A Darkscale Healer that’s cheap enough to be useful, I can see this slotting into a Priest deck with Shadow Ascendant and Cobalt Scalebane.

Blackguard is only when your Hero is healed – so it’ll just do 2 damage – there are far better Pally cards to combo with.

Even if you’re not against a dragon deck, you’re not going to be too upset dropping a 4/3 on the board for 3 mana – same statline as Spellbreaker or Kezan Mystic for one less mana.

Better than Razorfen Hunter as the Beast Synergy is on the 2/3 rather than the 1/1 … but not much better. Token Druid might get some use out of it at a push, maybe.

For Hunter it curves into Houndmaster if the 2/3 survives – but it’s so much worse, as a 3 drop, than Bearshark or Animal Companion.

15 health – that’s convenient with Jaraxxus and Alexstrasza…

The Cabal Shadowpriest combo though takes 2 cards rather than a single Mind Control, reduces the attack on the stolen minion to 2 (relevant if it has Lifesteal or something) and drops the stolen attack onto something with only 4 health and doesn’t work with Altiesh… however, the Priest can _still_ have Mind Control x2 if they’re that way inclined, and Embrace Darkness for maximum YOINK!

As a potentially significant upside though – it’s not a spell. Which means things like Tyrantus or anything buffed with the Lich King’s Anti-Magic Shell are vulnerable.

Hell, even if you aren’t combo-ing this with Cabal Shadow Priest, it’s still like a more powerful version of Aldor Peacekeeper.

In Mage decks unfortunately 🙂

Unfortuately “wider small boards” pretty much covers everything on the ladder that’s not highlander priest or the odd Big Druid.

I doubt it’ll see ranked play, especially since it’s tied specifically to Deathrattle Rogue; and archetype which only exists, really, in Wild – especially since N’Zoth rotates out in a few months.

In Wild – where the only minion in the deck is Angry Rag. Everything else is a spell to control/kill things, Shadow Essence or ways resurrect Rag.

… concede if opponent has Polymorph or Hex though 🙂

If Blizzard are following their normal pattern, they’re already working on the next expansion, so it’s quite possible that they’ve already got some future synergy inbound after the next standard rotation.

Now Deck of Wonders and Dragoncaller Alanna make a little more sense… if your deck has 5x Scroll of Wonders in it you’re more likely to deal 5 damage to everything rather than a lesser amount.

Make sure you play this BEFORE Alanna though 🙂

Big Priest currently only uses 1 Deathrattle card… Obsidian Statue, which kills an opponent’s minion when it dies. Granted you’d have to cheat one out early first for this to be really useful, that’s kinda the point of the deck and dropping 2x 1/1 Taunt Creatures that destroy an opponents minion when they die – gotta be worth 3 mana.

If it worked with Scroll of Wonders (the card from Deck of Wonders) it would give both cards purpose … but it’s already been confirmed that Scroll of Wonders doesn’t really count as a spell cast, it doesn’t discount Arcane Giant so won’t count here either (in all probability) – so only the original Deck of Wonders would count.

I feels like this was created just to annoy Highlander Priest but I can kind of see a point in a Control Mage deck – especially after Firelands Portal rotates out oddly. You won’t be getting that free 5-cost body from the spell so Flamestrike and Meteor could be used to keep the opponent’s board under control giving you a chance to wrest it back by flooding the board with 5/5 dragons.

Elementals would have been better for the DK synergy – would have been vulnerable to Dragonfire Potion but that rotates out at the same time as Firelands Portal so Elementals might have been even stronger then.

Less of an issue either way in Wild as Lightbomb wins either way.

No – you’d get 2 Ayas and one Golem, with the potential to summon two more Golems when the Ayas are killed, Battlecries are only triggered when you play a card from your hand – still pretty damned good value if the Fungal Lord survives a turn… but it won’t. Fandral rarely survives a turn and he’s got more health and can be played earlier.

The Jades all rotate out of Standard in about March as well.

Battlecries are only triggered when you play a card from your hand – so this won’t trigger the battlecry on the card it summons – so no, it doesn’t really compare with Brann Bronzebeard.

This is better for Deathrattles than Battlecries – same as Barnes.

… but it costs the SAME as a Doomguard making it essentially 5 mana to avoid the discard 2 cards mechanic … and that’s only IF it pulls a Doomguard. If you run this in is a Demon focussed deck, then the more demons you have the more random the pull from the recruitment – the lower your odds of getting Doomguard.

If your opponent kills this, then whatever is recruited is dropped on the board on their turn – giving them the opportunity to react, which they wouldn’t have if YOU played Doomguard.

This is also in the class where the Recruit mechanic is the least important – as the hero power draws cards. Put it this way, at 5 mana, would you rather play this 2/2 – or Despicable Dreadlord, or Doomguard?

About the time I could think of using this would be in a meme-y Taunt-focussed Warlock with Voidlord.

So – what it boils down to is, for 5 mana, cast 5 random spells … eventually?

There are decks where this is a direct improvement to brawl… unless your opponent has a lot of Divine Shields up.

It’s a peculiar one – it’s not a million miles away from Xaril, Poisoned Mind… and that’s a card that very rarely sees play even though it’s ideally suited to Miracle Rogue.

The big advantage here is that it only draw cards you’ve put in your deck – and you can weight the odds of getting what you need more in your favour by having fewer minions… which is pretty much in the nature of Miracle Rogue. Should help avoid those nasty situations where you’ve got a hand full of cheap cards but no Auctioneer. So in Miracle you might run one of these guys.

However, although it’s a bad tempo play, one problem with heavily minion focused decks is that they can run out of steam – so I suspect this might be more akin to Arcane Intellect for Keleseth Rogue, even providing a potential comeback from a big board clear – especially if you Shadowstep it.

Might stick it in a Wild deck with Aviana, Kun and some giant Legendaries maybe… 2x Tyrantus? 2x Deathwing, Dragonlord? 2x Malygos (for a silly spell-based OTK)?

In Standard I guess you could drop this and Stranglethorn Tiger in the same turn (as it’s 1 cheaper than Menagerie Warden) – but that’s actually worse than dropping the Tiger on 5 and the Warden on 6. Unless it gets some support I suspect it’ll be a largely unplayable “win-more” card.