Totem Cruncher
Totem Cruncher is a 4 Mana Cost Epic Shaman Minion Beast card from the The Witchwood set!
Card Text
Taunt Battlecry: Destroy your totems. Gain +2/+2 for each destroyed.
Flavor Text
When regular totem hours won't cut it.Totem Cruncher Card Review
But why? Why would you want to destroy your own Totems? If you play a deck that wants to play totems all the time, then you don’t want to destroy them. If you don’t play a deck that wants to play totems all the time, this won’t get too much value. But wait, there is a method in this madness.
You definitely don’t want to play it in any regular Shaman deck. Yes, your Hero Power totems are often useless. But you still have to pay for them, it’s not like they come for free. Making this card big is a huge mana investment. For it to just break even (4/5 Taunt for 4 is playable), you need to pay 2 more mana on an extra Totem, which puts this card’s total mana cost from 4 to 6 etc. It ramps up, but even if you destroy let’s say 3 Totems (which is super rare, as your opponent will usually actively destroy them for you), you’ve paid 10 mana in total for a single 10/11 Taunt, which can easily get Silenced back to 2/3 or just destroyed with a single target removal.
However, where this card might make sense is a Genn Greymane deck. With no Odd cost cards, you’d often play an even card + Hero Power on those Odd turns. And if you will play a deck without Totem synergies, you wouldn’t mind destroying them that much. For example, you could Totem on Turn 1, then Murkspark Eel on Turn 2, then some other 2-drop + Totem on Turn 3, and then eat those two totems on Turn 4 and have a 6/7 Taunt in play. This scenario looks really good.
The thing I dislike about this card are the initial stats. 2/3 for 4 is very low, it’s unplayable by itself and very weak to Silence. Good thing is that it ramps up pretty quickly, and since you will play Totems very often starting from the mid game, it should be quite easy to make it work. In the worst case scenario, it will be a 5 mana 4/5 Taunt, which is meh, but even with one extra totem, it’s going to be a 6/7 Taunt and so on.
On the other hand, if you play a deck that plays Hero Power Totems so often, wouldn’t you like to put more Totem synergy in? And if you do, wouldn’t it be better to not eat them? Yeah, that’s the thing too. So in the end it’s pretty much impossible to tell which way to build deck would be optimal, and if any of them will actually work.
Overall, it’s an interesting card. Definitely unplayable in regular decks, but might have some potential in Even decks.
Card rating: 7/10 in Genn Greymane decks, 2/10 outside of them.
Draenei Totemcarver is MUCH better than this;
4 Mana, starts off as a 4/4 (as if it “ate” one Totem, without eating one), then gets a +1/+1 for Each Totem; if you have 2 Totems out by turn 4, you end up with a 4 Mana 6/6 WITHOUT destroying your totems and thus losing stats on the board.
This thing … I can’t believe Shaman would KEEP getting crap; this isn’t even Kharazan Priest level; is MUCH worse. It has been 2 (possibly 3) consecutive EXPANSIONS (135 new things EACH) of Shaman receiving garbage.
This card is terrible.
With 0 totem it’s a 4mana 2/3 taunt.
With 1 totem it’s a 4mana 4/5 taunt that kills your totem. This is worse than Yeti, because a totem is worth more than a taunt tag.
With 2 totems, it’s a 4mana 6/7 taunt that kills your totems. This is worse than Argus, because there is the same amount of stats but the distribution is weaker to removal, and to silence, and with argus you get to attack with the +2+2 right away, and argus doesn’t require exactly totems to work, and this goes against your shaman game plan, which is to flood and play bloodlust.
With 3 and 4 totems, it gets even weaker to removal/silence and even more against your game plan. At this point you’re just helping your opponent clear your board.
Not to mention it can also kill your good, not basic, totems.
In all scenarios, it’s far under constructed-good.
Worth noting that this card is much worse than sanguine reveler and ravenous pterodax, that are already not good.
