(Hearthstone) Rogue, Shaman, and Warlock Card Review - Forged in the Barrens

all right next up we have rogue we're starting with swine tusk shank this is a three cost two two weapon after you play poison gain one durability so we've obviously already seen a lot of weapon rogue decks in the current metagame that play a lot of poisons you know there is of course deadly poison nitro boost poison which is getting nerfed to two mana uh from one mana so that is a significant change in terms of the damage potential of that but there's also the new paralysis poison or paralyzing poison which we'll see uh in a little bit but all those of course continue to give this additional durability it's a very interesting interesting weapon you know it's a you know weapon that obviously you want to keep buffing there's already uh there's already a self-sharpening sword that does exist in the current medium which is already a four durability weapon that keeps buffing itself naturally so you know are you going to be wanting to play a deck that includes both of these if you're playing like a weapon rogue deck or are you having you're going to play like you know just one or the other so overall you know like i you know i think this is in a weird spot where it's already competing with uh at least in the current you know state of the format something which is quite strong already and also you know this because you have to keep buffing this in order to get more than you know more than a couple of swings out of it it kind of naturally makes you really vulnerable to weapon removal you know weapon rogue style decks already uh you know like are afraid of your opponent just you know oozing you playing weapon removal there's of course at least a little bit less weapon removal um with the removal of harrison jones from the corset but harrison hasn't really seen a lot of play recently but you know if this style of deck becomes uh becomes more popular there is of course the you know the potential influx of weapon removal and i think this is a bit worse against weapon rule than self-sharpening sword is because self-sharpening sword is like a better independent weapon it is an independent weapon that don't need no poison so it can uh it can kind of uh self-sustain with the self-sharpening portion so it also has better synergy i think with stuff like tox blade and whatever tox blade the three three that gives you weapon plus two you know that will work more effectively with a higher durability weapon rather than this so i i do feel like this is just like a little bit too heavily reliant potentially on uh you know the buffs compared to the tools that already exist for weapon rogue right now but maybe there's some desire for additional uh additional redundancy in that style of deck next up we have efficient octobot with frenzy reduce the cost of cards in your hand by one it is a 1 4 mech this is a pretty interesting card obviously anything with this level of cost reduction can be extremely powerful you know reducing the cost of your hand all of them by one is is you know very very effective in a lot of matchups the weird thing is you know you you need to enable this yourself because your opponent is very unlikely to want to uh want to hit this uh you can backstab it of course you can like kind of get your own like uh mini emperor off if you just play octobot into backstab so it does have a lot of combo potential in you know like kind of in a vacuum right your opponent doesn't have to enable it for you um so if you're playing like you know a bunch of card draw you can like octobot backstab reduce the cost of your hand go um so that's definitely you know something that's very worth considering uh i i doubt we'll see this as just like a card that people are playing you know to like hope their opponent you know like use it for removal like as you know it is a four health minion so like it can actually be something that like carries buffs like nitro boost poison or you know cold blood or whatever pretty well and then if your opponent doesn't kill in one hit great the rest of your hand's discounted but that feels a little tougher to uh to justify the inclusion of it in your deck rather than like you know if you're actually playing like a full-on combo deck that's looking to uh to use it to really like go off in a single turn it does work with pen flinger which is certainly worth noting um you know maybe you you you apply like a uh like something similar to the current like you know uh weapon rogue decks that like plays this to like give you even more explosive turns by like pen flingering this reduce cost the rest of your stuff fire off a bunch of burn there's a lot of card draw in those style decks and most of that card are sticking around so could be interesting could be interesting definitely a card that's uh that's kind of scary um as we saw from uh the existence of emperor thurson and its time and standard except we have yoink one cost discover hero power set its cost to zero swap back after two uses i assume this only ever discovers basic hero powers um and you can't like discover like tank up or like you know die insect or something um but yeah this this seems kind of meh to me you know like you're none of the hero powers that you can get really feel like they are worth a card for two uses right like maybe this you know like if you're if you're like in a like uh against like an aggressive deck you're like okay you can get healing or armor up and it's like for life against like if you're like warlock against like a control deck you get like two life taps that's pretty powerful i don't know this feels like it's it's most of the hero powers don't feel worth a card even if you get to use them twice right you know like if you if you get like even like you know silver hand recruits for zero right you you are getting like at least like a reasonable you know reasonable uh value from some of them but it just feels like it feels like so many of them are just so bad right like you get you get like very easily could have you know a lot of matchups where that where like none of the things really feel worth it maybe this ends up being played in like a in like a auctioneer deck just because it's a one cost spell and like you're not getting like both effects in one turn i don't know my my gut instinct is this is not a particularly great card but it does have at least like some corner cases where it feels like it could have you know some amount of value like i don't know what the rest of the shell around this deck looks like right because it's not like like a lot of other steel stuff right they synergize with cards that care about stealing cars from opposing classes or anything this doesn't do that this isn't like have any reason to go into a deck that like cares about stealing opposing stuff because it's just stealing a hero power it's not generating cards you know that synergize with other things it's just like okay well what deck wants a different hero power and it's like okay do you play this in like a slower you know a deck that wants to play like a longer game in the hopes that you steal healing or armor up but like you know what if you just hit like silver hand recruit or demon hunter or whatever it's just like there's just so many options that are just like you know not the the direction any particular direction that it feels like it's unlikely to have any kind of consistently positive effect overall like i think it's it's neat that it exists um and i'm curious to see if there's like more sort of synergies that care about like stealing hero powers in