Control Shaman is a weak deck that no one plays in Rise of Shadows, so they need some powerful new tools to become relevant. Besides, this card has clear blind spots: aggressive, board-flooding decks might actually grow in power if you turn some weak enemy minions into Murlocs with this card.

I agree that this card looks really strong, but I’m not sure Control Shaman has a solid win condition vs. other Control decks yet so maybe the deck won’t be relevant in the meta anyway. Speaking of nerfs is premature before we even know whether the archetype that wants this card will be any good or not.

Transforming all of your minions into random Murlocs can be a good thing, if the targets are 1/1 minions from something like Snip-Snap or Thunderhead, but even then the range of results is pretty wide.

Transforming all of your opponent’s minions into Murlocs is MASSIVE, however. Transform effects like Polymorph and Hex are already strong; transforming ALL of your opponent’s minions and for less mana is insanely strong. And even if you give your opponent a powerful Murloc, like Warleader, you can combo this with Hungry Crab, much like Warriors combo Weapons Project with Harrison Jones.

Like Polymorph and Hex, this is best against giant minions or minions with powerful Deathrattles, which means this is not a good tool vs. a Rogue board full of lackeys. Regardless, it’s so good against big minions, this is easily 5/5

As a Mage player, I agree. It’s not healthy for one card to account for such a large portion of the power of the class; it’s literally unthinkable to try and make a competitive mage deck without Mountain Giant + Conjurer’s Calling right now (Kibler crafted a deck around spell damage + Unexpected Results, and it sucks). If Mage ends up too weak after a Conjurer’s Calling nerf, Blizzard can just release some new powerful cards to prop the class up. It’s in the same vein that I’d like to see Dr. Boom Mad Genius nerfed.

Yeah, you’re absolutely right. I just look at cards in order, didn’t read the other Paladin minions that got revealed before I commented on this 🙂

The more I think about it, the more these quests look like an answer for other classes to challenge Warrior’s persistent value generation from Dr. Boom Mad Genius. All of the quests reward you with a new hero power, after all, which is something you can draw repeated value from turn after turn, much like Dr. Boom’s hero power. But I’m also not convinced that this is a good solution to the Dr. Boom Mad Genius problem, because he also gives all your mechs Rush. That’s like a Dungeon Run treasure on its own, considering how dominant mechs are for Warrior.

I think being able to challenge Warriors on long games would require substantial power creep, and it would be better for the health of the game to just nerf Dr. Boom Mad Genius. It would certainly be good for the health of the Specialist format, which revolves around the Warrior class and which classes are able to challenge it, since Warrior completely shuts down classes like Shaman and Druid.

So, Blizzard is heavily hinting at some upcoming synergy with 1-health minions, there’s no other reason for making new 1-health minions at the 1 mana, 2 mana and 3 mana marks. As for grading this before we know what that synergy will be, that’s easy, this minion has a bad body and it draws you other minions with bad bodies; none of these new cards even get drawn from Crystology, the best card in the game right now. Needs some heavy synergy to be playable. 2/5

This really needs extra health to be good. Maybe this works out in Secret Paladin due to Never Surrender synergy, but it’s otherwise a pretty average 1-drop… and average 1-drops don’t see play. 2/5

I like this card’s design. Playing it does two powerful things right away: it resurrects a friendly minion and gives it Reborn, and it also puts an additional 3/1 body on the board. At the same time, this doesn’t lend itself to a resurrection-centric strategy like Big Priest or Wall Priest, because the 3/1 body pollutes your Resurrect pool; you want your Catrina Muerte resurrecting a 3/12 Witchwood Grizzly or a 5/12 Damaged Stegotron, not a 3/1 Psychopomp.

This card will be best, then, in a deck that’s not about resurrection effects- probably in Deathrattle Priest, due to the synergy of Deathrattle and Reborn. Hitting some of the bigger deathrattle minions like Mechanical Whelpling or Convincing Infiltrator with this battlecry would be ideal, but even hitting a humble Dead Ringer or EVIL Conscripter is still both good tempo and good value.

I’m not sure this is an auto-include in Deathrattle Priest decks because to maximize the effect of this card, you have to make a deck that didn’t used to care about its resurrect pool, start caring about its resurrect pool, which requires deckbuilding sacrifices in other areas- maybe you liked having Northshire Cleric and Wild Pyromancer and Madame Lazul in your Deathrattle Priest deck, and now you have to cut all of them for Psychopomp’s benefit. Is it worth it to cut them for a more consistent Psychopomp battlecry? I don’t think so. Is Psychopomp’s battlecry good enough if you hit a 3/2 body like Madame Lazul or Wild Pyromancer? Probably, yeah… but maybe you’ll resurrect the lackey that EVIL Conscripter gave you instead. 4/5

Some of these interactions don’t sound too powerful though. The difference between a Catrina Muerte or Prophet Velen with Reborn, and one without Reborn, is that one with Reborn has to be killed and then pinged by your opponent, like Divine Shield but in reverse order. It’s a nice little bonus, but it’s a much smaller boost than giving reborn to some of the other cards you mentioned, like Zilliax, Convincing Infiltrator or Mechanical Whelpling.

