That is one scary mech-pirate…
If it only survives one turn when you attack, it essentially is a Shield Block on a stick
Man, the Mech Pirate doesn’t even need to survive, you just need a weapon ready to attack and you got the Shield Block. The taunt guy… eh. Not the first time they printed this stuff, it’s hit or miss. The discover thing? Meh. It’s like an Echo effect for taunts, only it adds 1 cost and you keep the last copy in hand. Unless we get some crazy taunts/synergies in the future, the card won’t see much play.
Training Session is not good. Getting a random Taunt minion that costs 1 more is horrible tempo, even if you get one more cast out of it. Obviously the more Taunts you play the better but then you are just playing a bunch of small garbage Taunt minions.
Fleshshaper might look good but it depends on how easy it is to keep armor. 6 mana is a LOT to ask these days. If you can boost it with Last Stand it’s pretty good, also Lor’Themar Theron makes this a true threat. As an aside, remember when Blizzard printed Mawsworn Bailiff like it was an actual card? Fleshshaper is worlds better than Bailiff and Fleshshaper still might not be good enough - that’s how hecking awful Bailiff is.
Hookfist is bad if you compare it to Outrider’s Axe. The armor is nice but you need to have a 1- or 2-cost weapon in play already to make this good, and even then it’ll just get removed immediately. Bad but might see play just because of what Warrior is losing in rotation.
I get the feeling that Blizzard is going to keep printing Control Warrior cards like Fleshshaper that just aren’t good enough, until suddenly they print one or two more in April that will send it into the stratosphere. Think Deathrattle Rogue going into March of the Lich King.
What a disappointment.
Why are all the best decks getting amazing Support while all the trash archetypes get trash support and nothing amazing?
Pure paladin just got ridiculously good support. Taunt Warrior gets trash.
They keep shoving this taunt warrior support but the cards they give it are sooooooo bad. Why are they afraid?
Because they have seen big priest in wild and the know.
They know that the greed is ENDLESS.
Give classes with hard removal and wide removal and they will build a deck so greedy that it will make a new age of the most hated class. They took swipe away from druid because it has big greedy minions. They took the big minions away from priest and warrior. This was their balance, spliting the control removal from the control greed minions.
I want what all men want. MORE. I demand MORE.
They’re afraid of repeating the meta tyrant that was Galakrond Menagerie Taunt Warrior, I guess.
/s
As it stands, this style of Control Warrior (e.g. big Taunt) can’t exist as long as Blood DK exists, and even if it can overcome that it will fall to Evolve Shaman’s transform effects and any greedy Priest that rises to the challenge.
EDIT: But I at least appreciate the modicum of attention they are giving to the notion that they don’t want decks to be…like Blood DK, actually. Even control decks are being “forced” to have proactive win conditions.
But the problem with that is that if everybody has a proactive win condition, the ones that are fastest will simply be the best. Warrior can’t simultaneously remove threats and play its own - that’s a feature of basically every meta deck right now. Warrior doesn’t have that and thus can’t be relevant.
One theme I’ve been mulling over is that over the years, Control Warrior has simply lost card advantage in general. It has too many cards that are not good enough on their own - too many cards that have to be used in tandem with other cards. Think Shield Block + Shield Slam. Or Slam + Execute/Snowed In. Or how Brawl leaves one minion up which requires additional resources. Other classes just use one card to do one thing, Warrior has to use 2 or 3 cards to do one thing.
The problem with taunt warrior is that it can’t really exist because taunts specifically are there to prevent damage from board. What good is that if damage is coming from hand? Lol
So a taunt is absolutely useless against any deck that can win from hand.
They can keep making these huge expensive taunt minions, it won’t do anything. What taunt warrior needs is a taunt that must be dealt with or it continues to cause problems. For example, a taunt minion that makes it so you can’t play a card equal to its mana cost if does damage to your face. Something creative that forces interaction.
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i’m liking the robut pirate definitely. Glad to see pirate warrior still gettin some love.
Combine Animated Armor and Bolf Ramshield and Taunt and now we’re talking.
10 mana 7/7, Taunt, Can’t be targeted by spells or hero powers, can only take one damage at a time, whenever you take damage it takes the damage instead.
Buff it with Lor’themar Theron and other handbuff effects.
Getting a bit of a deja vu feeling,not sure why.
All these 3 do look pretty solid though.
While I agree that this cards for CW rather sucks, but I still like my disruption CW with Dirty Rat spell and Spell Disruptor with Kazakusan as win condition kinda like old Elysiana.
10 mana spell + 4 mana dredge taunt gave me a lot of armor more often than not, you could even use your big minions like Mutanus to get a bunch armor. That 3-mana tradeable spell is also nice. Warrior has some nice armor spells that for sure.
