Rastakhan's Rumble Card Review #2

They are not letting up with the new cards, and we have a bunch that look weirdly neat! I don't think we have quite as many here that excites me as much as Bwonsamdi, Jeklik, Oondasta and Hakkar in the last batch, but there are some neat ones here too.

High Priest Thekal: Whoa, what? High Priest Thekal is Paladin's legendary troll, and he's... he's a fucking weird card! A 3-mana 3/4 that converts all but 1 of your health into armor? This dude is basically here in order to set your hero's health to 1 without putting you at risk, thereby allowing for healing synergies. It's an ability that I've seen some fan-made cards do for Priests, and it's certainly a very interesting one! One of the biggest problems with heal-paladins is that they tend to have such a powerful early game presence (be it Righteous Protectors or Muster for Battles or Baku hero powers or Shielded Minibots, depending on the year) that they tend to keep a high health in the early game, meaning cards like Benevolent Djinn tend to not really end up being all that useful. Thekal allows you to basically heal for excess of 29, allowing you to get discounts on Zandalari Templar or to upgrade your spellstones. It's definitely a bizarre, interesting card that needs a fair amount of support,  but I like it! In Wild this and either Reno Jackson or Forgotten Healing are pretty great combos, too. Overall, while I will hold off on saying that this is a super-good card, this is definitely a weird and interesting one for midrange and control paladin lists, which have been gone for quite some time.

Spirit of the Tiger: We've seen Shirvallah, but here's the associated spirit! It's another expensive one, costing 4, and it has the effect of summoning a tiger with stats equal to the cost of any spell you cast. Which... yeah. 4-mana 0/3 is an expensive cost to pay, but that can be potentially off-set by getting insane amounts of value. Take, for example, playing Spirit of the Tiger on the same turn as Blessing of Kings. You basically get a 4/4 token as well as the Blessing of Kings effect, and the potential to gain extra vanilla minions in the future. With far more expensive cards like Dinosize, or A Challenger Arrives or Spikeridged Steed, Spirit of the Tiger can rack up intense amounts of value. It's also a minion that works well in buff paladin, so the 0/3 statline might get turned around a little.

Zandalari Templar: A 4-mana 4/4 that becomes an 8/8 Taunt if you've restored 10 health total in the game. healing-synergy cards from Kobolds & Catacombs didn't really end up working all that well in paladin. Of course, a cheap card that can turn into a huge minion after fulfilling a condition is definitely not something to sleep on, as Hooked Reaver shows. Zandalari Templar requires significantly more work than just taking damage and using your hero power, though with cards like High Priest Thekal and Crystalsmith Kangor, I'm... I'm holding my breath out. I won't say that heal paladin is the new big thing since we haven't seen all of the cards now -- and without some of the old control paladin tools like Forbidden Healing and Ragnaros Lightlod, I'm still unconvinced. Great tools, though, and if control paladin does become a thing, Zandalari Templar is going to be a key part of it.

Walk the Plank: A pretty simple spell, really. For 4 mana, you destroy an undamaged minion. It's basically a cheaper version of Vilespine Slayer as a conditional Assassinate, and while cheaper it's arguably a worse version of Vilespine Slayer due to the not-always-feasible "undamaged" condition. It's neat that they're preparing something for when Vilespine rotates out, though.

Gurubashi Hypemon: Hypemon, hee hee. Gurubashi Hypemon is an interesting card, working similarly to the Shadowcaster mechanic in a way. Hypemon is a 7-mana 5/7, that discovers a 1-mana 1/1 copy specifically of a battlecry minion. There are some pretty powerful battlecry cards out there, but I'm not sure if this card is going to be particularly well fitted to any current Rogue decks.


War Master Voone: DRAGON SYNERGY! When did we last see dragon synergy in Hearthstone, huh? That Scaleworm back in Witchwood? Dragon Warrior was pretty great back in the day thanks to Alexstrasza's Champion, and this time around we've gotten a bunch of extra synergy cards. War-Master Voone is a 4-mana 4/3 (apparently the reveal video had him be a 5-mana 4/5, so he got buffed before his final release!) that copies all dragons in your hand. And while copying things in your hand does mean that you kind of have to do some workarounds... the reveal video shows off the Boomship summoning three big-ass dragons into the field, which is awesome. In addition, in wild, Voone can drastically increase the amounts of dragons you summon with Deathwing Dragonlord, which is the first thing that came to mind when I saw this card. The fact that he's a pretty decent 4-mana 4/3 isn't bad, either. Not a game-breaking card, but it's one that builds up a fun little synergy that I do find to be pretty cool.