some way but i i am skeptical that it's really uh you know gonna be any kind of actual good card next up we have scabs cutter butter for cost three three legendary combo the next two cards you play this turn cost three less so this card is i think pretty sick i i've seen like some you know evaluation of this card like oh this is obviously so incredibly broken when you think about it like so this is you know requires combo right and because it's two cards cost three less each not like you know a reduced cut like the next card is six less or something like you can never use the ramp right like you'd only use this to play at its best this is you play this and you play two things that cost three obviously maybe there's like ridiculous scenarios where you're like you know playing like uh reduce the reduce cost your your next combo thing maybe you're playing like those and then playing a huge combo thing off of those um you can't you can't use this with edwin anymore right there's no edwin in standard and edwin you know if it were in standard would cost four so you can't use it there unless you'd like foxy fraud into it that's the name of the card but this this feels like it's more like okay what you want to do is play this and just get like a you know kind of burst a tempo play right you're getting like this plus like two ticket masters or like you know this plus like i don't know weapon plus weapon buff like i think this is you know it's clearly powerful but like i feel like there's the reactions that i've seen to this are like oh this is incredibly overpowered but it's like you're not you're getting like say you coin this out right you coin this out and you get like a 3-3 and then like you know what like two other three threes that's obviously very good but it's not like you know it doesn't seem like super super ridiculous to me and it feels like the you know you have to that's that's obviously like kind of best case scenario right like if you have like this and you have like uh you know a three drop and like one drops you're not getting the max best case um so i think this credit is definitely very good but this doesn't jump out at me as like oh this is like game breakingly broken right because a lot of the things that are going to be good against the board that you create with scabs would have just been good against would have been good against your board anyway you know like or vice versa you know like if someone has like a hell fire they're still clearing your board of scabs and two other three drops right overall i think this is definitely a a a very solid card but i i don't think it's quite as like outrageously broken as you know other people seem to be suggesting you could definitely you know you can definitely do some nutty stuff with it by like you know you like shadow step this and then you're getting like you know another turn where you're effectively getting even more discounts for less mana but like again you just keep playing three drops essentially right i think that like you know how powerful those turns can be are really reliant like what the what the three drops are that you're playing and like how effectively people can react to those to begin with and that has less to do you know at least somewhat less to do with scabs than it has to do with what those other things are doing overall like i said i think this is a very strong card i but i don't think it's some sort of like outrageous unbeatable broken legendary all right next up we have oil rig ambusher or cost 4-4 battlecry deal 2 if this entered your hand this turn deal 4 instead this is a really interesting card because entered your hand means did you draw this this turn or did you shadow step this this turn right so this is like a four cos four four you can like shoot them and then if you shadow set them oop boom even more so i mean this is like a pretty neat card i i don't think this is like an outrageously crazy a powerful card i mean it is worth noting like you could use this with scabs right if you're like you like you can i did i did talk a bit quite a bit uh with this guys about how like the best case scenario is like you know you're you're discounting three drops right you obviously can use scabs with like more expensive stuff like this you know it is three less so you could play like you know with scabs into like two of these you know if you like draw a bunch of cards and you're like okay scabs into oil rig oil rig boom if you like had drawn those that turn you you're you're still getting all that all that sort of discount but yeah i mean this this is powerful with obviously just drawing it it's powerful with with secret passage powerful with shadow step so like i think that that the something that cares about like you know okay you're sort of trying to cycle through and play more uh you know do more things than just like having access to the cards that you're naturally drawing is i think you know certainly pretty interesting so yeah i mean i think this is this is like a neat card i don't think this is likely to be like you know some sort of like crazy wacky combo card maybe it is maybe you have like you know you're just looking to keep shadow stepping this because you're effectively getting you know four damage for two mana if you're shadows or for one man if you're shadow stepping this or for two minutes what am i talking about uh if you're shadow stepping this but uh you know like it doesn't strike me as you know a card that you just like on its on its face is like you know likely to be sort of game changing outside of you know really really dedicated deck to it next up we have wicked stab this is uh this is played in new hampshire and massachusetts yeah i hit him with a wicked stab i've been away for so long my accent's terrible but uh you know two cost a deal two damage upgrades when you have five mana kind of eviscerate right does this go like two four six is my guess i actually don't know but you know look it's basically it's eviscerate eviscerate replacement right once you actually have five mana it's effectively eviscerate although you can just eviscerate straight up uh and then at 10 mana boom better than eviscerate so i think it's just like this is clearly a strong card it is you know obviously a bit weaker than an eviscerate early in the game but having you know not having to combo it later on and the the uh upside of six uh you know at the the highest rank once you are at 10 mana is pretty powerful so uh you know i think it's pretty pretty clearly a solid workhorse style card i i don't think this is like you know game changingly crazy or anything because it's mostly just eviscerate um but it is clearly like a very solid card next up we have silver leaf poison another poison so definitely something else that can work with the uh work with the initial weapon we talked about give your weapon after hero attacks draw a card so this is you know if on a weapon with a significant number of uh durability this can be draw question mark you know this can be extremely extremely strong obviously if decks with this type of card become more popular it does lead people to be more likely to want to play weapon removal um but at worst this is two mana cycle right like very very worst case scenario you you know you play this and you get to draw a card off of it when you swing your weapon which is you know a very good baseline for an effect this does seem like it's a particularly sick thing on like a king's bane and wild right like you you just like poison that king's bane up and now you're just like you know attacking and you draw attacking