Farraki Battleaxe

Farraki Battleaxe Card

Farraki Battleaxe is a 5 Mana Cost Rare Paladin Weapon card from the Rastakhan's Rumble set!

Card Text

Overkill: Give a minion in your hand +2/+2.

Flavor Text

Only two things in life are certain: death and axes.

Farraki Battleaxe Card Review

Another approach at a handbuff mechanic. However, I don’t really see this working. Remember Glowstone Technician? It was a guaranteed +2/+2 handbuff for all minions and it has seen no play. It’s just that the cards like that are too slow – the tempo gain from buffs is often not enough to offset the initial tempo loss from playing a weaker card.

And let’s be honest, 5 mana 3/3 weapon is very weak. Realistically, you wouldn’t even play it at 4 mana with no other effect. And in order to trigger the handbuff, you need to OVERKILL stuff, which is also not easy with a 3 attack weapon at this stage, because it will only trigger if you kill 1-2 health minions.

See, getting +2/+2 buff three times would be great, but that’s not going to happen very often. Your opponent won’t just play minions you can Overkill into this weapon. If he has a 3/3 on the board, you will still most likely want to kill it, but it won’t give you a handbuff etc. You should expect to get a single handbuff from it, maybe two if you get lucky.

I think that right now Val'anyr is just a better option. While the handbuffs are not happening every turn (let’s be honest, they’re probably not happening every turn with this card either), you can get an infinite weapon, or at least a lot of value until your opponent finds his Silence. The only thing is that Val’anyr can’t be played by Odd Paladin, but this card probably wouldn’t see play in Odd Paladin anyway – it’s not a deck that benefits from handbuffs in particular, especially since it has a low hand size most of the time and it might not even have minions to buff quite often.

All in all, it seems like an okay card, but nothing exciting.

Card rating: 5/10

Farraki Battleaxe Full Card Art

Farraki Battleaxe Full Art

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24 Comments

  1. brandon
    November 30, 2018 at 3:56 pm

    in pretty much every situation fungalmancer is a better option

  2. Pajamamama
    November 26, 2018 at 8:44 am

    You can get a 68 dmg Boar with this (and that other buff card). In some stupid meme deck…

    • Jonnymeerkat
      November 27, 2018 at 10:27 pm

      Can you explain? I think you are wrong.

      • Pajamamama
        November 29, 2018 at 9:30 am

        You’re right, i forgot about valanir.
        You give your boar +12 from 2 of this weapons, then you give it +4 from two 6 mana dudes, then you give it +4 from valanir. You have a 21 dmg boar now. Then you play this new card Helpless Hatchling and reduce you boar cost by 1, so it’s 0. Then you play the boar and double its attack twice wich gives you 21*2*2 = 84 dmg meme boar.

        • brandon
          November 30, 2018 at 4:23 pm

          so your big OTK plan is what
          turn 5 Farraki Battleaxe (first swing)
          turn 6 Glowstone Technician(second swing )
          turn 7(third swing)Val’anyr??
          turn 8 Farraki Battleaxe (first swing) and a recruit??
          turn 9 Glowstone Technician(second swing)and a recruit Helpless Hatchling??
          turn 10(third swing) boar Blessed Champion Blessed Champion
          *and this assumes that you getting every overkill to trigger no one breaks your weapon and ever buff hits the boar and there are no taunts on you opponents side of the board.
          Do I got you right??

          • Pajamamama
            November 30, 2018 at 10:53 pm

            My plan is, as i said in the first post, is that it’s a stupid meme deck. Nothing more.
            But if you wana go there… Weapon has ridiculous synergy with both equality and shrink ray. You can control buffing exactly your boar by having minions via spells like spellstone and this new card “a new challenger”. You have a bunch of heals and time out to stall the game. And you don’t really need exactly 84 dmg to OTK, since you can actually put some presure while getting to OTK, 30-40 will usually be enough (unless it’s a druid).

  3. TheThreather
    November 24, 2018 at 12:50 am

    Nah.

    Supercollider is just better.

    Can you even combo this with anything? The value is pretty bad also….. 3 Mana worth weapon and 2 extra mana for possible conditional delayed +6/6 that requires you to build your deck around it.

