Have you ever wondered exactly how likely you are to survive a precarious situation by playing a Discover card? With the full Forged in the Barrens set revealed and all the details available, we have everything it takes to delve deeper into the inner workings of the new expansion. It is time for some math in the Barrens!
Kazakus, Golem Shaper
Kazakus, Golem Shaper is the big Neutral Legendary minion of Forged in the Barrens. A mysterious minion with a strange Battlecry: If your deck has no 4-Cost cards, build a custom Golem. What does that even mean, and is it any good?
After some days of uncertainty, Blizzard published the full details of Golem crafting:
First, you choose the size of your Golem:
- Lesser (one-mana 1/1)
- Greater (five-mana 5/5)
- Superior (ten-mana 10/10)
Then, you choose the first herb (ability) for your Golem:
- Swiftthistle (Rush)
- Earthroot (Taunt)
- Sungrass (Divine Shield)
- Liferoot (Lifesteal)
- Fadeleaf (Stealth)
- Grave Moss (Poisonous)
Finally, you choose the second herb (ability) for your Golem:
- Wildvine (Battlecry: Give your other minions +1/+1, +2/+2, or +4/+4)
- Gromsblood (Battlecry: Summon a copy of this)
- Icecap (Battlecry: Freeze a random, two random, or all enemy minions)
- Firebloom (Battlecry: Deal 3 damage to a random, two random, or all enemy minions)
- Mageroyal (Spell Damage +1, +2, or +4)
- Kingsblood (Battlecry: Draw one, two, or four cards)
The new Kazakus, Golem Shaper works very similarly to the old Kazakus. You get to choose between one-mana, five-mana, and ten-mana options and then Discover two effects from a limited pool. This time, the effects for all mana costs are the same, bigger Golems just have more powerful effects, whereas for the original one there were more differences as Polymorph was not available for the one-mana spell.
Because there are six effects in both pools, the probability to Discover any specific effect is 50% – you can get a double Golem (Gromsblood) every second try! If you need a Golem that gets to work immediately, you have an 80% chance to find either Taunt or Rush, and another 80% chance to get freeze or damage to enemy minions, so your Golem can have some way to interact with the board 96% of the time.
Overall, the Kazakus Golems are strong. If you play Kazakus on curve, you can follow it up with things like five mana for two 5/5 minions with Divine Shield (25% of the time for any specific combination)!
Primordial Protector
Primordial Protector is an interesting new take on Spiteful Summoner. It draws your highest-cost spell and summons a random minion with the same cost. But how good are those minions?
First of all, what expensive spells are currently available in Standard format?
Druid is one of the main potential users of Primordial Protector because they have Survival of the Fittest at ten mana and Cenarion Ward and Guardian Animals at eight mana.
Hunter is the only other class with a ten-mana spell in Standard right now thanks to Nagrand Slam and they also have an eight-mana spell Jewel of N'Zoth.
Paladin is the only class with a nine-mana spell with Libram of Hope, but it is unlikely that Paladin would use Primordial Protector.
Mage (Deep Freeze, Grand Finale), Priest (Idol of Y'Shaarj, Power Word: Fortitude), Shaman (Tidal Wave), and Warlock (Twisting Nether) have access to eight-mana spells.
The main interest for Primordial Protector is therefore in ten-mana and eight-mana minions.
The current Standard ten-mana minion pool is this:
- Mordresh Fire Eye
- C'thun, the Shattered
- Darkmoon Rabbit
- Deathwing the Destroyer
- N'Zoth, God of the Deep
- Scrapyard Colossus
- Y'Shaarj, The Defiler
- Yogg-Saron, Master of Fate
The Old Gods with their Battlecry effects and low stats introduce quite a few low-rolls to the pool because summoned minions do not trigger their Battlecry effects. Four of the eight minions have good stats and Darkmoon Rabbit is situationally very powerful, but can be the worst roll if the opponent does not have a board. With stats varying from 1/1 to 12/12, a lot can happen when playing Primordial Protector with a ten-cost spell in the deck.
