Murkspark Eel

Murkspark Eel Card

Murkspark Eel is a 2 Mana Cost Rare Shaman Minion Beast card from the The Witchwood set!

Card Text

Battlecry: If your deck has only even-Cost cards, deal 2 damage.

Flavor Text

Makes shockingly good unagi.

Murkspark Eel Card Review

Let’s start with the card itself. 2 mana 2/3 are solid stats. 2 damage on Battlecry, however, is AMAZING. Of course, 3 damage would be better – we all know how powerful Medivh's Valet is when Mage has a Secret up. But unlike Medivh’s Valet, this could also be played on the curve with the extra effect. 2 damage is often enough to clear a 1-drop or even some 2-drops, later in the game it could help with the board control too or provide some small burn damage. Great card.

Okay, but here’s the thing. Even though I think that Shaman’s Hero Power is one of the best ones to have for 1 mana (you can play it on Turn 1, it’s synergistic), I don’t think the deck would work in Standard right now. The problem is the lack of synergies. For example, Hero Power had great synergy with Thing from Below. You could bring it down to 0 mana very quickly. But it’s rotating out. We had another card that would fit really well into such a deck – Thunder Bluff Valiant. But not only it’s odd-cost, but it’s also Wild only.

So in the end, I feel like in order to make this deck work, we’d need more Totem synergies. Not necessarily direct synergies – for example, Flametongue Totem, even though it doesn’t directly synergize with the Totems, would be amazing in such a deck. Since you would put a totem up almost every turn, it would be much easier to get Flametongue value.

But, it obviously wouldn’t be without sacrifices. Lightning Storm and Volcano would be gone, it means that you would be left with no AoE at all, unless they print some even-cost one. Mana Tide Totem, Hot Spring Guardian and Healing Rain would also be gone, and Jinyu Waterspeaker, which would be the best healing replacement, is gone from Standard.

However, as you can see, the amount of high quality cards you need to sacrifice is not as high as in the previous two builds (Odd Mage and Odd Druid). Depending on the cards that we will see in this expansion, or upcoming expansions, it might actually work. But with the current knowledge, I can’t rate it higher than average.

But as a general point, Shaman REALLY needs some powerful cards to not be completely irrelevant. The two last expansions were nearly non-existent for Shaman and in the current meta it’s still getting carried by its 2016 and Un’Goro cards. However, with all the 2016 cards rotating out (including the whole Jade mechanic), things don’t look too well for the class. If the class base doesn’t look good, the Odd/Even synergies look even worse. The thing is, if the class hasn’t got enough good cards to fill the normal deck, it will surely not have enough good cards to fill even/odd-cost deck.

Card rating: 5/10, higher if they print some strong even mana cost cards – especially board clears and totem synergies.

Leave a Reply

24 Comments

  1. Sebarus
    March 29, 2018 at 2:53 pm

    This is just +20 dust for me.

  2. Threather
    March 20, 2018 at 6:17 pm

    This card seems ok as it is, not too strong but quite strong. So it is 3/5 due to conditionality.

    Hopefully they print some kind of neutral beast synergy or the new shaman legendaries can make shaman viable without jades/evolve. Shamans current identity is more of a RNG machine regarding your opponent getting no AoE or getting good evolve combos off.

  3. Kakashi
    March 19, 2018 at 6:43 pm

    This card is trash, medivhs valet did more damage and had a much easier activation.

    • Elzein
      March 20, 2018 at 9:32 pm

      Medivhs Vallet only fit one deck (secret mage), as so does this card. If Even Shaman turns out to be a playable deck, this card won’t be trash. Also, comparing cards from different classes doesn’t always make sense. Fire Plume Phoenix is the real benchmark here.

  4. Piterno
    March 16, 2018 at 10:15 am

    “if river crocolisk, say, restored 3 health, it would be Op.” -Bennicus Brodeicus

    How about dealing 2 damage?

  5. Vizzcoin
    March 16, 2018 at 8:51 am

    It’s bad. Odd Is the strongest cards of Shaman. Unless they plan to release some *really* busted Even cost cards this expansion, I don’t see this working, especially since making a Shaman’s already trash HP cost 1 does nothing. If we got to Choose our HP instead, we’d be looking at *consistency*, the thing Shaman has lacked since the beginning of Hearthstone.

