But wouldn’t Cold Light Oracle be a better choice overall, then?

In my oppinion, you can’t blame no one for playing a good deck on ladder.

To be honest, I think (as harsh as this might sound) that laddering isn’t about fun, it’s about competition. And within any competition, you use the best possible combination of available ressources to achieve the best result possible.

Therefore, the reasons why there are so many Odd Paladins on the ladder are manifold … for some players, winning is more fun than trying new stuff. Others can’t afford all those fancy new cards, so they stick to what they got.

So, as I said in the beginning, you can’t really blame people for playing good decks in a competitive environment.

I think that for as long as HS exists, real metagame shifts (read: new decks with new or unexplored mechanics) will only happen with the standard rotation – or in Wild, where it is much easier to miss some broken interaktion with old and new cards …

Over time, Blizzard reduced their howlers per expansion to a minimum – yes, there are cards like Patches or Keleseth, but in my opinion, they’ve learned from those. So, if they don’t decide to delve deeply into power creeping and produce sets that are strictly superior to their predecessors, only few new cards will make it into trusted and working deck lists.

Besides that: Hearthstone is to ‘expensive’. Most of the time, trying new ideas requires owning the according cards. I for myself opened 140 packs of RR by now and I’m still missing

14 Legendaries
10 Epics
2 Rares (I didn’t get a single copy of Shriek and the Paladin Spirit)

So let’s say I’d want to test Dragon Warrior. To play a good version (and let’s be honest, it doesn’t make any sense to test a highly suboptimal list) I’d need to craft:

2 Smolderthorn Lancer
1 War Master Voone
plus older cards like 2 Reckless Flurry and some other cards that I didn’t open back then

Most players simply can’t afford all those ‘fun crafts’, so they stick to the decks they already own.

Another example for this is Discardlock – I’m pretty sure many people would like to test this deck right now – but look at how many ‘useless’ legendaries you’d need to craft for playing an optimal version – Lakkari Sacrifice, Clutchmother, Lana’thel. I’m sure many players couldn’t afford to safe those cards and dusted those them for what they actually needed. And so … most players stick to their Lifegain Zoo list for the time being.

tl;dr:

1. balanced set design decreases the amount of new archetypes
2 . serious metagame shifts only happen when Standard rotates
3. Most players don’t have the chance to play new cards because they don’t own them / can’t afford to craft all cards they want to test

Holy crap … this looks like the most complex single player content until now. Or am I overrating this?

Looking forward to it!

Meme confirmed. 😉

Why not Ship’s Cannon instead of Fan of Knives? Yes, FoK is arguably better against Odd Paladin, but Ship’s Cannon does a decent jobs against minions, might be even better against … erm … Even Shaman and isn’t completely useless against Control or Combo decks.

Just checked – doesn’t work, obviously. Still old recipes available.

Miracle Rogue. Because, erm, it’s a good spell.

Umm … Where’s the rarity crystal?

If at all, Battlebond is the MtG edition this one resembles to the most.

But yeah, it was very funny to see Ixalan getting released at a time when HS was all about Pirates and Dinosaurs …

I think both companies are having their eyes on each other in terms of trends. And *conspiracy theory mode on* if anyone thinks they are NOT spying on each others’ future developments … well … it’s a harsh world out there. 😉

To be honest, I don’t have any hope for both and would’ve rated them both 0/10. 😉

I’m somewhat confused by the ‘new card style’ tag … what does that mean? The Spirits aren’t exactly new in any way… just normal minions. So I guess ‘New card style: Loa’ doesn’t mean nothing in regards of game rules? Shirvallah and Hir’eek are Loas, right?

Maybe content is available not before the expansion releases!? I can’t remember how it was handled last time you preordered through battle.net …

Sounds very meme-ish for sure. 😉

I think it’s a little more complex … there actually were times when with each new expansion, Blizzard very clearly told the players which strategies they should go for (like, Dragon Priest or C’thun decks). And … most players didn’t like that, because for them it felt like their creativity was limited by handing out blueprints for viable strategies.

Right now, what they’re trying to do (in my opinion) is to give the players more deckbuilding freedom by NOT going all in on obvious strategies. The downsides are that there will be lots of cards that aren’t playable immediately and that there aren’t many (any) totally new strategies when an expansion is released.

I might be wrong though; maybe Hearthstone’s developers just don’t know what they’re doing. 😉

I’m not completely done with the review, but … how can you rate the Bat lower than the Tiger? You said it for yourself … in a vacuum, the Tiger CAN’T EVEN BE PLAYED. So, the Bat has to be better, right?

imho, the Tiger should be rated 0/10 as long as there are no clear support tools in this expansion. I mean … the f**cking card CAN’T BE PLAYED. 😀

PS: There is that Paladin spell that draws a card and deals it’s cost in damage, right? Smell a meme deck here with Giants and the Tiger …

In my oppinion, the dillution of class identity originates in Blizzard’s ongoing ‘masterplan’ to continuously rearrange the classes’ power level. If it is decided to bring Druid to the top, well, this can only be done by erasing certain class-specific weaknesses. One could argue that in this example, they did it rather creatively; instead of ‘printing’ more efficient aoe, they gave the class armor and taunts.

On the other hand, when a class should be weaker, they go as far as to actively remove ‘identity’ … Fiery War Axe was a Warrior signature card as was Mana Wyrm for Mage.

tl;dr Blizzard’s focus is on power level (maybe on archetypes) far more than it is on class identity.

Maybe they think that identity is given simply due to the fact that there are class cards?

Maybe the class system (or the fact that classes usually cannot be ‘mixed’) is the core of the problem? In Magic the Gathering, you don’t have to dillute color identity because you are allowed to lessen their weaknesses by combining them with other colors. In this context, maybe the x-class concept presented in MSoG is the way to go for HS (if done right).

Despite that, for the most part his statement is true.

I must confess I really like that comment. 😀

Is it possible to magnetize Prince Taldaram onto Zilliax? Or is that not working because he doesn’t have the Magnetic keyword as long he isn’t on the battlefield?

Just curious …