I agree, Level Up! is what makes Odd Paladin scary in Standard. And in Wild it’s even worse since they have “Two-arms men” and the 3-mana soldier that gives all Silver Hand Recruits +1 attack. Odd Paladin’s Hero Power should be nerfed to summon a 2/2 Silver Hand Recruit, especially looking at Wild. Next rotation is going to be a breath of fresh air, although I’m scared of Odd Warrior, it will probably beat most decks (horribly rolling over aggro) except Mecha’thun decks. That’s why I also believe Tank Up! should be nerfed to 3-mana.

Baku and Genn are fine as they are – in half of the classes they are not worth running. The problem is that there’s a bunch of cards out there that hugely synergize with the upgraded Hero Powers. Odd Paladin is the most aggravating example: Level Up!, Vinecleaver and Fungalmancer make the power-level of the deck very high. And thank goodness they can’t run the 3/4 that adapts Recruits or Tarim. Once rotation hits, they’re mainly left with Raid Leader as a synergy to their Hero Power, so I’m expecting it to be much weaker. Even Warlock can be built because Twilight Drake and Mountain Giants are good pay-offs, and AOEs are even-costed. The opposite is true of Odd Warlock: no pay-offs and no AOEs. We’ve seen this with Odd Mage too: before this expansion it really didn’t have much going on for it, and finally now that it has more support you can actually make a T3 deck with it.

The scariest deck after rotation for me is Odd Warrior. The only decks it will always lose to are Mecha’thun decks, but without DK Rexxar, DK Jaina and Quest Rogue it’s going to be the Control deck to beat, only losing Reckless Flurry and Quest to rotation. Odd Rogue will probably still be there because Hench-Clan Thug carries the deck, although no Vilespines and no Fungalmancer should tune down its power.

In any case I do agree that some upgraded Hero Powers should be tuned down, since they were not designed to be available from the start of the game. Odd Warrior should get 3 Armor per button-press (why does Hunter go from 2-damage to 3, but Warrior goes from 2 to 4?). Odd Paladin should summon a Silver Hand Recruit with a +1/+1 on it (so a 2/2 for 2). Odd Rogue… I don’t know how that could be nerfed. Giving it a 1/3 weapon would kill the deck, especially when you have Serrated Tooth as a fair card. And I’d rather have a 1/2 weapon than a 2/1 weapon.

Hybrid Recruit Hunters with a secret package and a high end have always been quite inconsistent. Ideally you want to have secrets to play early game, a buffed Spellstone by Turn 5, and then drop the Deathrattle Ooze and/or Kathrena and start bringing the big boys to finish the job. The problem is that it only happens like 20% of the time: sometimes you don’t draw secrets or Spellstones in the early game and you get run over, other times the enemy deals with your Spellstone and you don’t find the extra gas. 10-15% of your games you will draw your 3-4 big beasts in the early turns and then have nothing to recruit with Ooze or Kathrena. Cube Deathrattle is just so much more consistent: a Play Dead can help you trigger a Devilsaur Egg on Turn 3 or 4, but it’s also a great card once you have a Cube or Kathrena on the board. As you know Deathrattle Hunter can still get bad draws and not pressure enough in the midgame, but Recruit Hunter runs into that situation much more frequently.

We have to wait until rotation. I believe after rotation we are going to have a very fun meta. All the broken stuff from Year of the Mammoth will be gone from Standard. Odd Rogue and Odd Warrior will still be around, unfortunately, but other top decks are losing a lot from rotation. Odd Paladin won’t be the same without Level Up!, Vinecleaver and Fungalmancer, for example.

The problem with Quest Hunter has always been that the Quest reward is simply not good enough. Compare that to the Caverns Below, for example, and you understand why: Caverns Below also forces you to take slow tempo turns at the beginning of the game, but when the reward hits, it pays off. If you complete the quest with Hunter, you get a 5 mana 8/8 (you can use a Bittertide Hydra for that), and a bunch of 1 mana 3/2 cantrips. By turns 7-8 1 mana 3/2’s that don’t cost you a card are NOT good enough, since the opponent has answers to those by then, or has killed you in the meantime. If Carnassa’s Brood had Charge, this would probably be another story, but then the Quest Reward would probably have been good enough to make the Quest viable…

Tapping freely without lowering your health is actually quite powerful. You always appreciate the extra health vs Aggro and vs Control/Combo-damage based decks. The real problem why Odd Warlock hasn’t worked so far is that almost all the AOE is even-costed, and also you can’t run Gul’dan, one of the most powerful cards in the game. Even Warlock has turned to be better because it keeps its AOEs and also it has great pay-off cards like Twilight Drake, Hooked Reaver and, especially, Mountain Giant. But I still believe the upgraded Tap in a control shell is stronger than people believe, the problem is that that control shell does not sadly exist. But Mecha’thun Warlock, for example, would be much, much better if it had the upgraded Tap.

