So, this obviously looks like Fungalmancer, with the difference that he costs less mana, you can’t choose which minions get his buffs, and the buffs trigger on Deathrattle instead of as Battlecry.

If you want to trigger his buffs right away (and you do), then this is the perfect target for Grim Rally. Void Terror also works, but that’s a 7-mana combo, which makes it a lot slower than turn 5 Fungalmancer.

Eager Underling + Grim Rally is actually a more powerful turn 5 than Fungalmancer (at the cost of 2 cards). The problem is that it’s also a much more unreliable turn 5 than Fungalmancer, since you need to have both cards in your hand.

What about just playing this guy, and trading him away on your next turn? There’s a good chance your board will be hit by AoE like Consecration, killing your guys so that there are no minions left to get the buffs (whereas Fungalmancer helps protect your minions from AoE). Or your opponent can kill your other minions first and kill this one last, wasting his buffs. Or maybe the opposing control or combo deck doesn’t play any minions to trade this guy into.

A lot more unreliable than Fungalmancer then, but I think this could still see play on account of how powerful the combo with Grim Rally is. 3/5

Ancient of Lore has only drawn 1 card for a long time now!

After Rin proved that a card that needs 41 total mana can be good and competitive, I’m not worried about the 12 mana total cost required to get full value out of this.

Just when Toxic Arrow could’ve been good…

One of the better uses of Rush minions is to clear Taunt minions to allow your other minions to hit face. With 3 attack, this guy isn’t going to be clearing many taunts on turn 8, though.

It seems best at clearing wide boards of small minions. It sounds like it can be pretty good at that in combination with cards like Spirit of the Rhino and Lightforged Blessing, so this could see play. 3/5

I’ll start by pointing out that this has a strong anti-synergy with Lackeys, so this is not for every Priest deck.

That said, this looks like it would be very powerful in a Wall Priest archetype alongside Mass Resurrection. 5/5

I disagree with most comments here; I think this is kind of trash.

Hunter already has a spell that deals 4 damage to a minion, it’s called Wing Blast and it costs (conditionally) 1 mana, and even then it only sees play in some versions of Spell Hunter.

With the post-rotation reality of a lower power level, I think Wing Blast will become an outright good card. But the spell discovery value of this card is NOT worth so much extra cost.

Being unable to hit face is a big downside; you shouldn’t be comparing this to Kill Command or Fireball. Single-target and multi-target (non-AoE) damage spells that can’t hit face have a long history of being awful. Shadowbolt, Flame Lance, Cleave, Forked Lightning, Multishot, Explosive Shot, Grievous Bite, Powershot, Holy Water, Stormcrack- all of them are bad cards that belong in no meta decks. The only spells of this type that see play, are those that have a powerful additional effect (Imp-losion, Flanking Strike), have a deep mana discount (Devastate, Wing Blast, Shield Slam), or compensate for being unable to hit face with truckloads of damage (Meteor, Shield Slam).

The additional effect of this card is nice, but it’s no Flanking Strike; it has no immediate board impact, and to actually get an effect out of it you need to pay more mana. I fully expect this to join the long list of bad damage spells that can’t hit face. 1/5

While this does have a best case scenario of disrupting an opponent’s combo deck, its average-case scenario is more important- and it’s not good.

A 1-mana discount on Gather Your Party isn’t enough to make up for the fact that this also recruits a minion for your opponent. If you want to consistently win the duel, you need to cut out pretty much all of your cheap, early-game minions, like Recruit Warrior and Big Priest- except Paladin doesn’t have a defensive hero power or enough of a defensive suite of support cards to survive an early game with no minions.

Even if you DO build a deck around this card and it works, there’s no other synergies to be had in terms of other cards to recruit minions from your deck, or spells to resurrect your big, dead minions.

Which is a long-winded way of saying that this card is awful. 1/5

Faceless keeps the copied minion’s stats, it doesn’t need to be a deathrattle minion, and it doesn’t need to be friendly. This is a lot cheaper, but the effect is also weaker and a lot less versatile.

Could be good… if it had more support. There’s just not enough for this to play off of right now, and playing this as a 2/2 for 2 mana is pretty weak. 2/5

Very hard to gauge how good this’ll be. Are you going to give your opponent a big tempo swing by casting their “The Forest’s Aid” or Mass Resurrection? Will you force them to Hellfire their own board? Will you make them moonfire their own face before they can set up their Malygos combo?

This only interacts with spells, and there are no collectible neutral spells (although there are generated neutral spells like Ysera Awakens) in the game, so this card’s effect will vary pretty dramatically depending on which class you’re playing against.

Warlock spells tend to have significant drawbacks, so this should be good against them- even if cards like Dark Pact and Cataclysm are rotating out. On the other hand, I don’t see much potential for Hunter spells to backfire, so maybe you’ll just give them a free Secret, Animal Companion or Unleash the Beast.

This is pretty great against combo decks, even if Mind Blast will still hit you for 5. Still, how good (or not) this ends up being depends a lot on the average-case performance of this, which I simply can’t predict. I’ll still give this a good rating on account of its combo-disruption power. 4/5

On the face of it, this looks underwhelming. Aggro decks will often kill you well before turn 10, and combo decks can just kill you from full health anyway.

However, this has pretty good synergy with some other cards. Time Out can help you survive aggro decks until you get to turn 10. Thekal can drain your health and pump it into armor, with this restoring your health too, which can put you out of lethal range of Malygos combo decks. Dragon Speaker can give this Ultrasaur-level stats, which would demand premium removal from your opponent.

