The spoiler season for the newest Hearthstone adventure, One Night in Karazhan, is in full swing so the time has come to start taking a look at the cards that have been revealed so far and shake our magic eight ball to predict the future fate of these digital pieces of cardboard (or whatever magical medium cards are printed on in Azeroth).
Before we dive in, make sure you check out Part I of our review which includes everything that was spoiled up to and including August 2nd. Today we have three new cards to look at which were gifted to us by the Hearthstone gods on Wednesday and Thursday. Let’s get started!
Karazhan Card Reviews
If you’ve been wondering about Shattered Sun Cleric’s power level, wonder no more. In the right deck, Zoobot is a pretty massive upgrade over the base set’s cleric. Not to mention that this plays very, very nicely with the newly minted Enchanted Raven minion. Play raven on turn one and then coin into Zoobot on turn two and you have yourself two 3/3 minions. That kind of tempo is going to be very powerful in the Arena.
What about constructed play? Obviously Zoobot follows the same design idea as The Curator. With 10 mana you could even play them on the same turn. I’m not sure why you would want to, but you could. I don’t think the power of Zoobot will be enough to make it competitive in Standard, but perhaps in the right tempo deck in Wild it could shine.
Also that artwork is adorable. It almost makes it worth playing the card no matter what.
Neutral finally gets a weapon card. That’s nice. Thanks Blizzard. Now every time I’m playing a non-weapon class in the Arena and Bloodsail Raider comes along I’ll consider picking it up because I might get Medivh!
Obviously Medivh and Atiesh play into the random-summoning aspect of One Night in Karazhan. For fun, why not follow up Medivh by playing Firelands Portal and get yourself a five-drop, a seven-drop, and five damage? I’m looking forward to this happening to Kripparian.
The constructed implications of this card are somewhat narrow, but it could find a home in decks that heavily favor spellcasting but at that point would you better off just going up to ten mana for Yogg-Saron? Is there a deck for Medivh and Yogg-Saron? Was Yogg invited to Karazhan?
The problem is that getting a few extra two-to-four-mana creatures is nice but it might not be very impactful in the late game. Medivh into Pyroblast is going to be devastating. Medivh into Brawl could be disappointing.
On Reddit I discovered someone who referred to a Discard-Warlock combo deck as Discolock and now my only dream is to play said deck to Legend on the ladder. Would there be anything more delightful than coining out a turn four Doomguard and discarding Silverware Golem and Fist of Jaraxxus?
Opening hand of Soulfire, Fist of Jaraxus, Silverware Golem? Soulfire to the face it is!
The deck already basically builds itself with Malchezaar’s Imp, Succubus, Darkshire Librarian, Tiny Knight of Evil, Silverware Golem, Doomguard, and Deathwing taking up thirteen slots for minions and Soulfire, Fist of Jaraxxus, and Dark Bargain taking up six more slots for abilities. That’s nineteen cards meaning you can fill out the other eleven with whatever your heart desires.
Here’s my plan to start with for Discolock.
Ah yes, finally it’s just the thing to make Dragon decks move up to the top tiers of the Standard meta! There are 23 Dragons in Standard (24 if you count Bookwyrm) but what are the odds that you’ll get something good from the Historian?
It’s safe to say that most of the Dragons are pretty awesome but let’s break them down into the good, the bad, and the ugly.
The good dragons are pretty easy to identify by the fact that they’re useful. For our purposes we’re going to only count dragons that are universally good, not just good in specific decks. The good dragons to get with Netherspire Historian are, in my opinion, Twilight Guardian, Azure Drake, Dragon Consort, Coldarra Drake, Drakonid Crusher, Book Wyrm, Chillmaw, Chromaggus, Alexstrasza, Nefarian, Nozdormu, Onyxia, Ysera, Deathwing, and Deathwing, Dragonlord.
It’s worth noting that if you’re playing Netherspire Historian then odds are you have a lot of dragons and you’re likely to trigger effects like Chillmaw’s Deathrattle. Fifteen out of 24 is really good odds for getting one of these to show up in a three-dragon discover set.
The bad dragons are the ones that are really only good in specific scenarios, such as being played on-curve or in specific deck archetypes. This includes Midnight Drake, Twilight Drake, Dragonkin Sorcerer, Hungry Dragon, Volcanic Drake, and Malygos.
Last but not least, if you summon Netherspire Historian and the three dragons you discover are Twilight Whelp, Faerie Dragon, and Scaled Nightmare you should probably quit playing forever. The game hates you.
You could play Brawl, or you could play common Brawl which forces you to take 10 damage to the face? Don’t get me wrong, this has pretty massive implications for the Arena where you almost never see Brawl but now every time you play Warrior you have to expect that on turn five they’re going to wipe your board. I guess in that sense it’s like Flamestrike for Warriors?
In constructed I don’t see this doing very well. You’ll almost always want Brawl instead of Fool’s Bane, especially against other Warrior decks or decks like zoolock that can punish you for taking so much damage. Also, sometimes, especially in the late game, 12 damage won’t be enough to wipe the board.
Then again this card is almost completely trumped by Trons of the Annoy-o and Psych-o variety so maybe it won’t even be good in the Arena? More removal for Warrior is obviously not going to make people happy, but this isn’t Brawl. It isn’t even half a Brawl. Warrior can’t even use it to damage their own minions to trigger Armorsmiths and enrage. Let’s not worry too much.
When I first saw this I was super unimpressed. Then I looked up a list of all the six-cost minions in the game. That’s actually a pretty impressive list. Sylvannas? Illidan? Even if it’s Standard-only (presumably if you’re playing Standard) you can also get Savannah Highmane, Emperor Thaurussian, or Sunwalker.
Okay, not all the six-cost minions are great. There’s still Reckless Rocketeer, Archmage, and Corrupted Seer, but those are generally exceptions to the rule. It looks like about 75% of the time, maybe even higher, you’re going to be pretty happy with a random six-cost minion.
But is it worth six mana? Why not just play the six-cost minion you want in your deck? Is restoring six health really worth it? In the Arena, perhaps yes, but in constructed? I think not. Similar to Firelands Portal this will struggle to find a home on the ladder but it will likely be a complete tempo blowout in the Arena.