Seems there’s no actual limit on the number of duplicates either – I’m sure I drew 4 Deadly Forks (playing as Rogue obviously) in a game against a Mage last night. Which was actually reasonably effective – well, I won anyway.

Luckydo Buccaneer to slow? Ran into a Pirate Rogue yesterday with two in the deck – I was able to deal with the first one but when he dropped the second next turn that was it for me. 9/9 for 6 mana is fairly hefty.

I used a Secret Hunter – there’s not much you lose out on with the restrictions in place since weapons aren’t spells.

I’ve seen much the same thing (on PC) but that’s been since the release of XCOM2: War of the Chosen; though, I’ve been playing a lot less as well (because of XCOM and now Divinity Original Sin 2)…

Doesn’t help that I don’t think KFT is anywhere near as good as an expansion as Un’Goro.

Seems Uncover Staff Piece come down in cost to 2 mana?

“Nobody double-checks Arcanite Reaper to make sure it’s still a 5/2 weapon each time they cast it. That’s nuts. That’s why it’s less disruptive to change mana cost than Attack, Health, or card text.”

… it’s also far more dull, uninspired and lacks the ability to really fine-tune the power level.

Take Fiery War Axe in this case – simply bumping the mana cost from 2 to 3 turns it from one of the best weapons in the game, as an early answer to things like Mana Wyrm, to almost garbage – there are 3 other 3-cost, 3/2 weapons in Standard, all with additional abilities. If you’re playing Wild you’d be better off with King’s Defender even if you’re only running a couple of Taunts – that’s how big the nerf is.

So with the mana increase, why not add an additional effect to FWA?

How about something like “at the start of your next turn deal an additional 2 burn damage to any minion hit with Fiery War Axe this turn” – adds to the flavour of the weapon (it is Fiery) and allows it to kill things like Stonekeep Defender or Tar Creeper – but gives your opponent the opportunity for one more attack or to heal it. Adds to the power of the weapon when smacking minions but not the opposing hero which is an issue with it in Pirate Warrior decks.

So Warrior – the ultimate weapon class – now has the worst 3/2 weapon in the game?

It’s Eaglehorn Bow without the synergy with secrets…
… or Rallying Blade without the synergy with Divine Shield
… or Shadowblade without the immunity

Innervate is now boring; would have been far more interesting to have it refresh mana crystals you’ve already used this turn – might have seen use in late-game focussed combo or miracle decks still but neatly sidesteps the T1: Vicious Fledgeling (and similar) issue.

The Hex change doesn’t really do much but there was nothing wrong with Hex as it was anyway – now it’s a distinctly worse Polymorph; Taunt on the Frog matters in a class that can’t kill 1 health minions with it’s hero power.

The Murloc Warleader nerf… hmmm… oki. The card needed a rebalance, I guess, since it was previously buffed (sort of – it used to give ALL other Murlocs, yours and your opponents’, +2/+1) – and yes, Murlocs get unpleasant really quickly when they start to get tricky to remove.

The Spreading Plague nerf makes sense – especially when combined with the Innervate nerf as it essentially prevents Crypt Lord to Spreading Plague in consecutive turns, early game. Though I still think Druid has too many tools to deal with aggro now – especially since Pirate Warrior and Murlocadin have just taken a hammering as well.

Overall: 6/10 – could do better 😉

I specifically excluded aggro/token Druid for that very reason – you’ve got a pretty good chance of beating other aggro decks without the cheap taunts because of the cheap minion buffs (Earthen Scales / Power of the Wild) or Innverate into early strong board presence – T1: Enchanted Raven > Mark of Y’Shaarj … or just Vicious Fledgling. Aggro isn’t really a weakness for aggro/token Druid – it’s more cheap board clears and direct damage.

The main defining features of Druid really are “Choose One”, Ramp and Card Draw (Malygos Miracle Druid has been a thing previously) – plus giant monsters of course. So, as long as you’re not playing aggro/token Druid, the general game plan has always, generally, been ramp up as hard as you can, replenish your hand with card draw, and build a board of insurmountably huge minions… then trample your opponent into the dirt.

The weakness with that is if your opponent quickly builds a wide board of aggressive minions – you die. Especially if you don’t get the ramp cards early enough; even with 2x Wild Growth, 2x Innervate and 2x Mire Keeper (or Jade Blossom) it happens. Hunter and Pirate Warrior match-ups were generally bad news. Now both easily countered with things like Crypt Lord, Druid of the Swarm and Spreading Plague – buying you the time to start dropping big things (or Aviana > Kun > lulz in Wild).

Druid should only have one or the other; ramp up _or_ good, cheap taunts – not both… and they had ramp first as a defining feature of the class.

