If you have missed the news, Blizzard has just announced that four new cards will be added to the Classic set next month. The reason is that some of the class cards were previously rotated into Hall of Fame, leaving certain heroes with less Classic cards than the others (Mage in particular was two cards down). You can read more about it here, but in this short, unscheduled card review (I didn’t expect to write one until next reveal season!) I will give them a closer look and see whether they are playable right now, or maybe have some potential to see play in the future (given that they will stay in Standard forever). Without further ado, let’s start reviewing!
Tome of Intellect
Tome of Intellect replaces Ice Lance.
Tome of Intellect is like a Babbling Book, but without a body. The 1/1 body might not seem impressive, but it’s the reason why Babbling Book was played in the first place. Another point of comparison would be Primordial Glyph – but this one lets you Discover the card instead of getting a random one, as well as discounts it by 2, effectively making it cost 0 mana in lots of scenarios (or being able to save a discounted card for the future, which is also good).
This, on the other hand, is like a weaker version of those two. In most of the cases, why would you want to play a card that adds a random spell to your hand if you can just play some good spell in this slot? A random spell is pretty bad to begin with, but the fact that you have to pay 1 extra mana for it makes it even worse. I could understand something like Shifting Scroll, since it doesn’t cost anything extra
There are two redeeming qualities of this card. First of all – it’s a cheap spell by itself, and Mage is known for having a lot of synergy with cheap spells. That said, there are other, better 1 mana spells you can run, even the ones from Classic set (Mirror Image, Arcane Missiles). And second – spells that didn’t start in your deck are important when playing a Quest Mage. After Cabalist's Tome AND Babbling Book have both rotated out of Standard, Quest Mage had a much harder time playing 6 spells that didn’t start in the deck. So I guess that it might make some sense in that kind of deck. The problem is that the deck is pretty bad in the first place, and this card definitely won’t fix it.
Card rating: 2/10
Pilfer
It looks like they’re introducing the “Thief Rogue” theme to Standard, something I was also thinking about when writing my latest article (but I was considering adding Burgle). This card is basically the same story as the Mage’s one, but even to a bigger extent. It’s a strictly worse version of two Rogue cards that already exist – Swashburglar and Hallucination. The first one, just like Babbling Book, comes with a 1/1 body, making it clearly better, especially in Rogue, who cares about small minions early (to clear something with the help of Hero Power, or to Cold Blood it and start smacking the opponent). The second one, Hallucination, was commonly used in Miracle Rogue for a while – even though the effect wasn’t amazing, being a cheap spell had synergies with Combo cards and you could use it to draw extra cards from Gadgetzan Auctioneer. Cards from the other classes also have synergy with Tess Greymane or Spectral Cutlass, although there are better ways to generate thoe.
And just like Mage, the fact that it’s a 1 mana spell makes some sense for the sake of synergies, which I’ve already explained above when talking about Hallucination. But having the ability to pick one out of three, and being offered a random one is a massive difference. When you played Hallucination, having two bad options was pretty common. Now imagine that the game would pick a random one out of them, how often would you land with a completely useless card in your hand. So, just like in case of Tome of Intellect, I’ll add +1 to the score because of some synergies, but the card is still really bad.
Card rating: 2/10
Call of the Void
Call of the Void replaces Power Overwhelming.
As much as I can see other two making some sense despite having pointless effects, for the sake of synergies, this one I just don’t understand. Warlock has no synergy with cheap spells, no synergy with randomly generated cards etc. So while I could see how putting the two cards above instead of an actually good card might make a tiny bit of sense (still only a tiny bit), this one I seriously don’t know. The only reason to play this card would be for a new player to play with some more expensive (as in Epic/Legendary) Demons he might not have in his collection, but even then it’s not reliable enough.
So, since there’s not much to talk about, one piece of advice – if you ever think about putting this card into your deck, because let’s say you run some Demon-oriented build, just don’t. Put a good Demon instead, because this will give you something bad quite often, you have no way of controlling it AND you have to pay one extra mana for it.
