.
- the deck feels more like Zoo, which is nice because I used to play a lot of zoo before it was deleted from the meta. A "better" card is worth a lot less if you can dictate the trades.
- drafting is harder: you have to fully commit to the deck, and if your last picks are awkward there are a lot of difficult choices.
Overall I had a lot of fun, but my winrate went down a bit (I think. I'm too lazy to keep track), so I eventually went back to my normal "thing". But it was fun!
All you have to do is have the exact 4 out of 4 possible cards you need (since the quest uses up 1). Easy! :smallbiggrin:
It's true that the card is good though, I don't disagree there. But if you play that deck, unless you're comboing it with prep like in the example, do not play the draw dupe thing on turn 3, save it for later. Spending turn 3 drawing is a great way to ruin your own tempo. Mage only gets away with it because their aggro deck is designed around spamming spells in one or two big turns and their control deck usually has nothing better to do.
I think aggro got a lot worse with the recent draft changes. They dropped the appearance rate of flamestrike, sure, but with spells appearing more overall, it's much more likely that the other guy will have any of the variety of aoe clears that each class gets, which can ruin most aggro setups. Dragonfire potion, in particular, is in every priest deck in arena now.
That said, I think aggro-control got way better. If you can stick one or two strong minions early and kill whatever they play, you can win a lot of games off the pressure you build up. Burst tempo is also really good right now because a bunch of the decks are busy fiddling around with 3 mana 2/2s and 4 mana 3/3s, so if you nail one swingy turn, you can put them too far behind to recover.
Literally the exact opposite of that is true - Paladin secrets are largely bad and by far the weakest secrets in the game, except for Avenge. That's part of why there's never been another successful Secret Paladin since Avenge rotated out of standard.
On the flip side, Paladin desperately needs a 2-drop, and this one is a 2/2 for 2 that also lets you Discover a card. That card is from a pretty weak, undesirable pool, but it's still an extra card that you get to pick based on what you think you'll need, so there's some value to that. Maybe just filling that gaping hole in the class will let Hydrologist see play, if it works decently in practice. There is also still the possibility that Paladins get a new secret from the set that is actually good, too.
Re: Rogue Quest - I'm not optimistic about it. It seems aimed at an aggro deck - I mean, the reward is that all of your minions get set to 5/5 from then on, which decks running bigger creatures wouldn't always want - and yet the trigger condition isn't great for them, since they don't want to bounce minions (bad tempo), and Mimic Pod alone will definitely not get them four copies of the same card consistently. Plus, as has been pointed out before, aggressive decks don't like Quests anyway, because they have to skip their 1 drop to play them. Without more new cards that support it in a good way, I don't think that one sees play.
Current Brawl is Storming Stormwind again, except this time you have to do at least 30 damage to "win." One and done for me.
Oh yeah, it's by no means likely, but it is actually possible, and when it does happen and your opponent has no answer you kinda just win. Card is indeed still good, though I agree that you don't want it early unless you're comboing it.
Technically it's possible to complete the quest with just two copies of shadowstep. I wonder if this will bring back Ourtown Scrub? Two mana play two 5/5s is pretty good.
RE: the paladin card, this could indeed be the 2 mana card pally needs. 2 mana 2/2 draw a weak card is still better than hero power pass.
Regarding the Rogue Quest. Mimic Pod doesn't seem reliable enough on it's own to make this work (it might not even hit a minion). Unless more synergistic cards are revealed you'd need to invest significantly in stuff like bounce effects and Shadowcaster. Especially with Gang Up leaving Standard.
If there are more neutral (or maybe Rogue?) 1/2 Elemental generators this might be a little easier.
I'm not really feeling it, based on the cards we know of. Like Sherazin, it seems like a puzzle that's more trouble than it's worth.
Hmmm... I'll do detailed reviews of the cards later, but I'm getting a serious replication vibe off of Rogue. Imagine if you will...
Thornling 1
Uncollectable (possibly common) Rogue Minion
Battlecry: deal 1 damage
1/1
Now picture a bunch of cards generating these guys, think roughly the same as Jade cards in Shaman. Could be fun.
More thoughts on the Rogue Quest.
You could run Shadowstep, Thistle Tea, and Mimic Pod as replicating spells. Cheap Battlecry minions like Swashburglar are great for multiple bounces. Then have either little charge minions like Horserider and Bluegill, since these become 5/5 after the Quest is done, or multi-creatures like Imp Master, Defias Ringleader, to flood your board.
