by JR Cook - 10 years ago     show comments

Deck slots are precious, and several cards in Hearthstone are somewhat similar. So which one do you choose? Every Saturday, we take a look at two somewhat similar cards, and two of our writers will duke it out and make their best case to convince you that their card should be the one deserving of one of your precious deck slots.

Acidic Swamp Ooze vs. Faerie Dragon

Rongar: Here’s the deal: both the Faerie Dragon and the Acidic Swamp Ooze are good cards. Scratch that, they are great cards. If you were to have both in your deck, there’d be no regrets. Heck, I’d even say run two of each. At 2 Mana, you get a 3/2 card in both cases, and for a turn two (or a coined turn one), that’s a tremendous value.

But this is not the Mutual Admiration Society. We’re here to settle once and for all which card is better, so let’s get to it.

I know some of us on the writing staff have a huge card-on for the Faerie Dragon, and this is largely due to its staying power against direct spell damage. Depending on your opponent’s card draw, the Faerie Dragon has the potential to stay on the board for a couple of turns, each time dealing 3 damage. Not too shabby.

When I look at minions though, I look at survivability and utility. The Acidic Swamp Ooze gives you something no other minion does, and that is the ability to disarm your opponent. As important as it is to deal damage, it is just as important to mitigate or avoid damage. Sure, not all heroes can pull a weapon out on you – Druids, Mages, Priests, and Warlocks won’t – and in those cases your Ooze is still a nice early round drop. But for those opponents that do, having the Ooze simply melt away their weapon will give you so much joy, you won’t even care about the outcome of the game (which you will win of course, because you picked the Ooze for your deck).

Leviathan: ZenStyle is either licking his chops at the fact that Faerie Dragon has stepped into the ring for Card Face-off finally or licking his wounds that he isn’t here to defend her (I mean, it’s gotta be a her, right?) honor. Either way, he’s licking something. I will do you proud, Pop Pop!

Mkay, so – Faerie Dragon. The most important thing to note about this card is it’s text, of course: “Can’t be targeted by Spells or Hero Powers.” The one word that I would add to this text to make it clearer, and to save Rongar some confusion (heh), is “directly” right before “targeted.” What this means is that if you want to play a Holy Smite or the equivalent, you won’t be able do so against a Faerie Dragon because that’s a direct damage spell. However, if you’ve got Holy Nova at your disposal, for instance, this will actually kill Faerie Dragon, despite it still being a spell, because it does area-of-effect (AOE) damage and not damage that attempts to directly single out the Faerie Dragon. Now that we’ve cleared that up, you can begin to see why this is such an amazing two drop.

This innate ability essentially guarantees the Faerie Dragon protection from all early removal possibilities and likely requires a minion attack into it to clear it off the board. If you see your opponent sputtering/off to a slow start, you can really start to snowball Faerie Dragon’s utility by employing an Abusive Sergeant or a Shattered Sun Cleric to really start racking up early damage against your opponent aggressively.The latter of the two even adds more value as it pushes it out of range of most AOE options like your Consecrations or Blizzards. That’s just the beginning of why I find this card so loverly though. And yet, I would be remiss in not mentioning that it’s also just beautiful and majestic, but that’s simply not playing fair. Rongar, whatcha got for me?

Rongar:  Okay, so the Faerie Dragon has built-in protection which keeps it from taking damage in a handful of situations. Big deal. You know what the Acidic Swamp Ooze does? It protects YOU from taking 7 Damage (Gorehowl) straight to the face. It will save you from an opponent who can indiscriminately swing away at you turn after turn (Eaglehorn Bow), or keeps your enemy from clearing the board at will (Doomhammer).

Next time your friendly neighborhood Rogue pulls out a Perdition’s Blade and loads it up with Deadly Poison, I ask you – would you like to have that early round Faerie Dragon that was quickly dispatched by a measly 2 attack minion, or do you prefer to drop the Ooze that will save you from eating 6 damage points?

You pick.

Leviathan: Sure, the fact that the Ooze is the only minion in the game that can get rid of a weapon is powerful. Have you ever stopped to consider just how many weapons there are out there, though? I think we’ve been here before. If I equip a Gorehowl and use it to take out your Boulderfist Ogre, I’ve already gained plenty of value and use before you get a chance to react to it. And then I still have two Arcanite Reapers or an Arathi Weaponsmith in my hand/deck because I love weapons. Even if you’re running two Oozes, you can’t mitigate all of those weapons. Therefore, we can safely deduce that the Ooze has a limited usefulness, similar to the Faerie Dragon. Neither card is going to win you games outright, but I’m here to argue that the Faerie Dragon does more to prevent your opponent from making plays versus the Ooze’s ability to react in one particularized specific instance.

With proper placement, the Faerie Dragon is actually going to make your opponent think twice about how they use some of their more targeted AOE spells. I briefly touched on this in the inaugural Board Control article, but, to put it even more briefly, the Faerie Dragon between any two other minions will absolutely frustrate your opponents that want to get the most value for their Cones of Cold or Explosive Shots, etc. This gives the Faerie Dragon more than just her 3/2 body. It’s hard to really even tangibly quantify the value exactly, but imagine reading your card and instead of it doing what it says, it says, “Oh, Faerie Dragon is on the board? This spell is now nerfed to be half as useful.” That’s power.

I will certainly acknowledge that this works better against some particular Heroes (Mages, Priests, Warlocks) versus others (Rogue, Shaman, Paladin) simply due to the fact that the latter grouping can equip weapons and/or use their Hero Powers to indirectly affect the Faerie Dragon. One thing some newer players often overlook, too, is that the innate ability for protection also works against favorable spells. You want to heal up that Faerie Dragon with your Priest’s Lesser Heal? Sorry. Can’t be targeted by Hero Powers. Alright, fine. Let’s give it Power Word: Shield to make it a little beefier. Nope.

So, when it comes down to it, you need to protect your Faerie Dragon and she will protect you. Getting one out early can sometimes mean the difference between taking a very large lead into the mid and even late game. Considering the Ooze similarly, getting one early might actually be to your detriment because you’ll be holding it waiting for that “perfect play” against a weapon that may not ever come. What kind of minions do you like to play? Ones that get in there and start doing work for you ASAP or ones that you pray will see super value maybe kinda sorta before the game is over? Hm…

What do you think? Did one of our writers make a compelling enough case for you to pick one card over the other? Share your thoughts in the comments below.