At the same time, this looks fairly weak against midrange and control decks; if they have a powerful board and are pressuring your life total, this can restore your health but they’ll just bring it right back down, since you can’t play this and deal with their board on the same turn.

Ultimately, I think this is not good enough to see Constructed play. The main reason you want this is for the life gain, and I think Lightforged Blessing does a better job of it. 2/5

Yeah, this is also good with generic charge minions. Not exactly spectacular though- Kor’kron elite is a 4/3 charger for 4 mana, this could be a 4/4 charger for 5 mana. Being a shaman card, you could combo it with something like Windfury- but the odds of playing Muckmorpher, randomly selecting a charge minion, and also having Windfury spell in your hand are pretty low, and the payoff isn’t exactly an OTK combo. It’s nice, but not good enough to make up for the inconsistency.

The problem with generic charge minions is that many of them are bad cards. A Stonetusk Boar has low power and terrible value and it’ll feel terrible to draw it; definitely not worth putting it into your deck just because there’s a small chance Muckmorpher will turn into a 4/4 copy of it. I think it’s better to look at cards that are good on their own, then, and also synergize with Muckmorpher.

I’m not convinced about Argent Commander, but it could work. Certainly, a 4/4 charge divine shield Muckmorpher for 5 mana would be quite good.

Fairly awkward to use for Tempo Mage. Tempo mage likes an explosive early game, not to save up a bunch of spells for when you have enough mana to cast all of them plus a 2-drop at the end, only to gain some card advantage. This definitely looks more like a Control Mage tool to me.

Works well with Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Ray of Frost and a bunch of other cheap spells like Arcane Explosion and Shooting Star, which in turn have good synergy with spell damage. But I think comboing something like Cosmic Anomaly + Arcane Explosion + Shooting Star + Mana Cyclone, costs too much mana, requires too many cards, and doesn’t have enough payoff- so you won’t want to include bad, cheap spells just because they synergize with this. Great synergy with Elemental Evocation in that you get to cast this guy for free and get an extra free spell, but Elemental Mage is losing all of its elementals so I don’t think that’s worthwhile.

More realistically, I think this is a reasonable minion to play after you combo a Ray of Frost (or two) with something like Icicle or Snap Freeze, and will often just have to play as a 2-mana 2/2 on curve. Only giving this a good rating because mage spells are good on average. 4/5

Suuuuper cool design!

Pros: Very versatile. Can freeze a big minion two turns in a row, use it for damage in combination with Frost Nova or Blizzard, just cast it twice as a 2-damage Frostbolt, or freeze two minions. Great synergy with cards like Frost Nova, Blizzard, Icicle, Doomsayer, Mana Cyclone, Auctioneer, Luna, Antonidas, Vex Crow.

Cons: Can’t damage (or freeze) your opponent’s face, poor power and value on its own.

This could be pretty terrible to draw in a situation where you’ve got a lot of mana to spare but are out of cards, and it asks you to steer your deck in a certain direction to maximize its value. But when the devs say Freezing stuff is supposed to be one of Mage’s core mechanics and strengths? THIS is what they mean. 4/5

Current version of Secret Paladin is getting gutted with cards like Hydrologist, Unidentified Maul, Call to Arms, Fungalmancer, Sunkeeper Tarim and especially Divine Favor rotating out.

That said, the new Never Surrender! looks quite strong, and will be insanely strong vs. damage-based removal in combination with this card (RIP my Control Mage).

I imagine Secret Paladin will still be viable after the rotation, in no small part thanks to this card. Not giving it full marks because you want to play this on curve and there’s a good chance her ability will never trigger, or it will do nothing (autodefense matrix, repentance). 4/5

Shadow Essence was a core component of the Big Priest archetype because of all of the supporting cards: Eternal Servitude, Diamond Spellstone, Shadow Visions and so on. Because Shaman has nothing like that, I seriously doubt Big Shaman will be a thing.

As a minion in Control Shaman that can turn into a 4/4 copy of Al’Akir, Walking Fountain or Zilliax, this sounds like it could be good. There’s a bunch of weaker targets you could copy as well, which means this has a consistency problem, but the high rolls seem to be good enough to make this good on average. 4/5

Cleans up enemy minions, heals you up, and leaves a body behind for your opponent to deal with. Looks to me like Control Shaman is going to be a thing in 2019. 5/5

Fair point about lackeys. However, even with lackeys, I still think yanking minions from hand is the more powerful effect, since combo decks usually hold their combo minions and play out the rest, so minions that stay in hand are more likely to be combo pieces.

The other problem with this card is cost. Pulling a dangerous combo piece and not dealing with it immediately can blow up in your face (think Malygos). For several classes, playing Hecklebot + removal will cost 8 or more mana, at which point the combo deck might have already pre-empted you by drawing his minion combo pieces with Jepetto. So, still a lot worse than Dirty Rat as far as I’m concerned.

Comboing this with Soularium is interesting, but I’m not convinced summoning minions from your deck with rush that die at the end of turn, then discarding the originals (since you definitely won’t have any mana left over), is such a great idea.

I could be wrong, maybe there will be a deathrattle-heavy Warlock deck that does just this, but I find it unlikely.

This is way weaker than Dirty Rat, both due to its higher cost as well as its weaker battlecry (for purposes of combo disruption).

I also fully expect most control decks to run two copies of it, because it’s great against both Aggro and Combo decks. 5/5

Because Deathlord was played in a meta where summoning an enemy minion was typically a net negative; there were no multi-minion combos you could disrupt by yanking off a key piece.

Of course this has similarities with Deathlord, but the reason why people will play this will be the same reason people played Dirty Rat- which is to disrupt combo decks (and have a nice taunt body on top)