Hearthstone: Kobolds & Catacombs - A Card Review Retrospective

Back last year, I reviewed Kobolds and Catacombs, the soon-to-be-dethroned newest expansion of Hearthstone. As with what I've done through the Year of the Mammoth, I end up giving a rating for every card from 1 to 5 based on how viable I think the card is going to be in Standard meta, found at the end of my final card review for K&C. Now since we're going to get the announcement for whatever first expansion is going to be, I'm going to take a look back at my ratings for each class and see how right or wrong I end up being, and how viable the cards end up being.

I've personally been ranking up and try-harding with a combination of a Cube Warlock that utilizes the weapon and Prince Taldaram, as well as Big Priest... and the unexpected C'Thun Druid. Nobody expects the C'Thun Druid. Oh, and I opened a golden Deathwing in this week's tavern brawl! Good week for me in Hearthstone.

My overall impressions with Kobolds & Catacombs is... decidedly mixed. I actually took a relatively long break from Hearthstone in this period, only coming in to spam casual games to get my daily gold, but it is also an expansion where I really thought that they struck a great chord on balance on not trying to build everything around the mascot card of the expansion (quests and death knight heroes, for the previous two), and definitely after the nerf to Raza, Patches and the horrifying Corridor Creeper, it's actually turned out to be relatively fun to return into the game. Corridor Creeper, I think, is one of the biggest parts of the game that just makes it un-fun, where every single goddamned deck has an excuse to put Creeper in, making nearly every game turn out to be "who has the better draw". Of course, thankfully, the nerfs have arrived and the meta is a much happier place now.

Also a huge fan of the Dungeon Run game mode, not just because of what it represents (and the fact that I get to play with some really old cards) but because it's an offline game I can muck around with at work and put my phone down without any consequence when a customer comes in. With a new yearly rotation coming in, I'll also briefly discuss about just what big-name cards the classes will be losing. In addition to, y'know, Patches, who's already lost to us via nerfs.
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DRUID:

• 5: N/A
• 4: Branching Paths
• 3: Greedy Sprite, Lesser Jasper Spellstone (down from 4), Ironwood Golem (up from 1), Oaken Summons (up from 2)
• 2: Astral Tiger, Grizzled Guardian (up from 1)
• 1: Twig of the World Tree (down from 3), Ixlid Fungal Lord (down from 2), Barkskin (down from 2)

Druids, as a whole, were already one of the stronger classes from Knights of the Frozen Throne thanks to the sheer power of the Jade Druid deck, so much that druid had warranted the dual nerfs to Innervate and Spreading Plague, which kept the power level of the deck relatively well in check. Right now I'm not really seeing much druid other than Jade, but they've definitely adapted a lot to really making use of the tools given to them by K&C. While a lot of them feel more like tech cards more than anything, they really end up helping to make the Jade Druid gravitate into a more stable gradual-building-up game instead of 'ramp like crazy and cheat things out with Innnervate'.

Token Druid was a monster back when Patches and Creeper were a thing, but right now they're far more of a fringe deck. I've seen some variations of Spiteful Summoner Druid, which is neat but I don't think anyone's got to a version that is as stable as the Spiteful Priest decks.

Going through the cards quickly, Branching Paths was as useful and flexible as I expected it to be. Greedy Sprite might not be that good now, but I bet it's going to be better in Standard once Mire Keeper rotates out. I over-estimated Lesser Jasper Spellstone a fair bit, and under-estimated Ironwood Golem. Turns out a 3/6 Taunt is good enough for Ironwood Golem to be played over Sen'jin Shieldmasta, especially with Branching Paths and Malfurion the Pestilent offsetting the golem's drawbacks well. Oaken Summons is perhaps the biggest piece of the puzzle that makes the Golem combo be a very great turn 4 play, though. Grizzled Guardian is neat to work with Ironwood Golem, but druid recruit decks tend to be fringe, mostly. Druid's other cards aren't particularly spectacular, though -- both the legendary minion and weapon are more fun novelties than anything, and while the concept of Astral Tiger and Barkskin are great, as of the moment they're not particularly useful. Definitely easy for them to all find a home with the right new cards in the future, though.

I don't really have much to say about druid. They're perhaps the most stable and un-rattled class among the nine classes, being the only one that just assimilated the new tools they are given but without really altering much of their old strategies.

What are Druids losing with the rotation? 

• The Jade Package. Yep, next year, we're going to live in a Standard world without Jade Druid or jade anything. It's going to be weird. 
• Fandral Staghelm! No more mega-Nourish or insane values with Choose One cards.
• Mire Keeper! Probably replaced with Greedy Sprite, but the Mire Keeper's battlecry effect is definitely a far more stable ramping effect than the Sprite. 
• The C'Thun package. Druids are the only class that can still play with C'Thun nowadays, and while C'Thun hasn't reared its eyeball head once Brann rotated out, well, they're definitely out now. 
• Kun the Forbidden King is a card that didn't see much play back when he was introduced, but has been a pretty neat card in various Jade decks since. 
• Medivh the Guardian, which is a card used by multiple classes, but I think Jade Druids have been one of the best users of it. 
• Enchanted Raven, one of the more stable early-game cards for Druid. Maybe replaced by Dire Mole in the future? 

