Rastakhan’s Rumble: New Archetype Analysis

by OtakuMZ - 2 years ago

Introduction

With every new set released, deck builders hope to get new interesting cards to play around with. Each set always brings some new archetypes to play around with, some of which end up being very powerful. Sometimes a combination of cards enables an archetype, other times one card single-handedly creates a whole new style of deck (e.g. Reno Jackson, Genn Greymane, or Baku the Mooneater). In this article, we will take a look at Rastakhan’s Rumble so far to get you a better idea what we will face on the ladder starting early December.

In this set, there are at least two themes per class: the Spirit and Loa combine to push the class in one direction, while the Champion pushes it into another. Sometimes, there is some overlap between the two, but the developers have stated that the intention is more that each class has multiple viable archetypes than it is that all of each class’s cards synergize with one another. So far, we have not seen a neutral Cards like the above mentioned that will create a whole set of new archetypes throughout all classes.

Druid

Druid is the first and maybe least exciting class to take a look at. That might not be a bad thing as Druid has been powerful for a very long time and we could use a bit of a time away from it.

Beast Druid again, huh? Blizzard doesn’t give up on the Beast Druid theme. Almost every card released so far may fit into that archetype but none are too exciting. Wardruid Loti could be included in a variety of decks though due to its high versatility. Predatory Instincts seems more suited to be used as a tutor effect (for something like Hadronox, perhaps) in a deck with few targets, instead of a deck with many beasts.

Hero Power Druid, is thus far supported by only the Spirit and Savage Striker. So far, there is no clear path how this might be powerful enough to be even remotely viable. Perhaps, once the Loa is revealed, we see a better picture where this style of play is heading or if it is just doomed from the beginning – at least in the Year of the Raven.

Hunter

Hunter looks sweet so far even without either Champion, Loa or Spirit revealed! There are very promising Hunter cards interesting Neutral synergy available in Rastakhan’s Rumble. Thus far, only old archetypes seem to be revitalized. We are more than hyped to the the new theme of Hunter, but until we see more of the new archetypes’ tools, we take a look at old archetypes that get new cards.

Beast (Midrange) Hunter seems very strong. Almost every Hunter card revealed so far seems to fit the archetype: Revenge of the Wild, Master’s Call, Springpaw, and Bloodscalp Strategist. Baited Arrow ist he only Hunter card that falls short in our opinion. On the Neutral side, the Legendary Oondasta and Untamed Beastmaster make a perfect fit.

Deathrattle Hunter will surely adopt Oondasta as well and Secret Hunter may think to include Masked Contender, the new Mad Scientist of the set. Spell Hunter could run Revenge of the Wild either with Spellstone, Unleash, To My Side!, or Call of the Wild. The obvious crazy Revenge of the Wild alongside Flark’s Boom-Zooka combo seems also very sweet but perhaps less reliable. There is a wide range of opinions about the strength of Baited Arrow, but it seems its most likely home would be in Spell Hunter, where removal-and-a-body does a lot of work.

Quest Hunter may finally be worthwhile, too. Springpaw is an excellent 1-Mana minion as is Saronite Taskmaster (a Neutral common). After the quest is completed, Untamed Beastmaster might get out of hand very quickly if not removed. Depending on the deck’s composition, Master’s Call might become a reliable draw engine as well.

Mage

We all saw Mage during the first big card reveal stream and therefore this class is outlined quite well.

Hero Power Mage is clearly the biggest archetype of Mage. Spirit of the Dragonhawk and Jan’alai represent the core while Pyromaniac and Daring Fire-Eater provide good support. Nothing more to say here than if you haven’t seen the stream, you can take a look at how it all comes together here.

There is no other new archetype hinted so far. Hex Lord Malacrass is more of a value card which might fit into Hand Mage and/or Control Mage as do Arcanosaur, Blast Wave, and Firetree Witchdoctor. The latter will be likely an all-star like Stonehill Defender. The Hex Lord and Blast Wave both also hint to a random card generation theme, whereas Elemental Evocation and Arcanosaur both highlight some additional elemental synergies.

Paladin

Paladin is another of the more straight-forward classes when it comes to seeing the bigger picture for it.

