So, this is a particularly difficult card to analyse because its power level is very high, but it’s in a class which doesn’t really support it in any way. If this was a demon hunter card, it would be crazy powerful: 1 mana for 3 damage right from turn 1 is very good, and once you get to turn 4 (which is still in the early game, mind you) it also heals you. However, Paladin doesn’t have any weapons to use this with: they are mostly bad and/or unplayable because of Cariel. So, the question is: is this card good enough on its own or can it become a part of the midrange paladin package with Cariel as well? On one hand, it’s very good burst, on the other Paladin doesn’t need burst and it hardly benefits from it. All in all, I fear that this card won’t find a place in any paladin deck: Paladin’s strategy is usually much more board based, and you would more gladly play some excellent 1 mana paladin minion than gain 3 attack for one turn.

The stats are good, it’s a good tempo play and it curves off the bronze herald (the 3 mana 3/3 with lfiesteal and discover) perfectly. However, I don’t think the dragon deck will work. I don’t see it becoming more powerful than the Jailer Paladin, because its wincon Kazakusan, while it may come earlier than the Jailer, it’s also far less powerful, exceptionally so in a deck which doesn’t really have ways to use the Reward cards properly. Control decks loved Kazakusan because it replaced your deck, and if your deck is empty or full of removals which you don’t need anymore, than it was all the better; a midrange deck has more cards which it cares for (namely, Cariel, which you might not draw before Kazakusan even if you played Order in the Court because they cost the same amount of mana) and less card draw, making it so if you play Kazakusan with an empty board and an empty hand, you still might as well lose against any control deck with a Denathrius, a Jailer or some other big threat. The dragon legendary also doesn’t seem to fit well with this archetype, and I already talked about it in that review. This card is good, but the archetype won’t be.

It doesn’t look like a strong legendary to me. Not a lot of minions have less than 3 attack, and even if you do have the perfect play to pair it with, you just gain some minions with Rush and divine shield, nothing that protects her from being removed the turn later. If this card gave taunts instead of rush, then it would be far more powerful: but unfortunately, that’s not the case. And sure, it’s meant to be played with buff cards and handbuffs, but a card which only relies on other cards to be good better have an amazing effect, and this just doesn’t. You not only have to buff this card with something, you also need something to play afterwards so that you activate the effect; and mind you, if it’s something you handbuffed as well because it was in your hand with her, it might still not work because if it has the same amount of buffs and it didn’t have a lower attack than 3, then it’s still completely useless. I would much rather have something which gives me good stats or instant tempo, not some conditional legendary which works only in very specific comfort situations. I think that this might be the next Paladin legendary which interact with buff spells and that will also never find play.
And what if you buff it with the new 3 mana +3/+3 card or with BoK? It also sucks, because you either play those buffs in the same turn, making it a late game play for an effect which is only relevant in the early to mid game, or you have to rely on this surviving a turn, which is incredibly unlikely. Not only the opponent will do whatever they can to remove this, but it’s not like it has a lot of health anyways: 2 health for turn 2 is easy to remove, it can be dealt with by an empowered mage hp, by any early game warlock removal, and I could go on. If it was a 1 drop, perhaps a 2/2 or something like that, at least you could defend it with Sacred Steed on turn 2, like you do with Trogg, but this isn’t the case, and turn 2 offers the opponent a ton of ways to deal with a 3/2, and at that point you might as well play the 2 mana 3/2 raptor from the basic set. At least, that is a beast.

Right now, there aren’t any good paladin minions that you would want to cheat out, which makes me skeptical of this card already. And sure, 6 mana 5/5 + a free minion of whatever cost seems very good, but the health cost is not to be considered irrelevant: your health is a resource, sure, but it’s easy to get carried away and get railed by an aggressive deck with some burst. As to what minions would you want ot cheat, I don’t see many: the Countess, the Leviathan, Tyrion, that 8 mana 8/8 with Rush that summons 5/5s with taunt and that’s pretty much it. The Countess is limited to Pure decks, which are pretty bad (even if not as bad as many people think), Tyrion is unplayable because of the existence of Cariel, the 8/8 with Rush is just a bad card, so that makes the Leviathan the best option for this, and it doesn’t sound that exciting to be honest. Very powerful, sure, but it’s a 6 mana combo of 2 card which summons a bunch of minions all easily dealt with by some hard board removal.
However, even if this may not shine right now, be cautious of cards like these, because order in the court made it so all the heavy drops paladin has can and will be played on curve and in be in hand way before then: if you play order in the court, you can reliably have this by turn 6 and have 100% of the times your best minion to pair it with. What that minion will be, however, we will see.

