Hearthstone 22: Evening the Odds

[Hamste]

Can we add Glow-Tron to the list?

[Zevox]

What are your general feelings towards Hearthstone's new expansion, considering its reveal and its change in staff?

I only look at card spoilers, and maybe reviews by my preferred streamers (list given previously). I couldn't care less about the official hype machine.
[...]
As for Brode, I wasn't even aware his memetic status until the last iteration of this thread. Maybe I missed out, but the upside to that is I don't feel any sense of loss either.

Yeah, that part of Psyren's response applies to me word for word. As far as the expansion itself goes, I'm concerned about the power level of some cards, particularly the combo-oriented ones in Druid, and kind of disappointed that there doesn't seem to be anything that will make a value-oriented Control deck strong again (except maybe Doctor Boom, but I'm still iffy on that), but that's it. Don't care one bit about who they've got as the official hype men for the expansion.

In the time of the internet, unspoiled fun has become so rare. Imagine a world where an expansion gets released and you DONT know all cards. :)

Huh? I've got to say, I'm totally baffled by that notion. Why even use the word "spoilers" to describe that? I mean, it makes sense with a story in whatever form of media that you haven't seen, knowing details of those in advance can alter the experience of reading/watching/playing them for the first time for the worse because things that were supposed to surprise you don't. Hence "spoiled."

But cards being released for a card game? I'd be annoyed if they did that without giving us any idea what they were. I want to know what I'll be able to do with them that I couldn't before, what new kinds of decks I might be able to try or what alterations I might want to make to existing ones using the new cards. I don't see any reason to wait for them to be out to learn that, that would just mean it would take longer to get to actually playing the game once they're out as you have to look over everything and decide what to do with it.

[Gandariel]

Can we add Glow-Tron to the list?

Absolutely, added.

Personally Glowtron looks scary strong to me. It looks like an eaaasy auto include in every mech paladin deck.
And the "mech package" seems to be a decently strong addition to aggro.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Huh? I've got to say, I'm totally baffled by that notion. Why even use the word "spoilers" to describe that? I mean, it makes sense with a story in whatever form of media that you haven't seen, knowing details of those in advance can alter the experience of reading/watching/playing them for the first time for the worse because things that were supposed to surprise you don't. Hence "spoiled."

But cards being released for a card game? I'd be annoyed if they did that without giving us any idea what they were. I want to know what I'll be able to do with them that I couldn't before, what new kinds of decks I might be able to try or what alterations I might want to make to existing ones using the new cards. I don't see any reason to wait for them to be out to learn that, that would just mean it would take longer to get to actually playing the game once they're out as you have to look over everything and decide what to do with it.

It's a perspective thing. The exploration aspect can be exciting, see also Legacy games, which revolve heavily around secret packets that get opened up as you play more and more games, adding components and rules you didn't know about.

That said, the existence of deliberately bad cards plus the investment required to collect cards means that it's very expensive to explore, and from a competitive standpoint, it's bad to be surprised by cards whose existence you didn't know about.

[Destro_Yersul]

It's a perspective thing. The exploration aspect can be exciting, see also Legacy games, which revolve heavily around secret packets that get opened up as you play more and more games, adding components and rules you didn't know about.

That said, the existence of deliberately bad cards plus the investment required to collect cards means that it's very expensive to explore, and from a competitive standpoint, it's bad to be surprised by cards whose existence you didn't know about.

There's also the existence of the crafting menu, which lets you look at cards you don't own. So exploration amounts to opening a list anyways,

[Zevox]

It's a perspective thing. The exploration aspect can be exciting, see also Legacy games, which revolve heavily around secret packets that get opened up as you play more and more games, adding components and rules you didn't know about.

Should probably say, I have no idea what these "Legacy games" are.

My first proposal of list of cards for us to evaluate: please give suggestions of which cards to change !

