The Comprehensive Fractured in Alterac Valley Preview

 

Gnome Private

Reasonable 1-drop for aggressive decks if they’re lacking other options. Extra points for buffs.

Score: 2

Classes: Aggro decks

Corporal

Highly optimistic ability.

Score: 1

Gankster

Cute with Ramming Mount or other buffs. Can potentially stop minion development in its tracks. Too cool to give a 1.

Score: 2

Classes: Hunter

Ram Commander

Not a bad reload card for decks that like handbuffs or tokens.

Score: 2

Classes: Demon Hunter, Paladin, Warrior

Sneaky Scout

Is a 3/2 stealth minion for 2 mana just good enough without the Honorable Kill ability? Possible, but not likely. We’re not in Barrens anymore.

Score: 1

Stormpike Quartermaster

This could be interesting in a class that can stack and discount a lot of cheap spells and funnel buffs to certain impact minions. Worthy of an Epic Sax Guy video.

Score: 2

Classes: Priest?

Bunker Sergeant

Unlikely to be impactful enough. This set is full of so many good defensive cards that it probably doesn’t make the cut anywhere.

Score: 1

Direwolf Commander

We’ll forget this card exists in a week.

Score: 1

Piggyback Imp

This isn’t bad. Seems quite annoying to deal with, but probably not good enough to fit in most decks that would consider it. Sticky.

Score: 2

Classes: Demon Hunter, Warlock

Reflecto Engineer

This card is way too weird not to end up in a decklist that hit #1 legend in China.

Score: 2

Classes: ???

Herald of Lokholar

This card has good stats for the effect but might be a little slow. The big upside here is that there’s one specific class whose frost spells are so powerful that a tutor for them might be worth including anyway.

Score: 2

Classes: Shaman

Ice Revenant

Good card for an Elemental Shaman deck that runs frost spells, which is what we want to do if it wasn’t already clear from the Shaman set. Nice synergy with Windchill.

Score: 2

Classes: Shaman

Tower Sergeant

Is a 4 mana 6/6 even that good of a payoff? Seems worse and less flexible than Traveling Merchant.

Score: 1

Blood Guard

You have a wide board. You play Blood Guard. The opponent clears the board with AOE. You ask yourself why there’s a 5 mana 4/7 in your deck.

Score: 1

Frantic Hippogryph

You play this in Paladin and Libram of Wisdom help you score Honorable Kills every time!

Score: 1

Knight-Captain

The Pack filler in this expansion is very pack fillery.

Score: 1

Icehoof Protector

This 6-drop has 2 attack.

Score: 1

Legionnaire

This is probably too slow at 6 mana, but the effect is quite strong. Mildly interesting.

Score: 1

Humongous Owl

The biggest card in the set. It’s massive. Enormous. Gargantuan. We refer you to Tamsin’s Phylactery.

Score: 4

Classes: Warlock

Troll Centurion

These are the only minions in your Demon Hunter deck. You never draw them. You play Proving Grounds. The Centurions kill each other and deal 16 damage. Works every time.

Score: 1

Irondeep Trogg

We think this is one of the best cards in set and might become a very influential force in the meta. If your opponent cannot kill this via trade or a clean spell, Trogg can easily snowball out of control. It works extremely well in classes with cheap buffs that can follow up a turn 1 Trogg. It works extremely well with hand buffs. It scales incredibly well later in the game if you have more expensive buffs in your deck. Particularly powerful against quest decks, especially with first turn advantage. That scenario sounds downright oppressive.

Score: 4

Classes: Could be everywhere, but Druid, Hunter, Paladin and Priest stand out.

Kobold Taskmaster

Banana Buffoon saw play. This is a very similar card, but more powerful since the initial body is much better. Spell-slinging decks may want it as a generation engine to fuel their strategy. Has good synergy with Bless in Priest, specifically.

Score: 2

Classes: Mage, Priest, Rogue

Snowblind Harpy

Potentially a very good card in Freeze Shaman. Has strong synergy with Bolner, giving Shaman a legitimate tanking combo. Windchill takes care of board threats. Harpy prevents you from being burnt down.

