The Comprehensive TITANS Preview

 

Ancient Totem

A 0-mana totem with quite a bit of health. This card is likely a staple in Totem Shaman since it has so many ways to buff it, and it reduces the cost of Gigantotem and Thing from Below for no mana investment. There is some thought to adding it to a Menagerie deck, but it doesn’t do anything by itself and is very reliant on other cards to make it work.

Score: 3

Classes: Shaman

Drone Deconstructor

This card is a Fire Fly for mech decks. It’s both a turn 1 play that gives you some value in a Sparkbot, or a turn 2 play since you can drop Deconstructor and attach the Sparkbot onto it. Flexible cards that help you fill your mana curve can be very important to maintain consistency in early board development. There’s also a chance that this card sees play in non-Mech decks for that reason, but the Sparkbots become much worse if they can’t be magnetized on something. Menagerie Warrior is a good candidate. Warlock could use this as a Defile/Chaotic Consumption enabler.

Score: 3

Classes: Mage, Paladin, Rogue, Warlock, Warrior

Victorious Vrykul

Vrykul is a modestly sized 1-drop that adds a more powerful 1-drop to your hand after it attacks. Ignoring it gives the opponent more resources to pressure with, so this is a turn 1 play that requires an answer. The best fit for Vrykul are token decks, since it helps you flood the board with multiple bodies. The undead tag on the 2/3 token could be relevant.

Score: 2

Classes: Druid, Hunter, Priest

Flame Revenant

This card has the potential to snowball quite hard in the early game. It’s a Security Automaton for elementals with better baseline stats. This card would be strong if there was better support for a tribal elemental deck with an aggressive spin this expansion, but we don’t think it’s in the cards. Mage is more likely to use elementals as a complementary package rather than the focal point of a strategy. Still, we don’t want to give this a 1.

Score: 2

Classes: Mage

Invent-o-Matic

A 2 mana 2/3 mech with a small buff to magnetizing. This minion’s ability works on itself, so it’s a bit of a threat if you have follow-up to it, giving you additional stats and the potential to snowball further. There’s a bit of competition for slots in mech decks at this point, so if the deck doesn’t have a critical mass of magnetics, it might not be interested.

Score: 2

Classes: Mage, Paladin, Rogue

Watcher of the Sun

At its baseline, Watcher is a weak card generator. A River Croc that gives you a random Holy spell isn’t great. If you forge it, it restores 6 health to your hero. That’s barely better than a Flash Heal, so for 2 additional mana, this doesn’t seem that great either.

There are two decks that might be interested in the card for synergy purposes. Spell School Mage may want to use it to generate a guaranteed Holy spell for its spell school count. Thief Rogue gets a guaranteed card from another class and can use it as a healing tool alongside Shadowstep. Otherwise, you’re looking at decks that run Ignis that may use it as forge fodder.

Score: 2

Classes: Mage, Rogue, Ignis decks

Careless Mechanist

An oversized 3-drop with an unplayable drawback. Every deck, even aggressive ones, want to be able to draw cards. To limit yourself this much for a 3-mana Chillwind Yeti is a non-starter. This card may cause you to avoid spending mana just to keep it alive, which isn’t worth a couple of stat points.

Score: 1

Cyclopian Crusher

A baseline 3/3 rusher that turns into a 6/5 rusher. A 5 mana 6/5 rusher isn’t bad if you can drop it on turn 3, and the swing from it can offset passing turn 2. Neutral forge cards aren’t great in general, but this could be the strongest one. It can help decks that don’t have a great early game and want to be able to fill their curve. Good enabler of Ignis.

Score: 3

Classes: Paladin, Rogue

Melted Maker

For some reason, every Mech Paladin during the theorycrafting streams ran this card to copy Storm Giants. It was as slow and bad as it was confusing. Some class forge cards are good, but we don’t think any of them are worth holding in hand so we can copy them with Melted Maker.

Score: 1

Ravenous Kraken

Half a Carnivorous Cube, Kraken should be a strong card in deathrattle decks. It’s quite good at popping early game eggs and could be an enabler for some class-specific synergies. Its baseline stats are also solid. A 5-health minion is difficult to remove on turn 3, making it difficult for the opponent to pop the Kraken and play around your follow-up, such as a Yelling Yodeler.

Our prediction is that it will see a lot of experimentation and prove to be terrible in many of them, but it should be competitive. It might be a bait magnet, but there’s still so much potential in this card.

