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Karazhan Card Evaluation #1 (Standard – Kraken)

by - 8 years ago

Introduction / Important Links

One Night in Karazhan was announced today. For this expansion, I will try to bring to you my thoughts on every single cards. This is the first time I do that, so please be humble with me. Anyway, I was able to gain some experience in card evaluations with Whispers of the Old Gods through my Old Gods Power Ranking and I feel confident enough to try doing first impression evaluations with this set. You will find the rating used at the end of the article. I moved it to the bottom to improve readability. The Evaluations made are for Standard play mode only.

7 cards were released in the reveal stream on July, 29th. You will quickly notice, that the majority of the cards presented are surprisingly complex ones. As it is always with initial impressions of newly released cards, the evaluation may change with every subsequent release. Therefore, additionally to the Card Evaluation articles, I will do a Karazhan Power Rankings post which will adapt ratings with every new card, taking into account newly possible synergies or antisynergies with the resulting increase or decrease of value of each individual card. Atop, a full and up to date Spoiler Card List is also available as usual made by Eldorian (JR Cook).

One Knight in Karazhan – Adventure Overview

In this first installation, I will sum up the facts shortly. For more details I advise you to follow this link.

  • Release date: August, 11th (NA) / August, 12th (EU)
  • 4 wings (1/week) + free Prologue
  • Costs per wing: 700g / $6.99 / €5.99 / £4.99
  • Costs full adventure: 2800g / $19.99 / €17.99 / £13.99
  • 45 collectible cards
  • 3 card backs
  • 1 game board
  • Official website: Karazhan.com

Card Evaluation (1-7/45)

enchanted-raven

Enchanted Raven is the easiest card to evaluate. 2/2 for 1 mana in a class specific card is good but not overpowered. Being a beast makes this card better, it might be the missing link that druids were looking for to make beast druid generally good, a powerful early game minion. Combine it with Mark of Y’Shaarj on turn two and you are good to go. Despite the initial “wow effect”, this card is weaker than Living Roots in all but the beast druid archetype. Rating: 2

kindly-grandmother

The Kindly Grandmother is what hunter needs IMHO. A good early game beast with Deathrattle to contest decks like Zoo. Both, the grandmother and the wolf, are beast which is really important in hunter for its synergistic effect. The deathrattle may render Princess Huhuran viable and works well with N’Zoth, The Corruptor for some late game staying power. Some have argued already, that this one is not good for aggro, but Haunted Creeper was palyed extensively in aggro and hybrid hunter archetypes and I believe this one will be too. It might be even a substitute for the sub par Infested Wolf, resulting in hunter decks being a bit faster. Mix in Abusive Seargent and the already staple Houndmaster and hunter is ready to go. For me it has high potential to be Haunted Creeper 2.0. Rating: 1

 

firelands-portal

My initial reaction to Firelands Portal was “meh”. At second glance and with some number crunching, the card turns out to be very good. Firebat has already put together a spreadsheet about this card with the help of some other pros. I will give you an summary of the most important data: the summoned minion has a mean 4.14 attack and 4.72 health, for simpicity we account for it as a 4/5 minion, which is equal to a Chillwind Yeti (4 mana). The mean worth of the 5 damage is 4.25 mana. This results in a mean net worth of 8.25 mana for a 7-mana card. Taking into account that you have a “two in one”, this might be even worth more. You can argue that the 5-mana slot for minions is underwhelming (compare my Forbidden Shaping Infographic), but there are 27/57 with abilities, some very useful (e.g. 5/57 taunt, 3/57 charge). The only downside is the cost, it might be too slow for tempo mage (a doubt which I do not share, see Cabalist’s Tome) but is definetly good in control or grinder mage style deck .
Rating: 2

 

ivory-knight

Ivory Knight might look weak at first glance too, but I think it mioght be the card that will rise midrange paladin to new power. Why? It is a “3 for 1” card and as I already mentioned, combining multiple effects into one card is very powerful. Each effect by itself might be mediocre, but the flexibility that this card allows is only known for druid cards. Let’s calculate its mana value: discovering a spell is equal to Raven Idol of druid, a staple card (1 mana). The 4/4 minion has net worth of about 3.5 mana. The healing is a bit more difficult to estimate, but it is at a median of 3.5 healing which is worth around 1.3 mana (compare Holy Light and Healing Touch). Counter arguments are, that there are a lot of 0-2 mana spells in paladin (15/28) which renders the healing part weak. This might be true, but the average remains the same. What makes the card good IMHO is its flexability. You can weight the discover over the healing or vice versa according to your needs. You pay this flexibility with a mean of only 0.2 mana (6 – 1 – 3.5 – 1.3 = 0.2). Forbidden Healing, Raven Idol, Ethereal Conjurer and many more cards have already shown, that this flexibility in the mid- to late-game is really worth the investment.

The problem most people have when evaluation cards with RNG effects, is that they only see best and worst case scenarios. This was already true for Yogg-Saron, Hope’s End, and it might be true for this one. All my research for the infographics have told me this: whenyou are evaluating RNG cards, you have to take a look at the mean outcome first, to find the true worth of the card. This could also be true for Ivory Knight.

