Soulrest Ceremony
A spell with a similar effect to Animated Broomstick, but the drawback of our minions dying at the end of the turn. This limits the kinds of decks that can successfully leverage the effect. However, this drawback can become an upside if we are using deathrattle minions, giving Ceremony a dual role of both a swing card and a deathrattle activator in the right deck.
This dual role allows Ceremony to be useful even when we just want to sack a single friendly minion in play, such as Travel Security or an egg. Cheap swing cards should generally be respected. Soulrest Ceremony also has no rune requirement, which gives us a lot of deckbuilding freedom. We think this card could be useful in Herenn Death Knight or a more aggressive deathrattle deck in the future.
Score: 3
Hollow Direhorn
A 5 mana 5/4 rush is very slow. The requirement to give it reborn is unreliable too, as we need another friendly minion in play to sack on the turn we play Direhorn (Direhorn does not trigger on itself dying).
Even in the case we successfully activate it, a 5 mana 5/4 with rush and reborn is not even particularly good. The “infinite” potential seems optimistic. Considering that Rambunctious Stuffy is cheaper, easier to activate, yet does not see much play, makes us question Direhorn’s chances.
Score: 1
Story of Umbra
A very expensive spell. Theoretically, the value should be appropriate for the cost, but the deathrattle pool of 5+ cost minions is large enough for Story of Umbra to not be a consistent play. This is the kind of card that constructed decks tend to avoid, as there is no way to reliably leverage it. Discover value is fine when it is cheap and provides card advantage, less so when we pay so much for it that it needs to win the game.
We do not want to play this card in Herenn Death Knight, for example, as it pollutes the Wakener and Umbra pool. As much as it is meant to fuel Endbringer Umbra on paper, it is more likely to be a hindrance. Our curve is high enough as it is.
Score: 1
Final Thoughts: Soulrest Ceremony is the most thought-provoking card here, but we will be surprised if it drastically changes the current makeup of the class. We expect business as usual from Death Knight after the miniset.
Behemoth mask better than advertised when you consider elise location. Even the single raptor off the 1 drop becomes a massive life gain and removes 2 minions with the 8/10 rush body.
Wow, think I’m just crafting cards here. Have never not bought a miniset but guess this is a first. It’s like they aren’t even trying…
This is going to be #epic!