Score: 3

Classes: Death Knight, Hunter, Priest, Warlock

Relentless Worg

The main problem with this rush minion is that it’s not guaranteed to kill an early game minion. A lot of them have 3 health, in which case, you’re stuck with a terrible rush minion that doesn’t do anything. Even if it does connect, we’re not even that impressed. We like vanilla in our ice cream, not in our Hearthstone minions.

Score: 1

Sharp-Eyed Seeker

This card might encourage more decks to run Fizzle, which is terrible news for their win rates. Shuffling effects are generally very slow and niche, so running a dedicated card for them that does nothing by itself seems like a bad idea. There’s nothing we’re that desperate to find.

Score: 1

Trogg Exile

At some point, the stat line becomes so big that a plain-looking minion might be good. Trogg Exile is a respectable 4/4 rush for 3 mana. The drawback in the case of Imp Warlock, could be a big upside if it’s running Imprisoned Horror. Now you’re looking at a 3 mana 4/4 rush that discounts one of the best Warlock cards in the set by 4 mana. This could make the cut.

Score: 2

Classes: Warlock

Imposing Anubisath

Speaking of useful neutral cards for Warlock, how’s this?

Imposing Anubisath is a massive 7/7 taunt for 4 mana with the huge drawback that it can’t attack. Minions that can’t attack do nothing by themselves, which is why they require a lot of synergy to see play. But Anubisath is a taunt that also works incredibly well with Forge of Wills. This gives Warlock a very powerful curve that both impacts the board and roadblocks the opponent. This is also not a bad card to draw off Loken. We’re big fans.

Score: 3

Classes: Warlock

Mechagnome Guide

Guide’s baseline form is unplayable. A 4 mana 3/4 that discovers a spell is just nowhere near good enough and looks laughable next to School Teacher. Forge it and the spell costs 3 mana less, which gets more interesting. We’re playing a Spider Tank for 4 mana, then discovering a spell for 2 additional mana to reduce its cost by 3. Furthermore, we can do it earlier than turn 5. That gives us a chance to cheat a big spell early.

The problem is that strong discover effects are plentiful and there’s no guarantee that we find an expensive enough spell that’s worth cheating out. Since it’s a forge card, we’re giving it a chance to see play in Blood-Ctrl DK if the archetype chooses to run Ignis. Death Knight values discover effects more than any other class and this is another way for it to scam an early Scourge.

Score: 2

Classes: Death Knight

Saronite Tol’vir

Sen’jin Shieldmasta that draws a card every time it gets attacked. That’s an ability that could snowball resources quite hard if the opponent is forced to trade into it. It’s weak to removal, but if you can buff it in hand, it becomes much more difficult to deal with. We think decks with handbuff mechanics could consider it.

Score: 2

Classes: Death Knight, Warrior

Time-Lost Protodrake

Bit of a unique value generator, as it adds a card when it’s drawn rather than when it’s played. That makes it a little better since you don’t need to spend mana on the effect. We’re interested in this mechanic, but not in this card. The value generated isn’t reliable and the body itself isn’t good enough. One of those things needed to be better. This is a prototype.

Score: 1

Tram Operator

While Tram Operator does discount your next mech by 2 mana, it doesn’t change the fact you still need to make a 5-mana investment on a 4/4 to get the benefit. If you look at the dry numbers, it’s okay, but a mech deck can’t play an expensive card that doesn’t immediately impact the board. You could use it as a tutor in a non-mech deck to specifically draw a desired mech, but that’s still a very slow tutor. What’s also a bit annoying is that it can draw its other copy.

Score: 1

XB-488 Disposalbot

So, you’re telling us we need to spend a total of 7 mana for a Devouring Plague on a 3/2 stick? This card looks very underwhelming. Its baseline form is a weaker Dyn-o-Matic. You forge it for 2 mana to get a 5 health heal. Still not worth the mana investment. We can’t see how this is playable.

Score: 1

Containment Unit

This is quite a massive pile of stats on a minion. The fact it’s magnetic means you can use it to buff another mech and immediately push face damage. A 6/6 buff for 7 mana is slow, but it’s pretty good if it’s hiding a random 8-drop inside it.

Of course, 7-mana cards are slow for mech decks, which tend to be very aggressive since they need to control the board in the early game to have a chance. But, if there’s a need to build a deck in a greedier direction, it might be worth a shot.

