The Comprehensive The Great Dark Beyond Preview

Orbital Moon

This spell doesn’t provide any stats in play, so its impact on the game is dependent on whether there’s a target worthy of the additional keywords it provides. Those keywords are defensive in nature, so Orbital Moon should be considered a stabilizer.

One of the issues here is that Orbital Moon has a very peculiar and restrictive rune requirement. Two Blood runes severely limit the card to Blood decks, yet Blood decks aren’t a good fit for it. Slow strategies don’t want cards that are dependent on board, as they usually do not proactively develop boards. They also will unreliably trigger adjacencies. Meanwhile, Handbuff Blood decks want to be minion-dense, with several spells that were better fits on paper failing to make the cut in this fringe archetype.

Where Orbital Moon could be a decent card is a starship deck as an activator for Guiding Figure. However, we are a bit concerned that it will be difficult to give up Reska. If a defensive playstyle ends up being suitable for the starship mechanic, then we can see Orbital Moon making the cut. If we can activate the adjacency, then it’s a nice card to combo with Soulbound Spire and makes our starship even more powerful.

Score: 2

Assimilating Blight

Weirdly specific spell, with an even weirder rune restriction. Assimilating Blight makes a bit more sense in the context of Soulbound Spire and a Starship Death Knight deck, but the math doesn’t check out for us. In the current format, there are 16 3-mana deathrattle minions that can be discovered by Death Knight, so you’re looking at a 19% chance of finding Soulbound Spire. Nowhere near reliable. The pool is also of low quality.

On top of it, the odd rune restriction means we must give up Reska, as well as the defensive double Blood rune cards, to run the card. There have been very few cards in Standard that made giving up Reska worthwhile in the last year, while those that did were reliant on Soulstealer and Corpse Explosion. We don’t believe this card is on par with them.

Post-rotation, several 3-mana deathrattle minions rotate out of Standard. There will be 10 left, so if no new minions are introduced to the pool, the likelihood of finding Soulbound Spire rises to 30%. Reska will also be gone. Blight might have a chance then.

Score: 1

Suffocate

An Assassinate is never a constructed worthy card but Suffocate destroys two minions when we’ve got a Starship on board. The condition to have a Starship on board is very easy to trigger, as it only requires us to have a single Starship piece die. The second effect is random on paper, but we could direct it by targeting a side minion, so it’s not ‘entirely’ random. If we’re playing a Starship Death Knight deck, Suffocate becomes a logical consideration for single target removal with some upside.

Score: 2

Airlock Breach

This spell resembles Vampiric Blood in the way it works. It has a mediocre baseline effect but can activate its full effect with corpse spending. It also doesn’t just heal us; it increases our maximum life total.

A couple of 5/5 taunts, on top of 10 life, is an amazing deal for 6 mana. You’re looking at 20 effective life, with great board presence, that can come down as early as turn 6. This is fast enough to make an impact in the fastest matchups. In the slower matchups, this card is not even half bad, as it can apply a lot of pressure on the opponent.

The rune restriction is trivial, making it a tremendous fit for any Rainbow Death Knight deck. Rainbow DK currently generates more corpses than it can spend, so it won’t mind having another activator for Climactic Necrotic Explosion, alongside Corpsicle or Runes of Darkness. We can argue that this card is stronger than Vampiric Blood. A staple for many Death Knight decks going forward.

Score: 4

Soulbound Spire

Spire is the cornerstone piece of a Starship Death Knight deck. At its baseline, this card is nothing special. A Blazing Battlemage that summons a random 2-drop on a deathrattle isn’t worth 3 mana. Random 2-drops are worth less than 2 mana, especially when they’re summoned on a delay.

The upside of Spire is that its deathrattle scales with its attack value, so it ramps up with buffs. Handbuffs could be considered, but where Spire shines is inside a starship. If we keep building up the starship, its attack value will get higher and higher, to the point Spire can summon a massive minion. Death Knight’s other starship piece also allows us to trigger Spire’s deathrattle instantly with spellburst, so you’re looking at a big threat that can summon multiple big threats. With Yelling Yodeler in the picture too, this board could be enormous.

Our only concern is that Soulbound Spire is very vulnerable to removal, especially “wipe” effects (for example, Aman’Thul), mind control or transformation effects. All starships are vulnerable to removal to an extent, but Death Knight fully leaning into a pure stats angle with a delayed effect makes it more glaring than most. Should we always have a way to activate Spire’s deathrattle though, we can exert a lot of pressure.

Score: 3

Wakener of Souls

Wakener is a heavy card that’s packed with value. The combination of its deathrattle and reborn means it will summon a friendly deathrattle minion twice. We can build a deck with a couple of highly valuable deathrattles and squeeze a lot of bang for the buck. Reska or Travel Security are good examples of Wakener targets.

The problem is that Wakener is extremely expensive. An 8/7 taunt is horrendously slow for 10 mana, even if it’s a taunt. Dropping the card at that stage of the game makes it a sitting duck for counterplay, some of them brutal, such as Yogg or Reno. Realistically, Wakener is only strong if we can cheat it out early, with Exarch Maladaar looking like the clear enabler.

The other issue is that we also need to have a deathrattle minion die before we can take advantage of Wakener, so Reska or Travel Security don’t seem that great on paper if we’re reliant on Maladaar. This could be difficult to make work but may be suffocating if it does. If our corpse generation is adequate, Maladaar/Astral Vigilant could do some serious work.

