Concealing Confection
Weapons have a wide variety of costs and abilities, with many of them reliant on synergies, making this a relatively low-quality generation pool. Aggressive decks could find damage with this card in theory, but if the weapon is slow then Confection becomes a drawback. Slower decks are unlikely to be interested, as they have better value-generation tools. This is not a terrible card, but we suspect decks will always have something better.
Score: 1
Gullible Guard
A funny, but useless deathrattle. Besides adding it to the Guard Dog pool, there is not much to it. Gullible Guard is as vanilla as it gets, a baseline 1-mana 1/3 with no effect or tribe.
We think aggressive decks should always have better 1-drops to run, so we do not expect it to see play.
Score: 1
P1CK-P0K3T
This 2-drop is only active on turn 2 in a 30-card deck, when going first. The only way Pick-Pocket is playable is in a deck that starts with more cards, or shuffles things into the deck. Examples from this set are Priest (thanks to Azalina) or Warrior (thanks to Hogger and Scramble for Gear).
However, we doubt Priest will invest one of the precious 20 slots in its Azalina build for a plain 2-drop, when it has superior card-draw options. We can say the same for Warrior. The decks this minion is meant for are not desperate for an early-game minion that falls off late.
Score: 1
Defias Smuggler
Rush is a very powerful keyword when it potentially costs no mana. Smuggler can be Prepared for 2 mana for a full discount, which is relatively easy to do, especially for slower decks that look to set up swing turns at the later stages of the game and may not be active in the early game.
A 0-mana Smuggler can turn every minion we develop into removal, which makes us view some cards differently. A card that does not have an immediate impact on the board, which would normally be frowned upon, may be turned into immediate impact thanks to Smuggler.
The fact this card makes us think of the game differently is a huge compliment to its potential impact. We believe this will be a very important card for a significant percentage of decks going forward.
Score: 4
Classes: Death Knight, Demon Hunter, Druid, Hunter, Mage, Priest, Warlock
Violet Punisher
Punisher… punishes enemy minions that carry bonus effects such as taunt or lifesteal, stealing them and gaining stats for every keyword.
On paper, this is a powerful effect. A 3-mana 6/5 with two keywords is no slouch, for example. Issue is we are struggling to see which decks treat this as a core card. Aggressive decks need unconditionally strong minions that are powerful even when the opponent has an empty board. In slower decks, this does not make much sense, as removal is better and more broadly useful against a large variety of threats.
This is the kind of card that only sees play as a tech card if a certain minion with multiple keywords becomes extremely prominent and annoying to deal with.
Score: 1
Activated Golem
A 4-mana 4/5 with reborn is not good enough. If the opponent manages to kill the 4/5, it should be able to clean up the 4/1 that spawns after to prevent the Reborn keyword from re-emerging. If it cannot kill the 4/5 without cleaning up the 4/1, it will simply ignore it and avoid giving us a free keyword.
Score: 1
Reckless Detective
This is a weak rush minion that gives us a weak buff on its deathrattle. The extra value is not worth it if it makes us fall behind. While the buff gives us rush, it comes with a cost of 4 mana attached, so it is hard to summon a minion and buff it with the clothes on the same turn.
Note what we said about Smuggler: rush is very powerful if it costs no mana. Attaching it to a Blessing of Kings is a different story. The best we can do with it is buff a 1-drop with it, but that means we have played a 5-mana rush minion, which is hardly impressive.
Score: 1
Solitary Prisoner
Prisoner is good on turn 2 if both opponents skipped their turn 1. Otherwise, it is a completely dead minion. At other stages of the game, it is unlikely to be active unless both players have gone AFK or we can pair it with removal. Even then, a 2-mana 5/3 is not that strong at later turns. An awkward fit for decks, whether they are aggressive or passive.
Our guess is that the card’s highs will not be common enough, while the lows will drag it down too hard.
Score: 1
Sewer Imp
The issue with taunts that carry an AOE deathrattle is that opponents can trade their vulnerable minions into it, then re-develop the board after. This is also a bit too slow to be relevant in faster matchups while obviously useless against slower decks.
Score: 1
Arachnathid
This card requires an overly specific scenario to be useful. It is prohibitively expensive, which means we need to have minions in play before we play it, then run our minions into enemy minions. 7 mana is nearly Twisting Nether’s cost. We would rather play Twisting Nether, or some other expensive but unconditional AOE.
Score: 1
Escape Artist
A strange minion that disappears from the game after it gets to attack once. Essentially, we are paying 2 mana for a delayed and conditional 4 damage + draw a card. We are not sure which decks would want this. Aggressive decks want their minions to stay on the board. Defensive decks have better card-draw or removal options.
Score: 1
Frantic Forger
A 2-mana 2/2 that generates temporary, high variance, low-quality value. This is probably not good enough to fit in anywhere.
