Soup And Salad's Comments
Rebuke
Call to Arms on turn 6 is much weaker than it is on turn 4 with or without Rebuke. The only time is is actually rather powerful would be if it pulls out both Rightous Protectors.
After turn 5, the power of Call to Arms comes from thinning the weaker minions out of your deck rather than the bodies it puts on the board, especially against minion based decks.
Glinda Crowskin
That’s not going to be a Standard combo seeing as Moltent Giant is getting the Hall of Fame treatment.
Additionally, if you were to spend your turn 6 at 10 health and doing nothing but summoning stuff that can’t win you the game right that turn or save you as Possessed Lackey into Dark Pact can, you’re just asking for your opponent to win during their next turn. Slower decks probably wouldn’t be able to always pull that off, but they would simply focus on the board and do everything in their power to make sure you don’t reach ten health if a Molten Glinda Control Warlock deck became viable.
Houndmaster Shaw
Just because it doesn’t necessarily fit into the play style of the class it is in does not mean it can’t help that class in some way like Sunkeeper Tarim did for the Paladin Class or create a new style of deck for that class all together like Meteor did for Mage in creating a full on Control Mage deck.
Vivid Nightmare
Playing low cost spells kinda ruins the point of playing Spiteful Summoner. A deck with 2 of Mind Control, Free from Amber, and this, it would ruin the Spiteful Summoner turn a full one third of the time. Plus, Grand Archivist casting this on a Northshire Cleric or another weak minion on your board would be awful.
Rotten Applebaum
A new Sludge Beltcher for Standard. It kills more things, and prevents/heals about as much damage. This will see play in slower decks. Nothing exciting, but pretty good.
Vivid Nightmare
Molten Reflection in Mage isn’t breaking the game as we know it right now. That could in part have to do with Mage being a class that favors spells over minions in almost all cases, but outside of Big Priest, which is losing two critical Legendary minions and some removal, there aren’t any Priest decks that actively play minions you’d want a 1 health version of.
Vivid Nightmare
I was hoping Big Priest would die with Year of the Raven rotation, but this could be just enough to make the deck viable at least at lower ranks. Turn 6 Shadow Essence summoning really anything into turn 7 Eternal Servitude and this would be rather annoying with Obsidian Statue, The Lich King, or Ysera.
Hopefully, that’ll be as far as the card goes. Otherwise, it’ll be painful to deal with.
But as least all other current Priest decks are all using the Dragon package, and that’ll become useless with the rotation, and unless there’s another efficient self-silence card, Silence Priest won’t be a thing again.
Wispering Woods
I can only see this card being useful if you have at least 7 cards in hand, so you’d summon 6 wisps. Putting 12 stats on the board for 4 mana is pretty good, but Living Mana does it better and more reliably.
Perhaps if they were 1/2s instead, this would be decent if it only summoned 4 of them, but that’s not the card we have.
Hopefully, the two cards revealed in the stream will be the only total crap cards druid gets.
Witchwood Apple
If the 2/2s were 1 cost minions, this could’ve been okay. As they are not, this is unlikely to see play.
I am hesitant to call the “Hand Druid” idea crap since control oriented Druid decks have been successful and most of the tools are still going to be in standard.
Perhaps if there is a better reward card for holding onto your cards rather than playing them than what was shown in the stream, that card will be a decent follow-up to Ultimate Infesation
Rebuke
Such a deck would be Call to Arms or bust, something the current Paladin deck are not by any stretch of the imagination.
Playing a bunch of bad low value cards won’t do the deck much good unless Call to Arms pulled them all out of the deck at once like Mysterious Challenger did for Secret Paladin.
A Call or Bust Paladin deck could still work, but it would be far from the format dominating force it currently is right now without the cards they are losing.
Rebuke
Aggro Paladin as we currently know it will not be possible once The Witchwood drops and the rotation happens since both aggressive archetypes will be losing three critical cards each.
Rebuke
This card is amazing tool for Paladin. However, it isn’t as scary as many people think it is. It would be if it were in Kobolds and Catacombs, but since both sggressive Paladin decks are losing 3 or 4 cards each, I doubt the decks as we know them will likely cease to exist and shift more towards a midrange play-style, swapping out the Divine Favors, Dire Wolf Alphas, and other aggressive tools for a Tirion, Spikeridge Steeds, and Truesilver Champions.
A midrange deck playing Rebuke to hold a midgame board will not just win games outright as it would for aggresive decks.
Rebuke
The current Aggro Paladin decks will be losing a ton of critical cards (Rallying Blade, Vilefin Inquisitor, Stand Against Darkness, Steward of Darkshire, Grimescale Chum, among a couple others depending on the build) and I doubt the archetype will be getting too much new support.
This card is an amazing tool, but unless the gaps created by the rotation are filled, Aggro Paladin will probably shift more towards Midrange and drop stuff like Divine Favor as a result. A midrange Paladin using this card is not nearly as scary as Aggro Paladin.
Also the dragon package is losing Historian and Operative, so unless dragons get at least two new low to mid cost cards Duskbreaker’s relevance in the metagame will wane.
Witch's Apprentice
The card this will generate will usually be better than a 1/2, so on turn 1 this will usually be okay. It’s far from a terrible card, and it can go well with Flametongue Totem but so do most 1 drops.
If aggro Token Shaman is still possible after Evolve rotates out, this will be part of it.
Nightmare Amalgam
It’ll be nice to have a go to extra tribal card if such a package needs it. It could also create bridges between tribal packages much like how Jade Spirit did to connect Jade Shaman to Elemental Shaman when the elemental tag was added to that card. The 3/4 stat line is rather strong too, but it’ll only see play in decks that need a more of a particular tribe to get the synergies together rather wanting more.
Nightmare Amalgam
It’ll really depend on if any tribal packages really need a three drop, and Dragons may be the only one that will after the rotation.
This will be a card that will be played in decks because they need to, not because they want to if that makes any sense.
Hagatha the Witch
Priest’s spell line-up was just as bad as Shaman’s is right now when Lyra dropped last year.
While endlessly playing into spells is a bit easier to do, the benifit of functionally giving a battlecry of “Add a Shaman spell to hand” is that all minions replace themselves in your hand making it more difficult to run out of cards. The card they add may be bad, but a randomly given out Earth Shock, Frost Shock, or Farsight is better than actually playing a copy of the card in your deck.
Also, a Control Deck does not need to play more spells than minions. Just look at Cubelock lists.
Houndmaster Shaw
This is rather good. A Fandrel styled card for Hunter.
It may not be a finisher in the same way Tundra Rhino can be, but this card can be played on curve and often survive unlike Rhino. Pair this up with Emerald Spellstone or another turn 5 minion play, and you have an excellent Tempo curve on your hands.
Houndmaster Shaw
Rhino is more expensive and has less stats than this Shaw. It’s aura also only affects beasts.
The niche Shaw and Rhino inhabit are not necessarily the same.
Maybe, but Priest does have high value spells for their cost right now like Shadow Word: Horror and Spiteful Priest doesn’t play any of them as it is.