Thursday 12 November 2020

Hearthstone: Madness at the Darkmoon Faire Card Reactions, Part 2

So they did the huge card dump yesterday! And I kinda want to talk about them. A lot of the cards I am not too impressed by and I'll talk about them after the break, but those who seem strong enough for Wild, or whose flavour are cool enough for me to talk about, I'll go in-depth. Without further ado...

Insatiable Felhound would be great if it was in Warlock. A 2/5 Taunt for 3 mana is decent, but a 3/6 Taunt with Lifesteal? That's a huge steal! Unfortunately, it's in Demon Hunter, which tend to just want to go hard, fast and furious, and as a corrupt card the Felhound won't even see play until turn 5, and at that point... I dunno, I don't see such a delayed taunt minion, lifesteal or no, good stats or no, see that much play in Demon Hunter. The big thing that I feel makes this go from 'good' to 'pretty damn great' is the presence of Il'gynoth. Which suddenly makes cards like Felhound and Aldrachi Warblades and Eye Beam feel so much more powerful. 

Acrobatics is a very interesting card. I dismissed it earlier, but the idea that you can draw 4 cards with 3 mana? Of course you still have to play both the cards you draw if you want that, but even if you can't play them you still get an Arcane Intellect. It's a fun deviation of the somewhat repetitive 'Outcast' and 'when hero attacks' triggers for Demon Hunte. Still, maybe this is the card that makes a "everything in Demon Hunter costs very cheap and this is the Divine Favor equivalent" deck work?

Now Demon Hunter already has a lot of great weapons! Like Warglaives, or Marrowslicer, or Aldrachi, but Felsteel Executioner is just so much fun of a flavour. A 3-mana 4/3 Elemental, but if you corrupt it it becomes a 4/3 weapon instead? The vanilla minion isn't that good (I do appreciate the small attempt at a menagerie build), and honestly I think almost every DH deck would rather play Aldrachi or Marrowslicer for their early game weapon. But the flavour of an elemental that solidifies into a weapon is pretty damn cool and 3-mana 4/3 weapon isn't terrible. 

I kind of am obliged to talk about all the legendaries. DH gets Zai the Incredible, which copies the two Outcast position cards in your hand. I mean, it's a bit too slow, I feel? And if Demon Hunter needed to reload they'd just run Skull of Gul'dan instead? But I am unwilling to look down on anything that duplicates cards in your hand. DH isn't a class that I think is well-suited towards combo since they're so fine-tuned towards being aggressive, but this one is a cute little card. 
Fizzy Elemental might be the best huge beatstick minion we've seen in a long, long while. Rush and Taunt on a huge minion? Yeah, that's going to be extremely useful and powerful. I'm not sure if you want to spend card slots and 9 mana... but out of so many other large minions? I'd rather play Fizzy Elemental than something like, say, Tyrantus for sure. 

Speaking of being very solid, Faire Arborist! If you don't corrupt it, you just either get a stronger Novice Engineer or two 2/2 tokens. Not terrible, but not good. The corrupted effect, though, really gives you a lot of value particularly since Druid does have a history of ramping up pretty quickly. Not that powerful, but an Aggro Druid list has been making the rounds in Wild and I could see them experimenting with this lady here. 

Greybough has a very, very cool, flavourful effect! I'm not sure if it's powerful enough to be constructed viable. He's a mid-range card and has Taunt, and the condition of getting him to stick is a lot easier compared to something like Lucentbark. I still think he's too slow for constructed, but a pretty cool legendary effect! I approve. 

Trampling Rhino! Like, the M:TG keyword trample, huh? Trampling Rhino also has Rush, which is sorely needed for any Trample card in Hearthstone to work. 5 attack is a bit too little to matter, I think. Cool that they're finally experimenting with this one, though. 
Let me say this first -- Secret Hunter's not going to work particularly well in Wild, although those Reno Hunter or Spell Hunter lists might swap things in and out to experiment. Open the Cages is simple enough, it's a cheaper Animal Companion, and the requirement is simple -- you need two beasts. Lots of people talk about how this is basically a secret that depends more on the Hunter's play than the enemy, so you can essentially write the script on when this one goes off. Not the best Secret, I feel, but an interesting one. 