Score: 2

Classes: Mage, Paladin, Rogue

Celestial Projectionist

A 2-mana Zola that requires you to play the copied minion on the same turn, since it will disappear at the end of your turn. This card can be used to copy a high impact discounted minion, such as a giant, or a cheap card with a scaling ability like Astral Automaton. Not bad, but we suspect it’s not much better than Zola.

Score: 2

Classes: Priest

Starlight Whelp

In theory, cards in your opening hand are more likely to be your strongest cards (if you’re mulling for them aggressively), so if you’re running a deck with a scaling late game that desires copy effects, you might look at this. The problem is that the value generated is not guaranteed to be useful, and you’re playing a 3 mana 4/3 to get it. Not good enough but good bait.

Score: 1

Angry Helhound

This is a stronger version of Militia Commander. It has one more attack on the turn it’s played, but its attack buff also persists whenever it’s your turn. There’s one class that might consider this. Warlock may seek another 4-drop as a follow-up to Forge of Wills. This produces two 6/5 rushers on turn 4, which isn’t bad. We still think we can do better than running this card, but we’ll give it a chance.

Score: 2

Classes: Warlock.

Runefueled Golem

This is a very slow discover minion that doesn’t tap into a particularly strong set of cards. A lot of weapons are synergy-driven, so you might not use them to their full potential. A 4 mana 4/4 is just a non-starter for something that’s worse than School Teacher.

Score: 1

Disguised K’thir

Chameleos got demoted to a neutral minion. K’thir is a bit different since it transforms into a card in your opponent’s deck rather than their hand. The problem is the same though, this card doesn’t immediately transform into another card when it’s drawn, so you have a 5 mana 3/3 sitting in your hand, delaying your draw. Even a thief deck wouldn’t want to play this.

Score: 1

Fate Splitter

This is a cute card. If your opponent used a spell to kill this, you get the spell. If your opponent used a minion to kill it, you get the minion. The issue is that this card is very slow and has weak stats, so it’s not good enough for a thief deck. Maybe if there was a discount involved.

Score: 1

Mecha-Leaper

This is quite a sticky card. The magnetic buff is small, but it requires you to kill other mechs on the board before killing this, since the buff is going to leap into them. If you’re playing a mech deck that likes to flood the board, Mecha-Leaper becomes more difficult to cleanly remove. Might be too slow, but interesting enough to explore.

Score: 2

Classes: Paladin, Rogue

Razorscale

This feels like one of those fringe tech cards that are the product of constant complaints on Hearthstone forums. Hate mana reduction effects and things costing no mana? You can now play a 3 mana 2/4 with no immediate impact on the board that prevents your opponent from playing its cheap cards. The bad news is that you just played a 3 mana 2/4 with no immediate impact on the board, so maybe you just played yourself.

Score: 1

Son of Hodir

This card is probably just too slow, even though it has quite a bit of late game threat potential. The most likely class to utilize it is Druid, but it has much better win conditions to build towards. Cute with Jailer, but unlikely to see play.

Score: 1

Storm Giant

This taunt giant can cost 0 mana if you forge it 4 times! There are plenty of ways to copy Storm Giant, which sounds tempting on paper.

But there’s a problem with this giant that we think players might be overlooking. Good giants don’t get discounted by having decks spend mana doing nothing to impact the game. Good giants get discounted by decks performing actions that still help them win Hearthstone games. Just like you wouldn’t run bad cards to discount a giant, you also wouldn’t spend mana doing nothing to discount a giant, which is worse than spending mana on bad cards. Even if you manage to spend 8 mana forging this card and copying it with Melted Maker, you’re still giving your opponent an eternity to respond to it or take over the game before you get there.

Score: 1

Algalon the Observer

Algalon replaces your hero power with Algalon’s Vision, a 1-mana hero power. This hero power allows you to look at the top card in your opponent’s deck and put it at the bottom, if you choose to. It’s a bit like Sphere of Sapience, but on your opponent’s deck.

This legendary allows us to see and control your opponent’s draws! The problem is that we need to constantly spend mana on this hero power to get its benefits, and there’s no guarantee that the next card they draw isn’t better than the one you placed at the bottom.

Yes, there’s always the chance you’re playing against a deck with a single card win condition that you managed to bury at the bottom, but this is fantasy speak. A lot of times, you’re going to fall behind because you’re spending 1 mana every turn doing nothing that directly impacts the game, on top of playing a 4 mana 4/4.

This legendary is a good meme, but still a meme.

