I wish I had enough wins with Rogue to agree with the Secret Passage nerf, but perhaps I shouldn’t be aiming for a weapon-based build. That said… Is Priest really in a position that tears up the meta where the Cabal Acolyte nerf was necessary? The few times I’ve pulled off the Wave of Apathy + Acolyte combo it’s rare for Acolyte to steal the minion that matters as long as there’s more than one minion, so even if you want to propose that Acolyte’s health doesn’t matter since it’s meant to be a two-card removal combo, the effect isn’t consistently pulled off enough. The biggest play I did was pulling it off on a Warrior’s Rattlegore but that’s a one-in-a-million sort of thing.

Given the randomness of Galakrond Priest’s Invoke, I’d say Gandling is at least a nice way to make use of the various 1-to-3 drops that may be generated like Scarlet Subjugator or Grandmummy. A good number of them have Deathrattle effects too – you can always play Reliquary for its Deathrattle and save the Prime for later. I’ve even had a few games where Sethekk Veilweaver dropped Whispers of EVIL, so there’d be a point to the random Lackey generated.

Perhaps it wouldn’t be a necessary inclusion in Galakrond Priest, but it’d be an interesting Invoke roll compared to the Resurrection-synergy cards. Looking at you, Catrina.

I’m not a particularly serious player, but the situation with Demon Hunter reminds me of my experience with Mage – over the years, it seems that Mage’s pool of cards to work with have been increasingly random, with the few times it’s been viable were because the random elements were just aligned enough to be effective, as with Conjurer Mage. Until we got to that point, Mage had to work with theoretically interesting ideas like Book of Specters and Dune Sculptor or pray for a Hail Mary with Puzzle Box of Yogg-Saron. Mage had little consistency to work with because the class already had a straightforward Basic set of 6 face damage for 4 mana.

So where does that leave Demon Hunter? It might be that the only way to rein in the class would be for the new set to give Demon Hunter nothing of note, as the short end of the expansion stick has been passed around for a good few classes, on top of other classes having something to build a deck on.

> Spirit of the Dragonhawk made no sense outside of Odd Mage

Well… it’s also a 2 mana card. It wouldn’t have made sense inside of Odd Mage, either.

> it looks like Erkh is the first female ethereal within the Hearthstone universe

Actually… not really. Ethereal Peddler from One Night in Karazhan was already distinctly female with her voice and slightly curvy figure. Transmogrifier, too, although mostly from her voice clip.

I don’t know if randomized Brawl packs are now intentionally meant to cover certain themes (Mechs and Elementals for Mage, Tokens for Druid etc), but Rogue is… silly for this Brawl. It actually makes Cannon Barrage pretty alright, but I couldn’t tell you how effective it is. My only game involved a Turn 2 Patient Assassin and the Warrior I was facing chose death. Poor bastard didn’t even wait for me to drop my Sonya Shadowdancer…

It won’t be the first time Jaina’s dated a member of the blue dragonflight either.

BEGIN SCENE – Knights of the Frozen Throne opening.

FROST LICH JAINA: Do not fear power, fear those who –

(CUT to Reno the Relicologist. He flexes his biceps, a gatling wand grasped in each hand. Fanciful particle effects occur, the likes of which have not been seen since Hadidjah Chamberlin figured out the Volcano visual effects.)

RENO: (singsong) Maaaaaagic!

FROST LICH JAINA: (facepalm) Yogg-dammit, Reno.

EXEUNT.

I’d recently realized that Jaina and Reno’s voice actors are married to each other. And now I can’t get the idea of Reno scooping up Jaina majestically, then flying off with her in his dragon arms into the sunset, out of my head…

As the year and meta (well, hopefully the latter eventually) settles, and given I have no idea where to ask this…

Since we’re waving goodbye to the Witchwood in a few months, I wonder if HSTD’s analysts might consider a speculative article on what the Year of the Dragon might have been if Baku and Genn weren’t Hall of Famed? Might that be an interesting topic to delve into? Would odd and even decks have any impact on metas at all? Was the design basis of Dragon’s expansions too much to accommodate potentially overpowered odd/even decks? Or would odd/even decks just fall by the wayside to Highlander and DoD’s power creep?

Admittedly the list hasn’t been completely successful, even though I haven’t played nearly enough to get a grasp for what the meta is like. Hilariously, the deck outright loses to big bodies that get mindlessly played every turn since there’s only so much removal/taunt you can shove in. It’s a sad day when you’re losing to things like Burly Shovelfist and Faceless Behemoth.

Maybe I’ll experiment further by swapping out Deathlord for Khartut Defender(?), but I’ve relearned the biggest issue with Mill – its dependency on its own draw cards. Still managed to get some hilarious plays against players who have no idea how to deal with the archetype.

Funniest match I’ve had was probably an Activate the Obelisk Priest, who after decking out and having only 10/15 quest completion drops a Mind Visioned copy of Valeera the Shadow… then quits after he realizes he’s botched his own quest requirements.

Players of the Sunwell! Have you heard about the Church of Anti-Smorc? Would you like to have the staying power to stave off aggressive decks while punishing slower builds? Would you like to relive the glory days of watching important 1-of cards burn away in a satisfying shower of salt? Now you can!

