Ticket Scalper
Ticket Scalper is a 4 Mana Cost Common Neutral Minion Pirate card from the Rastakhan's Rumble set!
Card Text
Overkill: Draw 2 cards.
Flavor Text
Takes ten percent off the top.- Mana Cost: 4
- Attack: 5
- Health: 3
- Crafting Cost: 40 / 400 (Golden)
- Arcane Dust Gained: 5 / 50 (Golden)
- Rarity: Common
- Class: Neutral
- Card Type: Minion
- Minion Type: Pirate
- Set: Rastakhan's Rumble
- Mechanics: Draw Cards, Overkill
Ticket Scalper Card Review
It’s the first Overkill minion we’ve got, and it’s a classic example of a high risk / high reward card. Because a 4 mana 5/3 that draws you 2 cards is absolutely amazing, and that’s after you trigger the Overkill once. Trigger it twice and it will be absolutely nuts, one of the best cards in the entire game. The good news is that the minion does not have to survive in order for the Overkill to trigger. So if you attack a 4/4 minion and both die, you still get two cards. However, the trick here is that even triggering it once won’t be easy. 3 health minion on Turn 4 is very easy to clear. And here’s the catch – Overkill can only trigger on your own turn, which means that if your opponent runs his 3/2 minion into it, you won’t draw anything.
So in order to make it work, you need to play it, wait a turn and hope that it lives, then trade it into something while overkilling it. That’s really difficult to do, and I suspect that in practice it won’t work very consistently. Nearly every deck has a way to clear a 3 health minion on Turn 4 – aggressive builds have weapons and early minions, while slower builds have spells. It will die to most of the things that isn’t meant to kill 4-drops – e.g. Lesser Amethyst Spellstone will kill it without any upgrades, and it will also die to Flanking Strike – both of which are usually used against 2-drops or 3-drops.
Another difficulty is that your opponent will have to actually play a minion you can overkill into it most of the time. Because if he already has a 3/3, 4/4 or something like that on the board, he will just trade it into your 5/3 and you get nothing extra. So you need to drop your Ticket Scapler, and THEN your opponent has to play a minion that you can overkill. Sure, sometimes it will be the only play they can make anyway, but most of the time they will either drop something you can’t Overkill that easily (like a 3/6) or just remove your minion first before playing their own stuff.
The Pirate tag is a nice bonus, but is it really relevant? It doesn’t seem like a great fit into Pirate decks, which are meant to be aggressive. In a Pirate build, you prefer going face and not trading, at least most of the time.
It has some synergy with buffs (but if you aren’t buffing it on the same turn, it will probably die, and if you are, you’re not using your buffs efficiently) and with cards that give minions Rush (e.g. Rocket Boots or Charge), but it’s still a 2 cards combo that might not work that consistently.
Overall, it seems like a card that is great in a “perfect case scenario”, but this kind of scenario won’t happen consistently enough for it to see play. There are just too many ways to counter the card draw. The only upside is that you might sometimes force your opponent into making suboptimal plays. Like when it’s turn 4 and he wants to drop Saronite Chain Gang, he might be forced to play something else instead (or even not play anything at all).
Card rating: 3/10
This WILL be in a deck that runs Captain Hooktusk
Wuu Even more Pirates, me like, and also this is the kind of cards screaming “Please make a half bad turn and remove me”, 5/5 to all the pirates.
Genzo tne Shark, remember that?
He only really saw play in Token Druid and sometimes Prince Rogue back in the day.
So with that in mind, I think it’s entirely possible this card will be in Token Druid again at the very least.
I could see this in some kind of Pirate Warrior maybe… a deck that has a couple of problems, 1: taunt minions 2: no way to rebuild if your opponent survives the initial rush.
This allows you to (potentially) remove a taunt minion and draw 2 cards… or make your opponent think twice about playing Saronite Chain Gang before removing the Scalper. It’s also another high priority removal target – one that can immediately follow up Frothing Berserker.
… and it almost might make it worth putting a single Charge spell into the deck – maybe.
Depending on how the meta shapes up, there could be a niche for this.
maybe instead of charge running rocket boots,it makes the combo cost more,but you cycle even more cards,if that is your goal
Possibly an even better option yeah, I’d forgotten Rocket Boots existed 🙂
… could possibly also work with with The Boomship – but that would be a completely different deck.
3/10? I disagree. This card only needs to find the right aggro deck to go into. When your aggro opponent has board control, you have two options, generally speaking: play a taunt to get in their way, or use weapons/spells to deal with the enemy minions. Ticket Scalper removes one of those options- or, at the very least, makes it really unappealing. What are you gonna do, play a 4 mana 7/7 Hooked Reaver? Ok, I’ll trade my 3/2 and my 5/3 into it, draw two cards due to overkill, and keep piling on the aggression. And that’s assuming your opponent plays one big taunt; against Rain of Toads or Spreading Plague (with a little help), Ticket Scalper can draw you two cards and survive.
