Mountainfire Armor
Mountainfire Armor is a 3 Mana Cost Rare Warrior Minion card from the Knights of the Frozen Throne set!
Card Text
Deathrattle: If it's your opponent's turn, gain 6 Armor.
Flavor Text
Excuse me. Your mountain is on fire.- Mana Cost: 3
- Attack: 4
- Health: 3
- Crafting Cost: 100 / 800 (Golden)
- Arcane Dust Gained: 20 / 100 (Golden)
- Rarity: Rare
- Class: Warrior
- Card Type: Minion
- Set: Knights of the Frozen Throne
- Mechanics: Deathrattle, Gain Armor
I feel like some people are to in awe by this card to see it’s major flaws, but I think it will be decent at accomplishing it’s goal. Most rush decks have a handful of key cards that are able to deal lots of face damage in a short time. Once they are removed, the rush deck quickly loses steam. To counter this rush decks either protect these things with stuff like taunt, or remove any potential threat. Since this cards cannot be removed without giving the opponent some padding, rush decks will have to choose between killing the enemy to give their opponent some armor, or letting it kill important minions.
i really think this is being over hyped
Aggro decks just ignore it and force it to trade, wasting the deathrattle, while control doesn’t mind you getting 6 armor.
Unless you curve this into Defender of Argus, i just don’t quite see this
One thing to note is freeze mage HATES this card, as you just play it when the doomsayer
Freeze Mage hates it cause it’s a warrior card
Alright, the card is strong, no questions about that – vanilla-strength statline with a decent but somewhat inconsistent bonus, and it comes early enough to be meaningful and playable.
However, as strong as it is, I think it might be played less than anticipated, mainly because it might have a hard time finding a spot in the current major archetypes.
Firstly, in Pirate, I honestly feel that all 3 current 3-drops are much better for the archetype that this would be. Frothling is a beast of a card, no questions about that, and both pirates have a more significant effect, as well as being pirates for the tribe synergy. And with having so many strong 3-drops already, i don’t think altering the curve for the sake of including this would be worth it.
Another currently played deck is Taunt Warrior, based around the quest. Now, armour would be really beneficial for the win condition of that card, and this wouldn’t need to compete with any taunt minions besides Stonehill, so there’s that. However, I feel like the major point of this card is that it’s clunky to remove, leading to a lose-lose situation for the opponent (he’s forced to waste resources to give you a benefit). Now, in a deck with so many taunts, a minion like this loses soome of its effectiveness, as you make it harder to remove with taunt minions, ultimately making this be much closer to a simple 3-mana 4/3. Overall, I don’t think it could play it.
Now, Control Warrior is a whole another issue. I could absolutely see it being included for the extra armour, so no doubt it could very well find place for this card. And yes, it might very well see play in other archetypes which are not played at the moment, but I do fear that it could not be layed as much as it deserves due to not fitting the 2 out of the 3 major current archetypes.
Agreed — When I look at current deck builds in the meta, so far even the best Frozen Throne reveals do not appear better than existing cards.
This card is a good example of missing the meta: As you pointed out, Pirate Warrior is a tight build and this card won’t fit that deck, while Quest Taunt Warrior defeats the purpose of the card. Control Warrior isn’t really a thing in the current meta.
Worse yet, the Frozen Throne reveals seem intentionally weak, and neutering Hearthstone signature mechanics – this card’s Deathrattle only triggers on opponents turn, the Mage minion gives Mirror Image (why not a Discover?), and Putricide – a Legendary – gives a random Secret; why not one from your deck, or a Discover? (And Putricide as a Hunter card is just wrong if you played WoW).
But only ~12% of the cards are revealed, so there is still plenty of space to rock the meta. But so far the reveals are dampening my optimism about the new expansion.
Just one opinion…
In taunt warrior it’s actually not bad. Having a minion continually dealing 4 damage to face behind taunts is NOT a bad thing. If they want to remove it, well now you gain 6 armor allowing you to live longer to finish the quest while they waste resources on it or just keep getting punched in the face for 4 damage.
