The Foe Reaper 4000 wants to take three for the price of one!
by JR Cook - 9 years ago show comments
Meet the Foe Reaper 4000, recently revealed by the fine folks at IGN. This 8-drop Mech’s 6/9 body might seem a bit underwhelming at first, specially when you compare it with a Boulderfist Ogre, but there are a few key details that make this classic Westfall elite a bit more interesting.
For starters, his native 6 attack keeps him out of Big Game Hunter range, that alone is a decent difference maker. With his Health Pool standing at a strong 9, he survives hits from large bodies such as Giants, and Alextrasza. He’s just two mana away from hitting 8 attack, which means a little help from things such as Savage Roar, Flametongue Totem, or Dark Iron Dwarf, could easily have him topple multiple giants.
But of course, you can’t ignore the Reaper’s Legendary Power. When he attacks, he won’t just damage it’s target, he’ll also deal damage to minions adjacent to the target. So if your opponent has a Searing Totem next to his Fire Elemental, you can just target the totem and get ride of both minions while only taking one damage. When you combine his large health pool with the ability to damage strong minions without taking their full attack damage in return, the Foe Reaper 4000 has a good chance of controlling the battlefield and will likely command hard removal.
On the flipside, unlike Legendaries that have Charge or pack a strong Battlecry, the Foe Reaper won’t get to impact the game much until your next turn. This means that if your enemy has an immediate answer for this big fell,a then you are out of luck; especially since its special ability only activates when he attacks, and not when he defends.
And that might be the big problem with this card, if you are behind and you drop it, it’s very likely that it will get taken care of and you will have nothing to show for it. If you are ahead, there are likely better finishers, this big mech will probably shine when the board is kind of even and your opponent doesn’t have hard removal on his hand.
Are you looking forward to playing with this beefed-up Harvest Golem? In which decks do you think this guy could make a difference?
Let me know via Twitter @DannieRay23, or using the comments below.
I think you outlined its strengths and weaknesses well. It’s really too slow to deal with aggro, unless you have a way to cheat it out of your deck/hand. And if you’re already ahead, you’d probably rather have a card that wants to hit your opponent’s face, instead of their minions.
I have to disagree. I think the Foe Reaper Reaper is one of the better, if not the best legendary to be revealed so far. I say this because in the two situations where he is supposedly weak he is actually going to be a lot better than most current endgame legendaries.
Consider the case where you’re ahead. Virtually every deck in Hearthstone is minion based, so your opponent will absolutely have to remove the Reaper if he wants to start playing multiple minions. This should close the game out if your opponent doesn’t have an answer to him, and the foe reaper is not susceptible to BGH and Faceless, unlike Ragnaros. Even if the Foe Reaper isn’t good if you’re ahead (which I doubt), it’s generally better to have cards that are good in equal or worse positions, instead of cards that are “win more”.
Supposedly stronger finishers like Rag and Ysera all struggle to handle multiple minions. Many times aggro decks will just ignore your endgame minions and overload your board. As control warrior against Zoo warlock, you often mange to buy time for a legendary, only to have to run your alex into one minion at a time or hope that Rag does not go face. But with Foe reaper, if you can get him out without dying, then the zoo deck has to kill him or watch his board state quickly disintegrate to the 3 for 1 hits. So since he is a minion that aggro decks can’t ignore most of the time, the reaper is way better against aggro than cards like rag which already see play in control decks.
And since it seems the reaper will be a reliable and powerful minion on equal board states, it seems that this card should be pretty good.