    • Archer
      March 23, 2018 at 3:32 am

      It seems they are pushing for even shaman so it might get some good token sinergies. We’ll see

  6. Jonnychill1331
    March 16, 2018 at 6:44 am

    Very strong card, looking at the current even cost shaman cards in standard the strongest deck im seeing is a greymore tempo elemental shaman. This card would fit in that deck along with fire plum phoenix, flametoung totem, tolvir stoneshaper, Fire Elemental and kalimos. Grumble and fire plum harbinger can be used to manipulate mana costs and fill the odd turns. Maybe the new hero card will fit in as well

    • CD001
      March 19, 2018 at 5:35 am

      Problem with Elemental Shaman though is that you need to be able to throw down Elementals every turn to proc the abilities of things like Kalimos; and with even-cost only cards you loose Firefly and Igneous Elemental… plus Glacial Shard which can be useful in a dual role there.

      You also loose a couple of decent early anti-aggro taunts in the form of Hot Spring Guardian and Tar Creeper – not to mention Devolve and Maelstrom Portal both rotate out and Lightning Storm costs 3, so Zoolock and the aggressive Pally decks will be instant concedes.

      … aaaand you’ll not be able to use Servant of Kalimos or Blazecaller both of which are incredibly useful on their own – but in Shaman, with Murmuring Elemental, they have a lot more potential.

      Elemental Shaman isn’t really a very strong deck as it stands; I don’t think Genn and Murkspark Eel would make up for the loss of the odd-cost cards – but it will depend on what other even-only support becomes available for Shaman.

  7. Crapcrack
    March 16, 2018 at 6:15 am

    Super strong if a deck can support it

  8. TheEyeszlader
    March 16, 2018 at 5:19 am

    This card is insane but it comes down to have strong even shaman will be as a deck to see play

  9. Tarkus
    March 15, 2018 at 6:08 pm

    its a strong card as long as Even shaman is a thing. losing cards lightning storm and mana tide are concerning and no deck archetype can currently afford to remove odd costs cards. whether or not even shaman exists is dependent on this set giving us enough cards like this to justify it. hopefully its not just a few good cards with no deck to fit into

    • joseph
      March 15, 2018 at 6:40 pm

      lightning storm isn’t that good right now. mana tide is okay, but i’de almost rather play acolyte of pain, especially with 5/5 taunt rotating out

      • Matt
        March 16, 2018 at 1:54 am

        Acolyte is odd too. This is a tempo card though. Who cares about card draw and aoe?

  10. D00mnoodle
    March 15, 2018 at 12:27 pm

    Medivh’s valet is like a super strong card but it’s a bit inconsistent because of the secret requirement. This is like that but it’s allways active (in the deck you’d play this in) granted its 1 less damage but the consistency this brings is insane. We know how strong early tempo swings are, this card will be played guaranteed.

    5/5

  11. GlosuuLang
    March 15, 2018 at 12:24 pm

    If Medivh’s Valet could be played in Turn 2, it would probably be OP. This is not so strong, but it will be a great Tempo Play if Genn Shaman is a thing. 4/5

    • CD001
      March 16, 2018 at 5:40 am

      I think Genn/Shaman is only likely to become a thing if Totem Shaman returns… which it could with the right support. Being able to drop a token every turn for 1 mana could be useful with the right supporting cards – maybe.

      Still won’t make Windshear Stormcaller worthwhile though – especially since you can’t use it with Genn.

      • GlosuuLang
        March 16, 2018 at 6:38 am

        Yeah, it’s a shame that the two cards you would like to drop with a board full of totems, namely Windshear Stormcaller and Bloodlust, are odd-cost mana.

      • dMO
        March 16, 2018 at 7:16 am

        totems would be good if even shaman had any way to evolve them, which it doesn’t, yet.

        • CD001
          March 19, 2018 at 6:11 am

          Totem Shaman was around long before Evolve Shaman – before Tuskarr Totemic was nerfed and Thunder Bluff Valiant rotated out; TGT was good for Totem Shaman and there hasn’t really been a strong totem package since.

  12. YellowDude
    March 15, 2018 at 10:50 am

    So a Fire Plume Phoenix on steroids

    Depending on how the rest of the set looks like, if the set is in favor of this I don’t see any reason why Shaman would not play this

    • ben
      March 15, 2018 at 10:54 am

      All of the Shaman Jade cards are even except for Champion, I think this slots right in there and helps with the early game. Aren’t we glad Hex is 4 now?

      • Perry Manson
        March 15, 2018 at 11:14 am

        Jades will be no more in standard…

      • Name (Required)
        March 15, 2018 at 11:53 am

        Turns out that nerf to hex was actually a buff