You’re rigth,but another thing I hate so much in this card is that it are replacing some really cool epic shaman card,and even not make sense,why the hell a hedgehog would eat totems? That dude are probly Sonic brother and eat totems…
I can see this being played with nightmare almagalm.
You all know nothing. Control shaman is coming at ya.
Thank you! People need to give cards a chance. How many times have people looked at a card and thought it was horrible, yet it turns out to warp the meta anyway?
Maybe is not that bad. Imagine you have the 4 totems and u summon alakir, i think you need a way to open space in ur board, so u play this and have a giant an alakir and a happy life 🙂
This card is terrible, even if you destroy 2 totems, its not good. If you destroy 3-4 totems and it gets single target removed, it just removed your board…
Also its a terrible topdeck and statline without board full of totems.
Well – I wasn’t *that* far off with my Crystal Ball prediction! 🙂
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http://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/the-witchwood-card-reveal-schedule-card-reveal-stream-march-26th/
*Gazes into crystal ball … Totem Cruncher*
Hmmm… 4 mana 5/6 that destroys all totems and gains +1/+1 for each one “eaten”? I suspect making a Genn Shaman deck will be reliant on Totem synergy.
Terrible concept. As a Shaman player I DON’T want to destroy my totems. Have other minions waste their attacks on them, or face the threat of placing a Flametongue Totem that will trade efficiently. Not to mention Bloodlust. To top it off, by Turn 4 there’s always plenty of removal at your oponent’s disposition, or even worse – Silence. What mana does Spellbreaker cost again? Yeah, terrible card. 1.5/5 stars.
The bad thing about this card is that it allso destroy’s your flametongue totem and primalfin totem. In an even cost Genn Greymane deck you will have flametongue totem in it. And you often have to trade your other totems away.
It allso eats the 3 mana cost card with the ‘all tag’ and in wild your totem golem.
Anyway for even shaman to work there has to be atleast 1 more powerfull two-drop for shaman this expansion, and atleast one more powerfull even cost board clear. Since even cost shaman will have no board clears at all… And i doubt an even cost shaman deck is so agressieve that it does not need any.
Allso things from below rotate out…. Rip best totem synergy card (that is even)
The power totem card was meant to be Windcaller right? The one that calls the Windward is the big payoff.
The problem is you have you to have literally all 4 totems and only all 4 totems because of space issue.
I guess fix that card or just stop with this totem garbage probably.
Will be fun to try out in some meme decks but other than that, it’s useless, and actually even in a meme deck it’ll probably be useless, as I’d rather have a spell damage totem at my disposal than a minion with a big fat neon sign flashing silence me. 2 stars
How does it works with murmuring elemental? Doubleboost or nothing better? Cause the number of killed totems stay same.
I assume it wouldn’t double the bonus as the whole effect would trigger again, and the second activation wouldn’t find any totems to sacrifice. Unless you used that spell that summons basic totems when your minions die. But that isn’t what you meant I think.
You can test this on live: go into an adventure and kill something with a crab, after playing murmuring elemental. This card should function in the same way.
I think this isn’t soich totem support as it is even support. If you’re trying to play even shaman, you’re going to be churning out a lot of totems on the cheap. This gives you a way to leverage them seeing as you won’t be able to run bloodlust on that deck. Thinking about it now, sham
whoops. pressed submit without meaning to. was saying shaman is actually probable one of the classes that can best work around the deck restrictions with overload, though it will probably be a pretty tricky deck as you’ll have to think ahead to use your mana most efficiently.
Well good thing there are no popular 4 cost cards that have silence, that would mean you sacrificed your board for a 2/3 on turn 4. Second, why all the totems? Could it not just be 1 totem that a target? Wicked Witch rotated out so its not going to be common to have a full board of totems. Why does this exist?
Shaman so far:
Destroy your board and get silenced
??????? > get to turn 8?
Kill all your minions so you can get spells when you rebuild your board
Play the spells you get to draw more minions
….Solid
I think the DK wants to go in an elemental deck. This obviously is a 5 drop in an even deck and you probably don’t run a DK if you sacrificed a bunch for a 1 mana hero power.
