The loser of this Hall of Fame announcement is Mage.

*Jaina looks at Plaguebringer, then looks back at the Tome of Intellect and Icicle cards in her hands, then goes to cry in a corner*

A one-shot Kel’Thuzad for one less mana. Lots of potential, I expect it will see play. 4/5

It’s a fine role-player. If you’re playing a Dragon deck, the Classic set can offer you: Faerie Dragon, Twilight Drake, and a stable of 9+ mana dragons. Expansions will offer some more options, like Crowd Roaster, but it’s nice to have one more option here with Brightwing. Paladin’s Bronze Herald is better by a mile, but that’s the price of being a neutral card. 3/5

Agreed with all the other comments, this card is awful. 1/5

Excellent tech card vs. secrets. Statline is such that you can just curve this as a regular 4-drop in your deck, while punishing secrets when they come up. 4/5

We’ve seen this effect in the past (Purifier’s Maul), and it is NOT worth 5 mana by itself. It could conceivably see play if propped up by Divine Shield-synergy cards like Bolvar, Fireblood.

What Omnitarian said. 2/5

Remember all those times you used Cenarius for his +2/+2 buff? No? Well, Cenarius was never a very good card. This is like Cenarius, only it costs one less mana, doesn’t come with a 5/8 body attached, and doesn’t have the alternate cast mode in case you have no board to buff. 1/5

I think it’s fine. They don’t need to print a new version of Flash Heal or Binding Heal every year now. 2/5

Very strong, especially in the context of Rogue boards full of lackeys. Could easily jump right into meta decks. Previous Basic and Classic set replacement cards were not just bad, they were deliberately among the very worst cards in the game, right up there with Silverback Patriarch and Magma Rager. I like this new approach better, instead of polluting the Basic & Classic sets with unplayable cards, add cards that could see play with the right support structure.

If anything, I’m concerned that this is too good for an evergreen card.

Needs substantial support to see play. 2/5

So, here’s how I interepret the “Strengths, Limitations, Weaknesses” bit:

Strengths represent areas where whole archetypes can be built around. Naturally, if a class has 5 different strengths, you shouldn’t expect one viable archetype for each strength at all times; rather, you should see all of those strengths represented in one or more archetypes over a longer time period of 3 to 6 expansions. A lot of listed strengths look like a bit of a joke right now, but I expect Druid mana generation to get some love over the next couple of expansions, for instance. Only surprise here for me was not seeing “Silence” listed as a strength for Priest.

Unlike Strengths, Weaknesses represent something that should be in play at all times. Druids struggling to remove big minions is just a fact of life for those who play that class, regardless of which expansion you happen to be playing Druid in… which makes the “card generation” weakness for Shaman look like something they just came up with and plan to implement in the future, because Hagatha the Witch and Underbelly Angler are gods of card generation right now.

As for the Hall of Fame rotation and new cards:

The timing of this makes me think that Mind Blast would’ve been overpowered when paired with some cards of the upcoming expansion. Or maybe Blizzard didn’t care about maintaining the tradition of once-a-year Hall of Fame rotations. Regardless, my only concern with moving these cards to the Hall of Fame, is that the other traditional Priest win condition, Divine Spirit + Inner Fire, is really lame and not fun to play against, so Priest is going to need a full makeover with the upcoming expansion. New classic cards will be around forever, so it’s important to evaluate them in that context.

Plaguebringer: Like Plague Scientist, with higher mana cost but no Combo requirement. Surprisingly playable, especially with Rogue boards full of lackeys.

Radiance: Very efficient for your mana, but poor value. Might see play alongside good heal-synergy cards.

Siegebreaker: Mal’ganis this ain’t. This would need some serious synergy to see play.

Gift of the Wild: Similar to Cenarius’ +2/+2 buff, minus Cenarius’ 5/8 body or the option to get a couple treants with taunt instead. And Cenarius was never really good, so… I struggle to conceive of a world where someone puts this card in their deck.

Righteousness: You can make the biggest Blood Knight in history with this! In all seriousness though, Purifier’s Maul had the same effect for 3 mana AND it gave you a weapon as well. We’ve seen this effect before, and at 5 mana it would see absolutely no play… unless we see more divine shield synergy cards like Bolvar, Fireblood.

Brightwing: This is a good card that will see play.

