Bone Flurry
Dealing 3 split damage for 2 mana is weak, but activating the condition makes Flurry very strong at 6 damage. For this spell to be consistent, we need to be playing a proactive deck that always has minions in play. In this scenario, we can easily kill a friendly minion on our turn with a trade and then proceed to either wipe out the opponent’s board or push more face damage.
The Unholy rune requirement is a hint to where this card belongs, though it is still possible that slower decks will try out the card. At a pinch, we can always use a hero power to activate it, though increasing the effective cost of Flurry to 4 mana makes it far less appealing.
We suspect this card will be a staple in an aggressive Unholy deck, while its success in slower decks is reliant on their ability to proactively develop.
Score: 3
Corpse Cannon
Corpse Cannon is slightly better than a 2/3 weapon for 2 mana. The damage is split, so we can direct it more efficiently in trades, while the Frail Ghoul generation means the weapon is worth 3 corpses after 2 swings.
However, 2-attack weapons are unable to deal with a significant portion of early-game minions and Corpse Cannon is not a threatening weapon in slower matchups. This weapon has a steep rune requirement of two Unholy runes, but the same decks that run these runes may prefer to stick with the more threatening Command Claw. Command Claw does not need to clear minions to be strong, as it provides buffs to our minions to push more damage and demands answers from the opponent.
We do not envision Unholy-Aggro Death Knight to drop Command Claw for Corpse Cannon and we cannot see a slower Unholy deck emerging with the current card pool that would want Cannon.
Score: 1
Emergency Surgery
Summoning three 3/1’s is not worth 5 mana, even if they have lifesteal. The upside of this spell is that it acts as immediate removal, with the Undead attacking a targeted minion and potentially healing us.
Once we evaluate the potential outcomes of this card, the usefulness of this card proves to be deceptive. Would we play a spell that dealt 9 damage for 5 mana with lifesteal? This spell would be as unimpressive as Death Strike. How about 6 damage with lifesteal alongside a 3/1? Still looks about as good as Death Strike. 3 damage with lifesteal and two 3/1’s? That is a Drain Soul with a couple of minions not worth 1 mana each.
Of course, the advantage compared to these theoretical spells is that Surgery is more flexible and can be cast on targets with different sizes without diminishing returns. This is what makes the card serviceable, but we do not expect it to be more than that. If a Death Knight deck has some slots to spare and aligns with the rune requirements, it can consider this.
Score: 2
Drink Blood
Drain Soul with a hero power refresh. This does not sound great without a unique hero power, such as the mana-less hero power we get from Blood Doctor Thal’ena or the Imbue package. Another one to consider is Deathwing, where a hero power refresh leads to a Pyroblast on the opponent’s head.
This means that Drink Blood is serviceable in the early game when we want to clear an early-game threat, but scales well in the late game once we acquire powerful hero powers that are worth refreshing. A Herald Death Knight with Deathwing and Thal’ena would be the ideal candidate for this spell.
Death Knight does historically receive cards that change its hero power more often than other classes (Headless Horseman is another example), so Drink Blood could be a reasonable option both in the short and long term.
Score: 2
Blood Clone
Another ‘early game’ spell that looks good when activated on curve until we realize it is just not happening on curve, ever. 5 corpses on turn 3 is unrealistic even with an ideal curve. The two Blood Rune requirement denies it from Unholy decks, which are the only ones that can come close to this level of corpse accumulation.
Discovering a single minion for 3 mana is completely unacceptable, so we must wait until the mid-game to gather enough corpses to summon a 5-drop for 3 mana. This is not bad, as we still get the original copy in our hand for the next turn, but we are not sure we want to use the corpses on this card rather than on, for example, Reanimated Pterrordax.
We think Blood decks will skip this card and stick with the more consistent swing option.
Score: 1
Sawbones
This might be the flashiest card in the Death Knight set. Everything about it initially evokes a ‘wow’ from us. We can completely discount it, summon a board full of minions and then sack them for extra draw while refreshing mana to execute a full turn with the cards we have just drawn. On the surface, Sawbones looks extremely powerful.
But then we get to the deck building part and realize that Death Knight does not have cards in Standard that summon lots of minions easily, such as Crop Rotation. In fact, Death Knight is extremely limited in its ability to do this without investing a significant number of resources or running questionable cards such as Army of the Dead or Mother Duck.
Aggressive decks cannot afford to run Sawbones because they do not want to kill their own board, nor can they afford the lost initiative from Preparing Sawbones, which requires us to skip a full turn in the mid-game.
From a card that looks initially amazing, we have concluded that we will be surprised if it sees play any time soon. Of course, with the right support or an interaction we have missed, everything is possible, but our hot take is that Sawbones will end up unemployed. For the tools available to the class, it is too expensive.
Score: 1
Disguised Doctor
This is a uniquely bad disguised minion, one that we simply cannot play on our side of the board. A 1-mana 5/1 is laughably bad with such a terrible drawback. The purpose of Disguised Doctor is to play it on the opponent’s side of the board. The problem is that we want to immediately kill it, as we do not want our opponent to get a free 5-attack swing with it.
