Totemic Smash
Totemic Smash is a 1 Mana Cost Common Shaman Spell card from the Rastakhan's Rumble set!
Card Text
Deal 2 damage. Overkill: Summon a basic Totem.
Flavor Text
Trolls are the first group to have a totem survive atmospheric re-entry.- Mana Cost: 1
- Crafting Cost: 40 / 400 (Golden)
- Arcane Dust Gained: 5 / 50 (Golden)
- Rarity: Common
- Class: Shaman
- Card Type: Spell
- Set: Rastakhan's Rumble
- Mechanics: Overkill
Totemic Smash Card Review
Totemic Smash is just a solid card. Deal 2 damage to anything for 1 mana is good enough to see play, something that has been proven time and time again by cards like Holy Smite or Arcane Shot. And those don’t have any upside.
While Overkill on this card isn’t particularly powerful, it doesn’t have to be. The card is already good and it’s a sort of bonus. It usually feels bad to “waste” a 2 damage card on a 1 health minion, but sometimes that’s just what you have to do. This will let you do it without feeling bad, as you will get a random Basic Totem for your troubles. Also, if you roll +1 Spell Damage Totem before playing this, you can also clear 2 health minions while summoning a new Totem. On the other hand, this bonus is not big enough for you to regret missing it. If your opponent has a 2 health minion and you have this in your hand, you just throw it and remove it for 1 mana – that’s good!
One thing worth mentioning in particular is that any cheap burn spell can be crucial in Malygos strategy. You can already summon it with Eureka!, but you could only damage your opponent for cheap with Lightning Bolts and Frost Shocks before, the latter was pretty weak in matchups in which you didn’t need the combo, like vs Aggro.
As an extra note, the summoned totem is completely random and you CAN get a second copy of a totem you already have on the board, which can come handy sometimes.
Overall it’s a good card and it will probably see some play – either as an early game tempo removal or as a combo piece.
Card rating: 7/10
powercreep on holy smite, and even then it’s only ‘meh’.
I could see adding this to my shaman deck. Also has synergy with the new shaman legendary.
4/5.
Versus aggro decks:
Zentimo, coin, smash 3 pests for 3 new totems. Round 3 table turn.
If he can’t kill Zentimo 4x unstable affliction on totems and maybe triple zap his new minions 😉
Or Flametongue between the totems for new cleaning.
Totemic Smash is an Arcane Shot with a slight upgrade. That upgrade probably won’t be enough of a reason to include this over Lightning Bolt, especially if there are more Overload support in the near future. The problem Overload will have is that it encourages some really rather inefficient plays. Killing a one health minion with this will often mean it’s killing a token rather than finishing off a larger minion on the way off the board already.
I know it can replace Frost Shock as a source of bigger damage in Malygos Shaman, which would push the damage that combo can put out to thirty, but the flexibility of Frost Shock will probably make it better for that deck over this.
It just doesn’t do enough.
Great analysis. I would say the card is good aggro vs aggro as you aren’t getting that overload from the lightning bolt. Then again, 3 is the magic number right now so I won’t argue with lightning bolt still reigning supreme.
I’m starting to reeeeally wanna see something for Shaman that rewards spamming spells, or even something like Hunter’s Spells-only buildaround.
Because I’m getting tired of writing “fair spell to pull from Hagatha, but you wouldn’t run it yourself”.
Odd overload malygos!
Why would you run an Odd Shaman deck to begin with? The Hero Power is barely any better than the base.
Yeah seem cool
4/5
A good 1 mana spell for malygos
Basic shock, with slight upside. Its meh
I LOVE this art
Did someone say malygos shaman?
Lightning bolts and frost shocks are already there for malygos shaman. It just won’t be good until there is a better “cheat out” than the current eureka setup. Now if this was 0 mana overload 1 or 2. That would be a different story.
I mean this DOES do twice as much damage as Frost Shock. 30 damage from the combo with TS vs 28 with FS is pretty significant, though probably not enough for a combo shaman since there will be three classes in the meta that will regularly have more than 30 health by the end game (Warrior, Druid, and now Paladin). It wouldn’t be good for a straight Combo Shaman but it would make for a decent finisher in a Control deck.
The difference is Frost Shock can be used to take a larger minion out for a turn in a pinch. While Glacial Shard fills that same purpose, hanving a couple more when needed will usually be better than replacing it with something else that cannot be that.
Good point, the extra two damage to get to 30 is helpful. But the deck is so far from being viable that this card isn’t going to make much of a difference.
It’s 1 mana btw. And I love how the card is designed to not be Even, it seems reasonable, but I can’t find the deck for it.