One Night In Karazhan Weekly Review: The Opera

Introduction

The Opera

These are the following bosses and their rewards from defeating them.

Romulo and Julianne: pompous-thespian and onyx-bishop

Big Bad Wolf: kindly-grandmother , arcane-golem

The Crone: wicked-witchdoctor , swashburglar

Romulo and Julianne

pompous-thespian

Constructed Opinion:

Somewhat bad, like its taunt doesn’t even exist. Taunts are good in late stages of the game where you would want to start protecting your face. This card, however, hardly fits a spot in any current decks (Well, maybe taunt warrior if that was ever a thing) just because, if you would want a taunt, you would want it be at least difficult for your opponent to deal with or get through, and this card fails to do that.

Might be viable in: taunt warrior?

Arena Opinion:

Pretty standard, 3/2 for 2 mana. Could be useful in protecting your other minions though.

Summary: No space for in Constructed, okay in Arena.

onyx-bishop

Constructed Opinion:

Very gimmicky card, or resurrect in a minion form.
Tempo-wise, he could easily combo with the classic injured-blademaster, or you could build a really greedy/heavy high curve deck and expect resurrecting legendaries from this dude.
With resurrect there’s a lot of resurrect priests running around ladder with barnes and Onyx Bishop and good synergy cards (deathrattle cards,Injured Blademaster). Most people say they can’t wait for purify for this version of Priest to shine.

Might be viable in: Resurrect Priest? Nzoth Priest

Arena Opinion:

So RNG based, as you cannot rely on a good outcome from him. His stats is not so bad, so if you could get at least a 2 drop 3/2 stats he would give u a total of 5/6 stats which is pretty good for a 5 drop. If he gets more than that it would be game winning.
Could compare him to ram-wrangler , but gets a strict pool of minions.

Summary: Could see some tryouts in Constructed, RNG based in Arena.

Big Bad Wolf

kindly-grandmother

Constructed Opinion:

Looks good, but practically not a good card because it dies to a 3/2 (the 1/1 body only damages a 3/2 and the 3/2 respawned wolf dies to the damaged 3/2) and you have to wait an extra turn to get its 3/2 body usage.
May also requires you to run abusive-sergeant to make the first 1/1 body more handy

Might be viable in: Hybrid Hunter

Arena Opinion:

Worse than Constructed, Arena is so minion based, and your 2-mana minion mostly, decides how the game flows. and this 2-drop minion is kinda bad. It needs an activator/buffer to get good trades.

Summary: Bad in both Constructed and Arena.

arcane-giant

Constructed Opinion:

another Giant in Hearthstone database, and it involves discount abilities, well this time it’s cost is reduced by 1 every time you use a spell.
So, the current decks that contain high spell usage are: Yogg-druid, Combo Warrior and Tempo mage.
In Yogg-Druid, he doesn’t synergy with the deck at all, but is a handy big minion that can catch your opponent off guard. My suggestion is that he could be a substitution for the big 9 drops such as onyxia or cenarius and set a one-turn lethal when you can drop both of them on board, but its a very flashy/risky play.
Could be a substitution of the raging-worgen itself in Combo/OTK warrior, but we’ll have to wait until Blackrock Mountain rotates out, where emperor-thaurissan is gone, so the Arcane Giantcharge + inner-rage + rampage then faceless-manipulator combo is more relevant.
In a rather aggressive deck like Tempo Mage, a copy of Arcane Golem could be useful, he fits the high usage of spells and is a cheap threat after you have used a dozen of spells. Downside is that he requires at least 5-6 spells to lower his cost to 5-6 to be able to be played.

Might be viable in: Yogg-Druid, Combo Warrior, Tempo Mage

Arena Opinion:

Well, spells are quite difficult to get in Arena even you manage to get a handful of spells, they aren’t cheap to use every turn. Whatsoever, if sea-giant shows up in your draft aside arcane-giant you’d probably go for Sea Giant, because he is easier to play than Arcane Giant.
Giants Tier: Sea Giant > Mountain Giant > Arcane Giant > Molten Giant. If you have a lot of spells then Arcane Giant > Mountain Giant

Summary: Situational in Constructed, not too bad in Arena (also situational)

The Crone

wicked-witchdoctor

Constructed Opinion:

Weird card for Shaman, could be better if they cut out the ‘Basic’ out and we would see him ruining games.
A spell-orient Shaman archetype hasn’t been found yet, even it’s good basic totems are not scary at all.
3/4 stats for 4, quite bad stats and a not rewarding and difficult to use ability.

Might be viable in: Spell Shaman?

Arena Opinion:

I could see her as a slight nerf to Shaman a bit, since flamewreath-faceless is so overpower in Arena. Similar to Arcane Giant, you don’t get much spells in Arena making her difficult to use.