Immediately killing it means we need to expend yet another resource for it on the same turn (whether it is mana to ping it or run a minion into it), all for the sake of shuffling Blights that are inferior to the memorable Plagues with Helya. Remember that this card does absolutely nothing to help our board or provide us with resources.
Even if we build around The Living Plague, which we will mention later, we think Disguised Doctor is not worth including.
Score: 1
Tower of Ghouls
This 4-drop looks very slow to get going but has the potential in specific circumstances to get out of control. Note that if the opponent damages this minion on their turn, we still get to attack with the Frail Ghouls on our turn.
A 4-mana 2/7 is generally not something we would consider to be threatening, as the opponent can simply ignore it and Tower of Ghouls needs to damage itself via trades to proc its ability. So, we are spending 4 mana on a minion that does not want to attack face, something that is a red flag for a board-flooding aggressive deck that would be the prime candidate to use this card. A slow deck would never consider it, after all.
But one interaction gives us some food for thought, which is Talanji’s Last Stand. If we play Tower of Ghouls and the opponent ignores it, a single trade means we can instantly summon a couple of 4-drops with Last Stand. If our opponent tries to value trade into Tower of Ghouls without clearing the Frail Ghouls that pop out, we can threaten them with either Last Stand or even Grave Strength on our turn.
This means that Tower of Ghouls might be a deceptively strong card in faster matchups, where board tension is high. Its weakness is likely slow decks, where single-target removal could turn it into a game losing play, or the opponent can ignore it while taking only 2 damage a turn. But since we are playing an aggressive Unholy Death Knight, they cannot sit back forever.
We are a bit sceptical due to the reliance on Last Stand to be dangerous, but Tower of Ghouls may not be as slow and clumsy as it may initially look.
Score: 2
Blood Doctor Thal’ena
Thal’ena provides an additional hero power (it does not replace our existing one) that costs 3 corpses to buff a minion by 3 attack. Since the hero power does not cost mana, we can use it on the turn we play Thal’ena too, which could make up for the initial 5-mana cost on an underwhelming 4/6 body.
This legendary is clearly meant for long, drawn-out games, where the mana-less hero power can help us slowly gain an edge on the opponent. At a pinch, we can double hero power for a 4/1 Ghoul that either helps us clear enemy minions or push face damage. But if we can generate corpses, this 3-damage button will make up for the initial investment.
Thal’ena does have competition for corpses in the form of Husk, Eternal Reaper. Since both legendary minions require steep corpse spending, it is difficult to see them co-existing. Husk performs well in current Herald Death Knight, so Thal’ena may not be an automatic inclusion in slow Death Knight decks, should they prove to be competitive down the road.
What is clear though, is that unlike Husk, Thal’ena provides a steady impact on the state of the game. Alongside Deathwing, they represent 8 damage per turn just from hero powers. Not a number to disregard.
Score: 3
The Living Plague
A charge minion that… does not hit the opponent’s face. Instead, it shuffles Blights at a number that is equal to its attack value. 7 attack means 7 Blights that deal 2 damage each. 14 damage is a lot, but not when it slowly trickles, which means it can be dealt with more easily through healing or armor gain.
However, we could try to increase The Living Plague’s attack value. This can be done with buffs, but there are other options that cost no additional mana too. It is an Undead minion, so the Imbue package works on it. It can also be buffed by the hero power we get from Thal’ena. Theoretically, an Imbue Death Knight with Thal’ena can buff The Living Plague to well over 15 attack. Add Memoriam Manifest to resurrect it and we can shuffle 20 more Blights on paper.
35 Blights is a point where no deck will have an easy time outlasting, but can an Imbue Death Knight get to that point with any consistency? We think the archetype is extremely flawed and vulnerable, and it will receive no boost in its survivability from this set, so we will be surprised if it works out. The Living Plague will likely be a living meme.
Score: 1
Final Thoughts
Violet Hold Set Rank: 10th
Overall Power Ranking: 11th
Death Knight seems to be in a weak position going into Violet Hold. We know its current tools are not adequate to compete in the late game with other slow strategies, as it does not possess the game-closing capabilities required.
This set does not provide Death Knight much to work with in that department. Thal’ena provides some pathway to incremental advantages, but Death Knight likely needs more than that to compete with decks that have a more explosive late game. The Living Plague looks unimpressive, slow and difficult to leverage. It might need an Imbue shell to work, but this shell has never worked before.
Bone Flurry is probably the best new addition for the class and should be a welcomed addition to proactive decks, though we wonder whether Unholy Death Knight will attract enough attention to make its mark. Aggressive decks need to be elite to be noticed. It is not enough to be the 4th-best aggressive deck out there, so we know from this game’s history.
We are inclined to predict a whimpering start for the class. Every other class has something more exciting to work with.
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