Woodcutter’s Axe

Woodcutter’s Axe Card

Woodcutter’s Axe is a 2 Mana Cost Common Warrior Weapon card from the The Witchwood set!

Card Text

Deathrattle: Give +2/+1 to a random friendly minion.

Flavor Text

It's a lumberjack's axe and that's ok.

Woodcutter’s Axe Card Review

They’re really pushing the Rush mechanic for Warrior this expansion, and it can actually work. Tempo Warrior used to be pretty strong back in the day, and all of these Rush cards can revive it.

This card is obviously super powerful. While a 2 mana 2/2 weapon is not something you’d normally run in your deck, the fact that it Deathrattles with a +2/+1 buff to a random Rush minion is great. The weapon itself can’t be underestimated either – after all, Jade Claws have proven that having a 2/2 weapon is not terrible in the early game. While yes, there are lots of 3 health targets, you are often able to clear a 1 or 2-drop.

And as for synergies – it’s good with every Rush Warrior card revealed so far. Starting with the Redband Wasp, it turns it into a 3/4 minion with Rush, that gains +3 Attack while its damaged. With 3/4 stats, it will be so much easier to bump it into something and ensure that it survives, leaving you with a big threat on the board. Let’s say that you run it into a 2/3 minion – you kill it and you still have a 6/2 on the board. Quite good, isn’t it?

Then, Militia Commander’s biggest issue was that after the initial burst of +3 Attack, it has quite weak stats. For example, if you clear a 3/3, it ends up being a 2/2 minion on the board. Not terrible, of course, given that it already removed something, but not amazing. With this, that 2/2 would turn into a 4/3, and that’s a solid threat by itself. Then, Darius Crowley is probably the best synergy for this card. Giving it +1 Health means that it now has a higher chance of killing something and surviving, so a higher chance of getting buffed and snowballing.

The weapon could also see play in Pirate Warrior, as it would seriously want a 2 mana weapon, but the problem is that Pirate Warrior is losing Patches the Pirate, N'Zoth's First Mate and Bloodsail Cultist all in one go, so I doubt that it will be a viable deck in Standard after the rotation.

All in all, if you use some Rush minions in your deck, you definitely want to play this. Would work best in some kind of Tempo/Midrange Warrior, but even a Control deck with some Rush cards would want it. Strong card, but it’s still hard to say whether Warrior will be good enough to see play. Because obviously, if Warrior doesn’t see play, this doesn’t see play either.

Card rating: 7/10

Leave a Reply

35 Comments

  1. Riveon
    April 5, 2018 at 6:10 am

    Do we actually get to see the return of Control Warrior? It looks like the new Rush technique would benefit this specific deck type perfectly!

  2. LuKeAA
    April 2, 2018 at 10:48 am

    Fits the Control Warrior’s theme quite nicely:
    “He’s a lumberjack and he’s ok …
    – he sleeps all night, he whacks all day … “

  3. YellowDude
    April 2, 2018 at 9:41 am

    Can’t wait to theorycraft a Tempo Warrior deck, there’s so many things just falling together for it lol

  4. GlosuuLang
    April 2, 2018 at 12:57 am

    Finally Warrior gets a weapon to use on turn 2 after the FWA nerf. I think it will be included even in some decks that don’t have Rush minions, simply because of the tempo. 4 out of 5 stars.

  5. CounterPoint117
    April 1, 2018 at 11:10 pm

    This cards success will really be dependent on a good 3 mana rush minion for warrior, or something to play on 3 (like and alex champion) to bridge the gap to the new 4 mana rush dude.

  6. PPAP
    April 1, 2018 at 3:03 pm

    Can this card push in an Genn rush warrior? Because it looks as a fun deck to try

    • MockRock
      April 1, 2018 at 5:35 pm

      What benefit do you get from putting Genn in a tempo deck?

  7. Bajula
    April 1, 2018 at 2:44 pm

    I am more curious about this card’s viability in Pirate Warrior.
    What do you think, will this be a better replacement of Fiery War Axe?
    I think staying on curve with Bloodsail Raider and Cultist is definitely more important than having 3 attack…
    (Of course, I talk about Wild format)

  8. china
    April 1, 2018 at 2:26 pm

    how many more weapons do warrior need?
    give them some good minions alrdy ffs

    • MockRock
      April 1, 2018 at 4:27 pm

      Hi, remember Militia Commander?

  9. Gully1824
    April 1, 2018 at 11:16 am

    This is a good card. on par with other 2 mana weapons and certainly helps fill the void left by the FWA nerf.

    HOWEVER… I have a bone to pick… or a log to chop on this one…

    Blizzard is making the same mistake it does with every expansion. Simply put, there is not enough cards printed per class each set. This leads to some classes being abolished for an entire season or more.

    Here’s how it goes: They make a new key word, or idea, often push it on individual classes, and the mechanic doesn’t work well enough to make it competitive, leading to this class pulling from half the cards as other classes that didn’t get a mechanic rammed down their throat. Here are some examples: handbuff (especially in hunter and warrior), freeze in shaman, the entire inspire mechanic, the majority of suicide warlock (self dmg and disco), etc… I’m sure there is others.

    This could be fixed quite easily. Mark the card pool bigger. You don’t have to make a ton of other legendaries and epics, but a solid pool of decent cards and spells on top of your experimental mechanics. Blizzard would make more money anyways and players would be happy to not have their favourite class effectively eliminated for the better part of a year. It would make the meta more dynamic, and allow for multiple archetypes per class for a longer period of time.