I think that it’s definitely a fun card, but not a good one unfortunately. The issue with it is that it’s not useful unless in you’re in a very specific board case: for example, it is good to remove threats that might get resummoned because they won’t count as dead; it gets rid of deathrattle minions for a while without triggering their effects; it also puts the opponent in a bit of a tricky situation if they had a full board, since they would need to leave the board open for the resummoning in two turns. Is that enough to include the card in the deck? I am not sure, and the reason why is this: it only helps against other midrange decks, but it’s basically useless against aggro and control. For a 7 mana card, it isn’t the best thing I could imagine: against Aggro, it comes out too late; against Control, it doesn’t make that much if a difference, since Control decks take advantage from something that slows down the match. I do have to say that it might find a place anyway just because it’s good for the Jailer strategy, whether it’s in a Pure deck or in the Reno version of the archetype: you will always be able to draw this on curve because of Order in the Court, and it’s a good setup for both Cariel and Jailer, since they can’t remove big boards on their own the turn they’re played. After all, it doesn’t make it so you draw Cariel later (a big issue with including cards like Manta Rays in that archetype).
I don’t see it in thr Dragon archetype though. Just like Nozari, my beloved, it’s a dragon card that is way too controlish for a Dragon deck. Sure, it does set up for Kazakusan, but the Dragon deck seems like a midrange that wouldn’t want to stall the game most of the times. It’s definitely an inspired design, and it will be fun to experiment with, but I don’t think that it will be a stable in every deck or anything.

Genuine question: how many people actually play Mercenaries? Because I really haven’t seen anyone talk about it for months. They put so much effort on this gamemode and it bombed so hard , it’s honestly unbelievable.

So, this card has very nice stats and it might be very annoying to deal with for some decks, but I don’t see what kind of deck would want to play this card at all. Undead Shaman seems to be a token aggro deck, making this too slow for it, and Shaman doesn’t really have other decks which might find a use for this.

On one hand, this is better than something like the 3/1 for DH which had the same effect, but it’s not so much better that it makes me think that it will become a stable for the class. 3 damage to a random enemy just isn’t that good, exceptionally so when the control decks can now spawn boards of minion which can easily such up all the damage. What does make this seem pretty nice though is the fact that it doesn’t cost much and that it’s a fine payoff for a token deck, such as undead shaman. Even though I don’t think it will be played in any other deck (even murloc shaman would much rather play a warleader or a bloodlust, which are more reliable), undead shaman might be able to make this the proper payoff for building a token board. But is that payoff going to be enough? Probably not, which is what makes me doubt that the deck will find a place in the meta: a 3 mana card which does nothing when you play it and which has the only expressed intent of doing some damage to the enemies (which will not be enough to kill the enemy hero because right now all control decks have 40 hp to start with) doesn’t strike me as the big payoff that deck needs.

There is a 2 mana 2/2 undead which gives a minion Deathrattle: summon a 2/2 zombie with Rush (I assume the zombie to be an undead as well) which makes me hopeful about this card: it might just so happen to be a very powerful curve which kind of snowballs in a way because if the enemy decides to not kill this minion to gain on tempo they only give you more time to buff it up. However, it also has the glaring issue of being very weak on tempo without the cards to support it, and currently I don’t see enough Deathrattle providers to make this a very powerful 1-drop; but, the fact that it is a 1 drop makes it all the more likely to be played, since an aggro undead deck would need many 1 drops and this might as well be one of them. I am very torn when it comes to this card, but all in all I think it might just work in the deck it’s supposed to. But how stronge will Undead Shaman be? Too early to judge, but I haven’t see anything powerful enough to make me go “Ok, this is why you should play Undead Shaman instead of Murloc or Elemental Shaman”, so I’m not very hopeful.

This Legendary strikes me as particularly weak. First of all, I hope there is more to the Undead package for Shaman than we have currently seen, so I’ll lapse my judgement on that, BUT on an average aggro deck this card just doesn’t get there for me. When it comes to Aggro decks, Shaman already has one of the most powerful payoffs for a board that sticks for more than one turn, and that is Bloodlust, and the reason why it’s good is because it closes out the game. Something which i have seen times and times again is people not realising how payoff cards for Aggro only have a reason to exist if they close out the game, and this just doesn’t. Rotgill costs too much for a Shaman to be able to build a board AND then in the same turn play this right afterwards; at the same time, if a board sticks for more than one turn, you would more gladly play bloodlust and end the game rather than this, that just doesn’t. Now, I am not saying this can’t find some use: after all, it’s both an undead and a murloc, making it particularly flexible in both of those archetypes. In a murloc deck, it can be discounted to 3 mana and generally speaking murloc decks always include new murlocs even though they might not be the strongest to prioritise consistency: after all, if you do manage to buff a board up with Rotgill, it will be a pain to remove for the opponent, since every time they kill a minion, all the others will become stronger and more dangerous. All in all, I don’t expect this to be the strongest card out there, but I think it will see play in Murloc decks.

You can’t play Cariel with this because it’s not a minion

I’m not ecstatic about this card, even though it does seem really powerful in a vacuum. On its own, this is 5 damage on turn 2, which is quite a lot (assuming you have a 1 drop that survived the enemy’s turn), but what worries me is the lack of health buffs. While this card does deal a lot of damage, it doesn’t make your minions any more likely to survive. Something like Steed on 2 might not do as much damage directly to the face, but can make it so some minions can survive for several turns, which is particularly good with some 1 drops, like Trogg or the 2/1 which draws you cards. The two attack to your hero does help you fight off the enemy minions, but there is something clunky about this card which just doesn’t convince me. For now, I’ll just say that if there was an Aggro Paladin deck dependant from the dudes, perhaps it could be a secret deck, I would probably play this card, but I don’t see it in a wide range of decks.