Smolderthorn Lancer: A 3-mana 3/2 minion that, if you're holding a dragon, Executes an enemy minion. Removal tied onto a minion is always powerful, as Big Game Hunter and Vilespine Slayer have shown, and Smoldethorn is... decent enough, I suppose, gaining Execute's effect for basically 1 extra mana and a condition. Execute is a card that's seen still-universal play even after it was nerfed, only unused in Odd Warriors. Again, while I'm not sure if this little dragon package is going to revitalize dragon priest for standard, it's definitely a card design that I do like.

Firetree Witchdoctor: A pretty simple support card for dragon decks that don't want to have too many low-cost dragons, Firetree Witchdoctor is comparable to Netherspite Historian. A 2-mana 2/2 that, if you're holding a dragon, discovers a spell. Not particularly great, but definitely not trash! I can see this lady being used in dragon decks for sure.

Revenge of the Wild: A 2-mana Kel'thuzad effect for Beasts only? It's an interesting spell, I guess, and I'm not going to write off any sort of N'Zoth style effect, but the fact that it only affects beasts that die this turn is going to be a huge hindrance to making this an OP card. Interesting spell to print, though. Nothing wrong with that.

Masked Contender: An... interesting card for sure. He's a neutral 3-mana 2/4 that plays a Secret for free from your deck, which is, in a vacuum, great! It's comparable to Mad Scientist, only you get the Secret immediately instead of upon death. On the other hand, Masked Contender requires you to have a Secret already up, and that might be a wee bit too difficult sometimes. I guess the best place to put this in is Secret Hunter decks? I'm not 100% sure if Hunters would want to play this. Probably too weak to play in Wild, where both Mad Scientist and Cloaked Huntress are IMO superior, but definitely can find a place in Standard Secret Hunter decks.

Likkim: A  2-mana 1/3 Shaman weapon, and it's comparable to the post-nerf Spirit Claws, I guess. A 2-mana 1/3 weapon that becomes a smorc-y 2-mana 3/3 weapon. The condition is if you have overloaded mana crystals. I'm not sure if it's strictly better than Spirit Claws, though, a card that, since its nerf, has seen basically no play. Admittedly Likkim does make it so that you can get an advantage out of the overloaded mana crystals, but I am unconvinced that it's actually a good weapon. Neat, though.

Amani War Bear: A 7-mana 5/7 neutral beast with Rush and Taunt. It might be kind of boring, but Amani War Bear is definitely a very solid, if underwhelming, card. I'm not sure if this dude is ever going to be see constructed play, but definitely a solid arena and/or random generation cards. Not much to say here.

Rabble Bouncer: A 7-mana 2/7 Taunt that gets cheaper by 1 for each enemy minion. A bit of a more superior, but lower-attacked Second-Rate Bouncer. She's... she's neat, but I think she takes the anti-token-board thing a bit too far. At the point that you can play a super-cheap 2/7 Taunt, wouldn't you rather play a board clear instead? Kind of okay for Arena, I suppose, and I guess it's a pretty interesting effect to print.

Soup Vendor: No funnel cakes? HERESY. Soup Vendor is a 2-mana 1/4 that draws a card whenever you restore 3 or more health to your hero, and it's... it's neat? Restoring 3 health every turn, specifically to your hero, is kind of unwieldy, though, and I'm pretty sure the only classes that can do this effectively are Paladin, Priest and heal-package Warlock, and neither of them particularly needs that much help in card draw -- or rather, they have better options that doesn't involve healing 3 to face. Cute effect, but ultimately I think this poor tuskarr's just not that good.

