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[Darkmere]

I'm trying to work through it backwards. Discard cards are all strong and cheap but the fact that... well, they toss cards... means you either MUST have an imp out, or keep tapping to refill. You kinda need to press that advantage... and the portal is 5 mana, pass most of a turn, let your opponent have the first shot at those imps.

What concerns me is how well locks can play the control game without Reno and with so many cards that slowly screw you over. I'm not sure they can really pull that off long enough to get a lot of value out of both the discard cards AND the portal.

That said, I'm pretty shit at warlock soooooooo....

[frostshotgg]

There will never be a control meta. The game is not designed to foster one. That's not a secret at this point. The attacker controls trades, and defensive tools are implemented in such a way as to heavily favor aggression. Because combo decks aren't allowed to exist to keep control in check, control decks can't get the tools they need to stave off aggro, because otherwise every game would be a 20 minute slog which casuals would cry about and stop playing which means less $$$ for Blizz.

Re: Pally - The idea that "winmore" cards are inherently bad is such an absurd concept, at least to the extent that you're labeling all minion buffs winmore. Yes, there are cards that do nothing to advance the game state and if you're in a situation where it's good, the game is absolutely over, but buffs are not those, especially in a class that seems like it's going to be very heavily reliant on spamming out tokens. Buffs allow you to turn random tokens into serious threats, and if you have multiple tokens out and your opponent doesn't have aoe to clear them all off, there's nothing they can do to prevent your buffing, unlike killing a Gadgetzan for example.

Pally has a lot of bad buff cards. It also has some good ones. And there's still 4 cards unrevealed that they're getting, and they only need another 1 or 2 good buff cards to make playing 6 buffs in a game where they don't get entirely shut out pretty reasonable. It's not even remotely unreasonable to look at their quest and expect some powerful buffing that we haven't seen yet, when Priest has already gotten 2 deathrattles with at least one more presumably on the way.

[Criptfeind]

Nah, paladins don't have enough good buffs, even if every single card that hasn't been shown is a very playable buffs, they don't have enough good buff to get their quest done before the late game, where they'll be overtaken by jade. Furthermore, even if they did have enough good buffs along with not shown cards, you can't actually run enough buffs to finish the quest early enough because the more buffs you have the more awkward your deck is. Buffs aren't a thing that you can just put a lot into the deck, because then hands become super awkward with nothing but buffs. The idea of playing a lot of buffs fundamentally doesn't work because they have anti synergy with themselves. Hell, even if you think that they'll get more buffs, there's no reason to think they'll be playable. The one buff that's been shown certainly isn't a playable buff. It seems to imply there not been some great revelation at blizzard about how to make buffs good, since it's the same old shit as every other buff.

Anyway, I didn't say buffs are bad because they are "winmore" (although they are also an example of bad winmore as well. but that's a whole nother thing I've not touched here yet). I said that they are bad because they are bad value and awkward when you have a lot of them. When you buffs a card, then that card dies, you've almost never gotten the card and mana cost's worth out of it that you put into it. If you buff a token, that's typically terrible value for the mana and single card. I mean, you say that paladin is suppose to be spamming tokens, but they don't have any really good token generators. The 1 mana spell is okay, but you're not going to make a deck around it. Stand against darkness is trash. The hero power is too slow to rely on for the basis of a buffing deck. This idea of a token based deck that then buffs up the tokens is a wisp of a fantasy that doesn't really exist.

Maybe in wild you could do like, aggro questing egg paladin. But these decks seem like they have a better option, just dropping the quest for a better turn 1.

[RedWarrior0]

I did a quick hypergeometric distribution check in Excel, and the odds of drawing at least 6 buffs in a reasonable time are not good unless you completely overload on buffs. With 12(!) buffs in your deck, you're only ~58% to have drawn at least 6 buffs by your fourteenth non-quest draw (i.e., your turn 12 draw going first, or your turn 11 draw with coin, assuming you kept quest and didn't play any other draw cards). I didn't include the mulligan or the impact of potentially thinning your deck with Small-time recruits. Both will have a noticeable impact, but the latter seems awful - you need to be running a bunch of 1-mana dudes in a deck that has to go long.

