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.

It checks before the game starts, so you can’t run Quests.

Maybe if you build Reno Priest more like a Tempo/Control deck (so basically the way it was played before Shadowreaper Anduin), it might work better. I guess that most of the players didn’t feel like figuring that out yet, though.

Would it be a higher tier deck? Really hard to say.

It was 13 packs in total (3 log-in and two 5 packs quests). During the Journey to Un’Goro launch, we’ve got 7 packs (4 from daily rewards before the expansion and 3 for log-in after the launch), 100 Gold, 100 Dust and a Golden Rare – about ~10 packs worth of stuff in total. Not really a huge difference, considering that we’ve also got a free Hero skin.

It’s really unfair to say that they force you to pre-order to get those extra packs. We know NOTHING about the free launch rewards yet, but from the information datamined in the patch it appears that there will be daily rewards before the launch, possibly even over 2 weeks of daily rewards.

Why are people always so quick to jump to conclusions when we don’t even know anything yet. They might be literally giving 20 more packs in pre-orders WITHOUT removing any of the free launch rewards. Or hell, they might even INCREASE the launch rewards for all we know right now. But no, there’s always a problem.

P.S. And no, they are not killing the 2016 expansions… Wild is a thing, you know. A lot of people play the format, it’s not something obscure that no one ever touches. You can really enjoy the expansions there. If you want to argue that Standard format is just a money grab, then you really don’t know what you’re talking about. Thanks to the Standard format, the game is different every year and it doesn’t get boring.

Jaraxxus is not really a Hero card. You could say that he was the Hero cards’ predecessor, but in reality he works quite differently.

And glad that they did print a new Warlock Hero. As much as I like Jaraxxus, he’s pretty bad right now. He was great when the game was slower in general, but right now even slower decks usually have a way to burn you down from 15, or at least put a lot of pressure so you can never change into it.

I apologize for jumping to the conclusions, I’ve just seen quite a few posts saying that the deal is terrible, that no one should get it because Blizzard is doing it only for the money… Duh, yes, obviously, Blizzard is doing it for the money. They had to calculate that a better deal means more people buying pre-order and more money for them in the end. But more money for them doesn’t mean that it’s bad for the players.

I used to be a big Blizzard fanboy, I’m not anymore, and I see that the game is flawed in some ways (it’s hard to deny). Yes, we don’t get a lot of new features, balance patches etc. but I really feel like it’s getting better. We had a few balance patches last year, most of the problematic cards were dealt with (some took them really long, that’s true) and I think that the game is heading in the better direction. K&C’s Dungeon Run was a great step – the mode was super fun and it seems like they will continue that idea. Later this year we get an in-game tournament mode, which will make a lot of tournament problems (like submitting one deck and then playing another) go away and make it easier for an average player to get into tournaments. This deal is also a great thing – normal packs are, let’s be honest, really expensive. But getting 30 extra packs in total (because $50 is a normal cost for 40 packs) from this pre-oder is a nice deal.

I haven’t experienced lags, and even though I have some performance issues (even though I have a really good PC), it’s nothing major. But yes, I’ve heard that a lot of people are experiencing different issues with the game and it’s not great. At the same time, as a dev, you should probably know that it’s not always that easy to fix stuff like that.

I understand (and agree) that the game is flawed, but I really see that it slowly but surely heads in the right direction. Unless they don’t mess something up in a big way, I feel like it will only get better over the next 2-3 years. Especially with new competition rising – I’m not saying that they’re going to overtake Hearthstone, but devs will need to be careful about games like Artifact or MTG Arena. Competition is great, because devs of every game need to try harder to draw the playerbase to themselves, with more deals and more features.