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HUNTER

• 5: Lesser Emerald Spellstone (up from 3)
• 4: Flanking Strike, Rhok'delar (up from 1), Wandering Monster (up from 2)
• 3: Kathrena Winterwisp, Candleshot (up from 2), 
• 2: Cave Hydra (down from 4), To My Side (up from 1)
• 1: Crushing Walls, Seeping Oozeling (down from 2)

Oh man, Hunter was joked as the 'unplayable' deck during Un'Goro and Frozen Throne, as fun as the Death Knight hero that Blizzard gave them. And I was so, so wrong about a lot of these cards. As of the moment, the big Hunter archetypes are variants of controlling hunter (which, after cracking open Kathrena Winterwisp, I was genuinely surprised by how well it works), secret hunter and the fact that, yes, Spell Hunter actually works! None of these are actually Tier 1 decks, but the fact that these cards single-handedly punted Hunter back to relevance is definitely extremely well-done.

Pretty much the only card I guessed right was Flanking Strike. I severely under-estimated the power of Lesser Emerald Spellstone. Turns out that, yeah, while a bunch of 3/3's might be susceptible to Duskbreaker, they are still a goddamn pack of 3/3 tokens, and upgrading the spellstone is actually relatively easy considering that Secret Hunter works amazingly well with existing cards like Eaglehorn Bow and Cloaked Huntress (no, Putricide, sadly you still suck). Lesser Emerald Spellstone gets the 5-star slot simply because it's the only card here that truly ends up showing up in nearly every single hunter deck that has an excuse to slot it in. 

Wandering Monster is also actually a great enough secret to be played in conjunction with Cloaked Huntress and Lesser Emerald Spellstone, as it turns out that more ways to bamboozle your opponent and get bodies on the board is pretty neat. Candleshot, the 1-mana weapon, turns out to also be particularly well-done, finding its way to slot into Hunter's arsenal. Candleshot's more of a tech card for Hunter decks with a more spell-heavy or secret-heavy basis that want to control the board early, but oh boy, I truly under-estimated how useful that would be. Kathrena Winterwisp is a neat little tech card and a great, great way to build around bigger beasts, and I am truly happy about the fact that I have a deck featuring fucking King Krush and it actually has a positive winrate. 

The Spell Hunter cards Rhok'delar and To My Side are... are actually great. I was among the legions who scoffed at spell hunter and said that it wouldn't work. And while it's not a top-tier deck, nor is it the easiest to pilot (I've met way too many spell hunter decks that panic and splurge their spells without thinking) it certainly proves to be definitely viable. I don't think To My Side is the best card in that deck, because some versions of Spell Hunter even drops To My Side or use it as a mere one off. Rhok'delar, on the other hand, is actually pretty damn good if you can get it to work properly, because, hey, reloading your hand in a deck that already has the game plan to overwhelm the board? 

I'm not sure why I rated Cave Hydra a 4 back when reviewing this. I guess it's because I was fresh off the Patches meta? But even when Patches was running rampant over everything Cave Hydra was never really seen anywhere. I was pretty much right about Crushing Walls, though, which is crappy, and Seeping Oozeling is a neat and balanced card, but outclassed by every other way to cheat out cards early like Barnes and Kathrena. 

What are Hunters losing with the rotation?

• Cloaked Huntress and Cat Trick, two of the more powerful cards in the secret archetype. Whether the loss of Cloaked Huntress would cause the entire Secret synergy to crumble down into nothingness, or if Blizzard will print new secret-synergy cards in the Year of the Raven, will be a question to Hunter's continued viability as it is in K&C. 
• Kindly Grandmother, one of Hunter's best two-drops.
• Alley Cat, one of Hunter's best one-drops.
• Call of the Wild, one of Hunter's best finishers and the end-game spell in Spell Hunter decks. 

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MAGE:

• 5: Aluneth (up from 4), Explosive Runes (up from 3)
• 4: Arcane Artificier (up from 3)
• 3: Dragon's Fury Dragoncaller Alanna (down from 4), Raven Familiar (down from 4)
• 2: Deck of Wonders, Leyline Manipulator (down from 5)
• 1: Shifting Scroll, Lesser Ruby Spellstone (down from 5)

Mage was... all right in Frozen Throne, but shot up to be one of the more powerful and frankly oppressive decks in K&C. They just got so much tools to fuel a burn-based deck, and perhaps the card that's single-handedly responsible for doing this is the legendary weapon Aluneth, which is a delightfully difficult card to utilize, and one that sometimes backfires, but one that allows burn and secret mage decks to just draw through the deck like crazy to get to all the Fireballs and Firelands Portals and finish off their enemies.

Explosive Runes is also an amazing card who I wholly underestimated. I ranked Explosive Runes at a 3, which tends to be decent, but it turns out to be amazing in Secret Mage decks and also in the burn decks because, hey, free damage to the face that sometimes takes out a minion? And activates all secret synergies? And thanks to Kirin Tor Mage and Kabal Lackey, sometimes you just get for free? Yeah. 

While burn/secret mage is the most popular deck right now, control mages are actually very neat, too, Dragoncaller Alanna turns out to be amazing, and once Priest moved away from Shadowreaper Anduin highlander decks, it turns out that neither Psychic Scream nor Dragonfire Potion is adequate to really deal with a swarm of 5/5 dragons. Dragon's Fury also turns out to be pretty powerful in decks that can utilize it, and while the 'Big Spell Mage' decks might need just a little bit more to properly work, Dragon's Fury is definitely a worthy addition to mage's arsenal.

