Pally wants to cast its 2 cost and lower minions at specific times/to get their battlecries, so this won’t help them. Hydrologist is so much better when its battlecry goes off, Doomsayer is a specific time play to reduce aggro, and Pyro is their board clear. None of those want to get pulled. Pass.

In Arena, this could possibly work, but it sounds too difficult to set up/draft around and possibly even too weak once you do to really matter.

Standard: 1/5
Arena: 1/5

Well, currently the only Pally Buff that sees play (and that’s being generous since Pally has really fallen out of favor) is Spikeridge Steed. But honestly… that’s pretty much enough. A 7 mana 3/7 Taunt that summons a 2/6 taunt when it dies? That sounds playable. And what if you’ve already cast both of your Spikeridge Steeds? A 5/13 Taunt that summons two 2/6s when it dies for 7? That’s pretty nuts. I don’t know if you’d be willing to play any of the other pally spells to make this work, but honestly Spikeridge is probably plenty. This seems like a card that Pally will happily add to its growing ranks of awesome Legendaries.

In arena, it all depends on if how many Spikeridge Steeds you’ve drafted at the time you see this card. 1 probably isn’t enough, but if you’ve got 2, you pick this card for sure. Most of the time though, this card will be mediocre or even horrible. I’ll give it an extra point though because getting it in a deck where it works out doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch (especially since Blessing of Kings is another option that’s commonly picked in Pally arena).

Standard: 4/5
Arena: 2/5

Wow this is bad. So we either have 2 mana for a 2/2, a 1/3 taunt, a 1/3 Spell Damage +1, or 1/3 Healing totem. All of those sound bad with the possible exception of the Spell Damage one, but Kobold Geomancer and Bloodmage Thalnos both exist, so why would you even bother with this? It isn’t even sturdier than Kobold Geomancer since the 0/2 is still just its own body. Is this for that stupid Stormcaller dream? Blizzard, you’re putting too many eggs in this basket. It’s not happening.

In arena this is poor, but playable in a pinch. A pair of 1/1s for 2 is bad, but sometimes you just have to deal with that. Its flexibility helps it a bit.

Standard: 1/5
Arena: 2/5

This is obviously supposed to pair with the stormcaller, but wouldn’t you rather just play Spirit Echos or something? Basic totems aren’t that good, even when you get a bunch of them, and trying to make the Stormcaller dream happen isn’t worth running such a poor card.

Horrible arena card. Just awful.

Standard: 1/5
Arena: 1/5

Well, the good news is twofold: Firstly, a 5 mana 5/5 isn’t that bad on its own. Obviously you’d never play a 5 mana 5/5 vanilla, but with the right text, this card can become super good. Now obviously 5 mana for a 5/5 AND Al’Akir is absolutely insane. But the condition of needing all 4 basic totems on the board… oof. And there’s no real good way to cheat this out even with Wicked Witchdoctor, because that CAN summon duplicate totems. Unfortunately, you’re going to need to compromise your deck and bend too far backwards to make this even a possibility of happening, and too likely the setup will get your killed, and the reward isn’t even enough to win the game on its own. So this isn’t happening in standard.

In Arena the effect will obviously almost never go off, but a 5 mana 5/5 isn’t too bad of a body. And any time you DO get the battlecry off, you’ll probably just win. It’s a low pick, but it’s not a card you’ll feel bad about picking even if you do have to pick it up.

Standard: 1/5
Arena: 2/5

The problem is that you really, really want your DK to summon two Despicable Dreadlords to get the Consecration effect on the board. If you saturate your pool with 1/3 Demons, you lower your chances of getting those Dreadlords. Don’t get me wrong, getting Voidlord is a great bonus, but Dreadlord is so good on its own that you might not want to risk not getting it. Also, if you’re running Doomguards, you also definitely want to get those rather than the 1/3s.

Because of that, this card has clunky interactions with the DK; it doesn’t automatically synergize as well as you think it does.

It’s 6 mana Draw 3 cards. That’s a pretty relevant and fairly immediate effect. People play Nourish in Arena, yeah? And they can’t immediately use those cards that they drew because they play it on 5 mana? Well, there you go. And for that extra mana you’ll be drawing cards for the rest of the game unless they happen to have a weapon removal card.

Trust me dude, Mages don’t mind spending a turn drawing cards, especially when they can just Blizzard/Flamestrike the board the following turn, thus negating whatever momentum the opponent got from you “doing nothing” on your turn. And then you have a permanent card draw engine for the rest of the game. Which is bonkers nuts in Arena.