Score: 1

Ignis, the Eternal Flame

This legendary works a bit like Kazakus. You have multiple discover phases in which you build a weapon.

In the first phase, you pick the cost and the size of weapon:

• Runic Shortsword (1-cost, 2/2)
• Runic Axe (5-cost, 3/4)
• Runic Greatmace (10-cost, 5/6)

In the second phase, you pick one trait:

• Deceit of Loken (Poisonous)
• Hope of Sif (Lifesteal)
• Storm of Thorim (Windfury)
• Flame of Odyn (Also damages adjacent minions)
• Spark of Ra-den (Your hero is Immune while attacking)

In the third phase, you pick a special effect that scales depending on the cost of the weapon you selected:

• Genius of Mimiron (After your hero attacks, summon a random 2/4/8-cost minion)
• Pain of Jotun (Battlecry: Deal 2/4/6 damage)
• Wisdom of Freya (After your hero attacks, draw 1/2/3 cards)
• Chill of Hodir (Deathrattle: Deal 1/2/4 damage to all enemies)
• Light of Tyr (After your hero attacks, gain 2/4/8 armor)

This card is particularly hard to evaluate. It requires activation through forging, so you need to run a certain number of forge cards to make it consistent. We might decide we only want Ignis to be active in the late game or that we have a lot of draw, so two copies of our class forge card would be enough, but that still comes at a risk of Ignis being a dead draw. Cards that come online slowly have a very short window to be useful in the average Hearthstone game.

If we do want to make Ignis more consistent and active as soon as turn 4, then we need to run a sizeable package of forge cards. The problem with that is that neutral forge cards are generally weak. We need to run weak cards in our deck and spend mana forging them. That doesn’t sound great.

Ignis Weapons can be powerful defensive or offensive tools. One idea is to discover a cheap Windfury weapon and leverage attack buffs with it much like Doomhammer or Horn of the Windlord. Druid with the hero power package or Warrior with Odyn are such candidates. The problem is that there’s only a 60% chance of discovering Windfury. Should we really build around a win condition that only works 60% of the time?

Rather than a card you count on as a win condition, we think Ignis likely works best when you don’t count on it doing one specific thing. If you already have a reason to run a few forge cards, if you already have a strong enough win condition without it, if card draw is so abundant that you can afford eating one dead draw until the late game, then Ignis could make more sense.

Score: 3

Classes: Death Knight, Druid, Paladin, Rogue, Warrior

Flame Behemoth

This is a 6 mana 4/5 that you need to play in a mech deck to be any useful, because magnetic mechs are not playable cards in other decks even if they get a discount.

It’s important to note that you only have a ~50% chance of finding at least one 2-mana magnetic mech to attach on Flame Behemoth on turn 6. This card is very slow for a tribe that needs to be quite fast. An aggressive mech deck that draws this card early will have one less option to contest the board with during the early game, while its late game impact doesn’t come close to cards such as The Leviathan or Gaia, the Techtonic.

Just very underwhelming.

Score: 1

Prison of Yogg-Saron

A card we’ve already seen being played and had a chance to evaluate. Our current observation is that Prison can be a strong card in a slow deck that seeks more removal and comeback potential. Alternatively, it could be a reasonable addition to a faster deck that needs more late game juice to finish games off.

Considering that the location has already proven to be a strong enough, sometimes game changing card, in multiple competitive decks, we should expect it to continue to see play going forward.

Score: 4

Classes: All may bow down to Yogg.

Kologarn

Kologarn never takes damage when it attacks a minion. When it attacks an enemy minion, that minion gets yoinked into your hand. When Kologarn dies, any stolen minion that remained in your hand jumps to the opponent’s hand. If you’ve already played the stolen minion and it’s on your board, it does not switch allegiance when Kologarn dies.

Kologarn is very expensive, so it’s impossible to play a high value stolen minion on the same turn it’s played unless some massive mana cheating is involved. It might be tempting to use Kologarn as a soft removal option for TITANS, but if your opponent kills Kologarn before you managed to play it, they get their TITAN back to their hand, fresh and ready to go again.

There could be some shenanigans involved that circumvent the deathrattle. We could Shadowstep or Breakdance Kologarn. We could evolve, silence, or transform it. But since it’s an 8-mana minion, it’s quite difficult to use in combination with other cards. A very greedy removal option for very greedy decks.

Score: 2

Classes: Paladin, Priest, Rogue, Shaman

 

 

 

Spoilers: TITANS Summary of Ranks