Zilliax, I agree that you can replace it without hurting your win rate. A single Doomerang – maybe, if you have one that might be enough (two are obviously better, but hey).

But I think that the deck becomes really bad without Valeera. Of course, it’s still okay if you want to play around casually, but now you’re losing a huge win condition in slower matchups. Not only you buff your weapon slower, cycle through your deck slower, but you also can’t go infinite (which e.g. can make beating Odd Warrior harder, since you hit fatigue way, way sooner than they do and it can really stack).

Edit:

I’m stupid, of course you can go infinite without Valeera (with Rogue’s regular Hero Power). She’s still amazing at cycling faster, getting more tempo, more removals, more weapon buffs etc.

Good explanation, those are the cards I would replace for Val’anyr too 🙂

And yeah, if you’re running Val’anyr, adding Saronite Chain Gang is a good idea. Those two have great synergy!

Yes and no. Gather your Party is better if you build your deck around it. You don’t have to build your deck around this card (except Armor gain, of course, but that’s something you want to put into Control Warrior decks anyway).

Running any 1-5 mana minions sucks when using Gather Your Party, and you can run them with this.

That’s true. Just like every fantasy RPG has copied from D&D, for example 🙂 The truth is that at this point most of the tropes have already been explored. We’re living in a world where being truly innovative is either incredibly hard or even impossible in some cases.

Given that expansions are worked way ahead of the time (usually when the expansion is released, they’re already working 2 sets ahead – e.g. right now they will be working on the second expansion of 2019), that’s also mostly a coincidence.

I mean, come on, even if HS wanted to compete with MTG directly (and it doesn’t, the game has an overlapping, but generally different market despite both being card games), then releasing a similarly themed expansions to the one MTG currently has would be a terrible idea. How could it convince MTG fans to play HS instead? The general notion would be that HS is just ripping off from MTG, which would lead to even less players wanting to switch over.

Edit: I’ve just checked out. Ixalan was released ~4 months AFTER Un’Goro. So if anything, it would be the other way around, but that’s also silly, since I’m quite sure that MTG is also developing the sets way ahead of the time (especially since they need to take care of the whole paper card infrastructure). Amonkhet was the one released around Un’Goro, and Amonkhet is referring to Ancient Egypt, so it’s a completely different theme.

You mean MTG’s Guilds of Ravnica?

Naaah, it looks nothing alike.

After the last patch, you can already use the new card back and Shaman Hero in the game!

Nowhere, I’m just saying that it’s a possibility. They did one Hero per expansion so far this year, but they’ve never said that it’s a rule or something. If there was a time to add more than a single Hero card, it might be now, given that there are a lot of pretty well-known characters (especially for the current WoW players) in the current expansion.

Edit:

Never mind, Peter Whalen has said that Zul’jin will be the only Hero card this expansion: https://twitter.com/LegendaryFerret/status/1059453438616993793

My point was just that unless it’s not officially confirmed, there’s no rule about 1 Hero card per expansion 🙂

My guess is that limited time Heroes such as the ones you get from each Standard year, or from the pre-purchase bundles, are not going to come back. That’s what happens in most of the games – being limited is a part of their appeal. People buy them, because they know that they won’t be able to get them later and it will be pretty unique in the future. Adding another way to acquire it later might feel pretty bad for those previous customers. But of course, Blizzard can change their mind and bring those back in the future.

There were plans to bring back Tyrande, since the promotion was really limited and unavailable in many parts of the world. As far as I remember, she was already brought back in China. As for the rest of the world, it’s hard to say when and if it will happen. I’m personally waiting for that, because I didn’t want to register under fake US address before to get her and she wasn’t available in Poland.

Because tribes =/= races. They don’t have a separate tribe for Human, Undead, Tauren, Orc itd. so why should they have one for Trolls?

Also, in general, cards in Hearthstone have only a single tribe, which would create some issues. For example, an Undead Pirate – would it be an Undead or a Pirate? That might be addressed in the future, but it’s a bit problematic for now. The only multi-tribe card is Nightmare Amalgam, and this one is pretty easy, because they’ve just said “All” and it’s simple/clear on the bottom of the card, and the full list of tribes is listed in the card’s description (which wouldn’t be that easy on a card with an actual effect).

I mean, I don’t know why wouldn’t they do that this time around, since they did it for the last few times. Boomsday Project, for example, was announced July 10 and the reveal season started July 23 with August 7 release. It was similar for The Witchwood – revealed on March 12 with the first reveal stream happening on March 26, and the expansion released on April 12.

