With no more Void Daddies or Who-Dares-Summons-Mes in standard, Guldan could use a good top-end demon for his cheat-out/cloning/revive effects. This kinda fits the bill. Still needs more tools to be playable, but this could be a piece of the puzzle.

Probably the most playable of the cards revealed today. Body is not bad at all for its effect. Lackeys in particular makes this pretty compelling right now!

If warrior couldn’t find a way to play 1 mana gain 5 armor I don’t think priest can play this. And I mean heck, for standard, compare this to Regenerate or Divine Hymn! You can’t even use it with Soulpriest or other healing-deals-damage effects!

If I have a wide board with Druid I’d rather just use Savage Roar and kill my opponent. For the price of this you can cast Savage Roar or Blessing of the Ancients twice, and toss in a hero power to boot.

Red Mana Wyrm was already hard to play. This is even clunkier. The only way I can see this ever working is if a REAL good way to cheat out elementals emerges. Not even Elemental Evocation makes this card viable right now, imo.

Hmm well, it can be good in the right circumstances, but after turn 5 most board-centric decks are looking to finish the opponent off. Not sure decks will feel the need to run this. Especially at 5 mana it’s a hard sell.

Makes sense to introduce an evergreen anti-Secret tech. You can only print so many before they start to feel same-y.

This card might only be run in specialist, or secret-heavy metas. But it’s a good card to have around.

Low stats and the effect is too variable to be worth it. Just another card to make evolve/conjurer’s worse. 🙁

Doesn’t seem THAT bad. It’ll probably only be good enough to run if you can use the dragon tag, AND have a deck that struggles for value.

Dragon Paladin and Dragon Battlecry Shaman fit that bill right now. Not sure this card will “make” those decks, but it’s better than nothing!

The stats aren’t bad for the cost and the effect is obviously super strong if you have to trade in a bunch of minions that turn. Or even one minion tbh. You can’t really build a deck around her, but I’m sure she’ll find a decklist to pop into now and then.

And obligatory “super good in Arena”.

I wasn’t expecting them to dive so deep and specific about the class identities. Interesting read!

Vanish: Just when you thought Pogos were playable, now they’re not! Rogue has always been given tools to be anti-control, whether that’s Jades or Pogos or Quest or Kingsbane. And when you’re anti-control, you’re aggro-weak, and Vanish was the only card in Rogue’s kit to solve the issue of a full-on runaway board. It feels like a big loss, but it also was never a hugely popular card – only used in those sorts of all-in anti-control decks mentioned above. I imagine we’ll see more poison and sap effects to make up for it.

Mind Blast: On the one hand, you could definitely argue this card was limiting to Priest’s design space. Anything that can cheat out or revive Prophet Velen/Malygos or perennial tools like Archmage Vargoth… Mind Blast made those sorts of plays game-ending. But Priest always struggles to have a win condition, and HoFing this card removes his only evergreen wincon besides Divine Spirit / Inner Fire. That’s a huge deal, actually! I hope they have good ideas for priest in this upcoming set, cuz he’s kinda having an identity crisis now.

All you need is one other Murloc and you basically have one big flexible hand/board refill. It works better than you might guess- you’ll draw those two Murlocs eventually and you have plenty of plays to make while you wait.

Underbelly Angler is also such a big target that your opponent will use their resources inefficiently to remove it, helping you stick an Unbound Elemental/Thunderhead down the line. And quite a few classes have no way to remove it if they didn’t draw a 1-drop and you’re on coin.

This deck is legit. All sorts of fun l’il plays and interactions.

A few commenters have pointed out a scary T5 kill with Priest:

1) Stick a Coppertail Impostor or any Mech on the board
2) Play Reckless Experimenter, which lets you magnetize infinite 0 mana SN1P-SN4PS.

Unless they introduce some very fuzzy logic that “magnetize” is different than “play”. But afaik Experimenter discounts magnetized Replicating Menaces, so should work with this card as well.

Nice! Buffs are such a smart move to help push archetypes that flopped, and to counteract a class becoming worthless from nerfs (e.g., the nerf to Preparation hurt Deathrattle and Pogo Rogues, now these buffs will lift them back up.)

SN1P-SN4P is bonkers, it’d be playable even without echo. Crystology at 1 mana is positively insane, but I can’t argue that Paladin needs the love (especially with his best draw card HoF’d).

Dr. Morrigan might actually be playable. Extra Arms! is now more dangerous than you might guess. Interesting stuff all around.

I’ve played the version of this that runs Storm Chaser and Rain of Frogs instead of Spirit of the Frog and Feral Spirit. It’s an underexplored archetype but seems like the picks here would make you weaker to Rogue and Warrior…

Glad to see success without Flark (for budget players)… but 2x Raid Leader 0x Boommaster Flark seems pretty dubious…

It’s a tricky case because, as outlined here, whatever nerf path is chosen will very clearly pick winners and losers- it’s not like the other nerfs where you just increase the mana cost and people play it less. The nerfs used will singlehandedly decide the role that Bombs, Corrupted Bloods, and Combo decks will play in the meta.

One things for sure, this card was a really bad mistake and should definitely be rebalanced. The effect is too strong and too consistent for control decks – not only does it rescue them from fatigue, BUT it hard counters two important anti-fatigue tools available: bombs and Hakkar. It’s both game-breaking and auto-include for fatigue decks, and it makes for both a miserable laddering experience and a miserable tournament-watching experience.

I remember how zealously people would transform/silence Direhorn Hatchling and Raptor Hatchling (zombeast) in order to deny ONE card shuffled back into a control deck. Staying a single step ahead in the fatigue race is just that important. Elysiana shuffles TEN cards, and you can’t interact with her effect outside of highrolling with Hecklebot or Demonic Project. So first, her effect should for sure be “Discover 5 cards, shuffle ONE of each”. Heck, even 3 cards would still be playable. But 5 is a start, it means it’s very hard to hit that 45 turn limit without multiple bouncers.

Then, I think we have to ask whether the effect should be “replace your deck” or merely “shuffle the cards into your deck”. This is technically “good” because you can play Elysiana for value anytime, not just when you run out of cards. But it opens up bombs and Hakkar to serve as an anti-fatigue tool. Only Warlock (Rafaam) and Paladin (Liam) would have a hard counter to Corrupted Blood. I think that’s ok- Controllock and Controladin aren’t exactly tearing up the meta. And you could still try to play around those cards with careful overdrawing/burn, or just adding late-game threats into your deck. Bombs might be a bit powerful and fatigue in general won’t be as viable as a win condition but that’s a fair trade-off IMO.

Thanks for all of your hard work tracking the meta!

I think their wait-and-see approach is fine, but hoo boy do I have a pretty hard time imagining Archivist Elysiana NOT making tournaments a big frustration. Nobody wants to spectate Control mirrors running off into 45-turn draws and she all but 100% guarantees the match will end that way.