Mosh Pit
This location is extremely limited by its corpse requirement rather than its mana cost. A turn 2 Mosh Pit does nothing for us on turn 3 since It’s impossible for us to accumulate enough corpses to trigger it (unless we play Plagued Grain on 1, in which case we’re passing our first 2 turns). Even if we had the corpses, it’s hard for us to think of a target in the early game that becomes so much better with Reborn. This suggests that Mosh Pit is a ‘late game’ location, meant to hit stuff with valuable deathrattles like Cage Head. We don’t have much faith in this application. Locations need to be useful in the early game too.
Score: 1
Hardcore Cultist
Cultist is very weak at its baseline, but quite powerful when it triggers. A Consecration on top of a 2/1 for 3 mana is a good deal. The question is where this card fits and whether it can have a significant impact. We’re not quite convinced Cultist makes the cut in Frost-Aggro DK because it’s not very useful when we’re looking to pressure the opponent. A defensive Frost deck is more concerned with freezing the opponent’s board rather than clearing it. Activating Finale beyond turn 3 is also not trivial, forcing us to potentially spend hero powers inefficiently. If Remorseless Winter sees no play in any kind of Frost DK, that tells us this card could slip through the cracks.
Score: 1
Harmonic Metal
This is a very strong handbuff card. 8/8 stats for 3 mana, that can be directed to either two targets or spread out to four, giving us the option to be strategic in our choice to play it and allows us to get value even if we have few minions in hand. If we compare this to Blood Tap, one thing to note is that Harmonic Metal can always be played on turn 3, while Blood Tap has a corpse requirement that asks us to put minions in play before we can use it.
The most important thing, however, is the added redundancy. Blood-Buff Death Knight hasn’t been viable so far because its other handbuff cards beyond Blood Tap were simply not good enough. They only buffed the attack of minions and not the health. Now, this deck can search for one of these spells to get its game plan started more consistently. The archetype still has a lot to prove but Harmonic Metal is the kind of card that can put it over the edge.
Score: 3
Death Growl
This is probably the most powerful card in the Death Knight set. Death Growl heavily encourages Unholy-Death Knights to utilize deathrattle minions in their builds, which they’re already inclined to do. A Death Growl on something as small as a Foul Egg can be devastating in the early game and makes us want to add Nerubian Egg for further consistency. The number of stats you can stick to the board for 1 mana is too good to pass up in your quest to snowball the board.
Infectious Ghoul and Boneshredder come to mind as powerful mid-game spikes. Death Growl can enable late game combos too, with Cage Head. The card simply has huge implications for any stage of the game and with any new deathrattle minion that’s introduced to the format. It is likely one of the reasons Team 5 ended up cutting Carnivorous Cube from the Core set this year. That would have been gross, or beautiful, depending on your perspective.
Score: 4
Arcanite Ripper
The requirement means you can upgrade Ripper by simply using it to hit minions, taking damage in the process. This means that Ripper can very reliably summon a 3/3 with lifesteal on turn 4. That’s not bad, but the ceiling of this weapon in a Blood-Ctrl DK is extremely high considering it upgrades on any instance of healing. Blood Boil comes to mind as a card that can act as a very strong Ripper enabler. Vampiric Blood upgrades the weapon twice. A Blood DK can also just save the charges and hold the weapon, as the deck is in no rush to pressure the opponent. This is a great fit for the deck and a missing piece in its toolkit. Auto-include.
Score: 4
Death Metal Knight
This card looks good on paper. It is a stronger Happy Ghoul with taunt, but then you quickly realize it is hard to activate, even in a Blood Death Knight. Vampiric Blood is not a healing effect. Blood Boil and Gnome Muncher heal at the end of the turn. You need a lifesteal or a normal healing effect to proc it and these cards aren’t popular in Death Knight. We think this card is more likely to see play in a faster Death Knight, but it’s still going to be difficult to utilize. Noxious Cadaver/Voodoo Doctor/Death Metal Knight on turn 1 with coin, the dream.
Score: 1
Boneshredder
This card can be worth a lot of stats on curve even if it just triggers a Foul Egg deathrattle. If you’re running heavier deathrattles, it scales well too, making it a powerful enabler of Cage Head and Infectious Ghoul. You can play Boneshredder/Death Growl on turn 6 and really get a stew cooking. If your deathrattles summon minions, Boneshredder makes it quite easy to land Death Growls. The corpse cost is steep, but if Boneshredder is worth three bodies, then some of those corpses are paid back eventually. It doesn’t significantly hurt your ability to play Grave Strength or Lord Marrowgar later.
If you play Death Growl in your deck, you could consider this.
Score: 2
Screaming Banshee
This is a very interesting card that’s quite hard to evaluate because it attempts to defy common issues that have proven to be prohibitive in the past. Banshee is a 5 mana 3/6 that does nothing on the turn it’s played. That’s a big problem on paper. But the potential blowback of Banshee if you don’t literally die on the turn it’s played is significant. Trading into this is a nightmare, because any proc on the lifesteal summons minions on your side of the board. Blood DK tends to take a beating in the early game, so you should have enough health missing to gain a significant chunk.