Raven Familiar is an okay card in Big Spell Mage decks, but it's nowhere as powerful as I thought it would be. Arcane Artificier is a neat little card who sees a lot more mileage in a tournament setting, but that's not really a negative. It allows Mage a way to recover more readily than Ice Barrier, and it's going to be particularly important once Ice Block rotates out. Deck of Wonders and Shifting Scroll are both as bleh as everyone expected. 

In fact, perhaps my biggest mis-read in this entire review was the elemental package, with Leyline Manipulator and Ruby Spellstone flopping particularly badly. Quest Mage still exists, and there's a variant that uses Leyline Manipulator, but they're definitely not working quite as well as I envisioned them to be with my initial 5-star rating. It's really quite surprising, but poor elementals just can't catch a break, huh?

What are Mages losing with the rotation?

• ICE BLOCK! Yes. Ice Block is one of the most powerful tools and most assholish tools that Mages have in their arsenal, and I'm so happy it's being hall of famed. 
• Kabal Courier, Kabal Crystal Runner and Medivh's Valet are three core Secret-synergy cards that's going to leave, and while Secret Mage isn't completely out of tools, it's still going to be interesting to see how it'll work in the future.
• Firelands Portal, one of Mage's high-end explosive burn spells. They still have the gamut of Frostbolt/Fireball/Pyroblast from Classic, though, so they can still do the burn stuff... just probably not as good. 
• Babbling Book,  and Cabalist's Tome. Two ways to gain random spells, particularly key cards in Quest Mage and neat tech choices elsewhere.
• Medivh the Guardian, the only reliable way to 'break' Aluneth in some decks, while still being able to synergize with Mage decks. Not really that big of a loss, mind you, in my opinion. 

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PALADIN:

• 5: Call to Arms (up from 3), Unidentified Maul (up from 2)
• 4: Crystal Lion (up from 1), Drygulch Jailor (up from 1)
• 3: Potion of Heroism, Lynessa Sunsorrow (down from 4), Val'anyr (down from 4), Level Up (up from 1)
• 2: Lesser Pearl Spellstone, Benevolent Djinn (down from 3)
• 1: N/A

One of the biggest winners in this expansion is undoubtedly paladin. Whether it's Murloc Paladin, Silver Hand Recruit Paladin or just a more generic aggro deck, the different flavours of aggro Paladin is undoubtedly one of the most stable and powerful decks in the meta right now. And in no small part it's due to the sheer power level of Call to Arms -- easily one of the most powerful cards in the set, recruiting three tiny minions into the battlefield, and it could be anything from Knife Jugglers to Righteous Defenders to Argent Squires to murlocs... it's just one of the most powerful cards, and a way for Paladin to instantly reload without having to waste mana drawing and playing the minions. What was I thinking, rating Call to Arms a 3? Definitely another egregious mis-read from me. 

Unidentified Maul is also a card that I misread, but I feel a bit more justified for the simple fact that I thought that Paladins will pick Rallying Blade most of the time -- it's just that with Call to Arms making it so easy for Paladins to swarm the board, Unidentified Maul ends up being so much better as a result, with the 'give all your minions X' abilities having targets to hit almost all the time. Most aggro paladin decks tend to run both Rallying Blade and Unidentified Maul, and Unidentified Maul's definitely one of the neater surprises in the set for me, being a devastatingly powerful weapon on the right board. 

But best of all? The fact that Dude Paladin (or Silver Hand Recruit Paladin, its proper, mouthier title) actually fucking works. Part of it is because of Call to Arms and one of the four results of Unidentified Maul summoning more dudes, but it single-handedly brought Light-fused Stegodon back from being a meme card, and this once-laughable archetype has recently found its footing. Once Patches got nerfed,  people that experimented with Aggro Paladin realized that, hey, a free 5/5 with Divine Shield is actually pretty fucking powerful. Crystal Lion is powerful, and Drygulch Jailor's ability to be recruited by Call to Arms and the flexibility of spamming the board with dudes when you're ready to buff them is amazingly well done. Level Up isn't quite as good as the other two cards that makes the Dude Paladin deck work, but definitely all three cards rank higher than the 1-mark I gave them. 

Control paladin doesn't work as well as I thought it would, being unseen during the pre-nerf era, but it's definitely a more viable deck to use at this point. Lynessa Sunsorrow is positively devastating if dropped after your opponent's exhausted their Spellbreakers, Val'anyr takes a long while to go on  but is definitely a card that still sees fringe play. Both Lynessa and Val'anyr really need to be careful of Spellbreakers, though, which, thanks to Cube Warlock, is seeing relatively universal play. Potion of Heroism synergizes well enough with a midrange deck and Lynessa to see a fair amount of play, meaning the only 'losers' as far as this list is concerned are Benevolent Djinn and Lesser Pearl Spellstone, neither of which are objectively bad cards, but see very little play. Overall, paladin's probably one of the biggest winners here. 

What are Paladins losing with the rotation?

