The Comprehensive Whizbang’s Workshop Preview

 

Giftwrapped Whelp

An incredible 1-drop for a Dragon deck. This is a Flame Imp with upside. A 1-mana 3/2 that buffs a Dragon in our hand by +1/+1, which represents 7 total stats for the cost.

This is an auto-inclusion in Dragon Druid. The deck is innately aggressive and would love a stronger early game. Its inclusion in Priest is reliant on whether the class goes fully tribal. We doubt it immediately happens, but it might just be a matter of time.

This should become the best 1-drop in the format.

Score: 4

Classes: Druid, Priest

Scarab Keychain

A 1-mana 1/1 that discovers a card is solid, especially when you potentially discover a turn 2 play. Keychain is similar to Cactus Construct and only slightly weaker since the 1/1 is always a plain minion without any special abilities.

Still, some classes might appreciate this as a value card that can provide them with the ability to contest the early game. This could arguably become stronger than Cactus Construct later in the game since we can discover spells with it.

It has a great chance to see play in classes that need some generated value or want to maintain hand size in the early game.

Score: 3

Classes: Druid, Hunter, Mage, Paladin, Priest, Shaman, Warlock, Warrior

Tar Slime

Neither aggressive nor slower decks should be interested in Tar Slime. A 0-attack minion isn’t good enough for aggressive decks and it lacks enough defensive value for slower decks. Its only chance to see play comes from its Elemental tag. Should Elemental Mage or Shaman seek additional 1-drops for their curve consistency, Tar Slime is a decent option.

Score: 2

Classes: Mage, Shaman

Treasure Distributor

A solid Pirate 1-drop that synergizes well with the Rogue set since it focuses on summoning Pirates. The stats and ability remind us of Arms Dealer, which makes it a mediocre turn 1 play, but a decent tool in the later stages of the game. It is also a good opener with Toy Boat.

Score: 3

Classes: Rogue

Sing-Along Buddy

A hero power amplifier. Thanks to its Overheal mechanic and synergy with Raza the Resealed, the most suitable place for this mech in this expansion is Priest. If you Overheal a minion with Sing-Along Buddy, then it will trigger the Overheal twice. That makes it quite powerful with Heartbreaker Hedanis, Injured Hauler, or Crimson Clergy. It also synergizes with Papercraft Angel from Priest’s set.

It is capable of enabling an OTK with Reno, Lone Ranger and Raza the Resealed, thanks to Arcane Bullet.

Score: 3

Classes: Priest

Bucket of Soldiers

A weird egg-like minion. Bucket of Soldiers summons five 1/1 tokens with random bonus keywords that we’re familiar with from One-Amalgam Band. That is a powerful deathrattle in the early game, but it seems quite difficult to trigger the egg in the early game. Its value also diminishes if you try to copy the deathrattle, since you might end up being board locked.

Don’t think classes will be interested in this one.

Score: 1

Card Grader

Discovering a card from the deck is a stronger form of draw. The effect attached to a 3-mana 2/4 body seems like a good deal. It is a weaker form of Benevolent Banker since Card Grader requires us to activate in hand via casting a spell.

While Banker has become a core card for slower Priest decks, Card Grader’s activation requirement makes it far more limiting in its usage, since not every deck runs a sizable package of spells to be able to consistently trigger it on turn 3. It may see some fringe use in slower decks that are spell heavy and need more drawing power.

Score: 2

Classes: Demon Hunter, Mage, Priest, Shaman

Clearance Promoter

A mana discount on a couple of spells doesn’t sound bad, but the effect is random and attached to a deathrattle on a very weak 3-drop. Clearance Promoter also requires us to have a couple of spells in hand, which isn’t a trivial requirement. Terrible draw later in the game as well. It’s a hard pass.

Score: 1

Cosplay Contestant

This card gives us fond memories of the incredible Alkali, who was a wonderful community manager for the game. She’s now doing great work at another company, and we wish her all the best. We miss you.

