Cursore1610's Comments
Suspicious Usher
1 mana 1/3 discover a legendary minion is already not incredible, because you don’t need random legendary minions in priest decks, but this is even worse than that. Feels like a filler fodder to me.
Mysterious Visitor
I actually don’t know how this card works. Terrible wording btw. Does this reduce cards in hand or all future cards which you will steal from the opponent as well?
Boon of the Ascended
With Pelagos in play, this can create 2 8/8s on turn 4, one of which also has taunt. Is there anything else to say? Actually, yeah. Because, without Pelagos, it’s not that good. Sure, Aggro Priest relies on having huge minions early on, but this feels like a win more card rather than an actual win condition. Is the existence of Pelagos enough for this to be played? Might be, but I am not completely sold on it.
Pelagos
This card seems pretty insane for Naga priest, or whatever other highroll aggro priest will come out of the next expansion. It basically casts Ineer Fire every time you cast a spell on a minion, and there are some pretty degenerate combos you can do with this card and the buffs priest currently has in standard.
The fundamental issue with legendaries which are very powerful in certain specific aggro decks but don’t provide long term value or aren’t just finishers is that you don’t have a way to make them reliable. An aggro deck needs to be consistent, and to be consistent it needs to contain cards that are good whatever the mulligan: they can’t afford to play a whole package just in case they get that specific legendary which then doesn’t even make then win the game. However, I don’t see this being a particularly big issue in an Aggro Priest deck: that archetype has always been highrolly and has always relied on the idea of being able to do incredibly powerful plays only if the stars align their way, and if they don’t they just kind of suck. Pelagos provides more consistency to that deck because they don’t need to put any package in to make it work, amling it so Pelagos just become another card which they might draw and which just might win them the game right there and then.
If it wasn’t clear, I don’t like that kind of deck and I don’t like Pelagos, but I can’t deny that it feels very, very good in that specific deck.
Sinful Sous Chef
This is just a good 1 drop card, I can see it becoming a stable in many paladin archetypes.
Dude paladin is the one that comes up to mind, and this is an obvious inclusion there. However, this is an even more obvious inclusion in a Quest paladin deck, since it gives you 3 1-drops at the cost of one single card in the deck (just be sure to not play both the recruits in the same questline step, since you need to play different 1 mana cards for it to count them).
Another not so obvious inclusion might be in a handbuff deck: the ram commander was a stable in that deck for a while, so I don’t see why this wouldn’t be the same.
Also, I can see this being played in Pure Paladin as well: midrange decks need good 1 drops, and since paladin only has 2 other good 1 drops I can see this being the third one. However, it will need some experimentation and refining, and out of all the 1 drops paladin has, this is definitely the weaker one in a deck which doesn’t have interactions for the silver hand recruits.
Stewart the Steward
It reminds me of Dragonrider Talritha, but in a good way. The difference between that card and this one is that the value you get from this one is much easier to obtain: you can hero power every turn, and that’s the worst thing you could do to activate this effect, since you will have to pay 2 mana for it. In a much more likely scenario, you cam curve off this boy with the 4 mana 2/4 which summons 2 silver hand recruits: if you managed to activate the infused effect as well, you will have a 2/4, a 3/1 with divine shield and a 6/4 with divine shield by turn 4, and it’s not like it’s some unlikely scenario. That being said, this kind of cards also has the obvious issue of being pretty bad on curve: when you play this on turn 3 you’re not making a horrible play, but also not a shit one. All in all, I can see this being a very good option for a dude deck, whether it will be a quest deck or not. But will those decks be viable or not? I am afraid I don’t see a lot of reasons to run them instead of playing a mech paladin deck, for example, so I do not have high hopes.
Another thing which should be considered is whether this might become an auto include in basically any midrange paladin deck which might benefit from the infinite value. I honestly don’t think so, but the ability to constantly have a 4/4 on board just for 2 mana is something to be considered: you could also go for some combo where you activate this deathrattle multiple times and create huge recruits every turn, but that doesn’t strike me as anything but a meme. All things considered, I don’t see this card being played outside of the decks it is meant for, and it’s not what will make them work, so it’s dependant on whether those decks will work or not in any given expansion.
