I don’t think you want to waste Bloodsworn Mercenary on an Injured Tol’vir. You can’t be that aggro with Taunt minions, you need to play a more midrange game, and Mercenary can be huge value in the midgame.

Battle Rage synergy might be something, but I still prefer the higher natural health.

Strength of a color that can be freely combined with any other color is completely different than strength of a class that cannot be combined with any other class at all. It is really difficult to overcome this fundamental design choice: In Magic, cards can be tied tighter to a single color by increasing the colored mana requirement for the card: RRR is worlds apart from 2R, for example. In Hearthstone, this dynamic cannot easily be replicated.

There is a level of hyperbole in the statement, although fundamentally it is true: SW: Pain and SW: Death are direct damage spells in WoW, and that does not exist for Priest in Hearthstone anymore. I’ve played Dwarf Priest since vanilla btw.

Wheeling is indeed lost, but signals are not, because you get the packs from the same people.

Lands can be clunky indeed, although Eternal makes mana screw much more rare than Magic, because it separates influence (color) and power (mana). When you play a Red Land (Fire Sigil in Eternal terminology, but I’ll just use the Magic terms here), you get access to one mana and you gain one red influence. Your total influence determines what you can play, so if you have 4 mana, 2 from red lands and 2 from green lands, you can play two RR spells, for example, instead of just one you could in Magic, because you have access to two Red influence.

The upside of the Land system is that it allows free combination of cards in the game, whereas a class system limits you to specific cards. Greed is held in check by color requirements, so the more diverse set of cards you want to use, the more difficult it is to find the mana to cast them. Magic makes extensive use of this: 2R or 1RR cost, for example, makes cards completely different for splashing. I don’t think there is a good alternative system that allows such a range of options.

The problem with Malygos is that it is only good if you can discount it down to one mana. In that case, it is awesome indeed, but if you have a nine-mana Malygos, it is difficult to make good use of it. This is why I recommend Pyroblast, but you can try Malygos too, it is not a disaster by any means.

The synergies are not reliable enough. You generally do not want to use Rockbiter alone, and you cannot always find Likkim. By the time you get to Doomhammer, you are often going face to race to the finish line. There are some situations where you control the board with Doomhammer, but those are not common enough to really benefit from the Thug.

I really like this build. It’s the baseline of Aggro Overload Shaman: every card is included in two copies, there is nothing too fancy, it’s just the goods. It is a great place to start and then tech in some of the Legendaries or some tech cards depending on the meta.

I played Magic before Hearthstone existed, so I had these same feelings for Hearthstone Arena right from the start.

By the way, my favorite digital card game for drafting is Eternal, it has asynchronous drafting so you draft with real people, but you do not get to play with the same people and packs go through only one round and not two like in a real Magic draft pod.

The whole reason I wrote this article was that I have always hoped Hearthstone would do more for limited formats, I believe it could.

I have not used that version myself, no. I prefer to either use the full combo, or if I play a control build, I use Unseen Saboteur in it to counter combo decks.

The small Mecha’thun package (Galvanizer, Mecha’thun, Shield Slam) in an otherwise control deck is very slow, so your opponent has plenty of time to draw their anti-combo pieces or just draw their deck and combo you first.

Banker is not better. There is only one instance where Banker gives you any advantage, and that is a control mirror where you can keep Elysiana on the board to create pressure while shuffling another one in the deck. Even then it could backfire, should that second Elysiana be fished out from the deck with Hecklebot, but the opponent is unlikely to risk a Hecklebot when you have five discovered cards in the deck.

In every other case, Brewmaster is better. It allows you to reuse your assets immediately or at the latest on the following turn. Dyn-o-matic, Militia Commander, Town Crier, Unseen Saboteur, whatever you need in the matchup, and in most matchups having access to two turns with one of them is far more important than the endless deck.

It kills the third Nomi board with Warpath. Brawl and Malygos + Whirlwind kill the other two. Brawl is hard to get rid of sometimes, because it requires at least two minions on the board.

Yes, that is the combo. You can also have one irrelevant minion in hand as long as it dies to the 6-damage Whirlwind. There’s often a leftover Militia Commander or Acolyte of Pain or something, but it dies all the same.

The combo is Boomship to pull Malygos and Mecha’thun, then Inner Rage them both, and then Whirlwind to kill them both at the same time. You can also have a third minion in hand when you do the combo, as long as it has less than 7 health.

It could work, probably in combination with making the cards random, as you cannot Discover during end-of-turn effects.

The condition for this deck to be viable is that most control decks cannot deal with three boards of 6/6 Elementals. In the current meta, most of them cannot.

Sure, there are exceptions, like some Warlock decks (almost non-existent on ladder), some Paladin decks with three copies overall of Equality/Shrink Ray (almost non-existent on ladder), and some Warrior decks that have started to tech against Miracle Priest with Spellzerker or Mana Reservoir to enable Warpath to do the third clear (a major threat if they become more popular, as Warrior is a popular class).

Still, all is not lost even against control decks that can clear all three boards, as Priest can draw so fast that sometimes all three boards can be played before the control deck draws three answers to them.

No, you cannot kill off your Mecha’thun with this deck.

Then it becomes a race to see how many bounce effects you can add to a deck and get away with.

Limiting the effect out of Shudderwock and bounces would solve the 45-turn issue. It would also make the card ineffective against bombs, as Bomb Warrior can run it too and wait until fatigue with the big bomb turns. I’m not fully happy with that, but I can see how getting rid of draws is already an improvement.

I do not think the card would see play then. Bombs can wait until fatigue and just add more every turn once there.

If Mecha’thun becomes very common, silence effects will follow. Then the Mecha’thun decks will need to add more combo elements to the deck, and soon they are actually Mecha’thun combo decks. Then, they will have a harder time defending against more aggressive decks. At which point their popularity will fall, and pure control will be more popular again.

Some level of cyclicity is inevitable in the meta, of course.