Or, let me put it a different way: Mana Tide Totem is a solid card that draws a card every turn. Shaman doesn’t mind throwing that down to draw a card with the potential to draw more, spending a turn “doing nothing”, but it’s easily removable. Now for double the mana it draws 3 cards instead of 1 every turn and the opponent almost certainly can’t remove it. Yeah the totem is cheaper and on a less relevant turn, but Mage has the tools necessary to make up for that, especially for the reward of a constant reload effect.

The concern I have is that by the time Druid is dropping Nourish and UI, how relevant is a 4/4, even if it’s free? And it isn’t entirely “free” either because it takes up a deck slot. Is this efficient enough for Druid to even care and clear out that deck slot for this guy? I think there’s a fair chance that it simply isn’t efficient enough for Druid to even notice it.

This seems like it has potential. Casting free minions is good, but we have two interesting parallels to compare it to: Happy Ghoul and Thing From Below. While Happy Ghoul saw SOME play, it ultimate left, as a 3/3 wasn’t competitive enough and wasn’t as convenient as people wanted it to be to get out. Thing From Below, is of course still an amazing card, and it was one that you could build up to be 0 cost over time, so you could start your turn with it that way. This one… doesn’t compare with either of them in that light. It can’t be 0 cost at the start of the turn like TFB, and the effect that it needs to pull off is more impactful but more expensive than Happy Ghoul. I’m a little stumped on this thing. It seems like the classes that would be most able to run it are Druid and Mage, since they have the best expensive spells, but it doesn’t sound like something they’d really want to put in their deck; not really an impactful enough card. Pally might want it; they’ve got Spikeridge Steed and they like to have free minions to buff/flood the board. If a token-ish aggro Pally becomes popular again, this might see its way into that deck. Otherwise, I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Poor in arena for the most part where expensive spells are probably uncommon, but when it goes off is big enough to turn the tide.

Standard: 2/5
Arena: 2/5

It’s an interesting redesign of Hungry Dragon, though if we’re being honest, this looks even worse than Hungry Dragon. Hungry Dragon could be seen as a 5 mana 5/6 since the opponent got a 1-drop, or something like a 4 mana 4/4 if you subtract that opposing stats (probably an average of 1/2). This strikes me more as a 6 mana 5/6, since you’re effectively giving your opponent two mana. And some classes can do some gross things with those cheap spells, like Rogue. Even outside of rogue, consider that you’re giving your opponent a pre-nerf Innervate. Does that sound like a thing you want to do? Of course not. This card is bad.

In Arena this will be a sub-optimal pick, but playable.

Standard: 1/5
Arena: 2/5

So we take Beneath the Grounds, and for one extra mana, we tack on an upfront 4/4? That sounds like a bargain! Of course, a 4 mana 4/4 is bad, but if even one of these ambushes comes out, it suddenly becomes an insane 4 mana 8/8. Anything beyond that is just bonkers. And now the Ambushes are in your deck, but I think that just makes it better. Rogue is known for rapidly drawing cards in Miracle, and it seems like a match made in heaven. Time will show whether Miracle can fit this in (I’m not personally much of a Rogue player myself so I can’t say for certain), but it seems like it’ll work well. And this card can be Shadowstepped, which also sounds fun. And these auto-cast Ambushes replace themselves? I like this card. I like it a lot. Time will tell on if its unfair enough to see play in the meta, but I’m going to be extremely optimistic in my rating of this card because I just like it.

And it also sounds good in Arena. Less good, as you’re going to be drawing less cards, but it seems very plausible to drop this on turn 4 and at least see one of these ambushes come out before game end for insane value.

Standard: 5/5
Arena: 5/5

Harkens back to Entomb of old, but instead of you getting the creatures, your opponent gets them. That means that Fatigue Priest will never, ever use this. But that doesn’t really matter because Razakus loves this card. Just for that fact, I think this card will be insane in Standard. Outside of that deck though, I’m not sure how much Priest, a traditionally control oriented class, will actually want this.

In Arena, this is going to be a good enough board clear, provided that you can end the game without going into super late game.

Standard: 5/5
Arena: 3/5

Well hello Joust, I didn’t expect to see you again after both you and Inspire died the in train wreck/dumpster fire that was The Grand Tournament.

Remember how King’s Elekk was one of the only (if not the only) good joust card? Because this is basically King’s Elekk, but for spells, and in the most spell advantaged class running around. The only thing that really keeps this card from being just outright bonkers nuts on a stick is that Ultimate Infestation is running around. But this is still insanely good and I expect to see plenty of mages running this.

In Arena I think this card is still really good, especially because of spell scarcity. Generally mages get more spells and more expensive spells than any other class in the game in Arena, so this will go off a lot and get you your important game breaking spells.