At the same time, the cost of running 12 buffs is severe. You need to sacrifice early game board presence to play your buffs; you need to sacrifice something in your deck - removal, other lategame, early minions - to have room for 40% of your deck to be buffs; buffs are awful without a minion on board, they're all awful against a whole bunch of already-being-played hard removal, many are awful against some already-being-played soft removal. And to top it all off, the reward is probably one of the worst we've seen. All of them, other than Galvadon, provide something special. Three of them also produce a massive 5 mana body, so Galvadon isn't unique in being a big beatstick.

Like, I'm not even sure if the magical Christmas land scenario for the Paladin Quest deck is that good. It's possible to turn 5 Galvadon, but if that gets removed you're empty handed with a deck full of dead draws and weak cards.

[Leafsnail]

The Paladin quest sucks a lot but the set looks cool otherwise. There's a lot of neat new mechanics and interesting cards.

[RedWarrior0]

Okay, if anyone is going to actually be completing the paladin quest, the new 2-drop deathrattle is going to be key to doing it, since it'll let you not run a deck with eight trillion buff cards. I also stand corrected on the best-case not being great. I still don't think the quest is worth it.

Warrior quest, on the other hand, actually looks playable. Sulfuras is super-good, and taunts naturally prolong the game. We also get a couple new good taunts.

Mage quest seems okay. Taking an extra turn can be good, but it's heavily reliant on having a board already. You don't really need to go that far out of your way to complete the quest, even in a Kazakus mage, which is important. But the quest reward is 5 mana. It's good with Doomsayer, it'll be good with Arcane Giant I guess, but I'm not 100% sold on it.

[Criptfeind]

It's hard for me to imagine that there's not some incredibly broken things you can do with an extra turn, even if it does cost 5 mana.

[Kansa]

I think you are slightly undervaluing the combo with arcane giant, with those plus whatever you have in hand you can burst people down from pretty high even without emperor.

[Darkmere]

Seems like some of this stuff, especially paladin stuff, is heavily meta-dependent.

Buffs plus that epic paladin murloc make it a huge silence target, chucking buffs and all that value out the window. No amount of adaptations will save galvadon from a devolve, and you announce that play on turn 1.

But devolve is the ONLY magic bullet for it, so it's not that bad - provided you get stealth or spellimmune/warded/whatever it should be called.

I could see questing casino mage doing alright with the giants setup and ice blocks or part of an Exodia setup, maybe? Would be fun in wild with Thaurissan.

I'm really hyped to get more playtime for my Shaku Burglar though. It's not competitive, but it will be SO worth it to play the obsidian shard and my Luckydo Buccaneers, for once.

All in all it looks like a bunch of fun toys, I'm glad I pre-ordered and hoarded enough gold for an extra ~50 packs.

[frostshotgg]

So buffadin deck would have the following buffs for sure: Adaptation, BoK, Spikeridged Steed, BoW. Those are all definitely 2x, so 8 independently good buffs that are nearly or already worth a card slot. Depending on how the meta shakes out, BoM probably makes the cut, so let's say 10 cards. It's definitely close.

RedWarrior, does your spreadsheet factor in mulliganing? I think it's pretty safe to say of your starting 2 non-quest cards, one will be a buff, so you only really need to draw 5 more.

Also I fucking hate the mage quest so much. "Let's give every class a quest that at least requires a bit of dedicated deckbuilding. Except mage. Mage can get their quest for free by doing shit they already do. Make it a short quest too, none of that 10 murlocs nonsense." And of course the reward for it is fucking broken, why wouldn't it be? At least people will have something else to complain about besides jade druid ruining everyone's control meta dreams.

[sambojin]

Just checked out Trump's card review for the new expansion. The end bit anyway. Some looked ok, some were garbage.

Hallucinate seemed quite good at 1 mana, especially as anti-shaman, because they have so many nice spells to discover for most other decks to use. Generically ok'ish vs most opponents in my view. A handy 1-of for some interesting options.

The "pally button" murlock totem seemed good too. I don't know why, it's 2 mana for a split 1/4 of stats on the turn you cast it, but it can be better than that as well. Totem synergy, murlock synergy, but basically a free button if it survives each turn (and some crappy stats if it doesn't). I like it, but I'm probably wrong.