    Don;t get me wrong, I realize they make this game for everyone, casual and legend players, but as a legend player and long time MTG player (since Beta), I find this very frustrating.

    This card might be great! might be completely useless. This is what I hate about it. It’s a 5 star card if this mechanic gets played, and skyrockets warrior out of the basement. And if this mechanic just can’t cut it, then they’ve put warrior in the dungeon and threw away the key.

    • KLGamet
      April 1, 2018 at 11:44 am

      True. I also love when they make experimental cards like Deathaxe Punischer or Shimmering Courser with epic qualitiy. It’s really infuriating when you finally get an epic card but it’s worthless. I don’t know why but I get a lot of these epics instead of the good ones I still need. And It’s not like I miss one epic it’s more like ‘I got 4 epics out of 20 and I STILL get a bad one I already had.

      I think blizzard should make experimental cards not epic nor legendary (like Zola the Gorgon), just common and rare so that f2ps or like me people which don’t earn money could have a better experience playing Hearthstone.

      • Kondrias
        April 1, 2018 at 3:34 pm

        I think the point of rarity is connected to a cards complexity. The higher rarity cards do different stuff, more unique things. Like bone mare is a common card despite it being so strong. Because its effect is simple. Give a minion a stat boost. But a legendary like sherazin the corpse flower. Play 4 cards in a turn to revive is unique and very special.

        • Rialon
          April 1, 2018 at 3:56 pm

          Two words about “unique” legendary effects, my friend
          King Krush

          • ARandomWizard
            April 1, 2018 at 5:40 pm

            You need to take into consideration that King Krush is from the Classic Set which exists to display the themes of the classes.

        • KLGamet
          April 1, 2018 at 9:58 pm

          I know but there are still Legendarys/Epics with pretty normal effects and they’re still high rarity.

  10. Spyder9899
    April 1, 2018 at 9:42 am

    How many times do you think we will see attack with weapon with no friendly minions, deathrattle goes off, play a minion, wait a second….emote. :p

  11. Greg
    April 1, 2018 at 9:15 am

    Decent, I don’t know if a deck will be “built around this” but it’s a fun tool to push tempo. This is a fair card in my opinion.

  12. Piterno
    April 1, 2018 at 8:47 am

    About even with Jade Claws. Hope to see a good Warrior rush deck.

  13. Matt
    April 1, 2018 at 8:31 am

    This is good and probably gets a deck built around it.

  14. Soup And Salad
    April 1, 2018 at 6:27 am

    This reminds me of a potentially better Glaivezooka, the GvG Hunter Weapon, and unlike that card, this one is far more difficult to abuse by aggressive decks due to it being a Deathrattle. Since Rush is going to be a theme with Warrior for this expansion, they should be playing enough targets for this in a tempo deck.

    The 2/2 statline is really solid and it will most things recruited by Call to Arms. Comparing this or really any weapon to the old Fiery War Ax will result in it coming up short, but this is solid enough that Control Warrior might be able to come back with just this.

  15. Vincent
    April 1, 2018 at 6:10 am

    Wow, tempo/rush warrior inc. Nice with the new rush legendary and the 5/8 rush card, you can kill one of the 2/1’s.

  16. Bear569
    April 1, 2018 at 5:51 am

    Darius is more playable now with this weapon. you can break the weapon on turn 5 when you play it. 6/5 with rush always kill the most 4 and 5 cost minios.

  17. Crxne
    April 1, 2018 at 5:51 am

    That’s a very good card, a good weapon for the early game and a buff (perfect for Darius Crowley), that’s even better than Glaivezooka

    • Amethonys
      April 2, 2018 at 8:38 am

      Depends. Glaivezooka was faster since it was a battlecry meaning you could usually make whatever 1 drop on board trade up into whatever 2/3 drop your opponent played if you didn’t want to swing the weapon at it. The buff is better but it only works on rush cards meaning you need one in play when you break it causing you to basically dedicate mana on one the turn you break since you can’t hope one lives on board for a turn.

  18. Tor-
    April 1, 2018 at 5:34 am

    Warrior is very heavy leaning towards the Rush mechanic this expansion, really excited to see what decks people will create for it

  19. F4LL
    April 1, 2018 at 5:31 am

    It might see play without rush minions, it’s a pretty decent early game tool.

  20. KLGamet
    April 1, 2018 at 5:23 am

    Good Weapon with early (like Redband Wasp) or later ‘combos’.
    The Stats are fair in my mind.

  21. Pindead
    April 1, 2018 at 5:19 am

    MEH!

  22. Poison
    April 1, 2018 at 5:12 am

    lol I had exactly that weapon in min

  23. Icarium
    April 1, 2018 at 5:09 am

    Meh. Deathrattle to a rush minion on board is underwhelming. But it’s common so I suppose that makes sense. Deathrattle to a rush minion in hand would be far more sweet.

    • Maemmo
      April 1, 2018 at 5:38 am

      You could just time it, so you get it before you make the first attack. And since it’s a deathrattle on a weapon like this, it will be extremely easy to pull off – just like Razor is really easy to use.

  24. HS
    April 1, 2018 at 5:08 am

    good card, now the legendary makes sense