The Comprehensive Darkmoon Faire Preview

 

Data Reaper Report - Warrior

Minefield

Minefield

This is a very good removal tool for Control Warrior decks. Warrior has been struggling recently at fending off early aggression, and Minefield provides the perfect answer to the first few minions when you’re playing a deck that tends to be passive. This is essentially Dyn-o-Matic’s naked battlecry, but it comes online faster and at a crucial stage of the game.

Score: 3

Stage Hand

Stage Hand

This is a weak and boring card. Hand buffing needs to be stronger than that to see play, and there are probably better mechs to run in a menagerie deck than this one. If there aren’t, we’re in trouble!

Score: 1

Sword Eater

Sword Eater

This card is so overloaded, and not in the bad Shaman way, but in the good, busted way. A 2/5 taunt on top of a 3/2 weapon for 4 mana is silly and creates a tempo swing by itself. Sword Eater is incredible both defensively and offensively and provides pretty much everything you want in the mid-game. Just super jacked up.

Score: 4

Stage Dive

Stage DiveStage Dive (Corrupted).png

This isn’t as good as Town Crier. That’s pretty much the only negative thing we can say about this card. A 1-mana corrupt is basically corrupted by anything, but does it really matter? Warrior would run this card even if it couldn’t be upgraded because tutoring rush minions in this class is so extremely valuable. Stage Dive is guaranteed to be in nearly every Warrior deck. The corrupted form just guarantees it being nuts.

Score: 4

Bumper Car

Bumper CarDarkmoon Rider.png

Undersized rush minion generating more undersized rush minions. Cool flavor but low power level. A 1-attack minion doesn’t kill much and we don’t want to completely rely on buffing this in hand for it to be playable.

Score: 1

Feat of Strength

Feat of Strength

We wonder how many of these taunt buffing cards are we going to see from Warrior. The stats just keep getting ramped up to get them at a playable level every expansion, but it never happens. This will not succeed either. How about a 4-mana spell that gives a random taunt minion in hand +8/+8, Blizzard? That might do it.

Score: 1

Ringmaster’s Baton

Ringmaster's Baton

This is a specific weapon for a menagerie archetype that seems to be getting support for Warrior. This weapon is worth up to 18 stats in buffs over three turns, which is pretty good for a 2-mana weapon. These buffs scale well with keywords, which are also available for the class. Baton’s problem is its lack of strong synergy with Corsair Cache, its awkwardness with Sword Eater, as well as its slow impact on the board.

Score: 2

Tent Thrasher

Tent Trasher

This could be a very powerful enabler for the menagerie archetype. We’ve learned by now not to underestimate rush minions that can be significantly discounted. Though the condition isn’t trivial, the availability of 1-mana pirates as well as Thrasher’s strong baseline cost leads us to believe this card is quite good.

Score: 2

E.T.C., God of Metal

E.T.C., God of Metal

This card is a bit weird since it usually pulls you into speculation over some weird OTK combos with Bloodsworn Mercenary, and none of them seem realistic. If we just judge this card as a standalone threat with a few rush minions, it’s probably not good enough. It’s potentially strong in Galakrond Warrior thanks to Scion of Ruin, but we wouldn’t hold our breath.

Score: 1

Ringmaster Whatley

Ringmaster Whatley

Whatley is basically a cheaper, and stronger Curator. Drawing 3 cards is a great deal on top of a 5 mana 3/5. Not only is this legendary an auto-include for a menagerie deck, but it incentivizes sprinkling some tribal minions in other Warrior strategies just for the tutor effect. Just a strong all-around card that adds interesting tension to deck-building.

Score: 3

 

Final Thoughts

Darkmoon Faire Set Rank: 7th

Overall Power Ranking: 6th

Warrior’s set is mixed. It has some seriously powerful cards that should become staples for many Warrior decks in the future. On the other hand, it also has some very underwhelming additions that we don’t see making any impact. We’ll also say that we’re very skeptical of Menagerie Warrior and will be surprised to see it succeed.

The Warrior class is notoriously known for its weakness at closing games, especially when it comes to its faster archetypes. Unless you’re relentlessly fast with tons of over-the-top weapon damage like Pirate Warrior, “Tempo Warrior” decks often hit a wall when faced with decks carrying strong defensive tools.

These “Tempo Warrior” decks usually need a burst combo to end games against control decks, as was seen in Patron Warrior years ago, as well as in Enrage Warrior recently thanks to Bloodsworn Mercenary. When Warrior simply produces stats on the board, it’s generally lackluster.

We think slower warrior archetypes hold more promise because of this set. Control Warrior can run C’Thun as a finisher and perhaps significantly shift its horrendous matchup with Priest, for example. Bomb Warrior should still be around, improving its survivability thanks to Minefield and Stage Dive, and its strategy should remain very frustrating for some decks that could emerge with this set. Slow Warrior decks could also sprinkle some tribal minions and make use of Whatley as a card draw engine.

All in all, Warrior should be in a decent enough spot to remain very competitive. We predict that it will go the ResidentSleeper route, but those wacky tribal decks could make us eat our words down the road. Who knows?

 

 

 

8 Comments

  1. Your ads are being even more disruptive than usual and making your articles pretty much unreadable. On iOS, it’s simply impossible to read with the page moving up and down every few seconds and the whole page reloading or crashing regularly. On PC, it’s “only” moving up and down every few seconds, making it extremely difficult to read. You really should make the ads constant size or move them to a separate column on the right of the page because this is ridiculous.

  2. This review makes me a little sad, given that my favorite classes to play have always been Shaman, Mage, and Druid. Hopefully once the set is actually out and the meta starts to settle, there will be some good decks there.

  3. Problem is you would need minions on both your side of the board and your opponents side of the board. Your best case scenario is 7 guys on each side of the board for 14 damage, which is a very unlikely scenario.

  4. Thanks for the great article! And also, I don’t know if I missed it but how strong does this set look compared to other recent sets?

  5. Etc + broom is a strong combo, right? That seems like the solid finisher for tempo warrior that you were talking about in the conclusion section

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