Kobolds and Catacombs Card Review – Week 1

Starting strong with the first week of spoilers, Kobolds and Catacombs is looking like a promising expansion, full of interesting cards that deckbuilders can’t get their hands on soon enough. As the first batch of cards rolls out, we are here to give you our thoughts on which cards look the most exciting, promising or otherwise cool and which are the runt of the litter. So far the new expansion follows the theme of interesting cards that scratch your theorycrafting itch but are not immediately obvious how to best break, which is fantastic.

For this review, we dissect the cards and look at how good they are in a vacuum, as well as what decks they could go in. It’s worth mentioning that we are operating under the assumption that the metagame will change, but not as much as it  and most of the best decks right now will continue to be at least competitive, if not exactly where they are. The truth is that Kobolds & Catacombs is not likely to create a very big impact on the meta as other sets before it have done. The reason for this is that unfortunately, it’s in a unique sweet spot of circumstances – being the last set of the year, it will always exist with at least the card pool of the other two sets released in the same year – Un’Goro and Knights of the Frozen Throne, both of which introduced incredibly powerful class-specific build around cards (Quests and Death Knights) and powerful neutral cards (Bonemare springs to mind). Additionally, it is also the last set of this Standard rotation, which encompasses all sets from Whispers of the Old Gods to Kobolds & Catacombs – the largest card pool Standard has ever had, even when compared to the pre-Standard era. With all of that in mind, we are anticipating for K&C to keep things fresh and shake up the meta a bit, but not to actually have a great impact and completely shift the current (im?)balance of power.

More Kobolds and Catacombs Card Reviews

• K&C Card Review First Reveals

As a final foreword, I’m including a bold prediction for each reviewed card, just to keep the stakes high throughout the article. It’s very easy to simply list all of the pros and cons of a new card, however we are trying our best to actually evaluate them and how they will shape up the new metagame. This is very, very hard without the context of a full set, but I will try my best. These evaluations are implied for competitive constructed Standard/Wild decks only! They don’t mean that these cards should not be played either for fun or with experimentation purposes in mind, rather that the most competitive decklists will not be including them once the meta solidifies and lists are refined.

Now here are the cards, sorted alphabetically:

Branching Paths

What an exciting card to start this review with! Even though Choose Twice is its own unique thing and doesn’t work with cards like Fandral Staghelm, it’s fascinating to watch Blizzard push the boundaries of mechanics. What’s particularly interesting about this card is the ability to choose the same option twice, increasing its already great versatility. It’s easy to compare this to other cards its modes can form, such as Greater Healing Potion when you choose 6 armor twice or Arcane Intellect/Nourish when you pick the card draw two times in a row, or Savage Roar. But I’m not too convinced this is the proper approach. Branching Paths is very obviously not nearly as good at doing what other cards already do, rather it provides you a slightly overpriced toolbox where you pay for the luxury of being able to make your custom card for the right situation, very reminiscent of how Kazakus‘ potions work.

Is that price worth it? As it turns out, it most often is. At the very least Branching Paths draws cards, so it can never be a bad card no matter what, and it only gets better from there. Depending on whether or not your deck might need its other modes on even a semi-regularly basis, this will determine whether you play this or something else for card draw specifically. It’s easy to imagine a controlling style of Druid deck (that perhaps summons large men?) which will want the armor and the draw, especially one that plays the Jasper Spellstone and is looking for efficient ways to upgrade it. Even though it is also an attack buff with versatility, aggressive decks are often not inclined to pay 4 mana when they can pay less, given that they only really want one of Branching Paths‘ effects and definitely don’t want one of them.

Bold prediction: Will see play in Control Druid decks.

Cheat Death

And suddenly – Rogue secrets! That has it’s own implications for what it could mean about where the game is headed and how Team 5 has gotten a bit more open to breaking some of their ground rules, but we are here to talk about Cheat Death specifically. So, obviously, looking at the effect itself, we immediately draw the parallel with Shadowstep, which is an excellent card in today’s meta, one of the MVPs of the infamous Keleseth Rogue deck. Now, despite how good it is currently, just because there are plenty of good targets to bounce, we have to keep in mind that historically, Shadowstep has not seen too much play in Rogue since Leeroy Jenkins got nerfed and Rogue decks didn’t rely as much on Shadowstepping him as a primary win condition. In fact, ever since the early days of the game the card has been slightly out of favour, from Oil to Jade and the new builds of Miracle Rogue. That said, it is a staple of the class and for good reason, since Rogue love their 0-cost spells, especially when that can buyback a powerful Battlecry effect.

