Has Tourist access to: Shaman
Cards can be played by: Warlock
Corpsicle
A potentially endless source of damage if our corpse generation is high. Dealing 3 damage for 2 mana is the baseline acceptable rate, making it comparable with Frozen Touch. We could argue that Corpsicle is the easier card to fuel between the two, as you don’t need it to be in hand to ‘activate’. Frozen Touch did enjoy the benefit of Aegwynn enabling it to burst down the opponent faster, but Corpsicle does have strong late game implications as a constant CNE booster.
We can see Rainbow Death Knight utilizing Corpsicle as its main late game nuke. Currently, the archetype’s corpse build generates far more corpses than it uses, so it’s not difficult to accommodate the card. With both Corpsicle and Horseman’s hero power, our damage clock becomes quite intimidating, far quicker than a Helya. We’re into this.
Score: 3
Dreadhound Handler
This is a sticky 2-drop that also has immediate impact on the board. A 2/2 rusher that summons a Murmy when it dies. All bodies are Undead. This card is worth three corpses by itself and has no rune requirement whatsoever. Sounds like a dream card for the class.
Plenty of 1-drops have 2 health, which Handler cleanly deals with, with the most popular one being Miracle Salesman. Together with Mining Casualties, Death Knight now has two powerhouse 2-drops that make it very difficult for the opponent to win early game board control. We love it for most Death Knight decks.
Score: 4
Ghouls’ Night
A slightly bigger Crop Rotation, with randomness attached to it. You might not be able to control where the Ghouls attack, but they can potentially hit face, and they don’t die at the end of the turn. This makes the card an intimidating finisher after playing Eliza Goreblade.
Most importantly, Ghouls’ Night offers some board control on top of generating 5 corpses, just before the critical turn 5, when we might want to play Corpse Bride or Army of the Dead. The introduction of this spell makes Corpse Bride much more consistent, potentially re-opening the door for a more proactive Rainbow DK build to compete. It is also a subtle enabler for Horizon’s Edge. Though you can’t chain activations with it like you can with Crop Rotation, it is scary for the opponent to develop into the Ghouls.
Score: 3
Brittlebone Buccaneer
Buccaneer is a synergy-dependent 2-drop that requires a critical mass of deathrattle minions in the deck to become a consistent threat. The stats on the minion suggest dropping it on turn 2 and forcing the opponent to try to remove it. 4-health on turn 2 is comparable to 5-health on turn 3, which many decks have trouble clearing (think Hawkstrider Rancher).
Our issue is that Buccaneer works on a limited pool of minions, with an admittedly powerful ability. We don’t believe it’s going to be a viable strategy to run an aggressive DK deck with a high number of deathrattles, so it’s more likely that Buccaneer becomes a more combo-centric card.
There are some decent targets for it, such as Amateur Puppeteer or Reska, but one thing bothers us about its chances of seeing competitive play. If giving Reborn is so valuable for a late game strategy, why does Mosh Pit never see play? We have a location with a banked cost that’s arguably easier to use for combo purposes, while being able to target any minion.
For that reason, we’re skeptical.
Score: 1
Horizon’s Edge
Horizon’s Edge is a 4-mana card that’s worth 15 damage over 5 charges, while the requirement to unlock it is probably the easiest of them all to repeatedly trigger.
There is some argument to temper the excitement over this card, since repeatedly dealing damage with charges will lead to the enemy board being cleared, so you will run out of things to trade your minions into. But that sounds like the troubles of the rich. If we constantly keep the opponent from developing a board, it probably means we’re dominating the game. This is what Horizon’s Edge helps us accomplish. We dominate board and leverage that advantage to execute favorable trades while pushing damage.
Horizon’s Edge cost isn’t trivial, but it almost invites the opponent to play into it. It’s so easy to swing back the board after playing it. A single Crop Rotation becomes devastating, potentially using up all the charges in a single turn.
Most Death Knight decks will try to accommodate it.
Score: 4
Snow Shredder
Minions that can be significantly discounted should never be underestimated, but in the case of Snow Shredder, there’s a major requirement for it to be active. Freeze is not a prominent mechanic in the class, with Frost DK sitting nowhere near competitive play. For Shredder to be consistently active, we need a sizeable freeze package that’s hard to fit without giving up major win conditions.
We would ignore all of that if Snow Shredder was a 3/3 that could cost 0. The 1 mana cost still means we will often need to play off-curve to get the most out of Shredder. We’ve tried to incorporate this package into both Death Knight and Warlock decks and haven’t been impressed. Perhaps someone else can figure it out, but currently, we don’t think there’s enough support for it to go off in the upcoming format.
Score: 1
Slippery Slope
For 2-mana, we get to freeze a minion and draw a card, which isn’t a bad deal by itself, but Slippery Slope can draw multiple cards depending on how many frozen characters are in play. This makes it a potentially powerful draw engine in a deck that utilizes a sizeable freeze package.
The painful part is the rune restriction on it, which makes it unavailable to both Rainbow and Plague DK. This forces us to search for other win conditions in the class, which we’re not sure exist on a competitive level.