The card isn’t good but that’s not what matters here, alright?

Score: 1

Messmaker

A weird lifesteal taunt that casts Manathirsted Unleash Fel when it dies. That does sound kind of juicy, but Messmaker’s horrible statline for a 3-drop makes it very hard to get behind. It’s never going to do what you dream it can do in faster matchups as it is too easy to trade into and play around. It is also useless in a large majority of other matchups. Not strong enough to build around.

Score: 1

Nostalgic Initiate

A 3-mana 2/3 is simply unplayable, so Initiate needs spell support to even look playable. Then again, a 3-mana slow scaling 4/5 is not even good. That amount of hard work for little reward seems hardly worth it. The Mini only makes it slightly more palatable, but not enough to make it worthy of constructed Hearthstone.

Score: 1

Plucky Paintfin

This is an interesting tutor card for rush minions. Paintfin’s stats are superior to Venomous Scorpid, which was a solid value card in Forged in the Barrens. Unless you’re playing the most grindy imaginable control deck, tutoring tends to be better than discovering.

If we have rush minions that are worth finding, then Paintfin might be able to do solid work. It feels like a highlander card in classes that aren’t blessed with card draw or tutors.

Score: 2

Classes: Hunter, Paladin

Rumble Enthusiast

A very complicated card relative to how good it is. This is “Altruis at home”, which deals a pitiful 1 damage to a single enemy when it triggers. It requires significant deck building support, but we never build around such a pitiful payoff.

Score: 1

Sweetened Snowflurry

A 3-drop that we can’t play on turn 3 because we can’t use whatever spells we generate that turn and, thus, making its battlecry useless. We must wait to a later stage in the game to be able to play the random temporary Frost spells we generate.

But why would we ever do that? This is a dead card for a huge portion of the game and the Mini form isn’t even that good. This is a pre-emptive Botface nerf.

Score: 1

Caricature Artist

Caricature Artist’s main purpose seems  tutoring a prized win condition for a deck. If our deck has a couple of key expensive minions, then Caricature Artist can help boost the consistency in finding them. Cardslike Odyn and Brann come to mind in Warrior. We don’t like it in 30-card Control Warrior because the deck’s drawing power consistently gets it to fatigue quite often, thus making a tutor seem redundant.

This is a big upgrade on Taelan Fordring, but still a weak body that we don’t want to play without a very good reason.

Score: 2

Classes: Shaman, Warrior

Giggling Toymaker

The difference between a battlecry and a deathrattle is night and day. This is why Giggling Toymaker is nowhere near as good as its spiritual inspiration, the 5-mana Giggling Inventor, which took over the format back in Boomsday.

Toymaker is both horribly slow and easily ignored by the opponent since it poses no threat whatsoever as a miniscule 2/1 body. We also are not desperate to leverage its deathrattle.

Score: 1

Nesting Golem

Nesting Golem works like Rattlegore, so buffing it does not lead to an extended deathrattle chain. The first deathrattle will always spawn a 3/2, followed by a 2/1.

This card reminds us of Piloted Shredder with a stronger deathrattle. The days of Piloted Shredder being a powerful on-curve play are long gone. This card is just very slow and doesn’t have notable synergies besides being Undead and sticky. Piles of stats don’t cut it in modern Hearthstone unless they’re truly gargantuan or have special synergies.

We do think Nesting Golem is far better designed than Shredder. Those Doomsayers were annoying when coming out of Piloted Shredders.

Score: 1

Forgotten Animatronic

This card confuses us because it can kill our own minions. Why would we ever do that? It’s not even a good egg killer, because it’s completely random and unreliable. For a 5-mana 4/6, it needed to have a powerful ability. Animatronic looks awkward and situational. It’s only useful in very specific situations and that’s not what 5-mana cards need to do to get into a constructed deck. True to its name, it will be easily forgotten.

