Submerged Map
A high percentage of Murloc minions are cheap, so Submerged Map’s condition is relatively easy to trigger, making it discover 2 minions for 1 mana, which is a good deal. This spell is possibly useful for Quest Paladin, as it is an aggressive Murloc deck that needs all the resources it can get to both complete the quest and not run out of steam.
Non-Murloc decks would never consider the card, as most Murloc minions need each other to be useful. In a deck that is not built to leverage the tribe’s synergies, this minion pool’s quality is very low.
Score: 2
Hot Spring Glider
Assuming we play Glider in a dedicated Murloc deck, the Kindred condition is trivial. In this case, Glider has a net cost of 1 mana, while also adding a Divine Shield to the next Murloc we play. If we budget this in clear terms, we are paying 1 mana for a 2/4 and a Divine Shield. The only factor that tones down the power of this trade is the fact it comes with a slight delay.
However, very often we can play Glider and the next Murloc on the same turn. We can also use Glider’s banked mana cost to cheat out a threat, with Tyrannogill looking like an incredible follow-up on turn 4.
By all possible metrics, Hot Spring Glider should be one of the stronger cards in a Murloc Paladin deck. It accelerates the quest, overloads the board and makes it more resilient to removal.
Score: 3
Ready the Fleet
A tribal board buff. This spell might be targeted on a single minion initially, but the goal is to have multiple bodies that have the same tribal tag. If we do simple math, we conclude that Ready the Fleet breaks even as a buff if it hits two minions, as we get 2/4 stats for 3 mana. Once we buff three minions, the spell goes above the curve and becomes powerful enough for constructed play.
We like the fact the spell is versatile enough to fit into any tribe, though the obvious target in this expansion is the Murloc tribe. With multiple cards that allow us to swarm the board with Murlocs, we should be able to get good value from Ready the Fleet.
The card is very comparable to Flash Sale. Flash Sale is better than Ready the Fleet in any deck that does not focus on a single tribe, but Ready the Fleet’s cheaper cost likely makes it stronger in a single tribe deck. This is the only archetype it belongs in.
Score: 2
Story of Galvadon
The average value of a bonus effect is slightly less than 1 mana, so Story of Galvadon looks good on paper at a 2 mana investment. The problem here is that random bonus effects are not reliable and tend to be weaker when we target smaller minions with them.
Most keywords scale with stats. Lifesteal is better on a 5/5 than it is on a 3/3, for example. If we are looking to play an aggressive deck, which would be the only kind of deck interested in this spell, then we would not be too happy to play this spell over Hand of A’dal in the early game.
Furthermore, arguably Paladin’s best card in this set does not function well with Story of Galvadon, while functioning extremely well with Hand of A’dal and other cheap spells. This competition looks like a losing battle. Therefore, we do not expect Story of Galvadon to be competitive.
Score: 1
Violet Treasuregill
Treasuregill draws and casts a spell in our deck on itself, for free. The spell’s cost must be 2 or lower, but it is easy to understand why this is an incredible deal on paper. The value of “recruiting” out a spell can already be worth Treasuregill’s cost.
When it comes to maximizing its power, it is easy to curate our spell pool to be one that always leads to a highly beneficial outcome. Hand of A’dal, as a prime example, looks incredible with Treasuregill. We are spending 2 mana on 3/3 that draws a card, which would be the strongest 2-drop in the format.
Other applications are also available. Treasuregill can be a tutor for Aegis of Light or Dragonscale Armaments in Imbue Paladin. It can tutor Divine Brew in a Drunk Paladin deck. It can even cheat out a discounted Libram in Libram Paladin.
No matter how we look at it, Violet Treasuregill looks like a card that is simply impossible not to play and leverage in every Paladin deck. It is very possible that it becomes the best 2-drop in Standard.
Score: 4
Tyrannogill
This minion packs a lot of value in it, making it a strong card for Quest Paladin, both for quest completion purposes and the resulting payoff.
First, a 6/3 rusher is easily worth 3 mana, while summoning three 2/1 Murlocs with bonuses effects would be an incredible effect for 3 mana. This makes Tyrannogill’s total cost of 6 mana very favorable.
This is, by far, the best card we can follow-up on Hot Spring Glider. Cheating this minion on turn 4 means we do not need to use any more resources to complete the quest. This minion is worth 4 Murloc bodies by itself, which is 80% of the quest.
And if we complete the quest before we pop the deathrattle, all the Murlocs summoned will be buffed to 3/2’s, turning Tyrannogill into a massive stat bomb.
A mandatory inclusion in Quest Paladin, but this could be a decent card for every Paladin deck that goes wide and runs Crusader Aura, as the stats for cost are strong regardless of Murloc synergies.
Score: 3
Creature of the Sacred Cave
A 4 mana 2/5 is a terrible baseline minion, so for Creature to represent a good play, we need to play a Holy spell on the same turn, so that Creature repeats it. Ideally, we play a buff spell that can grow this minion and make it more difficult to remove.
The issue we see here is that Creature costs 4 mana, which makes such a play difficult to execute and slow. One realistic scenario seems to be playing it alongside Aegis of Light or Dragonscale Armaments on turn 5, but we are not convinced this makes Creature worth running considering how bad the minion is when it is played “naked”.
