There’s maybe some potential for this card in Purify Priest as a “4 mana 7/7”. This looks appealing with the new Warlock card, but it isn’t. At that point you’re spending 7 mana to get 10/10 worth of stuff, but you also gave you opponent a 2/2. And it cost two cards. So two cards for a 7 mana 8/8? Yeah… unappealing.

Has a little hope in Purify Priest though, imo.

It’s a neat card design, but that doesn’t stop it from being really bad. It probably needed to be much more aggressively statted to be viable.

I already mentioned Quest Shaman.

Finja is part of the standard Water package. It’s basically the whole point of running the water package, because Finja can pull those guys out of the deck.

Theoretically you play this in N’Zoth/Quest Priest. In reality, it’s probably just bad.

This is not the 2-drop Priests have been waiting for. Most of the time it’s just a 2 mana 2/2, and that’s not good. Pairing it with Northshire Cleric sounds good, but drawing both of them in your opening hand sounds unlikely, and that’s probably the only time this card is worth it.

Water package is pretty viable, so it seems like this card will be pretty good. My only question is that will you really run two of these with Finja? The standard Water Package is only 5 cards, so unless more Murlocs are viable, this might be regulated to only one copy. I’m not sold on the Brrrrloc either, so I’ll keep weary about this card.

Should Quest Shaman become a thing though, this is a definite run two copies card.

Even in a world where Deathrattle Rogue is a thing, I can’t fathom running enough Deathrattles that you’ll consistently get two cards with this and still have a solid deck. Even if you do, there’s the opposite extreme where you draw half your deck and burn a bunch of cards, leaving you in an awkward position, especially if the Fatigue Warrior and Priest that Blizzard want to happen come back.

I really like Deathrattle effects though, and even for me I probably wouldn’t run this. Rogue has better card draw options and would rather use those.

The bad news is that this does nothing against some of the more popular aggressive decks right now. Token Druid and Token Shaman like to slap down lots of minions and then burst you down with a temporary mass buff (Savage Roar and Bloodlust respectively). Pirate Warrior tends to use smaller minions and big weapons to smash you down quickly. Even if you survive long enough against those decks to play this, it isn’t really going to help you.

The good news is that this is a very potent card against Jade decks and against Big Easy Druid. The other good news is that with Raza and Lyra, you could pull off some pretty degenerate stuff. But how viable is it to make it happen? This card requires a LOT of mana to play, and unless you’re killing your opponent’s whole (or most of it) board with this effect (which again, isn’t very likely, you’re losing a LOT of tempo getting this out.

All-in-all, I think the battlecry is ineffective against too many decks, I think the hero power needs too much support, and I think Priest can do fine without it. I don’t even know what kind of Priest deck wants it. I’m not convinced control Priest wants it because, again, it’s a very situational board clear, and Priest wants no part of that. If they want a damaging hero power, they’ll probably just run Shadowform. And that sentence probably cements how bad this card actually is. I dunno, maybe I’m wrong and control priest will love firing this hero power from the hip, but I just don’t see it.

I can’t even think of much to say about this card. It’s just not very good. In arena it’s a very average to slightly below average pick because health doesn’t matter as much in Arena where it’s all about board control and minion combat, and a 3 mana 3/3 isn’t very good in that world.

Wow, that’s so impressive. So you’re telling me that this 5 mana card is worth less than 3 mana since we don’t care about the hero power now, right?

Evolve isn’t even the primary win condition in Token Shaman. It just wants to flood the board and play Bloodlust. Evolve is just a nice bonus, and it mostly works because it’s cheap, allowing you to play a lot of things and still evolve them in the same turn. This card with its chunky 5 mana makes it a lot harder to combo with more cards. So on further thought, no, I don’t think even Token Shaman will run this thing. Thanks for clearing that up.

Taunt… shaman?

Nah. Anywho, this card is pretty bad. Overload 3 is pretty bad, especially if you plan on playing this early. It has the same stats of Deathlord, which saw play, so it’s good, right? Well, Deathlord only saw play in Control Priest/Warrior because its “drawback” turned out to be good for them, as it thinned the opponent’s deck while giving them a big body (and the minion that hit the board would get Brawled/Lightbombed away anyways). Priest could also use it with Divine Spirit and Inner Fire for shenanigans. I’m not even convinced that Priest would run this if it could, since it already has Humongous Razorleaf and that overload is so crippling. But Shaman has no real way to take advantage of this card and its downside is a real downside, not something that can be exploited, so yeah, this thing is pretty bad.

Noteworthy is that this is a slight nerf to Stonehill Defender in Shaman. Pulling this from Defender won’t be awful, but since it’ll run interference on better Shaman Taunt cards like White Eyes, Al’Akir, and Thing From Below, it’s still a net Stonehill Defender nerf.

A 2/1 body is significantly worse than a 3/2 body. Even for a cheaper effect… nah, this just doesn’t do it for me. I mean, obviously this would never see constructed play, so now we get to decide if it sees Arena play, and I think it comes out as an average to slightly below average arena card. 2 mana card with 1 health is pretty bad.

My point is that for that much tempo loss, you’re expecting something INSANE. This… doesn’t really feel insane. Even in the best case where you pull off the 3-4 card combo you discussed, all you’ve done is stall a ton while your opponent still has a strong hand (since you vanished his board). At that point, is this passive really going to be enough to combo out/outvalue your opponent? Or will they just turn around and stomp you into the dirt? It just feels like you’re not getting a whole lot for your 9 mana investment.

It doesn’t compare very well to Glacial Shard, but Glacial Shard is really good and Shaman is obviously going for some serious freeze synergy, so perhaps this will work. Honestly, I doubt this will do much, but there’s something interesting there, at least.

A really cool design, definitely some fun stuff Warlock can do with this. We’ll have to see how practical those applications are, but I’m optimistic for the moment.

Initial impressions are… poor.

Playing this takes a whole turn, and on the turn you play it, it does noting except guarantee you make it to the next turn. Your opponent, meanwhile, gets a free turn to set up how he wants and clear your board. The advantage is that you basically get a free card every turn. If your can survive for a few turns after that, sounds great! But so late in the game, you can’t dedicate a turn to just not dying. I can’t even imagine what you could to with that extra card to mitigate such a crippling loss of tempo so late in the game.

Keep in Mind that Jaraxxus at least does something proactive on the turn he comes out by being able to attack for 3. If you still have the coin, you can even summon a 6/6 the turn you play him!

I mean, if Ice Block was 9 mana, no one would play it, right? Obviously this is better than a 9 mana Ice Block, but I hope you see my point. Maybe I’m missing something mind-blowing here, but I don’t see it.

I mean… what do you want me to say? Obviously this card is insane value. Its value is so insane that Druid will find an excuse to run it for the same reason that Hunters find excuses to run Highmane and Call of the Wild. It has the tools to make it work, and I think something will find a way to run it.

Also, this is the auto-pick of auto-picks in arena. Is there a single epic in the game that you’d pick over this one? Seems had to believe that there would be.

Nah, you’d run this with Possessed Villager before Blood mage. Possessed Villager guarantees this thing goes off three times for one less mana. Blood Mage still might be an option, but it doesn’t slot into Zoo as well as Possessed Villager.

In a Vacuum, this isn’t a very good 5 drop. You’d run Princess Huhuran before you ran this thing. Even with Highmanes in the deck, Huhuran still probably wins. You’d need to dedicate a lot harder to Deathrattle to justify this thing.

Nesting Roc also probably beats this thing sans Deathrattle support, for the record.

Heavy breathing cat is my favorite. I will never not find it funny.