and attacking attacking uh yeah i mean this seems like you know it doesn't seem like a card that like you're necessarily gonna want in like a really aggressive deck like if you think about like the current weapon rogue decks right i don't know that you actually would play this because you have so much other card draw in the form of like swindle and secret passage and cutting class that are cheaper slash burstier and if you're looking to like end the game quickly this isn't really an effect that like leads to that this is something that's like okay i wanna i wanna like build up a weapon with with like you know with this poison and get like significant incremental advantage over it uh over the course of time but uh again if you do if you do play it in in those style of decks you're probably looking to you know like poison up a higher durability weapon which does run the the much higher risk of running and weapon removal and uh and kind of feeling like you're getting wrecked and next is paralytic poison this was the another one that i was talking about before given plus one attack and your hero is immune while attacking um so this is pretty interesting in terms of the applications for like playing more of a mid-range rogue right like one of the the issues with a lot of weapon rogue type decks and the reason that you know they tend to be pretty aggressive and just look to hit the opponent in the face is that well you take a bunch of damage back when you attack but if you're playing like the um scaling durability weapon off of poisons you're playing this you're playing silver leaf now you can start attacking minions right and you keep poisoning up your weapon attacking minions and and like not taking damage back that's a really big deal i do i do think that that style of deck is difficult would be difficult to like actually be effective because if it does take up any significant metagame share it is extremely vulnerable to weapon removal um and would be unlikely to you know survive for very long if it became popular but it you know as sort of like a a more sort of niche style of deck i think that you know there's the the possibility that it could uh you know possibly have some success the possibility could possibly have some success i'm saying possibility a lot it's very possible that i will say possibility again just keep your ears peeled that's not what you do with ears that's eyes but you know you know what i'm saying except we have field contact three cos three two after you play battle cry or combo card draw a card so this is a a little bit like uh whirl kick right in terms of you are generating additional value but you are actually drawing cards from your deck which is you know has pros and cons right and this is obviously you know a wider range of uh of effects it's either battlecry or combo so they don't necessarily you know a you you can be using this with foxy fraud into a swindle boom boom draw draw draw draw or you can be you know just like chaining off your uh your combo cards or whatever themselves this is just a really i think a very powerful card for like big blow up turns to generate like a lot of it doesn't generate a lot of extra resources outside your deck it is directly card draw which you know again like unlike world kick doesn't like help you in like long attrition type games you know with world kick you can actually get a bunch of stuff from outside the game which gave you both sort of like a little bit less predictable range of stuff that your deck did but also like you know made it so you weren't constrained by like hey what's in your deck to actually draw this does work very well with stuff like anything that like like shadow of death ticketmaster you know waxadread c'thun style stuff that actually want you to get through your deck um which it you know does give a lot of different strategies for rogue more potential to sort of churn through the deck in that way i just think this is you know a a very strong card with a lot of potential applications the fact that it's either battlecry or combo does mean that you know you have a wide range of stuff that you can you can use it with especially you know like i said alongside like foxy fraud you have a battle cry that enables a combo and that you if you literally just play like field contact into foxy fraud into swindle like okay well i just drew like four cards and that's just like you know a lot to help churn you through your deck to find whatever sort of potential combinations not combo cards but combinations that your deck is built around like a mini gadget sand and last but not least we have apothecary hellbrim a forecast three two with battlecry and death throttle at a random poison to your hand interesting how similar this is to like zero um who was a forecast three two with battlecry death rattle and he gave you specific poisons um that were you know uh unique to him but this is poisons i assume from the selection of poisons that exist within the game of which we there are now three new ones from this set alone uh as well as deadly poison and uh nitro boost poison from uh you know the the existing set of cards that rogue has to currently uh deal with you know i feel like this is a sort of card that can be very effective in more of a again mid-range style weapon rogue it feels like the kind of of deck that a lot of these poisons and poison support cards are looking to enable um as i was saying before i do feel like that style of deck kind of has a cap of how good it can be because you know if you are spending all these resources to poison up a particular weapon uh you know your opponent can very easily just be like okay well i'm playing weapon removal if this deck's popular if this deck's good i'm playing weapon removal so you know because of that i feel like a lot of the direction that it feels like rogue has from a poison standpoint in this set is less appealing to me because it's like well if this is good people will people will like you know easily build the beat it but like as i mentioned before it does have the potential to be like kind of this niche thing if it is not quite popular and successful enough that people pack a bunch of web removal but it does feel like the sort of deck that if you you know if you run to the person who wants to beat you it's very hard to to like beat them because you are so heavily built into uh investing in a weapon and it could be so easy to remove that's rogue and uh like i said i feel like there's a lot of a lot of stuff that leans into what i feel like is a pretty vulnerable and fragile strategy of like mid-range mid-range weapon rogue and then some just generally good stuff um like scabs cutter butters and the uh the various sort of utility card type stuff so i'm curious to see what kind of direction that rogue goes there's already a lot of tools they have right now even stuff like that felt like they were like losing like eviscerate you know has a replacement in the form of like wicked stab so they have a lot of the the same stuff they had before and uh you know i feel like likely from what we're seeing here most of this is going to go in kind of a similar direction of more aggressive rogue decks because that's kind of what they do and i feel like this sort of mid-range rogue style deck as i've been mentioning is very vulnerable to particular forms of disruption and doesn't seem like it has quite enough going for it to support that next up we have shaman starting with brew khan a forecast 5'4 nature spell damage plus three so this is uh i think pretty clearly one of the uh the bigger sort