Biology project
Dreampetal Florist
Fireworks tech
[The mage spell damage package] (example, Unexpected results)
Reckless Experimenter
Myra unstable element
Thunderhead
Weapons Project
Wargear
Cloakscale Chemist (if buff priest is a thing, this guy will be insane in it IMO)
Zilliax

Please do give your suggestions ASAP, the expansion is launching really soon and I want to get the poll going !

Hm, I'd remove the "Mage spell damage package," which honestly I don't think is a package at all. I mean, sure, Unexpected Results would want to be run with the two new spell damage cards Mage got, but they're pretty independent of it themselves, and I'd say more likely to see play without it than with.

As far as packages go, I'd suggest Paladin Mech or Hand-Mage as options - though you could perhaps argue that both are too obvious.

Piloted Reaper might be fun to have, just for the "can probably-worse Shredder still be good?" prediction. Stargazer Luna, Venomizer, and Pogo-Hopper seem like interesting ones to include to me.

Considering all the discussion it had already, Star Aligner may be a fair candidate as well, even though I think it's pretty obvious myself.

[Anarion]

Personally, I'd rather avoid evaluating archetypes right now. I mean, yes, obviously they made a bunch of mage cards that benefit from spell damage, but until we see what setups are being run by other decks, it's hard to know if they'll be efficient or not. That's true for a ton of the mechs as well, actually. It's very unclear if putting a lot of deck slots into mechs with good or average bodies on their own is going to have enough synergy to be worthwhile or not. Single cards, on the other hand, can definitely be evaluated on their quality and whether they'll show up in decks of that class.

[Gluteus_Maximus]

Biology Project is good in most druid decks that want to ramp. So, pretty much any druid. Druid is mostly combo and token this expansion, so they don't care if their aggro and control opponents get more mana. 3/5

Dreampetal Florist is good in all druid combo decks, Malygos most of all. A 2 mana malygos and 0 mana faceless or floop is insane on its own, and it may as well be a 7 mana spell that does what it says and an Arcane Tyrant attached. Less good in a Togwaggle Druid because you can't guarantee Psychmelon tutors Azalina. All right in a big druid so you can play a 3 mana tyrantus. 5/5

Fireworks Tech triggers Mechanical Whelp, Spider Bomb, and Goblin Bombs' deathrattles, while also buffing them for a value trade and more value out of their deathrattles. Any mech-based Hunter will run this since they'll probably be a deck with all the Goblin Bomb spawning cards. 4/5.

Unexpected Results you really want 3 or more spell damage to get ~8 mana worth of value out of it, factoring in low-rolls. Cosmic Anomaly is a Tempo Mage card, since it can fill in its 4-drop slot. Celestial Emissary is probably bad except that it's cheap and can buff an arcane explosion. 3/5 for Unexpected Results, 4/5 for Cosmic Anomaly, and 2/5 for Celestial Emissary.

Reckless Experimenter will probably see some experimentation that isn't too reckless. If it can stick, you can get tons of value out of a lot of cards on 6. Or, you just play it with a bunch of cheap deathrattles to draw or spawn 5/5's. Hard to predict a rating for this one, but 3/5 seems safe.

Myra's Unstable Element is really a last ditch effort card. It can also activate decks that include Augmented Elekk or Mecha'Thun. Easy include in thief rogue, because of Academic Espionage. Good card though.

Thunderhead has nice synergy with all the 0 to 1 mana overload cards Shaman's been getting in Zap, Voltaic Burst, and Beakered Lightning, and Flametongue Totem. Great in some sort of non-even aggro shaman with Storm Chaser and Bloodlust.

Weapons Project could be good in a later meta, but not right now. Druidstone might be here, but thanks to Dreampetal Florist, Druid combo decks do not need Twig to work. Weapons Project is only a counter to cubelock, which isn't high up in the meta thanks to decks running skulking geist to get rid of dark pacts and aggro decks that kill them before they get out a lackey. Again, could be good in a later meta.

As Galvanizer is an auto-include in any mech deck, Wargear is a better BoK on mechs only. You can play it on your Mechano-Eggs or their spawns or Damaged Stegotrons to bring back with Kangor's Endless Army. Great buff on mechs that allows for trading up, down, sideways, into the face, or just play it as a 5 mana 5/5, or as I mentioned before, 4 mana 5/5, which is even better. 5/5 for mech decks.