Rinling's Rifle is a legendary card! For 4 mana, you get a 2/2 weapon and essentially 2 secrets that you can discover. Highly doubtful this needed to be a legendary, but it's a good effect for Secret synergy and getting more Secrets in play without ovevrloading your deck with Secret cards. Again, though, the cards are there; I'm unconvinced the deck list will pop up. 

Two weirdo legendaries for Mage! Sayge, Seeer of Darkmoon draws cards and reloads depending on how many Secrets you've gotten to trigger in the game. It's a reload mechanic for Secret Mage... which in Wild competes with... well, Aluneth. And I think Sayge is almost always worse, even if you can get pretty high amounts with him in wild Secret Mage decks. It's not terrible, and probably spooky in Standard. It's just outclassed in Wild. 

Deck of Lunacy! Remember Renounce Darkness? Yeah, that was such a fun card, but also such a bad card. I keep saying that old cards like Nefarian and Renounce Darkness really should've discounted the cards they generated or replaced. Lunacy here still costs 2 mana, like Renounce Darkness, but instead replaces all your spells with more expensive ones... but at a 3-mana discount. It's an interesting idea, and I think from the wording is that it can be any spell from any class? Because it'd be busted if it just drew from the Mage pool, the amount of 7-mana Pyroblasts would be stupid. It's still random at the end of the day, but there's so much power behind this one that at least it'll be fun to watch like New Yogg. 

We have Elemental synergy randomly snuck in. I do feel like it's not quite enough, even in Wild, where none of the Un'Goro Elemental package really stuck around. But Firework Elemental is a pretty neat one! At its base, it's a slightly weaker Fire Elemental that only deals damage to a minion. Which you don't really want. 3/5 for 5 mana? Yuck. But then you corrupt it and suddenly it deals 12 damage to a minion. Which sounds pretty huge, but, again, it's just to a single minion. It's like Omega Devastator. And Omega Devastator did see play, but only as part of Dr. Boom Mad Genius decks specifically because it's a conditional huge-damage-to-a-minion and has strong synergies. I don't think Firework Elemental will see much play this time around, but give the archetype a couple more powerful Elementals and I can actually see this one seeing play later on in the game. 

Grand Finale might be one of these elemental finisher cards? For 8 mana, you summon at least a single 8/8 token, as well as an additional one for each elemental you played last turn. I think the obvious way to rack this up is via token-generating cards like Fire Fly and Confection Cyclone, and a bunch of 8/8's aren't anything to sneeze at. I still think it's a bit too slow for Wild, but maybe with enough elemental synergy, hopefully in the next couple of expansions?

Now these. See how I was like "how cute, Standard is trying to do Secret Mage but their cards are subpar" up above? Here I'm like "oh fuck what are they doing to Silver Hand Paladin". Balloon Merchant is pretty decent even for Wild lists, and so is Day at the Faire, but these guys? Carnival Barker is already scary enough. Whenever you summon a 1-health minion, give it +1/+2? So that means each tap of a Baku'd Paladin hero power is two 2/3 minions that can potentially also gain all the buffs that Odd Paladin is already playing. Very, very scary, and I would say that this might be powerful enough to jostle out Steward of Darkness. 

Even scarier is the legendary, Lothraxion the Redeemed. Sure, in Standard everyone is discussing how he's a Demon and maybe you play this with a weird New'Zoth menagerie blah-di-blah. But as a Wild player... yeah, the idea that each time an Odd Paladin pushes that button, they're summoning 1/1's with Divine Shield? That Steward of Darkness is basically online for the rest of the game? The only downside is that Lothraxion himself is a 5/5 vanilla with pretty negative tempo, but at the same time it's also going to allow Odd Paladin a way to catch up with stronger tokens in the mid game. Part of me wants to say 'don't overreact', but at the same time it's a pretty spooky card for sure! 

Priest, now. We have the fifth Old God, G'huun the Blood God! A very situational legendary, I would say. G'huun draws two cards, and essentially Bloodblooms them. Remember Bloodbloom from Warlock? I was about to say that this is terrible since there's no way that you can guarantee the cards in your topdeck... but Lorekeeper Polkelt exists. I can't think of any specific combo on top of my head, between old cards and new ones. But I dunno. I kinda feel like this has the potential to swing games, and even if it's just added not as a way to enable combos but just there to maybe give a boost and allow Priest to cast more cards in a single turn than they normally can... I dunno. My gut feeling says that this might be another Bwonsamdi, though. 