Score: 1

Origami Frog

Another expensive card with very situational use. Origami Frog costs 5-mana and is only a reasonable upgrade on an Aldor Peacekeeper. It’s a nice answer to big minions, since we can swap attacks with them and then rush into them, leaving our Frog as a threat. The problem is that the threat will only have 3 health remaining, so it gets killed by anything that late into the game.

The other, more important issue is that it’s quite terrible against a board with smaller minions and never worth 5-mana in those situations.

Score: 1

Workshop Janitor

If our deck is desperate for card draw to such an extent that we’re looking at Workshop Janitor, then it might be time to delete the deck. Workshop Janitor is too situational, reliant on us finding our locations, and expensive as well. A 5-mana 5/5 that is clumsy.

Score: 1

Floppy Hydra

We’ve seen these cards before. You play a bad minion with a deathrattle that shuffles a stronger version of the minion. The issue is that most Hearthstone games are already over by the time we find the stronger second minion.

For this effect to see play, the shuffled card needs to be nuts. We’re talking about Prime level of game winning cards. Floppy Hydra is not it.

Score: 1

Observer of Mysteries

Observer’s secrets must trigger on the opponent’s next turn, or they get destroyed. Random secrets are generally proactive in nature because they work better when they’re complemented by pressure. An opponent who has their backs against the wall is more likely to play into secrets and take risks. If there’s no pressure, then the opponent can afford to play more safely.

The stats on this minion are just too low. A 3-mana 2/2 isn’t a threat. It’s neither a good pressure card nor is it a good stalling card, since the value from temporary secrets is unreliable.

Score: 1

Nostalgic Gnome

A 4-mana 4/4 rusher is bad, so for Gnome to be remotely playable, we need to be able to consistently land exact lethal damage with it. There’s absolutely no guarantee that the opponent will have a 4-health minion for us to run into.

A Mini Gnome is a bit easier to use, since it’s cheaper and represents 1-damage, so we can use other cards to set it up for a draw. But, surely, decks have better card draw options than something as unreliable as this?

Score: 1

Origami Crane

Origami Crane is a bit more reliable as a removal card than Origami Frog, since leaving our opponent’s minion at 1-health means we can ping it. Any class that can deal 1-damage with their hero power can play Crane and then clean up the 1-health minion in play with no additional resources.

But this is asking us to spend 6-mana on removing one minion. For Crane to be worthwhile, the target minion needs to be a big threat. You don’t see that in every matchup.

Generally, expensive cards that are reactive in nature struggle to see play unless their result is guaranteed to be favorable. Crane is the type of card that needs to “wait” for a favorable moment. When so many other single target removal options are available to a class, it’s not likely to opt into this card. We like the card’s design as a safety net to be able to tap into, but we don’t expect it to see much play.

Score: 1

Wind-Up Musician

Arguably one of the worst Wind-Up cards, which says a lot. Wind-Up Musician is not good even if we manage to trade it once and draw it, because it takes forever on average.

Dealing 2-damage to all enemy minions may sound nice on paper, but we need to think about how often this is going to happen on turn 6. Almost never. Because we need to draw the card, trade it, and then find it again by turn 6. Dealing 2/3 damage to enemy minions is something we care about in faster matchups, but these matchups are going to be decided earlier than the point in which Musician can make an impact.

If we’re that desperate for AOE in our deck to play this card, then something is either very wrong or strange about our deck.

Score: 1

Corridor Sleeper

Many comparisons have been made with Corridor Creeper, but this card is nowhere near as good. The first obvious difference is that Corridor Creeper was a 5/5. After it was nerfed to a 2/5, it was a fringe card.

The other issue with Corridor Sleeper is that we need to play it first before doing anything else. Corridor Creeper passively discounted in our hand. Corridor Sleeper requires us to spend mana to develop it first, ideally skipping turn 1. If we’re playing a fast, board flooding deck, which is the most likely deck to use the card, then we don’t want to skip turn 1.

