Has Tourist access to: Druid
Cards can be played by: Hunter
Cup o’ Muscle
We love drinks. This is one of our favorites, as it costs 1-mana and can be played in Hunter for free with Concierge, which allows us to execute an extreme mid game turn where we can develop a ton of stats at a relatively cheap cost. Watch out for Mantle Shaper here.
Outside of this amazing potential in Hunter, this spell is just a solid handbuff card. Both Hunter and Warrior have several minions that scale exponentially by gaining attack. Most importantly, Cup o’ Muscle helps us spend mana efficiently throughout the game, just like Bunch of Bananas does. Spending mana is key to winning Hearthstone games, so when a 1-mana drink that’s worth (eventual) stats in play becomes available, you gobble it up. Delicious.
Score: 4
Line Cook
Line Cook can be considered a bigger Saronite Chain Gang that has more flexibility, offering more value to a deck in the late game. Ultimately though, it’s an undersized taunt that requires synergy and plenty of time to work.
We think there are only a couple of decks that could be interested in Line Cook, which are Blackrock Warrior and Taunt Warrior. In theory, we can turn this card into infinite value by continuously trading its copies. If Line Cook is buffed by Blackrock ‘n’ Roll, it’s a 5/7, so having a horde of them sounds good. Line Cook is also a decent activator for Battlepickaxe, as it offers two taunts in one card.
But Line Cook does not have a tribal tag, which is a killer for its chances of seeing play in other decks. It doesn’t fit existing Warrior archetypes either.
Score: 1
Muensterosity
This Elemental is worth a lot of stats, which is necessary if you want to be a viable late game card. A baseline Muensterosity is a 6/9 taunt that summons another 6/9. The ability is persistent, so it’s a threat that must be removed by the opponent or it gets too much value in additional Elementals.
Furthermore, this minion double scales with buffs, as the Elemental summoned will always have stats equal to the original body. Blackrock ‘n’ Roll, Unlucky Powderman and Detonation Juggernaut are all strong enablers as a result.
This is a prime candidate to be included in a Sandwich Warrior deck, due to its Elemental tag. The line of play consists of equipping The Ryecleaver, playing All You Can Eat to draw a bunch of minions between the slices of bread, then summoning them all in one swing. Since Muensterosity’s ability is static, it’s a great minion to cheat out.
It’s a good threat for fringe strategies, but don’t expect to see it in established decks such as Odyn or Reno Warrior.
Score: 2
All You Can Eat
This is an incredible draw engine and one of the main reasons we think Hunter’s access to the Warrior set is crucial. All You Can Eat is infinitely better than a card like Master’s Call, as it does not restrict our deck in any way, while acting as a mass tutor. It is a 3-mana Curator that has no tribal limitations, which you can run two copies of.
We want to emphasize that this draw engine does not need to be run by a “menagerie” deck. It’s more powerful in non-tribal decks. You can run three specific minions of different tribes and have All You Can Eat find all three of them. The level of consistency here is incredible and opens so many possibilities of deckbuilding manipulations that can lead to us always landing a power spike at a specific turn.
When we always find what we need to win Hearthstone games, we tend to win more of them. All You Can Eat is the type of card that helps us accomplish that. We’re confident it will create viable strategies in both Hunter and Warrior over its time in Standard, and we’re hungry to play it.
Score: 4
Char
This is a very slow removal spell with situational use. Dealing 7 damage to a minion for 4 mana is not great. The good news is that excess damage is never wasted. It gets converted into a stat buff to one of our minions in hand, making it a handbuff card.
What Char’s main role in Warrior might be is to kill the Entrée we summon on turn 3 with Food Fight. It fits the curve quite well. But after theorycrafting some ideas, we’ve grown to dislike Food Fight, as it’s a huge limiter on our minion choices in a deck. Char also has no redundancies, which makes the game plan inconsistent.