Auspicious Spirits is like, a great control Priest card, isn't it? I would happily put this in a Reno Priest list. Play it on tempo and you pay 4 mana to get a random 4-cost minion. Fair, right? But if you Corrupt -- a keyword that I feel would work best in Priest, Druid and Warrior -- Auspicious Spirits suddenly summons a 7-cost monster for 4 mana. That's pretty damn awesome, and in a control deck you're likely to withhold resources for later on anyway. 

Blood of G'huun is a pretty interesting effect. Big Priest, maybe? A 9-mana 8/8 is expensive, sure, but it's got Taunt, Priest has ways to cheat out minions from the deck (Shadow Essence, Cloning Gallery, Barnes, Idol of Y'Shaarj, old Y'Shaarj) and Blood of G'huun will continually summon copies of minions in your deck without exhausting future Recruit potentials. It scares me more than its master, if we're being honest, although that might just be my own personal PTSD from Big Priest's rampage back in the day.

Idol of Y'Shaarj on first glance feels like a much greedier Shadow Essence. 8 mana is a lot of mana to pay for a spell, and you summon a 10/10 copy of a minion in your deck. Leaving the minion in your deck is important, I feel, for other synergies in wild with the original Y'Shaarj. I wanted to dismiss this, but Zerek's Cloning Gallery did see limited usage in Big Priest, and this is essentially the reverse, going for a single big copy instead of a bunch of smaller copies. These two are pretty great additions to Big Priest in Wild, if nothing else. 

Whether she sees play or not (and she seems good enough to be just a general value card a la Preparation), I love the idea behind Foxy Fraud. What a great concept for a Combo synergy card! It discounts the next Combo card you play the turn by its own cost, meaning you get a free 3/2, but by the virtue of you playing the Fox first, you also guarantee that the next combo card you play gets the combo effect triggered. A+ in balance and card design, and I honestly do think that it's practical enough to see play. 

Tenwu of the Red Smoke is... weird Shadowstep? It is basically a Youthful Brewmaster, but since it's a legendary it also adds an additional effect, namely giving it a huge discount. It's like Shadowstep on steroids, except it always sets the card at 1. Can't think of any specific deck archetype where Tenwu feels 'oh shit this is going to break the game', but it's also a very solid legendary that does feel like it's going to be super-powerful in the right situation. 

Rogue secrets are getting more and more fun, huh? Bamboozle, Ambush, Sudden Betrayal and Cheat Death have always been fun, and Rogue has been getting increasingly powerful Secret synergy. Shadow Clone is going to severely punish big-minion decks or those that don't pay attention to checking for secrets properly, though. You gets a copy of the minion that attacks you, and you even get Stealth with it, meaning that unlike Mirror Image you can't test for it and kill the generated minion immediately. And that's not counting Stealth synergies! A very great design. 

Grand Totem Eys'or is... a weirdo. It just gives a +1/+1 buff to every totems in your hand, deck and battlefield. It's slow, admittedly, but maybe between Splitting Axe and the assorted Totem buffs, you might get something? Totem synergy is a real thing in Wild for sure, albeit as part of an Even Shaman list, meaning Eys'or doesn't fit there, unfortunately. My gut feeling is that it won't, though. 

Shaman gets a bunch of cards everyone is calling 'Enhancement Shaman' after the archetype's WoW inspiration, and it's basically just attacking with the hero... and... uh... I kinda want to say that the entire archetype feels just bad? Demon Hunter in particular has so much better 'attack with your hero' cards that I wonder why you'd run any of these instead of either already established Shaman cards. Inara Stormcrash isn't terrible, a 5-mana 4/5 that gives your hero +2 attack and Windfury in your turn. That's cool, that's like a Doomhammer turn guaranteed every turn you keep Inara alive. Higher, with a weapon. And... and that's a great effect on paper, I'm just not sure if Inara has a deck she can find a home in. 

Whack-a-Gnoll Hammer is a weapon that tries to capitalize on this, being a decent weapon (3-mana 3/2) and also a weapon you want to attack with all the time, since it buffs a random friendly minion by +1/+1. I feel like we've got better buffs-when-attacks weapon like Silver Sword or whatever in the past, and, again, I feel like Demon Hunter and Warrior just have so much better hero-attacks and weapon synergies that these just look pretty underwhelming. Interesting idea, but I feel like at least in Wild we need just a bit more. 