Standard: 5/5
Arena: 5/5

(Imaginary) points for cool design, but a quick number crunch shows us how poor this card is. The mana investment here is a whopping 41 mana and a minimum 5 turns (Which will likely be more) for this dream to bloom. For that 41 mana you get 33/36 in stats (which, PS, in my book is still pretty far below what I’d want stat-wise for 41 mana) and a “win-the-game” effect. But wait, it isn’t a win-the-game effect, because the still have whatever they have in their hand and on the board to beat you. And if you just spend your entire turn destroying their deck and not affecting the board along with all the turns you spend playing inefficient cards to get this far and are somehow not dead already, they’re either about to kill you, or their deck was so bad that you didn’t have a chance of losing anyways. It’s a cute dream, but not one that’ll ever make it into even a truly dedicated Warlock deck. To be fair, there are a LOT of control Warlock cards around and being released, but I think this whole combo is too inefficient to ever actually get you anywhere.

In Arena, this is even more laughably bad. Not a prayer you’ll get it off.

Standard: 1/5
Arena: 1/5

This is a very dangerous card. Six mana draw three cards is a little below the curve, but because it happens EVERY turn, it’ll very quickly give you insane value if the opponent can’t quickly destroy it. On the flip side of that, if you can’t quickly play the cards you’re drawing, you’ll start burning and then fatiguing. In the right tempo mage though, this card will just win games, and mage has a habit of finding ways to make cards insane. I was going to avoid giving this card the 5/5 treatment just because of the potential disaster it could bring, but honestly, card advantage is so important that I think it’s going to be very unlikely that this card won’t just be insane always.

In arena… come on, this card is going to be nuts in arena. You see it, you pick it.

Standard: 5/5
Arena: 5/5

Now, the stats on this for draw a card are good, and generally if you’re going to be putting a weapon in your deck, it’s going to be a good one, so I’m optimistic about this card. It’s easy to manipulate what you’ll draw, and it’s usually something really good. If there’s a really insane Legendary Weapon this might just win you the game, and it can even pull you weapons that you normally can’t draw like Ashbringer. I think it has some real potential, but that’ll depend greatly on the weapons that we see come out of this set.

In Arena, you’ll avoid this card most of the time, but all it can take is one Truesilver Champion in your deck to make this card really good. But like always, you’ll have to regulate your weapons, as too many can be really damaging to a deck.

Standard: 3/5
Arena: 1/5 (non-weapon class); 3/5 (Weapon Class)

People seem to forget that “Worse Savannah Highmane” is still really good. I think it’s pretty realistic to run this in a deck with just Highmanes. Putting four Highmanes in your deck seems solid to me, but it on its own isn’t going to be enough to pull hunter out of its rut. While I want the Deathrattle Hunter to be a thing and while I think this card is good, I don’t think good is good enough realistically. We’ll have to see if this Deathrattle package will ever be enough to work, but I’m willing to give it an extra optimism point, especially because I personally really like Deathrattle Hunter.

In arena, this card is usually going to be bad, and sometimes it’ll be decent to insane, which isn’t going to be enough to make this card useable, unfortunately.

Standard: 2/5
Arena: 1/5

This card isn’t quite as bad as people seem to think it is… but it’s still pretty bad. There are cheeky ways to cheese it out or abuse it, but most of those ways are too inconsistent to be worth risking just playing a vanilla 7 mana 3/3. Just here for the memes.

In arena, this is a very swingy card, but most of the time it’s going to be REALLY bad.

Standard: 1/5
Arena: 1/5

On paper, this is the anti-aggro card to end all other anti-aggro cards, but not only is true aggro not super prominent right now, but this card is played too late to be relevant against true aggro. By turn 9 you’ve either already stabilized or already lost. This also doesn’t play super nice with Warlock DK because it saturates the pool of dead Demons with all these 1/3, which isn’t what you want to see. I don’t even think the Control Warlocks will want this, but there are enough numbers here for me to avoid saying that it will be completely useless.

In Arena, this is a really solid value card. 6/18 for 9 is really good.

Standard: 2/5
Arena: 4/5

Setting up this card is difficult, but potentially great with the right cards. Anything with Charge suddenly becomes a machine gun, but that likely won’t be a popular use of this. To be honest though, it seems unnecessary even in Miracle Rogue, and no other types of Combo Rogues have ever really been relevant. I’d like to give it a shot in Jade Rogue, but that has never been good and it probably won’t be made good with this. It has some potential as a combo piece, but it may not even be until a future set.

It’s going to be pretty poor in arena where getting that value is going to be tough without being able to build your deck around this. While it is “drawing you cards,” if those are just 1 mana 1/1s, it’s not going to be much help.

Standard: 2/5
Arena: 1/5