All priorly mentioned facts together renders the  card good in my eyes, if not top notch. It has a decent body to contest and a comparable effect to post-nerf Ancient of Lore in combinations with Fandral Staghelm. The overall effect is  admittantly weaker, owing the RNG and the weighting you have to do in between healing and discovering which I explained above.
Rating: 1-2

 

ethereal-peddler

Ethereal Peddler is a really difficult one. I really want to like the card, but … Well, let’s take a look which cards interact with it and how good they are in rogue: Undercity Hucksler – Great, Burgle – meh, Grand Crusader – mediocre to meh, Nefarian – ok. The minion itself is has vanilla stats which normally feels ok, but not for a class minion. Therefore, the effect has to go off to make it playable comeptitively. Again, Firebat rightfully stated, that the effect has to hit at least one card to render the card worthwhile and everythign above is extraordinary good. You will need at least 4-5 cards that give you spells or minions from your opponents class (caution when playing against rogue!). As of now, only Undercity Hucksler is really playable. I think we need at least one more good stealing card to make the effort of building a deck aroudn this one worthwhile AND rogue has to remain a niche class and not a major meta class to let Ethereal Peddler do his thing.
Rating: 4, B

 

barnes

The first impression of Barnes was: “oh no, another Herald Volajz” and “crap, already Shadowcaster did not work”. Don’t get me wrong, I love Shadowcaster, but both afore mentioned cards did not make the cut for compertitive play. Barnes has one important difference, he does not need the minion copied being on the board. The downside is, if you do not copy a minion wit ha deathrattle (e.g. Sylvanas Windrunner) or wit ha static effect (e.g. Ragnaros Firelord), he is only a Chillwind Yeti devided into a 3/4 and a 1/1 body. The first deck it could find a home in that comes to mind is a N’Zoth deck. But most N’zoth decks only run a few deathrattle minions, mostly Cairne Bloodhoof, Sylvanas Windrunner and Chillmaw. Even N’zoth Rogue, which runs 7 deathrattles in my version, they only account for 50% of all minions. He could shine in crazy designed decks, e.g. a Malygos Spell deck with only Malygos and Emperor Thaurissan to get value for sure. So in the end, the fate of Barnes is unsure. The decks he is run in have to be tailored towards him to make him shine, but the potential is high.
Rating 2, B

 

the-curator

The Curator is the most complex of the first seven revealed cards. It is for tribes what is Al’Akir for effects. He combines all tribes into one card: Beast, Dragon, Mech and Murloc. In Standard, the Mech tribe at the bottom of the card may not be too relevant at the moment, true. But drawing possible three cards, amazing. But wait, will we draw three cards all the time? More likely no than yes. But what will we draw consistantly? For current decks, the answer is likely two. Take druid as an example. They already run Azure Drake and fitting in a beast or two will prove not too difficult. Hunter already runs a lot of beast and they might fit in Azure Drake as well or some other dragon. Dragons in general are strong an often played as tech cards (Alexstraza) or late-game bombs (Ysera). Regarding beasts, Stampeding Kodo is already present in competitive played in a variety of decks, first and formost paladin and hunter. Stranglethorn Tiger is another solid neutral beast. For the  other classes, the Murloc part will prove the most difficult. Paladin already has good Dragon synergies and even a good murlocs with Murloc Knight. Nevertheless, there are some neutral options for the other classes in the form of Sir Finley Mrrgglton, Bilefin Tidehunter and Corrupted Seer.

Getting back to the first point made, if The Curator draws two cards consistantly, he can be compared to pre-nerf Ancient of Lore (for all that do not know the previous itteration, it had draw two cards instead of one), which was a highly competitive card. It might prove even better because of its taunt, which is a pseudo-heal against minion heavy decks and you can alter your deck to make drawing what you want by choosing cards, e.g. by putting only Malygos or Alexstraza in the deck.
Rating: 1-2

This concludes today’s article. I tried to bring to you additional aspects for each card compared to what I already read in other reviews. I would appreciate any comment below or @OtakuMZ1978. I hope you liked this article enough to join me as the party night in Karazhan continues.

Yours,

OtakuMZ


Rating Used

(1) Excellent: Cards that are top-notch or potentially overpowered. Most decks would like to run them, e.g. Dr. Boom.
(2) Good / Competitively Playable: Superior cards that will very likely see frequent play, e.g. Annoy-o-Tron, Harvest Golem.
(3) Decent / No Competitive Staple: Cards that normally do not make the cut for competitive play but are overall well-designed and might fit into specific decks. These cards can be powerful in Arena though or really viable for newer players but you would not likely see them in tournaments.  Also vanilla cards such as Chillwind Yeti fall into this category.
(4) Poor / Too Situational: Underwhelming and/or overcosted cards. These cards have inferior stats and/or underwhelming effects and will not see competitive play, e.g. Voodoo Doctor. Grouped in this category are also cards that seem to be good at first glace, but their effect are so highly situational that most of the times you will not be able to pull them off, e.g. Ghaz’rilla. The latter can arguably be fun and even powerful IF their effect goes of, of course. In any case, these cards I like to call “what-if cards” are so unreliable that they render themselves unusable in competitive play. Feel free to raise these cards to a “build-around” card or just have fun with!
(5) Unplayable: Straight out bad stats, poor card design or simply useless cards that are even too bad for casual play? You have them in your deck? Delete Hearthstone! 😉 These cards you would not and should never put in your deck, e.g. Magma Rager. Okay, one exception here: you want to troll your opponent so that he thinks you are the worst Hearthstone player alive! 😆
(A/B) Archetype Defining / Build-Around: Cards that are only viable if you build your deck around them, e.g. Grim Patron.
(C) Counter / Tech Choice: Cards that mostly have underwhelming stats but are highly useful to counter specific Cards or to Play against a very uniform meta, e.g. Eater of Secrets.


Martin "OtakuMZ" Z.

Real life physician and afterhour card battler. Martin "OtakuMZ" contributes to the Hearthstone team of BlizzPro since late 2015. Additionally, he contributes analytic articles for Hearthstone and Gwent as a member of Fade2Karma and in his collumn on the Gwentlemen site. He is best known for his infographics which can be accessed at a glance at https://www.facebook.com/hsinfographics and https://www.facebook.com/gwentinfographics


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