The current Standard eight-mana minion pool is this:
- Coilfang Warlord
- Illidari Inquisitor
- Cenarius
- Beastmaster Leoroxx
- High Exarch Yrel
- Tirion Fordring
- Turalyon, the Tenured
- Flesh Giant
- G'huun the Blood God
- Natalie Seline
- Al'Akir the Windlord
- Archwitch Willow
- Enhanced Dreadlord
- Grommash Hellscream
- Troublemaker
- Arcane Devourer
- Plagued Protodrake
- Primordial Protector
- Supreme Abyssal
That’s 19 minions. There is a surprisingly small difference between the ten-mana pool and the eight-mana pool in terms of stats. Natalie Seline is the only clearly weak minion in the eight-drop pool, although Supreme Abyssal can be of low value despite its stats, if you need to hit face. Three of the 19 minions have Taunt, three have Rush, and two have Charge. Overall, eight minions (42%) can have an immediate effect, compared to two (25%) of the ten-cost minions. Therefore, Primordial Protector is perfectly viable also for classes that use it with eight-cost spells and not only for classes that use it with ten-cost spells.
Pack Kodo and Rinling’s Rifle
Pack Kodo is an interesting new multi-purpose tool for Hunter that lets you Discover a Beast, Secret, or weapon. There is no class-card bonus for Discovers anymore, so all Neutral cards are of equal value to your class cards. This means that the Beast pool is large and unpredictable, but what about the Secret and weapon pools?
There are currently only five Hunter Secrets in Standard, so the probability to Discover any individual one from Pack Kodo is 60%:
A pool of five Secrets also means that Rinling's Rifle has a 60% chance to Discover a specific Secret with each swing. If you happen to need either Explosive Trap or Freezing Trap to survive, your probability to find one or the other when swinging with the rifle is 90%!
There are even fewer weapons:
While there is a chance to get a weapon that cannot attack (Sphere of Sapience), Pack Kodo also has a 25% chance to give you Rinling's Rifle that you can then play on curve!
Jandice Barov
There are currently 65 five-cost minions that can be summoned by Jandice. The highlights include Ogremancer, Earth Elemental, and Envoy Rustwix alongside the new addition Burning Blade Acolyte. Desert Obelisk and Chromatic Egg are both gone from the pool and Forged in the Barrens did not bring any new low-rolls for Jandice, so she is now stronger than ever!
There are 12 Taunt minions (18%) and 7 Rush minions (11%) in the pool (with Ruststeed Raider having both).
It is hard to find a reason not to include Jandice Barov in a Rogue or Mage deck with this card pool!
Runed Orb and Wand Thief (Discovering Mage spells)
There are several cards in Standard that Discover Mage spells. Most of them are for Mage only, but Wand Thief also gives Rogue common access to Mage spells. Before the rotation, the most commonly sought spells were direct damage or freeze effects, but many of them are leaving the Standard format, so how useful is Discovering Mage spells in Forged in the Barrens?
Overall, there are 32 Mage spells in Standard in Forged in the Barrens, so the probability to Discover a specific one is 9%.
The Mage spells include freeze effects (16% of the pool, 41% to Discover):
Area-of-effect damage (19% of the pool, 48% to Discover):
Direct damage (13% of the pool, 34% to Discover):
Card draw (9% of the pool, 26% to Discover):
Secrets (22% of the pool, 54% to Discover):
Summoning spells (13% of the pool, 34% to Discover):
Evocation is also still in the pool to generate even more resources, and so is Potion of Illusion that can generate 1/1 copies of your minions.
Compared to pre-rotation, the biggest hit has been to freeze effects. The probability to Discover direct damage, for example, has hardly changed at all even though Arcane Missiles, Frostbolt, and Pyroblast are no longer available because the overall card pool has become much smaller as well.
Ring Toss
In the post-rotation Standard format, there are six Mage Secrets available:
This means that the probability to Discover a specific Mage Secret with a single Discover is 50% and with a Corrupted Ring Toss it’s as high as 80%! That is one very reliable Counterspell, for example.
Yoink!
Yoink! Discovers a basic Hero Power and sets its cost temporarily to zero. I am not fully certain whether it can Discover the Rogue Hero Power, but the Blizzard website seems to indicate that it can, so that makes the pool of Hero Powers ten, which means that you have a 30% chance to Discover a specific Hero Power.
If you’re looking for additional damage, Demon Hunter, Druid, Hunter, and Mage Hero Powers can all provide that, and you can Discover one of them 83% of the time.
