I like this as a finisher for a lot, either used defensively or offensively. The lifesteal makes it where I don’t think you even feel particularly bad if you top deck it on turn 10 as a way to just grab a lot of value.

It’s all good, when I first saw it and had a similar reaction and thought “why is this a legendary?” until I read it again. Even with Aegwynn being in the Core set for the second year deathrattle inheritance still really throws me off.

The strong thing about the Dude Paladin cards shown yesterday is that unlike the Darkmoon Faire cards, they’re low-costed enough that they can have their impact early, while Silver Hand Recruits are the most impactful. Especially in Paladin, I don’t think Infuse (3) by turn 4 will be particularly hard, and after clearing your side of the board (the presumed situation giving you Infuse (3)) this is a great refill with some sticky stats.

I tend to agree. When I first saw this I scoffed at it, but thinking about it this works really well in Hand Buff Paladin, not to mention the perfect synergy with Buffet Biggun for the Dude Synergies.

For one it’s wild and disappointing to me that they took Mikanikos’s unique Steward model and made it into a random one, but whatever. This I rather like, at 3 mana it’s reasonable to expect in many matchups it will stick and give you great value for a while. Even outside a Dude Paladin deck, this is just a good value card, which like with the other two Dude cards shown yesterday really give them a value that the Darkmoon Faire cards didn’t outside of Dude decks.

As a huge fan of Pure Paladin back in the day, loving this card. Definitely very strong, easy 5/5, would not be surprised to see this be nerfed early on (though I suppose it can’t get much earlier than being nerfed right after it’s revealed). It does make me curious whether we’ll see more of a Pure-ish Paladin package through the rest of the set however, as it would be a naturally reinforcing cycle if we do.

Based on the key art, my predictions for the portrayed legendaries are: Mikanikos for Paladin, with mech interplay through Bron. We know Vashj is Shaman. Hot Draka for Demon Hunter (already have Warrior, she’s a fighter who’s agile and has fought Demons, therefore Demon Hunter). fdjkghdfsigsfdhg for Druid. We know Olgra is Warrior. Kel’Thuzad for Mage. Rafaam for Warlock (both this and Kel’Thuzad in line with past portrayals). Artificer Xy’mox is Rogue. Pelagos is Priest. Nifty fellow who I legit have no clue who he is Hunter I guess? The last one is by far my least confident but I’m assuming each class has a legendary shown on the key art.

I don’t care about how good this card actually is, I fucking love and am going to run it in every single Hunter deck I make.

Solid 4-star in my opinion. Good stats, and with rush I can see this working well as a 4-cost big removal spell that can trigger your own deathrattles and still leave a strong minion behind; maybe even serve as removing two minions for one card.

This is my favorite questline yet. Naturally fits into a Control Priest deck, follows the curve, and sets a major timer for the opponent if it gets completed without being too guaranteed due to the risk of getting screwed on draws. This will be an autoinclude for every control priest deck I build for sure.

I honestly love this. Even with the bit of organization around Nozdormu Day, it always felt bad to put it in my deck when there was a good chance the matchup wouldn’t even happen. This addition is great, and I hope will get people to participate in the blitz rounds.

I think this card can work really well in Priest and definitely supplements the spell-boosted minion package Priest already has. I can definitely see it getting a lot of play, especially in conjunction with the Sethekk Veilweaver, Nazmani Bloodweaver, Power Word: Fortitude, and Fortune Teller package.

I like weapons with effects like this a lot in general, and I love Divine Shield in Paladin, so I like this combo a lot. However, as is I don’t think there’s enough Divine Shield in Paladin for this to be worthwhile in Standard; if we get more good Divine Shields in this set, I think this could be a strong inclusion. 3 stars as is, 4 if the set supports it.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I dislike Blizzard’s focus on profits above all else (though I do have trouble being upset with them about it, given it is their literal job, being a public company and all). And I also don’t think it needs to be stated that, as a company, Blizzard tends to have a lot of issues with giving their games functioning code – I know it’s not Hearthstone, but the fact that they can’t expand the base Backpack size in WoW really kills my confidence in the technical longevity and functionality of Blizzard games. All this to say, I agree with basically every criticism you have (with the exception of the new quest system, I think that’s a positive change if they could get the code working), I just highly doubt that there’s any major connection between Hearthstone’s monetization and Hearthstone’s code stability. Because, let’s be real, if Blizzard hired 20 new employees for Hearthstone (to be clear, this is a random fucking number), I think we all know that far more of those would go towards marketing and monetization than would go towards coding and quality assurance.

Oh my gosh, you might just be right. I hadn’t realize the similarities, but damn, that’s striking.

I absolutely love Blizzard’s representation of Varden, and can’t wait for their Book of Mercenaries chapter and Hero Portraits.

Additionally, just generally love this story approach that’s going on, looking forward to it continuing.

Alternatively: bugs sometimes require getting in and messing with the code, and if not handled correctly lead to even worse bugs, and thus should be approached with caution. Hero portraits and card backs, conversely, already exist entirely within the game and the storefront pages are templates that have been shown to not have technical issues, and thus take little to no hero.

In summary, feel free to critique Blizzard for monetizing old content (though that seems disingenuous with the alternate hero portraits, given they were already monetized), but I highly doubt there’s any real connection between Blizzards changing the Hero Portrait and Card Back available for purchase and Blizzards progress in fixing bugs.