by OtakuMZ - 6 years ago     show comments

It is this time of the season again where we speculate about the impact of the cards from the new set. This time, with the higher complexity of some cards, it feels more difficult than ever. Yet, Nicholas and I will bring you our oppinion that you can hopefully decide which card you may craft in the first days. Beware of dusting trash rated cards early though as we may and will fail to guess some cards correctly even though we have quite a good record with this series.

To see a full list with all tokens and stuff, please head to @Eldorian‘s Kobolds & Catacombs Spoiler List. If you are looking for some tips on card analysis, check out Card Reviews – What I Learned from Card Reviews – What I Learned from WotOG and ONiK. If you want to share this one, the short link is bit.ly/KoboldsPR.

You know the drill, right? If not, find our rating system at the bottom of the article. So without further ado, lets head into our rankings.

Kobolds & Catacombs Power Rankings

(Last update: December 13th, 2017)

☆☆☆☆☆: EXCELLENT / STAPLE

☆☆☆☆:  GOOD / COMPETITIVELY VIABLE

☆☆☆: DECENT / NICHE PICK

☆☆: POOR / TOO SITUATIONAL

☆: UNPLAYABLE

A/B: ARCHETYPE DEFINING / BUILD-AROUND

C/T: COUNTER / TECH  CHOICE

Controversies:

As always, there are a few cards we don’t agree on over here.

OtakuMZ ranked Fal’dorei Strider and Grumble, Worldshaker as “Poor/Situational” whereas DeckTech thinks both might be a 4-star “Good,” so we’ve split the difference in our rankings here.

On the flip side, Decktech ranked Skull of the Man’ari and Unidentified Elixir as “Poor/Situational” while OtakuMZ thought they were both “Good.” Again, we split the difference and put them into “Decent” for now.

There were also various smaller disagreements, not worth specifically mentioning, with Decktech generally being the more optimistic of us, but as to the vast majority of cards, we were of the same mind.

Annex I: About Power Rankings: My Take on Card Reviews Explained

I might evaluate cards differently to what you think because the evaluations reflect my personal opinions based on my knowledge of the game. If you disagree I am happy to hear your point in the comments below, @hsdecktech or @OtakuMZ1978. I will try to respond to all inquiries and take into consideration to change my rank of the card in question.

All evaluations will be made with Standard play mode and competitive play in mind. This is no ranking for neither Arena nor Wild, please remember this when reading. I will sort cards categories (see at bottom of the article). They will be sorted by mana cost from low to high. There is a changelog directly below the actual ranking above the category explanations at the bottom of this page.

Annex II: Ranking Categories

☆☆☆☆☆ (5 stars) Excellent: Cards that are top-notch or potentially overpowered. Most decks would like to run them, e.g. Dr. Boom.

☆☆☆☆ (4 stars) Good: Superior cards that will very likely be seen play frequently, e.g. Annoy-o-Tron, Harvest Golem.

☆☆☆ (3 stars) Decent: 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.

☆☆ (2 stars) Poor: Underwhelming and/or over-costed cards. These cards have inferior stats and/or underwhelming effects and will not see competitive play, e.g. Voodoo Doctor. Also grouped in this category are cards, that seem to be good at first glance. Yet, their effects are too situational so that most of the time, you will not be able to pull them off (e.g. Ghaz’rilla). The latter can arguably be fun and even powerful IF their effects go off. 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!

☆ (1 star) Unplayable: Straight out bad stats, poor card design or simply useless cards that are even too bad for casual play? Do you have them in your deck? Delete Hearthstone! 😉 These cards you would not and should never put in your deck unless for fun or I missed something and the cards are sorted wrong, e.g. Magma Rager. If so, please leave me a comment! 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/T: 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

* The cards that appear under A/B and C/T will also be represented under 5* to 1* ratings according to their suspected power level when included or played in the right deck.