For the rest of the rogue deck, you'd probably want things that can summon help, like Defias Ringleader and Murloc Tidehunter. Suddenly summoning two 5/5s for 2.
I dunno I'm not a great deck builder.
You can bounce a Charge minion multiple times and attack multiple times with it right? I can see a 5/5 Stonetusk Boar repeatedly hitting, bouncing, and finishing with Cold Blood. Conceal's going away, thankfully, so this could be another strategy along the same lines.
Does rogue have any of the deathrattles that summon small tokens when they die? Like the one I'm thinking of right now is Rat Pack, but I know that is a hunter card. Something similar to that would be really scary with rogue.
Oh and Doppleganger might count as 3 versions of itself, which would make completing the quest potentially pretty easy.
Either way, even if it ends up not being a good card, it is a very interesting build around card, and I expect it to be the centerpiece of some really fun decks.
I keep coming back to Moroes for the rogue quest. Even though he does not trigger it with the Stewards, a 3 mana stealthed 5/5 that produces at least 1 other 5/5 seems like a fun addition.
Those won't work with the quest: unlike Unite the Murlocs (which was designed to synergize with Finishers, Finja, et al.), Caverns Below only works on played minions.
Paladin needs a lot more than a mediocre 2-drop, they can pull that from neutral cards if they need to. Whether Hydrologist is exactly that really depends on the player's ability to read what secret they need and their ability to manipulate the board to manufacture value out of the secret. Paladin's secrets are much more situational than Soulfire or Power Overwhelming, but the fact that you discover out of a much smaller pool may allow Hydrologist to function as a 2-drop that has a delayed benefit of protecting midrange minions from the opponent's gameplan... if the board state isn't already horribly out of your grasp by the time you want to play your Grimestreet Enforcer or Ivory Knight.
Actually, what should* work for using Doppelgangsters to finish the quest would be something like this:
Turn 10: Doppelgangster, Coin, Vanish (or Doppel-Prep-Vanish-Coin-Van Cleef if you're feeling cheeky)
Turn 11: Doppelgangster x2
Turn 12: Doppelgangster, Crystal Core
Bonus points for then using bounce effects to spam more 5/5 Doppelgangsters.
*Assuming Caverns Below's condition correctly recognizes that the squidfaced Doppelgangsters have the same name as the original despite being separate cards in the game data, that is.
That's actually a good question.
Also applies to bounced jade golems of different sizes I suppose.
Card thoughts:
Spoiler: Tol'vir Stoneshaper4 mana Rare Neutral Minion (Elemental). 3/5 with Battlecry: if you played an Elemental last turn, gain Taunt and Divine Shield. Well... ouch. That wounds me right in the Zoo. Blizzard seems to be making a concerted effort to slow the game down, with now two very solid neutral early walls. Hard removal is about to start coming at a premium for deck space.
Spoiler: Hydrologist2 mana Common Paladin Minion (Murloc). 2/2, Battlecry discover a Secret. Paladin secrets tend to be niche, but I believe that you're going to usually find something useful to the situation. This is not meant for Tempo play, it's a mid game tool to protect other plays. If Kripp's Murloc Aggro deck lives on, this may make the cut.
Spoiler: Mimic Pod3 mana Rare Rogue Spell. Draw a card, then add a copy of it to your hand. I like this WAY more than Thistle Tea, it's way more usable and less swingy if you happen to hit a bad card for the situation. Might see play.
Spoiler: The Caverns Below1 mana Legendary Rogue Quest. Play four Minions with the same name. Reward: Crystal Core, a 5 mana spell that causes all your minionsto be 5/5 for the rest of the game. We do not have anywhere near enough info to evaluate this one, unfortunately, need to find out the mechanics of the stat-set effect and how the creature duplication thing is going to work.
Edit: a random thought hit me about the Quests. Although they all start in your opening hand and cost one mana, they are NOT actually mandatory to play on the opening turn. Thus far, every revealed quest could be played on 2 or 3 with little drawback in many circumstances. Disco might lead with one of their mighty 1-drops, priest might drop a Cleric, Rogue may do Pirate things, etc. I think we need to stop counting a missed turn one as part of the deal.