of like spell school payoff type effects um nature damage nature spell damage plus three uh if you you know sort of think of some of the uh shaman spells that have been around for forever that are still around like lightning bolt lightning storm which is recently buffed in the core set uh those are nature spells and plus three spell damage on a four cost card you know means you can you could play like brew con into bolt bolt boom that's 12 damage that's a lot right there's uh there's no more lava burst i don't know a lot of bursts i assume fire anyway um but with uh with nature spell image plus three you are you're turning a lot of your you know your burn spells into uh you know very very powerful powerful effects this is just like a really good card right this is a mini malygos and you know obviously again it only affects a particular category of uh spells so you can't like you know be like brew con uh frost shocking people that's not gonna be a nature spell uh frosh check i think is also gone anyway but you know definitely a a very powerful tool for a lot of a lot of burst potential here you know like a lot of the the spells that you you you know end up playing for burn in shaman already i believe that sherpa and shrine portal my guess is serpent shrimp portal if you think about it i like to be a nature spell as well um so yeah just a lot of a lot of really strong stuff that you can use for for either burst potential to your opponent's face or clearing in the form of uh of lightning storms so definitely a super strong card and uh really uh really powerful way to start off shopping next we have earth revenant a forecast two six taunt elemental battlecry deal one damage to all enemy minions um so you know a forecast two six taunt not that good elemental is a relevant tag again um and the battle cry deal into all any minions that can be reasonably strong you know um this how powerful this is depends quite a bit on um what the metagame looks like you know if there's a lot of like silver hand recruits very powerful if there's a lot of you know generally like small like you know small minions can be really good it can be uh also pretty powerful because it does trigger your opponent's frenzies um which can be a good or bad thing right the fact that you can trigger your opponent's frenzy incidentally rather than having to use an actual effect to trigger it like depends what the frenzy is right like some of some things you're you're very happy to not have to like attack a minion into it and trigger their frenzy like uh you know it can it can also be be used to clear off divine shields um or you know there's like that one divine shield when it uh when it has frenzy guy or frenzy divine shield or the game divine shield i remember the name of the card but we'll get to that in the neutrals um be able to clear off the vine shields obviously be really powerful in certain meta games but overall just like you know clearing off the rogue stealth minions obviously in the current metagame that we exist in would be really really strong so i think this is just like a very solid card for like a mid-range elemental shaman deck and uh you know if those decks you know are are something that have enough support overall which i think they do this can definitely help you against some of those more aggressive strategies um or just you know against uh against tokens in general next up we have chain lightning deal two damage to a minion and a random adjacent one this is a nature spell very good with brucon boom um upgrades when you have five mana um so this is you know one of the ranked spells um and this is you know this is very powerful if you think about like a lot of the uh the sort of shaman aoe lightning storm obviously as i mentioned did get buffed but this this can be you know like kill two things at like you know even just rank one deal two to something deal two to two things it's just very very powerful and uh i don't know exactly the upgrade path i think it's two four six um or i i i i assume that it's 246 rather than like you know it's uh like increasing the number of minions it hits but like you know this is basically like cleave at level at rank one but like shaman is a class much more likely to want to actually play spell damage i'm told it's actually two three four not two four six it's not as not as good a uh you know sort of rank as uh as i was hoping as i was expecting but still pretty powerful right and you know you can't get spell damage off of your hero power anymore but obviously shaman still has a lot of incentive to actually play things that give you spell damage because well your class can use spellings very well work with brucon right you play this uh you know with brucon on like say like five minute with the coin it's like okay well deal six to two things boo boom very powerful in a mid-range type matchup for sure so you know i think this is just a reasonably solid card um it depends on what the metagame looks like again uh you know obviously if there's like tons of small minions this is this is still actually pretty good because you know if you're getting any kind of spell damage it could be three three even at rank one and if even if you're not getting spell damage can can often you know depending on how your opponent's minions are our position can kill multiple things too be able to kill like you know flame imp and anything against like zoo if that's you know if that's popular or even just like flame and damage something else that's also just you know often a very very appealing thing so i think it's just a very solid card overall next we have tiny fins caravan a two cost one three star return dry murloc there's a lot of burlap support for shaman in this uh in this set and uh one of the reasons that that's possible i think there's a lot of actually very strong murlocs is that there's no more murloc warleader which is one of the really important things you got to keep in mind when you think about a lot of these new moorlock cars i mentioned earlier that i felt like the caravan cards are sort of at their best um index that kind of naturally are constru forcing your opponent to react to them already and you know i feel like this might be one of the ones that has some potential because if you are playing a murloc deck you kind of already have a bunch of stuff that your opponent is going to be wanting to contest on the board that said a lot of the murloc cards typically want you to play more and more murlocs rather than necessarily like you know having like a you know this in play just like survive for a turn get like one murloc and like if you're probably just you know can easily kill this would you rather just have like another murloc than this right like unless this is getting two two cards you're i feel like you're going to kind of like rarely want to be playing this over just like playing a murloc that like gives you you know more tempo on the board right i don't know it's it's hard to evaluate without like having a sense of what the metagame looks like and if the metagame is one that has a lot of aggressive decks that are playing to the board a maybe you don't want to be playing murlocs anyway because it's very easy for them to like constrain your stuff though as i mentioned before the murlocs that exist now are a lot better than the more likes we've seen historically because they're not necessarily stated with uh having to keep war leader in mind but like if there's a more controlling metagame this can be extremely powerful card against controlling decks where they're forced to react to this immediately