Stonekeep takes a look at the most underrated and overrated cards from One Night in Karazhan!

Introduction

The last wing of Karazhan has been released a week ago, so I think that we can already start analyzing the impact of the expansion as a whole. Sure, the decks are still being optimized, some cards are still being tested, but we already see general trends.

Just like every expansion, there have been multiple discussions about the cards viability before they were released. “This card is bad”, “that will change the meta”, “Purify will never see any play”. A lot of different opinions from different players, but generally it was pretty easy to tell whether certain card is liked or disliked. And just like every expansion, those sentiments didn’t match the reality as good as reviewers would have liked. I also made my fair share of mistakes – dismissed certain cards too quickly or praised others when they didn’t deserve it.

This time I wanted to compare pre-adventure predictions to post-adventure reality. I’ll list the most underrated and overrated cards of the expansion. But just a quick explanation of my reasoning behind those terms. “Underrated cards” are the cards that turned out to be better than they were rated (and vice versa for overrated ones). It doesn’t mean that overrated = weak and underrated = strong. If the card was rated as “terrible” and it turned out to be “okay”, the card was underrated. On the other hand, if people said that X card will be a meta-changer and it was just alright/good, it was overrated.

P.S. I know that many people have rated those cards right. I mean, if you show a card to 100k people, it’s nearly impossible that everyone will be wrong. I’m basing the community rating on how majority of players have rated cards on different Hearthstone-related sites + on how the cards were received on Reddit’s /r/hearthstone.

Underrated

5. Purify

Community Rating: Worst card of the expansion™

Okay, so I want to start with this – I don’t think that Purify is a good card. I still think that the card is weak. But I think that it was unfair to trash it so much. It became the joke card of the expansion, people saying that it will NEVER see ANY play and that it might be the worst card in the game. And that’s simply not true.

Sure, the card isn’t good overall, but it’s only “meh, it might be slightly stronger”, not “if you play this card you auto lose” as some people were trying to make it. I’ve seen Silence Priest in action already and while the deck is far from competitively viable, it seems fun and possible to ladder with. This card is decent in this deck – sure, it’s never really amazing, but the fact that it does what the decks want to do (Silence own minions) + it cycles a card makes it playable.

I feel like this card would receive different reviews (average/bad card) if not for the whole “Blizzard doesn’t care about Priest” situation. Which I obviously agree with, but Priest’s card this expansion weren’t terrible. I guess people have expected something completely broken to fix the class and were disappointed when it only got average/good cards and nothing overpowered.

4. Runic Egg

Community Rating: Unplayable

I think that this was the second lowest-rated card of the expansion after Purify. And again, I think the ratings were unjustified. I mean… this card isn’t amazing, but in any deck that can activate it (attack buffs), it’s a 1 mana cycle. Silence isn’t really popular, so card draw is nearly guaranteed. Not to mention that, from my experience, people are killing this card, because they’re afraid of you getting something like Abusive Sergeant value.

I feel like this card is strong in any deck that wants to cycle hard and has some sort of attack buffs. So it can be strong in Aggro Paladin (like the Egg Paladin we’re seeing from time to time that plays Dragon Egg already) and maybe some combo decks like OTK Worgen Warrior. Sure, it’s a card that you won’t see very often, but it’s pretty strong in certain decks.

Again, just like in Purify’s case – I don’t think the card is insanely strong, but it has its niche uses. People seem to ignore cards that have very small effects and call them bad, unplayable. I’ve already argued many times that Priest’s Power Word: Shield is one of the strongest cards in the game and nearly no one seems to agree. It’s those small effects that make decks more consistent.

Even if this card won’t see too much play right now, I’m positive that eventually there will be a good deck to put it into (after all, it’s a 1 mana cycle). Even right now I feel like the card is at least average and it’s definitely not the worst minion in the adventure.

3. Ethereal Peddler

Community Rating: Average/Bad

This one wasn’t really expected to work, people have seen it more as a gimmicky card that might be played in a gimmicky deck. I know that the “Thief Rogue” archetype still in the testing phase, but right now it looks decent. The main reasoning of people calling this card bad was that Burgle is a bad card. They have mostly pictured it in a slower, more Control-oriented archetype for some reason. While it fits very nicely into a Midrange, more minion-based Tempo Rogue play style.