Enter Cheat Death and the context around the effect changes completely. Although it negates the downside of Shadowstep, as in you can play it preemptively without your target having to already be on the battlefield, you are paying a lot more mana for essentially the same effect. However, I would argue that it is worth it. Not in tempo-centric decks, of course, which can’t afford to play a card that is essentially anti-tempo, but it might make it’s way into the classic Miracle Rogue as a safety net for your valuable minions, only to power up even more later in the game when they have the discount. Whether or not that’s something those decks will be looking to do is a different thing, but the ability to set up plays for the future and have reliable consistency is very valuable.

One critical fact to take into consideration is that there are only going to be three Rogue secrets this expansion and more are unlikely to come. This means that unlike other classes, they won’t actually be… secret. Now, of course, in Constructed formats, most often secrets are already fairly well known, because only a few are better than the rest and decklists tend to be common knowledge, especially if you go higher up the ladder. In Rogue this exact effect will be exacerbated even further, so the real question to ask is this: Is the effect something you need at a price point you are willing to pay, given that the opponent is very likely to know exactly what your secret is? I think the answer in the case of Cheat Death is a Yes, given that you want this effect.

Bold prediction: Will see moderate Standard play – there’s going to be at least one Rogue deck in the meta that plays this card.

Duskbreaker

This card became quite the rabble rouser from the very moment it was spoiled. Zalae went on record with his first impression and most professional players, as well as I, tend to agree with him. Excavated Evil is a constructed playable board clear in Wild and Duskbreaker is not only 1 mana cheaper, but leaves behind a 3/3 body as well. Make no mistake, this card is the best AoE card Hearthstone has ever seen. Not the most powerful – there are spells like Twisting Nether that can fully clear any board. Not the cheapest, either. But it hits all of the checks in all the right ways to make it one of Hearthstone’s most efficient cards. Three health is a sweet spot for aggressive decks, which is what you are looking to combat by using Duskbreaker.  It is the reason Tar Creeper is such an excellent defensive tool and why Paladins often play Rallying Blade.

Obviously, the Area of Effect damage comes at the cost of having Dragon Tribal activated. This means that in order for Duskbreaker to see play, there must be a Dragon Priest deck to support it. Throwing it in a pure control deck with a smidge of drakonic value action won’t work. The lovely people over at /r/CompetitiveHS did the math for how many dragons you need in order to consistently activate Duskbreaker and unsurprisingly, it’s around 10 dragons total, including the wannabe-Hellfire itself. How likely is it for that deck to be a thing? Very, considering Dragon Priest is a deck even now (though relatively fringe) and recently, experts familiar with the deck have begun taking it toward a more control-oriented playstyle anyway. From that point of view, Duskbreaker fits right it. The fact that it’s a dragon itself helps further enable other dragon-matters cards, such as Drakonid Operative, Netherspite Historian and Book Wyrm.

But before we get too excited… we can’t even be sure that Dragon Priest will be a thing once K&C hits. Our old friend Highlander Priest is likely here to stay, especially after receiving potential new toys to play with, such as yet another “spell outlet” in Dragon Soul, powerful defensive alternatives such as Lone Champion and potentially yet unrevealed cards. As long as that deck remains strong, there will be little to no reason to play other decks if you are looking to play Priest. However, should the meta favor a more mid-range approach, Dragon Priest will be the deck of choice. Of course, there is a non-zero probability that a hybrid deck emerges, depending on how much Highlander Priest wants to give up in order to play Duskbreaker (because it really, really wants to). Elder Dragon Highlander? Here’s hoping!

Bold prediction: Constructed staple in Standard and Wild.

Feral Gibberer

Hello there Kuriboh, aren’t you cute! This little fuzzball… is just way too small. It has been historically true that 1-health minions have to be extremely pushed in order to see any play and Feral Gibberer is no exception to this rule. While it has the potential to start replicating like a pesky menace, it also dies to literally anything that deals damage. Even if it gets going and starts to swarm the board, it will be gone by the first sign of AoE damage. It doesn’t trade up even into other 1-cost minions! So, what do you do with it?

