Explodineer
This card seems meant to be an “extra” Warrior card for its Bomb archetype, but we think the class will skip it. The Boom Wrench and Safety Expert pairing is already capable of shuffling a huge number of bombs to the opponent’s deck to the point that Explodineer’s impact is very low in comparison. It is simply not worth spending 3 mana on a mediocre body for a single bomb.
Score: 1
Building-Block Golem
This minion does make you wonder a bit. A deathrattle that generates three bodies could be an interesting option for a deck that likes to flood the board and runs a Ticking/Pylon Zilliax. However, this card is probably too slow for archetypes such as Zarimi Priest and Aggro Paladin, which would be the primary candidates to run it.
Score: 1
Pro Gamer
Terrific and fun design, but ultimately unplayable. A game of Rock-Paper-Scissors is a coin flip, so the average outcome of Pro Gamer is not good enough. What’s more is that if the opponent wins the challenge, they get to draw 2 cards on their turn, while the draw for us is always delayed by a turn.
Note that Pro Gamer does not work with Shadowstep. The card needs to be present on the board on the opponent’s turn to complete the challenge, just like the “Suspicious” cards.
Score: 1
The Replicator-inator
This is a valiant attempt at designing a minion with both Miniaturize and Gigantify, but it’s almost impossible to make proper use of all forms of the minion. The biggest problem is taking advantage of the 5/5, which will be the most important determinant of whether this card sees play. Replicator needs a 5-attack minion on a discount to be useful, such as Thing from Below. The Mini version is the easiest to use, as it’s cheap and there are plenty of 1-attack minions you may want to duplicate. The Gigantic version is a very tough sell, as it requires giants and can only come down on turn 8.
We don’t think the Mini version of the card justifies an investment of 5 mana on a 5/5, so this requires an incredible recipe to work. It’s hard to see it, but maybe others can.
Score: 2
Puppetmaster Dorian
It’s easy to make the mistake when reading the card for the first time, but Dorian does not transform the drawn minion into a 1-mana 1/1. It adds a copy to your hand, so the original minion will still be added to your hand.
Plenty of minions in the game become insanely powerful when they cost 1 mana, so Dorian is a very enticing value engine for late game strategies. The most powerful synergy it has is with minion tutors. If you can play Dorian and a tutor or a cheap draw effect on the same turn, you can get guaranteed value without relying on Dorian to survive a turn. If you have mana to spare, you can also play the 1-mana minions on the same turn you play Dorian, potentially enabling an immediate swing.
We don’t think Dorian is a good enough card if you need it to survive a turn, so we must think of classes where Dorian doesn’t need to live past the turn it’s played. The most obvious candidate is Druid, thanks to its ramp and current utilization of strong Dorian targets such as Eonar and Yogg-Saron. Another candidate is Rogue, thanks to its cheap draw effects such as Gear Shift and Dig for Treasure.
Dorian’s design is very evocative, so it’s guaranteed to see plenty of experimentation whenever a tutor effect comes up that can pair with it well. It’ll be a bait card in most of these attempts, but we believe there’s a strong likelihood it will stick in at least one successful strategy.
Score: 3