Summary: Irrelevant in Constructed, Bad in Arena

swashburglar

Constructed Opinion:

Well, Blizzard is surely trying to make Stealing Rogue a thing, giving even more thoughtsteal cards. Even minions to copy cards on curve.
Burglar Rogue is still too trollish and depends on stealing good cards to be viable in competitive and high rank play, it still needs a lot of improvement.

Might be viable in: Burglar Rogue

Arena Opinion:

Weak minion, considering other more powerful 1-drop minions (buccaneer) a 1/1 rarely does anything or gives board presence

Summary: Too gimmicky in Constructed, bad in Arena.

Wing Reward

Barnes

Constructed Opinion:

Probably one of the most interest cards in the set. Has huge RNG based too. However, there aren’t many minions that are useful when it’s a 1/1 with the same ability, the best minions should be deathrattle minions so he has possible appearances in N’zoth decks. I find him playable in Miracle Rogue too, if you have a conceal in hand you could get gadgetzaan-auctioneer from Barnes and it would be a turn 4 Auctioneer that would ruin you opponent’s game.

Might be viable in: N’zoth Decks, Miracle Rogue

Arena Opinion:

Not as useful as in Constructed, as you’ll rarely possess a deathrattle or a good target for Barnes (could be 1-2 reasonable good targets) most of the time he’ll just get 1/1 random minions for you. He’s a bad pick in Arena in my opinion.

Summary: Has lots of potential in Constructed, Bad in Arena

Moat Lurker

Constructed Opinion:

Very innovative to say, but I find really difficult to pull off a good and effective combo. He could be very effective in N’zoth decks gaining more deathrattle minions. He could remove your opponent minion then you could somehow not let it die (shadowstep and you kill that minion for free) then you get free removal.
Abysmal stats, so you need a good deck for him to be in.

Might be viable in: N’zoth related decks

Arena Opinion:

Very difficult to pull off any tricks with him. Well, you could get at least another trigger of your deathrattle minions, but it’s very situational. Plus he has abysmal stats, making him barely useful if you don’t have a deathrattle minion.

Summary: Gimmicky but might see some play in Constructed, Bad in Arena

Class Challenge

Warlock: Kara-kazham

Constructed Opinion:

A weird card for warlock, gives a total of 6/6 stats in 3 minions but fairly not the card that Warlock needs.

Difficult to blend in any Warlock deck, too slow for Zoo Warlock and too vanilla for Reno Warlock, even Old school Handlock cannot afford to run such a slow card.

Might be viable in: I have no idea

Arena Opinion:

Not too bad in arena, as the meta in arena is quite slower so you can possibly afford to draft a slow card, and the body + stats from Kara Kazham is very useful in a minion based meta.

Summary: No place in Constructed, viable in arena.

Paladin: Silvermoon Portal

Constructed Opinion:

Weird card, like they halved blessing-of-kings into a minion and a buff. The bad point is you’d have to compare it with Blessing of Kings since they pretty much do the same thing and have exactly same cost.
Blessing of Kings is a powerful but slow card, it allows you to buff silverhand recruits to beat down chillwind-yeti and other stuff. Above them all, it works crazily with divine shields making you do free trades.
Silvermoon Portal gives stats equally to Blessing of Kings, but halves them to make a 2/2 and gives a 2/2 buff. It is weaker to Blessing of Kings due to the minion that gets the buff wont survive the trade and the 2/2 minion isn’t a big threat and can be easily ignored. You don’t get crazy trades with divine shield minions either.
We rarely see a Blessing of Kings in ladder these days, so this card wouldn’t see play much as it is an inferior version of Blessing of Kings.

Might be viable in: Aggressive Paladin decks

Arena Opinion:

Could see some play and draft in Arena due to blessing-of-kings is a powerful card in Arena, but still has difficulties in gaining value than Blessing of Kings.

Summary: Can’t help to be compared and foreshadowed by Blessing of Kings.

Card of the Week

arcane-giant

I’d love to pick barnes but I feel his power depends on RNG too much, so I’d like to suggest a deck around Arcane Giant that is viable and strong on ladder too.

Hope you guy aren’t to bored of good o’Garrosh yet, I’m happy to suggest Senfglas’ Creation, Patron Warrior featuring Arcane Giant.

This list has similar gameplay compared to the Worgen OTK we are facing a lot but adds in arcane-giant and grim-patron as more solid board presence cards. You trade versatility for a weaker OTK damage. (Worgen does maximum at around 60 while this list does only 28 maximum) Anyway, Grim Patron can always carry you games that your opponent class does not possess an AOE clear especially those aggro decks.

Conclusion

Well, this concludes my review of the Opera, the second wing of One Night In Karazhan, hope you guys enjoy it. Feel free to leave your thoughts and comments below and I’ll see you again next week.