Looks good to me, man. The first time I saw it I thought of Elekk and Upgrade, but realistically I think those would be win-more cards in this deck and you’re better with the additional control tools that you currently have.

Good luck!

It is losing Psychic Scream, but it still has Mass Hysteria and now Forbidden Words. Plus the option to include Holy Nova, Doomsayers, Abominations, and SW:Death if need be–yes they aren’t as good as scream, but the point is they are still available in case Wall Priest does still need to tech in something more. Meanwhile, every other meta deck that wants to go wide is getting seriously gutted. No more Emerald Spellstones or Flanking Strikes. No more Play Dead or Terrorscale. No more Odd or Even Pally. No more Divine Favor. No more Voidlords, cubes, or Skulls. No more Prince K, Firefly, or Fungalmancers.

If you say this rotation is making Wall Priest take 1 step backwards, then every other current archetype must be taking 10.

Shadow Visions is still rotating out, so at least all priest decks will less consistent. The good news is that I think Mind Blast OTK Priest will still be unplayable in standard. The bad news is the only significant cards that Wall OTK Priest is losing without RoS alternatives will be Oakheart and Shadow Visions, so that deck is looking more and more likely.

“Let them fight.”
-Ken Watanabe’s character from Godzilla (2014)

It is–in fact, that’s how I did my brawl this week.

NOOOO!!! Right when Wall Priest was about to die a nice, quiet death…

Needs Zillax and Lab Recruiters, man.

You need the Recruiters because your first Pogo is basically unplayable until you have a way to shuffle more back into your deck on the same turn–otherwise, it’s too easy to kill and you’re totally stalled until you draw the second. And you need Zillax to graft until a Pogo for a mid-game life swing, because you’ll lose early board to most decks.

Personally, I prefer Inventors to Sprint because they are cheaper and they synergize with Shark, but that’s personal preference. You might also want to consider Witchwood Piper to tutor for your Pogos/Recruiters; it has positive synergy with the Sharks that negative with the aforementioned Inventors. And since you won’t really have board presence until about Turn 5, I think you might want to jettison the Lackey and Cutless packages in favor of tools to help you stabilize earlier–I’m thinking specifically of SI, Eviscerate, and Thug–assuming the tempo of the new meta vaguely resembles what it is today. …But trust me on the Zillax and Lab Recruiters.

>>Note that the spells you get DO NOT cost 0 (as they appear on the Choose One screen), they cost
>>the same as the original spell. That leaves me kinda underwhelmed actually.

This. I can see possibilities–e.g., if there’s some nice hand-size synergy options, or if Druid comes up with some type of value/fatigue game–but it’s not like you’re going to want to pay 6 mana for Nourish AND THEN 6 more mana for 2 more mana crystals and another 6 mana for 3 additional cards. You’re just clogging up your hand at that point.

Do we know that the bombs from this are the same 5 damage as Clockwork Goblin and Seaforium Bomber? If so: that sounds INSANE–up to 16 damage for 4 mana with the option to add another 10 with Greenskin or Upgrade.

I have faith that you’ll still be able to scheme up some fun new budget decks once all the new cards are revealed and you’ve had some time to feel out the new meta. 😉

I started playing in Boomsday, and it’s been really striking just how dependent Standard gameplay is on Un’Goro / Frozen Throne / KnC. Those expansions have just been so much more powerful at every level than last year’s that it’s felt like buying packs was a waste: I could either buy 2018 packs and still be missing “critical” cards or I could buy 2017 packs and only have them for a few months.

It will be very interesting to see how the rotation and how Rise of Shadows will play out, and to see if it has a significant power spike to compensate for lost cards or if they’ll just try to lower the power levels for Standard across the board. Maybe we’ll even have a “renaissance” of the last 3 expansions and find new value once they are no longer overshadowed by the 2017 cards. I’m excited!

I would argue that any deck intends to win through Zul’jin and powerful spells could still be considered “Spell Hunter”, even if it also includes some minion cards. “Big Spell Mage” has some minions in it too, right?

The video does show overload: at 0:27, you see the 9th and 10th mana crystals form “lock” symbols from the Lava Burst that was just proxy-cast.

Because the text of the Horror says “Battlecry: Cast (Spell 1) and (Spell 2)”, I would guess that Shudderwock would cast the exact same 2 spells including a random target for the first spell and locking appropriate mana crystals, however Blizzard has been inconsistent before so don’t count on it.

For the sake of Devil’s Advocate: just because it has no direct benefit to you doesn’t mean its useless. I suspect Blizzard’s main goal was to make the game more “casual-friendly”–i.e., now you can build reasonably competitive decks without ever visiting a 3rd party site, so less involved players might be less discouraged and a play a little more which is generally good for everyone.

But yeah, I’ll go back to my earlier comment and say I too am pretty disappointed that the tool isn’t more competent. Hopefully it improves with time.

Another great article, Guardian, although it’s very disappointing news. I was REALLY hoping for something like “hey, I’ve opened Undertakah and Tirion, can you make me an interesting off-meta deck around that?” This sounds like almost the exact opposite: it reinforces “proven” meta synergies and just fails to recognize new or off-meta synergies.

>>Zayle than can be drawn out of packs too? Should work this way. So playing the single player content dont give me anything Special.

I read this as: it will work just like previous adventures. For example, if you buy, play, and beat all of The One Night in Karazhan, you are awarded free copies of the legendaries Medivh and Prince Malchezaar. Alternatively, though, anyone can pay 1600 dust to craft either legendary regardless of whether they’ve bought the expansion.

It sounds like playing the upcoming single player content will also award you free packs (as opposed to how previous adventures gave away 30-45 unique cards which weren’t available through packs), presumably at a significantly better rate than if you spent your $20 on just purchasing 15 card packs from the store instead. I don’t know whether you consider that discount “special” or not.

What I am interested to see is if the meta goes hyper-aggro. Between the loss of early uber-taunts (namely tar creeper, chain gang, and stonehill), the loss of cheap armor gain (odd warrior, branching paths), and the loss of so many favored stabilization tools (duskbreaker, spreading plague, psychic scream, spikeridge steed, cheating out void lord, etc), control and combo decks both are going to be feel painfully slow unless they get some solid replacements from the next expansion.

Not that I would mind, per say–I really hate how “must have” the above cards have become.

I would say all these have the possibility of insane high rolls, so they all even out in a crazy sort of way.

If I had to pick, though, I’d say either Shaman or Warlock. Triple battlecry can just be insane: I dropped a 22 attack Midnight Drake on Turn 4 last night.

It’s an even bigger change than just that. Think of it conceptually as if each player is really only bringing ONE deck, but it’s best two-out-of-three and they have the option to make slight changes to their deck between matches.

So basically you can sideboard cards, but you need to define “Sideboard A” with at most 5 cards and “Sideboard B”.

Promising. It will be interested to see if players start to focus on decks that can morph into different archetypes with a few changes (e.g., how pre-nerf ramp Druid could morph into Maly or Togwaggle or Taunt with a few card changes) or if they stick with a single archetype with just tech cards to counter particular matchups in the sideboard.