My feeling is that you’re thinking too much of the best possible outcome for this, and not the typical outcome.
Even with Quest DH, you have to spend quite a lot of mana on drawing cards to complete the quest, and even then, you can only reduce each card by 1 mana at most (unless it’s a Tradeable you’ve traded back into your deck).
I just don’t see a way you can build a DH deck with Xhilag that can reliably both get the cards it needs in hand and discount them enough to play it early enough to matter.
The rare times it happens, it would be really strong. But those times are likely to be quite rare.
So here was my thought:
Draws your 2 Naga discounts which can then reduce cards by 1 and then 1 more. That’s a 7 mana combo, but also draws 2 cards. You set that up and the reduction kicks in with the quest and now everything just discounted a ton more. Again, not a DH player, it’s just what I saw with those 2 cards.
That combo usually needs to be done in a single turn, since the Naga are both Outcast cards. So you’re waiting until turn 8 (or 7 with coin) to cheat out a 7-mana minion…
Or if you wait until the turn after you draw them, then you’d need to play whatever you top-decked that turn, plus both of the Naga. Which means you’re still just playing Xhilag on turn 5 at best, assuming you coined out Abyssal Depths on 3 and top decked a 1 mana card on 4 so that you could play it plus both Nagas on 4 in order to discount Xhilag enough to play on 5. And even then, that only works if Xhilag is the leftmost card in your hand; so that’s incredibly unlikely.
And at that point, you still wouldn’t be any further ahead than if you were just running a Big Demon DH list and were using Sigil of Reckoning and/or Caria to cheat Xhilag out for 5 mana.
In the end, I don’t think that there’s any good way to get the discounts you need to reliably get this out before your opponent has enough easy options available to kill most or all of the Stalks easily.
Now, I haven’t played a huge amount of DH either, so maybe I’ve missed something.
But the DH archetypes I’ve spent the most time on have been Big Demon DH, Quest DH and Outcast DH (in roughly that order of frequency), so I’ve had at least some experience with pretty much every method you might use to discount Xhilag. And from that, I don’t see how you can cheat it out early enough to be a flat out game winner with enough reliability to make it one of the top Colossals.
I think it still could be quite good — especially if you lean into the token DH stuff that is available — but I can’t see it being a top tier Colossal based on that.
The 4 cost card would draw both nagas. You play 1 naga for 2, it reduced the other naga by 1 and your other left card by 1. You play the other naga for 1 to then reduce the left card by another 1 and the right card by 1.
It’s 7 mana, assuming you didn’t discount any of those any other time with the quest or any other way. It’s pretty nifty if those are your 2 lowest minions I thought
It could be nifty.
But those Naga only give their discounts if they’re in Outcast position.
So, that only works without playing additional cards if one of the three following options is possible:
- Your hand is empty before you draw them, which makes their discounts useless, unless you draw additional cards after them.
- You play them on the same turn that you drew them, which requires 7 mana (and thus eliminates the possibility of cheating out Xhilag early).
- You play them on the following turn AFTER you play whatever you top-decked that turn.
Whichever path you take, I don’t see how that lets you cheat out Xhilag earlier than just Sigil of Reckoning or Raging Felscreamer would.
I don’t think you understand. If you don’t draw the Nagas before you play that spell, you will draw both nagas, 1 in the outcast position already. Then you play that one, then you play the other one for 1 in the new outcast position. As long as you never draw either of those nagas, that combo will work with that draw spell.
I understand the combo.
I just don’t see how playing a 7-mana combo to later cheat out a 7-mana minion is good.
Or how that makes the makes the 7-mana minion amazing.
If the entire point is just to play the 7-mana minion, why not just play it in the first place, rather than spending 7-mana to discount it to 5-mana to play on a later turn?
You seem to be too caught up in the idea of comboing into discounts to notice that the discounts you’re spending cards and mana to produce, don’t let you actually play the thing you’re trying to discount earlier than you could if you just used much more straightforward methods.
Take another look at the three possibilities I laid out for how the Abyssal Depths > Naga > Naga play pattern would actually work in game.
Is there a fourth possibility that I missed?
If not, how does cheating out Xhilag when you would already have the mana to play it full cost help you?
Edit: Here’s probably the dream possibility for your combo in Quest DH:
- Opening hand you have Quest, Xhilag and Sigil of Alacrity (in either order) plus one more card and then coin on the right.
- Turn one you play quest; or turn 1 hero power > attack and turn 2 quest.
- Turn three you play Sigil of Alacrity.
- Turn four you draw a card with Alacrity, draw your regular card and play Abyssal Depths (to draw and discount both Sages with step 1 of the quest) > Coin > Wayward Sage > Wayward Sage.
- Turn five you play Xhilag for 5 mana.
That still doesn’t cheat out the Colossal any earlier than Sigil of Reckoning or Raging Felscreamer could.
If you managed an opening hand of Quest, Alacrity, Spectral Sight, Abyssal Depths and coin, then you might be able to get Xhilag on 4 if and only if you drew Xhilag with the Alacrity and coined out Abyssal Depths on 3. (Or if Abyssal depths wasn’t in your opening hand, you’d need to draw it on turn 2 or 3, but not from the Alacrity draw, which has to go to Xhilag if you want the Colossal on 4). And even then, you’d still somehow need Xhilag to end up in the correct place in your hand to receive the discounts from the nagas.
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The DH colossal probably creates board space issues too, as you need room for 5 minions.
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Why are you overthinking things with Caria and the 2 cost and etc?
Raging Felscream is still in core right?
So you play that on 4, you can play the Colossal for 5.
No need for overly complicated stuff.
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All the expensive colossals will not see play if meta is filled with aggro and combo again and dying at turn 6-7 is the norm.
I’m ranking Faelin as number 1 because he shuffles 3 into the bottom of your deck and you dredge up those bad boys.
My top are:
Hunter
Mage
Paladin
Warlock
Honorable mentions: priest; it’s a nice “removal + heal + board presence”, but i don’t think there will be a deck that uses it for now
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you know I’m betting on your list:)
It seems my list wasn’t so far off, specially the bottom part. I underrated mage and overrated shaman and hunter (the latter because everyone was hyping up at the time). How would you ppl rank the colossals now 1 month into the expansion? Will it change with yesterday’s patch?
Xhil is now a LOT better.
Haven’t faced one yet, you think it fits better a token or a big demon deck?
Neither. I swapped out some cards from the Aggro list to make it effectively Naga/Fel DH and it fits amazingly. Jace is back, baby!
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Nice to see new variations popping up with Drek’Thar gone. The deck was never imbalanced, only that card was (and Multi-strike).
I avoided playing it most of the time so I never really noticed that Multistrike was a Fel spell.
It nails the DH theme/feel perfectly as a midrangey, aggressive deck.
Now that we’ve seen the minions played and there’s some new buffs:
1 - Warrior
2 - Paladin
3 - Rogue
4 - Mage
5 - Hunter
6 - Priest
7 - Demon Hunter
8 - Shaman
9 - Warlock
10 - Druid
The top 4 have been the best so far and I believe will continue to be the best. I think Hydraladon is better with the buffs Big Beast Hunter got. Behemoth and Xhilag are much more viable as well. I think my 5, 6 and 7 ranks are fairly interchangeable. Glugg and Gigafin are playable, but slightly weaker than the others imo. And then there’s Collaque, who was arguably the worst Colossal prior to the patch, and got zero buffs to move him out of that spot.