We all know Weapons Project is good, and this card is similar: You get to equip and attack with the weapon immediately, you can use them as weapon removal if your opponent has something like a Wrench-Calibur or Waggle Pick equipped, and they combo well with weapon removal; weapon removal is usually a tech choice because your opponent isn’t guaranteed to have a weapon, but they ARE guaranteed to have a weapon if you can force them to equip one.

Unlike a Warrior using Weapons Project, however, Rogue doesn’t have the defensive tools to play out and thrive over a longer game. Rogue wants to play for tempo and put pressure, so having this as a dead card in your hand until turn 6 when you can combo it with Harrison (assuming you draw Harrison by then) isn’t as good of a strategy in Rogue as it is for Warrior. Weapons Project also has an added synergy with Shield Slam; Plague of Madness looks like it could have synergy as a Combo enabler, but comboing out your EVIL Miscreant, SI:7 Agent or Edwin with a card that gives your opponent the means to remove your minion seems more than a little counter-productive. The combo with Ooze and Harrison is good, but it’s unreliable. 2/5

If the Mage legendary minion from this expansion is Reno and he has the Dragon tag, everyone’s gonna lose their minds over it lol

Reno is not a Mage, but Reno cards from Uldum will be Mage cards. This has to do with the magical treasures Reno uncovers and uses in Uldum.

If you look at Puzzle Box of Yogg-Saron’s card art, the box is resting on someone’s hands… yep, Reno found it. Reno himself is wielding a Gatling Wand, which lets him shoot off spells even though he has no Mage training.

Reno hasn’t been a Mage in the past and may not be a Mage in the future, but he will be the face of the Mage class for this expansion.

Reasons to think this is bad: Completing this quest in any reasonable time is only workable for Cyclone Mage, yet Cyclone Mage already generates several random spells at a time. The hero power is all value and no tempo on an archetype that already struggles with aggressive Hunter and Shaman decks.

Reasons to think this is good: The quest basically completes itself for Cyclone Mage, you have to make zero deckbuilding sacrifices to complete this quest early.

If Mage gets better defensive tools so they can play out longer games without dying halfway through to progressive chip damage, then I think this can be very good. As it is, the promise of this card is not worth spending 1 card from your opening hand, as it makes Mountain Giant cost 1 more mana. 2/5

Stats are slightly below something like Nightmare Amalgam, but you’re not too sad playing this as a 3 mana 3/3 on curve. It sounds like it could be broken in a battlecry shudderwock deck, but it’s not because it’s just as likely to hit your own face or minions as anything else when replayed by Shudderwock.

The battlecry is fairly hard to trigger, but strong and very versatile. You need to generate a lackey first, then you need to have that lackey on the board and then play this. You can achieve that by playing both the lackey and this on the same turn, but that can feel bad too if you’re doing something like playing Witchy Lackey on an empty board into Weaponized Wasp. Shaman also doesn’t have Shadowstep, so you can’t hope to emulate what Rogue does with Spirit of the Shark, Lifedrinker and Shadowstep.

I’m not impressed, but the video that announced this card promised more support for lackey-centric Shaman and Warlock deck archetypes, so I’ll trust that promise and give this 4/5

Warriors don’t put Warpath and Dyn-o-matic in their decks in order to combo them with Acolyte; their primary purpose is a defensive one, but depending on the matchup and board state, sometimes you do want to spend a bunch of mana in order to repeatedly ping your acolyte… which is why I wanted to know whether this card has that added versatility as well.

Anyways, my review of the card: this is much better than Shadowbolt. If you Shadowbolt a Scarlet Crusader, you just ping its divine shield off. BEEEES kills it and gives you two left-over minions. It effortlessly punches through secrets like Get Down, Autodefense Matrix and Freezing Trap. It works like a cheaper Imp-losion against 0-attack minions like totems. If they’re beasts, there might be an added beast synergy. It clears a mountain giant alongside a dire wolf alpha (presumably).

Moderately powerful, moderately versatile. 4/5

Does anyone know if I can summon 4 bees on my opponent’s side of the board, attacking my Acolyte of Pain?

Combo with Rafaam isn’t to add cards to your deck for fatigue, it’s to try and get rid of Impbalming’s downside of shuffling 3 garbage cards into your deck. The weaker the card, the more valuable it is to turn it into a random legendary, and those worthless imps are VERY weak ^^

Completely unplayable for Control Warlock. Pretty decent removal option for Magic Carpet Zoolock, which runs Arch-Villain Rafaam anyway. I’m just not sure whether Magic Carpet Zoolock wants a single-target removal spell; that’ll be highly dependent on what the metagame looks like. In today’s metagame, this card wouldn’t make the cut. 3/5

Holy… Blizzard is pushing the Control Shaman archetype HARD. Hagatha’s scheme is amazing, this is amazing, and both cards are from 2019 sets, which means they’ll both be around until April 2021. As a primary Mage player, I have so much AoE envy right now. 5/5

Hah, so increasing the cadence of content updates WAS an explicit objective, as expected. This is something Blizzard has struggled heavily with in other titles, like WoW, and is the biggest competitive advantage of LoL’s maker Riot Games.

It makes me pretty happy. I remember Dr. Boom and Piloted Shredder and Loatheb being overpowered for years. Mysterious Challenger was so egregious that I just quit Hearthstone altogether for two years until it rotated out of Standard with the Year of the Mammoth. I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t let something like that go on for so long now… Genn and Baku only lasted one year, after all.