The card has good stats, 5/6 is the best you’re going to get for 5 mana (I think it’s even superior to 4/7 stats in more aggressive deck). Rogue had no 5-drops besides Azure Drake. Dark Iron Skulker was sometimes played in Reno/N’Zoth, but it’s hard to call it a “5-drop”. If you have 1 or 2 cards from other classes in your hand, 2 or 4 mana worth of tempo is good enough. Even Burgle, which is really bad by itself, becomes okay with Peddler (unless you’re really unlucky, but such is the nature of RNG cards).

I think that if Rogue had a solid 3-drop or 4-drop that also copies a card from opponent’s class (similarly to Swashburglar and Undercity Huckster), Thief Rogue could become a really viable archetype. Right now I’m still not sure, but this card has definitely turned out to be better and more commonly played than people have expected.

2. The Curator

Community Rating: Average

I feel that so far The Curator might have been the most impactful card of the expansion so far (Arcane Giant is a close second from my experience). It has seen successful play in many different decks, including Beast Druid, Murloc Paladin and Dragon Warrior. But the general consensus was that the card is too situational and you’d have to build a deck around it to make it work, which would make the deck worse in return. Players have also grouped the Zoobot, Menagerie Magician and The Curator in the same category, which was clearly wrong, as those cards are way different. Another thing most of people have missed is that you don’t have to heavily build around it and force 3 draws to make it good. Drawing two cards is more than enough for The Curator to see play, if you compare it to one of the best cards we had in the game before Standard – pre-nerf Ancient of Lore.

It turned out that it’s pretty easy to play Dragons and Beasts in a lot of decks and Sir Finley Mrrgglton goes into enough decks that it kinda fills the Murloc slot. I feel like any deck that is based around Beasts OR Dragons OR Murlocs can easily fit this card in. Since you already play a lot of one tribal, all you need to do is find a place for 2 more cards from different tribes. And so, Beast decks can easily play Azure Drakes or some big finisher like Onyxia. Warriors can always throw in Fierce Monkey, as it’s a good Beast in pretty much every deck. Slower, Control-oriented decks can always play Stampeding Kodo (especially Paladins because of the Humility/Aldor Peacekeeper synergy). You can also play it in nearly every Reno deck, because of how many card slots you have to fill there anyway.

Overall I feel that even though the reactions to this card weren’t that bad, the difference between expectations and reality are significant. It was expected to SOMETIMES see play, mostly in the more gimmicky, multi-tribe decks. And right now it’s strong in a lot of different decks.

1. Onyx Bishop

Community Rating: Bad

I can’t really get my head around the initial ratings of this card. While Priest of the Feast also didn’t initially get as much love from the community as it should, it was at least rated as “average”. In Onyx Bishop’s case, however, most people have said that it’s a straight up bad card. It’s too expensive, Resurrect effect doesn’t really work well in Priest and even if it did, 3/4 minion just messes up with the resurrect pool.

I think that the Resurrect Priest has already proven most of them wrong, but I’ll explain why. First of all – Resurrect wasn’t that good BECAUSE we didn’t have similar effects. Since you need to build your deck around it – e.g. remove most of the small minions from your deck – if you couldn’t draw your Resurrects consistently enough, your deck building sacrifice wasn’t worth it. The deck would play even 2 more resurrect effects if they were good enough. Too expensive – I wouldn’t say so. It’s actually right on the curve. After you drop t3 Injured Blademaster and then a 4-drop like Priest of the Feast, you play t5 Onyx Bishop and you have guaranteed strong resurrect. While 3/4 messes with resurrect pool a little, it’s not that big of a deal. Getting a 2 mana 3/4 or 5 mana 2x 3/4 isn’t the worst thing ever.

The card is what made the Resurrect Priest archetype viable. And while it’s not a top tier deck, I feel like it still put Priest in the better state than pre-Karazhan. And the card itself is way, way better than people have rated it. I think that this card might have the biggest gap between how people have rated it and how it turned out to be.