or else you could potentially draw one two even three murlocs from your deck which can you know help potentially give you the ability to like overwhelm them so um i do things as very metagame dependent in a slower metagame this seems like it has the potential to be quite good but in a faster metagame this feels like it's probably just garbage next up we have arid stormer a three cost two five elemental with battle cry if you played an elemental last turn gain rush and wind fury it feels pretty powerful obviously three five or rather two five rush wind fury for three very strong against aggressive decks um and can actually just also be like quite powerful against control decks you don't necessarily have to take advantage of the rush for this to be good right if this is just like a 2 power 5 health wind fury minion any kind of buff on this is like pretty outrageously powerful and it feels like there's actually pretty strong tools for elementals in general there's the the one cost neutral elemental that reduces the cost of your next elemental and being able to play like a 2-5 wind fury on turn two thanks to that can be really strong there's also menacing nimbus that made its way back into the core set that can give you the ability to enable your elementals without like losing any form of value so i i just think there's there's a lot of uh you know a lot of powerful tools for the deck um for the the tribe essentially that um you know have the potential to to really push this over the edge uh if you know right now there's not like a ton of like buffs available um there's like there was earth and might for a while in uh you know that would be insanely powerful on this that is not currently in the in the format but you know with stuff like this you definitely want to keep your eye out for any form of buffs because buffing a winfrey minion maybe you play this with like the the knoll hammer right maybe you're playing uh elemental shaman you're playing the whack and knoll hammer the cage mesh custodian that's an elemental so you could you can play an elemental that draws your weapon enables this play your weapon boom you start swinging and buffing your wind fury guy really really good so overall i think there's a lot of tools to enable the uh the elemental shaman strategy and it's certainly something that i'm going to experiment with next we have no fin can stop us nothing can stop us get it um another murloc um buff card give your minions possible one give your murlocs an extra plus bubble swan this seems fine obviously you know if you're playing a murloc deck you know murloc's getting plus two plus two for three mana is pretty powerful um i i feel like you know the fact that it is uh effective also with totems is pretty valuable to those murloc decks as well but a lot of uh a lot of you know like murloc decks have typically struggled with like maintaining a board not necessarily with taking advantage of the fact that you have a board the fact that bloodlust is gone does mean that you know maybe you're looking for like a finisher um to actually end up winning the game to take advantage of the fact that you do have a big board and like this this seems like a card that in the previous mini game wouldn't necessarily be excited about necessarily right for a combination of well there's bloodlust well there's more like war leader now with the rotation from the of both of those from the core set you you don't have either of those right so you're looking potentially for another way to actually finish the game actually take advantage of the the murloc board or just the regular board that you build which definitely makes this significantly more appealing um tiny finn is also in the in the set by the way it's the zero cost uh the zero cost or not the set but in the format it's the zero cost uh uh one one minion that exists instead of wisp now so you know be able to like toss out double tiny fin boom their 3 3 can make this a lot more effective um maybe you're playing like like on the reveal stream there is the murloc slash elemental deck so you can play like you know your uh your arid elemental and and buff that with plus one plus one with this and buff your other murlocs and boom smash them so overall you know like i think this is like a a possible payoff card for these decks but the more important thing is always like okay well can i stabilize can i actually get a head on the board with these um rather than like you know how am i finishing the game or at least that always was the the uh the issue but maybe uh maybe with you know again the sort of rotation of those sort of key finishers you're looking for something like this to actually close the game out um considering many of the murlocs that do exist now are a lot better at board control like this one firemancer fleurgal two costs two three after you play murloc deal one to all enemies so i gotta say it's weird that a murloc is playing with fire murlocs are water creatures they literally like live on the beach or in the you know in the water in the ocean or whatever and he's just like burning people what's up with that what's up fleurgal you're betraying your people but this card is just like super powerful i you know i was just talking about how you know a lot of a lot of murloc decks historically struggle with you know board control struggle with like defending themselves this does not struggle with any of that this is uh burn all your stuff um yeah he's building building a beach bonfire and throwing all the opponents in and the more murlocs you play the bigger you get that bonfire up but yeah i think this is this is definitely you know a a very very powerful card it's all enemies not even all enemy minions so you can actually just finish the game with this there's you know definitely quite a bit of of murloc like generation or there has historically been a lot of murloc generation in shaman so like running out of stuff is often not necessarily like that big issue is after you play not if you summon something like soul of the murloc wouldn't actually uh you know wouldn't actually give you additional triggers of this thankfully because otherwise that seems like it could be kind of uh kind of crazy but you know this is sort of like you know a risky skipper right for murlocs but it doesn't hurt your own stuff it just kills your opponent's stuff which is you know it's pretty big swings so this is definitely one of the cards that um stands out as like okay well this is a reason to play murlocs right in a metagame if it's like especially you know an aggressive metagame against like zoo style decks typically historically murloc decks have like really struggled to win in that sort of matchup but with fleurgal um you you have like a kind of a trump card that you you know you might need to to hold back on some of your murlocs in the early turns but once you uh once you get fleurgal and can like play a bunch of murlocs to blow up your opponent's board um sometimes it may be difficult for them to get the board back against you rather than how it was always impossible for the murlocs to get the board back against zoo and speaking of murlocs spawn pool forager one cost one two that threat will summon a one one tiny fin so this is powerful for a number of reasons one it is a you know it's a one it's a one cost murloc that's actually you know like stable on the board right like one of the things that that murlocs often have struggled with is like yes they were like largely built around like uh synergies and like you know building up a big board but they're also often generally very very