The Comprehensive Across the Timeways Preview

Cryofrozen Champion

Random legendary minions represent a weak pool that is characterized by high variance and a lot of junk that may not have synergy with our game plan. Even at a 1 mana discount, the pool does not seem very enticing.

For the pleasure of finding random junk, we need to play a weak 1-drop that does not contest board well. We cannot see how this random legendary makes up for falling behind early. Frost decks with the current card pool are aggressively slanted too, while Cryofrozen Champion is anything but aggressive. This is a bad value card.

Score: 1

Timestop

This card seems particularly strong for the cost. 3 damage for 2 mana is a classic template for playable damage spells, so attaching two freezes to this template looks powerful. We can use this to hit face while stalling an opponent’s board, which fits the playstyle we are familiar with from Frost Death Knights running Frostwyrm’s Fury. It is incredible at controlling the board, as the random effect is easy to funnel to our desired targets.

Timestop has a lot of synergy with Standard Frost cards, some of them with great potential but are currently forgotten. Slippery Slope and Snow Shredder are standout examples.

We have seen some low sample experimentations with Frost Death Knight, and it did not look far away from being a serious competitive option. Whether a single good addition pushes the archetype over the edge is a fair reason to be skeptical, but we think this spell is worth a serious attempt to bring back the archetype.

Score: 3

Blood Draw

Discover a spell for 0 mana, at the cost of 3 health. There have been plenty of 1 mana discover effects that have seen play in the past and present, so there is a strong argument for Blood Draw to be considered a worthy inclusion for constructed play.

However, we are not that enamored with the spell after evaluating the vast options available for defensive Blood Death Knight decks. Decks like Blood-Ctrl, Starship and Herenn are stacked with good options which have synergy that directly further their game plan.

Blood Draw’s drawback is that it does not directly further our game plan and its spell pool is large and unreliable. This wide spell pool means there is no guarantee that we discover a better card for a specific situation than a card we intentionally put in our deck. We should also consider that many 1-mana discover effects are strong thanks to a discount on the discovered card, so Blood Draw’s net mana worth is not superior to them.

This spell’s best chance of seeing play is in Starship Death Knight, as it is a free trigger for Guiding Figure post-Starship launch. Besides that, we think this spell gets skipped until rotation, when quality options are narrowed down.

Score: 1

Liferender

Changing our health is hard to do without spending mana. Liferender works best with effects that do not cost mana, such as Blood Draw and Reanimated Pterrodax.

But is the payoff that great? Dealing 6 damage to a minion clears all but the largest minions in the game on paper, which could be nice at the later stages of the game, when we have mana available on effects like Vampiric Blood. However, Liferender is unplayable in the early game, a more critical time for removal to come online. The absence of a rune restriction does not matter, as more proactive Unholy or Frost decks are not interested in its effect.

Realistically, when are we playing Liferender in Blood Death Knight decks? We do not see room for this card, especially when it requires substantial support to be remotely consistent.

Score: 1

Memoriam Manifest

Manifest is a targeted resurrection spell that specifies both a tribe and a cost, making it less restrictive when it comes to deckbuilding. We are free to run any kind of deck we want, with a high-cost Undead minion we want to resurrect.

The clear target for Manifest in this set is Bwonsamdi. Our issue is that Bwonsamdi takes time to be worth resurrecting, as it needs to scale through Boons. Another option is Travel Security. It is not an amazing resurrection target, but it makes Manifest a potential inclusion in Herenn Death Knight, with or without Bwonsamdi.

Unfortunately, Herenn Death Knight wants to run Stitched Giant too, which interferes with our ability to resurrect Bwonsamdi. A 4 mana Stitched Giant is not terrible, but Giant’s strength comes from its ability to be played for free.

Ultimately, Memoriam Manifest is not realistically playable before turn 7 and does not have the best synergy in the most likely shell to utilize Bwonsamdi. A future Undead minion could change things, but until then, this spell does not look worthwhile.

Score: 1

Shadows of Yesterday

On paper, this spell represents a lot of power for 6 mana. It must, as the later the game goes, the less impact stats have per cost. It also has a significant rune restriction, limiting it to only Unholy decks.

For a double rune card, we have no idea which deck would want to play this spell. A board-flooding Unholy deck, unlike a burn-centric Frost one, is further away from being competitive in current Standard. This addition, which only comes online on turn 6, is nowhere near enough to turn it into a serious threat. Turn 6 is a late window for an aggressive card to be relevant.

The Rewind keyword has little value here, as the variance that comes from 8 random keyword rolls is not even that dramatic. This makes the spell only slightly better than if it had no Rewind. Feels like a card that was made to fill the Rewind slot for the class.

Score: 1

Chronochiller

A 4 mana 8/7 is undoubtedly a big threat. In theory, we can slot Chronochiller into an aggressive deck to compound early game pressure. If our early three turns are already threatening, then this minion drops to the board when the opponent is already on the backfoot. If we are playing a more passive deck, then Chronochiller is more easily dealt with. Veteran Hearthstone players will remember Flamewreathed Faceless being effective mostly because opponents were already under pressure from Tunnel Troggs and Totem Golems early.

The drawback seems daunting. We might argue that if Chronochiller survives, it means it is pushing 8 damage to the opponent’s face, so we do not mind skipping a draw. But a more negative way of looking at it is that Chronochiller essentially discards us a card every turn it survives. Would we play a 4-mana vanilla 8/7 that discards us a card? The answer is no.