    1/5

    • maelstrom
      November 24, 2018 at 1:45 am

      fyi this is palladin

  4. MelaMalone
    November 23, 2018 at 2:19 pm

    Well, this is really similar to Brass Knuckles. You pay for the effect, so I will evaluate them as 2/3 Weapons. This weapon costs (1) more Mana and gives an additional +1/+1 for each hit. This weapon has to kill something to gain the effect, and if that requirement isn’t met you don’t get the effect but hits for 3 instead, i.e. it’s more flexible in desperate situations, but that flexibility has an expensive and unwanted cost. With Brass Knuckles you didn’t have that requirement and could use it as you deemed necessary without losing the effect. Brass Knuckles didn’t quite make it in the meta, and this weapon is, in my opinion, just an expensive and slightly worse version of it with too many conditions that has to be met in comparison. The buffs are greater though.

    • KaihatsuJai
      November 24, 2018 at 8:25 pm

      Understood, but that’s a warrior card.
      Buff cards work better in Paladin, that’s why we have buffadin decks.
      It’s apples and oranges.

  5. Ocv28
    November 23, 2018 at 9:44 am

    So far this Overkill keyword has not been it for any of the cards chief. You’re overpaying for a card, then you have to use said card inefficiently for a meh-to-okay effect.

    • Lllllll
      November 24, 2018 at 9:56 am

      The overkill cards are good for arena, which is what the game developers wanted as this expansion was surpose to have a ‘gladiatorial’ feel to it i.e. the rumble run, loas and troll champions.

      plus Oondasta and Sul’thraze are pretty good.

  6. Jed
    November 23, 2018 at 9:28 am

    Probably too slow

    2/5

  7. Solus
    November 23, 2018 at 9:00 am

    People thought fungalmancer was going to be trash too, but now it’s in almost every aggro deck in existence. Now this isn’t as good as fungalmancer, but it can be played on an empty board, and odd paladin lacks turn 5 plays if their board is empty, so I think this might make it in as a one-of in that deck.

    • Lllllll
      November 24, 2018 at 9:59 am

      Odd pally is officially dead with all these new counters.

      bad for me 🙁

      • Lllllll
        November 24, 2018 at 10:01 am

        btw funglemancer was 100 times better than this.

  8. Soup And Salad
    November 23, 2018 at 8:54 am

    Farraki Battleax could work, but at turn five, there’s better things you can be doing with your high cost weapon than killing two health minions. Sure it can be used to finish off larger minions and will net you a benifit, but Truesilver Champion can come out a turn earlier, kill more things more easily, and has an effect that softens the blow of hitting minions while Val’anyr can be seen as a version of this card that never really breaks.

    It’s caught between two other, probably better weapons in a class that is probably just fine with those two exclusively. Granted, unlike those other two weapons, this could be used in Odd Paladin, but that deck doesn’t really want slow, long term value at least if it doesn’t boost Silver Hand Recruits. If this were a 4/2 weapon like the other great Paladin weapons, Odd Paladin might squeeze it in to get extra value from killing 2/3s like Saranite Chain Gang, but as is, it won’t do much.

    If you were able to knock it down a mana to costing four, the story about this weapon would be far, far different though.

  9. s0pe
    November 23, 2018 at 8:51 am

    imo, the problem with overkill is that it is hard to overkill a minion when you are on your turn 4 (w/coin) or 5. It takes too much effort to trigger the overkill for just +2/+2. I mean, you have to trade at least one of your minions / use a spell and then overkill it with the weapon…….correct me if I miss out on something…

  10. Flamewaker3053
    November 23, 2018 at 8:48 am

    Handbuff again?! Blizzard pls…

  11. Brann
    November 23, 2018 at 8:48 am

    Wow this looks pretty bad

    Can’t make an odd cost card too good. Or it’ll show up in Odd paladin lol

  12. Cursore1610
    November 23, 2018 at 8:47 am

    God, this card really sucks. It is odd-costed, but I don’t think this will be viable in odd paladin. 3/3 for 5 mana is not THAT bad for an aggro archetype, but not good enough. The overkill effect is useless in a deck that wants to go face. This could be played in a handbuff deck in wild though, because that deck needs a good weapon to control the board AND buff your synergy cards in hand.
    1/5 in Standard
    2/5 in Wild, because anyway the handbuff paladin is trash LMAO

    • Lllllll
      November 24, 2018 at 10:10 am

      Handbuff even paladin is decent, with saranite change gang and val’anyr.

  13. GlosuuLang
    November 23, 2018 at 8:42 am

    Very meh.