fragile um you had like you know murloc raider you know two one for one this is like not only a one two but also death threat will summon another murloc this is like a possessed villager but better you know because it has a relevant type you know it's like it's like kind of like a better mermaid i mean it is a class card so it like feels like you know class cards generally should be better than neutrals um but like in particular cheap murlocs are very good with fleurgal who we just saw so you know this is this just seems like it's you know a overall very strong card um and uh you know will likely be a a staple of the uh of the murloc uh murloc shaman decks obviously uh nothing can stop us very very happy to see something which you know makes it very uh very much more difficult for your opponent to clear off all your murlocs before you play a murloc buff but speaking of more murloc board control south coast chieftain one car or two cost three two if you control another murloc deal two damage again having a murloc with uh that has two health that has death throttle summoning murloc makes it so much more likely that you can just play this on turn two and kill your opponent's thing and keep your morlocks going keep your mouths in play a lot of powerful tempo tools for murloc which again historically you didn't have that much of right like historically murlocs tended to struggle for the board and you know if they did get the board great they could like have these big burst ways of actually win the game but these murlocs you know they're they're stable murlocs they're molecules they are good at fighting the board and then have powerful end game tools like nothing can stop us that uh you know can actually help them snowball the advantage they they actually also naturally get so you know i i think that that we are seeing a very different direction for murlocs now that they uh don't have access to uh murloc warleader as kind of the big push finisher that they always did and lastly not a murloc but apparently lurks on lily pads so probably lives around some murlocs uh a five cost four five elemental with battlecry hex something if you played an elemental last turn i think this is pretty obviously a pretty powerful um pretty powerful mid-range tool having access to a bunch of possible hexes um in uh in a mid-range uh elemental shaman deck seems quite strong um or even just like an aggressive deck right like you can play you can be playing a you know fairly aggressive elemental deck and not play hex in your deck because you don't want to have you know stuff that will just sit in your hand and be like you know fully reactive and you can still have access to the tool um through this you know and and this is something which you know your opponent can't like stop with like a spellbender not the spell that is around but like counterspell um you can use this on something that's untargetable right like say your opponent has you know a uh fairy dragon type effect you can still use your lily pad lurker to hit it this can be generated off of things you know like a uh menacing nimbus things that generate elementals it obviously is also a removal effect that continues your elemental chain which you otherwise would have to have to break up um to play a spell-based removal effect so there's a lot of positive things here um in uh in general i i assume this is targeted it doesn't say target but it also doesn't say random so i assume that you get to choose what you're actually hitting with it because that would be weird if it didn't say random and it was a random effect but anyway that is our last shaman card so shaman overall i think has some pretty interesting stuff you know you have the the nature spell damage stuff with brucon that you know can give you the kind of uh spell based shaman direction um and it could be like very uh very burst damage heavy then there's also the uh murlocs that i think actually have a lot of really powerful early game tools that can help support some of the stuff that we haven't really seen the other murloc cards get a lot of a lot of action recently but there are stuff like magic fin and things like that um that do still exist in the standard format i do think you know the more i sort of look and think about the uh the more like stuff the better nothing can stop us actually seems um and then of course the elemental stuff elementals don't feel like they're fully fleshed out just yet but definitely feel like it has uh has some uh some support for that direction in the set and uh and also of course as i mentioned with menacing nibis in the core set as well next up we have warlock starting here with blood shard bristleback three cost three three life steal with battle cry if your deck contains 10 or fewer cards deal six damage to a minion so there's there's a couple of these uh these cards that care about your deck having 10 or fewer cards um in terms of payoff and i think this is the the more impressive of them you know six damage lifesteal is you know very very strong obviously it's a pretty huge uh swing it's interesting because there's there's also a couple cards uh that destroy cards in decks kind of naturally as part of their cost or as part of their effect in warlock and you can also just use your uh your hero power to you know get down to a lower card count in your deck i i question like you know how reasonable the sort of strategy overall is given given just like this is like a kind of like unimpressive card at that point right three three lifestyle for three is fine but pretty weak um it doesn't really feel worth like building your deck necessarily to like do um it is it is something that like you know okay well just if if you are just kind of naturally playing this as part of you know a like slower controlling deck right and this is just like something that you have for like the late game as like you know okay i get to that point and then this is just like a big swing that feels like more a more reasonable direction with these than like the things that that just destroy cars in your deck because it feels like if you are going to be you know destroying much cars in your deck you're going to need specific late game win conditions like say a jaraxxus or something to actually be able to pump out enough resources to win the game if you you know especially effectively losing your hero power once you get to that point because you're just going to fatigue yourself so yeah this feels more like a this is just a like a card that i hope to get extra value out of late in the game rather than a card that i want to specifically really aggressively try to build my deck to support next up we have well another one of these cards that cares about your your uh running on your deck this one specifically if your dick is empty open a portal that fills your imps or fills your board with three two imps every turn five costs five five on top of it so this is obviously a pretty huge payoff um in terms of uh emptying your deck so this is more of like okay if you know if i'm going to be building my deck in the destroy my deck direction play you know this is like kind of the capper payoff right and you know fill your board with three two imps every turn is pretty powerful right like it can be pretty difficult for your opponent to actually deal with that that said you're in fatigue you're out of cards and like a lot of the cards that you would include in your deck to um if you're trying to like really build your deck toward this direction to end up destroying like random cards in your deck so unless this is like just something