by JR Cook - 9 years ago     show comments

While a lot of people scream for nerfs when cards feel overpowered, I don’t see many people calling for buffs to long forgotten cards. In my mind, every non-joke card should at least be a decent fit in a viable deck. Also, the meta would grow a lot more interesting if a wider array of cards suddenly started seeing play. So without further ado…

Welcome back to Mending Mondays, a weekly feature where I, Dannie “IAmDiR23” Ray will take a look at some of the worst cards in the Hearthstone and evaluate why they are deemed to be horrible, and what could be done to fix them.

Wailing Soul is actually one of my favorite cards from the Hearthstone expansion, yet it hasn’t amounted to much besides some appearances on gimmick decks. This week’s edition of Mending Mondays is actually a double experiment as we for the first time take a look at both a card outside the Classic and Basic Sets and a card that doesn’t need to be modified.

Why is it so bad?

If you look at Wailing Soul you’ll realize that it is budgeted as a 4-drop that has a positive ability. If you compare it with cards like the Violet Teacher, Burly Rockjaw Trogg, or even the Chillwind Yeti you’ll notice that Wailing Soul will never amount to much unless you can actually get a benefit out of his battlecry. The problem is that the Soul’s battlecry is only a positive effect in very specific situations and can also be very negative. Some of the most popular minions like Piloted Shredder and Sylvanas Windrunner have very powerful deathrattles that you really don’t want to silence.

So in order for Wailing Soul to be a viable card, you need to both take advantage of silencing your own minion AND avoid suffering for it. This means that you are mostly restricted to Vanilla Minions, Minions with negative effects, and some Battlecry minions. Then again, which minions really do better when you silence them? The Classic set gave us Ancient Watcher and The Beast.  Naxx brought us Zombie Chow, Deathlord, and Dancing Swords. Goblins vs. Gnomes also added some targets in Ogre Brute and Fel Reaver.

To summarize:

• Limited Selections of Cards that provide synergy with it.
• Anti-synergy with some of the best cards avaliable
• Not enough stats to warrant it being played outside heavily dedicated decks.

Possible Improvements

Wailing Soul could use a boost to 4/5, in fact you could even be crazy and pump it to 5/5 in the pretense that his effect is more often negative than positive.  A 5/5 Wailing Soul would be insane and would make a good argument to make gimmick decks around it. The problem is that this could restrict future cards; as the expansions roll we will have more and more cards that come with negative effects we want to get rid off, and Wailing Soul could get absolutely out of control then.

All in All, I think the more interesting design would be to leave it as a 3/5 and buff it by introducing more cards to combo it with. Wailing Soul will be as good as the possible deck that you could assemble around it.

The Results

Instead of modifying Wailing Soul, we will be introducing several cards that you could combo with your silence master. The Goal is to make cards that might be decent on its own accord but really strong if you manage to get a silence on them.

So what we need is more Ancient Watchers, this guy is a bit more expensive but it will only miss one turn worth of attacking. Unless you follow this up with an on-curve Wailing Soul, then you have a really commanding board. And if you are going to be playing a deck that relies on Silencing your own minions then you could even have Spellbreaker or Keeper at 4.

Since Dragons seem to be all the rage right now, lets put one out that synergizes with self-silencing. Enslaved Red Dragon will usually be a 5-mana 4/6, which would amount to the body of a Spectral Night without the cool spell shield. A timely Silence could snap this mean dragon out of its Shackles though, and this would allow him to reveal its true form, a 6/8 thumper.

What about giving a new power to all those creatures you silenced last turn? This might not be the most interesting card or the biggest game changer, but its always good to have options. Make enough cards that work of self silencing and people will catch up to the fact that you could build a deck around it.

A 3/3 as a 1-drop looks absolutely insane, until you realize that this will be a 2/2 when your opponent has to deal with it. Even if your opponent decides to ignore it, you can at most use it to deal 3 points of damage before it kills himself. Best case scenario it kills a 0/2 and then a 2/1, but that’s not likely to ever happen. Decaying Ghoul reaches his full potential when he is quickly silenced making the bigger body stick. Combined with Wailing Soul you could get a 3/5 and a 3/3 for 5 mana, which isn’t all bad. But in order to make a deck more consistent you gotta make sure that the Decaying Ghoul can also be played for early pressure.

A turn 1 Ghoul + turn 2 Owl would result on a live 3/2 and a sleeping 2/1 body, which is OK but not really optimal. You can immediately tell that it will pale in comparison to Cogmaster + Any mech 2-drop. To make this deck concept more playable we will introduce another way to make sure our early minions can be promptly silenced, enter the Mana Thief.  If dropped on an empty board the Mana Thief is a lackluster 2/2 for 2, but if you have a board you must silence one of your minions and give the Mana Thief a rather stout body at 3/3.  The drawback is of course that Wailing Soul would eventually return it to its weaker 2/2 form, and also that you don’t want to drop Mana Thief if your board is just creatures you don’t want silenced which actually wouldn’t be a problem in a deck centered around Wailing Soul.

Mana Thief is not only the best friend of Decaying Ghoul, but also of fellow 1-cost undead, Zombie Chow.  Another 1-2 play could be the absolutely bonkers Coined Ancient Watcher + Mana Thief  start. Even as a turn 2/turn 3 play that wastes a point mana, this is pretty good and puts a lot of early pressure on the board. Thinking some more about it, this burglar of us might even be too strong and perhaps should be a 2/1 instead.

Do you think some of the versions above are still too weak? Maybe absurdly overpowered? Messing with cards without the ability to test them is actually pretty challenging, but I try to do my best.

Be sure to check out past editions of Mending Mondays, and if you have any suggestions, be sure to leave them on the comments or hit me up on Twitter @DannieRay23.

See you next Monday!