Firetree Witchdoctor

Firetree Witchdoctor Card

Firetree Witchdoctor is a 2 Mana Cost Rare Neutral Minion card from the Rastakhan's Rumble set!

Card Text

Battlecry: If you're holding a Dragon, Discover a Spell.

Flavor Text

If your tree is on fire - stop, drop, and troll.

Firetree Witchdoctor Additional Information

Firetree Witchdoctor Card Review

More Dragon support, after Smolderthorn Lancer and War Master Voone for Warrior. However, since this is Neutral, it can also be played in other classes.

Let’s talk about Warrior first. The deck is starting to shape up already – we have a way to add a bunch of extra Dragons to the hand (Voone), Execute on a stick (Lancer) and now this. 2 mana for a 2/2 minion is not great, but given that it potentially gives you a lot of value it’s still good. I mean, do you remember how good Dark Peddler was? 2 mana 2/2 that Discovers is pretty solid. To be fair, spells aren’t the strongest part of Warrior class, but since this is discover, you should be able to snatch something good nearly every time. And in the worst case scenario, it’s a 2 mana 2/2 that gives you an extra mediocre card (having to choose from three bad or straight up unplayable cards will be incredibly rare). All in all, if Dragon Warrior becomes I think, I can’t fathom this card not seeing play.

However, while Blizzard seems to push a Dragon Warrior this time around, we already have another “Dragon” deck readily available. While Control Priest has cut on the Dragon synergies since it has lost Drakonid Operative, it still runs cards like Twilight AcolyteDuskbreaker as well as a bunch of Dragon activators. And this seems like another card that would fit the roster. Unlike Warrior, Priest is much more reliant on spells and the class has A LOT of great spells you might want to snatch off this card. Extra board clear, a buff, value card, a way to summon or revive a minion, even another burn card like an extra Mind Blast.

An even better deck for this card would be a Spiteful Priest, but it hasn’t been viable since Spiteful Summoner‘s nerf. It would be especially good in this archetype, since it can’t put that many spells into the deck naturally, and has to rely on minions to do their job (like board clearing or drawing). But this one would fit right in. That said, I don’t think that it’s enough to revive this deck, and it has used Prince Keleseth anyway, so it would have to pick between those two (which might be a very hard choice).

Overall, basically any Dragon deck would want to play this card. It’s almost as good as Netherspite Historian, which was an amazing staple. Now we need a strong Dragon or two (for Warrior or Priest at least) and Dragon decks might be back on the menu.

Card rating: 9/10 in Dragon decks (useless outside of them)

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28 Comments

  1. GlosuuLang
    November 21, 2018 at 7:01 am

    Good thing with Netherspite Historian is that it was 1/3 stats and discovered another Dragon (which allowed Dragon synergies to continue). This has 2/2 stats, which is much worse in this meta (Odd Rogue weapon, 2/1 one drops…), and an extra spell is nice, but definitely not in the same level as an extra Dragon. So this is clearly worse. Still, I’m interested in trying the new Spiteful Priest with this guy and Shadow Ascendant and push out Keleseth (if you didn’t get Keleseth on T2 with Spiteful Priest you usually fell behind).

  2. For the Alliance and the Light
    November 20, 2018 at 5:56 pm

    Dragon priest may actually make a comeback in wild, maybe even standard. Still, auto-include in my spiteful priest deck which is really lacking some clear spells(if I don’t have duskbreaker in hand).

    • Soup And Salad
      November 20, 2018 at 9:00 pm

      The thing Wild Dragon Priest needs is not this. It needs something that raises it’s power ceiling beyond dropping a turn five Operative onto a board cleared by Duskbreaker. That doesn’t beat the crazy value created by Kingsbane Rogue or Big Priest and is very reliant on drawing the Duskbreaker as soon as possible to beat Odd Paladin and the other aggressive decks.

  3. Soup And Salad
    November 20, 2018 at 4:57 pm

    Firetree Witchdoctor is hardly a Netherspire Librarian, but if Dragon decks remain paired with Spiteful Summoner as they were during The Witchwood, it’ll be good enough.

    • Warpten
      November 20, 2018 at 6:11 pm

      I’d argue a 2/2 is better than a 1/3, even for priest (outside of inner fire)
      and although duskbreaker is better than any spell, dragons are generally of lower quality than spells. Also, spells are situational, which makes discovering spells especially good (priests are happy to waste mana on shadow visions just to get the right spell at the right time).
      I’d say that even put next to netherspire, this witchdoctor still looks good.

      • Soup And Salad
        November 20, 2018 at 8:46 pm

        Dragons matter a lot in dragon decks. Historian was especially good for making sure dragons that require other dragons in hand to active their effects can do so more easily without needing to play lower quality dragon cards like Faerie Dragon or Azure Drake when Twilight Guardian was around.

        The 2/2 body is probably a bit better than the 1/3. However, I would argue that the smaller pool of Dragons in a discover pool matters more than the maybe slightly higher quality of spells in some of the classes that would want to play dragons. Additionally, class dragon cards like Duskbreaker and Drakonid Operative showed up far more often with Historian than any particular spell will with Witchdoctor.

        That does not mean Firetree Witchdoctor is not a good card. It just means it’s just a step below Historian.