Warlock's two legendaries! Deck of Chaos is scary. Like, sure, it's a high cost card, at 6 mana it's very impractical even if it affects your whole deck... and we said that about Luna's Pocket Galaxy in the past, didn't we? And it took Pocket Galaxy like an entire year or some shit before it reared its scary head. Deck of Chaos swaps the cost and attack of all minions in your deck, so you want minions with low attack but high cost, and a beneficial effect. An easy and scary one would be Malygos, which you can reduce to 4 mana (and also a 9/12 body, but the cheap cost is scarier). Other 4/12 dragons like Ysera and Zzeraku become cheap and have huge attacks. Voidlord, which you can reduce to 3 mana and turn into a scary 9/9 taunt. Keli'dan and Lord Godfrey, who's suddenly turned into a 3-mana and 4-mana removal respectively. Both N'Zoths, who turn into 5-mana board reloads that also has a boost in attack. And... it's a bit of a dream, because the conditions is a bit hard. You need Deck of Chaos and the expensive minion in your deck. But in wild? Yeah, this is going to be fun to build a deck for if nothing else. 

Tickatus is probably one of the most blatant deck-disturbance cards we've had. Like, in the past all we had was Gnomeferatu (discard one card) or Azari (you need to go through a lot of hoops to get him). Tickatus also takes a bit, and it's always a 6-mana 8/8, comparable to the Fel Reaver of old. If you don't corrupt it, it's basically just a Fel Reaver that burns 5 cards once... but if you corrupt it? It burns 5 cards from the enemy. Even without the 'oh my god I can ruin their combo', you just remove a chunk of your enemy's resources and, even if it's not something that's always relevant, it helps the Warlock to catch up on the fatigue race considering just how easily Warlock gets to fatigue. One of the most interesting cards in the set, I feel. 

Sword Eater is a fun one. I don't think it's powerful enough to see play in wild, but I do like the combination of it being a pretty decent taunt for 4 mana, being a pirate, and also equips a Fiery War Axe as a battlecry. Again, I feel like it's not powerful enough, but it seems super-duper powerful in Arena. It's just kind of a shame that Warrior has so many good weapons in wild (Ancharr, Wrenchcalibur, Blood Razor, the Lackey weapon, the Galakrond weapon) that this probably won't see play. But I just like this.

Stage Dive is an interesting one. Comparable to Town Crier in the past, Stage Dive is a bit weaker without the corrupt effect since it understandably doesn't come with a 1/2. But if you are greedy enough to get the value and get the corrupt value, you basically transfer the stats of the Town Crier in an offensive tilt, something that is pretty useful for most Rush minions. Particularly Rush minions you play a bit later in the game, which is when you get the corrupt effect anyway. Most powerful with this, I feel, would be cards like Zilliax (because Zilliax) and Scion of Ruin (because you can potentially buff three minions at once). 

Neutral cards now! Gyreworm is another 'elemental cares' minion, and, again, not going to be super important in Standard, but every single bit helps in Wild until you reach that critical mass that made archetypes like Totem Shaman or freaking somehow-tier-1-Discard-Warlock work. Gyreworm is important in that it's also an elemental in addition to being buffed by the elemental-curve mechanic. Still kinda weak IMO, but a step in the right direction. 

Inconspicuous Rider is an interesting one. It's a more expensive Mad Scientist that casts a Secret from your deck, and in Wild, at least, every single class has a better Secret synergy card that can tutor them out. Particularly Mage and Hunter. This is a very solid card, though, essentially a weaker Mad Scientist. Not strong enough to see Wild usage, but it's always nice to see new variations for an archetype's support. 

Two fun corrupt cards. Strongman isn't like, the most flashy card ever. It's so slow, a 7-mana minion that's a terrible 6/6 Taunt. You wouldn't even play it for 6 mana! But play an 8-cost card and it suddenly costs zero mana. It's a lot harder to get to compared to other 'get discounted to 0 mana quickly' cards like Thing from Below or the infamous Corridor Creeper, but the fact that Strongman is just a very huge tempo swing particularly if you can get a way to bring him back with New Y'Shaarj. 