• Murloc Paladins are also losing Finja the Flying Star and Corrupted Seer, although both have since been replaced by smaller Murlocs in K&C thanks to the whole Call to Arms deal. The Curator is also a card that older versions of Murloc Paladin ran, and they're losing it too.
• A bigger loss is definitely Vilefin Inquisitor and Grimscale Chum, two of the best one-drops in Murloc Paladins. 
• Rallying Blade, one of the best weapons Paladins have and used in practically every Paladin deck ever. Of course, as I mentioned above, Unidentified Maul is happy to pick up the slack. 
• Steward of Darkshire, one of the more powerful and annoying cards that ensures Dude Paladins will have Dudes to do Dude buffs to. 
• N'Zoth! No more extra Tirions, although control paladins aren't really that big nowadays. Control paladins are also losing Ragnaros Lightlord, thoguh.

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PRIEST:

• 5: Psychic Scream, Lesser Diamond Spellstone (up from 3)
• 4: Duskbreaker
• 3: Twilight Acolyte (down from 4)
• 2: N/A
• 1: Temporus, Psionic Probe, Dragon Soul (down from 2), Twilight's Call (down from 2), Gilded Gargoyle (down from 2), Unidentified Elixir (down from 2)

Priest! Priest is undoubtedly one of the powerhouses in K&C, dominating the metagame with the highlander deck that also dominated Frozen Throne previously, laughing and reveling in righteous schadenfreude after being nothing but a mockery back in the Year of the Kraken. Even with Raza the Chained nerfed, Priest is still one of the more powerful archetypes out there, probably the second-most-powerful class after Warlock, and that's a title that's debatable considering how high Paladin and Mage rank as well. Big Priest in particular is an amazingly monstrous deck.

Another deck that has ended up rising in the ranks is not the pure-dragon deck everyone expected to appear, but a variation that mixes dragon early game with Spiteful Summoner and Priest's big spells, which turns out to be pretty dang stable and amazing to play. And yet another flavour of Priest popularized recently with some big tournament or whatever is the Inner Fire combo priest, which is such a classic combo mechanic that I can't help but love it. With Highlander Priest taking a backseat at this moment, Spiteful, Inner Fire and Big Priests tend to be the most popular flavours out there.  

The biggest success of Big Priest is undoubtedly the Lesser Diamond Spellstone. The addition of Shadow Essence, Obsidian Statue and Eternal Servitude in Knights of the Frozen Throne has single-handedly made the archetype stable enough to reliably cheat out huge Obsidian Statues, Lich Kings and Y'Shaarjs, but Lesser Diamond Spellstone takes this and runs it up to eleven, allowing you to resurrect up to four minions with the disadvantage that you need to cast many spells with this card in your hand... something that the minion-light Big Priest actually does very, very well. Hell, it even got some Big Priest lists to cut out Potion of Madness so as not to dilute the pool of dead minions so that Diamond Spellstone will always bring out big minions.

Psychic Scream is another powerful card in Priest's arsenal, whatever flavour you use -- it's a 7-mana board clear that is simultaneously better and worse than Twisting Nether. It's better since no deathrattles pop out and it's cheaper, and sometimes it just bloats up your enemy's deck with useless tokens (Shamans and their totems hate this, and if you get to do this to a Warlock with 1/3 tokens out it's almost a guaranteed win), but it doesn't do a particularly good job at actually eliminating the threats. It buys time, though, and sometimes that extra couple of turns is just what you need to slam down your huge threats and murder the enemy. Psychic Scream is just one of the most powerful cards hands-down that Priest has ever gotten. 

Duskbreaker is about as good as I expected her to be, that cool little mini-AoE in the mid-game to help Dragon Priests stabilize against aggro and token decks, and she's really fun to play with. Twilight Acolyte isn't as good -- it's more of a tech card in Dragon Priest decks, although it's a damned good tech card.

Practically everything else ended up to be unplayable, which is just fine -- Priest doesn't need more help! I just over-estimated how some of these cards might see their way into decks. Twilight's Call isn't powerful enough or stable enough to really see play in N'Zoth or Big Priests, Gilded Gargoyle's not useful enough to even help Highlander Priest, whereas Unidentified Elixir and Psionic Probe are only great in Arena. Dragon Soul and Temporus are both really just kinda bad, though, and Temporus, I think, mostly exists to dilute the Netherspite Historian pool to make it less consistently good that you draw into Drakonid Operatives and Duskbreakers. Overall, Priest definitely continues into K&C and into the Year of the Raven with a strong backbone, even if a lot of their tools will rotate out soon. 

What are Priests losing with the rotation?

• Dragonfire Potion, one of Priest's best board clears.
• A lot of dragons! Drakonid Operative and Netherspite Historian are the two big ones to lose, so that really brings the continued viability of dragon synergies to question. To a lesser extent, they're also losing Book Wyrm. 
• Barnes and Y'Shaarj are two of the core cards for Big Priest, and while I'm sure that Big Priest might be able to somewhat survive in a way, it's never going to be as efficient as it is now. 
• Kazakus and Raza are rotating out as well, signalling the final nail in the coffin for standard highlander decks. 
• Kabal Talonpriest, one of the best utility cards in Priest.
• Potion of Madness, yet another great utility card in Priest. Year of the Mammoth is kind to Priests, huh?
• N'Zoth! Also a key card in many Priest decks that use the deathrattle theme.
• Shadow Word: Horror and Pint-Sized Potion, a combo that practically every other Priest decks use and a way to mass-murder early board-flooding decks. Quite legitimately curious what the next expansion will bring to help replace this, to be honest. 