Service Bell
So, 3 mana draw 2 is not ideal for a class which has severe lack of card draw and card generation. Assuming this could see play in a Pure Paladin deck, it can reach out for two good cards you need or even one you need even more, like the Countess. The issue is that it’s very slow: 3 mana only spent to draw 1 or 2 cards is more than a midrange deck can sometimes afford to spend. I am not saying this is unplayable: I think that you can probably slot this card in a Pure Paladin deck just to add consistency to the deck, but it’s not amazing by any mean. Remember that sometimes this will be a 3 mana tracking, and that’s not good on tempo nor value by any stretch of the word. All in all, not the worst thing, but not the best either.
Great Hall
I feel like many people are underestimating the potential of this card. It being a location, it effectively makes it so the enemy knows that whenever they create a minion with a lot of stats, they are going to be punished for it. This basically cockblockes a lot of strategies which rely on overwhelming the opponent and try to catch them off guard with big stats, something a lot of different classes have done with very different archetypes and strategies. Cards like Van Cleef, the various kinds of Giants still in standard, the evolve mechanic, the new 7/7 legendary for DH, the various board buffs and handbuffs Paladin has right now…. all of that can become pretty much useless when confronted with a 2 mana card which can’t be removed and can’t be interacted with. The best part is that it lasts as long as you want it to: you don’t have to keep it for a certain specific threat you’re planning to counter because you can just throw it in there and wait for it, and either the enemy tries to bait you into using all 3 charges on something else, or it will simply have to accept that the first three big shots they have will necessarily miss.
I didn’t even mention that this card can also target your own minions. It’s definitely a plus, and I can see that being worthwhile, but I also think this card is much more useful as a scar tactic for the opponent’s big minions rather than a buff for your own minions.
Elitist Snob
Ziliax but for the Pure paladin archetype or at least a class cards heavy deck. Ziliax was one of the best cards ever made, but it did also have magnetic, although Elitist Snob makes up for it with the +2 health. So, is it good as Ziliax was? I don’t think so: the issue here is that it relies on a pretty harsh deck restriction AND, most importantly, on you having enough cards in hand to activate all its effects. Now, I’m gonna assume that if you have 4 paladin cards in hand you are always going to get all 4 effects, because if that’s not the case and you might get one effect more than once even before getting all the others this card starts to fall short pretty quickly. However, even if that’s the case, I can see this card being played for midgame tempo and board control by a Holy Pure paladin deck: it has all the potential to be the lifegain and board control card that midrange deck needed to really start being a thing. I guess we’ll see how this goes when we start to mess around with it.
Divine Toll
Extremely random and extremely ineffective. I really don’t see why would you ever play this card over something that actually either summons good minions or removes the enemy’s. All in all, one of the worst cards paladin has received in the expansion.
Buffet Biggun
In a dude paladin deck you can reliably activate this by turn 4, and I will say that it’s maybe not as awful as most other infuse cards if topdecked. Not only is it easy to infuse cards in a token deck, like Quest paladin will be, but it also summons Silver Hand recruits, which can be buffed by either Cariel or Stewart. When this card is infused, though, it suddenly becomes that much more powerful, summoning a really aggressive and generally powerful board. I can see this being very good in the right deck, but the issue is that the Quest paladin archetype is so bad from the get go that some cards really need to pull through if it is to become viable.
Vengeful Visage
Yeah, it’a shit card unfortunately. It’s even worse than Mirror Image, and that secrets isn’t even good. Like, all you have to do to make it so this card is useless is just attack with the weakest minion you have: as simple as that. All in all, definitely not what secret tempo mage needs right now, nor ever.
