Heavy Metal!

Heavy Metal! Card

Heavy Metal! is a 6 Mana Cost Rare Warrior Spell card from the Rastakhan's Rumble set!

Card Text

Summon a random minion with Cost equal to your Armor (up to 10).

Flavor Text

This metal is so heavy it will satisfy your iron requirements for the next year.

Heavy Metal! Card Review

Remember Geosculptor Yip? That guy is an 8 mana 4/8 that plays this 6 mana spell. At the end of every single turn, as long as it stays on the board. So not only you pay only 2 extra mana for a 4/8 body (take a guess how good it is), but also for a potentially repeated effect (if he stays on the board for a second turn, casting it second time would pump the value up to 12 mana). And how much play he sees right now? Not much. He’s played in ~4% of the Warrior decks, most of which have less than 50% win rate. If you think about that, this card doesn’t look very good.

If it was Odd-Costed, it would make much more sense. After all, Odd Warrior is known for having lots and lots of Armor, so it would be easy to consistently summon a random 10-drop with it. Regular Warrior decks also have ways to gain a lot of Armor. Drywhisker ArmorerWeapons Project, Shield Block, even the Bring It On!, which comes with a downside, but if you could summon a 10-drop on Turn 6, it might still be worth it. This card might actually fit into heavy Armor-gain kind of Warrior that Yip also fits into. Yes, it’s weaker than Yip, but Yip is a really good card in theory, it’s just that classic Control Warrior just sucked for the last X expansions.

But you see, I think that even in a classic Control Warrior with Yip, there might be no place for Heavy Metal. One of the Yip’s advantage is that you’re getting roughly 5.5 mana worth of stats as a baseline, so even if you don’t have 10+ Armor, it can still work out. And if you have, you end up with TWO minions on the board, so it’s not as vulnerable to single target removals. Then – how consistently would you be able to use it on Turn 6? Keep in mind that regular Warrior can’t stack Armor as well as the Odd Warrior. Some chip damage from the opponent and you might not have 10+ Armor that you want. And playing it at let’s say 5-7 Armor is pretty bad, not only you don’t get any extra value, but you rely on RNG (and there are some really bad 5-7 mana cards, like 1/1’s). It might also be nearly dead against Aggro, you would need to wait until Turn 8 to combo it with Drywhisker to be able to play it in the first place, because they’re getting rid of your Armor nearly every single turn. And you really want to play it on the curve. Because a small tempo gain in the late game isn’t going to do you much good. If you aren’t planning to play it on Turn 6 most of the time, then why wouldn’t you just play some consistent big threats like The Lich King instead? If you’re a Control deck, you aren’t going to do much with the extra few points of mana in the late game anyway. Having 2 leftover mana (Lich King) vs 4 leftover mana (Heavy Metal) is rarely going to make a meaningful difference.

All in all, I could see this card seeing play, but only if an Armor-heavy version of regular Control Warrior would become good enough. And given how weak it is currently, I don’t think that it will happen.

Card rating: 2/10

Leave a Reply

26 Comments

  1. sumduud
    November 16, 2018 at 2:39 PM

    As someone who uses geosculptor yip in a control warrior, I will tell you that they will need to add in some insane armor generation to make this even a consideration.

  2. Poonanator
    November 14, 2018 at 9:25 AM

    Since the dawn of time one genre of music has ruled with an iron fist. HEAVY METAAAAAALLLL

  3. Tuscarora87
    November 13, 2018 at 1:00 PM

    This card is an insult.

  4. Warptens
    November 13, 2018 at 10:10 AM

    Tempo armor warrior?
    1: crystallizer, eternium rover, shieldslam
    2: keleseth
    3: mountainfire armor, frothing, shieldblock
    4: krokron, chain gang, blood razor
    5: darius
    6: heavy metal
    7:
    8: yip
    add the rush package, gemstudded golem, scalebane?

    can be both good against aggro because you’re protected by armor, and good against slow decks because you’re then guaranteed to get 10drops from heavy metal and yip

  5. CD001
    November 13, 2018 at 5:59 AM

    Even at decent amounts of armour, e.g. 6+ so you’re at least breaking even on the mana cost, you can get some pretty terrible results from this (assuming random means you can get cards from any class):

    6 armour:
    Possessed Lackey (2/2)
    Meteorologist (3/3)
    Glowstone Technician (3/4)

    7 armour:
    Azalina Soulthief (3/3)
    Giggling Inventor (2/1)
    Lynessa Sunsorrow (1/1)

    8 armour:
    Hir’eek the bat (1/1)

    9 armour:
    Dragonhatcher (2/4) – since you’re unlikely to have any dragons it’s pretty terrible

    So you can’t play this before turn 6 and you ideally want at least 8 armour and it gets, relatively, slightly worse each turn; getting a 8+ cost random minion on turn 6 could be great – getting a 8+ cost random minion on turn 8 and having 2 mana left over… well, you could have just put a *good* 8-cost minion in and avoided the random factor.

    Unless there’s a big ol’ support package for this that’s yet to be revealed… it’s looking pretty poor.