Score: 1

Nostalgic Clown

This is one Nostalgic minion that we believe has potential to be competitive, because it can deal face damage. We like face damage.

Clown feels like a callback card to Carnival Clown, since we need to play a higher cost card to activate it, which is how the Corruption mechanic worked back in Darkmoon Faire. While the 5-mana minion isn’t easy to activate, Carnival Clown’s Mini certainly is.

But what’s most intriguing about this card is that it represents 8-damage total. Add Deepminer Brann to the mix and Nostalgic Clown deals 16. Add Zola to the mix and the damage potential of Nostalgic Clown is now 32 post-Brann (Nostalgic Clown, Clown’s Mini, Copy Mini with Zola to generate two more Clown Minis).

This could be a real finisher in Reno Warrior that’s easier to support compared with Odyn.

Score: 2

Classes: Warrior

Origami Dragon

Probably the best Origami minion, because it cleanly deals with a threat without any additional resources. Setting a minion’s stats to 1/1 is the equivalent of casting Subdue on it. Unless it’s a Titan or a minion with a very powerful static effect, it shouldn’t bother us.

More importantly, Origami Dragon becomes a serious, stabilizing threat after the stats swap. It has both Divine Shield and Lifesteal, so if the target minion was big, Origami Dragon becomes very hard to remove without healing us for a lot.

Another important bonus is that it’s a Dragon, so it can fit in a class that requires Dragons to support some of its synergies. We give this one a chance.

Score: 2

Classes: Druid, Priest

Factory Assemblybot

This feels like a card we’re meant to cheat out, but if we cheat it out, then we don’t get the benefits of its Miniaturize. We must play Assemblybot from hand to generate the Mini, which means we need to actively discount it.

Without the Mini, this card isn’t good. Spending 1 mana on a 1/1 that summons a 6/7 sounds amazing but spending 10 mana for the privilege is something that no constructed deck wants to do.

The 10-mana cost also makes it impossible for us to develop both bodies on the same turn unless we run Audio Amplifier. We don’t see why any class would do this right now.

Score: 1

Playhouse Giant

We’ve got a new giant, and it could be very impactful on the format. Playhouse Giant gets discounted by the number of cards we’ve drawn. Note that it doesn’t count the number of cards we have left in our deck: it only counts draws.

That means it gets discounted by Tradeable cards as well as Gaslight Gatekeeper. Have a full hand and play Gatekeeper? That’s a 9-mana discount on Playhouse Giant.

Any class with the capability of drawing rapidly will be interested in this combo. We think it’s a realistic proposition to have Playhouse Giant occasionally hitting a 0-mana cost by turn 7, which makes it worth building around in classes like Rogue and Demon Hunter.

Warlock is a class that has access to Life Tap and Forge of Wills, while also naturally tending to maintain a large hand size, which is ideal for Gatekeeper.

We’re not sure about the drawing capabilities of Priest. It has some potential in that department, but what makes the class a very interesting Playhouse Giant candidate is Zarimi. Playing a couple of Playhouse Giants alongside Zarimi is a scary finisher.

We could even see a heavy cycle deck like Odyn Warrior run Playhouse Giant to drop them to the board on their Reno turn, which sounds like a brutal swing.

Great potential to see play across multiple classes. Likely to find at least one competitive avenue.

Score: 3

Classes: Demon Hunter, Priest, Rogue, Warlock, Warrior

Zilliax Deluxe 3000

Zilliax is the standout card in the set in both complexity and likely play rate. A Zilliax is built by merging 2 different modules from an available pool of 8 modules in the deckbuilding phase. These modules’ mana costs, stats and abilities are then merged into the final Zilliax product.

Quick math means Zilliax has 28 different combinations. 28 different functionalities. While not every combination makes sense, many of them have great synergy together.

Whether we play an aggressive deck, or a defensive deck. Whether we flood the board or develop few minions. Regardless of how we choose to win the game, there’s probably a Zilliax combination that makes sense for us to include in our deck. In some cases, we may have to choose between a few good options.