Score: 1
Alarm-o-Matic
Sort of Dirty Rat, except we are pulling an enemy minion to our side of the board. The issue is we are letting our opponent prevent the effect from happening just by killing a pitiful 0/3. The counterplay is too easy.
Score: 1
Disguised Executioner
This can act as a deathrattle activator or single-target removal. Somehow, it does neither of those things well. As single-target removal, we are handing over a 5/4 to our opponent, which is too big of a penalty. Even if we kill an 8/8 giant, spending 3 mana to “shrink” the threat to a 5/4 is ridiculously weak. There are cards in the game that kill an 8/8 giant for 3 mana or less without giving anything back.
As a deathrattle activator, for a card such as The Egg of Khelos, this is too expensive and likely does not make it into an Egg Warlock or an Egg Warrior.
Even when ignoring the randomness of the effect, which can mess things up for us depending on board placement, we are not impressed.
Score: 1
Jailbird
A potentially 0-cost 3/4 taunt for decks that possess Prepare cards. The big drawback of the Prepare mechanic is that we are passing turns and giving up initiative while discounting these cards. Jailbird offers us a way to develop stats and defend ourselves in our vulnerable setup turns, which makes the minion valuable.
We think any deck that runs a critical mass of Prepare cards will automatically run Jailbird, but it does require us to run at least 4 prepare cards (ideally 6) and not every deck can easily accommodate it. Strong card when properly supported and might even encourage some decks to run more cards from the family.
Score: 3
Classes: Demon Hunter, Mage, Priest
Captured Archmage
A useless 2-drop as a standalone card, but if we can repeatedly copy Archmage or resurrect it, its deathrattle starts shooting fireballs at enemies. Add Umbra and Deios to the equation and it is possible to build up towards a 60-damage OTK that is extremely difficult to outlast. 30 damage without Deios is not bad either.
There are a few classes that can support this win condition. Paladin can run Archmage as the Beatrix 2-drop and tutor Archmages with Scarlet Recruiter and Reinforcement Aura. Warlock can cast Bat Mask on Archmage. Demon Hunter can chain resurrect it with Ravenous Felhunter and Ferocious Felbat.
We are intrigued by the finishing potential of this card.
Score: 3
Classes: Demon Hunter, Paladin, Warlock
Rat Burglar
This Rat requires us to activate draws for the opponent on our turn, which is not an easy effect to possess. Yoinking cards from the opponent’s hand is powerful, but the condition is difficult to meet, while the mana investment likely required to perform the combo is too steep.
Note that any Rat combo does not actually reduce the opponent’s resources in hand. It only takes away the cards we have handed them over on our turn. This is irrelevant unless we yoink a key win condition or they are hitting fatigue. Otherwise, the only impact is card advantage on our side.
Score: 1
Getaway Hogdriver
A card-draw source for heavy minion decks. For Hogdriver to be worthwhile, we need a guaranteed or a near-guaranteed proc, as a 5-mana 5/2 that draws two cards is a terrible deal.
This card is mostly meant to be played in Zee Shaman, an archetype that has no access to Shaman’s best card-draw tools due to its inability to run spells. We can even double its battlecry in some circumstances to draw 4 cards. We doubt this will be a common inclusion in other classes, as they will usually have cheaper card draw available to them.
Score: 2
IMPFERNAL!
This minion triggers its deathrattle even if it gets destroyed in hand or deck, which makes it an interesting fit for strategies that run deck destruction or discard effects. A 3-damage AOE for free is a significant boon in faster matchups. Note that the AOE is equivalent to Hellfire: it also hits both heroes.
Ideally, we never actually spend mana to play this minion. This is a prime target for Zuramat’s Prison and will likely see play in whatever deck finds use for the legendary location.
Score: 2
Classes: Zuramat’s Prison decks.
Black Market Auctioneer
Auctioneer is back in Standard. Unfortunately, it is absurdly expensive and difficult to use. Even if we pass on turn 3 or 4, playing Auctioneer on turn 5 will not help us much unless we are loaded with 0-cost spells. This means we need to pass turn 5 or 6 for Auctioneer to be remotely usable.
We think this is too much to ask, especially when Auctioneer has a hidden restriction that requires our deck to be dense with spells. Rogue and Druid are the closest classes that can utilize Auctioneer, but they either have better draw options, or they cannot support Auctioneer without giving up too much in other areas.
Too safe on the cost here.
Score: 1
Warden Maiev
This is an incredible legendary for aggressive decks that run a healthy dose of cheap minions. A 3/3 buff is massive and even though there is a dormancy penalty on the buffed minion, it makes things increasingly awkward for a defensive opponent trying to remove our threats.
