If only if Shadow Ascendant was still in standard. Sounds really nice to play an ascendant on turn 2 to follow it up with this on 3. You’d basically have two mini-Gruuls with Divine Shield.

Pain warlock died long ago with the advent of the aggressive aggro demon hunters. You simply can’t afford to push damage at YOURSELF while your opponent is also pushing damage at you. While you play Diseased Vulture and pump out a bunch of 3 mana minions by damaging yourself, your DH opponent is going face. Brittlebone Destroyer barely helps this problem at all. Despite the fact that it destroys an enemy minion, most aggro decks can easily replace it.

Plus, this card is extremely pricey – if you tap or heal and then play this card, you’d have to pay a full 6 mana just to destroy a minion. Not very efficient against aggro.

Why would DH need a simulacrum though?

Playing this card late game is completely irrelevant and unimpactful, since you’d only be able to copy your lowest cost, weakest demon in your hand. And playing this card early game is a loss of tempo – I’d much rather play a Battlefiend or Battlemage on turn 1 than play this card. The +1/+1 buff does not compensate for skipping turn 1 at all.

If there’s an OTK-type combo utilizing demons that I’m not seeing, then maybe this card could work. But other than that, complete and utter garbage. 1/5

But the fact that this card effectively protects ALL your minions from taking any damage at all is still quite insane, and should not be underestimated.

Demon hunters can trade their normally squishy Satyr Overseers and Felwings into big taunt bodies with no worries of weakening their board. And next turn if your opponent plays another big taunt body, you literally just repeat.

If your opponent doesn’t have a rush minion or an instant removal spell to take care of Kreen, your opponent can literally run through their entire deck full of big taunts and still not be able to remove your board.

REALLY awesome card. 5/5 for sure, and probably will end up somewhere in Face Hunter as a great tempo card.

Imagine playing a 2/2 Battlemage on turn 1, and then playing this card on turn two, along with the cub that you get. You’d end up with a 3/3 battlemage and 2 1/1 cubs – a total of 5/5 in stats by turn 2!

This card fits in a number of other decks as well, too. Quest Hunter could really use the 2 extra bodies, Token Druid could get a nice +1/+1 buff plus two tokens, and Spell Druid could use another nice cheap spell to generate extra tempo.

You might as well play a 4 mana 4/5 yeti instead of this card, honestly. They both don’t have rush or taunt and therefore have no impact on the board when they are played. Your opponent would just ignore this minion and go face.

The deathrattle is pretty irrelevant honestly, given its delayed nature. Shaman has zero deathrattle synergies I can think of right now, so taking immediate advantage of its deathrattle is out of the question. You’d have to trade this minion’s awkward 5 health into a 5+ attack minion to make any use of it.

This card is also ripe for silence, transform or return to hand effects. Plus it overloads you for 2 mana and cripples your next turn.

Actually, that’s not a bad idea to use this guy for evolve effects.

But sadly, this card’s effect is a deathrattle, and Shaman has pretty much zero deathrattle synergies right now. Before you could evolve your board of 2 mana totems, you’d have to trade this minion’s awkward 5 health into enemy minions so that it dies(on your next turn too, because this minion sadly doesn’t have rush). Which is a pretty tall task, given that most players don’t have any 5 attack minions on the board by turn 6.

Also, this card overloads you for two and basically cripples your next turn. Assuming that you’ve successfully found a 5 attack enemy minion to trade this guy into, you still wouldn’t even be able to evolve your totems. You’d have 4 mana to spend on turn 6 thanks to the overload, and you wouldn’t be able to play Boggspine Knuckles.

Honestly, this card is flashy as hell, but quite overrated. This card is one of the most interesting cards I’ve seen in a long time, but sadly I’ll have to give this one a 2.5/5.

It costs 5 mana and has zero impact on the board when it is played. No taunt, no rush, nothing. Basically this card is useless against aggro.

The deathrattle is super flashy, but in reality is way too slow. Shaman doesn’t have any deathrattle triggering cards, so you won’t be able to get your 4 basic totem value anytime soon. If you want your 4 basic totems, you’d have to trade this awkward 5-health minion into something so that it dies. Most players by turn 5 don’t have any minions on the board with 5+ attack for this guy to trade into, so you’d have an awkward 4/5 body on board for probably at least 2 turns.

Even assuming that you trigger the deathrattle, you’d have to follow it up with some big totem-buff plays like Totemic Might. Otherwise your 4 basic totems would get decimated in no time by some AoE clear, or get traded into by enemy minions.

This card is also hella vulnerable to silence or transform effects, given that it just sits around for a full turn not doing anything. Plus it cripples your next turn with its overload.

I’d also like to add that Totem Shaman is basically an aggro deck right now. Either you win by turn 5-7, or you don’t win at all. This card gives off a more midrange-y feel to the archetype, but I doubt this card alone can pull it off.

I was about to post a comment about how Mozaki was inevitably going to fail as a card due to the lack of burn spells in standard, but now that I think about it I think Mozaki’s intended purpose wasn’t for a burn spell mage deck. Maybe Mozaki was designed more towards a control deck.

Mage has a bunch of freeze options to stall the opponent. But if you play Mozaki, you also get the extra spell damage so that you can finish off your opponent’s big minions.

You could play Mozaki on a heavy enemy board, and stall your opponent’s heavy enemies with cheap freezes like Ray of Frost, and buff Mozaki’s spell damage at the same time. Next turn, you could finish off all the enemy minions with a 6 damage Flamestrike all thanks to Mozaki’s extra spell damage.