The card gets better in Hunter due to the availability of Chatty Macaw. Macaw’s randomness is probably offset best by Char, as excess damage is never wasted. If Macaw ends up shooting a small minion with Char, we don’t mind it at all.
We’ll be generous here because we do like it in Hunter, but don’t be surprised if this card is completely forgotten in 2 months.
Score: 2
Undercooked Calamari
A 4 mana 3/4 that casts Shadow Word: Pain on a minion, but with the potential to scale its removal ability with buffs. Calamari is the type of minion you don’t mind soaking a Cup o’ Muscle, as well as a multitude of handbuffs available in both Warrior and Hunter.
Handbuff minions that impact the board upon entrance are important, as Handbuff decks tend to start slow and fall behind, so they need a way to swing the game once they scale. Calamari is superior to a rush minion, as it doesn’t need to take any damage to kill a minion, nor can it be roadblocked by a taunt.
However, it is still dependent on a Handbuff, minion-dense strategy to be competitively viable to see play. That might not be the general direction of these classes in the Perils of Paradise format.
Score: 2
Food Fight
Food Fight is essentially a Big Warrior card with extra steps. We summon an Entrée to the opponent’s board, then try to kill it over the next couple of turns to pull one of the big minions in our deck. If we manage to kill the Entrée on turn 5, then we’ve managed to ‘recruit’ at a timing that’s considered to be strong for big decks. We see turn 6 as the very last turn when a big deck can compete by cheating out threats, but it’s often not enough.
The issue we have with Food Fight is that killing the Entrée demands additional resources from us. Dealing 6 damage is not an easy feat at this stage of the game. A Shield Block/Shield Slam on turn 4 isn’t enough. Burning Heart isn’t enough. The best we can hope for is a turn 4 Char, or a Bladestorm if our opponent disconnects from the game and never plays a minion.
But there’s another irritating thing about Food Fight, which is the minion limitation. We must play ‘big-appropriate’ minions in the deck, so no battlecry minions.
We don’t think Food Fight justifies the cost, nor do we think this card can consistently get us where we want to be as a Big deck. Sandwich Warrior can do better than this. Chemical Spill is better than this.
Score: 1
Draconic Delicacy
This dragon is basically a big Moonfang with rush and elusive. Moonfang did make some noise at a point in the game’s history, as minions with this ability are incredibly hard to remove. Damage-based removal is useless, while minion trades are impossible to make. You need a non-targeted removal spell, or a poisonous minion. Delicacy’s rush ability also gives it a free hit to kill an enemy minion when entering play, only taking 1 damage in the process. Hand buffs further scale up the card to be a real monster.
However, this card is very slow. 8-mana is the point in which most decks begin spending mana on their win conditions. Delicacy does not impose an immediate win condition, while being easily dealt with by defensive decks that do run indirect removal, Virus Zilliax, or a mind control effect. So, it’s not that great in some slow matchups, while being quite useless in fast matchups.
The one saving grace for Delicacy is its dragon tag, which makes it a great minion to cheat out with The Ryecleaver. If Sandwich Warrior finds success, it will take Delicacy along for the ride.
Score: 2
The Ryecleaver
The main source of mana cheating, which will be utilized by Sandwich Warrior. A 7-mana weapon is quite slow, but Ryecleaver can summon a powerful board the next turn, on our second weapon swing.
The key is to equip the weapon, get the first slice of bread into our hand, then play a source of card draw the next turn to get minions tucked in between the two slices of bread. This is important because Big Warrior isn’t going to be extremely minion dense, nor is it enough to have a single minion summoned by Ryecleaver. We need this turn to be a big blowout.
All You Can Eat is the best enabler of Ryecleaver, so it should not be played until we find the weapon. The good news is that with Instrument Tech available, we should have Ryecleaver on turn 7 every game. We can also run ramp cards to play the weapon earlier, with both New Heights and Trail Mix available from the Druid set. It’s all about whether this game plan is strong enough to win slower matchups, and whether we can survive against aggressive decks until the big turn.