This is a list I found when trying to see if Mill Rogue was as solid in Sunwell as it somewhat was, and it’s still as fun as ever:

x2 Backstab
x2 Preparation
x2 Shadowstep
x1 Togwaggle’s Scheme
x1 Lab Recruiter
x2 Sap
x2 Elven Minstrel
x2 Vilespine Slayer
x2 Vanish
x1 Valeera the Hollow

x1 Brann Bronzebeard
x2 Coldlight Oracle
x2 Deathlord
x1 Antique Healbot
x2 Rotten Applebaum
x2 Sludge Belcher
x1 Zilliax
x1 N’Zoth, the Corruptor

###WILD Hybrid Mill-N’Zoth Rogue
AAEBAaIHBvUPhRfgrAKA0wLg+gKggAMMtAHEAe0CzQP4B4YJ/g2BDoHCAtvjAsXzAq+RAwA=

“Me choose to go mill, me no need to kill.
Everybody knows that the mill is the skill.”

It does feel particularly awkward since, if we were going by the lore for Year of the Dragon, Dr. Boom’s synergy has been Mechs. Pirate Warrior hasn’t been a thing since Golakka Crawler and Patches’ “too little, too late” nerf before he was sent off to Wild, so… Ancharrr is definitely confusing. It might be enough for it to work as a tutor for Pirate techs, though the only one we have right now is Bloodsail Corsair (not that weapon reliance is huge now either), so it’ll have to be up to future reveals to see if there was a point.

Not putting Pirates on the field also feels weak – an effect like Captain Hooktusk dropping Pirates with Rush would be awesome – but I’m not exactly keen on reliving the “Eyeeeee’m in CHAAAAAARGE” era any time soon, and Warrior already has solid Tempo, Mech and Control builds to work with. I can live with them receiving a card on the level of “Dumbfallen Aviana” this set.

To be fair, given the airship theme for this set and some of the other cards like Secure the Deck, pirates aren’t completely out of place. Time will tell if this card turns out to be meme, destined for Purify-level turnarounds or Splintergraft-level pointless.

wronchirexxar.gif

“Well played. Well played. Well played. *hound* Well played. *hound* Well played…”

So looking over the review for the Druid sidequest card and how awkward it is to fit in an existing recipe, what you’re saying is…

The card can’t Secure a Deck?

I’ll see myself out…

“But if they don’t add enough, we might see the main theme of this expansion fail completely”

I think that’s summed up my issue with the Year of the Raven (and maybe, Uldum to a certain extent) – the new mechanics were hyped so much, Blizzard’s subsequent lack of representation felt underwhelming. Baku and Genn decks were dominant, sure, but I’ve always felt that it was because of a lack of support for other classes than simply Baku/Genn existing. Out of 4 odd/even class cards, only two were ever even remotely relevant. (Hero Power Odd Mage, what’s that?) Fast forward to Uldum… and now the only Quest with any relevance is Druid’s. Everything else just builds onto the older decks.

I guess Team 5 always had a fear of introducing too many new things to support the latest expansion gimmicks… and maybe after seeing that it hasn’t worked all that well and things are just as polarising/broken, it feels refreshing that they’ve gone all in with Dragon synergy this time. Then again, this might also be the full extent of synergy we get so we get disappointed again. But the universal Dragon synergy is at least a step in the hopefully right direction.

When your opponent gets Turn 2 Underbelly Angler and you get Corrupted Seers.

“Sweet, I have board clears! …Wait”

Tavern Brawl: Tinyfin Block was my introduction to this deck – and it was incredibly stupid with the draw and buff options quickly snowballing.

I’d netdecked the list here (https://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/decks/corbetts-mech-paladin-brawl-block-tinyfin-mode/) and added Solemn Vigil into the deck, just to add more draw options – prior to that, I did have games in the Brawl where Divine Favour wasn’t possible due to both sides having small hands, or when I’d whiffed both Crystology and Divine Favour. In the early game you can trade mechs and Silver Guys into enemy minions and draw 2 cards after Solemn Vigil gets heavily discounted. Unfortunately I forget which cards I swapped out.

I’m a little on the fence about what we know for Quest changes. I appreciate the idea behind it, though I would probably have appreciated a swing in the other direction at least: if you roll a 50g Quest, could players be given the option to always roll for a harder, more rewarding Quest? Daily quests is my main method of gold since I haven’t arenaed in a long time, and having the option to roll for slightly more gold would be nice.

Alternatively, players could be given options when rerolling – roll a quest of higher, lower, or equal difficulty/rewards? A random roll for higher rewards would account for Quests such as “Challenge a Friend” and “Play 100 Murlocs”.

It’s an odd conundrum we find ourselves in. I remember how the Year of the Raven had become stale since all most cards did was feed the classes with the best Baku/Genn decks. But at least you could craft those two legends and know that for the Year of the Raven, you were more or less set. This time… well, if you hadn’t gone all in with crafting your Control Warrior tools, your Combo Priest pieces, or other cards nobody realized could be useful (I’m pretty sure nobody ran the Bwonsamdi/Talanji combo), you’re crippled with a subpar deck.

I’m honestly rather bummed that as much as the newer quests are easier(?) to complete, they mostly haven’t had the groundbreaking impact the originals had. They’re straddling that awkward place between “gets run over by aggro” and “eventually loses to control”. No kidding, this is the most expensive era of Hearthstone. In retrospect, it makes Team 5 charging 2.8k gold and 2.1k gold for the respective solo player content all the more annoying.

There’s been several in my farming the brawl to clear dailies. As you mentioned, each class seems to have a semi-random pool of synergistic cards for this Brawl, for which Rogue has a few cards that would duplicate wishes. Mimic Pod and Thistle Tea, for a couple, plus the hero power of DK Valeera. Which didn’t matter in my opinion, since there’s only so many points where dropping a wish would make sense – it’s usually Flame Imp, Houndmaster, Backstab or Twilight Drake in the early game, I’ve found. Twisting Nether for a field wipe. Pyroblast for lethal.

Lorewalker Cho is also a thing but far less spicy than I’d hoped since all he did was stop the on-tempo Hobgoblin Paladin from playing his wish…