If you look at this as a piece of Skeleton Mage, this is an integral piece that gives you longevity and is exciting to see.

If you look at this as a piece of Quest Mage, this is filling a huge gap of easily playable Frost spells that adds longevity and is absolutely the last thing you want to see. Quest Mage needs to be made even more unplayable.

This is good. In a vacuum, this goes in a lot of Mage decks.

In a Skeleton oriented deck, this card is a 2x and one of the best cards in the deck; you will hard mulligan for it likely. Freezing a minion is a very good effect. Summoning a 2/2 that progresses your endgame is also a good effect. 3 mana to get 3 uses of the aforementioned effect is very very good.

In a vacuum, this is probably like a 5 star card. In terms of how good it’ll be in a metagame, I highly doubt it’ll impact the meta much.

What they were thinking was this:
– Build a deck around summoning lots of skeletons
– Play this to explode your skeletons and then resummon them with the effect
– Play Kel’Thuzad to resummon all skeletons from the game.

Is it good? Probably not. Is this card the worst card I’ve ever seen? Definitely not. It requires a package of cards to work properly, but this is better than cards like Immolate or that legendary Warlock minion that came out last mindset (Commander Ulthok or whatever?).

Don’t sleep on this card. It looks like a crappy Blizzard at first glance, but if you build a skeleton deck, you’re going to be pushing face/value trading with the skeletons, playing this card to kill off your skeletons & resummon them, and the deathrattles from the skeletons are proccing to push more face/finish clearing board.

Skeleton Mage will likely be a trash meme deck, but this card is deceptively good in that deck.

Interestingly, you could combine this card with the 3 mana Rokara to make this weapon gain 4 durability. Rush -> gain 1/2 stats -> attack with hero -> rush -> gain another 1/2.

I think this card could be pretty awesome in a handbuffy style of deck with rush down board synergies. I think it’s absolutely Mutanus bait, but it’s super cool. I wonder if they’ll release weapon revival, because if so, this card suddenly becomes a build around card.

I mean this is far and away just one of the coolest cards ever. Outclassed in many ways by Crabatoa, but still just what a cool card. I wish you could reequip weapons, because if you could revive this card and sort of build around it, that would be one of the more interesting deck concepts out there.

Gonna reserve judgment until I see the rest of the set, but this is still just one of the coolest cards they’ve ever made.

Turn 3 do nothing isn’t as bad, but thinking in terms of later in the game, spending 3 mana to do nothing IS pretty bad. Look at how unplayable Immolate is, and how much people freaked out about how oppressive that card would be. Immolate sees play only because you can screw control & combo over because those decks can’t punish wasting 4 mana.

Any midrange or aggro deck will see you spend 3 mana on nothing and thank you for the extra tempo.

You are right though that this card combing with other Seed cards already played IS probably where it becomes pretty strong.

idk I’m kinda down on Wildseeds bc Dormant minions always seem better on paper than in practice. That said, this card makes them like a little bit better? You have to keep in mind that if this doesn’t hit the rush minion, you’re spending 3 mana to do nothing for a turn.

I think the power level of the Wildseed cards is gonna boil down to how easily you can fit them into Beast Hunter. I think the Taunt seed minion is absolute dog water, and waiting 2-3 turns for the Stag is a really long time. Yes, the weapon plus the body is amazing, but also the dormant 3 is really REALLY bad. I also think these cards mess with the Revive Pet pool enough to make them not necessarily worth it.

Maybe you slot out the Naga package and you put in this stuff, but I really dunno. Hot take but I think they’re just kinda meh.

I mean the secrets themselves are actually pretty strong. Kidnap is definitely playable, and Sticky Situation is just better than Cat Trick was, and that saw plenty of play.

To reply to the original comment though: Rogue wouldn’t want to play a 4 mana 3/4 on 4 *IF* that’s all it was. But fortunately for this card–it’s not all it is. 4 mana 3/4 that casts 2 or 4 mana worth of spells WITH Combo inherently meaning that you’re doing other stuff that turn…that’s a LOT of tempo and/or value all wrapped around a 3/4.

Essentially, this card deck thins 1-2 cards that you DON’T want to draw; it casts secrets that become really awkward to play around, and it provides a body that can trade with opposing early game minions. The 3 mana 3/3 that cast secrets from hand is and was patently just worse than this card. 1–it required you to have secrets in hand; 2–Rogue’s secrets back then were not as good as the ones now with the exception of that one that drew you 3 cards. It’s also worth noting that Secret Rogue back then was perfectly viable and decent–it just centered around Shadowhunter Hanarr, which was a card you often played pretty late in the game to create a really nasty board state for your opponent to answer.

I mean if you’re referring to just playing on curve, sure; it’s not a 4 mana cast 2. But if you look at it in terms of its value for mana cost, it’s essentially a free 3/4. There are so many ways you can enable its combo in Rogue though: you can Prep, you can Shadowstep, you can cast that new 2 mana deal 3 spell, you can coin this out on turn 3…

I’d argue that most of the time, this IS played as a 4 mana cast 2.

We do agree–fantastic card nonetheless.