It’s not for every deck, but I can definitely see this being a good fit for some aggressive decks. I’d give it 5/10.
Quest druid can make use of this 🙂
Again _a just fair_ card which is ruining the new mechanic, the same as it was with the rush and the magnetic. Vanilla stats: 8 for 4 mana. Upside: text and a tribe tag. Downside: unpractical health stat line -> everything immediately falls into the water. We can wait to see other cards for synergies in a specific (aggro/tempo?) deck, but why not just play Gnomish Inventor or something, which is actually – consistent. Ticket Scalper not only needs to survive but also needs to have a specific target usually played after your card. 50% trigger probability is low for 4 mana 5/3, but this one doesn’t surpasses 20%.
Today we got another card Belligerent Gnome: 2 mana 5-6 of stats, which is above average and we are still debating usefulness of the card, so what then to think about the 4 mana 5/3 with a hard condition?!
3 health kills this card. Not a big enough reward to make up for it.
My heart says no but my body says.. maybe…
It’s a strong effect.. and her stats, while unflatteringly distributed, are technically vanilla for a 4-drop. Worst case is that your opponent can trade a 3-attack minion into it. In that case, keep this in your hand, of course. It’s also easy for control decks to fire off a smaller spell to off her, but that costs them a spell you can punish with a follow-up threat. And notice how this card can really pin your opponent if they don’t have a board. They can’t play weak minions to draw your fire, or you’ll score a ton of cards off them. They can’t Saronite, they can’t drop a totem/dude, they can’t plop an Elven Minstrel or Arcane Tyrant or any of that sorta stuff. If they instead chose not to play anything, you now have free reign to smack their face for 5+ damage each turn. They’ll really wanna kill with this with a spell, but that’s not always possible or efficient.
This also is a rare draw tool that gets much better with buffs! A Keleseth or Southsea Captain buff makes this look a lot more dangerous. In a pirate deck, you can try protecting her from pesky minions with Southsea Deckhand or Dread Corsair, then making up for those cheap plays with her draw effect.
It’s stats are not vanilla for a 4 drop. A 4 drop vanilla has 9 stats. See, for example, Chillwind Yeti.
If a deck can give this Rush and doesn’t have any other way to draw cards easily, it will at least try this. Otherwise, I don’t see it working.
A 5/3 is probably too easily removed by turn four under most circumstances for this to survive a turn. Granted, it will probably Overkill something if it does.
Perhaps, the more desperate a deck is for card draw, the more likely a deck will be to play it. It is a potential source of neutral card draw with better stats than Gnomish Inventor if anything else. Granted, Gnomish Inventor will always draw a card. Ticket Scalper gives you no guarantee,
Almost as Yee haw as elven minstrel
4/5
Except the effect has a low chance of actually triggering and it’s not immediate.
Does overkill activate if an enemy attacks it?
No. It must attack to trigger Overkill.
I like the card in any Hunter deck that has Shaw. Granted it won’t be too consistent because Shaw is a Legendary, but when you /do/ get both out at the same time, this card can effectively read “Deal 4 Damage to a minion, draw 2”, or just flat “Deal 5 damage to a minion”. Might not see play in other decks (idk about Even/Pirate Rogue yet), but an interesting card nonetheless.
eVeN rOgUe
Hmm. For one, it’s a pirate, so it can go in rogue to be a replacement for Elven Minstrel. It can draw a good number of cards, present a threat, or go face with that body. The 3 health kind of feels bad, but it can clear a 4 health minion and draw 2 cards out of it. I’m giving it a tentative 3 stars.
Does overkill trigger if your minion dies?
I guess so… overwise this card is way to slow and will not survive
Overkill only happens when you attack with it on your turn
Oh, my bad. Did you mean when you attack with it? Then yes, the effect does trigger even if it dies
GOoD
At first this card is too weak to be played at 4 mana and 3 health. The only hope I see is pairing this with the hunter goblin prank or the warrior rocket boots. For rocket boots, 6 mana deal 4 damage (because of overkill to guarantee card draw) draw 3 isn’t that bad.
Still you’re spending 2 cards to do it . . .
Does Overkill only work when the minion is attacking? If so I think this still has potential, but it’s way too easy to remove.
Naturally it also works if a minion hits this one and dies but the best way to use it is a single remove draw 2. That being said.. This card is awesome if it doesn’t get removed, 5 mana is enough to force an enemy to trade in if he/she has no other ways to deal with it.
Overkill only works on your turn. The opponent can freely trade into your overkill minions, you will not get the effect.
Really? That seems like an odd design decision.
It does…? Wow.. Way to make a keyword half useless Blizzard.