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ROGUE

• 5: Fal'dorei Strider, Kingsbane (up from 1)
• 4: Elven Minstrel (up from 3), Cavern Shinyfinder (up from 3)
• 3: N/A
• 2: Sonya Shadowdancer (down from 3)
• 1: Sudden Betrayal, Kobold Illusionist, Lesser Onyx Spellstone (down from 4), Cheat Death (down from 2), Evasion (down from 2)

Tempo Rogue was one of the best decks to play prior to the Corridor Creeper nerf, but even now after Patches and Creeper are essentially unplayable, Rogues still move strongly into the new year with a whole lot of powerful tools. Different flavours of Miracle Rogue and the likewise newly-stable Kingsbane/Mill deck ends up being one of the more interesting decks out there. It truly ends up being polarizing, as far as my old ratings are concerned, how wrong I was about Kingsbane. Turns out that if you can draw quickly enough and stabilize with cards like Fal'dorei Strider (which is a dang good card),  the fact that you can end up swinging Kingsbane for 14+ damage at the end-game with Lifesteal is honestly quite good. I rated Kingsbane 1 before and, boy, I was insanely wrong.

I was right about Fal'dorei Strider being amazing, though, because 4 mana for an immediate 4/4 body, and three more 4/4's later down the line? And the fact that Rogues draw like crazy through their deck? Yeah. Rogues' two tutor cards, Elven Minstrel and Cavern Shinyfinder, help to thin out the deck and just help to get through Rogue's game plan, whether it be accumulating the specific cards for a Miracle finish, or to just thin out the deck to draw Kingsbane's buff cards. 

The rest of Rogue's arsenal isn't really great, though. I knew the Secrets wouldn't work out, I just didn't realize how bad they would be. Sonya Shadowdancer is a neat novelty, but she isn't much more stable than the Kingsbane and Miracle flavours of Rogue. Lesser Onyx Spellstone turns out to be way too slow, and Deathrattle Rogue isn't viable that much, and I was definitely being way too optimistic to rate it a 4, because even in Wild, Lesser Onyx Spellstone asks way, way too much for a glorified board clear that Vanish and Vilespine Slayer turns out to do far more stably. 

What are Rogues losing with the rotation?

• Counterfeit Coin, one of the best cards in a Rogue's arsenal, particularly the miracle variants. 
• Coldlight Oracle, which, while a powerful tool in Kingsbane decks, isn't particularly that integral to the rogue's game plan, if we're being completely honest. 
• Southsea Squidface, one of the better cards to buff your Kingsbane.
• Swashburglar, although it's not seen that much play since Patches was nerfed.

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SHAMAN:

• 5: N/A
• 4: N/A
• 3: Unstable Evolution (down from 4)
• 2: Grumble Worldshaker (down from 4),  Murmuring Elemental (down from 3)
• 1: The Runespear, Primal Talismans, Lesser Sapphire Spellstone (down from 2), Windshear Stormcaller (down from 2), Crushing Hand (down from 3), Kobold Hermit (down from 3), Healing Rain (down from 4)

Poor, poor Shaman. I knew it was going to be a bad expansion for Shaman, I just under-estimated how bad the cards are this expansion. At this point, poor Shaman is a sad cry from the dominant single-deck that it was during the Old Gods meta, because the only real archetype you can muck around with Shaman is Evolve Shaman, and even that is hit hard by the nerf to Corridor Creeper and Patches. Elementals don't work, and the Freeze package given to Shamans in the previous expansion hurts it even more. 

Like, I don't think there's a single card here that really deserves a rating above 2. Unstable Evolution's the only one, and even then it's a highly volatile card and more of a tech choice in an evolve shaman deck more than anything. Sure, it's neat to have another card to help to evolve your Doppelgangsters and Saronite Chain Gangs, but at the same time, it's not that good. 

Let's go through quickly the cards this set, yeah? The Totem synergies with Kobold Hermit, Windshear Stormcaller and Primal Talismans all just flat-out don't work, because the thing that Windshear Stormcaller gives you -- Al'Akir -- doesn't even reliably win you the game. And Kobold Hermit is just so woefully under-statted that it can't even work as a board-flooder the way Tuskarr Totemic did before. The Runespear is just flat-out bad and unpredictable. Crushing Hands is too  expensive compared to just playing things like Hex or Lightning Bolt. Lesser Sapphire Spellstone is a neat overload synergy card, but it's just way too slow and demands too much to really work well. Murmuring Elemental, Grumble and Healing Rain are actually well-designed cards, and I can see them be powerful somewhere down the line, but at this moment none of them actually work anywhere. So yeah. Shamans are undoubtedly the losers of this expansion. 

What are Shamans losing with the rotation?

• Evolve and Doppelgangster, the two strongest combos Evolve Shaman has. Which really doesn't speak well to Shaman's fate, huh?
• Maelstrom Portal, one of Shaman's best early-game AoE's, is also leaving. Devolve, another one of Shaman's best tools, is also leaving.
• Thing From Below, one of Shaman's best cards, is also leaving. Not a good year for Shaman, huh? 
• The Jade Package, the only other stable Shaman archetype (often mixed with Evolve). Shaman just can't catch a break,  huh?
• 4-mana 7/7, even if we haven't seen it in a while.