you're playing kind of as like a chef gnomish card right you try and like you know just kind of naturally get to the point where you have you have no cars in your deck you run the risk of getting rid of this it's not like this is a quest card right where you just have access to that like is guaranteed so that's part of why i really question like having you know this is sort of like the kappa of that kind of strategy of really dedicating your deck to your to like burning your deck running out of everything i assume much like the lakari sacrifice that um this ends up like the portal ends up taking a board spot so you'd effectively get like six imps every turn like maybe this is something you you like you know play in your deck like just sort of incidentally as like an answer to opposing tickets right you're like okay well if you're gonna take us my deck away i'm gonna i'm gonna play this and just like you know blow up your stuff over and over and over you can kill all my stuff forever it doesn't matter i have this endless endless portal but uh but yeah like i said i i feel like a lot of the stuff that that goes in sort of the direction of i want to blow up my own deck run the risk of blowing up this guy which is your big payoff and being you know a little bit too risky to build your entire deck in that direction next up we have tamson roam whenever you have a shadow spell that costs one or more add a copy to your hand that costs zero so the shadow spells in warlock are stuff like like that i can think of off the top of my head that are that are like powerful with this siphon soul is a really good one with this i haven't actually got buffed and is a shadow spell so seven soul costing five you play this you can siphon soul you get another seven soul for zero and it's not even like zero this turn right it's zero period um you can use like soul shear um but this is obviously just a pretty powerful and pretty uh pretty open-ended card that helps support the the sort of shadow spell school we're seeing a lot of like you know there's like some support for most of the spell schools almost all of them i don't think there's any fail spell school support that i can think of but you know this i i think it's just like you know you you even if you just like play this and play like one spell you're getting some value out of your phone isn't killed immediately you get like even more value out of it um and you know like this you can play this plus buff siphon soul because it only costs five plus like a uh you know a uh soul share or something and that's that's just like you know that's a lot of value right in a longer game um and like this is something that will will make it worth paying a lot of attention to any shadow spell that exists in the future right like i think like i think like cascading disaster is that a shadow spell there's just a lot right there's a lot of things where it's like okay well well what can i what can i use with this what can i and like the fact that it's not like zero this turn it's not like copy it right it's you get it that costs zero period that's huge because it can give you like effectively a a like massive tempo swing and a future term by by being able to play something like a siphon soul for free down the road but yeah i'm i'm curious to see like what stuff from like the previous year because yeah we don't know all of the uh spell schools that are being added to like last year's stuff like we know all the stuff in the core set we know all the stuff in this set but we don't know all the stuff from last year so any of the stuff that's in like ashes of outland or in skolamance or in uh in darkmoon so despite seeing all the cards from barons there's still kind of that open-ended question of what it interacts with from the the previous year so i'm definitely very curious to see what direction uh you know what additional support that this card is gonna have next up is cabal outfitter three cost three three battlecry and death throttle give me another random friendly minion possible swan so this is a pretty clear like just zoo support style card you know remember uh uh shattered sun cleric when that was something that these that saw play in like zoo type decks well this is basically a shadow sun cleric but better the fact that it had intake you know battle battlecry and death throttle you can use this alongside say like nerubian egg right like derubian egg is back ruby egg is in the the core set you can play that play this boom eggs online you know obviously just like that's a you know specific example but it's just like a super efficient card you know overall right as long as you have other minions this is giving you a lot of value for uh for this card so i think this is like you know not like a crazy all-star anything but definitely a uh a reasonable role player in any kind of zoo style deck next up imp swarm i'm gonna uh three two imp summon a i assume two and then three at five and ten mana this chord is card is like kinda meh maybe this is something that you you know wanna play like a mid-range demon type deck but doesn't really feel like you know a two a three two for two and then two three twos for for two at five is like super appealing i think this is one of the least exciting to me of the uh the ranked cards is because like the relative value of the you know those minions feels like it decreases pretty dramatically as the game progresses it's because like they get out scaled and the amount of like potential answers to them increases so much over time compared to a lot of the other stuff where you know the the relative value of like a two mana mass removal spell that's that's scaling or whatever is like much higher in the later game next up is soul rend this is one of the cards that i was just talking about in terms of potentially enabling those uh just you know fewer cards in your deck destroy your deck type effects deal five damage to all minions destroy card in your deck for each killed this is obviously a very powerful card you know forecast aoe like five damage to everything is is really really strong but again like if you're playing a deck that is reliant on specific win conditions like the envoy or like say jaraxxus i i feel like this is very uh very risky risky effect and maybe you know you you build a deck around like you know low deck size empty your deck and just play like you know the envoy a jaraxxus and like some other if there's like some other like persistent way to you know gain advantages as like a win condition that you can't think of maybe just the two of them is fine and you know you if you get really unlucky you still rend and kill both of them it feels like you could probably win the game with either one once you get to the late stages and maybe this this alone like you know it's not just like an enabler because this is sort of a payoff right it's not a path for moving your deck but it's like a payoff for building your deck in that direction because this is just such an efficient removal effect except there's altar of fire to score the top three cards of each deck this i feel like is going to be the sort of card that like people hate like tickets like ah destroying all my cards but i think this card's pretty bad i think it's like very unlikely that you'd want to play this card even in like a you know you want to destroy your card your own uh cards deck because maybe i mean maybe it's fine maybe because you are warlock so your cards are like you know kind of low you know like low value relatively speaking so you can you can actually uh you can actually afford to