First, you need to hold it for many turns for it to be mana-efficient. Branching Paths gave you 12 armor for 4 mana, and it had alternative cast modes; if you just want this to be as good as the armor effect, you need to hold it in your hand for 11 turns.

Against aggro decks, that’s just too slow. You want a lot of armor and you want it fast. Considering defensive cards like this one are usually best vs. aggro, this being really bad against them is a big deal.

Against Control decks, it gives a lot of armor but doesn’t necessarily help a ton because control mirrors are more about value and board control than about gaining a lot of armor. A large enemy threat will just take away most of your armor in one hit.

Against mecha’thun OTK decks, this card does nothing.

Against damage-based OTK decks, like Malygos variants or Shirvallah + Holy Wrath, this card is fantastic. Sadly, that’s not good enough when this card is otherwise poor.

Agree with the analysis of the controversial Dr. Boom’s Scheme. Control Warrior has the Dr. Boom hero card, which is a huge deal in a world without Death Knight hero cards. This has to hurt the power level of other Control Warrior cards, otherwise the archetype ends up being overpowered.

Elemental Synergies pretty much die out with the rotation. It might see play if Elemental synergies make a comeback in the future, I suppose!

Agreed! It’s very similar in that it’s meant to be good as a defensive minion on a slower deck, rather than on an aggressive deck protecting your other minions with a more aggressive statline.

I think it’s worse than Lone Champion though, in that this guy loses his ability if you play any minions after this one. Lone Champion only needed to be alone in the moment you play him, this guy wants to be alone all the time.

Yeah, Mega-Windfury lets you attack 4 times. My thinking here is: If you manage to stick a moderately large minion on board for a single turn, say, a Fire Elemental. Then on the next turn, the Shaman spell Windfury + Whirlwind Tempest will let your Fire Elemental attack 4 times, which is a huge amount of burst damage; enough to end many games. You don’t need to stick a Windfury minion on the board; Shaman can give Mega-Windfury to any minion, combining this card with the Windfury spell. You could even push this harder as a combo with minions like Ravenholdt Assassin, which make it very hard for your opponent to remove them.

True enough, but I don’t think it’s worth it to cast a 6-mana spell to reduce the cost of a minion in your hand by up to 7 mana.

The reason why Sap and Vanish are good cards, is that undoing the work your opponent did to put minions into play is helpful. Zola the Gorgon is also good because she puts a friendly minion into your hand without removing it from the board.

I agree that this might be good in combination with Pogo Hopper, but otherwise you’re just Sapping your own entire board, clearing the way for your opponent to kill you.

Pretty terrible unless you combo it to take advantage of Mega-Windfury immediately.

That said, if you DO combo it… this + shaman Windfury spell = huge damage burst, and all you need is to stick a big minion to the board for 1 turn. This is especially fun times if you use it in Control Shaman and Ysera gives you Nightmare, although Dream is also nice in that it lets you get rid of taunts in the way of your Mega-Windfury minion for 0 mana.

I guess Shaman is meant to have burst damage win conditions? Wide boards have bloodlust, tall boards have this. Very strong win condition for Control Shaman. 5/5

Returning minions to your hand is pretty great… if you discount them while you’re at it. Otherwise, this is like Youthful Brewmaster. The thing is… Youthful Brewmaster is not a good card. In Hearthstone, you pay mana to move minions from your hand onto the board. Doing the reverse so that you have pay your minions’ mana cost again is… generally not a good idea. Maybe this sees play in combination with Pogo Hopper, but otherwise this is just bad. 2/5

So, a 2 mana spell that heals for 4 and has Echo, but uses different wording just to be confusing. O… kay.

This is a little mana inefficient compared to the usual healing efficiency in Hearthstone; if you compare it with the most efficient spells, it’s very inefficient (it takes 6 mana for this spell to equal Healing Rain’s 3-mana effect). That said, the versatility in how much you want to pay and what you want to heal is nice, and if you combo this with Krag’wa you get the option to pump as much mana into healing as you could ever want. Auto-include in Control Shaman. 5/5

It’s like Archmage from the Basic set, but with Taunt!

Yeah, no one will put this in their deck. Spell damage synergizes with spamming cheap spells, so it doesn’t really do much if you slap a little bit onto an expensive minion. 1/5

A 2-drop that is mediocre if you play it on turn 2, and which gets better if you combo it later at the cost of becoming more vulnerable to removal as you stack more cards onto a single minion. The scaling on the ability means it could be decent; maybe this is worth including, maybe not. 3/5

What kind of deck is likely to have a bunch of spells in hand by turn 4? Control decks; they like spells, and they tend to hoard cards in hand. If you’re a control deck with a bunch of cards in hand… why exactly are you playing this instead of Twilight Drake or Mountain Giant? 2/5

What Jed said. 2/5

Lluadian has it right; this is most reminiscent of Chillmaw, except with worse stats and without the mindgames about whether the 3 damage to all minions deathrattle will activate or not. On the plus side, you don’t need to be playing a Dragon-themed deck to be able to include this guy.

I think this can be pretty sweet for otherwise AoE-impaired classes, like slower Druid decks. It’s less reliable than Primordial Drake because the AoE is a deathrattle instead of a Battlecry, but the ability does deal more damage and it comes on a cheaper minion. This is not for every Control deck, but it can be good for sure. 4/5

This looks like a good card. Combos have already been spelled out by others, so I have nothing more to add. 4/5

So, the way this interacts with Undatakah is as follows, I believe:

You play this guy. It gets killed. Then you play Undatakah; it gets this guy’s deathrattle, as well as up to 2 others. Undatakah dies, then it gets resummoned because it of Recurring Villain’s deathrattle.

However… resummoned Undatakah is a vanilla 8/5. It doesn’t have a deathrattle. It’s like Carnivorous Cube, in that it gains a Deathrattle from its battlecry, and it doesn’t get to use its battlecry when resummoned. So, yeah. I don’t expect this guy will see play. 2/5

Makes sense in Cheap Spell mage. It’s a turn 2 3/2, which is reasonable. Unlike most 2-drops, however, it can also be good if you draw it later on, as this archetype wants Spell Damage and this guy’s battlecry will help you avoid running out of steam. 3/5

Great synergy with Plot Twist, just like Portal Keeper. 3/5

… Is Plot Twist actually going to see play? With cards like this and Portal Overfiend, it just might! 3/5