Buff it, that’s what. This card can grow in numbers very quickly once it starts connecting with the opponent’s face and an army of tokens is just waiting to get buffed. Enter your Mark of the Lotus, Power of the Wild, etc. In a class such as Paladin you can buff them straight in your hand! Alternatively, you can use all those extra 1-cost cards you have just generated to trigger abilities that care about minions being summoned. Remember how 1 health was bad? With a Steward of Darkshire in play, suddenly they all have Divine Shield and aren’t looking half bad. Switch that up, look at their single attack point. In Wild, ye olde Hobgoblin is waiting to buff the fuzzballs into scary monsters. Even an ordinary 1 mana 1/1 can do great things… when you have lots and lots of them!

Despite all that, we still have to look at how often we will realistically be able to generate extra copies. The 1/1 body is as fragile as they get and it’s hard to imagine it surviving just about any reasonable turn in Constructed. That said, sometimes the opponent could simply not have anything to play, letting you get the ball rolling, especially in the Arena format, where Turn 1 plays are reasonably likely to be skipped. But without any good way to give this guy Charge, you should not count on him surviving the turn.

Bold prediction: Won’t see play.

Kathrena Winterwisp

Finally, a great Hunter legendary! What makes her great, you ask? The value. Recruit is a really powerful and dangerous mechanic and this is one of the cards where we can see why. Because of her text, Kathrena is never an 8-cost 6/6, because she is ready to bring her pets along for the ride, which can be anything from Savannah Highmane to Swamp King Dred. The potential value is absolutely insane and this should take one of spots for “most scary card of the set”. Tutoring things for free is extremely powerful and she even gets to do it twice! All that’s required is that what you want to get is a beast.

So, naturally, Hunters are known for playing beasts. Especially in Standard, Hunters actually play lots and lots of beasts, most of them considerably smaller than what’s necessary to make Kathrena Winterwisp live up to her potential. When you’re tutoring up a Kindly Grandmother or Alleycat, you’re suddenly not very excited to pay all of that extra mana. However, when she puts a charging King Krush into play alongside a 6/6, suddenly she feels a lot more broken. The big question here is this – can Hunter guarantee good pulls by only playing big beasts? It is certainly a theme in the most recent expansions, a value-oriented Hunter who generates and restocks on big threats with lots of Deathrattle and Beast synergy – from Abominable Bowman to Kathrena, there are plenty of ways to exploit those Highmanes, including curving all the way into N'Zoth, The Corruptor. What remains to be answered is whether or not this deck can exist or not.

Giving up the good early plays for Hunter will be a tall order to achieve. Keep in mind we’re not talking about the mythical unicorn that is the Control Hunter dream, rather about a top end-heavy midrange deck that can get through the early game with non-beast minions and spell support. We will have to evaluate that in the context of the full expansion, if there are enough non-beasts to make it happen, however right now it’s looking decently plausible and if the metagame manages to slow down by a turn or two, however unlikely that might be, this style of Hunter deck will be laying in wait to feed on its prey. Either through big, value-oriented beasts or charging monsters such as King Krush and Charged Devilsaur, Kathrena will provide a big pile of stats and get a lot of mileage out of just about any hunter deck. Outside of the worst cases, even smaller minions can be decent pulls and Hunters are never sad whenever they can put up a bunch of stats on the board.

Bold prediction: Hunter staple for Standard.

Lesser Mithril Spellstone

 

We already saw the Shaman spellstone last week and looking at this, you sort of immediately draw a parallel to it. For 7 mana you get to summon a pile of stats… however, typically, a vanilla creature that is simply Power/Toughness is not worth playing. Yes, eventually you will be able to summon a total of 15/15 worth of stats spread across three bodies for 7 mana. At first glance that seems really good, but… is it really? Sometimes it will be enough to break the opponent who has either run out of removal or simply cannot contest the sheer bulk of your minions, but often times you can do much crazier things for the effort you put into upgrading and playing the Spellstone. Keep in mind that typically, Warrior decks play no more than 4 weapons and even with our preview card from KTF, Forge of Souls, it’s going to take a lot of patient setup to upgrade. Weapons tend to be really good as early as possible, meaning you will most often want to play them in the early game, when theoretically you don’t want to have Mithril Spellstone in hand. If you keep it, then for the first 7 turns of the game you are playing with 1 card less than the opponent, whereas if you toss it back, you might not draw it in time to see you play the weapon. It is a lose-lose situation most of the time you try to go for a big Spellstone, which in the end won’t even be a good play if you are under pressure. Though, to be fair, it is an excellent play if you aren’t.