Spell Paladin is layed out clearly by Spirit of the Tiger alongside Shirvallah itself. We can imagine this archetype combined with the Paladin Quest (The Last Kaleidosaur) which Brian Kibler already pushed to Legend this season and seems to get a big buff from new cards like Immortal Prelate. The other possibility would be a Control Paladin shell. New cards like A New Challenger, although not overwhelmingly strong by themselves, could provide the survivability for this archetype alongside old friends like Lay On Hands.

Speaking of Lay On Hands: Heal Paladin is the second theme for the class. The Paladin Troll Champion, High Priest Thekal, synergizes perfectly as does Zandalari Templar. There are a lot of Paladin cards (e.g. Benevolent Djinn, ChillBlade Champion) as well as Neutral cards (e.g. Earthen Ring Farseer) that can heal up. The Neutral card Soup Vendor could potentially support that archetype further by providing card draw.

Priest

The award for the best flavor in this set goes to Priest for fully embracing the path of the Shadow Priest. Although zombies have been used over and over in TV and cinema over the years, we still love them deep down in our heart – and they are far more interesting than the pure benevolent Holy Priest stuff, right?

Zombie Priest a.k.a. Necromancer is one of the big new archetypes. With this deck, you want to shuffle minions back in your deck through Spirit of the Dead to draw them later with Bwonsamdi to play potentially big minions for little mana. You could even drop them all with Princess Talanji.

Aggro Priest finally seems within our grasp in which Bwonsamdi could function as a late game card draw tool in a very aggressive Priest deck to filter 1-drops out of the deck and augment late game draws. Maybe even an Aggro Zombie Priest will be invented to combine both strategies. Maybe the craze Surrender to Madness fits into such a deck; we at BlizzPro hope so for the very least.

Talanji Priest/Randuin can be implemented in more than one way. Thief Talanji. The class always loved to play the opponents deck. Spells like Mind Vision, Thoughtsteal and Courious Glimmerroot could be the means to do exactly that while discounting the Mana cost of Grave Horror and Arcane Giant in the Wild format. Value Talanji / Dragon Talanji. You could also go the Discover / Deathratlle route for Talanja Cristalline Oracle, Stone Hill Defender, Bone Drake and the likes will help find minions from outside the deck. This could be achieved the already viable Dragon Control Priest shell, too.

Additions to existing archetypes include perhaps just using Bwonsamdi as a value card–drawing 2-3 cards late from either a midrange-style deck (like Spiteful Priest) or a combo-style deck (using Inner Fire shenanigans). The set’s additional dragon synergies also mean that Duskbreaker may get one last hurrah, and the defensive nature of this set’s dragons means that the Mind Blast/Control variant of Dragon Priest seems like a likely route.

Rogue

Evaluating Rogue is much easier than some of the other classes. There is a very distinct picture drawn here.

Pirate Rogue is the first big thing the developers want in the game. We’ve only seen a couple Pirates this set, though, and it seems like the archetype might need a little bit more support in the second half of the set reveals if it is to see play. Cannon Barrage seems decent, and I think we are all happy it is not available to Warrior, as that would be a nightmare in Wild. Sharkfin Fan could synergize extremely well with Cannon Barrage which provides some merit for this type of deck. Raiding Party seems incredibly powerful if there are any Pirates worth grabbing.

Kingsbane Rogue. Speaking of Raiding Party, the card seems incredibly powerful in Kingsbane Rogue, which already runs 2-3 pirates (Cutthroat Buccaneer and Captain Greenskin) and has an endless supply of weapons in the ever-present Kingsbane. This may be the boost the deck has needed ever since the Coldlight Oracle rotation.

Battlecry/Combo (Tempo) Rogue seems to be the second and not so new deck. It has to be seen if Spirit of the Shark is worth leaving the Odd path or if we just put in Gral, the Shark as another tempo and carddraw tool in the already powerful Odd Rogue deck. Maybe the picture will get clearer once we see a few more cards, including Captain Hooktusk.

Shaman

Shaman this set is weird, but what did we expect from a class that worships a giant voodoo frog? We have not seen the Loa so far, but we know from the set’s structure that it will have some synergy with the Spirit card, so we can make some informed guesses.

