Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft

Unleash the Beast: More support for spell Hunter.
Keeper Stalladris: This feels like a general utility card more than a must-include. Are the "copies" zero-cost? If so, then it's insane value.

Apparently the copies cost the amount of the original spell - which makes sense, really, else Combo Druids would crawl out of the woodwork.

Thank goodness!

No Surrender - Common Paladin Spell; 1 mana; Secret: When your opponent casts a spell, give your minions +2 Health.

Can be useful against Ao E, but you do need a fairly hefty board to be as useful as possible.

"So, you think you can Blast Wave my Silver Hand Recruits? HA!" In fact, that should be the flavor text.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 26th 2019 at 10:43:30 AM

• Veressa Windrunner - Hunter Legendary Minion; 7 mana 5/6; Battlecry: Equip Thori'dal, the Stars' Fury.
  • Thori'dal, the Stars' Fury - 3 mana 2/3 Weapon; After your hero attacks, gain +2 Spell Damage this turn.
• EVIL Conscripter - Priest Common Minion; 2 mana 2/2; Deathrattle: Add a Lackey to your hand.
• EVIL Genius - Warlock Common Minion; 2 mana 2/2; Battlecry: Destroy a friendly minion to add 2 random Lackeys to your hand.
  • Not sure why that "random" is there for when no other Lackey-generating card had random, as far as I remember. They're random by default.

Agreed, it's inconsistent. Thori'dal looks kind of nuts for spell hunter, although running a minion in order to activate the effect is going to be a bit wonky.

Maybe it's just to make it clear that they're both individually random, and not always the same one?

I can certainly see how it could clear up some confusion—still, for the sake of consistency it would be better to include it on all relevant cards.

I suppose given that the behavior is programmed there's less to worry about than in, say, Magic, where different wordings on different cards can be ruled to take effect in subtly different ways.

Haha yeah

In 2017 MTG released Hostage Taker, a card that caused an infinite loop with itself if it was played on an empty board, causing the game to immediately end in a draw.

Hostage Taker had an effect of 'when this creature enters the battlefield, exile target creature or artifact until this leaves the battlefield'.

It could target itself, and it's a madantory effect. So if it enters the battlefield with no other creatures or artifacts on it, it has to target and exile itself. Exiling sends a card to the exile zone, so it leaves the battlefield. Which triggers the second part of the effect, which brings Hostage Taker back to the battlefield. And because it entered the battlefield, it needs to exile a creature of artifact again...

The card was leaked before it was released, causing everyone to realize the problem, and Wizards issued an errata 'exile another target creature or artifact' so it can't target itself. By that stage, the card was already in print with the literally game-breaking effect.

It's absolutely hysterical, because this is a hypothetical interaction people have been aware of for at least 10 years.

Worth noting that said card and others like it can still form an infinite loop, you just need 3 of them.

In fact, there's a somewhat infamous video of Luis Scott-Vargas crashing Magic Online in this way.

Yeah, it's doable with three copies which can be combined with effects that deal damage when a creature enters the battlefield for INFINITE DAMAGE

Which is fun

• Fluffy Boarloc (name pending) - Common Neutral Minion; 2 mana 2/1 Beast; Rush; Deathrattle: Summon a 1/1 Fluffy Murloc (name still pending).
  • The 1/1 is a Murloc.
• Jepetto Joybuzz - Legendary Neutral Minion; 8 mana 6/6; Battlecry: Draw two minions from your deck. Set their Attack, Health and Cost to 1.
  • Long live combo decks, I guess...

Dragon Speaker - Epic Paladin Minion; 5 mana 3/5; Battlecry: Give all Dragons in your hand +3/+3.

Jepetto is too random. Like Barnes, if you draw him after you draw your combo minions, he's worthless. He's also very slow: 8 mana for a body that's big but doesn't do anything.

We're back to Handbuff Paladin? Interesting.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 27th 2019 at 6:37:03 AM

Yeah, any combo that would be enabled by Jepetto consistently would necessarily be slow, chewy, requiring certain circumstances and other cheap Add to Deck mechanics, and generally require such a big window that most combo decks could have won anyway? Like...

