Earlier today, the most unique fabled legendary was revealed for the Warlock class. Rafaam increases our deck size to 40 and wins the game if we managed to play all the different Rafaam minions before dropping the 10 mana legendary.
While Rafaam offers us a clear win condition in late game matchups, the increased deck size and need to find and play every Rafaam is a big challenge, both in time and resources. Thankfully, Warlock is getting some card draw to help us find the Rafaam minions more consistently with ‘RAFAAM LADDER!!’.
Drawing 3 cards for 4 mana is a solid deal. We can see this spell making its way to other decks too, if there is a great need for card draw.
The class’ biggest package of this set involves Shreds of Time, a ‘cast when drawn’ spell we shuffle to our deck that deals 3 damage to our own hero. This is the price we pay for powerful effects on a special discount. For example, the first revealed card from this package is Twilight Timehopper, a 2 mana 4/4.
As you will see in this article, the Shreds of Time package offers frontloaded, immediate power, at the cost of shuffling these spells, or drawing them from our deck.
This is a powerful board buff, equivalent to Mark of the Lotus, which was a completely cracked spell during its time in Standard. This encourages Warlock to flood the board early and aggressively, severely punishing the opponent for not immediately fending off its advance.
A Sigil of Cinder with no delay is easily worth 3 mana. Tachyon Barrage offers a full mana discount for the Shred of Time drawback. This spell is also an amazing enabler of Devious Coyote, which might be the strongest neutral in the set for aggressive decks.
Fatebreaker deals 3 damage to us immediately by casting a Shred of Time from our deck but grows into a 4 mana 7/7 when it does. The lifesteal keyword means that Fatebreaker may end up gaining us more life than it costs us. It is extremely threatening in both faster and slower matchups as a result.
Velocidrake also casts a Shred of Time from our deck, turning into a 5 mana 10/10 with rush across two bodies. This is a gigantic swing card in the mid-game, one that may end up saving us more health by dominating the board in faster matchups, while representing 10 attack in slow matchups.
A Time Shredding Warlock deck is expected to be extremely aggressive. We are banking on winning the game through early-to-mid game snowballing, before the Shreds of Time can significantly hurt us. If games are decided by turns 6-8, then we will not be damaged by a large percentage of the Shreds of Time we shuffle to our deck.
There is one way to flip the Shreds of Time on the opponent, which is by playing Chronogor, the other Warlock legendary revealed earlier today too.
Since Shreds of Time cost 0 mana, they will be drawn by the opponent! This does require us to not run Cursed Catacombs to be reliable, so there is some deckbuilding tension here.
We have one more card revealed, and it is a very different type of card. Bygone Doomspeaker offers disruption for late game Warlock strategies with a Rewind spin.
Doomspeaker’s Rewind means that we have two chances of discarding a specific card from the opponent, making it more consistent. Unlike Dirty Rat, Doomspeaker can hit every type of card, not just minions. We can also use Rewind if we are unhappy about the card we are discarding from our hand. Ironically, this minion can ruin Rafaam’s day.
Can Rafaam overcome the odds and prove his supreme Hearthstone skills? Will an aggressive Warlock deck emerge thanks to the Shreds of Time package? We will have more to say about the Warlock set and the entire expansion in our Comprehensive Across the Timeways Preview, coming a week from now. Our usual theorycrafting content will follow, as well.
See you later. Don’t get lost in time.
The Vicious Syndicate Team
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