Rastakhan's Rumble Card Review #1

There's a whole ton of cards revealed after the live-stream a couple of days back, and the drip-feed of new cards is finally starting! The expansion's going to be out in early December, so... yay! Anyway, I'm going to give the regular quick thoughts about these cards. Not going to ramble too much about some of the less interesting ones, because the interesting ones are really interesting in a way that's significantly different compared to Boomsday ("I guess this can be useful if mechs work maaaaybe?")

While I originally wanted this to cover everything up to today, this will cover around 20 cards, and we'll have another 20 or so in a couple of days.

Spirit of the Dead: The Spirits (0/3 minions that have stealth for 1 turn) are... interesting cards, to be sure, but for a good chunk of them I have a feeling that they might be too costly to justify playing. Spirit of the Dead is cheap, though, costing only one mana. It has the pretty fun effect of "after a friendly minion dies, shuffle a 1-cost copy of it into your deck". It's not a Shadowcaster or Barnes ability, you literally shuffle a copy of that card with full stats into your deck. Which is an awesome, if long-term, plan. It works amazingly well with Bwonsamdi below, but even then Spirit of the Dead in a pinch can help out Northshire Cleric as a 1-mana high health drop.

Bwonsamdi, the Dead: God, even if this expansion is another TGT/Boomsday, I will love this expansion so much more due to all the troll-friendly legendaries. I love trolls, yes? Bwonsamdi is a 7-mana 7/7 that draws all minions from your deck. And has the additional condition of "until your hand is full", so you won't ever overdraw! One of the biggest weaknesses of a card like Academic Espionage or Barnabus the Stomper is that even if your entire deck is cheap, you can only draw a couple of them at a time, thus sort of nullifying the insane tempo advantage that you might have obtained from playing ten 0-mana cards in a turn. Bwonsamdi's different. After bulking your deck up with Spirit of the Dead copies,  Bwonsamdi is a huge bomb that potentially draws an entire hand's worth (realistically it's probably more like 4-6 cards, but still!) of 1-mana, huge minions. Which minions, you have control over. It's like a bizarre variation of old-school Resurrect Priest of sorts, where instead of using Diamond Spellstones and Eternal Servitudes to bring them back from the dead, you shuffle copies into your deck and then re-summon them with Bwonsamdi. It's going to be a deck that's either going to have too many moving parts to execute, or an awesome combo, but I can safely say that this is just such a creative and weird way to play that I am definitely pumped for this!

Zentimo: The Shamans' legendary troll champion is Zentimo, who is... an interesting card. He's a 3-mana 1/3 that has the continuous effect of targeting adjacent minions when you target a minion with a spell. He does have an admittedly horrid statline, but he definitely has potential! It's not just removal either, but you can basically turn Earthen Mights and Rockbiter Weapons into mini-Bloodlusts, and Unstable Evolution is going to be insane with Zentimo. We've seen how powerful doubling spells are with Electra Stormsurge, and while it's quite far from how Zentimo's effects work, it's definitely an interesting comparison. I don't write Zentimo as "new best legendary" or whatever, but he definitely has a whole ton of potential!

Ticket Scalper: A pretty simple Overkill card, 4-mana 5/3, draws 2 cards if you overkill. It's such a weak statline that she's not going to survive the turn you play her since it's pretty easy to get a 3-health removal by turn 4. I suspect she's released pretty early on just to illustrate that Overkill only works on the initiator's turn? Eh. Drawing two cards is admittedly pretty great. She's a pirate, so maybe rogue pirate? Have a feeling that they'll have way better pirates to choose from.

Belligerent Gnome: Poor Silverback Patriarch! The Belligerent Gnome is basically a conditional version of Warlock's Vulgar Homunculus, a 2-mana 2/4 Taunt against aggro token decks. Most of the time, he's a 2-mana 1/4, which isn't the worst. Maybe he's going to be the common early-game taunt minion when Tar Creeper rotates out of Standard? Not the most exciting card, but an interesting one.

Time Out: A 3-mana Ice Block that makes your hero immune until next turn. Way worse than Ice Block, and as a pre-emptive spell it'll just make your opponent go "sure, I don't really care" and do other things. The only time it's ever going to work is if you need exactly one turn to do a DK Uther or Mecha'thun one-turn-Exodia combo, but I don't see this being a good card, honestly.