Furthermore, it is not a great fit for either an aggressive Unholy or Frost deck. Unholy decks want to go wide. Frost decks want to burn. This does neither.

Score: 1

Forgotten Millennium

Spending 8 mana to fill our hand with random junk… is a choice. While the Undead minions cost no mana, meaning they can drop to the board on the same turn and provide stats that are worth the mana cost, they also cost us what is likely to be a massive amount of health.

An easy comparison for Forgotten Millennium is The Scourge. The Scourge costs 1 more mana but summons a full, guaranteed board of random Undead minions without costing us any health. The only thing we miss out on are potential battlecries that the Undead minions may have, but this is a weak argument in support of this spell. The Scourge is a better card that is not reliant on our hand space and did not make it into constructed decks. Forgotten Millennium looks unplayable.

Score: 1

Husk, Eternal Reaper

The first card to put a deathrattle on our hero. If our health hits zero, we are resurrected with a maximum total of 20 health, depending on our corpse count. This is not an immunity effect, as the opponent can keep damaging us after the trigger, but there is potential for overkill damage that makes their attacks less efficient.

This seems like a monumental survival tool for defensive Death Knight decks. The moment we play Husk, our corpse count becomes another source of effective life. While current Death Knight decks run other corpse spenders, they are not particularly strong or irreplaceable. Foamrender can be cut. Corpse Explosion can be permanently relegated to one copy. The only corpse spenders we cannot give up are Reanimated Pterrordax and Exarch Maladaar. We think Husk can coexist with them, as they are strong in different matchups and situations.

Furthermore, a card like Reluctant Wrangler may become a more enticing option to make sure Husk represents more value. Husk is game warping in two critical instances: Aggressive decks and OTK’s. Against aggressive decks, this is a get out of jail card that makes us harder to kill the longer the game goes on. Against late game burst finishers, this provides a significant cushion to prevent getting OTK’d. The potential for overkill damage in this case is particularly annoying and makes some win conditions far less effective against Death Knight.

With no rune restriction or a significant deckbuilding cost beyond making sure we generate enough corpses, Husk may become a meta-defining element of late game Death Knight strategies going forward.

Score: 4

Talanji of the Graves

An important part of judging Fabled cards is to evaluate them individually, as each one is a card in our deck. We then evaluate their overall potential as a package.

Talanji is a 4 mana 4/5 that draws a minion, which is extremely weak. Its resurrection effect is stronger but only becomes relevant on turn 7 at the earliest.

What Befell Zandalar is Consecration. Not a spell we love putting into our constructed decks.

Bwonsamdi is a terrible 6-drop at its baseline that becomes stronger only after finding and playing the other two Fabled pieces, as well as being aggressively targeted for resurrection. With one keyword, it becomes a playable minion that is better than… Cairne Bloodhoof. With two keywords, it becomes a stronger version of Travel Security.

This package seems lukewarm. Its only chance of seeing play is in Herenn Death Knight, as we can pull Bwonsamdi out of our deck and resurrect it with both Memoriam Manifest and Wakener of Souls. Even then, this resurrection game plan requires us to give up Stitched Giants and does not seem strong until we find the other two pieces required to give Bwonsamdi permanent keywords and upgrade its deathrattle.

Is it not simply better to stick with Travel Security as the 6-drop deathrattle of choice? We suspect it might be, as we need to find and play both Fabled pieces to make Bwonsamdi the superior target and we have no way to reliably find both within the average length of a Hearthstone game.

Score: 1

Final Thoughts

Across the Timeways Set Rank: 10th

Overall Power Ranking: 3rd

How much will Death Knight get punished for standing still? This is the question that is floating in our minds when we try to evaluate the impact of the new set on Death Knight’s competitive prospects.

Death Knight’s set is weak and unlikely to change the class’ composition of strategies. We will be playing Blood-Ctrl, Starship and Herenn for another expansion, with a faint hope of a Frost DK emerging. So, what happens to these strategies when they are faced with classes that have significantly strengthened?

We think this will depend on the composition of strategies that end up successful. We have an optimistic slant on Death Knight because we expect aggressive decks to be the ones mostly growing in power. Death Knight is well equipped to deal with aggression, so it will feel comfortable queuing into a larger share of them. Some of these aggressive decks may prove to be more resilient to Death Knight’s removal toolkit, but Death Knight has the capacity to counterpressure and is not a passive passenger in these matchups.

Where things are more concerning is if late game strategies become increasingly lethal. Rogue is guaranteed to improve its matchup against Death Knight, in our eyes. Other classes are also getting late game win conditions that could align well against Death Knight, if they prove to be competitively viable. But they have more question marks surrounding them. This is why we value Husk highly, as it is an insurance policy to some extent that can curb some of these late game disadvantages.

But what Death Knight will count on most is that the emerging aggressive decks will punish and overpower these late game strategies and keep them at a fringe presence in the format. Should this occur, we expect Death Knight to remain a popular and competitive option, as it has been throughout The Lost City of Un’Goro.

But if aggression does not perform as we anticipate, Death Knight may find itself queuing into a more hostile format than it has encountered in the last few months. In that case, its standing will slip further down the ladder.