Sure, you could combine this with, like, Malygos and Togwaggle's Scheme, seed your deck with like fifty Malygosi or whatever, then forcibly draw two of them with Jepetto, and then hit your opponent in the face for like a million damage with spells

But that requires, at minimum, three turns to pull off. And you probably would have had to nearly deck yourself before Scheming Malygos. And playing Jepetto himself is still a hugely empty turn.

With Jepetto being neutral, I would imagine that there is something more practical that you can do with Jepetto, but... He definitely is not just "add to combo and winrate soars" card.

Dragon Speaker, though... That one just... It needs a lot of help to have any kind of utility. Specifically, it needs dragons, ones that Paladin would want to play, that could not only benefit from the buff while also being cheap enough to get some of the tempo back immediately, fight for the board the turn its played. And even if there's, like, a 1 Mana 2/1 Rush Taunt Dragon added into with this set or something, that's still a turn six play, right? It's kinda ugly to see this as an Epic, honestly.

But seriously, there are so few dragons in the game period, and even fewer where the buff would be relevant. Primordial Drake is the only big dragon I see that would somewhat benefit from this, and it's leaving Standard with the rotation... maybe Crowd Roaster? And other than that, like, it seems okay on the likes of Faerie Dragon, Twilight Drake, and Dragonmaw Scorcher... but why would Paladin want to use those?

Edited by RegisteredUser on Mar 27th 2019 at 7:30:19 AM

Well, Dragon Paladin used to be a deck that saw a lot of play, with cards like Dragon Consort, but those have long since rotated out. As you have noted, it would need a lot more support to be significant now.

This is why I'd like to have way more deck spots, so I could make all kinds of decks in Wild rather than just the one in Wild and Standard I have to do. How can I have fun experimenting with a dragon deck if it would mean destroying another deck?

That's easy, just export the deck strings and save them in a text file. That's one of the major reasons Blizzard added that capability to the client. All you have to do to restore a deck you used before is import the string for it.

It's a bit more awkward if you're on mobile, but you can still copy the deck strings and save them in your notes app.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 27th 2019 at 11:56:36 AM

Well, that's a fair method. Not quite as convenient as just having more slots, but hey, small indie company.

• Bronze Herald - Paladin Common Minion, 3 mana 3/2 Dragon; Deathrattle: Add two 4/4 Dragons to your hand.
  • These dragons cost 4 mana.
    • Also, that card was revealed alongside Dragon Speaker, but Hearthpwn didn't have it uploaded when I was making the Dragon Speaker post.
• Mass Resurrection - Priest Rare Spell; 9 mana; Resurrect 3 different friendly minions that died this game.
  • It's neutered Diamond Spellstone with nothing worth resurrecting and no cheat methods. In fact, pretty sure Wild Big Priest would not play this either, since the "different" part ensures you can't just summon three Obsidian Statues (on top of it being straight up worse than Diamond Spellstone).
• Sludge Slurper - Shaman Rare Minion; 1 mana 2/1 Murloc; Battlecry: Add a Lackey to your hand. Overload: (1)

Edited by FergardStratoavis on Mar 27th 2019 at 5:44:14 PM

Okay, so I guess Paladins are getting some dragons for synergy. Kind of obvious.

Reminder; Diamond Spellstone also can only resurrect different minions. You can never get two of the same one from it, either. So Mass Resurrection is a more expensive version that brings back fewer minions than the fully powered up spellstone, but doesn't need to be powered up. Eeeeyuck. Well, it should make comboing with it harder, as you can't set up the OTK with that card alone (without the coin, at least).

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 27th 2019 at 12:48:58 PM

Is that right? My bad.

Still, with a lot of Big Priest resources rotating out (like, the entirety of Knights of the Frozen Throne, for one), I can't really see anyone play this. Wall Priest is going with Oakheart, and you would probably be better off trying some old-school control stuff.

Mass rez is only useful in a 'Resurrect your minions even more often than usual' kind of way, but I don't think big priest particularly needs that since they already have so many methods.

It sounds like a good spell to discover if priests had that.

Edited by Resileafs on Mar 27th 2019 at 1:18:16 PM