I struggle against Control Warrior anyway – it’s so hard not to just click “concede” to avoid the tedium of playing against it. I’m not even sure how good a deck it is as I’ve generally lost the will to live by about turn 5.

Handlock seems to be the natural home of the Faceless Rager – early Mountain Giants or Twilight Drakes with huge health can make the Rager really good. Even a silenced Doomsayer can be useful.

I’m not certain, but I think … I _think_ … I hate the card art even more than the Sir Annoy-o portrait.

… actually – this would be terrible with Jade Idol, thinking about it, wouldn’t it? You’d end up with a 1-mana card that summons a Golem (OK) and another 1-mana card that does absolutely nothing but shuffles 3 copies of itself into your deck?

I guess there could be some kind of lulzy Mill/Hakkar combo going on there maybe but otherwise…

Presumably the two cards you get are costed the same as the original. So playing Power of the Wild when Stalladris is on the board nets you a 2-mana 3/2 Beast and a 2-mana spell that gives all your minions +1/+1 … in your hand – neither of which is *that* spectacular.

It’s a decent value-generator though and at 2/3 for 2 mana it’s solid; if it was more expensive it would be harder to play it on the same turn as the spell you want to duplicate… but I dunno, I’ve just got a feeling that this *might* be getting over-rated. It’s nowhere near as good as Fandral with cards like Nourish as that gave you a 5-mana effect for free… whereas this will likely give you an expensive, potentially unplayable, card.

Then again, even played on turn 2, it’s a minion that your opponent *is* going to try their best to remove…

In Wild you’ve got Fandral – granted you _could_ use both,

Not quite the same though, you don’t really want to try infinite with Hoppers and Recruiters, you want to play a more tempo-oriented game by getting extra hoppers in the deck early and pulling them as fast as possible to generate multiple massive threats as soon as possible… but not necessarily an infinite number of them.

With Valeera and Zola you play a Hopper, then use Zola to add another to your hand then “Shadow Reflection Zola” to add another Zola to your hand for next turn, rinse and repeat – it takes card draw out of the equation guaranteeing an ever-larger hopper each turn.

First route you hope to out-tempo your opponent and kill them before they kill you, the second is better in a grindy game as it provides truly infinite value. To go infinite with hoppers and recruiters, late game, you’ll have to copy Recruiters into your deck as well as Hoppers – which you then have to draw, so is less consistent.

Ideally you want both options available – but without Zola and Valeera the Hollow…

Whatever the opposite of powercreep is (nerfcreep?) seems to be what they’re going for this expansion… maybe they have learned from past mistakes (KofT and MSG in particular) and they’re trying to lower the overall power level of the game now.

This is a crap-tonne of value – even more so with Shudderwock since both Hagatha AND the Horror are battlecries meaning that the ‘wock will give you another Horror and cast both the spells the original one did… though with random targets, so picking Lava Burst (as in the video) first time around could be a little risky.

Whether there will enough support for a slower Shaman package remains to be seen though – there are a lot of cards rotating out including Grumble, Kalimos, Healing Rain and Volcano … and all the Elemental synergy from Un’goro.

I think Swampqueen Hagatha could be great with the right support – however, if the meta is fast and Shaman doesn’t get some boosts to survivability, she’ll likely be too little, too late.

With Zola and Valeera the Hollow rotating out, Pogo-Rogue won’t be able to go infinite… this is probably the next best thing, but Pogo-Rogue isn’t exactly consistent.

It’ll need quite a bit more support, I think, to become *really* viable.

Found this article a little while ago – pretty much sums it up IMO: https://www.gamecrate.com/hearthstone%E2%80%99s-identity-crisis/21473

It’s Wild – you could just go with the Grim Patron, Deathspeaker, Knife Juggler, Defile combo if you want infinite knife pings… not constrained by the time limit then, nor reliant on drawing a specific one-of.

Sending Naturalize to HoF because it doesn’t fit the class identity rings a little hollow when they nerf the quintessentially Druid thing of being able to ramp into big monsters.

If they were worried about class identity they’d never have given Druid strong or cheap stall options (Spreading Plague, Crypt Lord), massive armour gain (Druid’s always had some, but never so much, nor as flexible) or Ultimate Infestation.

Even the Innervate nerf could have been handled in a more “Druidy” way; if they had made it something more like Preparation for Minions (e.g. “The next minion you summon costs 2 less”), that would have fit the class identity far more while nerfing the (possibly problematic) Malygos / Auctioneer builds at the same time.

They broke Druid’s class identity a long time ago – they’re going to have to start from scratch this standard rotation.

Since the first time I beat the Rumble Run was using Treasure From Below, I went with that… I know it’s OP against the computer. Against actual people, it can still be OP if you go first – they seem to just concede 🙂

I think the early days of Un’goro were my favourite in HS, before people had sussed out how insane the Rogue quest was, before infinite value from Death Knights, or Spreading Plague or “I win” on T2 by playing Keleseth – and the Lich King becoming the new Dr. Boom.

Personally I think KFT kinda broke the game 😐 Fun still, but broken.

At least they didn’t give Jeklik the Hir’eeks Hunger shrine this week 😉

“Secondary and tertiary decks may have up to 5 cards different from the primary deck.” … so it’s a sideboarding hack then?

Just go Hooktusk and Smorc… early Ship’s Cannon pretty much wins you the game.

“We’re also due for an anti-HP tech card anyway, since Mindbreaker is rotating out.”

… Sideshow Spelleater v2 incoming 😉

“Not being fun to play against” has been Priest’s core defining class attribute since forever 😐