Cost Augmentation/”Evolve” seems to be one of the main mechanics here. In total, the archetype seems not very well defined as there is a lot of randomness going on with giving random spells and potentially chaining them. The problem here is variance. If you played Shudderwock Shaman in the past or another deck that runs Hagatha, you already might have experienced that Shaman there are some very good Shaman spells, but also lots of bad or situational ones. That said, the Spirit actually draws from your deck, so it could well lead to *increased* consistency, depending on how you build it–you could very well turn the Spirit into pseudo tutor effects if you fill your deck with spells of a particular cost and only one target for them to get.

Apart from that, there is some Overload synergy with Likkim, the new Shaman weapon which might also fit in a spell deck with cheap overload spells. The weapon is very powerful, but we doubt it will push Overload Shaman into viability on its own. Boomsday’s Thunderhead was another strong card that seemed to simply lack enough support, so maybe they can prop each other up. Rain of Toads seems like a mediocre card in a vacuum, but when combined with the above-mentioned cards and a big payoff like Snowfury Giants, the deck might get a little traction.

Malygos Shaman, with or without Overload synergy, might also make an appearance with the addition of Totemic Smash and, perhaps, Haunting Visions. The deck would use Eureka! to cheat out the dragon and then go ham with Totemic Smash, Lightning Bolt, Frost Shock, Lava Burst, etc. The deck would likely struggle in a metagame with too much Odd Warrior, Druids, and the new Heal Paladins, but there might be a metagame in which it can exist if the critical mass of tools for it is reached.

Zentimo seems good enough that it might just be worth considering for any Shaman that is allowed to run Odd cards, much like Electra Stormsurge did. The only problem with that is that right now there is only one such deck (Shudderwock Shaman), and it is already pretty tight on card slots.

Warlock

Discard Warlock is clearly the main focus of the set. The new “discard the lowest cost card” seems a lot better than discarding a card at random, especially given that it allows the discard sub-theme to coexist with the other major theme of the class in this set, handbuffing. We are very hyped for this archetype as are many others. Further, this archetype may be even more powerful in Wild as there is additional synergy by Silverware Golem.

Hand-Buff Warlock is the second theme of the set for Warlock pushed by Hir’eek, the Bat alongside Spirit of the Bat. This deck seems weaker than Discolock as it come short in terms of synergy regarding previous sets. Outside Soul Infusion and Void Analyst, there is not much going on in the card pool. Nonetheless, Soul Infusion is already a staple card in Zoolock and experimentation with Void Analyst by pro players was not futile overall. There are also a few more cards to be revealed for Warlock in this set, which may change the landscape.

Warrior

Dragon Warrior seems to be the big theme for Warrior. We have seen three Warrior cards for this archetype so far as well as two neutral Dragon-themed one. The first Neutral is Firetree Witchdoctor, an overall solid card for the archetype which might be even better in Dragon Priest. The second is Crowd Roaster – which is very controversially discussed by the community. At first, the Card appears to be a little on the weak side but it might fit very well in a more aggressive Dragon deck. On the one Hand, the effect is superior to Blazecaller and needs less setup. On the other hand, four Health is a lot easier to remove than six even though it potentially can push more damage or remove a second big minion. The Warrior-specific dragon-synergy cards all seem pretty powerful, so this set may see the return of a midrange-based Dragon Warrior. Alternatively, there may be enough odd-costed Dragon synergy to add a “Dragon Package” to existing Odd Warrior decks, either in addition to or in place of the current Mech Package.

Apart from that, we get more support for different archetypes. The deck that may be most viable is Rush Warrior which seems to be getting a big buff from Akali, the Rhino which appears strong. Further, a there is weak support for a non-odd Armor Warrior (Heavy Metal) and a the more promising Self-Damaging Warrior in the form of Overlord’s Whip. If either of those can be pushed into viability is still unsure. Sul’Thraze seems like a powerful card if it can find a home, and that home may be one of the many midrange Warrior options being teased by the set. I think we have to wait until the Warrior Spirit is revealed.

Conclusion

Well that’s it folks. Did we miss something? If so or if you have other interesting points to raise we would love to discuss them with you. Just start the discussion here or tweet @BlizzPro, @OtakuMZ1978, and @hsdecktech. Thank you for reading!