The Comprehensive Saviors of Uldum Preview

Sinister Deal

This card is decent. It is one of the weaker lackey generators, but it will probably still see play because Warlock will want all the lackeys it can get due to EVIL Recruiter. Serviceable.

Score: 2

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Neferest Thrasher

3 mana Yeti is just good, and the card is a strong follow up to EVIL Recruiter as well as Diseased Vulture if we decide to play it. It’s a massive upgrade on Pit Lord because having an over-statted minion 1 turn earlier is a big deal and the drawback could become an asset.

Score: 3

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Evil Recruiter

Yeah, so this card is just broken. There’s no need to explain it in a complicated manner. This is a 3 mana 7/7 or a 4 mana 8/8 depending on how you want to look at it. Lackeys are good. They just became better in Warlock. This card is much better than Flamewreathed Faceless. Broken.

Score: 4

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Plague of Flames

Another unbelievably strong card. Turns Rafaam’s Scheme and Fiendish Circle into AOE enablers in control decks. The card costs so low that most possible activators for this will result in a big tempo gain. The only way this card doesn’t see play in this expansion is if slower Warlock decks fall completely flat, which is certainly possible. Remember that it took Defile one additional expansion to become meta. This is a Defile-level card.

Score: 4

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Expired Merchant

Very interesting card, with two interesting applications that immediately come to mind. One is copying giants, which Handlock would appreciate, and the other is chaining infinite value through Soulwardens. The problem is that both plans are slow to set-up, so they may not pan out. Merchant mostly displays potential for us.

Score: 2

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Impbalming

This card is bad. It’s slightly better than Assassinate with a horrendous drawback. We really don’t want to draw Worthless Imps instead of good cards from our deck.

Score: 1

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Diseased Vulture

A card we wouldn’t be interested in if it wasn’t for Thrasher, which makes this an enticing 3-4 curve. The vulture can snowball if left alone but it’s mostly good when we don’t need to spend mana to activate it. May promote heavier Zoo builds that don’t run Magic Carpet.

Score: 2

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Riftcleaver

This card could have been good if Warlock had reliable forms of healing to make up for the drawback, but these options don’t really exist in the current format. Should be incredible in Wild due to Molten Giants and Hooked Reavers, but in standard it’s a strong tempo card that doesn’t have a great deck to go into.

Score: 2

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Dark Pharaoh Tekahn

We’re a bit skeptic that this card is strong enough to see play since Zoo doesn’t have the ability to produce a huge number of lackeys that could justify this legendary, and those lackeys are also used to fuel EVIL Recruiter, so this makes Tekahn a tough sell.

Score: 2

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Supreme Archaeology

This is the worst quest of this expansion. Ticks all the wrong boxes. The slowest quest to complete of them all. Requires us to build a Plot Twist deck, which is the only way we can accelerate quest completion in a meaningful way. The reward comes online at a point where we’ve drawn most of our deck already, and the hero power doesn’t even reliably affect the board. Just terrible.

Score: 1

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Final Thoughts

Saviors of Uldum Set Rank: 6^th

Overall Power Ranking: 8^th

Warlock’s set has one major star. EVIL Recruiter is just nuts. It is a completely unfair card that provides a major upgrade for Zoo Warlock, and yet we’re still not sure whether the archetype can succeed in Saviors of Uldum just because most other classes have also received powerful cards. Other classes received more well-rounded sets that didn’t concentrate most of their power in one card as much as Warlock.

Now, we will reiterate that Plague of Flame is also nuts, but we’re not optimistic about late game Warlock strategies for the same reason Defile was not enough in Knights of the Frozen Throne. History has taught us that Warlock needs strong healing tools to make them competitive. Instead of meaningful healing, Warlock got an atrocious quest that asks us to constantly life tap, which is ironic.

This means that Saviors of Uldum could be another expansion in which Warlock goes “Zoo or Bust”. We don’t think Zoo will be a bust, but it probably won’t be one of the strongest decks in the game if Warrior remains dominant, so don’t expect miracles here.

 

 

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