Solid Alibi
Similarly to Time Out!, this card seems pretty good at stalling, but also necessitates a deck which wants to stall. I don’t know if the Big Spell/Hero Power/Varden Mage wants to stall THAT bad, but it has to be noted that this is a Frost spell, making it so it gets recasted by Varden. Mage has a lot of ways to discover and generate spells, something Paladin didn’t have at the point in time Time Out! was in standard: that makes this spell especially powerful, being able to be chained up through several different turns. Sure, it doesn’t make you completely immune, but it still makes you very hard to deal damage to, and I think that the effect is almost the same as being completely immune when you have high amounts of health. However, when you’re low, Time Out! provides a complete protection from any form of damage, while this doesn’t, and I think that should at least be mentioned. Of course, it’s not as good as Ice Block was, but it is on the same vein, so we already know how powerful stalling cards can be when paired with the burn Mage has access to. Watch out for Solid Alibi: this kind of cards eventually always find a way to be incredibly unfun to play against.
Nightcloak Sanctum
Seems average. Good tempo, it can lock a minion out of the game for 3 turns, but if you compare it to the 4 mana card for Shaman which summons 3/4 at the end of every turn, this seems to fall pretty short. The volatile skeletons are very easy to get rid of, and the 2 damage deathrattle just doesn’t feel impactful enough, especially so when it goes randomly to any enemy, even the enemy hero. All in all, don’t see this doing much to improve an already bad deck, and at the same time I also don’t see a non-volatile skeleton deck using a card such as this.
Kel'Thuzad, the Inevitable
There you go: the finisher of the volatile skeleton deck, and it kinda works. As a finisher, it’s pretty average, while still having some definite issues. For example, you can’t use Brann to double its battlecry, nor can you use Zola to put another copy into your hand. If you compare it to the 8 mana 8/8 which does 10 dmg to all enemies, it’s easy to see how this falls short: not only is it far easier to activate that card, but it also deals massive amounts of damage to every single enemy. Considering how random Kel Thuzad is and how many volatile skeletons you would need to make it actually powerful, I predict this is not going to be enough for an already dubious deck to work.
Frozen Touch
Cool card, but is it really worth it? How reliably can you repeat infusing this card? I fear that it’s not as easy as it may seem. Sure, a volatile skeleton deck might pull it off, having so much token generation, but it still feels clunky and doesn’t help that gameplan in the slightest. I don’t see any other mage deck having nearly enough minions to use this more than a couple of times, and even then why not use Ignite instead? Tbh, this card just seems awful and unecessary through and through.
Deathborne
While still being the best way to summon a lot of volatile skeletons, this card manages to be the worst one out of the ones we got to see. It’s simply too situational and hard to make work: not a lot of decks are that susceptible against board removals which only do 2 damage, and the fact that it hits your board too isn’t that good. Sure, it kills and replaces your volatile skeletons that you already summoned, but apart from those it also damages the rest of your minions, and it just feels a bit too weak for 6 mana. Not to mention that it’s completely useless against control decks, which makes it so Kel Thuzad also will struggle to leave that much of an impact against them.
Cold Case
The volatile skeleton archetype is pretty bad I feel like, but this card here is the most “fine” one out of all the others, including the location. It gives a bit of protection, it craetes a couple of minions and then calls it a day. It’s fair, but also very flexible, being good on curve against all kinds of different decks. That said, I don’t see it being played outside of the volatile skeleton archetype, and if that archetype doesn’t pull through (like I suspect) then I am afraid this card won’t either.
Chatty Bartender
This kind of card is always scary, as in it should be feared by any kind of deck which is interested in creating wide boards and has no way of directly removing her. That being said, its effect isn’t immediate, and it’s pretty much useless against decks which do have ways of removing her right away. I am already imagining destroying this girl with the full might of the Leviathan, but there are a lot of Rush cards and removal spells which can easily take care of her. All things considered, I see this being a good inclusion in the secret tempo deck which may or may not exist in the next expansion, and I don’t think there is enough there for that deck to exist yet.
Insane value card. Basically 3 hands of adal for 3 mana, just overpowered on many different levels. Sure, the turn you play it you’re paying 3 mana for hand of adal, but the fact that this provides so much value even later in the game is just pretty insane. It is also exactly what an aggro priest deck needs: buffs and card draw, adding consistency to a deck which only lacks exactly that.
I do have to admit that I don’t think this card will be played in many other priest decks: control deck aren’t quite so in meed when it comes to buffs and card draw, but Quest Priest might run it to fill the 3 mana spot in the Quest.