There is one really exciting possibility, though, which must not be overlooked. With Dead Man's Hand you can shuffle the Greater Mithril Spellstone into your deck and start generating infinite threats that way, while also being able to play another card alongside it, for instance a Shield Block, Bring It On! or something along those lines. Whether or not that’s optimal remains to be seen, but it’s not very likely, given that current builds of Dead Man's Hand decks want to simply outlast you without worrying too much about generating threats.

Bold prediction: Highly unlikely to see play.

Level Up!

Another one in a classic line of Paladin cards that do things with Silver Hand Recruits (get it, because Recruit is the mechanic of this expansion?), Level Up! has big shoes to fill. Quartermaster immediately jumps to mind as a direct comparison and although he is no longer in Standard, he has actually been carrying Token Paladin to the top spots of the Wild ranked metagame. This card does exactly the same, however it loses the 2/5 body, which is not insignificant, and replaces it with Taunt. This can be powerful in its own way, allowing your Recruits to protect a more valuable piece, however we have to keep in mind that usually, though not always, having the extra body is better.

Still, we have to be aware of the “critical mass” component – as yet another card that buffs recruits and as more ways to generate them are added into the game, eventually we have to wonder whether or not we want to have these cards in the deck simply because the more redundancy there is, the more consistently a game plan can be executed. Even if a certain approach is not inherently the strongest in the game, doing it often and reliably can be a successful winning strategy. By gaining not only additional board flooding options but also new ways to turn those tokens into threats, the Recruit deck will eventually reach critical mass where it can simply keep re-flooding the board again and again, exhausting the opponent’s ability to answer threats. It could, of course, be entirely possible that Level Up! doesn’t find its way into that deck because it’s simply not powerful enough, but time will tell.

Bold prediction: Likely to see play in Wild Recruit Paladin.

Tar Creeper 2.0 (Lone Champion)

What I really love about this card is that is shows Blizzard’s ability to learn from the past. It’s easy to think that Tar Creeper was meant as a control card and it’s adoption by aggro decks was an unintended byproduct of its defensive powers that allow those decks to protect their threats, however the truth is that we can never know that this was not an intended use, on top of being a defensive option for slower decks. Whether it’s intentional or an honest “mistake” is up in the air, however if Team 5 was caught by surprise with the Creeper, they certainly took all precautions with Lone Champion. His “if you control no other minions” clause makes him abysmal in fast decks, because they are looking to get onto the board immediately and a vanilla 2/4 for 3 is not what aggro wants to be playing.

As far as slower decks go, will this see play over Tar Creeper? It’s hard to say. Technically, the Divine Shield counts as at least one point of health, so realistically it’s more like a 2/5 with Taunt for 3 mana, which is not all that bad. The big question here is the attack. On the defense, Creeper has 3 attack, which makes it stack up against the vast majority of early threats, killing aggro’s 1/3s and 3/3s, as well as trading completely with 2/3 minions that see play, along the lines of Arcanologist. Lone Champion‘s 2 attack means that it’s often going to get value traded into, without actually killing most things that will be running into it. On the other hand, it has more attack than Creeper when on the offense, so it’s a lot better at retaliating and trading on its own. It’s also a lot better later in the game, when it can soak up multiple hits from large minions. All in all, it looks like an interesting alternative to Tar Creeper and depending on what you need, you will be playing one or the other… or in some cases both. Highlander decks will love the option to play a second Creeper and in some cases the Divine Shield can be an upside, such as if Divine Shield Paladin becomes a deck, though it’s fairly likely to be a deck that plays too many minion to have Lone Champion enabled.

Bold prediction: It will see plenty of play in slow decks as an alternative or addition to Tar Creeper.