Often Blizzard makes cards that cost 1-2 more for 1 extra attack or health or lose a tribal tag or something like that. Like how Elven Archer can be compared with Ironforge Rifleman. Often the card that costs more for an "eh" buff on the other one is worse, and Ironforge Rifleman costs 2 more for just 1-1 stats. Cloakscale Chemist is 1 cheaper and has 1 less attack than Silent Knight from TGT. Being cheap is already a plus. It allows for you to play buffs on curve because no one will be able to clear a divine shielded 2 health minion with stealth on turn 2-3. This is a good card in some decks that don't want to run keleseth. It could be a card for even paladin, considering it has all right stats that a 2 or 4 mana buff could really help out.

Let's break Zilliax down to its most basic components. Realistically on its own it's going to heal for 6 and deal 3 to 2 minions. The 6 heal is worth about 1.25 mana, so that's packaged with a 3.75 mana flanking strike with Houndmaster Shaw up. That's worth more than 5 mana on it's own, so it looks good as long as you've taken 6 or more damage. It's only going to go in a mech deck thanks to its magnetic, so Galvanizer can make this and a possible magnetic target way cheap. A midrange/control Mech deck will run Zilliax for sure.

Finally, Glow-Tron is an insane card. At 1 mana 1/3, it's already contesting the board against aggro. Like 3 mana 3/2 weapons, some decks run 1 mana 1/3's without text. This having magnetic makes it just awesome. Cheap mechs get an all right buff, and you can play void rippers to switch it to a 3/1 buff basically. A galvanized Glow-Tron and Mechano-Egg is 4 mana, then on turn 5 swap its stats with Void Ripper and trade for 8 damage and summon an 8/8. While the Galvanizer is a bad card to see in your Kangor's Endless Army, if you kill enough good magnetized mechs on your side the chances are low you see Galvanizer Galvanizer 1/8 Mechano-Egg.

[Mando Knight]

The new deck recipes are available now, as before it's about 50:50 entirely new decks and old decks with new cards. Interestingly, only Paladin and Priest have both of their class legendaries included in the recipes, and only the Priest recipe includes both in the same deck.

[Joran]

My first proposal of list of cards for us to evaluate: please give suggestions of which cards to change !

Biology project
Dreampetal Florist
Fireworks tech
[The mage spell damage package] (example, Unexpected results)
Reckless Experimenter
Myra unstable element
Thunderhead
Weapons Project
Wargear
Cloakscale Chemist (if buff priest is a thing, this guy will be insane in it IMO)
Zilliax

Please do give your suggestions ASAP, the expansion is launching really soon and I want to get the poll going !

As mentioned, I'd like to get Soul Infusion in. Maybe Eureka! too.

[Psyren]

I just noticed that Rusty Recycler is Wall-E

The deck recipes seem meme-able with Whizbang. At the very least it's a way to try out multiple legendaries for the price of one. I probably won't craft him but wouldn't be overly upset if I pulled him (especially a golden one!)

[Spore]

I just noticed that Rusty Recycler is Wall-E

I love his flavor text even more.

[Geno9999]

I love his flavor text even more.

It's not a story the Elementals would tell you...

[Spore]

It's not a story the Elementals would tell you...

It's a Mech legend. Doctor Boom was a dark master of mechs, so OP and so omnipresent, so that he could use the turn 7 to influence the entire metagame for two years to come. He had such a knowledge of the metagame, that he could even keep the games he cared about from loosing.

[Psyren]

So apparently one of the Whizbang recipes is literally just Spellhunter, except with Secret Plan instead of Arcane Shot. So probably hope for that one if you plan to climb with him.

[Gandariel]

And there we go, here's the link to the poll.
This was much faster than last time, i just had to change the names of the cards :)

Remember, you have time to answer until the expansion actually drops!

Good luck and have fun!