Overrated

5. Violet Illusionist

Community Rating: Good/Meta-Defining

This one, I was really surprised about. When I first looked at this card, I thought – hey, it’s not terrible, it might see some play in Warrior. You know, since you hit so many things with weapons anyway, it might block some damage. But then I started reading comments on this card. Pretty much no one rated it as a bad card, all I’ve seen is good, great, amazing, meta-defining. What? No way. I had to check out whether I didn’t end up on a wrong card’s page. But no. I’ve read that it’s going to be great in Control Warrior, in Rogue decks (since they take so much damage with their Hero Power), in Warlock with cards like Flame Imp or Pit Lord, even in Druid… Oh, and the thing that people were most hyped about is this card in Mill Rogue. Because it prevents fatigue.

Control Warrior – sure, I agree with, especially with the Gorehowl or the new Fool's Bane. This can potentially prevent quite a lot of damage and is worth it. But any of the other decks, I didn’t get it. Rogue decks that take the most weapon damage (Miracle type) have no place to put this card, they’re really tight already. Warlocks wouldn’t build a deck full of self damaging effects just to hope that they will get this card on the board, it will stick and they will be able to mitigate some damage next turn. Not only would that be a rare combo, but it wouldn’t even be that impactful. If you play this and follow it with Pit Lord next turn, you’ve healed yourself for 5 and that’s all. Sure, it’s good, but not game-changing in most of the cases. And Mill Rogue, the most hyped of the decks that it would go into. I’ve started wondering if people who said that ever played Mill Rogue. The whole point of this deck is to make the enemy take more fatigue than you, because you have 6 more cards total in your deck – thanks to 2x Gang Up. Not only that, but how are you supposed to fit this card into your last fatigue turn? You play Brann Bronzebeard + 2x Coldlight Oracle (+possibly 3rd one with Shadowstep) and that’s 9 mana already (10 with Shadowstep). It’s not like you have any more mana to play this card. You would need to set up Emperor Thaurissan on Brann Bronzebeard + Violet Illusionist to make it even possible, and it would limit you to 2x Coldlight after that. Maybe in one out of twenty games, in some late game scenario where you can Emperor when you already have every piece in your hand and then you really need it, because you’re low on health etc. – maybe in that kind of scenario it might come handy. But that’s the reason why people often put Reno in their Mill Rogue decks – when they’re pretty much out of cards already and ready to perform their final combo, they just Reno and do it next turn.

The card has seen some play in Control Warrior already – most notably in Fibonacci’s Yogg Control Warrior. But that’s pretty much it. It’s a solid tech card if you know that you will take a lot of damage attacking with your weapons. But no more than that.

4. Prince Malchezaar

Community Rating: Good/Meta-Defining

It’s another one I was honestly surprised about. People were really hyped about this card. You get free Legendaries, it’s like auto-win in Control matchups! But the thing is, those free Legendaries not only might be terrible (think about Elise Starseeker’s Golden Monkey – sure, you sometimes get a hand full of amazing Legendaries, but more often than not you get some bad ones like Millhouse Manastorm, Lorewalker Cho etc.) And a free win in Control matchups, that’s not necessarily true either. While it gives you the edge, not every Control matchup is decided by fatigue. It’s decided by fatigue only when both players commit to that kind of play style. But one can decide to push for more tempo and it wasn’t an uncommon thing to do if you knew that you might have an edge. And if your enemy is very likely to win fatigue, you would also push for tempo, try to cycle through your deck to get Golden Monkey fast and then overwhelm the enemy with a Legend every turn way before fatigue. Sure, this game plan might fail and Malchezaar might win control matchups. I’d even say that he’s good in control matchups. Not auto-win, but good and ONLY in them.

Now, it’s all about the stats. How often you actually play vs a control deck? 20% of games? I think that it’s even lower, but let’s say 20%. So 20% of games, playing Prince Malchezaar gives you a slight edge. And 80% of games, it gives you a disadvantage, because it makes you less likely to draw the early Fiery War Axe or Brawl when enemy floods the board or Execute right when you need it. Instead, you draw a bunch of random Legendaries that will very likely be unplayable until the late game. And since you should win in the late game anyway (you’re playing a control deck), they aren’t really necessary a lot of the time.