Raven Familiar

So… Joust is back! Or is it? Although traditionally it reveals and compares minions, it was never an officially keyworded ability, so we can’t say with certainty that this isn’t Joust. Or Spell Joust. Or simply conditional card draw for Mage (that should totally be a keyword someday). Let’s face it, Mages play tons of expensive spells, and even if only Pyroblast costs 10 mana, they are still more expensive than the spells other classes typically play (Druid says hello). Your Firelands Portals, Flamestrikes and Blizzards are excellent targets for the Raven Familiar and they are commonly found in most Mage decks. That being said, it’s also equally unlikely to imagine a Mage deck without some of the class’ most iconic tools – Frostbolt, Arcane Intellect, Ice Block, etc. Simply put, these cards are way too good not to play and although there may be an aggressive Burn Mage that doesn’t play the Flamestrikes of the world, there won’t be a Mage deck that doesn’t play Frostbolt.

In other words, when you are playing Raven Familiar, unless you build your deck in a very specific (and often times sub optimal) way, you cannot guarantee that its effect will activate successfully and get your that Pyroblast.  It’s not strictly clear whether or not decks will want this gamble, because card draw is really sought after by Mages. This card appears to be overshadowed by Arcanologist, which guarantees the draw and has a better stat line. Or it could be the case that there are way more big spells than small ones in the Mage deck and it’s a calculated risk that will pay off more times than it won’t.

Bold prediction: Might be played in controlling Mage decks.

Rummaging Kobold

What everybody suspected from the start is finally here: anti-(anti-weapon tech) tech. With legendary weapons being a centerpiece of the new expansion, we were worried that unlike Quests and Death Knights, weapons are too easily countered by tech cards such as Gluttonous Ooze, Harrison Jones or even the good old trusty Acidic Swamp Ooze. Well fear no longer! With the new Rummaging Kobold, your weapons are safe and sound in the graveyard, ready to be used again after a small down payment of 3 mana and a follow up investment of their original cost. And just when you’d think that the good Kobold is held back in “traditional weapon classes” because he can bring back “ordinary” weapons, I’m here to tell you that’s not necessarily a downside! It can be used in decks like Jade Shaman which can’t go infinite with their jade count, in order to reforge a Jade Claws or two, which is one of the few cheap early-game weapons that scales well into the late-game.

KoBold prediction: Whether or not this card is played is directly tied to the amount of anti-weapon cards in the metagame.

Seeping Oozeling

Another expensive, Deathrattle-oriented Hunter card! Despite being slow, provided that you have enough high quality Deathrattles, this card is actually very decent. Even something as small as Kindly Grandmother‘s effect (for Turn 6 anyway) can give you something to work with and larger, more impactful abilities are icing on top of the cake. Deathrattles tend to be some sort of stickiness for the most part, although other times they can be pure value bombs that if you are lucky enough to hit, will completely turn the game around, Kathrena Winterwisp is an excellent example, as well as Sylvanas Windrunner in Wild. You can easily avoid the less impactful abilities by simply not running those cards in your deck.

Yet despite those redeeming factors, at the end of the day this is still an undercosted minion and it’s going to be very hard to both guarantee it has great value and make it to that point in the game as a Hunter. Still, it’s a very interesting deckbuilding challenge, which seems to be a common theme for many cards in K&C. The fact that it’s also not a beast can help out a lot with this new Hunter archetype that seems to be peeking from behind the curtain.

Bold prediction: It will be part of a slower, top-heavy Midrange Hunter.

Silver Vanguard

Continuing Kobolds and Catacombs’ trend of “powerful but cautiously costed” cards we have Silver Vanguard. Obviously a huge tempo loss when she is played, you are hoping to make up for it by Recruiting a powerful 8-cost minion, such as Tirion Fordring or The Lich King, which is like… ramping by 1 mana, kind of? First off, you won’t have that many 8-cost cards in your deck, so any one of them that you draw makes Vanguard’s ability worse, or potentially even fizzles it out. Second, it is an entire card you put in your deck in order to ramp out an 8-drop one turn sooner, conditioned on her Deathrattle triggering at all. The only question remaining is “Why?”

To start, you can potentially trigger her ability multiple times with cards like Play Dead and the like. It’s good that she doesn’t care that the 8-cost minion is other than how much mana it is, meaning it can be used for Tirion just as well as to summon Charging Devilsaur. We have already seen a plethora of tools apparently aimed at a slower, “big” hunter deck and this might be one if them, especially in the context of the previous card. In all fairness, when you are not playing a 7 mana 3/3 for that Deathrattle, it becomes quite good. However, other than Seeping Oozeling, it’s hard to get her ability copied without getting her into play. Since you don’t want to be paying the full mana, you might be looking at how to cheat her out earlier, with either Barnes or another similar effect, but at that point… you could simply cheat out the 8-drop instead, eliminating the middle woman.