We’re not sure whether Zilliax will go into every deck in the game. There will be decks that are more likely to use Zilliax for synergy reasons. Other decks might opt out of Zilliax if it doesn’t directly further their game plan and they need more than a strong standalone card.

What’s likely is that Zilliax will be the highest play rate card in the history of Hearthstone. If it’s included in 60-70% of decks, we wouldn’t be the least bit surprised.

Score: 4

Classes: All of them

Splendiferous Whizbang

The new iteration of Whizbang is a wonderful card for casual players looking to queue random, funky decks on ladder without needing to make a significant investment when crafting cards. We’ve investigated the pool of Whizbang decks. They’re no pushovers. They are capable of winning games.

Are they competitive at the higher end of ladder? No. Whizbang decks are meant to be fun, but, if we’re looking at them from a strictly competitive standpoint, then they’re all Tier 4 decks.

Does it matter? No. Whizbang is not meant to be used by the dedicated tryhards that read all our reports and seek to find an edge on ladder. It’s meant for those looking to lean back and have some silly games.

Score: 1

Li’Na, Shop Manager

Li’Na is an expensive board flooding tool. Whenever we play a spell with her on board, she fills it with minions of the same cost. It’s very important to note that Li’Na follows the practical cost of the spell. If we play a discounted spell, then the minions will be of the discounted cost and not the original cost.

As an example, if we play Li’Na and then a 0-mana Cultivation, then she will summon a board of Snowflipper Penguins and Ancient Totems. Cultivation will buff the minions summoned, but they will not be 8-mana minions.

In a way, Li’Na conflicts with herself. She fits board flooding decks, but she’s very difficult to use in those decks because she’s so expensive. Realistically, we’re not playing her before turn 7 with a 1-mana spell. Her combo with Cultivation is probably the best one available in the format.

Her ability is persistent, so she could technically summon multiple boards of minions, but as a 3/3, she’s never living past the turn she was played in.

A greedy tech in board flooding decks, or a light win condition in slower decks.

Score: 2

Classes: Druid

Colifero the Artist

The expansion’s early release legendary. So far, Colifero hasn’t found a competitive deck, despite being tested in multiple classes. It has only proven to be a meme card.

The reason is that Colifero requires a very specific way to build decks. We need to run an almost complete spell shell, with a small package of minions that make for good Colifero draw targets. We then play a spell that summons tokens to the board and play Colifero, transforming those tokens into our desired minions.

Druid has tried that with Ragnaros. Demon Hunter has tried it with Illidari Inquisitor. Big Paladin has made a valiant attempt as well.

The problem is that building around Colifero turns the rest of our deck into hot trash. It looks far too gimmicky. Unless a class can genuinely survive running an all-spell shell with Colifero as the sole payoff, it’s not happening.

Score: 1

Joymancer Jepetto

Jepetto is a very expensive value card. We better have a spectacular reason to run an 8-mana 6/6. At first glance, it seems like a card geared to generate us Mini cards that we’ve managed to play throughout the game.

Mini cards are powerful, but not to the extent that we’re willing to play an 8-mana 6/6 just to generate them. Jepetto doesn’t make sense in a token deck that runs a lot of small minions either, because it’s so slow.

Jepetto needs to be used in decks where the minions generated are game winning. Ideally, those minions need to win a turn after we play Jepetto, because playing it makes us fall significantly behind. Our thoughts go to Astral Automatons Priest as a good candidate that could fit.

Automaton Priest’s entire goal is to spam as many Automatons as possible. If it’s able to refill its hand with Automatons post-Jepetto, then it can even OTK the opponent by playing them alongside Zarimi. Another idea is to run it in a Jade Display Druid deck, but that requires us to run Jade Display. Yikes.

If there’s another way to force the issue in such a dramatic path, then that’s where Jepetto may end up making an appearance.

Score: 2

Classes: Priest

 

Whizbang’s Workshop Summary of Ranks