Score: 2

Auchenai Death-Speaker

Death-Speaker triggers whenever a minion with reborn dies. In general, it’s easier to play or summon minions on our turn rather than killing them. This makes the card harder to use than Brittlebone Buccaneer, for example. However, it costs a meager 1-mana and doesn’t sacrifice stats for its ability.

It does seem a bit hard to see where Death-Speaker fits. Its synergy with Wakener is very optimistic. It’s not impactful enough to play alongside Dreadhound Handler. It’s too situational in Plague DK with Chained Guardian.

Death Knight does have the ability to give other minions Reborn, but then we’re spending more mana and more cards, which makes these elaborate plays less reliable and less worthwhile. We think this is often just going to be a Dire Mole.

Score: 1

Guiding Figure

The enabler for Soulbound Spire. If both starship pieces die, Guiding Figure’s spellburst can activate Soulbound Spire’s deathrattle on the ship, with the goal to execute an immediate effect as we launch the ship, producing a ton of stats in play while stabilizing our life total with the help of the neutral Arkonite Defense Crystal.

As a standalone card, Guiding Figure is not too impressive, as it can be considered substantially weaker than Yelling Yodeler. The activation requirement costs almost as much as Yodeler in practice, while triggering a deathrattle only once. It’s likely that in most situations, we’ll be playing Guiding Figure without a deathrattle in play, a Bloodfen Raptor just for the sake of building our starship.

Most starship pieces are independent cards. Soulbound Spire, as undersized as it is, is not reliant on other cards being in play to produce what it advertises. Guiding Figure is not independent, so we consider it to be a relatively weaker starship piece, but one that’s necessary to make Soulbound Spire work.

Score: 3

Exarch Maladaar

Maladaar is one of the most obviously powerful cards of the set. A 6 mana 5/5 that can cheat out a big threat is comparable to Portalmancer Skyla in terms of impact. Turn 6 is the sweet spot for when big cheat cards are competitively viable.

But what strikes us about Maladaar is that it’s so generically powerful. It works on any type of card, ignoring the context of our hand, making it extremely versatile. It can cheat out a swing minion, such as The Primus or Yogg-Saron. It can cheat out a big spell, such as Climactic Necrotic Explosion or the Scourge. But it can also cheat out Reno, which sounds completely absurd.

Having 8-10 corpses by turn 6 is a very realistic target, considering how easy it is to ramp up corpse generation with Mining Casualties and Dreadhound Handler. The Unholy rune requirement is very modest, making it a possible inclusion in every Death Knight except full Blood. Plus, with Airlock Breach, we might not care about losing Vampiric Blood anyway if we decide not to go full Blood.

An automatic inclusion in every Death Knight deck that isn’t purely aggressive.

Score: 4

The 8 Hands From Beyond

This legendary seems very extreme and thought provoking. It does not immediately affect the board, nor does it affect each player’s available resources. It only destroys cards in the deck, leaving the 8 most expensive ones in each. At a baseline, destroying cards in the deck is far worse than destroying them in hand.

Furthermore, we must consider the timing of the card. By the time we get to 8 mana, how much has our opponent already drawn? Plenty of strategies have 10-12 cards left in their deck at this point, sometimes less than that, making the effect almost entirely meaningless. Maladaar and Cattle Rustler are possible options to cheat it out early and improve its timing. Our belief is that Rustler will be mandatory to utilize 8 Hands, as it both tutors the card and discounts it.

8 Hands is almost entirely useless in faster matchups, while not providing a guaranteed benefit in late game matchups either, which makes it significantly worse than Boomboss at face value. Boomboss also has never seen serious competitive play without Brann.

What’s left to consider is 8 Hands’s effect on our own deck. Blood-Ctrl Death Knight is very top heavy, with its win conditions sitting at the top of its curve. It’s possible that curating our deck to find our heavy bombs will be beneficial, especially if we run Ceaseless Expanse, a legendary that gets massively discounted by the deck destruction effect. Kil’jaeden is another card from this set that works well with 8 Hands in theory.

8 Hands looks unplayable at first glance, yet its effect is so unique that it’s hard to write it off, as there are some angles in which we can leverage it well.

Score: 2

Final Thoughts

The Great Dark Beyond Set Rank: 6^th

Overall Power Ranking:  6^th

Death Knight’s set is a bit mixed in terms of power but has a couple of haymakers that we believe will firmly establish it as a very competitive class at launch. There are a lot of possibilities available to it.

Of course, at the center of it, is Exarch Maladaar. We consider it to be one of the best cards in the set, and one that will warp deck building to a significant degree. It will be very difficult to go triple Blood or triple Frost when this card is here. Furthermore, Death Knight will be encouraged to run a heavy top end, so that it can abuse its massive discount potential.

Consider for a moment. You’re looking at Soulstealers in Blood Death Knight. Titans in every deck. Climactic Necrotic Explosion having its last big run in Standard. Cheating out Exodar might be a big advantage available to the class compared to other starship classes. Reno Death Knight might become the strongest Reno deck, as a turn 6 Reno sounds completely ridiculous.

That one Unholy rune doesn’t look so bad when it allows us to run Airlock Breach. We think Vampiric Blood’s days are over. If we’re planning to hit late game, it’s either Rainbow with Reska or double Blood. Double Blood does have a curious new win condition with 8 Hands complementing Kil’jaeden and the Ceaseless Expanse. The 100 mana card should be rapidly discounted in the class.

Death Knight’s starship has some late game potential, with Yelling Yodeller looking like a tasty activator next to Guiding Figure to summon a massive pile of stats and gain a ton of armor. The latter could be even more important than the former, turning Death Knight into a respectable tanking class.

Just ask Garrosh; it’s worked well for him over the years.