High Inquisitor Whitemane: A one-shot Kel’Thuzad for one less mana. Lots of potential, I expect it will see play.

Barrens Stablehand: A permanent nerf to effects that generate random 7-mana minions. The card itself is an afterthought, completely unplayable.

SI:7 Infiltrator: Very strong tech card. Put it in your deck for the secrets, play it for the stats (most of the time). Will definitely see play in metagames with strong secret-based decks.

Arcane Devourer: Now that Mana Wyrm has proven to be unplayable garbage at 2 mana, I’m sure Arcane Devourer will be good by running with the same concept at 8 mana. I’m being sarcastic. This is a bad card.

Sweet, thanks!

Is there a good resource to track standings, class representation and winrate by week and such for Grandmasters? Watching the games is fun, but I feel kind of lost without a stats cheat sheet.

I saw the Master’s, but Specialist format is a whole different beast compared to ladder. Freeze Mage’s worst matchups are vs. Hunter and Shaman, but Hunter struggles in Specialist format and Shaman is just not viable, so it makes sense to specialize your deck vs. Mage, Rogue and Warrior in Specialist, since that’s pretty much all you’ll be facing. Ladder has a ton of Hunters and plenty of Shamans, by comparison.

-4 rating? That’s harsh. Are you guys trying out the deck before rating it?

Personally, I don’t like how this deck list looks, either. I hit Legend today with Solegit’s list, and compared to that one, this deck has -1 Giggling Inventor, -1 Kalecgos, -2 Fireball, +1 Khadgar, +1 Acidic Swamp Ooze, +1 Harrison Jones, +1 Snip-Snap.

Snip-Snap synergy with 1-mana Zilliax is interesting, but the bigger change is adding weapon removal. I already beat Rogue and crush Warrior and Paladin without weapon removal, so the weapon removal is for… Overload Shaman? It seems a little suspect to me.

If someone hit high Legend with it, maybe it’s good, but I don’t like the decklist on first impression.

Final tip from me for this deck: the fact that you run Mountain Giant, Kalecgos, Alexstrasza, Giggling Inventor and Astromancer means you can sometimes choose whether you want random 7-drops, 8-drops, 9-drops, 10-drops or 12-drops from Conjurer’s Calling.

If you want defense, 12-drops are the way to go, because half of all options have taunt. If you want a big, threatening board presence, I’d say 10 drops > 9 drops > 12 drops > 8 drops > 7 drops.

10-mana high rolls include Deathwing, Mecha’thun, Kalecgos and Big Bad Archmage, while the only real low roll is Nozari, which isn’t too terrible.

9-mana high-rolls include King Krush, Mulchmuncher, Bull Dozer, Shovelfist, Oondasta and Ysera, but there’s rather more low-rolls in Cenarius, Shudderwock and Lord Jaraxxus.

There’s plenty of great 8-drops, but the low-rolls get a lot worse due to Hir-eek. High rolls for 7-drops get dramatically less powerful, and there are awful low-rolls like Giggling Inventor, so the drop in average minion quality is highest when you move from random 8-drops to random 7-drops.

Another great synergy in this deck is Antonidas + Ray of Frost. Against Control Warrior, even a 7-mana Antonidas who gets answered immediately can give you a bunch of Fireballs if you follow it up with Ray of Frost, Ray of Frost, Ray of Frost, Coin, Ray of Frost.

Very puzzling decision. Judging from HSReplay data, Ranked Wild is the least popular competitive Hearthstone format, being played at less than half the rate as Arena, and less than 1/10th the rate of Ranked Standard. It’s pretty clearly an afterthought; there are no balance patches for Wild, little to no competitive scene and it serves as the dumping ground for badly designed cards like Genn and Baku.

I highly doubt this bundle will sell well. If they’d offered a cosmetic item like a Toki hero skin, at least you’d get some completionists going for it.

5 Mages, 2 Warriors, 1 Rogue in the top 8. Very different from ladder, where Mage struggles vs Hunter and Shaman.

I don’t have stats for class representation in the Specialist format, but my impression is that Rogue, Warrior and Mage are dominant. It’s not good to always see the same matchups, but it’s hard to balance for ladder play and for the specialist format simultaneously. I doubt we’ll see a lot more variety in Specialist until the August expansion, though.