I don’t call every card bad. I call cards that I think will be bad “bad”

How in the world is this card good for Tempo and Control decks? Tempo decks, like their name suggests, want to play a tempo game. 7 mana 3/3 that is useless in some matchups is not a tempo game.

And when you play Control, you have a big hand of your own… You don’t want to REPLACE it with your opponent’s hand almost ever. You prefer your cards, because they fit your deck better and you have synergies of your own. Even if you end up with 2 or 3 more cards than you had, you still would rarely want to do that. Like, stealing Possessed Lackey or Skull or Prince Taldaram etc. from Warlock – opposing Control deck will always run a bunch of cards that are useless in your deck.

And you’re completely ignoring the fact that this card is 100% dead in case your opponent has less cards than you do. I don’t know if you noticed, but it does not COPY your opponent’s hand and adds to yours. It replaces your hand with your opponent’s one.

Even if this card has potential in one matchup (Warlock), you don’t put a card that is good against let’s say 15% of the ladder and sucks against everything else into your deck.

Thus, this card is bad. It has some potential, but only in Aggro vs Control. Which I don’t believe is enough for it to see play. But you don’t have to take my word for it, just play around with it once it comes out and see for yourself.

But real talk. Everyone is saying how bad Warrior and Shaman are right now, but Rogue is also in a pretty terrible spot after the latest nerf, which almost killed the Tempo archetype.

We haven’t had a strong slow/combo-oriented Rogue archetype in a while and I’d love to see one! I know that Miracle is, well, always “a thing”, but realistically only for the few dedicated players, who spend most of their time playing the deck.

“pretty sure they will”

You’re talking about the Odd/Even cards? Then I’m more than “pretty sure” that they won’t. Devs already confirmed that you won’t be able to draft them in Arena, just like C’Thun and his related cards (even though they were also alright by themselves).

You’re right that Soulthief would be good in Aggro vs Control matchup. But I think you didn’t consider Aggro or Midrange mirrors, who will also have a nearly empty hand at that point.

You also don’t consider the fact that playing a 7 mana 3/3 is a big tempo loss unless you’re ahead on the board, and that alone can give your opponent an opportunity to come back.

The card has a lot of potential in some situations, but it just looks way to inconsistent to be good.

You can read my whole review on the card’s page: http://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/cards/azalina-soulthief/

“There are going to be alot of over powered odd or even cards”

Not really, though. The ones we already know are almost all of them. Not every class is going to get one.

You can’t run this in Spiteful Summoner deck. Spiteful Summoner, Grand Archivist and the two big spells you run – Free from Amber and Mind Control are ALL even cards.

I see your point. We’ll have to wait to see more Warlock cards, but Genn Handlock might actually be a thing.

Good thing, the average power level of an Arena deck was really too high. A deck that could easily get to 12 wins before the change was average now. I had the most insane Arena draft ever and I only went 10-3 (and trust me, that would be easy 12-0 or 12-1 before) – after 5 wins I’ve faced other bonkers decks every time. Lost one game to Paladin draft with 3 Tarims, lol.

Only Shaman is getting a Hero card this expansion.

There might not be anything “unique” like Quests, Hero Cards or Legendary weapons this expansion. Or they might come up with something new. We’ll have to wait for more cards to see!

Yeah, everything REALLY depends on what kind of cards they print for Mage now and in the upcoming expansions. I think that Black Cat has a lot of potential, because the card is crazy good when it works. But we need at least a few powerful odd-cost cards (especially spells) to make it work.

Thank you very much! 🙂

Baku and Genn effects look at your deck at the start of the game, but those Battlecry minions don’t. It’s technically possible to play both odd and even cards, and play one of them once you’re left with no odd/even cards in your deck.

But none of those minions really fit that purpose. The only card that was ever played in that manner was Reno Jackson in combo decks – but Reno’s effect is much stronger than any of those cards.

You’re right that it’s possible, but it’s definitely not worth it.

Even with just a few even cost cards in your deck, there is a very high chance that one of them will be stuck near the bottom of your deck. You’d still have to draw nearly whole deck to activate the effect. And at that point, when you’re with a few cards left in your deck, you actually don’t want to draw the cards.

It’s like – you COULD play two copies of some cards in Highlander decks, but most of the optimized lists didn’t, because it decreased the consistency by a lot. Even a single card. Now, if you’d add let’s say 6 even cost cards, on average one of them would be in the last 5 cards.

And without the card draw part, this card is bad for the majority of the game. So you’d be playing a 3 mana 3/3 with Spell Damage (we had a Mech like that, can’t remember his name right now), which has a card draw around the time when you don’t want to draw cards anymore…

You’d definitely want to play it with Baku and only odd-cost cards.

The Odd/Even cards won’t be available in Arena.

At the same time, I think that Echo and Rush mechanics are really interesting in Arena, even more so than in Constructed.

That’s not my point, I’m not saying that you should play Dark Arakkoa instead. It’s just a point of comparison – 4/8 Taunt is worth around 6 mana, and it would be on the weak side at 6 mana. Dark Arakkoa has seen SOME play outside of the C’Thun decks, but only because Ramp Druid needed to fill the curve between Druid of the Claw and bigger Taunts, and there was nothing else to play.

It’s simply not worth to sacrifice all of those cards (Wild Growth, Swipe, Plague, UI) to run a 6-drop for 5 mana and have an upgraded Hero Power.

Yes, I’ve obviously meant Primordial Drake not Glyph. Fixed it.

With the current power level of the game, I just feel like Jaraxxus shouldn’t change your max health at all. Right now there is simply no reason to run him over Hero cards, because not only they don’t change your health, but also give you 5 Armor and have Battlecries. Jaraxxus reduces your max health to 15 AND does nothing immediately outside of giving you a 3/8 weapon.

It’s actually something I didn’t think about. Turn 3 Giant might be great. Sacrificing Odd Cost cards is not as bad in Handlock as in Cube/Control Warlock (where it’s basically impossible).

Still, I think that even a classic Handlock would want to play some Demons like Voidlord in order to fuel Bloodreaver Gul’dan. There’s no point in running the Hero if you don’t run Demons.

1 mana Hero Power also has a very high diminishing returns in Warlock. As much as it’s great on the first few turns, later in the game it gets worse and worse. Not only you don’t need to tap as much, but you’re often floating a lot of mana anyway, so it’s not like the 1 mana is making a big difference. For example, if your whole Turn 7 is Tap + Giant, it doesn’t matter if the Tap is 1 mana or 2 mana, if you get what I mean. So the early game advantage of a Turn 1 tap is just about the only reason why you would wan to run it.

And of course, the final question is – is there a reason to play Handlock in Standard if Cube/Control Warlock is a thing?

Even/Odd cost cards won’t be available in Arena anyway.

Ahahah, yeah, it’s 7/8 and not 9/7. I’ve messed up the stats with North Sea Kraken… for some reason they look similar to me. 7/8 is about as bad as 9/7, so it doesn’t really matter, but I’m fixing it – thanks 🙂

Funny thing, but it actually turned out that there WAS a reveal today. We all got caught off-guard.