Totem Squancher
This is a minion who’s battlecry weakens your board and does nothing positive the turn it comes out. People can remove this minion with one of their plentiful low cost removals (like voodoo doll) before it can even attack, and now you are down multiple totems and a minion. This would be a massive tempo swing for your opponent.
Totem Crusher also eats your flametongue totem. This seems like a really bad trade for +2/2, especially if it is currently buffing other minions
Is it bad that the most dissapointing aspect, to me, about this card is that it has an even attack value so it can’t come into play as a 4 mana 7/7?
It’s actually a shame what they’re doing with shaman. They introduce a new deck archetype for it but only give small snippets of that Archetype every expansion. Obviously there are exceptions like Evolve Shaman and Elemental Shaman, but apart from those, we kinda just get half arsed decks like Freeze Shaman. However having said that, I actually really like this card, I think it would work well in a Genn Greymane deck where you will be pushing out totems at a much faster rate. What I’m worried about is Shaman having to rely on taunts from the Classic deck or the pool of neutral cards to protect the totems. Because once Thing From Below rotates out, what early game taunts does Shaman have left? Drakarri Defender? Voodoo Hexer? I fear that dark days are upon us for us Shaman Mains. Evolve Shaman will take a massive hit after Evolve is rotated out. Let’s hope for either really good spells or really good elementals now.
Be realistic, regular evolve was already falling out of flavor in favor of unstable evolution and DK thrall. Evolve has been fully replaced already, and it’s not like doppelgangster wasnt rotating out anyways
They do that for every deck archetype for the most part. Think murlocs, took them forever to make it good (they even tried making Warlock) and all it took was one card, namely Gentle Megasaur, to push it into tier 1.
this card is actually really good if silence is your guys excuse thats pretty weak. Destroy 2 totems and its a 4 mana 6 7 lul
That 4 mana 6/7 has a total of 8 mana invested into it over at least three turns as well as 4 stats and the minor abilities lost from the sacrifice of the totems themselves. This being a good silence target would not be the reason why this would end up being a bad card.
But the thing about many cases when you’re using your hero power is it’s just because you have 2 extra mana. I wouldn’t consider it an investment, rather creating a payoff.
It will end up being an investment if you want to do it consistently seeing as the 0/2 totems will need to be defended if you want this to be more than a 6 mana 4/5. The same reason is why Paladins have to rely on Silver Hand spawners to be able to be able to get their synergies off for thse. Against minion based decks in a world without Thing From Below, that will prove to be difficult to consistently achieve.
You are still also investing mana into it no matter how you stack it. That mana may have gone to waste either way, but it’s still mana investment.
It at least gives something for the basic totems you summon when you have nothing better to do, but this has to kill three tokens for it to be worth it since you are losing stats when you summon this. In which case, it will be a 8/9 with taunt.
For a Totem Shaman deck to work, there needs to be better rewards for doing so. Summoning Al’akir would be cool if it wasn’t impossible to get all four basic totems on board at the same time for example.
If this didn’t kill your totems so you could play it with your non-basic totems, it would be fine even if there’s only two totems on board, one in a pinch, and that would be fairly easy with Manatide and Primalfin Totems being rather strong on their own, but no. Instead of pushing an archetype well with worthwhile support, they push out a bunch of slightly less than mediocre support. I can understand why they’ve been doing so since three more good cards on the level of Spirit Claws, Totem Golem, and Tunnel Trog will always push Shaman over the edge to format wraping levels of power, but if that’s the case, the classic and basic card line-up needs to be shaken up. Move Bloodlust out and have something like Elemental Destruction, Lava Shock, or Whirling Zip-o-matic take its place.
While I’d still rather not have Shaman being the only worthwhile class to play, that doesn’t mean I want it completely unplayable, and with Evolve and most of the good cards to use with it leaving Standard, the class will be what Priest was two years ago.