The most enticing proposition is to play Creature in Libram Paladin, which has Holy spells that can get discounted and therefore makes the execution and the outcome more powerful. A Creature that repeats a 0-cost Libram of Divinity on itself is an enticing proposition. Repeating Libram of Faith could end the game on the spot in some matchups.
Libram Paladin has popped up recently in Standard and shown it can be competitive. This could be the card that elevates its profile further. We do not think Creature will be good enough in other Paladin archetypes.
Score: 2
Threshrider’s Blessing
Summoning a random 4-drop might be worth 3 mana, so this effect attached to Blessing of Kings for 5 mana does not sound too bad. Blessing of Kings might be able to see play constructed if it costs 3 mana, so Threshrider’s Blessing does not sound bad on paper. In practice though, we know these cards are difficult to make work in constructed.
Expensive buffs need to be extremely powerful to see play because they are reliant on us having a board to be playable. Should the opponent deny us a minion in play, these buffs become dead cards in hand and are significantly worse than a potential 5-cost minion. A cheaper buff can occasionally be played on the same turn as a minion target, but a buff such as this one does not have that flexibility.
Aggressive Paladin decks also benefit more from going wide than going tall, simply because Crusader Aura is such a powerful spell, one that snowballs harder than any single target buff. It is enough for us to have three minions in play to produce immediate pressure that beats anything that Threshrider’s Blessing can do, and one turn earlier.
So even though this buff passes the “vanilla test” on paper, Paladin has access to things that are more “unfair”, making it unnecessary.
Score: 1
Ido of the Threshfleet
Ido adds a powerful buff to our hand (Call the Threshfleet!) that stays as long as the legendary is on the board. For example, if we play Ido on turn 8, we can buff it twice with Call the Threshfleet! as the spell will reappear immediately after we cast it. We will also still have this buff in hand the next turn if Ido survives.
A 2/2 buff that gives Divine Shield is clearly strong for 2 mana. Having an infinite supply of it can snowball the game out of control, and we can also use the buff to grow Ido and make it more difficult to kill. The downside is that Ido’s initial cost represents a big tax. A 4 mana 2/7 is an Oasis Snapjaw, a vanilla minion that saw fringe play in 2014 (it was not good).
Our biggest concern with Ido is that it is a minion that has very little synergy in potential Paladin archetypes. We do not have a way to discount Holy spells, nor do we have a way to discount Ido. In most cases, we will likely drop Ido on the board on turn 4 and ask the opponent a question about their removal options. Removing a 7-health minion on turn 4 is difficult and may soak a lot of resources towards killing it.
As a standalone card, Ido does not seem bad. But the absence of clear synergies likely makes it a fringe consideration for Paladin decks. It is a generically good card, which is sometimes not enough for constructed.
Score: 2
Dive the Golakka Depths
This is a very different quest from others in the set, as it is extremely skewed towards building a specific type of aggressive deck. The support required is obvious and entirely deck defining. We either play a Murloc deck or do not bother at all.
As for timing, this is probably the fastest quest to complete. It could be done as early as turn 4, through various curves. A Quest Paladin deck should be able to complete its quest in a timing that impacts every matchup. That is a massive advantage compared to other quest decks.
The reward is also unique in its immediate impact and its continued scaling to the late game. There is no need to spend mana on it. We get an instant aura that buffs future Murlocs summons by +1/+1. Note that it will not buff Murlocs we have already summoned before we completed the quest. That would have been insanely broken.
Dive the Golakka Depths is fast and straightforward, with a powerful ability that makes snowballing Murlocs more difficult to deal with. Its quest completion and reward are the fastest in the set and relevant for any matchup. We suspect it will be the best performing quest deck, at least on the first week of the expansion.
We do have some concerns about the fact it is an aggressive, snowballing deck that needs to pass on turn 1. Other aggressive decks might be able to get under it and push it off the board. When it comes to passive decks that do not contest it early, it should be able to feast.
Score: 4
Final Thoughts
The Lost City of Un’Goro Set Rank: 4th
Overall Power Ranking: 1st
Paladin has been thriving in the Emerald Dream, and we do not expect it to go anywhere in Un’Goro. In fact, there is a good possibility the class will diversify further, with new archetypes and packages making an instant impact.
Let’s start with Dive the Golakka Depths. We believe this will be the best performing quest in the format, at least in the first week of the expansion. It may be limited to one aggressive archetype, but it should be the fastest one to complete, with its reward costing no mana. We believe that Murloc Paladin can complete the quest on turns 4-5 regularly.
This means that Murloc Paladin’s only drawback is paying 1 mana for the quest itself. We are paying 1 mana for a permanent buff on the 6th Murloc we summon onwards. That does not sound like a bad deal, even if we ignored its repeatable effect. Expect this archetype to pound the faces of unoptimized jank decks and serve as a litmus test for other quest decks.
The other notable card to watch out for is Violet Treasuregill. Do not be fooled by its Murloc face. This minion could go in every single Paladin deck going forward. We can use it to cheat out several key spells that Paladin decks currently run, such as Aegis of Light, Divine Brew and Dragonscale Armaments. It could drive Imbue Paladin to give up Equality for Hand of A’dal. It can even pull discounted Librams from our deck.
Taking into consideration an upgraded Drunk Paladin, Imbue Paladin, the potential re-emergence of Libram Paladin, as well as the promise of Quest Paladin, it is hard to see the class not establish itself as one of the pillars of the format. Well met.
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