Darkmoon Dirigible is another great Corrupt card, except a lot cheaper. It's a 3/2 Mech with Divine Shield for 3 mana, a more terrible Silvermoon Guardian. But corrupt it, and it's basically Zilliax-lite, having all the offensive qualities. And sure, it's not quite as awesome as Zilliax, but Zilliax is like, one of the all-time most powerful cards ever. Probably an auto-include in any Mech deck that exist, and wouldn't be a terrible inclusion in any Standard decks that would care about menagerie or corrupt synergy.  
Parade Leader is a simple card, but one that I feel can be potentially powerful. Giving +2 Attack to any Rush minion you summon is pretty great, and, again, there are a fair amount of good Rush minions out there. There aren't any dedicated token-rush decks out there yet, but I dunno. Parade Leader feels like one of those neutral cards with such a simple effect that seems to be a bit impractical, but at the same time my gut feeling just says that this is just a strong one. Particularly in Demon Hunter. 

Optimistic Ogre is just here because I like the flavour. He's essentially the same thing as the Ogre Brute or whatever, 50% chance to miss, but the wording is neat! It's Boulderfist Ogre, discounted by a single mana... and I know that this will never see constructed play, but it's just such a fun card (and 100% great in Arena) that I wanted to highlight Optimistic Ogre above the others. 

These are the cards that don't really impress me all that much. Demon Hunter got a lot of them, by virtue of getting almost double the cards that other classes do in this expansion. They're playing catch-up! Redeemed Pariah is sort of like Secretkeeper for Outcast cards, but honestly he feels just a bit too slow for what Demon Hunter wants to do. Decent design, though. Line Hopper is very fair, especially stat-wise, but most Outcast cars are already cheap that I don't think you'd want to play a 3-mana 3/4 just to get them out faster. It at least feels more practical than Redeemed Pariah, I feel. Felscream Blast is... neat, but a Cone-of-Cold style effect isn't something Demon Hunter really would want. Run Eye Beam instead. 

Relentless Pursuit is a very fair and fun combination of attack stats and 'Immune'... but I dunno. In Wild, especially, you'd probably always run Twin Strike over this. I haven't played Standard in a hot minute, but I also think that I would put Chaos Strike over this one. Dreadlord's Bite is a very good weapon, a Fiery War Axe that sometimes nukes the enemy's board. I could definitely see lists that play Aldrachi Warblades swap it out for this one just to get that extra boost. I dunno. It just falls between control and aggro just a bit that I don't think it's going to really work.

Throw Glaive is... it's interesting. It's essentially conditional Echo, isn't it? Like a less practical Defile? It's an interesting card, but on the other hand Demon Hunter has so many tools against small boards of minions already between things like Immolation Aura or the 1/1 Rush spells or even Dreadlord's Bite and Felscream Blast in this very page. 
Cenarion Ward is Moonglade Portal on 8 mana. 8 mana is very, very sweet (particularly in Wild, there are Ragnaroses running around) and it's armour gain, which is much, much better than health gain. Very solid. Umbral Owl is a 4/4 Rush that gets discounted with spells. Cool combination of effects and a body, but I don't have much to say about this one. It's just a bit too fair, and I'd rather play with Marshspawn instead. Moontouched Amulet really reminds me of good ol' Feral Rage from Whispers of the Old Gods, except instead of choosing one, you get both effects with a corrupt effect. It's a pretty balanced and powerful card, I like it. Probably not wild-constructed viable, but very solid. 

Dancing Cobra is way too slow for constructed. Neat statline and idea, but there are way better beasts for either the huge-stat-for-2-mana or a cheap poisonous. Jewel of N'Zoth I don't think will see play in wild, because for the simple fact that regular N'Zoth the Corrupted is around there. There's something to be said about redundancy and having three N'Zoth turns, though I really don't think rez-deathrattle Hunter is going to be a thing. Mystery Winner is a very, very solid Secret synergy card. She's just not strong enough for Wild with her statline, not that Secret Hunter is a huge thing. 

Confection Cyclone is basically a bigger version of Fire Fly, costing more, statted more and adding two 1/2 tokens. Not too great unless you're playing Elemental synergies. Otherwise, it's neat. Game Master is way underpowered for Wild Secret Mage it's not even funny. Discounting Secrets to 1? That's terrible, they are supposed to go to zero! Mask of C'Thun is just a big-ass ultra-Arcane-Missiles. I don't see it seeing play, but it is a good high-mana cost spell that deals damage and you would want to get off of random spell generation. 