Card rating: 1/10
Icicle
This one seems to be the best from the bunch, but it’s like being the least toxic person out of your random League of Legends team in Bronze – the bar is set so low that it’s not hard to achieve. I think that if this card could go face and not only damage minions, it would actually be okay-ish (still not good, but it would make some sense). As it is right now, it’s just bad. 2 damage to a minion is not worth 2 mana – it’s realistically not even worth 1 mana, 1 mana is 2 damage to everything (Arcane Shot) or 2 damage to a minion with an upside (e.g. Arcane Blast, Breath of Sindragosa). But without arguing how much its really worth, I think we can agree that the effect is clearly not worth 2 mana.
And now, the extra effect. 2 mana to deal 2 damage to a minion and draw a card would be a really great card by itself, but I don’t think it would be broken. It would be like a Shiv that deals 1 more damage, but can’t go face. But in this case, the effect has an extra condition. The minion needs to be already frozen. Not ANY minion, but THE minion you’re targetting. That’s a big issue. You can’t just have Water Elemental on the board, freeze the opponent’s face and draw a card. You either need to have a minion that Freezes (like the Water Elemental) on the board, hit something that survives, and then play this card on it or you need to combo this with other card immediately. E.g. you can Frostbolt + Icicle something to deal 5 damage for 4 mana and at a cost of effectively one card. Which makes the effect incredibly situational, and even if you play a deck with lots of Freezes, situations like that won’t even come up that consistently.
I mean, if a card like Coldwraith, which has a vanilla body (3 mana 3/4) and it draws card when ANY enemy is Frozen, sees no play at all, this one surely won’t.
Card rating: 2.5/10 (because it’s slightly better than the other ones, but not good enough to get 3)
Closing
On the one hand, I like the fact that they didn’t overdo those cards. That was the entire point of Hall of Fame after all – removing the cards that were too strong, too popular or problematic. Looking at the power level of those, I can’t fantom how they could fit into one of those three categories.
On the other hand, I think that they could make them slightly stronger or at least more unique. I’ve always said that having bad cards is okay, but it’s much better if those bad cards at least have interesting effects to compensate – then can appeal to a different kind of players (those for whom winning is not that important, but having fun with the deck is), or at least see some play in off-meta decks. My guess is that they just didn’t want to risk it, but I feel like they could do something better without taking any serious risks. And after all, this is a digital card game – if one of those cards turn out to be a bit too powerful, they can just hit it in the next patch.
Thank you, Blizzard, for diluting our Discover pool and, what’s worse, our Classic card pack pool. I mean, the commons at least are not that obnoxious, but the Epic… just think you could have gotten a Brawl or a Twisting Nether instead of this…
Blizzard said that these cards were added to help bring new players into the game with simple spells that also let them try out cards that they don’t have. That’s why they were added at the game in the same patch that added ranks 26-50 for beginners. They’re not for experienced players, they don’t need to be. Keep in mind that there are more people that Blizzard needs to appeal to besides longtime players.
If I were a beginner, I’d rather open another Epic in my Classic pack (something like Brawl, Doomsayer, Preparation…) instead of this crap. If you want to try out cards that you don’t have, play Dungeon Run, best F2P content in the game.
I’ve heard this many times now and I don’t understand it. Am I really missing something? Those cards are terrible for beginners. Icicle is a weak Epic, something they definitely don’t want to craft or open (given that Classic is full of staple Epics they’d rather have). And other cards are just bad.
Yes, they “let new players play with the cards they don’t have”, but so do all the Discover cards. You want to play big, flashy minions? Play Free from Amber in your Priest deck instead of hoping to snatch one from your opponent’s class. You can also just play Hallucination instead of Pilfer, both are commons. Sure, they will rotate out, but more Discover cards will take their place.
And hell, “play with cards they don’t have” is a silly argument anyway since those are so random. You might play a deck with Pilfer for entire week and not get the cards you want to test out. Most of the time you will get some random crap that you don’t even want to play and lose the game. If you’re a new player and you want to play with cards you don’t have, play Arena, Tavern Brawls or craft Whizbang – that’s a good way to play with cards you don’t have and actually learn a thing or two about synergies and stuff.
I can’t believe that people are actually buying this whole “official reasoning”.
I agree best thing about the whole article was that comment
“it’s like being the least toxic person out of your random League of Legends team in Bronze – the bar is set so low that it’s not hard to achieve” hahahaha