It’s the final reveals for Whizbang’s Workshop at vS! We’ve got the last three Death Knights, and they’re quite important for an archetype that has already been teased when the expansion was first announced.
Remember Spinel Spellstone and Amateur Puppeteer?
These cards specifically buff all Undead minions in your hand, encouraging the Death Knight to focus on this specific tribe in order to leverage the buffs to their maximum potential. But surely the class is being given new Undead minions that scale with buffs, right?
Absolutely.
Shambling Zombietank is a 2 mana 3/2 taunt that summons a copy of itself if you’ve got 5 corpses to spend, which makes it an amazing buff target, as it doubles up the stats on any buff it receives. You can think of it as a half-cost Saronite Chain Gang. With cards such as Mining Casualties and Crop Rotation, Death Knight has the tools necessary to quickly accumulate corpses in the early game, setting up Spinel Spellstone and Zombietank for a big play in the mid-game.
Darkthron Quilter is a big payoff for a Handbuff Death Knight archetype. At the end of your turn, it deals damage randomly split amongst enemies equal to its attack value. While that might seem tame with its baseline 2-attack, the damage quickly ramps up with buffs. Moreover, Quilter possesses a persistent effect that triggers every turn, so not only does it have an immediate impact when entering play, it’s a must-kill target for the opponent, as it cannot afford to be dealt this damage in subsequent turns.
Rainbow Seamstress might be one of the most elegantly designed cards in the set. It’s a 3 mana 3/3 that gains keywords depending on the type of runes you have in your deck. If you have a Blood rune card, Seamstress gains Lifesteal. If you have a Frost rune card, it gains Reborn. If you have an Unholy rune card, it gains Rush.
The obvious conclusion is that Rainbow Seamstress is the perfect card for Rainbow Death Knight, as it gains all keywords in the deck, making it a powerful 3-drop that helps you win early game board control. But Seamstress is also a fantastic card in a Handbuff Death Knight archetype, even if it chooses to only include Blood and Unholy cards, as Seamstress still gets the two most important keywords which scale with buffs: Rush and Lifesteal.
Some of the other cards in the set could definitely go into a Handbuff Death Knight, even if they don’t directly support the mechanic itself.
Handbuff Death Knight’s rune alignment allows it to run the Headless Horsemen, which is a late game value card that can potentially give you discovered Undead minions that offer more buff targets.
Dr. Stitchensew, revealed by Roffle a couple of hours ago, is a very sticky Undead minion that becomes harder to ignore the bigger it gets.
So, Handbuff Death Knight now has a lot to work with. It’s got great support in Whizbang’s Workshop. It still has its Festival of Legends set, consisting of Harmonic Metal, Screaming Banshee and Hollow Hound. Its Core set contains Blood Tap, Nerubian Swarmguard and Gnome Muncher.
Will Handbuff Death Knight finally become a competitive Hearthstone deck? It’s looking closer than ever. We’ll have to find out on March 19th, when Whizbang’s Workshop launches.
Remember that plenty of content will arrive on this website before the expansion’s launch.
First, a podcast episode discussing our initial impressions of the set will be out early next week.
A Comprehensive Preview of Whizbang’s Workshop will be out next weekend. We will evaluate every card and try to guess how impactful it can be.
A theorycrafting article, with all kinds of decks from every class for you to try (including Handbuff Death Knight!), will be published a day before the expansion’s launch.
We’ll see you again for all of that, soon.
The Vicious Syndicate team.