I mean, given the fact that the card that summons al’akir is odd, and the empowered Shaman power lets you choose which totem to summon it’s not THAT hard.
This on the other is even, and with a 1-mana cost hero power you can spam totems at a cheap enough rate that this can be a decent wall
If I were to rate all hero powers on their strength in affecting the game, Shaman’s would be near the bottom in basic, empowered, and (1) cost forms. The Totems just aren’t that great to begin with since they are random unlike Paladin’s and you can only have one of each at any one time, not really worth limiting your card pool to be able to be able to select what single totem you summon, and the reduced cost doesn’t do a whole lot to improve their quality since there is still that randomness and limitation.
Funnily enough, a Battlecry/Totem hybrid in Wild with Brann, Tuskarr Totemic, and Kobold Hermit would be pretty fun; with how Brann works with, say, Blade of C’thun, it “destroys” twice, gaining twice the stats. So you could double up on totems with your other battlecries, and if they don’t rid Brann from the field, down comes a gigantic taunt. Not necessarily top-tier (although it COULD possibly be…), but still a fun combo to try out 😀
They will already be destroyed so the stats won’t be added a second time. Similar to the battle cry of forgotten ancient.
Actually, if it works like warlocks 3 mana 3/3 that destroys the minions next to him, they get destroyed twice.
Try it with Void Terror and Blade of C’thun. Both double up on stats with a Brann proc even though the minion is technically destroyed, so I reckon this’ll have the same mechanic. If you’re too lazy to test it yourself, I’m pretty sure Dane has a video on his Shadowcaster deck with C’thun in which he uses the mechanic to his advantage with Blade of C’thun.
It’s still going to be a warlock meta and this will eat a silence every time you play it.
“Silence exists” is like the “Weapon removal” argument. The counter isn’t in every single deck, and it shouldn’t be the make all end all for any given card.
Silence is in every deck right now and will be as long as everything is focused around warlock.
The thing is people are playing silence in response to cubelock an insanely popular deck spellbreaker is just about everywhere now and this will end up getting silenced by decks teching against cubelock
Acidic Ooze – 3/2 for 2 with no synergy. Good against the 3 main weapon wielding classes, with some fringe benefits to the others.
Spellbreaker – Good against everyone all the time because its a 4/3 for 4 with Silence. At no point ever have i been like, no silence is a bad play against this monstrosity i might need to save it.
If your argument is that silence is as uncommon as weapon removal than you are wrong. If your argument is that they might want to save it for something else your wrong. Silence is not at all like weapon removal. It is massively effective against cards in all 9 classes, and typically everyone knows what those cards look like. No one ever holds a silence unless they are sure you have something worse in your hand guaranteed.
Im starting to think that maybe i could try some sort of Even Elemental Shaman deck. Hagatha, Kalimos, Murkspark eel, Genn, Fireplume, seem to work well together… Too bad that Primal Talismans costs 3 tho..cos it could work very strongly with totem cruncher.. The main problem continues to be that the best shaman spells are odd cost.. meaning that you could only use them if you get them by chance trough hagatha’s pasive hero power. (And there’s also the fact that once you use hagatha you pretty much lose the ability to summon totems at 1 cost so you would have to use this minion before that to get any use of its battle cry… i dont know, maybe it wont be that good…i’ll have to wait to see the next reveals for shaman and neutral.
Even elemental decks don’t work just because you have to keep playing an elemental every turn, and you likely don’t have enough options in that case. Tar Creeper, Wax Elemental, Servant of Kalimos, Fire Fly, Igneous Elemental, Stone Sentinel, Glacial Shard, Air Elemental, Hot Spring Guardian, Thunder Lizard, Blazecaller and more are all unavailable. You only keep Tol’vir Stoneshaper, Kalimos, Fire Elemental, Frozen Crusher, Frost Elemental, Fire Plume Phoenix, Volatile Elemental, Grumble, and Al’Akir.
Out of the good elementals, you’re losing 8 of the 11. Of course there are more to come, and others can maybe fill the void, but it’s unlikely that elementals can work in an even cost deck.