What do you mean “neutering”? Isn’t it cool to see new ideas like this, Fatespinner, even Plague Scientist?
Look, Mountainfire Armor brings up a psychological dilemma. It is aggressively stated, thus making it easier for the opponent to remove. As such, they have to ask themselves whether they leave it alive and allow it to do some potential damage, or do they kill it thus making it harder to kill you?
Meanwhile, Ghastly Conjurer is very fairly stated. It’s around 12 stars for 6 Mana, but much more defensively weighted. Besides, do you REALLY want Mage to have more chances at discovering burn damage? I’m guessing not. Let’s try not to decrease the horse-to-glue ratio of fairness in those regards.
And Professor Putricide is FAIR. Completely and utterly FAIR. If it put in a Secret from your deck instead, it would basically become Mysterious Challenger 2.5. Definitely nowhere near as powerful as Mysterious Challenger, but reaching the level of power there. By just putting a general random secret into play, you not only gain more potential value off of Putricide (because you’re not losing any of your own secrets), but your opponent may have to play around cards that would normally never see play, like Misdirection or Snake Trap.
There’s a lot of potential in the cards that have been reveal so far. And I’d rather be optimistic for the chances of play than whine about how these cards are designed differently from previous cards.
And the meta will change! It always does! While I am guilty of looking at the meta of the time when evaluating cards, I think that for a card as unique as this deserves more time and reveals, maybe it even needs to be played for a month in different decks before it finds a home. It’s not “missing the meta”. It’s looking to the future and what it could hold.
Looks like a strong card, reasonable stat-line for the mana cost, Deathrattle gives a big ol’ chunk of armour as long as your opponent is the one to kill it (hello Shield Slam) and being Deathrattle, N’Zoth could resurrect it.
The only downside I can think of is that it’s immediately countered by Tar Creeper.
I totally agree. I think this would fit very well in a control-style warrior deck, which from the cards reveals thus far it looks like blizzard is trying to revive a little bit. Especially strong in control v control matches, where the opponent can’t afford to let you hit face for 4 every single turn, and so will inevitably give you the 6 armor. Definitely one to watch
Papa like!
This card, unironically, might be even better if it was a 5/2 or 6/1. Which, considering how powerful it already is, absolutely unnecessary. The high damage would force your opponent to deal with it, or take a lot of face damage. Either stretch of the imagination, a lose lose situation unless they have tough taunts.
Yeah, yes pls ^^… If this guy is a 5/2 or 6/1, every aggro warrior would add this card to their deck.
And the game is done, when your opponent has no answer against this 5/2 or 6/1 —> causes more unnecessary aggro plays and bring more cancer upon this game
I don’t actually like this card that much. Like, in an aggressive deck you don’t really care about the armor. Against an aggressive deck they’ll usually just try and race it and won’t trigger it. And against control the armor usually doesn’t matter as much. Unless you have a good way to leverage the body or the deathrattle, I just feel like you have better options at three.
Against aggro this could be useful since they are unable to use weapons to efficiently clear it without triggering the deathrattle, so it can be used to efficiently trade with a ships cannon and frothing beserker for example. Against control you can gain advantage of the armour with shield slam, which gives huge value as long as you have a good amount of armour which this would give. So actually this seems like a really strong card.
Sick, close to op.
WOW absolutely S Tier your opponent doesnt want to proc it but then it keeps a 4/3 on the board that could hit face and else it gains you 6 armor absolutely insane card unless extra silence is printed this is the nuts
10/10 This will be as staple to Warrior as Tomb Pillager was to rogue 2 includes into any control type warrior and great in arena because the stats aren’t bad.
This card it’s op. Will be played at every warior’s deck.
Finally a cool card!! So excited that it’s something new with a new deathrattle!
I do really like it. N’zoth Tempo Warrior seems a thing this soon
Pairs well with the Abomination.
That’s a real interesting mechanic – I like it!!