Heavy Metal: The Geosculptor Yip effect, but 2 mana cheaper, activates once and as a spell. Everyone's right on their money that this effect seems kinda crap on an even mana slot, and without any synergy it's just way too expensive for what it does. Yip's better, and Yip barely sees play.

A New Challenger: Somewhat comparable to Heavy Metal, A New Challenger is a 7-mana paladin spell that allows you to discover a 6-cost minion, and then you summon it with Taunt and Divine Shield. It's one mana more expensive and helps to get you closer to Shirvallah, and it's... interesting! There are some 6-mana minions that already have Taunt and/or Divine Shield (Sunwalker being a prime example that has both). The obvious winners are, of course, cards like Cairne Bloodhoof or, in wild,  Sylvanas and Thaurissan. And even cards like Windfury Harpy or Hogger are going to be interesting with the Annoy-o-Tron effect. I don't see this performing particularly well in Standard, though it definitely is a card design that I find pretty fun!

Ironhide Direhorn: A 7-mana 7/7 that summons 5/5 tokens when it Overkills. A simple, good card that... probably won't ever see any play in constructed. Even after the Standard rotation there are a whole ton of better high-end minions for Druids to play. It's on paper a great card, amazing in arena and something you'll be happy to get off of random card generation effects, but it's just the fact that this poor dino probably won't see play in constructed decks. Neat Overkill effect, though. I'm not complaining, and if there ever comes a proper beast druid decks, this is probably going to fit right in.

Gurubashi Chicken: Yeah, this is worse than Angry Chicken. It's just such an abnormally difficult effect to pull off, and the result is just such a crappy buff that it's genuinely far more of a joke than previous joke cards.

HAKKAR THE SOULFLAYER: YES! Hakkar the Soulflayer has been one of the most hyped up cards and one of the go-to creations for any WoW lore-friendly fanmade cards, and Blizzard has finally graced us with an official Hakkar card. That artwork makes Hakkar look kind of like a Hydralisk from Starcraft. I love this thing! It's a neutral 10-mana 9/6, which isn't the best body out there, but it's big enough to impact the board. Hakkar has the deathrattle of shuffling a 'corrupted blood' card into both players' deck, which is a spell that casts when drawn, and deals 3 damage to the player before shuffling two copies of it into your deck. It's an insane amount of accumulative damage that's going to be really, really painful with mill decks, ensuring a far more significant amount of damage (at the cost of, y'know, drawing the corrupted bloods yourself). An alternate sort of combo is to use Hemet Jungle Hunter to get rid of your own Corrupted Blood, and watch as your opponent kills themselves. Hakkar basically turns fatigue into an instant death sentence, too. It's a very fun card, honestly, and one with such a bizarre effect that I won't really care if he turns out to be super-playable or not. Also love that he technically gets an instant counter with Skulking Geist, which would probably prevent Hakkar decks from being too oppressive. I'm going to dick around and play with Hakkar, for sure! It's such a weird and unique effect. Sadly, thanks to his poor stats, Hakkar is not going to be a particularly good card, but I do like him! And, who knows? Maybe he's going to be the next Rin as this bizarrely impractical-looking legendary that turns out to be pretty okay!

Oondasta: Another card I am in love with, Oondasta is a 9-mana 7/7 with the Overkill effect of summoning a beast from your hand, Boomship-style. The kicker? Oondasta has RUSH. The problem with Ticket Scalper up there is that it's never going to survive  to get the two-card draw. So you can just drop Oondasta for 9 mana, it can rush and kill something (with 7 attack, it better), and probably survive to be a threat that needs removing. And it can summon a beast from your hand -- star choices include King Krush and Charged Devilsaurs, who can charge and hit face. Oondasta is also a way to cheat out Shirvallah in Paladin without having to play the buffing game. Hadronox, Tyrantus and Baku are some huge-end beasts that you would probably be happy to come with an additional 7/7. Best of all, all of the loas (other than Bwonsamdi) are Beasts, so Oondasta's going to be an interesting card that may find a spot in all classes, providing their loas don't have battlecries. The best place for Oondasta is probably the Kathrena/Deathrattle hunter, where Oondasta can be pulled out by Kathrena, and also helps to alleviate the "aw man, I drew King Krush" moments by cheating out beasts from your hand. Easily one of my favourite cards in this set so far.