The usuale showcase card for the new mechanic, will never see play.

Neutral cards which provide board clear are always not to underestimate, since some classes might need a board clear and have to resort to the neutral cards to get one. However, there are way better board clears than this in Standard right now, and this strikes me as a particularly understatted minion with the effect that it has. Contrary to a Consacration (a surprisingly viable card even today) it affects your minions too, making it way too weak to see actual play.

It’s kinda crazy how most of the Neutral cards released in the newer sets would be insane if they were in Standard a couple of years ago but now are completely forgettable and will never see play in anything. Everytime the newer expansion comes out, there is a continous flow of Neutral garbage which is just there because Neutral cards need to be like this for the most part. This one is part of that bunch: it’s not that it’s a bad card, but there are cards which do the same thing she does, but better and more synergistically. I don’t think this card will see any play.

It seems like garbage to me. The baseline is this: no deck needs a value card which gives you random spells anymore. Decks are highly sinergistic, value doesn’t cut it when in a turn or two the enemy drops a fat Denathrius and obliterates your face with 30+ damage. That being said, it might find its uses in some decks which needs big spells. I think that Mage has better spells to play and recast than this, even though it is a Holy spell so Varden can replay this card 100% of the times; Paladin might use this in a Holy deck, but I really don’t know why he would do that; Shaman has some Spell school synergies, but this is just one card, and not even a good one. I really can’t imagine a deck wanting this, but who knows, maybe some new synergies come out and then this will be insane, but I doubt it.

I feel like what you said relates to what I claimed earlier. The consistency downside is there, but it’s hard to see, since it’s hard to understand when the enemy makes a suboptimal play because of their own incompetence or because of a bad hand. But it’s not just that: they might not use a board removal because they want to keep it for later or not have it at all; they might have a slow deck, or a fast one with bad consistency. What I’m trying to say is that when the downside happens, you as the opponent don’t notice it; when the downside doesn’t happen (because there’s always the chance that it doesn’t and that the Mage does have the perfect Widlfire-on-turn-1 curve) you do. It’s what makes Renathal frustrating for me to play against when I play and Aggro deck against it: it’s either a stomp on my part, and I don’t pay much attention to it because it’s literally how the deck I play should work, or it feels like the opponent just has 10 more hp without any kind of downside.

The thing which bothers me about Renathal is that it gives you a very powerful effect which makes you stronger 100% of the times while having a drawback which is likely but not certain.
In a control matchup, a Renathal deck can both use the 10 additional hp and the 10 additional cards: having more resources is good against decks which want to leave you dry. However, what concerns me most is how Renathal works in a deck which has to face aggro or midrange decks, which perhaps don’t use Renathal themselves. The drawback for having 10 additional health is having 10 more cards: when I use an aggro deck and fight against a Renathal control deck, I always ask myself how the 10 more cards have affected their game. Sometimes, I see the opponent using pretty weak cards and doing sub-par plays and I realise that that’s the drawback for having so much more natural protection against my aggression: for example, a Mage might not have the freezing cards they need in hand because they have a couple of Babbling Books, which wouldn’t be in the deck if not for the Renathal requirement. However, that’s the issue: the drawback is likely to happen, it is not a certainty. The Mage might draw the Babbling Books, but they might also just draw all the good cards they need. They might have a hard time finding Vandar, or they might have it right on curve.
When next expansion comes out, the number of good cards in Standard will be at an all-time highest: finding 40 good cards to put in the deck won’t be as much of an issue as it is right now. I fear that Renathal will become a stable for any deck if this is the way things are going and it doesn’t feel fair for one card to be so influential and powerful on its own.

This card feels a bit awkward. So, the payoff in a Big Demon Hunter deck is pretty insane: 5 mana for 3 very big minions is very powerful, one hell of a late game swing. The issue is that you need to infuse it first with demons, and doing so in a Big Demon Hunter deck isn’t so easy. There are cards capable of doing so reliably, but the issue is that if you do include token demon generators, then they’re also going to pollute the pool of minions you’re going to summon with this. I’d say that it’s probably gonna fit into the decklist, but I don’t think that the deck is going to be good because of this card.

If it had lifesteal, then maybe, but since it doesn’t it’s just absolutely trash. It’s not like this card doesn’t have a good power level, because it does, and I’m sure that in arena it will crash things, but in standard there is no deck which would want such a heavy drop just to clear a couple of minions. Unlike that 7 mana 6/6 legendary which you could decide what to give in terms of keywords, this is just bad when the board is empty. And also, since it doesn’t have Rush by default, you also risk not getting it if you’re up against two minions, making this also unreliable.