I think that they’re only giving Dust refunds for relevant nerfs. Ixlid being an Elemental was not relevant in any deck he was played in.

I disagree with that approach (from the fairness perspective, because from the business perspective it’s probably a good decision), but it’s not for me to decide.

Well, I do realize that the effect can be broken when it works, my main issue is with making it work.

Grand Archivist – how would you make it consistent? By putting it as a single spell in your deck? That’s also not very consistent, as you will draw it before playing Archivist quite often, not to mention that a Mage deck without spells doesn’t sound good. Even the minion-heavy Elemental build plays Book of Specters (which would be pretty risky in the same deck as Pocket Galaxy, by the way) and a few other spells. It might make sense if you were to put Spiteful in the same deck, but you really can’t, because it would be useless after you drawing that single spell.

Primordial Glyph – yes, but discovering card from random effects is not something I consider when reviewing a card. I always review a card is if you were to put it into your deck. Primordial Glyph is an interesting tool, because it can give you the most surprising cards you need. I won many games thanks to a Decks of Wonders I got from Primordial, just because I was desperate for some random ways to get me back into the game. But I wouldn’t rate Deck of Wonders high because it’s sometimes useful fro Glyph.

You will definitely run into situations in which Luna’s Pocket Galaxy from Glyph will win you the games. But for the starters, Mage will have 39 Spells in Standard, which means that a chance to get Pocket Galaxy from Primordial Glyph is less than 8%.

I’ve mentioned in the review that the card might be much better in Wild, thanks to Ice Block, Inkmaster Solia and a few other tools. But same goes for Standard – I believe that a card might get stronger if Mage gets some other cards to support it. The effect is indeed incredibly powerful, so it might be worth building your deck around. Maybe I’m even completely wrong and it will be busted in this expansion, who knows 🙂 That’s part of the fun with the reviews – different people have different opinions, and not everyone can be right!

And thanks, I’m glad that you’ve enjoyed the read!

I sadly have to agree – as much as I like to think that my reviews will be accurate, in the end it’s always a guessing game. Some of the cards are clear, but most of them are heavily meta-dependent. If one thing goes wrong, then a whole archetype might not be useful and all of the cards that would go into it might be bad.

But I’m mostly doing it for fun and to share my thoughts about the card – I believe that the description here is much more important than the rating itself 🙂

It’s not objectively worse than Disciple, it has a Mech tag. You can discount it with Galvanizer/Mechwarper, stick Magnetize minions into it etc.

It doesn’t suddenly make him amazing, but it’s clearly not “objectively worse”.

It’s not, those are two completely different cards that fit into completely different decks. Not to mention that Dire Frenzy was horribly overrated.

0 is an even number, so it does work in Even Shaman.

Not sure if we’ll do Hand Mage in particular, but we’ll be doing a lot more theorycrafts before the expansion releases!

If you Magnetize a Mech into something, it disappears and “transforms” into a buff. You can no longer get it. If you Zola the Hopper, you get Hopper, even if it’s buffed by Zilliax.

The only way to get extra Zilliax from Zola is to play Zilliax on the board, not as Magnetize.

Possibly, might make sense. I like Acolyte in slow Shaman, because it’s an amazing card draw with Volcano. You can immediately draw 3 if you play both on the same turn.

They won’t, rotation happens yearly, not every expansion!

Next rotation will happen with the first expansion of 2019, and every 2017 sets (Un’Goro, KFT and K&C) will rotate out.

The thing is, Warlock can’t get rid of all the small minions. Cube Warlock runs lots of stuff you don’t want to pull out with this, e.g. Kobold Librarian, Stonehill Defender, Doomsayer, Umbra, Faceless, Cube. You can’t get rid of all of that stuff. Even Warlock also NEEDS the early-mid game minions – some 2-drops like Homunculus, Doomsayer or Sunfury Protector, as well as 4-drops like Shroom Brewer, Hooked Reaver (it will be a 4/4), Twilight Drake (it will be a 4/1).

You CAN remove all of the small Demons and still have a proper deck. You CAN’T remove all of the early-mid game minions in the same way. I mean, you can, but it will be just bad – it’s not worth it. You have to ruin your early and mid game for a free 5/5 body and up to 2 mana gain (if you pull a 10 mana minion) in the late game, that’s if you draw it in the first place and you survive that long…

Not saying that this card is useless, but the strategy you’re thinking about simply won’t work.

I wouldn’t call Zerek’s Cloning Gallery “absolutely useless” yet. And we’re still only a bit over half into the reveal season. Legendaries aren’t everything – Priest can still get a few solid class or Neutral cards.

It was confirmed that Warrior’s Hero Card (Dr. Boom) will also be in the pool of potential cards you can get as a log-in reward, forgot to add that to the guide!

It wasn’t confirmed yet, but definitely not midnight. Normally EU release happened in the night/morning after the NA release – so if the expansion would be released on August 7 in NA, EU release would have happened around 2 – 5 AM on August 8.

That was until The Witchwood, which had more or less simultaneous release around the world. It was available on the release day in the afternoon/evening. So that’s what I would expect this time around too – August 7, probably somewhere between 5 and 8 PM.

It definitely draws, even though it wasn’t confirmed. Every card like that which you shuffled into your opponent’s deck so far cycled – Iron Juggernaut, Beneath the Grounds, The Darkness.

Why “waste”? It’s not like Neutral cards synergize with all of the classes. There are Neutral cards that work only in a single class and there’s nothing wrong with that.

This is still good Neutral material, since there are 4 classes with Secrets. It’s a bit like Captain Greenskin before every class got a Legendary weapon. It was useless in lots of classes, but the card was absolutely fine.

While I agree that Emperor is better, come on, it was one of the most busted cards in the history of HS. Comparing stuff to it is like saying that “well, this 1-drop is not as good as pre-nerf Undertaker” – duh, of course it’s not.

Another thing is saying that Emperor reduced mana cost of combo pieces by 0-9 mana and this by 0-7 mana is also made to push your argument. In case of Emperor, you were never holding 9 combo pieces (no combo deck used that much), realistically it usually reduced the mana of your COMBO PIECES by 2-4 (as well as other cards, which weren’t combo pieces). In case of this one, you basically drop it only when you have your expensive combo piece, such as Malygos or Togwaggle in your hand, so it should always reduce it by 7, getting you more mana reduction in total. Combo decks have a high amount of cards in hand, but not MINIONS – Maly or Mill Druid play pretty much no minions, which makes it really easy to isolate the card you need in your hand.

Yes, it’s no Emperor. Emperor was a generally strong card, this is strong only in the specific decks and specific circumstances.

I understand that you might not think that it will be a good card (still rating it 1/5 is an overreaction in another way), but sorry, your arguments just seem super flawed.

Shudderwock Shaman would need to drop Keleseth to play this, not sure if worth it.

It will, but then again, you usually don’t cast any spells on your Shudderwock turn (not enough mana), so it’s quite pointless.

I’m 99% sure that Murmuring Elemental doesn’t work with Electra. It would work if Electra read “Your next spell this turn casts an extra time”. But it’s “twice”, not “extra time”, similarly to how Brann Bronzebeard doesn’t stack with himself – “twice” is always twice, doesn’t matter how many times you get it.