[Anarion]

And there we go, here's the link to the poll.
This was much faster than last time, i just had to change the names of the cards :)

Remember, you have time to answer until the expansion actually drops!

Good luck and have fun!

Oh nice, you added a star rating guide. But, it still says "Witchwood card ratings" when you finish.

Anyway, I gave a lot of these cards high ratings because I think that they'll reinforce several existing archetypes. Druid in particular has a bunch of strong decks that will benefit from acceleration and I'm certain that the cost reduction guy is going to feature in wild at least, and probably in standard. He's worth a ton of burst tempo (think, like, play Lich king and a huge dragon at once). Also, pretty much everything in this set is at least close to efficiently costed, which means they're pushing the power level here. We'll see what happens though. If mechs end up sucking, then a lot of this stuff won't be anywhere near as good as it looks.

[Resileaf]

I expect Boommaster Flark to appear in wild decks for a terrifyingly powerful combo.
Boommaster Flark + Baron Rivendare + feign death*2.

[Gandariel]

Oh nice, you added a star rating guide. But, it still says "Witchwood card ratings" when you finish.

Should be solved now :)

And might i repeat, *everyone* is welcome to participate in the poll. Yes, even you, dear lurker who follows the thread but doesn't post!

[Spore]

I expect Boommaster Flark to appear in wild decks for a terrifyingly powerful combo.
Boommaster Flark + Baron Rivendare + feign death*2.

You do realize Necromechanic exists? For Standard this looks like the following:
Necromechanic into Flark's Boomzooka into Play Dead on Kathreena

[Gluteus_Maximus]

You do realize Necromechanic exists? For Standard this looks like the following:
Necromechanic into Flark's Boomzooka into Play Dead on Kathreena

Just thing is Feign Death twice with Flark's goblin bombs and Necromechanic is 32 damage. If next expansion hunter got an AOE deathrattle activator this would happen

[Resileaf]

You do realize Necromechanic exists? For Standard this looks like the following:
Necromechanic into Flark's Boomzooka into Play Dead on Kathreena

Sure, nechromechanic works like Rivendare, but feign death is in wild only.
And feign death triggers every deathrattle on the field, which makes it superior to play dead in this situation.
So ideally, Rivendare is the better choice because he's cheaper so the combo can be played on turn 7 and 8 while nechromechanic requires waiting for turn 9.

[Zevox]

And there we go, here's the link to the poll.
This was much faster than last time, i just had to change the names of the cards :)

Remember, you have time to answer until the expansion actually drops!

Good luck and have fun!

Kind of confused about the additional card choices being ones nobody suggested, but whatever I guess.

Spoiler: Mine

Show

Biology Project: 1 star. As strong as ramp is, giving the same ramp to your opponent likely is weak. The only card we've seen do that before didn't see much play.
Dreampetal Florist: 5 stars. Goes into any Druid combo deck, is the 7-drop that Juicy Psychmelon draws.
Fireworks Tech: 3 stars. I don't think the Hunter mech deck will come together that well. It'll either be a fringe deck or t3 I suspect. Though to be fair, wouldn't surprise me that much if I'm wrong, since I'm not really qualified to judge Hunter decks.
Unexpected Results: 1 star. If spell damage made it summon more minions it might have potential, but as-is, even with the new spell damage +2 minions, I don't think getting two random 4-drops off it will be that strong, nor do I see any deck that would want that.
Reckless Experimenter: 4 stars. Pretty hard to call honestly, but I think someone will more likely than not find a way to make it work to some degree or another, I'm just not confident it will be a top deck.
Myra's Unstable Element: 3 stars. Looked like trash at first, but we've seen some things it can be a combo piece for, so I'll bank on the thought that at least one of those will make t3. Won't surprise me much if it winds up 1 or 2-star though.
Thunderhead: 5 stars. Not totally confident about it, but I think this is strong enough that either in even Shaman or a new midrange Shaman it will at least be a defining piece of a t2 deck.
Weapons Project: 3 stars. After seeing what other people had to say about it, I think this goes into Control Warrior just fine - but I'm not confident that Control Warrior will be beyond t3, even with Doctor Boom.
War Gear: 5 stars. Surprisingly, I think this is good enough to wind up a staple of whatever mech deck(s) emerge (most likely one variety or another of Paladin), and I expect at least one to be strong.
Cloakscale Chemist: 1 star. I see no reason to expect anything out of this guy.
Zilliax: 5 stars. Same reason as War Gear.
Glow-Tron: 5 stars. I'm pretty confident about Mech Paladin.
Soul Infusion: 1 star. Just not good enough for the only deck that might want it, Zoo, I think.
Juicy Psychmelon: 5 stars. The Lord Godfrey of the set - obviously OP, possible nerf candidate.
Topsy-Turvey: 1 star. Equal parts prediction and hope, as I can't imagine a deck that actually worked with this being one I'd like to play or fight.
Doctor Boom, Mad Genius: 4 stars. The card that allows Control Warrior to be on the radar, defining the deck... but not taking it past t3, I think, much as I want it to be better.