    • Pengun
      November 13, 2018 at 7:17 AM

      The two extra mana make for a good hero power

      • CD001
        November 14, 2018 at 5:15 AM

        … but even if you manage to have 8 armour by turn 8 allowing you to buff to 10 (remember, you can’t use this in a Baku deck) – half the 10-cost cards are worse than the Lich King anyway, so you’d be better off just putting the Lich King in your deck.

        Ideally you want to play this *on* turn 6 with at least 8 armour – which just seems too slow and too situational.

  6. IWILLDEFEAT
    November 12, 2018 at 7:03 PM

    Yip comes with a 2 mana 4/8. And it doesn’t see play. It’ll need some serious support.

  7. Omnitarian
    November 12, 2018 at 6:28 PM

    It’s not a bad card in and of itself – kinda like a pre-nerf Spiteful Summoner without the body but without the buildaround. Thing is, I can’t see it fitting into any particular Warrior gameplan. Control Warrior wants removal and value tools, not spending a whole turn making a random tall minion. Tempo Warrior probably wants more aggressive cards and weapons, fewer clicks of the Hero Power- so he won’t have the armor to make it work effectively. Ditto for a possible even Warrior – no Eternium Rover, Dr. Boom, or Shield Block makes getting armor tricky. Bring It On! + This card ain’t bad, but ehhh hard to see building a deck around.

    For this to work, it either needs to be useful enough to help Control Warrior pivot to beatdown vs Combo Decks, or there needs to be new tempo tools (preferably even-costed) that develop armor as you go (e.g. Bash).

  8. MM
    November 12, 2018 at 5:35 PM

    Control decks don’t want super random cards, unless is op
    Design 0/10
    power 5/10

  9. Jed
    November 12, 2018 at 4:03 PM

    Yeah it seems ok, I think it’s pretty meta dependent though. The more control decks, the better this will b

    3/5

  10. Soup And Salad
    November 12, 2018 at 4:03 PM

    Well, Control Warriors can get to eight or more armor somewhat easily. Granted, that deck doesn’t really need minions to play with. Either way, that’s the only deck I can see this card being played in. I can still see this seeing play though but only after Gather Your Party and Recruit Warrior generally leave Standard.

  11. zek
    November 12, 2018 at 3:06 PM

    This card is horrible. The art of the champions isn’t better either… I’ll pass on this expansion.

  12. Jirwin
    November 12, 2018 at 2:34 PM

    Wow this expansion has no hype good job Blizzard

  13. Starcereal
    November 12, 2018 at 2:31 PM

    With this being the first card revealed for warrior, I am excited at the direction warrior is going for this set! This is a slightly worse free from amber, more conditional which is the worse part. But, in control matchups and if the meta slows, seems like a decent card.

    • Taznak
      November 14, 2018 at 6:04 AM

      This is not the first card revealed for Warrior. Sul’Thraze was the first. If you couldn’t tell it was a Warrior weapon, that’s totally understandable; it’s not easy to tell with weapons. You have to look at the color of the outline surrounding the text box: if that outline is red, it’s a warrior weapon. Yellow, Paladin; Green, Hunter. And if it’s almost invisible because the outline blends in with the gray text box background, Rogue.

  14. Dudedge
    November 12, 2018 at 2:16 PM

    Looks like dredge just got a new tool

    • TheTallRonan
      November 12, 2018 at 4:22 PM

      Yer on the wrong forum mate

  15. Piterno
    November 12, 2018 at 12:35 PM

    Like it. Goes into non-odd control warrior with plenty of armor gain. A 6 mana tyrantus? Yes please.

  16. Pindead
    November 12, 2018 at 12:11 PM

    Kinda bad. It’s hard to get 10 armor. And a random 10 drop is kinda ez to deal with. It could see play in recruit warrior for extra value. But i don’t see it be good

  17. Smellberg
    November 12, 2018 at 12:11 PM

    Return of even recruit warrior?

  18. Thraben
    November 12, 2018 at 11:21 AM

    Liking this card alot. Geosculptor Yip didn’t have enough things for a deck to work around it, if they make more cards like this with various armor interractions it might actually be worth something.

  19. Ribbuster
    November 12, 2018 at 11:15 AM

    6 mana summon a random 10 drop. Maybe if a non-odd warrior archetype with reliable armor gain is a thing. I think this is too weak overall to see real play, but maybe.

    • TheTallRonan
      November 12, 2018 at 11:22 AM

      I dunno all the 10-drops currently in Standard are 8/8 or above. Seems like it could be very good, if you can get up to 10 armor reliably.

      • Dylan Hentchel
        November 12, 2018 at 11:54 AM

        Isn’t Gather Your Party just better most of the time?

        • Stonekeep - Site Admin
          November 12, 2018 at 11:59 AM

          Yes and no. Gather your Party is better if you build your deck around it. You don’t have to build your deck around this card (except Armor gain, of course, but that’s something you want to put into Control Warrior decks anyway).

          Running any 1-5 mana minions sucks when using Gather Your Party, and you can run them with this.