Unleash the Hounds Nerfed!! (…but don’t celebrate just yet)
by JR Cook - 10 years ago show comments
The news was just released: Unleash the Hounds will cost three mana, up from two mana.
That’s after Blizzard lowered the cost from four to two mana, which was after they changed the card from its original “one turn kill” form to the four mana version of the card we know and love today.
It seems they just can’t make up their minds. Or that it took the card being reduced to two mana for people to realize how good it can be.
Let’s take a look at how this change affects Hunters. First, Hunters currently enjoy the best, most efficient draw engine in the game today: Starving Buzzard (another card that’s been changed in the past) into Unleash the Hounds, which turns into “Draw X cards and put X 2/1 Hounds into Play, where X is how little respect your opponent paid to Unleash’s potential” (2/1 because I’ve yet to encounter a Hunter who didn’t also have the Timber Wolf).
Then, Hunter’s Mark becomes a free Assassinate where the downside (the fact that Hunter’s Mark itself doesn’t actually kill anything and is inherent card disadvantage) is more than mitigated by the fact that you’ve gotten more than one hound from Unleash, drawn a card from those hounds, and it only takes one to kill the creature you just placed a Hunter’s Mark on.
It’s all combined to create a true beast: Midrange Hunter, a deck that has no terrible matchups, very few bad matchups, and almost all good matchups. The deck is getting to the point where it’s so streamlined that innovation is almost always going to make the deck worse.
Well, was.
Now, Blizzard has finally dropped the hammer, swinging the mighty NerfBat with Unleash directly in the angered crosshairs. They’ve decimated the card’s potential by jacking the cost all the way up from two to…
…three?
Come on…
Don’t get me wrong, this is a significant nerf. However, it by no means kills Unleash the Hounds or stops it from being one of the best cards in the game, in my opinion. Blizzard accomplished what they wanted by bringing it down to Earth (Azeroth?) somewhat, which is nice.
The real effect is going to be the shifting effect on the metagame. Right now, Hunters can pull off their full combo (Buzzard+Unleash+Timber Wolf) on turn four with a coin, meaning Warlock Aggro can’t put out enough damage to truly “get underneath” Hunters (meaning dealing enough damage early so that, even if the Hunter combos, Warlocks can still push out the last 10 points or so of damage to win).
That is the real effect of this change; now, Warlocks will have the ability to be more aggressive against their Unleashing brethren. Whereas right now, I hate coining out multiple minions against a Hunter on turn one (especially if they have one toughness, as a turn two Unleash will tear up your start (similar to Cleave). With Warlock Aggro, you want to build an ever-growing board presence (unlike Faceroll/Rush decks like Hunter and Paladin that just aim to dump as much damage as possible into their opponent), meaning Unleash is super potent against them. At two mana, it was oppressively good.
At three, there exists the possibility to “get under” Hunters. While it’ll still be a very good card against Warlocks, the Life Tappers will get enough of an improved matchup against Hunters that, I think, they’ll return to the top spot in the arbitrary “best deck in the metagame” discussion.
So we’re going to trade one deck we hate for another. Instead of “Hunters are just dumb facerolling noobs who never learned to play”, we’ll get, well, just substitute Warlocks. Heck, we already get that.
Imagine when Warlocks regain their top spot…
So while I think the nerf is good for the overall health of the metagame (in that it makes Hunters less god-like, meaning you should see less of them, which is great for Shamans), the celebration will be short-lived as we welcome in our new overlords. Luckily, Warlocks and Hunters will beat up on each other enough to keep either from reaching the god-status that Hunters have achieved recently, and with the way the metagame will naturally shift, eventually other decks will start to push those decks out.
The metagame cycle will start again, which is a good thing. Warlocks are next for the “top spot” in my opinion, which isn’t so much a good thing.
But don’t mistake this nerf for the Mind Control or Pyroblast nerfs; Unleash is still one of the best cards in the game (if only because of the Buzzard interaction) and will still piss you off every time it’s played.
Michael “Shoc” Martin
Check out the Stream (Live every weeknight, 10:30PM – 1AM EST)
It should be at least 4 mana, but, well, I am not complaining, the change was well overdue.
Unless I am mistaken this will actually change very little. As you said Shoc, this card is still one of the best in the game and will not be removed from hunter decks.
For almost every class this will not actually change how you play the game against hunter and it was how you had to play against them which made the match not fun. Paladins and Shaman are still being punished for using hero powers.
Hunters can still ping you, control the board and pull out a massive combo for the win. The issue isn’t entirely with the card itself. It’s with the interactions with other 0-3 cost cards.
Face-rush hunter has been nerfed more than mid-range hunter but Face-Rush had died out already since Mid-Range dominated it.
Hunters will still reign supreme (unless, like you said, the Warlock agro rises further which I can’t disagree with also).
I personally think it should be “summons two hounds with charge” so you aren’t afraid of summoning as much as well as them over drawing
This is almost good news. I prefer Shaman decks and right now, I don’t want to play the game because of Unleash the Hounds. Raising the cost from 2 to 3 might be enough to fix my problems with the card but honestly I don’t think so. I feel the only real fix for this card is remove beast as an indicator to the hounds. It would solve the card battery problem, the ramp them up with timber wolves problem, and the hyena problem. Yes it removes the synergy with those those cards but still keeps it effective as a hunter style fireball which at one point blizzard said was it’s intention.
Still, I’ll wait and see how it works at three cost. I am hopeful.