Wandmaker
Generating random one-cost spells has been a powerful ability in Hearthstone. Cobalt Spellkin is rotating out of Standard, but Wandmaker will still stay for another year, so how good is Wandmaker in various classes in Forged in the Barrens?
Demon Hunter is one of the classes that has used Wandmaker a lot, and their one-cost spell pool is still looking strong even with Twin Slice, Mana Burn, and Consume Magic on their way out of Standard:
The Rogue one-cost spell pool looks just nuts:
Everything except Brain Freeze will most likely turn into face damage!
Priest also still has a good set of one-cost spells, which now includes a silence effect with Focused Will:
The Shaman pool includes surprisingly many answers:
Warrior also has a fairly consistent set of answers:
For the other classes, Wandmaker gives cards that are all over the place, but for these five classes – Demon Hunter, Rogue, Priest, Shaman, and Warrior – the current one-cost spell pool is quite formidable.
Draconic Studies
With Descent of Dragons leaving the Standard format, the card pool for Draconic Studies is changing a lot. Descent of Dragons was full of Dragons of all shapes and sizes, but without it, most of the Dragons available to Priest are big minions:
- Brightwing
- Circus Amalgam
- Crimson Hothead
- Dragonmaw Sky Stalker
- Onyx Magescribe
- Nozdormu the Eternal
- Skeletal Dragon
- Plagued Protodrake
- Alexstrasza the Life-Binder
- Malygos the Spellweaver
- Onyxia the Broodmother
- Runaway Blackwing
- Sleepy Dragon
- Ysera the Dreamer
- Deathwing the Destroyer
Out of the 15 Dragons available to Priest in Forged in the Barrens Standard format, seven of them cost nine mana or more and 12 of them cost at least six mana. This means that you are practically guaranteed to Discover some big and beefy late-game Dragons, but you’re unlikely to find anything to play in the early game.
Conclusions
Things change, but many of them remain the same as well.
Kazakus, Golem Shaper can generate some scary Golems very reliably and Primordial Protector looks strong also with eight-cost spells.
Wand Thief has lost some consistency in finding freeze effects, but it still has a lot of good spells to discover, and the smaller Mage spell pool has made Ring Toss highly consistent. Rinling's Rifle is also very consistent now.
Jandice Barov was already strong and she is now stronger than ever!
Wandmaker continues to be good in the same classes it was used in before, and it is slightly better in Warrior now.
Draconic Studies has changed from a tempo play to a tutor for big late-game Dragons. Whether that is useful in the upcoming meta is another matter.
That was a small tour to the math of the Barrens, I hope it will help you in the game when the new expansion arrives!
Kazakus is REALLY GOOD! Won me 2/3 games on Day 1. I think it’s worth in any deck that can cut the 4-mana slot (or run a few). The Tempo gain with the Golems is NUTTSS
There’s a pretty big error I found. The probability to get a specific secret from Pack Kodo is 20%, not 60%. That minion only shows you one secret.
Great article, I also do some of these analyses for myself, so I really appreciate it. I just found one small mistake and please correct me if I am wrong.
Pack kodo discovers a beast, secret or weapon, so each time you play it, you have only one secret offered, so there is no probability 60% on getting individual secret of the Pack Kodo, but only 20%. There is 60% on individual secret by swinging with ringling rifle though, because it offers three secrets.
I dont mean it badly, I am really thankful for the analysis, that thing is a bit confusing though.
Thanks again! 🙂
you are rigth, we only have 1 chance = 20%
Believe it or not, if Jandice auto-included in every Mage & Rogue deck, it’s gonna be nerfed to 6 mana.
believe or not but kazakus gonna see only in experimental decks nd forgettan after a while. it is not like oriinal kazakus. You make and oriinal deck which donesnt contains any 4 cost cards but no direct damage to face ??
tnx. i m not gonna take it.
super valuable breakdown, thanks!
Very interesting analysis, and particularly good to see that Kazakus shouldn’t generally be completely useless. However, I think I remember seeing something saying that Pack Kodo offers you one from each group of cards (i.e. one secret, one beast and one weapon), much like warrior’s Boom Squad, which would mean your numbers are off for that card. Nonetheless, thanks for the read!
On closer inspection, it’s only that the chance of getting a specific secret should be 20%, not 60%
Interesting overview, thanks a lot !
Excellent article. I find Discover to be way weaker in Wild (obviously due to the larger card pool). Any math on that yet?