have like really weak cards in your deck overall but i feel like this is like pretty bad i feel like you know even in those decks i would be like not that likely to want to play this just because you know it's a card that does nothing to impact the immediate game state maybe in like a metagame where there's like popular combo decks this is like something which which you know ends up enabling your like late game tools like the envoy and also potentially disrupting your opponent probably not though probably not i feel like it's uh it's unlikely to be to be that appealing next up is grimoire of sacrifice destroy friendly minion deal two damage to all enemy minions so most of the time when you're uh when you want like you know this aoe in in uh in warlock at least right now there's like you know there's like the void contract or whatever there's like hellfire this is this you know like with with the uh with stuff like armor vendor i could see this as being a particular you know like a potentially powerful card like this is the sort of thing that kind of depends on what the you know the sort of metagame looks like how good is two damage to all enemies right like if you are playing something like armor vendor and your like control warlock deck you know it could be a great way to enable this tour guide i think tour guide is unlikely to really be something that you're super excited about playing in uh in like a controlling warlock deck without plot twist and the quest but you know it's the sort of thing that like okay well you're just trying to churn through your deck maybe you're playing the envoy maybe maybe you're playing like you know rust wicks and you're looking for more ways to sacrifice it there's no more um like vectus plot twist type stuff so you don't have the i guess effect this is still around actually no i'm thinking about it but there's no there's no more like you know quest plot twist type of stuff so you don't have the ability to do like the crazy prime gaming stuff that i was doing before but you do still have you know the ability to um you know sacrifice your guys to blow up some of your stuff this is you know to like still use rust wicks and uh and like camera thought kind of thought you know camera that prime um is a ash's car so that's all still around so there's still the option at least but not the quest so still some things that you you know obviously in warlock you want to sacrifice you could just you could potentially play this like you know for like mirror matches in zoo and kill like the ruby an egg right like if you're playing against like token druid or like other zoo decks this could be a card that like you know is good to sacrifice your eggs with things like that so overall you know like there's there's a lot of applications for this sort of thing that i think are very meta game specific next up is apothecaries caravan two cops one three at the start of your turn somebody one cost minion from your deck so i feel like this is one of the better caravans um i talked quite a bit about how i felt like the caravans are likely at their best in proactive decks that are gonna be pressing your opponent's removal as it is um obviously if you're like a zoo style deck you're gonna have a lot of one-cost minions in your deck you're gonna you know be pressuring your opponent's removal by playing out a bunch of stuff so this seems good you know like getting getting a free flame you know getting a free uh whatever there's no void walkers anymore possessed villagers just seems like it's you know like again if you are actually putting your opponent under pressure and you know forcing them to use their removal on like something like this and you know potentially keeping your your other stuff alive be valuable if they like let it live for like one turn now there's just more stuff they need to kill so i think this is this is like a a totally reasonable card one of the better caravans out there maybe the best caravan out there just because of how it fits into you know what zoo warlock decks naturally kind of want to do and lastly we have baron scavenger six cost six six taunt costs one while your deck has ten or fewer cards this is obviously another like payoff card for the destroy your own deck slash like late game control thing i think between this and the um the lifesteal battlecry dl6 you know these are cars that you could just like kind of naturally put into like a a deck that wants to play like a long controlling game because you know with with life tap warlock has so much better ability to have like situational or weaker cards in their hand throughout the game that even if you're not necessarily like really aiming to blow up your deck um these these are like potentially powerful enough in the sort of like mid late game that you could use it i don't know it's possible that they it may be like i don't i don't know like you know what what sort of turn at which you would kind of naturally get to 10 cars in your deck if you're not like specifically blowing stuff up it might be too slow for that um to have to have those in the deck but it's not like that big of a commitment right like these are this is just like four cards in your deck that are essentially just like late game tools that can be really swingy once you get there maybe you know there's just enough power cards in uh in warlock that you wouldn't need them anyway if you weren't necessarily playing a like super dedicated blow up your deck strategy but i mean even even then like maybe you know you uh you're just playing like one of the lifestyle guy one of this or something because they can just be a really really big tempo swing in those situations uh so i think that i think that the point that i'm largely trying to make is that you don't have to be a like deck that is entirely dedicated to you know essentially emptying your deck with the destroy your destroy cards and your deck cards in order for these to possibly be good these are the sort of thing that you can you can look at they're kind of like what i was talking about with the um refreshing spring water right these are like aren't binaries like oh you have no spells in your deck these are things like okay well if my deck is just kind of naturally playing long games a lot and gets down to a low deck count these can just be cards that i want a copy of or two copies of because they're powerful cards you know um and you uh you have like i think more deck building options with them than just like okay i'm putting all the stuff that destroys my deck and all the stuff that's pa you know pay off for having low cards in my deck and ta-dah that's my deck anyway overall i think warlock has a lot of interesting stuff going on here um you know there's obviously some of the stuff that that supports the uh the sort of traditional zoo direction as well as kind of a variety of different control directions um i feel like the the mercenary card it's kind of an interesting outlier it doesn't necessarily push to a toward any particular strategy and as i mentioned i feel like evaluating that really takes um really needs more information uh about like what cards from like the previous year stuff like again like cascading disaster um are shadow cards that we haven't actually learned about yet so um i'm definitely excited to see um what sort of options are available to warlock even if i will really really miss plot twist

Channel: Brian Kibler

Views: 26,268

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Id: fWc2HtrlqGM

Length: 53min 48sec (3228 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 30 2021