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WARLOCK:

• 5: Voidlord, Kobold Librarian, Lesser Amethyst Spellstone (up from 4), Skull of the Man'ari (up from 3), Dark Pact (up from 1), Possessed Lackey (up from 2)
• 4: Vulgar Homonculus, Rin the First Disciple (up from 1)
• 3: N/A
• 2: Hooked Reaver (down from 3)
• 1: Cataclysm (down from 2)

And the undoubted winner of this expansion? Warlock. Oh boy, Warlock. I don't really have to go through this, really, because out of every single card Warlock got, only Cataclysm is straight-up bad (I tried Discard Warlock early in the expansion and it actually worked better without Cataclysm than with). Everything else is amazing, including the cards that I thought was cute-but-unplayable. Like Rin! Who the hell thought Rin would be playable, but also one of the straight-up most dangerous cards in Warlock's arsenal? Turns out being a taunt is good enough, and spending 5 mana every turn in the late-game as you build up to Azari is just damn doable when there are so many ways Warlock can do to make a board stable by cheating out the big demons in their deck. Whether it's using Possessed Lackey, Skull of the Man'ari or Krul the Unshackled, Warlocks have so many way to cheat out Doomguards and Voidlords, leaving the Warlock actually free to dick around and play Rin's seals and ultimately slam down a win condition that straight-up eliminates the enemy's deck. Rin is definitely one of the biggest surprises in the set, and when I got her as my first K&C legendary, I was like "oh, cute, the meme card", and was legitimately blown away by how amazing she ended up being. Suddenly summoning Azari isn't just a cute thing to work towards like, say, Galvadon, but a legitimate strategy that fucks up your enemy. 

Part of the reason Warlock is so strong is Bloodreaver Gul'dan from the previous expansion, able to summon every single demon that died earlier this game, and, of course, none are better to summon than Voidlords and Doomguards. Voidlords are just one of the best cards to come out of the expansion, a 3/9 demon with taunt that summons three Voidwalkers, and the fact that you can actually cheat out Voidlords means that it's child's play to guarantee that when you play Gul'dan and N'Zoth in the late game, you're going to get a literal wall of Voidlords to defend you. 

Throw in the neutral card Carnivorous Cube, and suddenly the defensive Voidlords and offensive Doomguards end up being an endless swarm of either undying walls or charging monsters that you can reliably guarantee with the one-mana card Dark Pact... that doesn't just destroy a friendly minion, but also heals your hero by 8. Dark Pact is amazingly well executed with Carnivorous Cube, and it's an actual archetype to have a Possessed Lackey or Skull of the Man'ari summon Doomguards, and then for the Warlock to immediately Cube and subsequently Dark Pact the Doomguard, striking for 15 damage, and 15 more later when you re-summon the Doomguards with Bloodreaver Gul'dan.

And none of this would work without Possessed Lackey and Skull of the Man'ari. The Skull is the free weapon I got from the K&C quest, and I was also surprised by how well it worked. I thought it was going to be decent, ranking it a 3 back in the day, but it was way, way better than that. Cheating out demons? Bypassing their negative battlecries and getting them for free? Hell yeah, it's worth wasting 5 mana! Possessed Lackey being a 2/2 that dies easily (and a great target for Dark Pact, too, as if the synergies aren't enough) and able to summon Voidlords and Doomguards from your deck also makes Warlock's abilities to cheat out demons insanely powerful.

That's not all, folks, because we still have one of the most powerful cards, the humble Kobold Librarian, which I predicted would be 5-stars. A 1-mana 2/1 that gives a free hero power? My god it's powerful. It builds the board while drawing a card, and the damage to your hero helps to activate the Amethyst Spellstone. It's a price that I'll gladly pay, especially with Dark Pact available to Warlocks. Amethyst Spellstone itself is also a hideously amazing way to just deal 7 damage sometimes to a minion, murder them and heal your face, drawing out the game and helping you to stabilize before the huge Doomguard/Cube or Bloodreaver Gul'dan or N'Zoth turns. My god, when did Warlock end up being able to heal better than Priest? 

And that's just the Control/Cube Warlock archetype! Because I'm not going to downplay how well-done Vulgar Homunculus and Hooked Reaver are. Hooked Reaver isn't that spectacular, but he's definitely a pretty powerful card to stall in the late-game... it's just one that doesn't work as well with Skull of the Man'ari, Possessed Lackey or Bloodreaver Gul'dan, all of which bypass the battlecry,making it a weird case of being good, but kind of unplayable. Vulgar Homunculus is actually a stable enough card to activate the Amethyst Spellstone, and has caused zoo Warlock decks to actually ditch Keleseth (especially after the Patches nerf) in favour for a more Demon-oriented deck. Yes, zoo warlocks actually think the Homunculus is far more reliable and stable than a deck-wide +1/+1 buff!

Yeah, Warlocks are dominating. They get only one bad card, and all their good cards aren't just neat little tech choices, they actually define the archetype and are some of the most powerful cards that synergize amazingly well with each other. As sick as I am with seeing Warlocks on the ladder, I am legit happy that I actually got both my Voidlords and my two warlock legendaries without crafting them, and that it's actually an elegantly designed set of cards that synergize amazingly with each other. 

What are Warlocks losing with the rotation?