Remember that dormancy resolves on our turn, so we get to spend more mana developing the board with the minions we have summoned alongside Maiev on the previous turn. This unlocks the possibility of building a mega-board without counterplay, one that we hope that the opponent cannot answer with its available mana.
Whether we drop Maiev early or save her for a later turn, she represents a must-kill target that the opponent cannot ever ignore or risk losing the game on the spot. Its worth in stats is simply too high to disregard. A staple in every aggressive deck going forward, unless it is abnormally light on minions.
Score: 4
Classes: Aggro decks.
Inspector Murloc Holmes
A 4-mana 4/5 is not acceptable for constructed play, so we need to evaluate the reliability of us triggering the gain of 3 coins. We have no control over the investigated card, which means there is no way for us to increase our chances of Murloc Holmes correctly predicting the opponent’s next play. It is random and depends on the number of cards in the opponent’s hand.
Since the investigated card is random, the opponent does not have a great incentive to drastically change their play to avoid giving us coins. What they can do is play a smaller number of cards, so the investigated card is statistically less likely to be included in them.
If we play Holmes on turn 4, it is not too likely to trigger against an opponent with a large hand size. If we play it against an aggressive deck with fewer cards in hand, we are more likely to trigger it, but playing a 4-mana 4/5 that does nothing is more punishing in these matchups. In the late game, our opponent is more likely to play multiple cards a turn, but the impact of gaining coins is smaller.
Considering Murloc Holmes has no major synergy in our deck, we should pass. It is a long shot that it is good enough in Rogue for the coin generation.
Score: 1
Zuramat’s Prison
A loaded legendary location. Zuramat’s Prison contains three charges, which means a turn 5 Prison is resolved on turn 9, unless we accelerate it with ‘Welcome Home!’. This clearly establishes it as a late-game-oriented tool for slower decks.
The effect of each charge is a 5/5 taunt for a discarded card. Three 5/5 taunts represent decent accumulated value for 5 mana, which can help us stabilize, but the cost of three discarded cards is significant on paper when it comes to card advantage.
The deathrattle is when things are kicked up a notch. An 8/8 Zuramat is summoned alongside the final 5/5 taunt, and Zuramat plays one of the three cards we discarded. If it is a minion, it is summoned to the board. If it is a spell, it is cast. We get a 5/5 taunt, an 8/8 Zuramat and an additional free card played.
This free card is likely to be a high-value one, as we can choose which cards to put in the Zuramat pool. We can build the deck with a top-end curve of minions that represent immediate threats, with the most drastic example being Briarspawn Drake. It can be paired with Impfernal to become stronger against aggressive decks. Alternatively, we can use Zuramat’s Prison to cheat out an expensive combo piece, such as Deios, though it is less reliable.
This location possesses a powerful effect. It is slow and Zuramat can be cleared on the turn it is summoned, which would mean only one of our discarded cards got played for free. For it to be strong against aggressive decks, it needs to be accommodated with an otherwise dead draw in Impfernal. But its late-game potential is clear, and its core synergies are available to every class, so there is a good chance one of them manages to use it well. Watch out for Warlock in particular.
Score: 3
Classes: Mostly Warlock
Vanessa the Ringleader
Not much is needed to be said about one of the most impactful pre-release legendary cards we have seen. An incredible value generator that can be discounted through the Prepare mechanic and played as early as turn 4-5 to completely blow out an opponent, while it does not lose any power in the late game due to its scaling with available mana.
Since Vanessa triggers off every card, she can feed on her own generated and discounted value to keep the chain going. Supporting her is easy as it only requires us to run cheap cards. Whether they are spells or minions does not matter. Even though Rogue and Druid are her best homes, she could fit in anywhere.
The most likely card in the set to be nerfed in the first patch for Violet Hold, as it has already proven to be an absolute menace with its high-mulligan impact through its early blow-outs.
Score: 4
Classes: Mostly Rogue and Druid
Togwaggle, Smuggler King
A chaotic late-game disruption card. Togwaggle shuffles both players’ hands around, swapping some of our cards with the opponent. This effect is neutral at its baseline and is only beneficial if our opponent’s deck is reliant on specific cards for its win condition. Ideally, we should not have our own core pieces in hand when we play it.
We believe the only fringe use-case for Togwaggle is in an attrition deck, with the goal of disrupting a win condition reliant on specific pieces. It is more likely to successfully disrupt a wide variety of win conditions compared to Dirty Rat, but it is far more expensive and difficult to accommodate.
This steep cost and possibility of backfiring make us wary of Togwaggle’s broad use. It is mostly likely to sit dead in hand and heavily punish us for drawing it in faster matchups, while its late-game applications are narrow. The ultimate Bronze rank tech card.
Score: 1
Escape from Violet Hold Summary of Ranks
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