Holy Bola!
This spell is only good if it draws a second card. Drawing a single card for 2 mana is unacceptable, and we do not want to gamble on this effect either. A cost requirement of 2 or less is quite extreme, even for an aggressive deck.
The one deck that could use Holy Bola is Aggro Paladin. This deck has completely disappeared months ago due to lack of interest and a subsequent nerf to Flight Maneuvers. Its curve would accommodate this spell to an extent it would be very consistent. Cheap card draw is something the archetype would appreciate, though it is questionable whether players will care enough to revive the archetype as it is not receiving a bulk of interesting new cards to play with.
But objectively, this card has competitive potential.
Score: 2
Scarlet Bruiser
The return of Pure Paladin? A 2-mana 2/2 that generates a resource with a discount that pays for itself is a good minion. This is not an aggressive card, but one that promotes a slower, value-centric game plan.
Currently, Paladin is already relatively close to employing a deck with no neutrals, as evidenced by Aura Paladin with the End-Turn package. While some small sacrifices need to be made, a slower Paladin deck can realistically meet the condition without significant trouble.
Furthermore, the value-generating potential of Bruiser could make it a candidate to become the centrepiece 2-drop for Beatrix, Scarlet Recruiter and Reinforcement Aura. This would make Aura Paladin extremely grindy, while possessing the capability to produce threatening board states. However, this does require us to give up on Violet Treasuregill.
The main reason we think it has a good chance of seeing play is that Paladin is not reliant on neutrals to compete in the late game and Beatrix could turn it into Pure Paladin’s late game centrepiece if it chooses the grindy late game route.
Score: 3
Truth Seeker
This weapon’s buff is massive, but it is also extremely expensive. Decks that would seek this buff to be their finisher will normally be aggressive and possess a low curve, such as Aggro or Dude Paladin. A turn 7 buff is likely too late to make an impact in these decks. These archetypes employ finishers that cost 5 mana at most, as these cards are cheap enough to be online in a large majority of their games. A 7-mana card in a deck with an average game length of 7 turns (Dude Paladin) will normally underperform.
Furthermore, Truth Seeker is conditional to only buff Paladin minions, which seems like a needlessly excessive penalty on a card that would not even be particularly good without it. This limits the weapon to a very narrow type of deck that does not seem to support aggression from turn 1.
We are not convinced that slow decks can support it through their board development, even if they go the Pure route. At best, this is a tech card against highly defensive strategies, but we think Paladin has better tools to win attrition matchups.
Score: 1
Reinforcement Aura
This Aura pulls a cheap minion from our deck for 3 turns. The overall value is quite good for 3 mana, as we are potentially pulling 3 2-drops with it. The only requirement here is that the 2-drop in question possesses a static effect, rather than a battlecry.
The solution for the density of 2-drops required to support Reinforcement Aura is Beatrix, which we will discuss later. We do not think Reinforcement Aura is a competitive card without the Paladin rulebreaker, as it is too slow for aggressive decks and requires an unnaturally high count of 2-drops to support, especially if we run Scarlet Recruiter alongside it.
The fit in Aura Paladin seems natural, with the potential to enhance the effect through Gelbin or Sandfury Aura. However, it does conflict with Violet Treasuregill, while the recent trend to drop the Aura package in the second half of Cataclysm was fully justified, so whether this set pushes the Aura package to become an optimal choice again is not guaranteed.
Since we rate Beatrix and Scarlet Recruiter highly, this card has a strong chance of seeing play through its association.
Score: 3
Vigilant Sentry
The second Pure payoff. Three 2/3 taunts for 3 mana is an incredible deal and a needed defensive card for an archetype that is likely to be relatively greedy in its build, leaving itself vulnerable to aggression. Three 2/3 taunts would be a powerful play at 4 mana, so the card is clearly pushed to greatly encourage a Pure build.
In theory, this number of stats can slot into an aggressive deck and pressure the opponent. In some games, this can happen, but Pure Paladin cannot be built aggressively with the current card pool. Aggressive Paladins are highly reliant on neutral early minions to be competitive.
If Pure Paladin manages to successfully establish a late-game win condition, it will become a top tier deck. Only a complete late-game failure could force the class to pivot to a neutral win condition. As amazing as this card is, if a slow deck does not have a reliable game plan for beating other slow decks, it disappears.
But we do not think this will be the case, so Paladin will be enjoying the benefits of this payoff for the foreseeable future.
Score: 4
Scarlet Recruiter
This 5-drop pulls cheap minions from our deck and turns them into removal by giving them rush. This is a powerful combination of two effects.
The first is pulling minions from our deck, which can often be better than summoning stats. Historically, this is an effect that has found a lot of success in Hearthstone. We have control of the minions we put in our deck, so we can include minions that have strong stats and strong static effects, such as deathrattles. A 4/4 with two 2-drops for 5-mana is a worthy investment.
The second effect is giving the minions rush, which makes the 2-drops significantly more valuable. In fact, we would budget this effect as an additional 1 mana, since now our minions have an immediate impact on the board and can swing the game state without counterplay.
While it is likely that Scarlet Recruiter and Reinforcement Aura will be played in the same deck with Beatrix, Recruiter is a more powerful standalone card that does not necessarily require the same level of support and synergy as the other two cards do. It is objectively cracked.
Score: 4
Dalaran Champion
A 4-mana 3/3 with divine shield and taunt is not good enough to be a constructed card. The upside of Champion is that any buff on it gets enhanced further by +1/+1. This works well with its scaling keywords, which become more powerful as we increase the stats on the body.