The rogue's petals seemed overcosted at 1 damage for 1 mana, but guaranteeing combo options in hand might be worth it. Maybe.

There were some other good ones too, mixed in with lots of bad stuff.

[RedWarrior0]

RedWarrior, does your spreadsheet factor in mulliganing? I think it's pretty safe to say of your starting 2 non-quest cards, one will be a buff, so you only really need to draw 5 more.

No; it's assuming you don't mulligan anything, and considers the opening hand (other than your quest) to be draws as well. So the sixth draw will be turn four on the play (2 cards in hand plus one each on turns 1, 2, 3, and 4), or turn three with coin.

Mulligan logic is harder to do, and is probably better done with a highly-repeated simulation, since the mulled cards get sent back into the population after the redraw. I'll see what I can do about that.

Also, that spreadsheet was before the Primalfin Champion reveal, and that card is by far the best minion in the Paladin Quest deck because instead of digging for 6 buffs, you only need to dig for 3 or 4, and that has a huge impact (those are the same spreadsheet, but with the 6 in the formula replaced by 4 and 3 respectively). I'm still somewhat pessimistic about the paladin quest, but Primalfin Champion definitely makes it much better.

The original spreadsheet had the following in C3 (top left corner, 6 buffs in deck in 6 draws), extended down and to the right:
=1-HYPGEOM.DIST(6,C$2,$B3,29,TRUE)+HYPGEOM.DIST(6,C$2,$B3,29,FALSE)

[frostshotgg]

There's actually another card that's really good for buffadin. 4 mana 3/3 legendary "After you cast a spell on this minion, summon a 1/1 Plant and cast another copy on it" which by the wording presumably counts twice.

[Criptfeind]

The legendary looks really good for buffadin. I'm not totally sold on the 2 mana dude, like, yeah, he'll see play in the deck if it is good, but will he actually make the deck good? He's still got almost all the weakness that buffs traditionally have, getting ruined by silences, transforms, and return to hand effects. What he does is make it so it's not ruinous to your value if he's hard removed by kill effects, just your tempo. And in theory makes it so you can play less buffs in the deck overall which is pretty okay but still unreliable. And the body is pretty bad itself. Unlike that thou, the legendary plant is just weak to aoe, and only sorta. I think it's slightly awkward since the upside of most (single, obviously gets radically better with every buff on it) buffs on it isn't really quite enough on it's own, although the stegadon one might be. All and all though it seems like a pretty good card. I'm still pessimistic overall, since there's some very awkward questions to answer such as how many buffs (10 buffs feels like way too many, that deck is basically going to crumple to any tech cards and also probably hilariously fail when one don't draw ones buff loving cards and instead is stuck with an unplayable buff hand. But maybe with the new buff lovers, you don't actually need 10 buffs to do the quest before you loose? We'll see.)

Also on the whole the deck feels quite meta dependent? Idk, it's hard for me to imagine the buff deck being good against the three decks with easiest access to kill effects that don't kill, mage, shaman, and rogue. So we'll have to see what percentage of the meta the various decks take. Shaman looks like they are getting a pretty good deal, in that they can take the best of the elemental if they are good or jade and mix and match both together. Elemental jade? Could be a thing. And they will wreck any buff deck incredibly hard with hexes and devolves. Of course their early game is getting hit, so maybe they'll fall a bit. But there's some like, okayish elemental early game. It seems like one could cobble together something from that. Certainly if elemental shaman can't get it up against aggressive decks there's not going to be much hope for any of the quest decks.

[Leafsnail]

The 2 mana card makes the Paladin quest a bit better. It still seems risky but on the plus side the quest reward will win you the game instantly a lot of the time. I can imagine it being an "all-in" combo style deck.

It's hard for me to imagine that there's not some incredibly broken things you can do with an extra turn, even if it does cost 5 mana.

What it says is effectively "Your minions gain charge/can attack again. Draw a card. Refill your mana crystals. Activate all start/end of turn effects".

I imagine it will lead to an instant kill most of the time. On the first turn you play Arcane Giants plus any other random minions in your hand like Apprentice. Then on the second turn you smash in with all your minions and throw burn at their face. Or maybe you set up a spell power guy like Evolved Kobold on the first turn then have 10 mana to exploit it on the next turn.