For Warlock, this is an easier card to accommodate, as the class doesn’t have to give up major cornerstones to fit Slippery Slope in. The main limiting factor is the number of available freezes. Warlock probably has the best one to combo with Slope in Soulfreeze, but we’re concerned with redundancy. Glacial Shard just doesn’t cut it.
Score: 2
Frostbitten Freebooter
This card really put a major damper on our excitement over a freeze package, especially in Warlock. We do understand that it’s a 3-mana deathrattle that we can discount with Felfire Bonfire and combo with Darkmarrow, but it’s a terrible minion to play by itself. If we’re reliant on drawing a single legendary on top of a specific spell to use it remotely well, we’re in trouble. It’s a 3 mana 2/2.
Freeze baked into a deathrattle is slow. The opponent can trade around it in a way that makes it less effective. If there aren’t multiple minions in play, then Freebooter becomes nearly useless. It takes too much work to make work, while the payoff is hardly there. This is where the Freeze package in this set flops.
Score: 1
Eliza Goreblade
Eliza is an undersized 4-drop, but one with significant impact on the rest of the game. It’s important to note that the deathrattle does not just buff existing minions on the board, in our hand and in our deck. This is not comparable to Bestial Madness.
This is an aura effect that impacts every single minion in play, including minions we summon in the future with cards like Crop Rotation or Army of the Dead. Our hero power becomes a 2/1 charger. It is a permanent game buff on everything.
When we think of late game implications, Eliza sounds like a strong card that can exert a lot of pressure. An innocent looking Mining Casualties becomes so much more of a threat, for example. An opponent’s empty board can lead to them getting burst down by Ghouls’ Night.
Some shenanigans are also available for both Warlock and Death Knight to duplicate, or even triple, Eliza’s deathrattle. This could lead to an oppressive game state where it’s almost impossible for the opponent to survive. We think this card is going to look scarier once we see it played live. Its clock seems more dramatic than Helya’s, while its rune restriction doesn’t stop us from playing it in any kind of Rainbow build.
The biggest issue is that we don’t have a reliable way of finding it. But we do think it can make the cut in some builds of Rainbow Death Knight and will prove to be superior to Helya, which has been fraudulent recently.
Score: 3
Buttons
Buttons resembles Magatha, as it’s a big draw engine that’s attached to a 5 mana 5/5. However, instead of encouraging us to play a minion-dense build, Buttons encourages us to run a package of spells from different spell schools. Death Knight normally has access to Shadow and Frost spells. Access to the Shaman set allows us to run Fire and Nature spells.
The issue is that we’re limited to spells from this set, so the options aren’t that strong. Frosty Décor is an incredible card, but Malted Magma and Natural Talent are less appealing. We know that Magatha isn’t even good enough in Plague Death Knight anymore when it reliably draws five cards, so the prospects aren’t looking too good for Buttons.
On the other hand, Buttons can tutor us Threads of Despair in Rainbow Death Knight, so maybe that’s good enough alongside Malted Magma and Frost Décor to have us draw three cards of a good quality on average.
The reason we need Buttons to be a good card by itself is that other than Frosty Décor, we’re not too excited about the Shaman collaboration. Death Knight doesn’t run enough spells to take advantage of Shaman’s Naga package, nor does it need to build around Razzle-Dazzler. It’s already got its own Rainbow to take care of its late game.
Score: 2
Final Thoughts
Perils in Paradise Set Rank: 10th
Tourist Synergy Score: C
Overall Power Ranking: 11th
It is a strange feeling to rank a class at the bottom when we don’t even think it got a bad set. Death Knight got some very strong cards that can help them seize the board and leverage advantages to continue to dominate board control. It has also received several tools that should help them gradually scale towards the late game.
But the way we worded the first paragraph can already tell you why we’re pessimistic. Death Knight’s strong characteristics may simply line up poorly into the emerging format. Should off-board mechanics rise to greater power, a powerhouse card such as Horizon’s Edge may find itself unemployed. If late game clocks are imposed early in the game, scaling our Climactic Necrotic Explosion might become meaningless as we rarely get to 10 mana to cast it.
Furthermore, Rainbow Death Knight aggression does not come early and fast. Its best chance to impose a serious threat on the opponent may come down to Corpse Bride/Stitched Giant.
An underwhelming freeze package does not solve that issue for the class, nor does it allow Frost DK to return to the format in any capacity, as its entire gimmick relies on strong board strategies to exist and to be stalled by Frostwyrm’s Fury.
Death Knight’s access to the Shaman set does not leave it completely in the dust, but it does not open a new path in which the class can cover for its established weaknesses.
Should the format not surge in power, Death Knight can have plenty of success through various forms of Rainbow Death Knight strategies. It can develop giant threats. It can control the game and wear down the opponent with consistent damage. It can even completely lock out an opponent through a unique Reska combo. But if the format does introduce new management, Death Knight will find itself outpaced and burst down.
Those stubborn Plague Death Knight players are in for a shock.