Slower, defensive decks have mass removal options that can potentially answer a big board. Thankfully, we do have Hydration Station to resurrect our minions and develop multiple waves of threats. Faster matchups could be a more serious problem, as the archetype will have shed a lot of survivability tools to support its Ryecleaver game plan. Odyn, for example, is a much easier win condition to support while maintaining strong matchups into aggressive decks. This card is not comparable. Not in its late game inevitability, nor in its survivability.
Score: 2
Hamm, the Hungry
Let us be perfectly clear about this. Hamm is a bad card. It is a 6 mana 5/5 taunt that eats a minion from the opponent’s deck. It’s never going to live another turn to eat another minion and grow, so it’s essentially a smaller Mutanus with taunt and a far worse battlecry.
The reason it’s so much worse than Mutanus is that eating a minion from the opponent’s deck is the equivalent of putting it at the bottom of the deck. Since we have no control over the outcome, it’s essentially random. Unless the opponent hits fatigue, the ability is completely irrelevant when it comes to its true impact on the game.
Eating a minion in the opponent’s hand is much stronger because it impacts their current resources, denying a play from them. There is no such denial of play when we play Hamm.
However, none of this changes Hamm’s competitive viability. He can be a 6 mana 5/5 with no special ability. A Genn Greymane. He would still be Warrior’s most important card in the expansion.
Because access to the Druid set is simply mandatory for every single late game Warrior strategy. It’s the most mandatory access out of all classes. Access to ramp in Trail Mix and New Heights. Access to Sleep Under the Stars. Odyn Warrior is not passing this up. Control Warrior is not passing this up. Reno Warrior is not passing that up. Sandwich Warrior is not passing that up.
Therefore, Hamm is one of the strongest cards in the set. Not thanks to his ability, but his connections. This is Hearthstone nepotism.
Score: 4
Final Thoughts
Perils in Paradise Set Rank: 11th
Tourist Synergy Score: A+
Overall Power Ranking: 2nd
This might be the biggest carry job in Hearthstone history. In contrast to receiving the most questionable set in the format, which supports a Big Warrior archetype of unknown quality, Warrior is gaining access to the strongest set in the format. A Druid set that is perfectly suitable for its needs. The Druid set is the real Warrior set and there is no world in which we ever give that up.
The most dramatically powered archetype in the class will be Odyn Warrior. But we’re not sure we’ll be able to call it Odyn Warrior anymore. We’re not even sure it will run Odyn. That’s because in many matchups, it will simply win through cheating out an unkillable Zilliax, then proceed to resurrect it with one of the three resurrection cards that are available in its deck. There is no initiative-focused deck in the game that can stand up to an army of Zilliax.
You might say that we’ve been down on every attrition deck in the format, so why is Control Warrior different? Unlike other classes, Warrior has access to armor gain that can help it outlast many of the burst finishers in this set. Sleep Under the Stars is a huge armor gain card that allows you to gain 15 armor when you’re not under pressure through the board. Add Razorfen Rockstar to the mix and we could be looking at a mountain to climb for any deck that relies on a finite amount of burn.
While it’s true that some decks have oppressive amounts of damage, it also means they are more vulnerable to aggressive decks. Many players will try out all the high lethality decks that come with the set. In turn, they’ll be met with a horde of aggressive decks that look to punish them. That’s where Warrior comes in, to blow out early aggression more effectively than any other deck, while having its own win condition in late game matchups.
The deck that may suffer from the increased lethality is Reno Warrior. It might be able to incorporate the Druid toolkit into its build, but its win condition will still be attrition based.
We do also have the prospect of Big Warrior, which seems like fun. But we’re not convinced it has the necessary tools to pressure decks early enough in the game. It does have a tremendous amount of reload through Hydration Station to summon waves of threats, much like Control Warrior, but it doesn’t have the same level of clock that Odyn or Zilliax enable.
Warrior should emerge as a powerhouse class regardless of how to the format shapes up. Brace yourself for the era of the Unkilliax.