[Gandariel]

Kind of confused about the additional card choices being ones nobody suggested, but whatever I guess.

Well I had the form pre-made and was missing a few cards, so I just added some that looked interesting to reach the same length as last time.

But to justify the choices, Psychmelon is there for the same reason as Godfrey last expansion. Looks too strong, if it turns out to be weak it'll be surprising.

Topsy turvy is actually a fairly hyped card. It's Inner fire for 0 mana, it can be removal, it can be a lot of things.

Soul Infusion and Glow tron were suggested by posters, and Dr Boom... I don't know, I'm pretty curious myself about him.
The thing is, he does nothing when you play him, (you likely can't cast many mechs in the same turn as him), so I'm afraid he won't be as good as imagined.

Edit: OH, you had suggested some cards and i totally missed it. Super sorry Zevox, i just scrolled through the thread to see if others had given suggestion and missed yours. Promise you'll get more spots next expansion :)

[Hamste]

So they released the stats for the chances you will be offered any given card in arena for boomsday:

https://www.hearthpwn.com/news/5873-...date-with-kris

Here is Kripp looking at it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9frQk-R7p4

[Anarion]

So they released the stats for the chances you will be offered any given card in arena for boomsday:

https://www.hearthpwn.com/news/5873-...date-with-kris

Here is Kripp looking at it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9frQk-R7p4

Yeah, I saw that. They also put out a csv of how all the cards are bucketed by class and for their internal tiers. It's quite interesting.

[Gandariel]

Release day is the 7th August, so there's still a bit of time for the reviews!

Link again :)

We're up to 7 responses for the moment. 8 counting me

The best cards of the expansion seem to be Soularium for Warlock, pretty much everything for Druid, maybe the new Paladin 1-drop.

[Anarion]

Release day is the 7th August, so there's still a bit of time for the reviews!

Link again :)

We're up to 7 responses for the moment. 8 counting me

The best cards of the expansion seem to be Soularium for Warlock, pretty much everything for Druid, maybe the new Paladin 1-drop.

Those ratings reflect estimations on the best decks. Betting that druid, warlock, and some kind of aggressive paladin will occupy T1 (and almost certainly use those cards) is a relatively safe bet.

[Spore]

Those ratings reflect estimations on the best decks. Betting that druid, warlock, and some kind of aggressive paladin will occupy T1 (and almost certainly use those cards) is a relatively safe bet.

If warrior is strong enough I could reckon that with it, its's counter decks become popular as well.

[Gluteus_Maximus]

Well, Trump suggested that control warrior will be insane. Weapons Project with Harrison is a ton of draw and weapons and armor and a body for 7. They can play a ton of armor gain cards and Dr. Boom to beat combo, and warpath/brawl/blood razor beats the aggro. Azalina can copy 1 mana shudderwocks with Cornered Sentry and Drywhisker armorer to gain a lot of armor and again copy more 1 mana shudderwocks. Control Warrior will probably be at least the bottom of tier 2.