    • Coolio
      November 23, 2018 at 9:10 pm

      It’s Nethersprite Historian, not Librarian! Jeez, people already commented about this card when comparing it to Firetree Witchdoctor. At least have the decency to read other people’s comments or better yet double check/know ahead of time what cards are called. Shear shameful laziness, and you call yourself a Hesrthstone player.

      • Soup And Salad
        November 23, 2018 at 9:17 pm

        Did you consider that perhaps since I cannot edit comments, that mistake was left there no matter what I wanted, and seeing as people could figure out what I meant without help, it matters little anyway?

        Maybe, just maybe, you should have taken your own advice and read the response I wrote directly above this comment, and see I correctly named the card in part at least.

    • Coolio
      November 23, 2018 at 9:11 pm

      It’s Nethersprite Historian, not Librarian! Jeez, people already commented about this card when comparing it to Firetree Witchdoctor. At least have the decency to read other people’s comments or better yet double check/know ahead of time what cards are called. Shear shameful laziness, and you call yourself a Hearthstone player.

    • Coolio
      November 23, 2018 at 9:12 pm

      It’s Nethersprite Historian, not Librarian! Jeez, people already commented about this card when comparing it to Firetree Witchdoctor. At least have the decency to read other people’s comments or better yet double check/know ahead of time what cards are called. Sheer laziness on your part.

  4. Daha
    November 20, 2018 at 1:04 pm

    Warrior spells are one of the worst…

    • Jonnymeerkat
      November 20, 2018 at 3:13 pm

      lol.

      A. It’s not a Warrior card.

      B. Execute. Brawl. Warpath. I’m not even listing all of them, but those are some pretty damn good spells right there. Most importantly, Warrior spells are pretty damn similar to one another, helping you maintain consistency with the card.

      • Smagel
        November 21, 2018 at 12:42 am

        it might as well be a warrior card (for standard) since dragon priest is dead in standard and no other class currently or seems to be getting decent dragon synergy this expansion.

        • Warptens
          November 21, 2018 at 6:28 pm

          Control (dragon) priest is the best performing priest deck in standard.

    • Soup And Salad
      November 20, 2018 at 4:57 pm

      Discover will always let you pick the best of the three you see.

  5. Jed
    November 20, 2018 at 12:18 pm

    I almost hope they don’t print any dragons so their can be a flame war.

  6. Liam
    November 20, 2018 at 12:10 pm

    They keep printing all these Dragon synergies but no Dragons wtf

  7. Piterno
    November 20, 2018 at 12:10 pm

    Show us new dragons before any more of these please

  8. Attila
    November 20, 2018 at 12:08 pm

    Dragon warrior pls cone Back and win the rumble 🙂

  9. Max Fahlén
    November 20, 2018 at 12:08 pm

    Reminds me of Kabal Courier but worser. Pretty meh card.

    • InfinityMinusOne
      November 20, 2018 at 12:41 pm

      I disagree – seems to be on the same level of playability as Netherspite Historian. Granted it doesn’t free up dragons in your hand by replacing them, but the ability to discover extra copies of spells is incredibly powerful in the classes that will care about Dragons this expac (Priest and Warrior).

      Another key thing to point out is that the pool of cards that can be discovered for this card (the spells for your particular class) is much smaller and more consistent than the pool of cards for Courier (which was ALL the cards from three different classes). I love the card personally and look forward to brewing with/playing against it.

      • Riptide
        November 20, 2018 at 1:57 pm

        Trying to make Dragon Hunter a thing too.

        • InfinityMinusOne
          November 20, 2018 at 3:37 pm

          You’re absolutely right, almost forgot about the dragons that Hunter has to offer. Hopefully something in that spectrum pops up!

      • Max Fahlén
        November 20, 2018 at 2:24 pm

        The difference between this and Nerherspite Historian is that Almost all dragons at that time synergised with Other dragons. If you play a midrange warrior, you should want dragons, not spells. Also with dragon warrior getting pushed this card does not make senare Sinclair warrior spelas sucks. Can maybe see play in priest but I Do not think this is worth

        • InfinityMinusOne
          November 20, 2018 at 3:58 pm

          Warrior spells aren’t too bad depending on the ones you get. While something like Explore Un’Goro or Deadly Arsenal would be terrible, spells like Execute, Omega Assembly, or even Commanding Shout (in the right deck/situation) would often be very solid picks off a 2-mana 2/2.

          Not to mention that there’s also Dragon Priest to consider. This card is more viable in Priest than it is in Warrior given their quality of spells (even something like Mass Dispel or Shadow Madness would be a good pick off of this, and there are better ones). Admittedly, this isn’t as powerful as Netherspite Historian was in Standard, and Dragon Priest wouldn’t be as powerful as it was back in its heyday, but the deck could make a resurgence if there are more Dragons/Dragon synergy cards released in this set.

    • Warptens
      November 20, 2018 at 12:51 pm

      worse? it’s 1mana cheaper
      it’s op, autoinclude in control priest and spiteful priest

  10. 312
    November 20, 2018 at 12:06 pm

    Oh, a priest card

  11. Rebel
    November 20, 2018 at 12:05 pm

    Gud