• N'Zoth! One of the big bombs in Warlock's end-game, although some Cube/Control Warlock decks already cut out N'Zoth anyway, so I don't think Warlock will be that affected by it. 
• Kazakus and Krul. Highlander Warlock players are out there, mostly because Kazakus is so damn good, but yeah, everyone's favourite potion maker is rotating to Standard to hang out with Reno.
• Silverware Golem and Malchezaar's Imp, two of the stronger Discard Warlock cards, are leaving, signalling the doom of the Discard Warlock archetype in Standard, at least. 
• Mistress of Mixtures! I think Warlock makes use of the Mistress more than any other class, as one of the better one-mana drops (it's essentially replaced Possessed Villager, itself also rotating out), and while Warlocks do have other one-mana drops, Mistress of Mixtures is going to make the Control archetype as we know it today somewhat less stable. 
• Crystalweaver, Bloodfury Potion and Abyssal Enforcer are three cards that some demon-centric Warlock decks use, and they, too, are leaving. Not that big of a loss now, though.

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WARRIOR:

• 5: N/A
• 4: N/A
• 3: Gather Your Party (down from 4)
• 2: Woecleaver, Unidentified Shield, Drywhisker Armorer (down from 4)
• 1: Kobold Barbarian, Bladed Gauntlet (down from 3), Reckless Flurry (down from 3), Gemstudded Golem (down from 3), Lesser Mithril Spellstone (down from 2), Geosculptor Yip (down from 3)

Warriors... warriors aren't hit as hard as Shaman this expansion, but at the same time you hardly see them on the ladder anymore either. Used to be that they could fall into the Pirate package standby, but with the nerf to Patches, and the earlier nerf to Fiery War Axe, poor Warrior has barely got a leg to stand up on. Add that to a frankly unimpressive set of cards this expansion? I actually over-rated a lot of the cards, too, because turns out just simply gaining armour for advantageous cards that don't really have a win condition just doesn't really work. Lesser Mithril Spellstone, Drywhisker Armorer, Bladed Gauntlet, Reckless Flurry, Unidentified Shield, Gemstudded Golem and Geosculptor Yip all try to work with the amount of armour that Warrior has, but none of them really provide any sort of win condition, all just relying relatively weakly on stabilizing the board (and unreliable RNG in Yip's case). Like the enrage/whirlwind theme from Frozen Throne, it's the design team putting way too many cards to work with a theme, but it doesn't work. And honestly, without some sort of stable early game and a proper late game finisher, Warrior's in that weird spot where it's really hard to even build a proper deck.

The recruit theme they got with Gather the Party and Woecleaver is decent fun for a meme deck, and sometimes it just manages to steamroll the enemy extremely hard, especially if Woecleaver manages to roll a Y'Shaarj... but at the same time, it really doesn't end up being particularly good. Recruit as a mechanic didn't really work out that well, yeah? Paladin's Call To Arms and Warlock's Possessed Lackey are amazingly great, but the rest of the recruit mechanic just sort of fell flat.

And then there's Kobold Barbarian, a card that's so outclassed by everything in the game that I'm genuinely flummoxed why it's printed as a class card to boot. 

What are Warriors losing with the rotation?

• N'Zoth's First Mate and Bloodsail Cultist, two of the best pirates. Also Naga Corsair, too. Not that pirates are the same since Patches (who's also leaving!) was nerfed, but the two of them in particular is probably the death knell for Pirate Warrior decks as we know them today. 
• Sleep With the Fishes, one of Warrior's more reliable AoE clears. 
• Ravaging Ghoul, one of Warrior's better whirlwind effects that also helps to build the board.
• Bloodhoof Brave and Alley Armorsmith are actually two of the better taunts that Warriors have access to, and one of the essential cards in the odd quest warrior decks you see. 

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NEUTRAL:

• 5: Spiteful Summoner (up from 4), Carnivorous Cube (up from 3), Corridor Creeper (pre-nerf, up from 2)
• 4: Fungalmancer (up from 2), Grand Archivist (up from 1)
• 3: Master Oakheart, Violet Wurm, Plated Beetle, Zola the Gorgon (up from 3), Arcane Tyrant (down from 4), Dire Mole (down from 4)
• 2: Post-Nerf Corridor Creeper, Marin the Fox, Guild Recruiter, Shroom Brewer (down from 4), Shimmering Courser (down from 3), Hungry Ettin (down from 3), Kobold Monk (down from 3), Sleepy Dragon (down from 3), Dragonslayer (down from 3), Fungal Enchanter (down from 3), Silver Vanguard (up from 1)
• 1: King Togwgagle, Dragonhatcher, Rummaging Kobold, Scorp-o-Matic, Gravelsnout Knight, Feral Gibberer, Trogg Gloomeater, Corrosive Sludge, Cursed Disciple, Hoarding Dragon, Kobold Apprentice, Toothy Chest, Wax Elemental, Furbolg Mossbinder (down from 3), Lone Champion (down from 3), Green Jelly (down from 3), The Darkness (down from 2), Void Ripper (down from 2), Ebon Dragonsmith (down from 2), Shrieking Shroom (down from 2), Sneaky Devil (down from 2), Boisterous Bard (down from 2), Sewer Crawler (down from 2), Stoneskin Basilisk (down from 2)

Neutrals now!

And boy, there are a lot of bad cards, huh? Let's go through the good ones, though, because, hoo boy, there's a lot of ones that I genuinely missed. Obviously, the biggest winner in this set is Corridor Creeper, a neutral epic that ravaged the metagame so hard that if I was able to give Creeper a 6, I would've. Creeper has since been nerfed from a free 5/5 to a free 2/5, and has seen little to no play afterwards. Currently, it's probably a 2-star card since some Shaman decks try to use it. But, y'know, Shaman.