Another way to play him I’ve seen on the ladder was to play a heavy early game Warrior deck, with a lot of removals, Cruel Taskmaster, Armorsmith etc. and then play Malchezaar as your win condition. As in, you make your deck strong against faster decks and then you win slower matchups with the random Legendaries… And that way of thinking is also flawed. If you make your deck so early game heavy and you remove all the big win conditions from your deck, now not only the random Legendaries you get need to be amazing, but you also run out of cards very fast. I’ve just played a Midrange Hunter game against such a deck. He ran out of stuff to do on turn 7, because he had so much early game. And then dropped like two mediocre Legendaries (Skycap'n Kragg and Illidan Stormrage) when I had nearly full board. Any Midrange deck should wreck this one and then any “real” Control deck should outvalue it despite the few random Legendaries.

But alright, I can see him being played in a Control deck. In some very specific meta, if you face A LOT of very slow matchups… But some do play him in Discard Warlock. Reasoning? “Well, if you need to discard something anyway, you have a chance of discarding a random Legendary instead of a card from your deck”. And that, my dear readers, is an example of a very flawed thinking. Those cards aren’t “extra” cards. You need to draw them like normal cards and they count for a card. The only difference is that you have 5 more cards in total, so if the game would ever go to fatigue then it might matter. But since Discard Warlock games don’t go to fatigue that often (because like Zoo, it’s a pretty aggressive deck), it’s almost the same as if you would put 5 bad cards into the deck (stuff like Goldshire Footman, Bloodfen Raptor etc.) and say that you did that so you could discard them instead of good cards. Not to mention that having random Legendaries actually reduce the chance you discard the cards you want. Let’s say you’re stuck with Soulfire, Silverware Golem and Rend Blackhand (or any other expensive Legendary) in your hand. Now, you can’t guarantee discarding the card you want, because you have a bunch of expensive Legendaries you don’t want to play in your deck. I hope that you understand why this idea is so stupid.

And the funny thing is that the card is very popular even though it’s bad. I’ve seen him in quite a few decks when grinding the ladder this season, especially before I’ve hit the more competitive ranks. I guess people like to make their decks worse on purpose.

Okay. Prince Malchezaar is a really cool card and I think that I would put him into a lot of decks if I was a new player with very small collection. After all, it would allow me to play around with all the cool Legendaries I don’t have access to. But it doesn’t make your deck better, if we’re talking about the usual ladder grind, it only makes your deck worse.

3. Barnes

Community Rating: Good/Meta-Defining

I’m also guilty here. I was really hyped for Barnes and I thought that it’s going to shape the whole meta. I suspected pretty much every deck would play it. And I was wrong, oh so wrong.

It turned out that the card is consistent enough only in a few decks. Sure, people still play Barnes in Hunter and it works great there. Sure, they still play it in some N’Zoth decks (like Control Paladin). But it’s not as common on the ladder as I, and many people, thought it would be.

The problem with the card is that in your average deck it’s a vanilla 3/4 + 1/1 most of the time. And while it’s not terrible, you wouldn’t like to play something like that in general. Most of the people thought that the swing of getting a Sylvanas Windrunner or Emperor Thaurissan will be good enough to put it, even if it happens once in 5 games or so. But no, you really need to build a deck around it to make it work. And by build around it, I mean that realistically at least half of your minions (the more, the better) need to have some synergy with Barnes or else it’s going to fail too many times. Most of the decks, however, can’t do that. They can’t get rid of their Battlecry minions, they might not have access to good class Deathrattles (e.g. that’s one of the biggest reasons why it’s so strong in Hunter – Infested Wolf, Savannah Highmane and such make for a great Barnes targets) and it’s just not worth running it for the 3-4 good targets out of 15+.

The card is good, I can’t deny that, but it doesn’t really match the initial hype around it. It’s just strong in a certain few decks and you don’t play against it every second game on the ladder. It’s solid enough to see play in months to come, but it rarely wins the game by itself. And that’s actually really fine, having every second game being decided by turn 4 RNG would be a disaster.

2. Cloaked Huntress

Community Rating: Meta-Defining

Some said that it’s going to be a next Mysterious Challenger. Most people said that it’s going to have a huge impact on the meta. That Hunter will dominate it. And well, they were right on the last part – Hunter is a huge force in the current meta. But the most popular meta decks (Midrange, Hybrid) don’t even play Cloaked Huntress.

