One Night in Karazhan
The card reveals for the new expansion, One Night in Karazhan, have continued. This time we have books, imps, and one of the coolest legendaries I’ve seen. Several old mechanics have been continued and potentially improved upon. However, the big news is that an entirely new mechanic has been introduced, by the Prince himself.
The Cards
Malchezaar’s Imp is interesting. Each set has introduced a small discard mechanic. This is the first one that seems particularly viable. Pairing it with cards such as Darkshire Librarian could actually prove quite effective. However, any deck making use of the discard mechanic is simply too unreliable at this point. This is a good step towards making that deck, but it won’t cut it if they want it to be viable.
Raving Grimoire is another random ability that appears highly competitive. Mage spells are, on average, extremely good. A one mana 1/1 is fairly decent, but when it comes with this much value, it’s is quite viable. Which is highly regrettable for the competitive scene. This is especially sad considering Tempo Mage is already a fairly RNG heavy deck. Adding Grimoires to it only expounds this randomness, removing quite a bit of skill. A sad direction for Hearthstone.
Book Wyrm is a cool idea, but it seems to have one fatal flaw. Most of this set proves Blizzard has figured out how to not understat cards for their effect. This is an exception to that rule. Book Wyrm is massively understated for what it is. It’s very similar to Cabal Shadow Priest in both cost and statline. However, Cabal Shadow Priest is not conditional, AND it actually steals the card. Allowing it to target one higher power is not worth these conditions, especially for a worse effect.
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Moroes is another fairly cool card that simply lacks viability. I’ve always liked the idea of playing a card that produces infinite value. However, Moroes is far too vulnerable to any AoE. In the current meta, almost every single deck runs an easy way to kill this. They also will likely catch some other small minions in the crossfire. Not only that, but losing your turn three tempo is a massive swing against any aggressive deck. The only place I see this working is the Paladin deck that runs Steward of Darkshire. Otherwise, Moroes is cool but nonviable.
Protect the King! Is, unsurprisingly, cool but not incredibly viable. In the current meta, with the exception of Zoo, virtually no deck will have more than two minions in play. For this card to get value, you have to rely on yourself losing the board, badly. And if you do, this card simply won’t win it back. The only place this card sees play is in a Taunt Warrior deck, alongside Bolster. But even then, neither card is very viable without the other, so I doubt it sees any real play.
Prince Malchezaar is awesome. This group of reveals has left me very underwhelmed, until we get to this bad boy. Not only are his stats strong for his cost, but his ability is amazing. He doesn’t replace five cards in your deck with legendaries, he actually adds five cards to your deck. We all know that random legendary minions aren’t incredibly strong. That being said, having an extra five cards in your deck that are legendary, can be very strong. Control decks in particular will benefit highly from this. Hitting fatigue five turns later, while having a lot of potential extra lategame sounds pretty awesome. Plus, it doesn’t put anything into play, so the random elements aren’t nearly as gamebreaking as other cards. I can’t wait to try out this Prince, best legendary I’ve seen in a long time.