The last two reveal streams have happened on Monday, so my educated guess would be November 12 if they want to go for a longer reveal season, or November 19 if they want to go for a shorter one, like the one we had in Boomsday (which went only for like 10 days).

It’s a bit weird that they haven’t announced when the reveal season starts yet, which might suggest that it’s the latter.

1/10 is my minimum rating, but I reserve it only to the cards that really don’t make sense. Those two have a bit of potential, even if for an off-meta / meme deck. And they CAN get stronger with the right synergies.

But yeah, in general I don’t have much hope for either of them too, lol.

Rain of Toads is a better card in some scenarios, but it’s far from strictly better. It’s like saying that Phantom Militia is strictly better than Sleepy Dragon, because it creates 3 bodies vs 1 – that’s just not true.

The obvious upside is having a higher defensive capability – it has 12 health in total vs 8 of Earth Elemental, plus 3 bodies means that it’s less vulnerable to Silence and single target removal. When comparing to Earth Elemental, I was talking about the context of one specific deck – Overload Shaman – so I don’t know how stuff like Evolve or Overload are relevant. Yes, that’s a thing, but it’s not going to come up with this deck outside of the random spells from Hagatha.

But at the same time, 3 bodies means that it’s worse vs AoE (e.g. Mage can sweep it with Flamestrike, they can’t do the same thing with Earth Elemental). 2 attack on individual Taunts means that in the mid game they will probably die without killing much. They’re great against small minions (1-2 health), but worse against higher health minions, which are more likely to be present at this point in the game. Earth Elemental also combos better with Ancestral Spirit – it’s the second best target (after duplicated Snowfury Giant, of course) for Ancestral Spirit. And finally, Earth Elemental costs 1 mana less – being able to play it on T5 vs T6 might make a significant difference against Aggro. It also doesn’t get countered by Mossy Horror, which is very common (much more common than techs that counter Earth Elemental like BGH or TBK).

All in all, I still think that Earth Elemental is a better choice for Overload Shaman, but it doesn’t mean that the deck will play both + it also depends on the meta (decks & techs).

You’re technically right, but I think that Tiger has a higher chance to work than Bat.

The problem with Bat is fundamental – it’s a Combo card that you want to play in a Zoo deck. While it’s possible that they push it somehow by adding more and more easy to get / powerful handbuffs, I just don’t think that it’s going to be the case. If they did, those handbuffs would probably be played by Zoo without Hir’eek, or Hir’eek would be just an addition, an extra win condition if you might.

On the other hand, TIger makes more sense fundamentally. Both the minion and the requirement to make it work fit into a slow Midrange / Control Paladin deck, and mana cost discounts can’t be underestimated. If you play a deck with multiple spells, it WILL be down to 0 mana at some point, and it will be a very strong play then. When you play Zoo, Hir’eek might not ever be playable, because if you get it late, you might not have your handbuff cards already (because you’ve already used them), and if you get it early, there is a very high chance that you discard it… and dropping both Soulfire and Doomguard doesn’t sound right unless, again, they print some really powerful handbuff support.

But you’re right, maybe I just should rate both of them at 2 right now. I just have more hope for the Tiger than I do for the Bat, but that’s just me. In case of early reviews, a lot of the ratings are just guesses, especially for the heavy synergy cards (like Loas in this case). But I still think it’s fun, at least I enjoy writing them 🙂

Zul’jin will probably be the new Hunter’s Hero, that’s what they’ve slipped during “What’s Next” panel. But it’s not 100% confirmed, and well, there might be 2 Hero cards this expansion too.

Much better? I think you mean much worse. It’s a Mage Legendary, it’s hard to complete the Quest ONCE, there’s no way that you’re going to consistently complete it twice during one game.

If anything, you MIGHT want the card in Quest Mage, because if you had some spells in your opening hand, the generated ones would count as if they didn’t start in your deck. But that’s a stretch too, since you can’t consistently control your starting hand.

They haven’t announced it yet. Reveal season is usually opened with a bigger reveal stream, most often on Monday or Friday. My guess would be Friday 16th or Monday 19th.

But we should see some more cards in the blog posts / videos that explain the new mechanics before the reveal season starts in full force, at least that’s what happened in the last 2 expansions.

Lynessa might be bigger, but yeah, if this card gets popular, people would just tech in Silence and ruin Paladin’s day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g5Hz17C4is

I think that Zul’jin might be a Hunter Hero card. KFT is rotating with the first expansion of 2019, so in ~5 months or so.

Teams are just sort of a theme for each class. They are lead by one champion and a Loa (sort of a troll god) and all of the class cards “belong” to that team (so share similar theme and synergies). As far as we know, they don’t matter gameplay-wise, it’s just lore/story thing.