It’s your decision to not pay for the game, and there’s nothing wrong with it. I was F2P player for a quite long time, I’ve really started buying packs with real money only around Gadgetzan (and I’m playing since Closed Beta), but in my case it was mostly because I just couldn’t afford them before. Now I usually end up buying ~100 packs for money and another ~80-90 for gold – since I’m writing about the game full time, I need to have access to as many decks as possible right away 🙂

The deal is a part of pre-order, so it will last as long as the pre-order does. Pre-orders usually finish a day before the launch (which will most likely happen mid-April), so you should still have a lot of time.

It’s a bit complicated and I wasn’t sure whether to call it a new keyword or a new mechanic. On the one hand, similarly to Echo, this mechanic already exists on a card (Prince Malchezaar). At the same time, it’s not exactly the same – Malchezaar has no restriction at all, and those cards have pretty significant restrictions.

Since the mechanic wasn’t keyworded on Malchezaar, you could argue that it’s a new keyword not a new mechanic, but it’s really just the matter of semantics.

What Warlock? If Control, no way, because it means no Bloodreaver Gul’dan – definitely not worth to sacrifice one of the best cards in your decks. Same goes for other stuff – no Hellfire, no Defile, no Doomsayer, no Twisting Nether (you’re basically left without any AOE), not to mention no Spellstone or Siphon Soul (so you’re left with no single target removal either). You can’t even play Mountain Giants, since they’re 12 mana. If Zoo, taking no damage from Hero Power is not really a huge upside, and you can’t run Prince Keleseth (or other 2-drops if you go for it).

And about Priest, yeah, squeezing 1 mana Hero Power would be pretty good… for example, you could get an extra draw from Cleric. Oh but wait, you can’t run Cleric. You can’t run PW:S, SW:D, Curious Glimmerroot, Tar Creeper, If you play Dragon version you can’t run Twilight Acolyte (but I’m not sure if the Dragon version even be viable), if you run the combo version you can’t play Inner Fire (so no combo basically). Not to mention that Shadowreaper Anduin is also bad, because the discount only affects your Basic Hero Power, meaning that if you play the Hero card it switches back to 2. In some cases it’s not a problem (like in case of Gul’dan), but it’s a big deal for Anduin.

As you can see, it’s not that easy. I’ve really analyzed all the classes and it’s incredibly hard to fit most of them. Yes, having 1 mana / upgraded Hero Power is nice, but not if you have to sacrifice a bunch of key cards, that will be a downside not an upside.

Yeah, but no Shield Slam (which is one of the main reasons to stack Armor), no Shield Block, no Reckless Flurry or Brawl (so basically no AoE), no Acolyte of Pain to draw etc.

I don’t think that 1 mana Hero Power is worth the sacrifice. The thing is, Warrior doesn’t really have problems with mana or squeezing the Hero Power every single turn.

In Warrior, the upgraded Hero Power is much better than the discounted one. But even that is hard to fit.

Come to think about it, they might actually turn those cards into another keyword some day. You know, the “repeat this if a certain condition is met”. That would be cool.

I don’t really mind using Echo keyword here, but you are right that if they ever want to turn Defile/Plague/etc. mechanic into a keyword, Echo would fit pretty nicely 🙂

My guess is that they want to implement more Heroes / Quests / Legendary weapons as regular Class Legendaries, instead of just minions and minions all the time.

Shaman might get a Hero this expansion, Warrior might get another Legendary weapon next and I don’t know, Hunter might get another quest in the third expansion.

I think it’s cool that not every class has got one – it will make Hero cards something more unique instead of something we get every second expansion.

And no, the existing DK is not really bad – it just has a pretty narrow use. It fits only into a single archetype that might not even be viable after rotation (because Evolve rotates out).

Lightfused Stegodon costs 4 mana.

And Level Up is not really a 5-drop. It’s a 5 mana card, but that’s not always the same.

“Drops” are cards that are almost always solid plays on the curve. Buffs, removals etc. are usually not considered “drops”, as they’re more situational.

But yes, the card is good in Dude Paladin (not amazing, the deck only runs one copy and even that is not necessary), however that deck would not really be a “Dude Paladin”. It would be more like a classic Midrange Paladin.