Naxxramas Card Reviews

The main part of my Magic the Gathering blog is reviews for new cards, which seems like it is not going to be overly onerous to do for HearthStone as well. I am just going to talk about each new card and give it a fairly arbitrary X/10 rating with 10/10 being a card I anticipate a patch for and 0/10 being unplayable in any situation.



Haunted Creeper 8/10

This is an excellent little card that I was very temped to give a 9/10 rating. Being so cheap it has relatively low nominal power and won't drastically mix things up, instead it will just be a slight upgrade on something else fairly cheap. I think it is better than Harvest Golem and Novice Engineer when it was a 1/2. I don't think it will get nerfed however  as it wont just go in every deck like the 1/2. Overall you get a 3/4 for 2 mana which is a great deal. Although if this were the only way to rate it Harvest Golem would seem awful by comparison the fact that 1/2s and 1/1s are not that relevant on a board does reduce the power gap between the two cards. Haunted Creeper will never be dead, it is a great filler card for any deck wanting to make a board presence and it offers really good scaling with a wide array of cards such as Knife Juggler, Power of the Wild, Redemption, Starving Buzzard and a lot of others. When a card is good on its own as well as offering lots of synergy you are onto a winner. Expect to see lots of these in lots of decks.


Nerub'ar Weblord 3/10

This is a card that is only good when you are facing certain decks and as such should not be something you want very often. If the meta game swings to a place where most of the best decks have battlecry dorks and you have one with none then this might be just the ticket. If you have an arena deck with no battlecry cards then this is OK low curve filler however you won't know how much battlecry you have till you are done drafting and so there will be few occasions this is anything other than a terrible pick. Overall this is a constructed card but it is not one you can base decks around or on, it is just the kind of card that will allow metagames to adapt and counter. In other words there will be short periods of time where these can be good and then as soon as they would become a staple card in certain decks it will become less good again as people counter respond and leave you with a really low power 2 mana 1/4 do nothing.



Nerubian Egg 6/10

A nice design and a lot of potential power. Unlike the Haunted Creeper you cannot just say this is total 4/6 worth of dork for 2 mana as the 0 power on the first part makes it useless or even a hindrance on its own. You cannot even say this is a 2 mana 4/4 as you need to get the first part of the card dead. Nerubian Egg is a card of high variance. As said, on its own it is fairly useless, at best acting as a deterrent to AoE cards. As soon as you have ways to give it attack or taunt you suddenly have a card that can be considered more as a 4/6 for 2, things like Abusive Sergeants, Defender of Argus, Direwolf Alpha etc. Certainly it is easy to have some of these cards in a deck but the overall power of the Egg will depend on how many appropriate synergy cards you have. In a warlock board control style deck you should reliably be able to make the most of the card and so it will be near optimal, in other decks it will be really hopeful and way too inconsistent.


Maexxna 5/10

A very average legendary that is really a very slow removal spell rather than a threat. Two power for six mana is not getting a lot done to heroes however eight toughness and deathtouch (or whatever key word her ability is) should be able to kill of way more than one card and six mana worth of stuff. I can see the classes that struggle with removing big dorks perhaps playing her. Druids most so although she is a beast and so hunters may also have their uses for her. As a removal card she does leave a lot to be desired as she has no taunt or charge built in meaning she can either be ignored for a turn and leave you too far behind to recover or she can be Sapped or otherwise killed and not achieve any of the desired creature killing. All in all I don't think Argent Commander has much to be worried about.



Poison Seeds 3/10

A very interesting card that is too situational to shine on its own. As part of a more focused combo deck it could have its place but I fear it is still too fiddly and with not enough support from other cards to really abuse it. The main problem is that your opponent gets the first use out of the 2/2s and so has the choice of what to do. Usually it will be to beat your face in as sweepers are typically used when you are getting beaten up. It never solves a problem, only calms it down meaning you then need other cards to mop up with. It doesn't provide card advantage really and it is especially hard to have lots of dorks that becoming a 2/2 would be an upgrade to. Certainly a lot of the new cards work well with it such as Nerubian Egg and Haunted Creeper but it seems a bit of a gimmick than you can luck out and win with in a crushing way or more likely mess around with situational cards generally being underpowered and lose. Just play the new good cards with other good cards rather than hopeful bad ones. Synergy is great but consistency is king.



Anub'ar Ambusher 7/10

A 4 mana 5/5 with an easily negated drawback that can even be turned into an advantage. What is not to like? It is slightly better than a Chillwind Yeti but also more awkward. Like Nerubian Egg it scales with cards that work well with it, those being non-minion cards and (cheap) battlecry ones. If played and built sensibly with it should be rare to have the drawback be devastating and as such the extra power over Yeti will make it overall better. If played carelessly however you expose yourself to too much risk and would be far better off with good old reliable Yeti. Cards like this are good as they force you to think about other cards and not just go for the most powerful, as the most powerful depends on what else there is. Any sort of midrange deck is probably going to have a look at this and quite want to play it.



I'll be adding cards to this list as I have time rather than as they become playable.