The other two big winners are Carnivorous Cube, which we've covered in Warlock as enabling one of the most powerful decks in the metagame right now, and it's a card that I thought was just going to be a weird, wacky meme card. How wrong I was! Cube's gone from being a 3-star to a 5-star. Spiteful Summoner is the other 5-star, although I predicted that it's going to be good. I just didn't expect it to be this good. The best user of Spiteful Summoner is Priest decks, who are able to run a minion-centric deck with just Free From Amber and Mind Control in their deck, and then muck around with Grand Archivist (a card I actually rated 1) since targeting doesn't matter with either of those spells. Druids are also able to use the Spiteful Summoner/Grand Archivist combo with Ultimate Infestation (and Spreading Plague sometimes for a more defensive but less greedy version). It's particularly amazing, for me -- Spiteful Summoner's value is apparent. A 4/4 for 6 mana that summons a huge minion? Grand Archivist's synergy with this is what really a pleasant surprise, because, yeah, if you only have a couple of big spells that always don't require a target, and you've spent your Spiteful Summoners, Grand Archivist can help you cast those expensive spells for free. 

Fungalmancer is a card that seems to have replaced Bonemare as the cheap, neutral buffing card. Obviously without giving taunt and being a shittier body and requiring two targets for its full value, Fungalmancer isn't quite as stable as Bonemare, but a lot of token decks -- Paladins and Warlocks in particular -- have managed to utilize Fungalmancer to a relatively great extent. I still don't think it's as good as people think it is, but it's definitely seeing a lot of play on the ladder. 

That's all the 4-star and 5-star neutrals, so let's talk about the ones I ranked 3. Plated Beetle is a very stable 2-mana drop for N'Zoth decks, helping you to buy some time, and is a legitimate tech choice in N'Zoth Warlock and Priest decks. Master Oakheart is amazingly weird, and I've opened one in a pack, and its ability to recruit Voidlord should never be underestimated. Ultimately it's way less stable than the likes of Possessed Lackey, but I've had a lot of fun trying to make Oakheart work with different classes, and it's actually seeing some decent play for what could have easily been a meme legendary. Violet Wurm is a card that the Kathrena decks play as one of the big beasts Kathrena can summon, and I'm actually surprised that I called it right as a 3-star card. Arcane Tyrant isn't as good as I thought he would be, but he's seeing some legitimate usage in Druid and Mage decks. Tyrant's good in Mage in particular thanks to his synergy with Frost Lich Jaina, but at the same time the Frost Lich version of control mage isn't the best mage archetype out there. Dire Mole has lost a lot of favour after the Patches nerf, causing the cheap-token style of druid and hunter to be a bit less popular, but still a relatively stable card.

And the rest of the cards are 2-star and 1-star cards, and a lot of those I had ranked 3 previously. We'll discuss the ones I got really wrong, yeah? I'm not sure why I was convinced Shroom Brewer was a 4-star card, but I guess I looked at Earthen Ring Far-seer and thought that Shroom Brewer would simply be a better Earthen Ring Farseer... without realizing that, hey, Warlock has way more efficient healing tools. Hungry Ettin actually saw a fair bit of play early on in K&C, but fell out of favour for more stable cards. Or Voidlords. Dragon synergies didn't run as rampant as I expected it to be, so neither Sleepy Dragon and Dragonslayer really worked. Silver Vanguard is actually somewhat neat, being used in some fringe control Paladin decks as a card to cheat out with Barnes or Oakheart, but it's more of a meme than anything.

Worth noting that some cards like Green Jelly, Shrieking Shroom, Trogg Gloom-eater and Hungry Ettin are actually pretty damn good in arena, but are next to worthless in constructed. 

What else? Everything else ended up more or less where I expected them to end. Kinda sad that Shimmering Courser didn't turn out to be good. But I had been pessimistic about many of the other cards like Dragonslayer, Guild Recruiter, Darkness and Gibberer from the get-go -- neat concepts, but way too unreliable to pull off. Of course, a fair amount of these cards are decent in Arena, which actually makes the neutral batch here somewhat akin to TGT in that it adds a lot of stable, decent neutral minions to the card pool. Except Toothy Chest. Toothy Chest just sucks bad. 

Notable losses that doesn't fit anywhere specifically:

• N'Zoth, which I already mentioned in Priest and Warlock, but N'Zoth is one of the most powerful, most balanced and most most interesting cards to act as a big end-game bomb. 
• Yogg-Saron, who hasn't been a meta card for the longest time, but is a fun little finisher in some spell-heavy decks that can sometimes, y'know, win you the game. 
• Eater of Secrets. Granted, both Hunter and Mage are losing a lot of Secret-synergy cards, but the big counter to secrets is also rotating out.
• Dirty Rat. No one's used Dirty Rat that much since Raza got nerfed and big-value Warlock decks are running rampant, but there's that. 
• Patches the Pirate. I mean, he's nerfed now, but he deserves an honourable mention, surely?

So yeah, overall, in terms of card quality, the expansion actually works pretty neatly. A bit shame that they really dropped the ball on balance issues, and while back in the pre-nerf era there's a huge variation of decks and classes... they all worked alongside the same Patches early game with Corridor Creepers being dropped somewhere down the line, so I'm definitely glad that the much-needed nerfs end up being implemented. Overall, though, I'm definitely excited to see what the new Hearthstone expansion will bring us, be it Emerald Dream or Duskwood or something else entirely.