Blast Wave: Bit of an... interesting card. On the surface, Blast Wave is an overpriced Volcanic Potion -- 5 mana, nuke the board for 2 damage. But you do get an Overkill effect of gaining random mage spells into your hand, and cards like Babbling Book and Cabalist's Tome have seen play relatively successfully in the past. I think Blast Wave's Overkill triggers for each enemy you killed? If you can only activate the Overkill effect once then Blast Wave is straight-up a trash card. If it can be activated multiple times... it's great against some board states, I suppose, against un-buffed Silver Hand Recruits and Totems, but the Overkill might be a bit harder to activate. A very interesting card, honestly, one that I don't think is super-great, but I'm also prepared to wait and see.

Predatory Instincts: A 4-mana card that draws a beast specifically and doubles its health. It's... it's an interesting tutor card, for sure, and one that's going to be a pretty juicy choice for Hadronox decks to guarantee tutoring out the big card that you want... but 4 mana tutoring a card is pretty hefty of a cost, especially when Druid's other tutor card is, y'know, Juicy Psychmelon. I'm not sure what other specific beast druids would want to tutor out that isn't covered by Juicy Psychmelon already. Sure, you could kind of maybe say that you want to tutor a beast with this card, and then buff it, and then buff it some more with the Beastmaster card. I dunno. I guess Oondasta or the druid loa beast may be a possible choice?

Saronite Taskmaster: Bit of an interesting variant to Zombie Chow -- a 1-mana 2/3 that, when it dies, gives your opponent a 0/3 with Taunt. It's... I dunno. It's something that guarantees some sort of value to your opponent by absorbing 3 damage. Sometimes it's just a 0/3 Taunt that basically acts like "oh, punch the enemy a couple more times" like Zombie Chow's deathrattle does, but it's also a token that might allow your opponent to buff. Priests, Paladins, especially Shamans... I dunno. It's not bad, but I don't think it's particularly good.

Haunting Spirit: A weird Shaman spell. It's a 3-mana version of Preparation, which... is bizarre. It cancels itself out, basically, costing 3 and discounting 3. You also get to discover a spell, so it's kind of basically just a glorified 0-mana "discover a shaman spell" card, which Shaman doesn't really particularly need but isn't super bad. There may be something weird with the wording of this specific card in regards to how it interacts with, say, Electra? Or a way for odd Shaman to discover even spells? I ultimately think it's pretty bad, though -- it only affects the next spell you cast this turn, and I'd honestly just risk running the spells I want instead of this.

Princess Talanji: New Priest Legendary! Princess Talanji is an 8-mana 7/5, that has a very interesting battlecry -- summoning all minions from your hand that didn't start in your deck. Basically it's like a version of  Boomship or Deathwing Dragonlord that just rips everything from your hand. There are ways to accomplish this -- you could play the Bwonsamdi package, but that just seems silly since all the minions generated by Spirit of the Dead already cost 1 mana. You could do some funky things with cards like Archbishop Benedictus, or general 'steal' cards, or Entomb... Holy Water, maybe? Talanji's probably going to need a couple of extra support cards to help out, but that is definitely a powerful effect that's just waiting for the right deck to use.

Murloc Tastyfin: Is he the cook, or  is he the dish? Murloc Tastyfin is... he's an allright card. A 4-mana 3/2 that tutors two Murlocs from your deck is perfectly all right, helping your murloc decks to reload. It's like a delayed Ice Fishing, and some Murloc Shaman decks tech in Ice Fishing (which, IMO, isn't that good, but eh). Tastyfin's probably a bit too slow to see play in wild, but in Standard I can see him working out quite well.

Overlord's Whip: Huh, this isn't a bad weapon at all! 3-mana 2/4 isn't the worst statline out there, and it has the passive effect of dealing 1 damage to every minion you play -- sometimes, as a Warrior, you do want that. Yes, self-harm Warrior was sort of a dud back in Knights of the Frozen Throne, but I don't know -- a weapon (and a 3-mana 2/4 at that) is probably going to be a whole lot more easy to play than Animated Armor. It's a neat little variant compared to Blood Razor, I think. In any case, maybe sometimes it's just a fun little tech card that you put into your deck and you get a couple of value hits with Acolyte of Pain or Grommash Hellscream, and you're happy? Having a reliable way to just enrage Grom right out of the gate is probably the most practical and awesome usage of the whip.