Untamed Beastmaster: A very interesting card, I guess? On paper, the Untamed Beastmaster is pretty powerful, a 3-mana 3/4 that buffs every beast you draw by +2/+2. Obviously best used by hunters, and one that can do some hilarious shit when placed in Quest Hunter decks. Untamed Beastmaster kinda looks very powerful, honestly, if it can find a deck that can utilize its effect to its fullest potential, being a mostly-beast deck that just draws a lot of cards before the Untamed Beastmaster eventually dies. On the other hand, we've seen weird synergy cards like this  flop a couple of times in the past (see: grimy goons) but I kind of have some high hopes for this. He looks neat, but I don't think it's the right meta for him.

Raiding Party: For 3 mana, you tutor two pirates from your deck. If you play this as a combo card,  you also draw a weapon! I don't think Rogues really need to tutor any weapons outside of Kingsbane or Necrium Blade decks, but maybe we'll get some really cool Rogue weapons that work particularly well with pirates? I'm not 100% sure about the combo effect, but I do know that tutoring two cards for 3 mana is a pretty powerful effect, and if that pirate cannon barrage deck works out, this is going to be an auto-include.

Grave Horror: An interesting Priest-only "Giant" style card, except it's not 8/8! What heresy is this? TThe Grave Horror is a 7/8 Taunt that costs 12, but is reduced by 1 for each spell you've cast in this game. It's... it's kinda weird to give this to Priest of all things, but I guess Priest is a neatly spell-heavy deck? I'm not sure if a 7/8 Taunt that takes a while to become cheap is going to be something that you want to do, though. It's like a weird, class-specific taunting Arcane Giant. Taunt's good, but I dunno.

Jan'alai, the Dragonhawk: The next bunch of cards sort of fall into neat little packages of synergies, and we'll start off with Mage. The Mage loa, Jan'alai the Dragonhawk, is an interesting card. She's a 7-mana 4/4 that, if you've done 8 damage with your hero power this turn, you summon Ragnaros the Firelord. And a 7-mana Ragnaros that also comes with a 4/4? That's definitely great! I've been playing with Ragnaros all season long thanks to me playing in wild, but honestly, be it in wild or in standard, Ragnaros is going to be a great thing to have. There are a lot of ways to get Jan'alai's requirements, the most obvious is via odd mage decks (you only have to use your hero powers four times), and this expansion introduces a bunch of neat hero power synergy cards... time will tell if this is going to be another TGT, though the cards at least look fairly more powerful this time around. Jan'alai's neat! I don't neccessarily think she's going to be the new meta-breaking deck, but I like her.

Spirit of the Dragonhawk: A 2-mana Spirit that allows your hero power to also target adjacent minions, which basically triples the requirement output for Jan'alai. You probably don't really need too many enablers for Jan'alai since you only really need 8, but it's nice to have options. Spirit of the Dragonhawk turns your hero power into Shooting Stars until it's killed, which is honestly a pretty damning ability to have against odd paladin or any token decks.

Daring Fire-Eater: A 1-mana 1/1 that adds 2 damage to your hero power for this turn. It's... it's a lot shittier than I thought it was, honestly, since Fallen Hero from TGT didn't see play and that was a consistent effect. Still, you can think of him as a 3-mana 1/1 that deals 3 damage... and I don't necessarily think it's the best thing out there. But by far not the worst. I dunno. I don't really think you need too many of these hero power synergy cards to make Jan'alai work, but maybe I'm just slightly pessimistic because of how bad TGT flopped?

Waterboy: Waterboy is a neutral card, but I'm slapping him with the Jan'alai package as another hero power synergy cards. He's a 2-mana 2/1 that makes your next hero power this turn cost 0. (Both Waterboy and Fireeater's emphasis on 'this turn' really makes them kind of shittier than they already are). Waterboy is more of a free 2/1 to get when you do a hero power, I guess? I don't see this dude being good, honestly. Even if hero power decks become awesome, I'd say cards like the Blackwood Sprite, Clockwork Automaton or even TGT's Garrison Commander would see play before Waterboy does.

