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Mending Mondays #15: “Bring Me Steel”

by - 9 years ago

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.


 

MasterSwordSmith

This week we take a certain Mr. Smith. His Masterful skills in swordcrafting will make the rest of your minions stronger, but this is seemingly not enough for this guy to carve himself a place on competitive decks.

Why is it so bad?

Master Swordsmith has a couple of things going against him. First, you have to look at his statline. How does a 1/3 trade with other one and two mana cost cards? 2/3 and 3/2 are the most common statlines for 2 drops, which both handle our little buffer and live to tell the story.

dire wolf alpha

 

Sure, Master Swordsmith can handle some 1 drops and you get the buff on top of it. But this ties us into our second problem, the card is too slow. The buff from Master Swordsmith only triggers at the end of your turn, which means that you cannot make immediate use of it. Compare Master Swordsmith to Dire Wolf Alpha, Doge gives us our buff instantly, and it can also give up 2 damage provided you have the minions for it. Dire Wolf allows your 1-drop to trade up better, and it’s 2 attack allows it to handle 2HP minions on its own. Dire Wolf Alpha can give you extra damage you need for lethal, it can also can provide more than 2 damage if you have a lot of minions and they die. Wolf also has great synergy with charge minions.

The Master’s only advantage over Dire Wolf is that the buffs are permanent and if every minion survives every turn, then the bonuses start to pile-up. The thing is, if you’ve played enough Hearthstone you know that most minions usually don’t stick around that long.

micromachine

 

Now to our third problem, you need to be ahead. You need a minion already on the board to get the full effect of your ability. Sure, you also need minions to trigger Dire Wolf but the 1/3 body is a lot less relevant than the more solid 2/2. Also, if you are playing an aggressive deck that is usually ahead on the first few turns, maybe you’d be better served to have other aggressive minions that keep piling the damage on. Micro Machine might only buff itself, but it does it twice as fast, and does not need another minion on board to activate.

Finally, Master is neither a Mech or Beast for the additional synergies. The 1 attack does enable Hobgolbin, so I guess that’s an advantage over Dire Wolf.

 

Summary of Badness:

  • Takes too long to get benefits.
  • Kinda dead during late game.
  • Body is not too relevant.
  • Requires Having a Board.

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.

Basically we have a swordsmith which gives weapons to his friends. The ability reflects this perfectly, so the main problem must lie within the numbers. We know we want to buff other minions, but maybe we can change the moment where your minions are buffed.

Possible Improvements

a 2/3 body would immediately turn the Swordsmith into a more viable option as the body would be useful enough when you can’t take advantage of the ability. Personally, I feel this guy is better suited to be a 1/4, this make it more likely that he sticks around to spread the buffing love. Gotta keep that Hobgoblin synergy bro.

hobgoblin1/1's are not all that scary, but 2/2s? Color me spooked.

Other option would have his ability activate at the end of EACH turn, not only YOUR turn. What about making the buff +2 attack instead? What about buffing creatures as they get summoned like Sword of Justice does?

The Results

MM15Card1

This is a rather simple upgrade, statwise this is now in par with Armorsmith. This should allow a turn 2 Swordsmith to stick around for two turns, hopefully buffing two of your friendly minions on the process. The random nature of the buff, and the fact that your opponent gets the chance to deal with your minions before you get to take advantage of said buffs make keep this card in check. Even with the extra health, this version of Swordsmith doesn’t really jump to me as something I’d really want to put in a deck.

MM15Card2

This is basically a version of Micro Machine that buffs other creatures instead of himself. This is not a mech but has one extra HP. Again, the requisite of having additional minions on the board make this a liability and even with double the buffs this would still seem to be a sketchy addition to constructed decks.

Would having both improvements be too much? Maybe if it was BOTH 1/4 and buffed minions EACH turn, then the Swordsmith would be a really valuable card, but how much is too much? Let me know in the comments below.

 


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!


JR Cook

JR has been writing for fan sites since 2000 and has been involved with Blizzard Exclusive fansites since 2003. JR was also a co-host for 6 years on the Hearthstone podcast Well Met! He helped co-found BlizzPro in 2013.


0 responses to “Mending Mondays #15: “Bring Me Steel””

  1. Iggore_TK says:

    personally I think a shammy would get loads of use out of the 1/3 that buffs each turn change. that would basically make it where each of the totems could attack and actually damage the minions that traded in to bust them up.
    Would also make the smith an even greater target for removal, so not sure how much it would actually change its playstyle though.

  2. Martin Killmann says:

    Since the guy is soldier-themed, he should have some synergy with warrior and related classes. Since it’s a _weapon_smith, why not tie it to a weapon?
    “At the end of your turn, give a random friendly minion and your equipped weapon +1 attack.”

  3. ifog says:

    Master Swordsmith is not really a card that needs changing, especially since hobogoblin came out. It’s almost always a 2/3 for 2 mana, and often a 3/3. In every deck with sticky taunt minions he can make his worth (most notably shaman and paladin).
    I would change his name though – it is a name suited specifically for weapons and kind of a waste of good name for hardly used minion. I would give him instead a passive – your weapons does +1 dmg, your ops weapons do -1 dmg.

  4. P0n3Swag says:

    I’d much rather it be a battle cry that gives all other minions +1 attack and cost 1 more or have 1 less health. meaning you need at least 2 minions for any real value and gives possible lethals. A non-class specific savage roar would make for some interesting zoo archetypes (face zoolock?)