Boomsday Project Card Review/Reaction #5

A chunk of new cards, most of them legendaries, and... interesting ones, I suppose?

Zerek, Master Cloner: We start off with the Priest legendary minion, Zerek. Zerek here is the leader of the Priests's cloning laboratories or something along those lines, and is an... interesting minion. He's a 6-mana 5/5, with a Deathrattle that reads "if you've cast any spells on this minion, resummon it". So he's sort of leaning towards a buff priest game? Currently Priest doesn't really have a lot of targeted spells other than Power Word: Shield, Unidentified Elixir, Divine Spirit and Inner Fire, and those last two tended to only be used in combos. You could theoretically cast damaging spells on Zerek, but that's just silly. We do have the new card Power Word: Replicate, which summons an additional copy of Zerek, meaning presumably both of those have a Deathrattle that resummons a 5/5... and there's also the question on whether Zerek returns to life with buffs still active or not. It's one way to play with Quest Priest too, I suppose, although playing Quest Priest as it is, or using Zerek's Cloning Gallery is far, far more efficient, I think, in actually completing the quest. Zerek might see a fair bit more usage in Wild, perhaps? With N'Zoth and Velen's Chosen, there's a fair bit more cards that synergizes with Zerek. Ultimately, though, neat effect, but we really need a fair amount of support to get him to work.

Power Word: Replicate: And one of said support is Power Word: Replicate, a 5-mana spell that summons a 5/5 copy of a friendly minion. This sort of "clone with exact stats is... interesting, which is why Prince Taldaram saw a brief bit of play in decks like Cubelock that really want the effect and not the statline. Oh, and since we're talking about Priest 5/5's, Shadow Essence also does a similar effect, albeit from the deck. While you could obviously use it for a Zerek combo, I'm unconvincced if this is that good -- what makes Shadow Essence so powerful is you cheat out the minion and their effect a couple of turns before your draw and play the actual card, whereas Power Word: Replicate has the rather huge ask of having the minion already on board. On paper, Replicate is a fair spell, but I'm not sure if it's actually good.

Voltaic Burst: A shaman spell that... honestly doesn't look that good? It's comparable to Lost in the Jungle, a 1-mana that summons two 1/1's. The difference is that Voltaic Burst's Sparks have Rush, which means instant board presence, but the spell also has Overload. It's not a card I see ever actually being put into a deck, because Shaman has so many better removal tools -- and their hero power makes bodies anyway. Maybe it's a spell printed just to muck around with Hagatha's consistency? E

Juicy Psychmelon: Druids get a very interesting tutor card, a 4-mana spell that draws, specifically, a 7, 8, 9 and 10 cost minion from your deck. We finally get that proactive C'Thun tutor card we've been begging for! In wild, I can actually see C'Thun decks running this, drawing C'Thun himself, Twin Emperor Vek'lor, Doomcaller and... Ysera or some 9-mana card, I dunno. Other than C'Thun, though, tutoring four cards at once -- four specific cards at that -- is definitely powerful. There's a Togwaggle druid list in Wild, and Juicy Pyschmelon can draw the four cards central to that combo -- Azalina Soulthief, King Togwaggle, Aviana and Kun. As far as standard is concerned, both Malygos and Hadronox are 9-mana minions, so this could just basically read "draw your win condition" for both Malygos Druid and Taunt Druid. Taunt Druid even gets the bonus of the Psychmelon drawing the Lich King or Primordial Drake, too. It's not going to be an easy card to use, and decks will have to probably be revamped to get the maximum value out of Psychmelon, but it's definitely an interesting card that I really am looking forward to see what it does.

Shrink Ray: Speaking of interesting cards, Shrink Ray here is... bizarre, but in a good way. It's a 5-mana spell that not only does Equality on the board, but also sets the attack of all minions to 1 as well. Everything is left as 1/1's, which is... interesting? The problem is that if you just want to clear the board, Equality (and Wild Pyromancer) is strictly better, costing less than half of Shrink Ray. And if you want to turn the board into an equal state, Sunkeeper Tarim is still in the rotation, and you get a 3/7 body with taunt, and if you are in the lead, you buff all your 1/1's into 3/3's that can hit face. I dunno. Shrink Ray on first glance looks neat, but after mulling it over I don't think it's actually all that good.

Myra Rotspring: Like Zerek, poor Myra looks like a card that's nowhere as practical as her associated legendary spell. That's not to say Myra is a bad card, though. Myra is a 5-mana 4/2, but she discovers a Deathrattle minion, which means you draw a card... and she gains its deathrattle. Does this really matter when you kind of have a huge tempo loss by playing a 5-mana 4/2 that draws a card? Maybe. We've seen 4-mana 3/2 that draws cards like Elven Minstrel and Xaril see play. But the problem is that Myra doesn't actually fit anywhere in the current Rogue decks. She's just an okay legendary card that sort of doesn't really have much synergy with anything Rogue does (Miracle, Aggro, Kingsbane and the potential wacky 'shuffle things into your deck' archetype that's still in the air). And the fact that there's a huge possibility that Myra discovers three pretty shitty deathrattles means that I'm unconvinced Myra is super-good of a card.


Necrium Blade: Rogues get a weapon to support the potential Deathrattle synergy with Necrium Blade, a 3-mana 3/2 weapon with the Deathrattle of basically casting Play Dead. But randomly. It's... it's all right? By virtue of being a 3-mana 3/2 weapon with an upside, the card's already semi-decent, but, jut like Myra, the problem is to build a proper Deathrattle deck that can capitalize on synergies from Myra and Necrium Blade. Maybe in wild you can do something with this? I dunno.

Augmented Elekk: It's a really interesting neutral minion, a 3-mana 3/4 Beast (which means hey Rexxar!) that has the passive effect of shuffling another copy of any card you shuffle into your deck. So that Rogue synergy is definitely there. Academic Espionage (although you shuffle copies of the generated cards, so if you whiff on Espionage, Augmented Elekk just makes it worse) and Lab Recruiter synergize well with this card, and Fal'dorei Strider suddenly shuffles six 4/4's into your deck. The Hunter Quest shuffles even more raptors into your deck, if you're still trying to make it work. Note that this is shuffle cards into a deck, by the way, so Weasel Tunneler effects trigger twice if that's your thing. More seriously, in Wild you double the effect of your Entomb, meaning you steal their Sylvanas twice. Forbidden Torch and Deck of Secrets also trigger twice, if that's your thing. Most interestingly, Jade Idol also shuffles a card into your deck, which means Augmented Elekk doubles the amount of Jade Idols you shuffle in -- not super powerful, of course, since Jade Druids doesn't actually have problem shuffling, it's drawing that tends to be the tense part. But definitely a very interesting card, and one that looks deceptively simple.