High Priestess Jeklik: Unexpectedly, we're seeing the return of Discard Warlock! I've had the (mis)fortune to naturally open the Warlock Quest, Clutchmother Zavas and Blood Queen Lana'thel naturally from my packs, so I kind of am obligated to try my darnadest to make Discard Warlock work. Spoiler alert: it never did. Maybe Rastakhan's Rumble is going to usher in enough tools to make it work somehow? After all, it's not like Warlock needs any particular boost in power at this moment. The legendary troll champion, Jeklik (a boss in the old Zul'Gurub raid), is an interesting card. She's a 4-mana 3/4 with Taunt and Lifesteal, and whenever you discard Jeklik, you re-gain two copies of her. Like Zavas and Silverware Golem, we finally have a card that you're happy to discard from your hand as High Priestess Jeklik quite literally replenishes herself. As a far more durable Lifesteal minion (with taunt to boot!), she also effectively replaces Lana'thel (who tends to get discarded in most of my games anyway) in my mind as a way for Discard Warlock to regain health. Jeklik is definitely a very interestingly designed card for sure, being not particularly powerful, but definitely looking interesting enough for me to actually hope that maybe we'll have the opportunity to make Discard Warlock work.

Reckless Diretroll: A very interesting variation of the discard mechanic! Reckless Diretroll is, on the surface, just a smaller version of the Felhound from Un'Goro, a 3-mana 2/6 Taunt that discards a card. Obviously, if that was all that the Reckless Diretroll is, it's kinda shit! Warlock has better taunts without resorting to what's essentially a cheaper, stat-swapped Sen'jin that discards a card. But Reckless Diretroll discards your lowest-cost card, and that's the first real time that Warlock has been able to dictate and manipulate which card they discard! Clutchmother Zavas and High Priestess Jeklik are both (relatively) low-cost cards that you can definitely discard to gain value, and while I'm still unconvinced that it's going to be enough to suddenly make Discard Warlock 100% better than Zoo, Cube, Even or Odd Warlock, it's definitely a great supporting piece to the puzzle.

Shriek: Shriek is a mini-Hellfire of sorts, dealing 2 damage to the entire board for one mana (!). It's cheap as all hell, helps to deal with token zoo decks (and those nasty, nasty Witchwood Paladins). Like the Diretroll, Shriek discards your lowest-cost card, which, again, helps out a whole ton in the whole discard warlock thing. Hell, I can even see Shriek being used in non-Discard decks.

Soulwarden: A far, far better version of that crappy Dinomancer card we had in Un'Goro, the Soulwarden is a very, very interesting card! She's a 6-mana 6/6 that adds 3 cards you've discarded earlier in the game into your hand. A 6-mana 6/6 that draws/generates 3 cards is definitely extremely powerful, and since those are cards that you've discarded earlier, it's definitely going to be cards from your deck. I'm not 100% sure if she'll add additional copies of High Priestess Jeklik, but I kinda think that she will? I dunno. Soulwarden's a great value card to throw into discard warlock lists in order to make sure they don't lose steam. I still don't think Discard Warlock is going to be super good, but I can definitely see the roots of an interesting deck archetype!

Gral, the Shark: This card has badass art. That's one of the most stand-out thing about this card for me, really. Gral's effect is... interesting? I don't think he's quite as powerful as the likes of Bwonsamdi, but Gral definitely has an interesting effect! He's a 5-mana 2/2 that 'eats' a minion in your deck and gains its stats (not its effect, though), and adds it to your hand when it dies. It's an interesting, delayed tutor effect that allows you to sort of make use of the stats, sort of like a better, more controlled Myra Rotspring, but on the other hand I'm not 100% sure what Rogue deck can make effective use of this. I do think that Gral is a pretty poor fit for present-day odd rogue decks, so maybe some sort of weird tempo or control list? You can double Gral's effect with the Spirit, although I don't necessarily think it's as well-done as some of the other Spirit-Loa combos. Interesting effect, in any case.