2 damage AoE plus a 3/2 body plus a mage Secret for 5 mana and 2 cards? Sounds pretty strong, honestly; I expect a Secret Mage deck would be a tempo deck, and this is great tempo. Will the deck itself be any good, though? A great card will see no play if you can only play it in a terrible deck, which Secret Mage might be. 3/5

So, remember Sunreaver Warmage? Same statline and mana cost, neutral, easier condition to satisfy, dealt a little less damage… and no one plays it. Maybe this is great, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this ends up gathering dust in everyone’s collections.

Mage secrets are bad cards. Is it worth it to put 6 to 8 bad cards in your deck for this and other Secret synergies? Maybe! This card can be a total MVP for Secret Mage, but if the deck itself is anemic, then Cloud Prince will see no play. 3/5

The Leeroy + Faceless combo has been around basically forever, they’re both Classic cards. The last time I remember it being part of a good metagame deck, Leeroy still cost 4 mana, and Warlock was running Leeroy + Power Overwhelming + Faceless Manipulator for 20 damage… so that’s years ago. Leeroy + Inner Rage + Faceless has also been around forever, and it’s never been good.

I agree that a combo like Leeroy + Inner Rage + Rampage + Bloodsworn Mercenary is worth more damage, or you could even add in a second Inner Rage for 26 total damage, but the thing about combo decks is, things often don’t go according to plan. Being able to think on your feet and adapt your game plan is critical for improving your winrate with a combo deck, and Faceless Manipulator is the kind of card that can allow you to successfully pivot into a different game plan. Its flexibility also makes it okay to have two copies of Faceless in your deck, which has the added advantage of improving the combo’s reliability. Switching it for Bloodsworn Mercenary does improve the power of the actual combo, but it taxes the deck’s flexibility and reliability,

It sounds like a fun combo, but I don’t think you can make a strong, consistent deck around it.

You can do it, but do you want to? Abomination and Tunnel Blaster are not good cards, and even if they were, they don’t fit with Rogues’ game plan.

Every Paladin deck can get a board clear by having Equality and Wild Pyromancer in their deck, but aggressive Paladin decks choose not to have that board clear because they’d rather have more cards that advance their aggressive game plan. Early on they shouldn’t need the board clear because they’re playing to win the board, and if a slower enemy deck stabilizes and wrests control of the board away from the Paladin, a board clear won’t help; it’s merely buying time against a Control deck that will beat you in the late game no matter what. You’ll get better results by doubling down on your aggression plan.

So yeah, board clears generally make sense in slower, midrange / control decks, but Rogue has historically been a poor choice of class for those playstyles. While the combo itself may be effective, I don’t think you can make an effective Rogue deck that takes advantage of that combo.

You have to destroy a friendly lackey, so a Wisp won’t do! You need to generate a lackey first, which you can do by playing EVIL Genius or EVIL Cable Rat on turn 2. On turn 3, you can then play the lackey for 1 mana and follow it up with EVIL Recruiter, but only if you have the Coin to give you the 4th mana crystal you need 🙂

A good card for a hopeless archetype. This is not even close to enough support for Deathrattle Rogue, and pointless outside of it. 2/5

Pretty awful for a Murloc aggro deck, the game will be over long before turn 8 most of the time, for better or for worse.

There might be a world where you want this to thin out your deck, but I doubt it. 1/5

Good body, great tribe, battlecry gives you good value and can even make your opponent’s Control deck burn a card. 5/5

Compared to Faceless Manipulator, this costs 2 less mana and has a free 3/3 body but cannot copy enemy minions or undamaged minions. If you want a combo with Leeroy, I think you’re better off running Faceless instead of this, you don’t care about the 3/3 body and you have the upside of being able to copy a giant Magnetic enemy minion from your opponent or the like.

If not for combos, why do you want this? You could use it to copy that 2/2 Militia Commander that’s left over after it smashed into something, or a 1/2 Eternium Rover that managed to bump into something, it’s decent tempo… but Control and Bomb Warrior are not tempo decks, so I don’t think they want this.