The main question is where does Dalaran Champion fit. We have doubts about its competitive viability in a deck that relies on on-board buffs. The reason is that 4 mana is a sizeable investment and it is difficult, especially for the proactive decks that would use the minion, to both play it and cast a buff on it on the same turn. If this is not done, then Champion becomes a high-priority target to remove, but on turn 4, it is not a difficult minion to clear. We would not count on this minion needing to survive to be useful on turn 5 when we can play Nozdormu or Toreth.
Which brings us to handbuff decks, which can buff Champion before it is played, with no counterplay from the opponent. The problem here is that a Handbuff archetype is not close to looking feasible with the current card pool. There is simply little to no support for it. Do we play 10 Grimestreet Outfitters with Beatrix?
So Dalaran Champion is a bit homeless and does not fit the rest of the set. It feels a bit like a throwaway filler card.
Score: 1
Judgment
A strange card that is probably one of the most challenging ones to evaluate and discuss from the whole set. In our attempts to figure out whether this is useful or not, we tried to separate its potential uses. One use is as a buff, where we increase the size of our minions to the biggest one we have for the sake of pushing damage. The other use is as a debuff, to shrink enemy minions to the smallest minion we have.
The debuff usage seems optimistic and clunky. We need to Prepare the card and then target a Silver Hand Recruit of ours. But this action does not clear the board, it only shrinks the minions, which is an effect that has proven itself to not be good enough on many other occasions. The reason is that many threats in constructed are threats because of their effects rather than their stats. Judgment does not cleanly deal with those types of threats and is already expensive to use, potentially requiring us to also spend mana on a hero power and/or another card to wipe the board with.
The buff usage is also awkward. A board buff is one that fits a proactive deck, yet we need to spend a turn preparing Judgment, which risks us losing our board advantage and an opportunity to develop a board that would be ripe for Judgment. In addition, board-flooding decks do not generally build tall threats. Judgment requires us to have a big minion and other small ones, while not facing opposing minions that could put us at risk. This is not a common board state in Hearthstone.
It is possible that some late-game combo can be utilized with Judgment and this is where the card may surprise us, but our guess is that it will not work out.
Score: 1
Commander Beatrix
Beatrix sets our deck to have 40 cards, with 10 copies of a 2-mana minion of our choice. This is determined in the deckbuilding phase. So, without specific tutors, every 4th draw in our deck will be this 2-drop.
First, we want to say that Beatrix’ 40-card deck determination is not necessarily a drawback as in the case of Renathal, where we need 10 extra life at the start of the game to make it powerful. Renathal forced us to run 10 extra cards that are worse in quality than the first 30 cards that we want to put in our deck. Beatrix allows us to choose a potentially desired card that we want to draw more than other cards in our deck. While it is possible that there is no such card, this is not necessarily a drawback in theory. This is not an Azalina that wrecks our synergy levels.
The question is whether there is a 2-drop that we can build around in such a dramatic fashion that we do not mind having 10 copies of. Thankfully, Beatrix has support in the form of Scarlet Recruiter and Reinforcement Aura. These cards can pull a significant number of copies of this 2-drop out of our deck, which can negate the dilution effect on our draw quality.
Recruiter and Aura push this 2-drop to be a static effect 2-drop, such as a deathrattle. Two ideas are Scarlet Bruiser and Captured Archmage. Bruiser can lead to a grindy Pure Paladin deck, while Archmage in combination with Umbra can build up to a massive OTK turn.
We think Beatrix opens promising late-game opportunities for the class in the immediate term, while things can easily pop up with a release of a single 2-drop in the future.
Score: 4
V’ama, Looming Death
This legendary is clearly meant to be leveraged in a Pure (or relatively Pure) Paladin deck in which V’ama selectively targets enemy minions, though it will obviously be useless in the mirror matchup.
A 9-mana Twisting Nether, even when compensated with a 5/5, is quite slow. We are not sure how often V’ama will bail out a Paladin that has fallen behind against slower strategies, though we recognize that there is subtle synergy between V’ama and Beatrix, since the Paladin rulebreaker encourages us to pivot to win conditions that are slow to build up and can overwhelm even the most defensive strategies.
Currently, Paladin needs to be the one to pressure in these slow matchups, so the dynamic needs to shift for V’ama to be useful as it allows the Paladin to sit back and buy more time. Against aggressive decks, V’ama comes online too late. We think the card has the best chance of being competitive if Captured Archmage becomes a legitimate win condition inside Beatrix. Otherwise, it is a skip.
Score: 2
Final Thoughts
Violet Hold Set Rank: 2nd
Overall Power Ranking: 3rd
Paladin is getting a strong set that provides it with some new-late game opportunities thanks to Beatrix and the 2-drop package with Scarlet Recruiter and Reinforcement Aura. What we like about it is that depending on the 2-drop, the nature of the win condition can drastically change.
There are only two Pure Paladin payoffs, but both cards may prove to be a big deal. Vigilant Sentry is a very important card in faster matchups, because it is a massive roadblock for aggressive decks.
Scarlet Bruiser inside Beatrix is worth so much value that the Paladin might be able to grind out opponents like an attrition deck. This value is discounted so Pure Paladin can gain incremental advantages from it over time. The drawback is that it is not explosive, but Aura Paladin already has a solid pressure shell that can accommodate it. Giving up neutral cards is not a big sacrifice.
Paladin can also straight up OTK opponents through the Captured Archmage route with Umbra, but Archmage is far weaker than Scarlet Bruiser earlier in the game. Giving up Sentry also leaves us more vulnerable to aggressive decks.
Dude Paladin may experiment with Truth Seeker while Aggro Paladin gets ‘Holy Bola!’ as a solid card-draw engine, but these decks may struggle to get visibility.
Pure Paladin will get most of the attention and unlike other Paladin decks in the last few years, it may prove to be genuinely attractive to players if it employs the Beatrix/Bruiser pairing.
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