Has Tourist access to: Warrior
Cards can be played by: Priest
Catch of the Day
A synergistic 1-drop that isn’t particularly great on turn 1. If we give our opponent a worm and run into it, we get a 1 mana 3/1. Nobody would play a 1 mana 3/1 in the current format, so it’s all about bypassing the battlecry and cheating this fish out with Trusty Fishing Rod. In this case, we get to pull the 3/3 rusher without a drawback. Another way to ‘circumvent’ the battlecry is to follow up Catch of the Day with a turn 2 Pet Parrot, which will summon the fish without the worm. Later in the game, it becomes easier to kill the worm with a weapon ping.
Catch of the Day carries subtle synergy with Ticking Zilliax, as it discounts it by 2 mana for the cost of 1. We think this 1-drop could be great in both aggressive Hunter and Priest decks, if it’s accompanied by Trusty Fishing Rod. But it needs to be useful outside of the pull scenario, since we will have other 1-drops in the deck.
Score: 3
Pet Parrot
We suspect this card might be a little overrated. For the majority of 1-drops in the game, Pet Parrot is not worth the turn 2 follow-up. If we’re paying 2 mana for a 1/1, summoning a 1-drop isn’t worth the cost. We’re simply paying 1 extra mana for a 1/1, which is a bad deal.
This is why we don’t think Pet Parrot will be a mainstay in every board-centric deck. Where Pet Parrot may shine is when it can amplify a 1-cost card of unique qualities. A good example is Astral Automaton in Priest, or Acupuncture. An aggressive Priest deck that is centered on self-damage, runs Catch of the Day, Brain Masseuse and Acupuncture, may want to use Pet Parrot.
There will be opportunities for this card to be stronger in the future too, with the right 1-mana card being added to the format. As of now, its best home is an Automaton Priest that runs other 1-mana generators, such as Griftah and Mixologist.
Score: 2
Trusty Fishing Rod
Pulling minions from our deck tends to be a very powerful effect, even when the stats in play don’t seem amazing at first thought. You generally want to run Catch of the Day with this weapon, which increases the likelihood of summoning big stats to the board when we swing our weapon. Beyond that, some shenanigans with scaling 1-drops can occur.
Astral Automaton is a good example. If we can more consistently pull it from the deck, then it becomes easier for us to copy it. It has no battlecry and its stats are aura-based, so we could end up pulling a big Automaton in the mid-game.
Adaptive Amalgam also works well with this weapon. We can have a single Amalgam as the only 1-drop in our deck, continuously buffing and pulling it from the deck, making it harder and harder for our opponent to deal with it.
But even without any late game scaling, the card is strong enough by pulling average 1-drops. We don’t think it’s better than a 3-mana Boogie Down, but it’s not much worse. This card should be a staple for some aggressive decks in both Hunter and Priest.
Score: 4
Birdwatching
A Pit Stop with no specific tribal tutor effect, making it substantially less powerful. As a sweetener, it buffs all copies of the minion we discover, wherever they are.
We think that even though this card is a bit slow, minion tutors always have potential to see play. Spell-centric decks are common in Hearthstone. They often have valuable minions with powerful compounding effects that are worth finding more consistently even if we pay a premium for them. To follow up on previous mentions, both Adaptive Amalgam and Astral Automaton are good examples of when Birdwatching becomes more valuable.
Reno Priest currently runs Pendant of Earth just for the sake of finding its win conditions more often. Birdwatching will find a home, even if it’s never going to be one of the most powerful cards. If we want a 3rd, scuffed, Creation Protocol, we’ll run Birdwatching.
Score: 2
Parrot Sanctuary
This location allows us to bank 2 mana in the early game and reduce the cost of our next three battlecry minions by 1. This is a good deal for us. Sacrificing initiative in the early game is worth it if our deck can accelerate its power spikes. Battlecry minions are the most powerful ones in the game, so if we sprinkle a good amount of them in the deck, we should be able to get a lot of impact from Parrot Sanctuary.
In some cases, playing a minion a turn earlier can be the difference between winning or losing a game. A non-extreme example would be a turn 3 Pozzik. An extreme example would be a turn 5 Twilight Medium.
This is a card that should be useful in both Priest and Hunter, as there is no class in the game that can’t be built around battlecry minions. The most important thing here is that the deck that runs Parrot Sanctuary is not an aggressive one that is reliant on winning the board early. Skipping turn 2 is far less likely to be worth it when our deck needs to take the initiative and leverage it, rather than wait for a power spike later in the game.
Score: 3
Furious Fowls
The translation of this card is that we summon two 3/2’s and deal 6 damage to an enemy. Is that worth a turn 6? Probably not for most decks. There aren’t many minions in the game with 6 health, so the damage is not efficient if we want to use it for removal. The big saving grace is that it can go face and develop threats, but it might be too slow for an aggressive deck.
There is one bit of synergy in the set that works well with Furious Fowls, which is Chatty Macaw. If we follow up Furious Fowls with Macaw, we get a repeated Furious Fowls, which is strong to tack onto a 3 mana 3/3.
We do like the Macaw interaction. If Hunter can afford to play a bit slower in its aggressive style, it might be a strong top end card. 5-mana cards and above tend to fall off hard when we’re playing a deck like Token Hunter, so we’ll have to see if the meta allows us to play more patiently.