Though you’re right, but Warrior has Spell Disruptor and Rat spell, which should not be understimated. Rat in wild is still popular. So I wonder why Kazakusan Warrior isn’t a thing, because he has one of the better dragons with in-build shieldslam and with Amalgam he already has the needed dragon requirement.
This is all meaningless when we have decks doing 60+ damage from hand. There’s a reason Blood DK, even if it reaches into the 70 health area cannot beat Curse Warlock. Curse Warlock absolutely annihilates Blood DK even though Blood DK can clear the early imp game and heal up. You simply cannot stop the damage from hand. I was just in a game last night where a Rogue got 6 copies of Astalor in their hand. What good is armor going to do you? Armor is a joke right now, except in Druid where it can use the armor to play cards. That’s the only use of armor right now.
For the same reason Dragon Paladin isn’t a thing. Kazakusan is entirely too slow. By the time you want to play Kazakusan, the opponent will have lethal in their hand.
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People are undervaluing Training Session. You don’t have to get 10 cards out it. Just getting 1 extra use out of it is worth. It’s not like you discard the discover if you didn’t play it nor do you pay an extra 1 mana every time you play the taunt you chose. It a 1 time pay 1 to get a discover that you can chain into another discover if you play that discover the same turn.
You’re right, people are overlooking that aspect, and that’s a good spell…
…in a meta where Taunt minions actually matter. But taunt minions don’t really matter much right now. Here’s a situation: assume you’re playing against big spell mage or curse warlock. You have 10 mana. You spend 1 mana for this spell. Give me the list of taunt minions you’d chain together. Give me the miracle play.
And then you realize no matter what combo of cards you choose, it doesn’t matter.
Taunt warrior won’t matter because taunts don’t really matter. If taunt minions mattered right now, Warrior would be decent. MAYBE on rotation it can be good, but I doubt it. Here’s hoping Ungoro rotates in…?
Igneous Lavagorger x2 with a thrid in hand to get a bunch of armor against Curse Warlock
Against Big Spell Mage 3x Asvendon with a 4th in hand. Also it’s not like you have to go max greed with the card every time you play it. If you need to go faster in the matchup just use it when you have an extra mana and just take whatever fits the curve.
I really want Taunt Warrior to be a thing, I do, it’s just that…it can’t exist in this meta. There’s too many decks that kill too fast or don’t care about your taunts, whether because they remove them easily (DK, Priest, Shaman, Warlock) or just have burn from hand (Priest, Warlock, DH, Mage).
Warrior might really just have to wait for Sunken City and Nathria to rotate out.
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Is all that armor going to get you over 60+ health and armor? Because Curse Warlock is just going to hit like a truck. Like I said, not even Blood DK at 75 health is safe.
I got a sneaking suspicion Ungoro quests are going to rotate in as the current quests rotate out. Not saying the Ungoro quest for Warrior is going to be good enough, but it does at the very least pose some hope for taunt warrior.
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Curse Warlock can get out armored an healed. I have given a Druid a curse card that was for 13 damage an still lost the game. Warrior should look for better matchup’s than Warlock. If Warrior could build a deck that stomps all these Cringe DK’s rolling around the meta it would be helpful.
I wouldn’t say they can get out healed. Full Healing can’t go up that high. Armor is possible, but highly unlikely. If you’re playing Curse Warlock vs a Druid going pure armor or a Blood DK going to vamp blood max casts, you can get your curse up to a 10/11/12/13 damage all at once with Darkvein. That’s 103 damage minimum assuming they clear the curse immediately. Almost no one is going to be able to heal and armor that high all while being able to absorb the 46 damage all at once. It’s possible, yes, but it’s highly unlikely. I’ve never been able to not get the curse damage to finish the opponent. The killer is doing the curse before for the 6/7/8/9 damage. They have to use 8 mana to clear that and only have 2 mana left. Then you hit for 46. They likely couldn’t heal/armor to 46 for 2 mana.
Hookfist is great, the other two are okay.
Like Hookfist is so good, there’re so many things for whetstone to activate at this point and it’s a pretty solid card in aggressive warrior decks otherwise.
Fleshshaper is pretty bad in the current meta, but if it slows down at all, this is solid. The armor requirement is the biggest deal. I think this is just worse than Mor’shan. Way easier summoning requirement, though it has significantly worse overall stats.
Training Session is so versatile, but I’ll have to look at the actual current Warrior taunt pool. I feel like just playing for board in the late game is typically a losing prospect, but maybe they’ll actually make some balance changes to make those cards better. At worst this is a 1 mana card that lets you pick something useful, and taunts are generally getting better as decks like aggro mage/frost DK/unholy DK rise in popularity. (That do need to do some board damage to have lethal most of the time)
I HIGHLY doubt it. Or at least I hope not. Those quests are really bad.
I’m actually hoping they try the questline concept again but with less of a “I win the game if I finish this” aspect. But like… next year. We can be without quests & hero cards for a bit.
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