Bold prediction: Too slow, won’t see play.

Spiteful Summoner

Before defaulting to Mage when we think of expensive spells, the most obvious thing at the moment is the Druid class and their Ultimate Infestations and Spreading Plagues. At 6 mana, this doesn’t need to hit something gigantic for you to get your money’s worth, but that’s not always the most important aspect of a card. Much like Faceless Summoner, you are looking to make a tempo play by getting a bunch of stats on the board. But what holds true for Mage decks running Frostbolt also holds true for Druids playing Wild Growth, etc. In fact, it’s true for just about any class – cheap spells are some of the best cards in Hearthstone that you can be playing and you would need a very serious reason not to (Prince Keleseth jumps to mind, though it can be argued even he is not that restrictive). Even if you end up skewing the odds enough, is the payoff really worth it? Faceless Summoner did not see almost any play and this card won’t be too different, even though making it neutral opens up a lot of potential. There are simply better things you can be doing for 6 mana, especially in some of the more obvious classes that this fits into, such as Druid, Mage, Priest and Warlock.

Bold prediction: Highly unlikely to be played.

Sudden Betrayal

Another Rogue secret! What’s nice about this is that it cares about positioning, which is a criminally underused component in Hearthstone. However, like most secrets, it is easily played around by the opponent if they can put a weak minion between the one attacking and the one they don’t want it to attack, or simply by attacking with a weak minion. Despite that, Sudden Betrayal has a lot more going on under the surface. First, of course, we have to keep in mind that it is a Rogue secret, which means that as we discussed earlier, it will be fairly easy for the enemy to predict which one it is that you have played, especially since it’s not looking very likely that different secrets go into the same deck. Next, we have to appreciate that this card is not trivial to play around. Easy, yes, but not trivial, as it requires setup and planning on the side of the opponent, which can slow them down or force them to take suboptimal turns. Lastly, we have to really appreciate the simple fact that, albeit indirectly, this is a form of healing in Rogue. Damage prevention and/or health restoration have been tools the class is notoriously famous for not having access to (and for good reason, design-wise) and this is one of the very few defensive cards for Rogues. Luckily it doesn’t cost 9 mana this time.

Bold prediction: Moderately played and core to any late-game oriented Rogue deck.

The Runespear

Sigh. Sometimes we just have to be blunt and there’s no getting around it – paying 8 mana for a 3/3 weapon feels miserable. Attacking with this weapon better be worth your investment, in terms of mana, tempo, board, etc. Sinking 8 crystals into a 3-attack weapon is hard to justify, so before anything else, we have to ask the question “does this card justify it?” Personally, I think that the answer is “no”. If we look at the available Discover pool for this card, aka Shaman spells, we quickly come back down to Azeroth to realize that there is a lot of bad with all the good and for the each great option there are many “worst of the worse” options as well. Given that the targets are random, you really want to be picking, if possible, from spells that don’t target, such as Shaman’s board clears, Bloodlust, Evolve or Devolve, etc. However, some of the more impactful AoE spells are symmetrical, and for every spell that doesn’t target there are at least twice as many that do, ranging from damage, removal, buffs, etc. Put simply, Totemic Might and Cryostasis are more likely results than Far Sight. Obviously we don’t yet know what new spells Shaman will be receiving and things can potentially always change in the future, but right now it’s not looking too for The Runespear.

There is also the fact that this card is extremely slow. Now, that’s not the biggest factor here, considering that it’s very likely that it is at it’s least worst when you don’t have any minions and the opponent does, but then an 8-cost 3/3 weapon feels even worse. Given that it is you as the player who actually casts the spells, you also have to take into account that spells with Overload will overload you, further increasing the cost that you pay for it. Despite all that, we have to give this weapon its due diligence. In the event that you do end up getting this weapon, either for free through an effect or with a discount, it does become one of the better legendary weapons out there.

Bold prediction: Won’t see any play.