Not as good as it looks… way too easy to counter/play around
Unplayable card for yet another poorly designed Shaman meme archetype.
greymane deck could actually be good, and i dont think its unplayable
How many Yetis do you run in your decks these days? This is a conditional Yeti with a major downside.
Yeah, the irredeemable downside of getting rid of generally useless minions off your side of the field for a massive presence that is absolutely worth it.
Seriously, how is this unplayable? In a Genn deck, with cards like Kobold Hermit and a 1 Mana Hero Power, getting Totems out becomes incredibly easy. If you curve out well into Turn 4, it’s very plausible that this can end up being a 4 Mana 6/7 with Taunt. WITHOUT Overload. That’s powerful.
Sure, it destroys Flametongue, Primalfin, and Mana Tide Totems, but Mana Tide wouldn’t be in a Genn deck, and oftentimes if you’re setting up into this, you’d want to curve Hero Power on one, Murkspark on 2, Hero Power + Hermit on 3, and then this on 4. I can see it now.
This is an easy 4 Star Card.
That all assumes your opponent doesn’t have minions to clear the low value tokens shortly after they’re summoned. This hardly gives another reason to play Even Shaman because for one card requiring half of the mana investment to make as big, you give up win conditions like Bloodlust and Thrall Deathseer as well as some other generally good cards shamans would want to play like the only good source of draw in the entire class.
One totem makes it Yeti stats with taunt and beast (not that beast matters in shaman). Two and it becomes a boulderfist ogre with taunt and beast but costs 2 less. Boulderfist ogre’s flavor text says it all: I have good stats for cost. Also no overload. Spellstone please on an 8/9 of this. If Totem Shaman was made to work, then you can windshear out al’akir and then get rid of your 4 totems and get a 10/11 taunt, a 5/5, and a 3/5 taunt windfury divine shield for 9 mana.
While a 4 mana Boulderfist Ogre sounds cool, remember you are investing mana and stats into this minion as a sort of pre-overload. Plus, you wouldn’t want to have your non-basic totems on board when you drop this.
That’s fine cause the only totem shaman really plays otherwise is Mana Tide. This can also work in even shaman so you can get your totems out for 1 instead of 2
That’s not true. Token Shaman decks out there at the moment play all three standard non-basic totems, Manatide, Flametounge, and Primalfin, and Jades play the former two. A totem Shaman deck is likely to play non-basic totems, not so much because they are totems but that helps, but because they are strong cards as it is.
While making a Genn Greymaine Shaman deck isn’t impossible, it would be gaining a very small benifit for a very high cost. You also wouldn’t be able to play Primal Talismans and Stormcaller in such a deck. In such a deck, you’re still investing 6 mana into a 6/7 over at least three turns.
oh dang that guy who predicted Totem Cruncher wasn’t even that far off damn
I saw that…. almost makes me wonder if he had some inside info?
I mean, the names were leaked, and what would you expect of a minion with the name “Totem Crusher”? But I too am impressed nonetheless; he got it nearly spot-on 😀
I guess it was me. Right?
No it was someone on the Card reveal times, think his name was CD001 or something like that
Should have been : give your other minions +2/+2 and detroy a totem. Too ez to silence. Very poor design
I don’t think there’s ever been a card that has been vulnerable to silencing effect that didn’t see play because of that reason. Blessing of Kings and Spikeridge Stead would be two examples of such cards of the top of my head. Plus, outside of Priest, the only silence card worth playing is Spellbreaker, and the statistics on that card suggest it is usually one of, if not, the worst card in any deck that play it.
This card isn’t good because it both destroys the totems indiscriminately (Both basic and non-basic) and starts off too small for its cost to make it easy to make into a substantial board presence. Now, that could change if a better totem spawner ever comes around.
Everyone compained that shaman wouldnt have any good totem support after the old gods rotation and here comes blizzard and tells you that you re an idiot for laughing at the kobolds and catacombs shaman support
This card is hot garbage dude…