Score: 2
Chatty Macaw
This Macaw is not comparable in power to Brilliant Macaw, as repeating battlecries is a much more powerful ability that is easy to funnel to an optimal outcome. In the case of Chatty Macaw, it repeats a relatively narrow type of spell: only those that targeted an enemy.
Hunter isn’t the type of class that has been blessed with removal effects, but there are a few high value spells it gains access to with this set: Furious Fowls, Death Roll and Char. Any of those being repeated by Macaw are not too shabby. It could also go for pure burn and hope to hit the opponent in the face with Kill Commands, but that might be a little optimistic to include in an aggressive deck.
In the case of Priest, the class is swimming with removal effects, though most of them can’t be considered valuable enough to be worth repeating. It’s important to remember that Macaw targets a random enemy, so it might not hit the target we want, making the repeated spell less optimal on average than the original one.
This is a decent minion for a slower deck.
Score: 2
Death Roll
You can think of this spell as a very big Swipe. We’re killing a target and dealing random collateral damage based on the target minion’s attack value. In some circumstances, Death Roll could be devastating to an opponent’s board. In other scenarios, a single giant in play could lead to the opponent getting blasted in the face. It very much appeals to us that the damage can hit face, making it a pseudo-nuke baked into removal.
This seems quite appropriate considering it’s a Hunter card that Priest has access to. Both classes could be interested in it, especially when Macaw is a consideration. Macaw does hit a random target, which could make the spell less effective, but this could be worth a lot of damage if the opponent develops a board slowly.
The downside to this spell is that it’s not very effective against wide boards of tokens. 5 mana is a lot for a removal spell that may only kill a single target, so we think the Macaw synergy, or other synergies, need to be relevant for this card to be good enough.
Score: 2
Sasquawk
While there is plenty of incentive for an aggressive Priest deck to tap into the Hunter set, Sasquawk evokes a different desire. This is the single card that makes it impossible for us to pass up on Priest’s access to the Hunter set if we want to build a late game focused deck.
Sasquawk’s potential is simply too high, while being incredibly easy to execute. Played a single powerful minion like Aman’Thul? Just play a Sasquawk next turn and your opponent will crumble. Perhaps you played Harmonic Pop to clear an opponent’s board and they decided to reload? Sasquawk takes care of business. Played a bunch of Astral Automatons and they got cleared? Sasquawk reloads the board with an army of even more powerful Automatons. Had a big Wondrous Wand courtesy of Marin? Now you get to do it again!
Of course, Hunter should massively benefit from the presence of this card too, as it gives the class insane reload and swing potential, something it doesn’t always have access to. Sasquawk can bring back resource-focused Hunter decks to the forefront.
The examples don’t end because this is simply one of the strongest late game cards in the set. Feed the parrot.
Score: 4
Ranger Gilly
Gilly is one of the worst Tourists from the perspective of a standalone card. It’s a 6 mana 4/6 that does nothing on the turn it’s played. It adds a minion that wasn’t good enough in 2014 to your hand. Its only upside is a big deathrattle that could be relevant if the matchup is very slow, but the minion can be relatively ignored by the opponent, who might be happy to let us fill our hand with vanilla minions.
But we’re here to tell you right now, we don’t care. The Warrior set provides Hunter with access to a couple of important synergies that are hard to pass up. Even a faster deck that might view Gilly as a completely dead draw might accept it as a deckbuilding cost. It is very possible that we’re overrating some of these synergies, but it’s been impossible for us to build Hunter decks in this expansion without Warrior cards and feeling good about it. Hunter is simply way too hungry and needs an all you can eat buffet with some muscle beverages.
If that means Steve Irwin is tagging along, so be it. We missed him anyway.
Score: 2
Final Thoughts
Perils in Paradise Set Rank: 5th
Tourist Synergy Score: C
Overall Power Ranking: 10th
Hunter gets some cool and new powerful stuff to do, but there’s an air of uncertainty about the power level and the fit of it all when facing the upcoming format. Hunter may be giving Priest access to good tools of aggression, but it’s severely lacking support coming from the hapless Warrior set. If it weren’t for a couple of fantastic cards, we’d be handing out an F on that synergy score.
Hunter is in a similar position to Mage where its most promising new avenue comes from Concierge and its combo with a Tourist drink. This allows Hunter to set up a powerful mid game swing turn where we can develop a lot of stats in one swoop. However, everything feels a little worse compared to Mage. Not only does the Tourist not synergize with this style, but it is a hindrance. There are less available spells to fuel Concierge, while there is no overlying payoff such as Sea Shanty.
The upside of Hunter is that the class is generally better at pressuring in the early game compared to Mage, so we can build an aggressive deck, slap the Drunk package in and not rely on it excessively. Thanks to All You Can Eat, we can also find it more consistently than Mage.
But we struggled to find other powerful things to do with the class. Hunter can always develop a purely aggressive deck and stomp some bad decks at launch, but does Hunter do anything that aggressive decks in other classes cannot? We’re getting a sense of redundancy.
And when it comes to the late game, we’re sensing a painful Death Knight vibe. It feels a bit too fair. How does Reno Hunter stand up to a higher-powered format, even with the addition of Sasquawk, when it’s not relevant today? Can a slower Hunter strategy do anything unique that would place it in a competitive standing when facing a high-powered format? Should we really play the removal game and imitate Control Priest? We’re only hoping we failed to discover something that others may figure out.
Imagine Concierge is nerfed. What does Hunter even do to capture the hearts of players? A low play rate, regardless of win rate, is likely.