Once you add other cards into the equation, Banshee becomes scarier. Any sort of Handbuff on the minion makes its ceiling exponentially higher. Banshee/Vampiric Blood summons 2 5/5’s, a massive swing. A Blood Boil with a Banshee in play can summon a full board for you. This is a card that’s impossible for the opponent to ignore and demands hard removal, a silence, or a transform effect. For a 5-mana card to be able to win games by itself, it is foolish to underestimate.
Score: 4
Cage Head
This legendary has arguably the most powerful deathrattle in the format. A 9/9 charger with taunt is no laughing matter. The issue is obviously the initial body. An 8 mana 5/1 ‘Rager’ with zero immediate impact on the board means the opponent gets a full late game turn to ignore it or deal with it before you get to charge with your Blight Boar. Cage Head is unplayable without synergies, but synergies do exist.
Construct Quarter significantly helps the card, allowing you to sack Cage Head on the turn it’s played, giving you a Grommash Hellscream type of finisher (but better since it has taunt). Boneshredder, if it lands on Cage Head, is game winning. If you ever have time to instantly Death Growl a Cage Head on turn 9, your opponent is set up for a lot of pain.
The card is very expensive and not trivial to use, but we do like its late game potential.
Score: 2
Climactic Necrotic Explosion
The first exclusive Rainbow Death Knight payoff. First, let’s explain this card a little bit. Every number on the card is improved by itself. The damage, the number of souls (capped at 7), the attack of the souls and the health of the souls. Every time you spend a corpse, one of these numbers gets upgraded. This means that after spending 20 corpses, this card will deal 10 damage and summon 7 6/6’s souls, on average. Obviously, there will be variance, but this is the kind of power you can expect.
The problem is that spending corpses is a rough task, especially for Rainbow DK. Many of the best corpse spenders are restricted to at least two runes of the same type. The corpse spenders available are tough to utilize together (Bone Commander, Corpse Bride, Boneshredder, Malignant Horror). It’s a challenge to build a deck that both heavily generates and heavily spends corpses.
And all of that for what? A single 10-mana spell that doesn’t even come close to guaranteeing a win in a slower matchup, where a turn 10 play would even be relevant. Explosion is flashy but looks ultimately unplayable because of its deck building restriction.
Score: 1
Final Thoughts
Festival of Legends Set Rank: 4th
Overall Power Ranking: 1st
Death Knight is in the envious position of not having to endure rotation. All of its established archetypes from the last 4 months remain intact, with significant room for improvements thanks to new cards.
Unholy should enjoy Death Growl. The card enhances its ability to develop sticky boards and encourages it to go lower to the ground to connect Growl to multiple bodies. Eggs are going to be a popular choice in the new format, and we expect Naval Mine to be considered as a tool to directly pressure the opponent’s life total. In addition, it has the option to lean harder to the late game through Cage Head, Infectious Ghoul and Boneshredder. The one issue is the absence of strong card draw for such a late-game-oriented strategy, especially when Chillfallen Baron is not a card you want to run with Boneshredder.
Blood is getting a big boost in power. Late game inevitability is Blood-Ctrl’s worst enemy, and inevitability tends to grow weaker post-rotation. Decks are less likely to present oppressive late game win conditions that circumvent removal. Attrition-focused Control decks have consistently shined brighter at the beginning of a new Hearthstone year, as evidenced by Control Warrior in Sunken City and Control Priest in Barrens.
But Blood-Ctrl isn’t just getting help through rotation, it’s getting very strong cards too. Banshee is an extremely powerful stabilizer that threatens to take over a faster matchup if not immediately addressed, while still presenting a threat in slower matchups thanks to Vampiric Blood. Arcanite Ripper is also a terrific fit for the archetype. If a pesky combo deck ever threatens Blood-Ctrl, it also has the option to run Dirty Rat. Its strong removal kit can deal with whatever Rat pulls, making it less likely to backfire.
Don’t sleep on Blood-Buff too. Harmonic Metal is the kind of card that helps the archetype reach a critical mass of handbuffs alongside Blood Tap and, potentially, Party Animal. A buffed Banshee sounds like a terrifying prospect.
Frost might be the only rune choice that isn’t getting a meaningful upgrade, but the reduction in effective off-board strategies that often occurs in rotation could increase the effectiveness of Frostwyrm’s Fury. This archetype could end up sneaking into the format, though the absence of new quality cards could keep its play rate low.
Team 5 is trying to support a Rainbow Death Knight. Most of the cards in the set are single rune cards, but Rainbow’s major payoff is a subtle yet brutal demand for a specific line of deckbuilding that we’re not sure it can or should support considering how expensive the payoff is.
Death Knight is a class we will be most surprised to see struggle since it has multiple avenues for success. Are we overestimating the class’ tools, as we did in the buildup of March of the Lich King, or is Death Knight just damn good?
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