Overall, I don’t really like this card and I think it will see next to zero play. But that’s just some food for thought.

Imagine healing your face for 5 on turn 4 with this card, and then popping off with a Crystal Stag turn 5.

Not gonna lie, sounds like a pretty strong combo, but it lacks consistency. You’d only be able to run 2 copies of Crystal Stag, and you’d also need to probably run a lot more healing than just two copies of this card to make your healing more consistent too. Not to mention most healing cards like Crystal Power or Healing Touch provide little to zero tempo and board effect.

Sounds like a meh card to me.

See, a serious issue with this whole idea of restoring health in exchange for strong plays is that (1) you’re playing against a control deck, and your opponent doesn’t try to damage you in the early game, or (2), you’re playing against aggro and your opponent is aggressively pushing face damage at you. In which case, you’d be better off removing your opponent’s minions than restoring health, because your opponent would just knock down your newly restored health with their full board of minions.

Sure, this minion might have taunt as well, to protect your face. But personally I’d opt for either a board clear or a better taunt. 4/5 stats for 4 mana is honestly pretty lackluster at this point in Hearthstone, and I’d rather have a Bone Wraith or Overconfident Orc than this guy.

Yeah true, this card might pose a serious threat to heavy Embiggen Druid decks. But that doesn’t mitigate the fact that this card costs 8 mana, meaning that you’d only be able to play this card after your Druid opponent has already built up a big heavy board with their embiggened minions and Strength in Numbers sidequest.

You’d only be able to remove one big minion from your Druid opponent’s board, but your Druid opponent would probably have 2-3 other decently sized minions on board by turn 8, which could be used to make favorable trades against this card next turn.

Keep in mind, that this minion only sets minions’ stats to 3/3 after attacking them. So when it is attacked itself, it doesn’t set minions to 3/3. So your opponent’s minions would only take 3 damage after trading into this.

All in all, I’d say you’re better off just killing off your opponent in the early game than playing this card to boost your late game. You won’t have to deal with your Embiggen Druid opponent’s big fat minions if you don’t give them the time to play them.

This one might as well be an 8 mana 3/9 with battlecry “destroy a minion”, because chances are right after you kill the first minion you bump this guy into, your opponent is going to immediately remove him with a spell or by trading.

Keep in mind that only when this minion ATTACKS an enemy minion does it set the enemy minion’s stats to 3/3. So when your opponent smacks some big bois into this, you’re not gonna end up with any favorable minion trades.

Also, keep in mind that this card’s effect doesn’t get rid of effects like Divine Shield or Reborn. So even smacking this dude into something isn’t 100% guaranteed to remove it.

Overall, this card is super lackluster. Compare it with the 8 mana Demon Hunter card Coilfang Warlord, which is essentially a 5/9 taunt with battlecry destroy a minion. Not only does it have taunt and a higher attack, but you can also run 2 copies of it in your deck. I’ll have to give this card a 2/5.

Might see some play in Highlander decks though, simply because it’s a removal card for Paladin which normally struggles with removal options.

Eh, not really. Are you sure aggro would rather draw this card instead of drawing a Flame Imp or Battlemage?

I’d rather just fill my deck up with cheap aggressive minions instead of this.

Pain Warlock has basically died in standard though, with all those ultra-aggro Demon Hunters and normal Hunters pushing nonstop damage at you.

I hate to be overly harsh here… But most likely 1 star. At best, maybe 2 stars.

People compare this card to Cobalt Spellkin… To which I must disagree. Although both cards are resource generators, Cobalt Spellkin at least guarantees that the resources you get are cheap enough to be played. Even if they don’t completely fit into your game plan, you might find some niche scenarios where you’d need some 1 mana removal, or some tiny minion buff that helps it survive a trade.

But for Onyx Magescribe, the resources you get would usually NOT be cheap enough to be played. Most of the time, they’d be completely dead cards in your hand unless they just happen to fit perfectly into your game plan.

Not only this, but Cobalt Spellkin is probably at least 2 mana cheaper than this card (Onyx Magescribe costs one more than this card AND requires you to spend mana on a spell to trigger its effect). Obviously both bodies for Cobalt Spellkin and Onyx Magescribe are bad, but at least playing a weaker body on turn 5 is better than playing a weak body on turn 6.

Even Cobalt Spellkin barely saw play… I wonder how much play this card’s gonna see.

Really? Cobalt Spellkin at least guaranteed that you’d get some cheap spells to play. This card doesn’t.

Chances are with this card that you’re gonna end up with some medium-cost spells that don’t really fit into your game plan, and are just gonna sit around in your hand the rest of the game.

Warrior’s probably gonna dominate Arena this expansion with this dude + Rattlegore.

Yeah, it’d be OP as a neutral.

Paladin’s really been struggling the past few expansions, even with the exceptionally strong set of cards that it’s been getting – Hand of Adal (unnerfed Extra Arms, except that you cycle a card instead of getting another buff card), Air Raid (literally Odd Paladin back from the dead), Aldor Attendant (Dire Mole with bonus Libram discount), Shotbot (a better version of Shielded Minibot)…

Seriously, giving Paladin more OP cards isn’t gonna actually help the class. Personally, I think what Paladin needs now is a better win condition than just tossing down strong minions onto the battlefield. It’s been tried for the last year or so, and clearly it doesn’t work at all.

Not much to say here. 5 stars.

Will probably be replacing Pharoah Cat as the 1 drop of choice for Rogue.