Redscale Dragontamer is too slow, and while this expansion does have some menagerie synergies we've got a bunch of weird Dragon/Murloc synergy attempts in Descent of Dragons and none of them took off. Oh My Yogg! is an interesting quasi-Counterspell in that your opponent still casts a spell and it's random. It's not practical to put in a deck (and no Paladin decks in Wild run Secrets anyway) but it's a fun, fun secret and one that's definitely going to go in some highlights. 

Snack Run is Ivory Knight from Karazhan, but a lot cheaper and doesn't come with the body. Ivory Knight was pretty solid back in the day, but current Wild meta? Probably not. The artwork is simply delightful, though, that carnival goer is just so happy about her jumbo deluxe value meal. 

Not all of the cards I put here are bad, by the way. Fairground Fool, for one, is very, very solid especially if you manage to corrupt it! 4/7 Taunt for 3 mana? Yeah, fuck you, Silverback Patriarch. Priest is a deck that can play Corrupt well, I think, although the Fool probably won't see play unless you're gunning for a New Y'Shaarj deck. 

Nazmani Bloodweaver and Palm Reading have a bit of a weird 'reduce the cost of cards in hand' thing going on. Nazmani is a bit too situational, I feel, requiring you to play spells with it on board. Still a very solid minion body with a very solid effect, though. Palm reading is just a bit more powerful, and while I don't think discovering a random Priest spell is super-good (Priest spells are a lot more variable) the discount for your entire hand of spells might be useful in some situations. 

In contrast... Insight is just a bit of an m'eh for me, even with the potential discount. Tutoring a minion seems just too specific, and while we've had decks with very minimal minions in it, I don't think even Big Priest wants this. Sweet Tooth is pretty all right for a Stealthed corrupt card, but Rogue has access to a lot of more reliable and better Stealth cards. Malevolent Strike is an interesting variation on Assassinate, but I feel like especially in Wild you'd probably run things like Vilespine Slayer or Walk the Plank over this one. 

Swindle's just a solid card. It's not too powerful, it draws cards, and sort of tutors them. Something super-specific like Raiding Party will probably still be the draw card of choice in Wild, but I can see a less focused list including this. Cutting Class saw play, after all. Cloak of Shadows is cute, but I don't think Rogue cares about getting Stealth (not immune like that one Paladin card from Rastakhan). Magicfin's effect is cute if it snowballs, but that's a huge if. You still need to play a Murloc deck (doable in Wild) but the random legendaries probably don't synergize well with your Murloc deck. 

A trio of the 'Enhancement Shaman' cards. Cagematch Custodian is another card that's a solid elemental that tutors you a weapon. Cavern Shinyfinder saw play, but Rogue's Kingsbane and Spectral Cutlass are way more powerful than most of the weapons that Shaman plays. Which at the moment I think is basically just Fist of Ra'den, which isn't something you want to actually attack with. I would see this in play in decks that just want to fetch weapons, not the 'attack with your face' synergy decks.

Deathmatch Pavilion is another spell that works off your hero attacking, and... the big payoff is two 3/2's? That's kinda terrible, I would 100% run feral Spirits over this one. Stormstrike is pretty neat, basically bundling a Wrath and a Rockbiter Weapon into a single card. Not bad, but probably one that doesn't find it into a specific list per se. 

Revolve, oh, I get it, it's like 'evolve' but it just revolves around the same cost. All minions get changed, but... what's the practical application of this? The flavour's there, but if you want to fuck with your enemy run Devolve or Devolving Missiles instead. Pit Master feels kind of like a weaker Corruptable card, it's just a bunch of vanilla bodies. Again, I'd rather run Feral Spirits although this doesn't feel as bad as Deathmatch Pavilion. Midway Maniac! A simple Warlock demon, it's basically Voidwalker with 2 extra health for 1 extra mana. In Wild you have way better Demons for early game, but this one's cute for arena and random demon pools.

Man'ari Mosher is actually quite great. Spider Tank stats, and it basically acts as an Abusive Sergeant on steroids, and he's a demon himself? I think some zoo decks might experiment with this one. I like him, the lifesteal is just a neat bonus that I feel can push it to being a good card. Ring Matron is a weirdo. I do like these cards that summon little buddies, but the 6/4 stat is just not that good for a Taunt. Two free Fiery Imps is a good deathrattle, though I wager she's mostly arena. 