Card has potential, but doesn’t fit into any current Warrior deck archetypes. 3/5

I’m far from certain Warlock will get good healing options. My impression is that Mage, Rogue, Hunter and (maybe) Warlock are just not supposed to have good healing / armor gain cards; they’re supposed to be aggro / midrange classes, so if you want to play a Control deck you should look elsewhere.

My estimation is that Rogue, Mage, Hunter and maybe Warlock are not capable of making true Control decks nowadays. If you have little to no access to healing or armor gain and try to win in the late game, aggro decks will run all over you.

These classes can still be good, but their game plans will either revolve around pure aggression (Bomb Hunter), an explosive midgame (Cyclone Mage), or will fall somewhere in between.

The secret will always cost 2 mana, and it’s actually good that it’s random since your opponent won’t know what to play around. The beast will either be very cheap (there’s 5 hunter beasts for 1 or 2 mana), or fairly expensive (there’s 6 hunter beasts for 5+ mana, plus however many are released in this set); most of them are good. The weapon is either Headhunter’s Hatchet, Eaglehorn Longbow or Gladiator’s Longbow.

Alll in all, it’s solid stuff, though not every Hunter deck will be happy to take the 3 mana tempo loss from playing this. 4/5

It’s impossible to trigger his battlecry on turn 3 without the coin. Not just that, but it can be very inconsistent; drawing this without lackey generation is awkward, whereas drawing lackey generation without this guy forces you to choose between holding on to the lackeys for who knows how long, or just playing them and risking them dying when you might topdeck this guy next turn.

That said, the payoff for getting EVIL recruiter’s combo off is hard to argue with. 5/5

Turn 1 minion + turn 2 EVIL genius can be replaced by a turn 2 EVIL cable rat, so it’s easier to pull off than you make it sound.

7/5 body + Obliterate battlecry for 6 mana sounds great. Then again, Obliterate existed in a world where Warlock had access to truckloads of healing in Amethyst Spellstone + Bloodreaver Gul’dan; today’s handlock might not want this because they struggle mightily vs. face damage from aggro decks already, with few options for healing.

Zoo probably doesn’t want it because it’s too slow. Kibler’s Plot Twist Warlock has access to substantial amounts of healing in a control shell, but then still might not want Riftcleaver since it has no synergy with Betrug / Dorian + Plot Twist. Riftcleaver shows potential, but it’s not obvious to me which deck archetype wants this. 3/5

Great for memes, poor for competitive play. 1/5

You’re right about the additional difference between this and Hench-Clan Burglar, and that mitigates Bazaar Mugger’s disadvantage somewhat. You’re much more likely to get a useless card if you get a random class spell than if you get a random class minion.

Let’s suppose you rush this into an enemy 2/2 minion. You pay 5 mana, clear an enemy 2/2 minion, and are left with a 3/3 body… very similar to an SI:7 agent (except it can’t hit face). Is getting a random minion from another class worth the 2 extra mana this card costs? No.

Unlike Hench-Clan Burglar, you don’t get to discover which card you get. Not only that, but at 5 mana, this is a very slow way of enabling your Vendettas and Underbelly Fences. 2/5

Ok, that’s fair; I can see this being good against most of the minions Control and Bomb Warrior run nowadays.

On the other hand, I can think of plenty of examples where this is not great. Pulling a Giant or a Tirion or any very large minion is an obvious example. Pulling a Zilliax is also pretty awkward; you’re giving your opponent free tempo, and are left with a 6/6 minion on your own board, which makes me think… why didn’t you just play a Highmane instead?

For every good matchup like Warrior, there will be a bad matchup like Mech hunter where you end up pulling a Venomizer or Spider Bomb and trading 6 mana and a card in your hand for just a card in your opponents’ hand, a massive tempo loss.

This can be great value-wise, but it’s very suspect in terms of tempo, which is a puzzling combination for a class that lives and dies by tempo.

Great card, just… why Hunter? This is the sort of card a Control deck would love to have vs. other Control decks and Combo decks… except Hunter Control decks are no good because they’re not even close to having enough defensive tools to deal with aggro decks. And if you’re not running this to disrupt your opponent’s long-term value, it’s like a Boulderfist Ogre with the Beast tag. 2/5