“Very good.”

You’re new here, aren’t you?

The question is whether it can defeat Shudderwock.

They’re clearly gearing Warrior up to be a Mech control deck. A huge part of their incentive to play the archetype is Dr. Boom, who doesn’t come out until turn 7. This essentially reads “1 mana: add 3 removal spells to your hand that leave minions behind.”

This card will either never see play or be involved in some horrifically degenerate combo. There is no in-between.

An EXTREMELY sticky card that drops a very synergy-driven type of minion. I could see it, the raw stats are pretty bad for the cost but this is generally going to guarantee something left over the following turn in a lot of matchups. Great for magnetizing, great for Spikeridged Steed, great for Dire Wolf… I think there’s an excellent chance to see this in at least Paladin, and possibly in a lot of other places.

These cards have NEVER worked as just general “play them” cards, the only scenario where this would be useful would be in a meta where Priest has one specific bad matchup which revolved around a specific minion. Even then, you’d need to ALSO benefit from that minion enough to be worth a card slot which is useless almost anywhere else, and the fact that it’s Discover means there’s no guarantee you’ll actually get what you need. Don’t like it, predict it’ll see no play whatsoever.

The Dirty Rat replacement, which I…don’t like. Dirty Rat provided a vital tech option to a lot of classes, but this one keeps the worst of the card (its variance) while locking it to one class and providing none of the interesting flexibility that Dirty Rat had. I’m not going to comment on the power level of the card, because I don’t know, but in terms of design I HATE it.

It’s a “3 mana 4/4” which is itself not overly impressive, but the synergy is what’ll make or break the card. If Treant decks are a thing, this’ll probably make it. Otherwise, there’s some glimmer of hope for it in Token/Aggro Druid but it doesn’t seem all that exciting.

I HATE this design, it’s clearly going to be used as a cheap follow up to Malygos with no possible counterplay. Unless we get a Dirty Rat-style tech card in this expansion, this guy is going to be infuriating.

Fair enough, so an even worse version of something that already sounded bad. Perfect.

Using this gives you the advantage of +1 mana that you can act on immediately, with the downside of giving your opponent +2 mana and +1 card advantage. That…doesn’t sound like a great dead. I think you’d need to be using a very specific strategy to play this card, it doesn’t seem like a staple.

I have no idea what to think about this card. You get to make use of the +1 mana advantage first, but then your opponent gets to make use of +2, then it levels out except that you’re a card down. If you’re using it in a combo deck, you still need to draw the combo, which means traditional ramping with armour gain seems fast enough. Which leaves us with Ramp or Big Druid, which doesn’t seem that exciting. Not gonna leave a rating on this one yet, we really need to see more of the set.

May have some utility in Big Druid, that’s about all I can think of. Seems like one of the gentle cards they’ve been using since the beginning of time to introduce a new mechanic. 4 mana 18 stats is obviously nuts, but on turn 10…what do you actually do with this?

Oh, right, Emeriss. Umm…is playing an 8/8 on turn 10 in order to play 72 stats of Taunt on turn 11 good? I doubt it, not when it’s so easy for classes to slot in Equality/Psychic Scream/Twisting Nether/Sap/etc. That would have to be your big game winning strategy, and it doesn’t sound like it will win a lot of games.

This card is obviously ridiculously powerful, and it kind of scares me. On the one hand, using it with Lightning Storm/Far Sight/Healing Rain seems like a cool way of building a Control Shaman. On the other hand, that “Control Shaman” is really Shudderwock Shaman, and I don’t love the idea of that deck having access to Reno-lite. And that’s not even getting into an unblockable 10 damage from Lava Burst if you decide to go that route instead. Yuck.

Seems like it could have potential in Miracle or Malygos, where you’re already trying to draw your deck as fast as possible. If you’re not going to die the turn you play this (you DO still have 5 mana to defend yourself), it seems like a great way to get the rest of your setup enabled. Would be shocked if it saw no play, this effect is REALLY powerful.

Of course you don’t want to freeze your minions, but the point is that the power spike of either card is on turn 3 after daggering on 2, and it’s still not good enough for either of them (yes, this is marginally better than Frostrider). Another comparision: Silithid Swarmer. A 3 mana minion which instantly comes with 5 health and benefits off of a weapon on 2. Thug is a maximum 3 mana 3/5 IF it doesn’t die and you get both attacks off with the dagger, after which you need to redagger to keep building it and therefore lose the tempo lead. Even if Thug DOES grow to a 5/5 (which will be very unreliable), Silithid Swarmer’s 3 attack is still generally enough to kill anything in the turns where it’s relevant, a 3/5 is much better than a 4/4 on the turn it’s summoned…and it saw absolutely zero play. No reason to think differently here.

Midrange and tempo decks don’t GET a 4 mana 6/6 almost ever, and no, Control decks probably wouldn’t use it to begin with.

Why are You Randomly capitalizing Words in Your Sentence?

Would I ever play a 4 mana 6/6? Yeah, actually I think I would. In an aggressive deck. Which has minions on the board. And no instant way of getting your opponent’s minions off the board. Yeah….next.

This will be an Arena staple, but very little chance it ever sees Constructed play. I say “very little” because Bog Creeper did see SOME fringe play, but not much.