Score: 3

Classes: Mage, Shaman, Warrior

Frostwolf Warmaster

This card seems nuts on paper, and yet we struggled to fit it into decks when theorycrafting. It’s not easy to get it discounted quickly in the early game, where it’s likely to be most dangerous.

But theorizing between a small group of people has its limits. There are millions of Hearthstone players, and someone will figure it out. Warmaster is the kind of card that can be built around to do broken stuff. We’ll be surprised if it never sees play.

Score: 4

Classes: One is enough.

Stormpike Marshall

Solid defensive card for decks that either lack those kinds of tools in their class sets or have deckbuilding restrictions. Alternatively, this could be a good card for handbuff decks, since they often spend a turn buffing their hand and potentially letting an opponent get a free hit.

Score: 2

Classes: Mage, Paladin, Warrior

Grimtotem Bounty Hunter

This card will see some play. Whether it will have merit is another story, but we can easily see a scenario in which this effect becomes valuable or sought after. Strong bait material.

Score: 2

Classes: All of them.

Popsicooler

This card is adorable and cool, but probably not good enough to find its way into deathrattle decks. Would be much stronger if it could freeze face, but the limitation to minions makes it too situational.

Score: 1

Frozen Mammoth

Very good stats for the cost. If an aggressive Mage deck that played minions existed, Frozen Mammoth would be a powerful option for it. Seems currently unlikely, but crazier things have happened.

Score: 2

Classes: Mage

Spammy Arcanist

Defile on a neutral body is quite something. The higher cost clearly makes it worse than Defile, which was much more flexible since you could activate it more easily with another card, but Spammy Arcanist could find its way into a deck that’s desperate for any kind of board clear it can find.

Score: 2

Classes: Defensive decks.

Abominable Lieutenant

This could be an option for a big deck that likes to cheat out big minions, but this is terrible on an empty board and very underwhelming into a wide board. Fringe.

Score: 2

Classes: Big decks.

Ivus, the Forest Lord

This card is weak early on and becomes comparable to Siamat later in the game. We don’t think Siamat would see any play right now, so just a slightly more flexible version is hardly something worth getting excited over. Can potentially high roll stats in the early game, but it’s a completely unreliable path. It might be decent in a handbuff deck because of the keyword scaling, or as a finisher in Druid running Guff, but those are fringe cases.

Score: 2

Classes: Druid, Paladin, Warrior

Drek’Thar

Some players may not be aware of this yet, but Drek’Thar has already proven to be a meta defining card in the brief period he’s been around in Stormwind. We’re a little confused about other content creators not giving him the maximum score as a consensus. He’s currently underutilized relatively to his absurd power level, and likely underexplored in several classes. Equivalent to Barnes in potential toxicity. Probably gets nerfed soon after the expansion’s launch.

Score: 4

Classes: Potentially all of them.

Korrak the Bloodrager

Scary card that could potentially be oppressive in several deathrattle strategies because it’s so awkward to clear. Any class with such synergies will immediately look to Korrak as a strong build-around. It’s important to note that triggering his deathrattle will still develop a copy, so Sketchy Information summons him to the board as well as Counterfeit Blade. Xyrella summons him. Tamsin’s Phylactery turns into a cracked Soul of the Forest. There’s a lot of potential here.

Score: 4

Classes: Demon Hunter, Priest, Rogue, Warlock

Vanndar Stormpike

Vanndar would be a good fit in big decks if not for the fact he interferes with recruit effects, so you’re forced to run a greedy curve and rely on drawing him to do all the work in terms of mana cheating. That makes things a bit awkward, but we think the effect is still so powerful that it will likely find its way to a competitive deck.

Score: 3

Classes: Potentially all of them.

Lokholar the Ice Lord

We don’t like the trigger for this card. If you’re at a low health total, a 5 mana 8/8 with rush and windfury may not even save you from dying. This could be a decent card in big decks, but even then, it competes with other valuable targets such as Scrapyard Colossus.

Score: 2

Classes: Big decks.

 

 

 

Fractured in Alterac Valley Summary of Ranks