This is maybe the easiest 5* of the set (either this or the Paladin reprint of Zilliax). We’ve seen 2 secrets now, both of which are good enough to see play in my opinion; and 4 mana to cast 2 secrets from deck on a 3/4 body is VERY freaking good. Cards like this are obviously powerful, but you have to tie the rating of them to the power of the support package. Rogue can coin this out on turn 3 to have a 3/4 that effectively Saps the next enemy minion played AND summons a 3/4 stealth minion if your opponent plays a spell–WOW, what a play.

Any card that has deck thinning attached to a tutor effect is very powerful, and this one happens to cast from deck a card type that is really awkward to draw. I almost feel like they shouldn’t have made this have a battlecry; maybe they should have just had the Combo effect. Guaranteeing deck thinning is strong, and we’ve seen exactly this effect see play on a 3 mana 2/4 body.

Now that we’ve seen 2 secrets, I feel pretty comfortable rating this card. Giving it a 4–the secrets are both very playable, and the secrets package could definitely fit into some kind of a Thief Rogue list. You’d have to make room for about 8-9 cards: Halkias, 2x Kidnap, 2x Sticky Situations, 1-2x whatever the 3rd secret is, and 2x Private Eye.

Halkias is a really solid card for Rogue because it’s a 5/4 that you have to keep answering, which can get really awkward for a lot of decks. If it gets to connect with face even just once, that’s very good for Rogue, as we all know how quickly games can just end against a Rogue with 2x Wicked Stab & 2x Tooth of Nefarian.

It’s entirely possible that the Secret Deck ISN’T a Thief deck; you’ll have interesting choices in deck building for Rogue because I don’t see a world where you DON’T play 2x Door of Shadows (getting extra Wicked Stabs or Tooths or even that new 2 mana Backstab/Prep card seems busted); and I can definitely see a world where maybe Maestra + tradable cards are too clunky to justify the Gnolls. That being said, my mind instantly thinks of some kind of Thief/Secret tempo deck that has Draka to help control board and push extra damage. You could also consider that new 3 drop which has hand hate if you control a secret, and it’s a pretty well statted minion (4/3) for a tempo oriented deck.

All in all, Halkias to me seems like a 3.5* card. He’s very much playable in a secret deck, though not likely the superstar of it. A lot of games will likely be decided by how much extra tempo you can generate out of Halkias.

Yes, as they’re cards you draw before they’re cast. So in effect, Curse Lock is going to be able to shuffle in a bunch of cards, and then add 2 damage to each tick of fatigue. It’s why I’m incredibly worried about this card because it’s yet again another instance of uninteractable damage for Warlock. If aggro isn’t fast enough/good enough, this could be a really unpleasant play experience.

oh wow. don’ttttt sleep on this one. could be incredibly busted. it’s a battlecry so you can’t interact with it besides delaying a turn, and some decks REALLY need the card draw. I’m I think concerned with Warlock using it to help push that extra few points of damage through, but I think it’s just really strong anti warlock & anti druid tech.

Yeah I’m on board with you here. I feel like the power level of this upcoming expansion is so dependent on Infuse being GOOD enough, and I don’t think it will be. I feel like we’re going to be stuck with a cycle of nerfs & tweaks so that we aren’t stuck in this same meta for another 3 months.

To add on: I’m incredibly DOWN on Infuse overall as a mechanic. It seems really bad if it only works when your own minions die. Infuse 5 is basically saying: “have this card in your hand early enough so that 5 minions of yours can die by turn 8”. That’s a really restrictive condition for the power granted (which yes, admittedly IS strong); AND, this is all not counting how awkward it can be to have an 8 drop that early in your hand.

I really just don’t see this card being dominant. It’ll definitely provide some crazy Jace-like turns for streamers & diehards, but I just don’t see this one working.

It’s a legendary that certainly does a lot, but idk really how much of a home it has. The relics don’t have Fel tag, so it won’t fit into that; it’s too expensive for Aggro; Deathrattle DH probably doesn’t want it (and also just sucks lol); Big Demons haven’t exactly developed into anything…

Idk, I also want to know how the upgrades work; does it increase every number by 1? If that’s the case, then upgrading the card draw to be “draw 3, discount each by 2” is pretty insane.

Hot take, I kinda think this card isn’t going to see play. I’ll give it a 2 for now, but maybe some crazy NoHands list pops up or something.

Also should add: the potential to copy Vessels later on also shouldn’t be missed. This card will likely be a core part of Rogue for the next two years.

Bananas strong. Getting an extra Wicked Stab or Tooth or Recon is just absurd. I expect to see this in pretty much every single Rogue deck. 5 stars, Rogue’s already looking pretty strong next expansion.

Nah, they’re right. “Dies to Viper” is not really salient criticism because forcing out a viper to this card means they’re sinking 3 mana into answering a free weapon and then they still have the 3/4 body to contend with.

If I’ve learned anything playing HS, it’s that ANY amount of chip damage Rogue can get in is really valuable. Rogue can always burst for stupid damage beyond like turn 5.

This card is very strong, regardless of whether or not the weapon loses 2 charges to an Ooze/Viper.