Yes, Ultimate Infestation is seriously over the top while ramp is a feature of Druid… but personally I’d rather keep ramp (with Innervate) as part of Druid’s identity, nerf UI and ditch the cheap taunts – but that’s not gonna happen 😐

I’d be amazed if they moved Innervate to the Hall of Fame mid-season (which is about all you could do to it really)…

Far more likely to be something relatively innocuous, like making Ultimate Infestation all 4s (summon a 4/4, draw 4 cards … etc.) and maybe putting a spawn cap on Spreading Plague or upping the cost… and Druid will carry on much as before.

KFT completely covered Big/Ramp/Jade Druid’s Achilles Heel… aggro. Druid had very limited options for cheap Taunts before KFT, even more so before Un’Goro (Shellshifter); Robo-cub in GvG was about it apart from the Neutral cards. If you didn’t get the ramp you would often die… that was the only balancing factor to things like Innervate.

Crypt Lord, Druid of the Swarm and Spreading Plague will just happily lock out most aggro decks even if the Druid doesn’t get ramp early on – giving them time to dominate the board and win. Far more effective than a couple of Swipes.

In these cases, while Ultimate Infestation may be OP as hell, it pretty much just becomes a “win more” card. Druid should not have access to good, cheap taunts; it was never part of the class design.

I actually got decent value out of The Voraxx in a Paladin buff deck…

Oh – correction, I used a secret Hunter rather than Murlocs – still 6/9 were Murloc decks.

I found, using Murlocs with Mage that the little Deadscale Knight (1/1 Lifesteal) became invaluable just to give a little health buffer… I think I had something like 20 health when I won because the Knights were buffed up so much.

Ditto – Murlocs for everything bar Druid and Warrior; it’s official – the original “joke” race now has enough synergy to be OP 😀

Ramp Druid was always a thing – it’s designed in – but it was always vulnerable to being Zerged by aggro or Zoolock so it was never hugely successful on the ladder (not to Jade-like levels). KFT has given Druid the tools to deal with aggro though and that, IMO, is the problem now.

… and HS has no equivalent to MTG’s Armageddon 🙂

I’m going to have to dig my old MTG cards out… I’m sure I’ve got at least one of each of the 5 original Moxen and Time Warp and I thought they were all 4th edition prints – either that or I’ve got more Unlimited cards than I thought I had. Don’t have Black Lotus though – not sure about Ancestral Visions, it’s been a while and the cards are in a box that’s yet to be unpacked since we moved house.

“Other cards I think are possible are Baron Geddon” … Baron Geddon is definitely possible; I’d probably swap out an Arcanologist as you’re only running 3 secrets and you’ve got 2 Mistress of Mixtures for early drops.

TBK and Gluttonous Ooze are both situational – TBK might be good until the Lich King novelty wears off but Geddon synergises with the deck theme overall (since he gained the Elemental tag).

Priest is a slightly odd choice for The Ancient One … since you can build up a 30+ OTK with much cheaper creatures and spells anyway. Going for combos like this generally means you need a lot of card draw to be reliable – which this deck is sorely lacking looking at it…

… however, as someone who ran a wild Ancient One Ramp Druid for a while, I can see the appeal – smacking someone in the face with a giant 30/30 monster *never* gets old 😀

Not to mention you’ve got a lower health total in MTG; 20 as opposed to 30.

So having a Shivan Dragon (for example – been a few years since I played MTG) dropped on the board on T3 is sort of equivalent to getting Angry Rag on the board on T3 in Hearthstone.

There’s also no guarantee in MTG that you’re going to gain 1 mana each turn (you could get a crap land draw), which makes the 3 mana boost from Black Lotus even more powerful… for Innervate to be equivalent in power to Black Lotus I think it would need to give you 4 mana.

The very essence of Druid is mana ramping – it’s like the single defining thing about the Druid class; Innervate and Wild Growth almost should be auto-includes in Druid otherwise it’s kinda missing the point. I seem to remember the description about druid being all about overtaking your opponent and then overwhelming them with giant creatures.

There are issues now with cards like the Lich King being dropped early – but that’s *always* been the case with Druid. I’ve had Angry Rag on the board on turn 3 before (Wild Growth on T2, Innervate > Innervate > Rag on T3).

Personally I don’t think that’s a problem with Druid – that’s the whole point of Druid.

However – Druid *should* be countered by Aggro; if you don’t get those early Innervates and Wild Growths you’re supposed to be in trouble if your opponent is running an aggressive deck. When aggro became too dominating with things like Pirate Warrior, for instance, some anti-aggro cards were added like Stonehill Defender and Tar Creeper, to a lesser extent Tar Lurker (Warlock) and Warrior got a few new cheap taunts to power the quest (and there’s nothing more boring than playing against a Taunt warrior in wild)… and now Druid, the class that’s biggest weakness is supposed to be that it can get face-rolled by aggro, is getting some very strong anti-aggro cards of its own like Crypt Lord, Druid of the Swarm and Spreading Plague.

IMO Druid is losing it’s class identity – it is supposed to be strong when it gets the mana ramp going – and it’s *supposed* to be much weaker without it… unless it’s aggro token druid of course 🙂

Someone *really* doesn’t like Water decks…