Hearthstone 'One Night in Karazhan' Card Reviews (Part 2)

Hearthstone's next single-player Adventure, One Night in Karazhan, is launching on August 11. Blizzard is likely to reveal several more, if not the rest of the set, later tonight on its stream. So we're taking the opportunity to catch up with all the cards so far.

(5) Fool's Bane

Unlimited number of attacks each turn. Can't attack heroes.

This elegantly designed weapon adds a lot of flavor by keeping Warrior the most versatile weapon-user in the game. It also plays to its strengths by restricting itself to board control, which is common for Warriors anyway due to their Armor abilities. It's relatively weak for the cost--compare to the 5-mana 5/2 Arkanite Reaper--so you'll have to hit minions more than once for removal, thus doubling the damage you take.

All that means it's probably best suited as an anti-rush tool. It can dispatch their low health and potentially take out a whole field of four opponents without breaking much of a sweat or taking too much damage. That makes it a good tech card to slot in if you're a Warrior being overrun by fast zoo decks, but it'll be less useful in slower control vs control matchups.

(8) Medivh, the Guardian (7/7)

Battlecry: Equip Atiesh, Greatstaff of the Guardian.

8 mana for a 7/7 barely misses the vanilla test, but that doesn't necessarily make it a poor card. The base stateline is the same as Force-Tank MAX and Gruul, and similar to Chromaggus and Kel'Thuzad. Usually in higher-cost Legendary minions, the vanilla test matters less than the effect. In Medivh's case, he gives you the first neutral weapon in the game, and the first weapon built for synergy with spells. 

(3) Atiesh (1/3)

After you cast a spell, summon a random minion of that Cost. Lose 1 Durability.

The effect of Atiesh is exactly like Summoning Stone, a card which never saw serious play. Atiesh stands a decent chance, though. Instead of a weak 0/6 minion that forces you to sink a five mana investment, it's a free equipped item when you break out Medivh. That means that to counteract the effect, your opponent will need a minion that destroys weapons, which is a much more specialized case than simply attacking the Summoning Stone with their own minions before it can be used. Plus, it's accompanied by the 7/7 on the board, so even if they do play a weapon-breaking minion like Harrison Jones, Medivh is still a threat.

The drawback to Atiesh is its limited number of uses. If you add durability to it, you might get it up to four uses, but it still obeys the rules of weapons in Hearthstone. However, you'd be lucky to get off even one use of Summoning Stone, and Atiesh is fairly likely to let you get the full value out of it, letting you combine spell removal with putting your own power on the board. Similar to the Mage's Firelands Portal, this opens the door for decks that are almost all removal and only pack a few minions. It will definitely be worth experimenting with.

(6) Moonglade Portal

Spell: Restore 6 Health. Summon a random 6-Cost minion.

The Mage apparently isn't the only class getting a portal spell that does double-duty. The Druid version trades damage for healing, and costs one more Mana, but has a much better pool of minions to summon, including Sylvanas, Cairne Bloodhoof, and Emperor Thaurissan. 

Are those better odds enough to tempt Druid players to put this in their decks? Probably not. Unlike Mage, Druid actually has plenty of minion power on its own. Healing is a nice bonus, but it's not as good as board control. This may create some nice synergy witn Medivh's staff above, and it'll definitely see some experimentation, but it's not likely to be an auto-include.

(2) Netherspite Historian (1/3)

Battlecry: If you're holding a Dragon, Discover a Dragon.

It's not often that a neutral card is arguably even better than a similar class card, but this card could give the Priest's Museum Curator a run for his money. Curator Discovers a Deathrattle card, making a staple in N'Zoth decks and Priest decks in general, since it adds another card to your deck. Netherspite Historian performs a similar action, but with the less narrow Dragon synergy, and with one more health to boot.

Granted, its effect is conditional upon holding a dragon. But as Wyrmrest Agent and Twilight Guardian have shown, a proper dragon-based deck is very likely to have one in-hand near the beginning of the game. This will easily be an auto-include in dragon decks.

(2) Pompous Thespian (3/2)

Taunt.

This is a thoroughly boring card that simply puts out a slightly different statline than we've seen before. A 2-mana 3/2 is pretty basic stats, but we haven't seen one with Taunt yet. That does raise the specter of power creep, but expansion cards do tend to be better than the basic and classic sets.

(3) Silverware Golem (3/3)

If you discard this minion, summon it.

Now this is an interesting mechanic, similar to Fist of Jaraxxus but applied to a minion. While 3/3 for 3 is about as vanilla as possible, the strength of Silverware Golem comes from the chance that you could summon it for free. The reveal of Malchezaar's Imp made it seem as if Blizzard was trying to push a new discard-heavy deck type for Warlocks, and this just furthers that impression. You could even engineer your hand to make sure it happens. 

Time will tell if this minion is enough to push Discard Warlock as a viable deck type, but the mechanic itself is unique enough that we're likely to see more attempts in the future.

(3) Zoobot (3/3)

Battlecry: Give a random friendly Beast, Dragon, and Murloc +1/+1.

As cute and flavorful as this card is, it's hard to imagine it coming into play in any serious competitive decks. It's meant to synergize with The Curator, giving buffs to each of the tribal types that Curator can pull. However, The Curator was already evaluated as difficult to manage, and chances are you won't be able to get all three tribals and Zoobot out at the same time. This would be a very powerful swing effect if you could get the full value out of it, or even 2/3, but it requires such a crazy combination of lucky breaks that you'll barely ever do that.