The reveal season for Mean Streets of Gadgetzan is in full swing, with 132 cards set to be revealed in Hearthstone's next expansion. Will Priest be a playable deck? Will Midrange Shaman stop making us cry? Will we finally get a Control Hunter? Why does Harrison Jones destroy things he thinks belong in a museum?
With 132 cards to review -- 131 after our Grimestreet Pawnbroker card reveal -- we better skip the exposition and get moving with the first big chunk.
Let's start out with the class that needed the most help: Priest. I doubt it was coincidental that Blizzard very quickly showed off some powerful Priest cards, given how little-used the class has been in competitive Hearthstone in the past six months or so.
Suffice it to say, both Control and Dragon Priests get a lot to bite into here.
Potion of Madness is a cut-rate Shadow Madness, which does the same thing for a minion with three or less attack, but one mana vs. four mana is a very serious discount. Control Priests have trouble in the early game and ramming an enemy's 2/3 into a 3/2 or stealing a Loot Hoarder and drawing a card for one mana can be quite useful. Probably not a two-of.
Pint-Size Potion is another utility card, one that manipulates the board to give interaction with other key Priest cards, such as Shadow Word: Pain, Cabal Shadow Priest, Potion of/Shadow Madness, or the little-played Shadow Word: Horror.
Kabal Talonpriest gives Priest a strong three-drop that buffs health, similar to the Dark Cultist, a 3/4 that gave a minion the health after it died. Here you get the health up front and while Dark Cultist wasn't always played it was never poor.
Drakonid Operative and Dragonfire Potion are essentially love letters to Dragon Priest. A five-mana 5/6 is playable on its own, but being able to Discover a card from your opponent is a valuable effect up until you hit fatigue. Most Discover cards give you some sort of random selection while selecting from your opponent's deck ensures a higher quality of card. Else they wouldn't have put the card in their deck in the first place! Dragonfire Potion gives Priest a truly powerful board clear that's been missing since Lightbomb rotated and it's even playable in Control Priest, which needs a catchup mechanism and is happily playing Excavated Evil as it is.
And here were have three defensive tools for Warrior. I Know a Guy isn't the sexiest effect, but there are a lot of times early on against very aggressive decks in which a Warrior really needs a Taunt card early so they can start building up the armor totals. A one-of when the meta commands it.
Stolen Goods gives a Warrior using Taunt minions an additional tool to buff them early. Non-aggressive builds of Warrior don't always have Fiery War Axe on Turn 2 (I swear I'm not lying) and rather than just taking the two armor, activating a Fierce Monkey into a 6/7 on Turn 3 is a worthwhile turn.
One of the cards it can enable is the Alley Armorsmith, expensive for the stats but a great stalling tool that will either block attacks and restore health or eat a removal spell. The latter's not so bad for a Control Warrior since those builds tend to run giant threats; you'll come out ahead in the long run if your opponent is spending resources to remove this card rather than Ragnaros or Grommash Hellscream.
One new mechanic in MSG is the tri-class cards, cards that can be played by three of the game's nine classes, keeping with storyline theme of three competing factions.
Grimestreet Smuggler is a bit understated as a three mana 2/4 and while the effect gives a de facto 3/5 worth of stats if you have a hand, it's a bonus that's a bit difficult to control and when you can't control an effect, it has to be extremely overpowered to be worthwhile (hello, Yogg-Saron). This one isn't.
The Grimestreet Informant, Lotus Agents, and Kabal Courier have a lot in common in that they're straight Discover cards for the three classes in which you can play them. I think the Informant is the most likely to see play, simply because it's early enough that the tempo loss to Discover a class card is hardly fatal. It's about equal to the Jeweled Scarab, which discovers a three-drop - class cards tend to be better, but Scarab's ability to guarantee an on-curve play on three is quite underrated.
The Kabal Courier is trickier to play on three, though will probably see some Arena play in Priest and Warlock (the Mage is less inclined since it already has access to Mage class cards, which are the best of the three). Lotus Agents? Probably not at all. By Turn 5, playing a card that can be dealt with by many two-drops isn't worth the Discover. You'd have to flip the stats for this to be playable.
Kazakus is an interesting card and one that's hard to evaluate due to its novel effect, similar to Reno Jackson in League of Explorers. Essentially, you "make" your own spell, first choosing whether to make a one-cost, five-cost, or ten-cost spell and then Discover two effects out of the ten offered. The spells are less valuable than the mana; the benefit is, however, that you get to tailor the spell to the exact situation. I'm already thinking of a Kazakus/Renolock deck.
This article is part of a series analyzing the cards in the Mean Streets of Gadgetzan Hearthstone expansion. For more, see part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6 and part 7.