Free Admission is Sense Demons on steroids! In Wild, between Cube and Darkglare decks I feel like, yeah, some lists could just swap out Sense Demons for this.

Cascading Disaster is a fun, fun card from a flavour standpoint. The monster just gets bigger and bigger as it destroys more and more minions. It's basically just Onyx Spellstone from Rogue back in the day, though. Admittedly Cascading Disaster is in Warlock, and corrupting it is far easier than playing three Deathrattle minions, but I don't see Wild Warlock ever touching this. 

Warrior now! Minefield is... interesting. A Mad Bomber effect on the field? Some Warrior cards do like being damaged, but not so much that you'd run this over things like Warpath or Bladestorm. Feat of Strength is just kind of decent, but it's also hand-buff and you'd rather hand-buff with Armagedillo. On the other hand... it's a +5/+5 buff. You used to need to craft a legendary Don Han'cho for that! It's huge enough and specifies a taunt minion that maaaaaybe it'll work?

Two new Warrior mechs! I don't think they'll be run in any new revival of the Mech Warrior, but it's good for both menagerie and maybe at some point we'll get Dr Boom Mad Genuis back? Bumper Ccar is a 2-mana 1/3 rush that adds two 1/1 rush tokens. The tokens aren't mechs, though, and while there are rush synergy in this expansion I don't think this one is good enough. Stage Hand is a hand-buff cards, and those are historically never ones that see play; especially when they're so mundane like this one. 

Rock Rager is a fun artwork. Put a Taunt on a Magma Rager and he's worse, though. It's one mana cheaper, but... still worse. Even for elemental-matters list it's still not that good. 

Costumed Entertainer! He's a low-cost-for-his-stats handbuff card. Won't see play! Prize Vendor is mini-Coldlight-Oracle. In Wild, Coldlight Oracle eclipses him significantly. Safety Inspector... okay, this one has decent stats, and the battlecry of essentially mulliganing your lowest-cost card is an interesting one. Mostly maybe for midrange decks? None of them are super good at the moment, though. 

Showstopper's cute, maybe you can play it in some sort of weird Silence Priest? It's a deathrattle, so it's pretty slow, and, again, in Wild you'd always just run better silence or transformation effects instead. Wriggling Horror is a mini Defender of Argus. That's... that's decent, maybe some zoo decks will put him in, but I reckon he's just a nice-looking filler. 

Claw Machine is a weirdo, it's a 6-mana 6/3 mech rush that draws a minion and buffs it. Not a terrible one, I feel, but just impractical enough from its cost that I'm not sure if it'll make it into any specific deck. 

K'thir Ritualist is a slightly overstatted minion that gives your opponent a free card. No thanks. Circus Amalgam is a bigger Nightmare Amalgam with Taunt. This one actually is cool; particularly in Standard maybe some Murloc or Totem synergy decks would want it. Amalgams get extra bonus from the New N'Zoth synergy, and the taunt really makes it so much of a better choice than its smaller sibling. 

I like the idea and concept behind Darkmoon Statue. It's probably not that good; we have better 'aura buff' cards, but I really like the flavour here that it gains attack after the corruption gives the statue life and allows it to walk around. 

Almost done. Circus Medic also has great flavour, and the corruption swaps her from being a healer to a damager. I'm not sure if it nis useful in any deck, though. Knife Vendor is... just weird. Warlock's the only deck that wants to damage itself, and they've far, far more beneficial tools. Banana Vendor, too, is a weirdo. Giving bananas to the enemy can be harmless, especially if you get some for yourself (Banana Buffoon actually saw play in Wild for a while) but giving your opponent free bananas... I dunno. I'd say that that makes this one kind of bad. Wild players, play Banana Buffoon instead, the 2 health isn't worth it. 

Derailed Coaster isn't terrible since there's the potential of really maxing out an entire board of rushers, but if you flub on this one it's just a sad one. Carnival Clown is cute but is too expensive to Corrupt, and I don't see it having any use except maybe an Evolve deck, but that's so much effort, play Doppelgangster instead. Fantastic Firebird is a pretty decent -- if bland -- elemental for 4 mana. Decent, stable stats, but otherwise unremarkable. 

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