hearthstone Mean Streets of Gadgetzan: Preview of Revealed Grimy Goons Cards

[L0rinda 307]

The next expansion, Mean Streets of Gadgetzan, has been announced, and many of the cards have been spoiled already. This preview discusses the announced cards from the Grimy Goons classes of Hunter, Paladin, and Warrior. There are six of these cards, bringing the total previewed so far to twenty one.

The Grimy Goons are one of the three factions in Mean Streets of Gadgetzan. Their relevance in-game is the use of tri-cast cards. Grimy Goons cards can be played by Hunter, Paladin, and Warrior. Jade Lotus cards can be played by Druid, Rogue, and Shaman. Kabal cards can be played by Mage, Priest, and Warlock.

Grimy Goon card:

I've mentioned in the other previews that I feel that Discover across three classes is probably a little too wide to be powerful enough often enough. On this card in particular, the raw stats are so low that the Discover would need to be very good indeed. I don't think this card will see much play.

Paladin cards:

Getaway Kodo is an interesting looking card. It has terrible synergy with the Hero Power, which is an issue, but people will be looking to try to get value from this card. As things stand, it would likely be too slow for a control deck, and not quick enough for an aggressive deck. There will be some good interactions with cards such as Dragon Consort, but they might be too forced to make a consistent deck.

Small-Time Recruits and Meanstreet Marshal will obviously have to be tried in aggressive decks that try to keep the pain coming. If the right combination of buffs and minions can be found, there might be some potential in a sustained attack. When using that thought process though, the question usually ends up being "Is Zoo just better?"

Warrior and Hunter cards:

Warrior and Hunter had just one card each revealed. When analysing I Know a Guy, be sure to look at the good cards, rather than the bad ones. The pool of Taunt minions for Neutral and Warrior is pretty small, and so there is often going to be something helpful in the choice. It seems like it might not make the cut, but the chance of getting a second The Curator or Twin Emperor Vek'lor, combined with board control options like Chillmaw or Abomination, might at least be worth investigating.

Piranha Launcher doesn't seem to fit in any current archetypes. 

 

Other cards:

The preview for the Kabal classes can be found here.

The preview for the Jade Lotus classes can be found here.

[Paracel 165]

I'll try to give my opinions on the spoiled cards and rate them, using this scale :

Spoiler

 

A : Obviously powerful, a multi-archetype staple, perhaps, a format-defining card.  (Tunnel Trogg, Fiery War Axe, Piloted Shredder);

B: A decent card, your typical "bread and butter"; archetype staple; reliable niche cards also fit there (Blackwing Corruptor, Cult Sorcerer, Blood To Ichor, Acidic Swamp Ooze);

C: A mediocre or weak card that is a filler, outclassed by its peers or has a niche that's not reliable (Eater of Secrets; Stampeding Kodo; Stranglethorn Tiger; Infested Tauren);

D: It has seen play. Once. Something that's just really not great, but can occasionally make it in a meme deck, or via "get a random card" things. (Cone of Cold; Bloodsail Corsair; Starfall);

F: Striclty unplayable. It exists to brick your random effect cards. (Shatter; Wisp; Purify; Captain's Parrot; Cursed Blade).

Ratings are purely subjective, and, of course, opened up to debate. But I'll try to back them up with reasonable explainations.

One big thing to note is that I'll be giving two ratings - one for the current Standard, and one for going forward, in 2017-2018.

 

To kickstart things off - on all the triclass cards, or "Gang" cards:

Spoiler

The idea is definetly cool, but current iterations do not look great. It reminds me of multicolored cards in Magic: The Gathering, except for one huge thing. Being multicolored is a design thing that imposes strict disadvantage - a card is harder to cast because you need different types of mana. This drawback opens up space for card text to be good - and it will be balanced out in the end, because color screw is a very real thing. With those Gang cards coming in Hearthstone, design goes in a directly opposite way - being available to three classes is a strict advantage. You just can't make it good and don't stick an opportunity cost to make it fair. Also it would greatly reduce the diversity of the format. So it ends up undertuned, like it was with Inspire in TGT. 

Grimstreet Informant

A strictly worse variant of Novice Engineer for classes notorious for playing fair offense and fair defense. They never wanted the draw, and they'll never want a bad Discover, either,

Verdict : D.

Getaway Kodo

I agree that it does not find synergy with Hero Power and the aggresive Paladin archetype Blizzard is trying to push in general. It's not functional in an "unfair" Mysterious Challenger way either.

Verdict : D.

Small-Time Recruits

Whenever a card says "draw three", you should be very worried. This is a specific draw 3 that only draws 1-drops, which is not exactly great value. What's more important is that we have this card already - Divine Favor. I keep calling it busted and it stays being unplayable along with its home archetype, because the cards it can draw are generally very bad. Small-Time Recruits don't change that problem in any way, and it's not strictly better than Divine Favor, so I'm not expecting it to be viable unless the rest of the set pushes Aggro really hard.

Verdict : D for now, C in '17-'18.

Meanstreet Marshal

When I spoke about Aggro Paladin support in the rest of the set, this card was a prime example of what I did not want to see. The front side is really bad, and you have to work to get your card back, and it's an Epic for some reason. I'll pass.

Verdict : D.

I Know a Guy

Journey Below variant that's actually much more relevant than the original. Taunt is a very important keyword, no matter what Warrior you are, and yeah, pool is pretty small, so you can land decent hits. It can't be a Control staple, but tempo-oriented Warriors can find a place for this card, especially going forward when Varian Wrynn and Dragons won't be so prevalent. The problem here is that such tempo decks aren't always in the market for investment card selection things.

Verdict : C+

Piranha Launcher

It's bad, it's stupid and it's awesome. Can't wait to get one off my Malkorok! Or Burgle! Or something!

Verdict : A for Awesomeness D.

[PaasHaaS 81]

Getaway Kodo and I know  guy seem the most useful so far, but nothing really exciting so far. The problem with Kodo is obvious: terrible hero power syngergy and it'll be obvious as fuck if you try to set it up otherwise. That said, even if you make it obvious, how many decks can play around a turn 9 Kodo + Heal rag/tirion/bad rag? It's only hex & polymorph/boar that can really punish it.

[Strongpoint 74]

I think redempting Tirion back is better  than getting him back in your hand.  

[Paracel 165]

28 minutes ago, Strongpoint said:

I think redempting Tirion back is better  than getting him back in your hand.  

Redemptions pretty much anything is better that being forced to spend mana again. Unless your battlecry is rad, but that's not Paladin beat.

[Valks 2,375]

On 11/7/2016 at 6:26 AM, PaasHaaS said:

It's only hex & polymorph/boar that can really punish it.

If the meta continues, that's like more than 50% of my matches with those cards included :p

Also, Entomb, Mind Control, Sylvanas etc. You also need to remember that, let's say you're facing up an aggro or mid deck, it's entirely possible that by waiting for Turn 9 with your heal/taunt rather than 8, they can just ignore the mob, push face and either kill you or put you out of healing range. 

Using it with anything other than Tirion seems pretty crappy IMO, since you're guaranteed to lose your next turn if you need the heal.