I think that it was one of the most tested cards in the whole set. People have played it in Face Hunter, in Yogg ‘n’ Load Hunter, there was even a new archetype created around it – Secret Hunter (LifeCoach’s Secret Hunter was probably the most popular build recently). And while it never performed poorly, it wasn’t as amazing as everyone thought it will be.

Yogg ‘n’ Load Hunter turned out to still be a fun deck rather than a competitively viable one. Secret Hunter is good, but Midrange/Hybrid are just slightly better, so people play them instead. And that’s the thing – the card is not bad, but the archetype it would go into is just worse than the others. It was a problem with many cards before. I suspect that this card will see some play in the future, as it’s a very strong tempo move. But right now, after laddering whole day yesterday, I’ve seen this card once.

1. Menagerie Warden

Community Rating: Meta-Defining

If I had to pick the most hyped card, both by the community and the pro/streamers, that would be Menagerie Warden. It got the highest score in most of the reviews, including mine. Beast Druid was going to be the next tier 1 deck all thanks to Menagerie Warden. Similarly to the last card, I’ll have to say that it wouldn’t be fair to call it a bad card. It’s simply not bad – it’s good. But it doesn’t perform as well as expected for a few reasons.

The main problem is the deck itself. Beast Druid, after the initial testing period, turned out to be an average deck. Instead of a Tier 1 (like most of the people assumed it would be) it is probably low Tier 2. Very playable on the ladder and has its strong points, but not anywhere near broken, so you don’t see it that often. Second thing is that Beast Druid tends to be a pretty aggressive deck. With a lot of small drops, Charge minions, Savage Roar etc. the deck wants to play a fast game. And Menagerie Warden fits the slower, Midrange deck much more. So it creates a conflict, where on the one hand you want to play a fast game, but on the other if you really want to use your Menagerie Wardens, you need to slow down. Third point, which kind of connects to the second one, is that it requires you to have board presence going into turn 6. But not just any board presence. Not only it needs to be a Beast, you’d also like it to be a bigger Beast (so 4+ drop). It’s hard to meet all of those conditions without playing a turn 5 Stranglethorn Tiger – that’s the only Beast that’s very likely to survive a turn no matter what (because of the Stealth) and is big enough that’s it’s really worth copying. So the only way to guarantee great Menagerie Warden turn is to play Tiger into Warden back to back. But that’s also not that easy – if you face a faster deck you might have to remove something with Wrath or Swipe, maybe you get a good Hero Power value that you just can’t miss (e.g. killing a 5/1 minion that would otherwise kill your 5/5), maybe you need to Taunt up, because you’re close to dying.

As you can see, there is a lot of conditions and you rarely get to play a perfect Menagerie Warden. I’d say that overall it’s a card that performs much better in slow matchups than it performs in fast ones. And it performs in a slower versions of Beast Druid much better than in the faster ones. The problem is that current ladder is so tempo-oriented that slow matchups are rare and Beast Druid is better as a faster deck.

Menagerie Warden is a good card and definitely auto-include into Beast Druid decks. But it didn’t really break the meta, it didn’t push the Beast Druid to the highest tier and it most certainly isn’t “the next Call of the Wild or (insert any overpowered card)”.

Closing

It’s not anything new that card reviews are wrong. I read and watch reviews for every expansion since GvG and I don’t remember anyone ever being right about every single card. Even the ones that seem obviously good/bad a few months after the expansion is out have been heavily misjudged. And that’s alright – it’s impossible to predict the meta, the decks that will be popular and there is a huge difference between theorycrafting and in practice. I consider myself to be a good player and a decent deck builder and I have made more mistakes when rating this expansion than I’d like to admit. So don’t feel bad if you were riding on the Beast Druid’s hype train and it derailed. Or if you thought that The Curator is a terrible card and no one will play it. Karazhan turned out to be a pretty fun expansion and let’s all just enjoy it!

If you have any questions about the article or feel like some other cards this expansion have been overrated or underrated, please let me know in the comments. And if you want to be up to date with my articles, you can follow me on Twitter.

Good luck on the ladder and until next time!