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.

This week we take a look at Onyxia, the Broodmother. This is a card I’ve always found a tad underrated, specially now that the Dragon theme is finally worth something. But I completely understand why this black dragon doesn’t see enough serious play. Like many other legendaries before it, the 9-mana cost is very prohibitive. For 9 mana you need a killer effect, and while pretty solid, I guess the massive whelp summoning isn’t game changing enough to warrant the inclusion of the Broodmother on serious competitive decks.

Why is it so bad?

9 mana, 9 mana, 9 mana. If you play Onyxia that’s almost your whole turn, but more importantly you need to make it to turn 9 in the first place. Onyxia being a dead card early on is somewhat compounded by the new “Hold a Dragon” mechanic that BRM introduced, but still the Swarm of 1/1’s just isn’t deadly enough. Specially with all those Grim Patron Decks and whirlwind effects floating around.

Compare this to Dr.Boom. The difference between 7/7 and 8/8 isn’t that much. And even if our Broodmother is often going to give you more than 2 whelps, those Dragon Babies don’t have the ability to explode all over your opponent’s board and face for a devastating effect. You are paying 2 extra mana over Dr. Boom, but how much extra are you getting? You could argue that aside being a dragon, a 9 cost Dr. Boom could often be stronger. And it’s not just Boom, a lot of the common late game cards offer effects that are outright stronger or exhibit better synergies with the popular decks. Would you really take Onyxia over threats such as Ysera, Malygos, Alexstrasza, and Ragnaros?

By now you should know that 7+ attack creatures are extremely vulnerable to BGH, and that players will also save their hard removal for these bigger threats, what do you have left for your 9-mana if the main body of Onyxia is handled?

At most you have six 1/1 whelps. Now if you are in a turn 9+ situation, those just aren’t very threatening. If you only need that 6 damage to finish off your opponent, the are a lot of better ways to use that mana to get yourself the kill. If you were set on playing the control game and take the board back, your 6 whelps are still very vulnerable to taunts and Unless of course you can super boost them with Savage Roar or Bloodlust, they won’t do that much against most of the other late game threats. Onyxia is just completely stopped by a Big Game Hunter + Sludge Belcher combination.

Summary of Badness:

• Whelps aren’t that threatening during late game.
• Better options at the mana cost.
• Too slow.

Finding this Card’s Heart

An obvious buff to this card would be to turn it into Dr. Boom or Emperor T. But that’s not what we are interested on, we want to stay true to the heart of the card and thus we need ask ourselves what is what really defines this card.

Onyxia is a solid card mechanically, filling up the board makes it interesting and unique so we’d like to preserve that. Also, she is the Broodmother of the Black Dragonflight, it makes sense that she does what she does.

Possible Improvements

In the past, when we wanted to keep an ability, the obvious thing was to alter the stats. Sadly, most of the base set Dragons have a thing going on with costing 9 mana and having either 8/8 or 4/12 statlines.  So what can we do? Well, we could target the stats on the whelps. 2/1 whelps might not seem as a huge upgrade at first, but threatening 12 damage per turn is a lot scarier than threatening 6. Also, this would make the whelps consistent with those who come out of Dragon Egg. Another option would be to give the whelps charge, so you could use Onyxia somewhat defensively.

But there’s also an argument to shift the stats. I mean, Alexstrasza, Malygos, Ysera, and Nozdormu where all aspects of their respective Dragonflights. But Onxyia wasn’t he aspect of the Black Dragonflight, that honor was reserved for Neltharion, who you could also know as Deathwing. I don’t know about you, but Onyxia’s current ability on an earlier creature could actually become a very prominent threat.

The Results

Greedy? Perhaps a bit, but this version of Oynxia threatens up to 20 damage and that’s the kind of effect you want out of a 9-mana finisher. Plus it isn’t like its charging, instant damage. The whelps die to about any type of AoE and Onyxia itself isn’t that hard to remove. This version of the card is something where you challenge your opponent to deal with it, plus as we mentioned eariler, the 2/1 whelps are consistent with Dragon Egg.

This is the “Not an Aspect” Version. 6/6 is pretty good, it’s not vulnerable to Big Game Hunter and can take a hit from many of the common cards that get play. The 1/1 whelps are probably a lot more threatening earlier on and as I’ve mentioned over 9000 times by now, we need more strong 7-drops to compete with Dr.Boom.

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!