Twig of the World Tree

It appears that very shortly after this card was spoiled, the community discovered the dream scenario: Wild Growth, Twig of the World Tree, Nourish for mana crystals, Medivh, the Guardian + Ultimate Infestation on the same turn for a backbreaking swing. While it’s true that this is most likely a game winning play on Turn 5, it’s balanced out by the fact that it will happen very, very rarely. Outside of that, the Twig looks like a really fair card. Too fair, in fact. If you have to break the durability just by attacking, it will take you 5 turns to do so, meaning you get to have 10 mana on Turn 9… yay! The effect is almost the same as that of Kun the Forgotten King, so it has lots of crazy potential. Ultimately, it seems a bit too slow, though it’s nice that it has protection from anti-weapon tech cards and can potentially lock out a Harrison Jones in somebody’s hand.

Bold prediction: Will be played in Big Druid.

Unidentified Maul

Another entry into the Unidentified cards, the maul is an interesting tool for Paladins to work with. Right off the bat, we have to talk about the baseline weapon, a 2/2 for 3 mana. Let’s be honest, that’s simply not exciting, especially with Rallying Blade being in the same rotation for a little while longer. Normally we don’t go into the nitty gritty of mana costs and “what’s worth what” because that’s simply a bad way to analyse cards, however here we have a direct parallel with another weapon that costs 3 and also has 2 durability, except it features 1 more attack point and still has an upside, which in all fairness is a lot more conditional. We have also established that 3 attack is very crucial and a lot more important than 2, given the state of early threats at the moment. So we ask, are Unidentified Maul‘s effects worth giving up the extra attack and all the relevant things that go along with it?

My answer is… maybe. Champion's Maul is the only one that doesn’t rely on minions already being there – it brings them! It’s hard not to draw comparisons with Muster for Battle, which was a dominant Paladin card during its time in Standard and is still considered one of the more powerful cards in the Wild format. It summons an additional Silver Hand Recruit, however it also gives you a much worse weapon and while in general the extra 1/1 is better, arguments could at least be made for spots where the 2/2 weapon is a lot more impactful and the two cards seem actually comparable. And you know a card is good if it’s comparable to Muster for Battle. As far as the other options for Unidentified Maul go, while they don’t look as great as their Champion cousin, they are still good cards for aggressive Paladin decks. Note that they care about minions, not necessarily Silver Hand Recruits, so any early board is going to be empowered by one of these in their own way, which can actually be a lot more sought after of an effect that the 3 attack of Rallying, in something like Murloc Paladin for instance. And even if everything else isn’t good enough, sometimes the 1/4 chance for having access to Muster for Battle in your deck might be good enough to play this.

Bold prediction: Will see play in aggressive Paladin decks.

Zola the Gorgon

Last but not least, we get to play with Zola the Gorgon, which is a clever play on the name of a certain cheese. Before anything else, even though it’s exciting, in order to better and honestly evaluate what she does, we have to immediately forget that the copy she adds to our hand is golden, because that’s absolutely irrelevant. Great, but irrelevant. Now, what does being able to add a copy of a minion mean? The most obvious answer is that it’s great with Battlecry minions. Obviously Zola’s stats are not great, but any deck that wants to generate more of a minion probably won’t care about the slight loss in tempo that comes with playing her. This is a value-oriented card. As such, she opens up new possibilities. We saw Manic Soulcaster being played in the Kazakus Mage lists from the previous Standard rotation and she is still core to most Reno Mage decks in Wild. The problem with Soulcaster is that she was a Mage class card. Zola now opens up that possibility to get 4 Kazakus potions with Brann for Priest and Warlock too, at least one of which has a prominent Kazakus deck currently in Standard.

Aside from Kazakus specifically, there is no shortage of good cards you could copy with Zola the Gorgon. Probably not cards that cost more than 7 mana, because they are not guaranteed to live until the next turn, but Zola is a better Youthful Brewmaster because she allows you to gain all of the value from your minion again without returning it to hand. This is particularly true when you want to get a copy of a fat defensive creature or perhaps even a Deathrattle minion. Her usefulness doesn’t begin and end with Battlecries, which makes her a somewhat unique figure in the value generating space, functioning a lot more like a Shadowcaster rather than a Youthful Brewmaster while keeping the minion’s stats… and unfortunately the mana cost.

Bold prediction: Staple in Kazakus decks, very likely to see tons of play in Control Decks.

That’s all for now! Are you excited about about the spoiler season and the next expansion? Keep up with the reveal schedule and all things Kobolds & Catacombs.