Having Dragon Soul up, then dropping Radiant Elemental + Test Subject and filling the board with 5/5s looks like a powerful win condition. If the opponent lacks AOE, you could include a Mass Dispel to make sure all those 6 dragons connect to the face. Armor gain classes or classes with lots of AOE could become very problematic. Maybe you could tech Stonetusk Boar + Vivid Nightmare to deal with the likes of Odd Warrior. In that case you would need to avoid playing the legendary weapon.

I have a dream: making Odd Quest Warlock a reality. Both the Quest Reward and the upgraded Hero Power make sense in a control shell that drags the game and provides a good win condition. The problem with this so far has been undoubtedly that there’s no odd-costed AOEs in Warlock except for Lord Godfrey, and thus a control shell can’t be made with Odd-costed cards. Now we get Shriek, which is a substantial upgrade, but I’m still very skeptical that it can make the deck viable. I will try.

If I were going to run an almost Beast deck, I would definitely play Houndmaster over Beastmaster. Houndmaster is a 4-drop, arguably the best 4-drop in the game (6/5 worth of stats + Taunt). I have won many games against Control by curving Bearshark into Houndmaster. Beastmaster + Master’s Call seems too clunky, although it can definitely win games by high-rolling. Someone in Reddit did some Math for including non-Beasts in Master’s Call, and the consistency drops dramatically when you include them: https://www.reddit.com/r/CompetitiveHS/comments/a0qyf7/analyzing_masters_call_how_many_beasts_do_you/

Master’s Call is a powerful card, but it costs 3 mana, and I would personally not run non-Beasts because the consistency is a big issue.

I really don’t see Master’s Call making an impact this time around, at least not in the mentioned Midrange archetype. You have to sacrifice Hunter’s best 4-drops (Houndmaster and Houndmaster Shaw) to make it worth it, and there’s no worthy subsitutes for those (Lifedrinker feels weak). It’s just a shame that Hunter got more options for its 3-drops (which are stacked already) and not for their 4-drops.

The thing is: 1 mana 1/1 Rushes are also not great, they are strictly worse than Elven Archers, and Elven Archers are almost always not good enough to include in a deck. The main problem, again, is massive tempo loss. If you play Odd Hunter, you’d rather drop a Sabertooth Tiger than this guy, and that’s a common from the Classic set instead of a legendary! I mean, haven’t you drawn Baku in Odd Hunter and totally dreaded having that deck card? Including the Lynx in Odd Hunter is going to increase your chances of getting more dead cards in hand. The only deck you would consider including this Lynx is Quest Hunter, since it gives you the required triggers for it, and the Toxmonger makes some of the pings actually good enough. Stonekeep seems to agree with me here: gives 3 out of 10 stars and says it’s only viable in Quest Hunter.

I know, friend. It was sarcasm. But since dragons are beasts, why not mechs too? Haha

If I’m playing the Spirit (which is also a bad card) I’d rather play Unleash the Hounds because I can at least go FACE (something imprinted in Hunter’s DNA). So what if you get a bunch of 1 mana 2/2 Rushes? You have lost massive tempo with a 5 mana 3/2, and you’re not getting it back with this. Not to mention that there’s tons and tons of AOE removal for 2 damage, and that you need the Spirit in your hand as well, which won’t always be the case.

Finally a pay-off for Frozen Crusher and Cryostasis! /s

No, but seriously, this curves from Hyldnir Frostrider. That’s possibly the best thing. Unsure why you would want to get 8 Armor in a Tempo deck, though.

OK, sorry, I hadn’t realized it was indeed DISCOVER. That makes it QUITE better (I thought it was totally random, like Pilfer). Still, unsure that this is better than Hallucination. 1/5 stars (up from -1/5 stars)

If it AT LEAST were Discover, you would at least up the meme potential to get Twig more frequently. As it is, this is TOTALLY unplayable. Should have come with a 1/2 body attached at least, considering the myriad of bad weapons you can get. -1/5 stars.

A 1-drop that is only useful later in the game. Yeah, no thanks.

This could have been better than Amani Berserker in the old Tempo Aluneth Mage (RIP Mana Wyrm). Still, solid 2-drop which can have a good upside. Glad to see more 2-drops challenging the Keleseth reign.

This comes a bit too late, it would have been great when Voidlords were freaking everywhere. I won’t say no to a conditional pre-nerf Ironbeak Owl.

Nerubian Egg for Standard. Definitely good for token/buff decks like Even Shaman.