hearthstone IGN's Witchwood Reveal: Rat Trap

[Aleco 252]

 

Rat Trap is an unprecedented Hunter secret with some serious upside - but is it worth the risk?

 

IGN Brasil just revealed a new Hunter secret, and this one is Spicy with a capital S:

 

Card image courtesy of HSTopDecks

 

Woah! This Hunter secret is totally unprecedented, which makes it quite difficult to evaluate. We've seen something slightly like this in Cat Trick. but a 4/2 Stealth and a 6/6 are entirely different beasts (pun intended). It goes without saying that getting a 6/6 for 2 Mana is a helluva deal, but just how often will you be able to trigger it? My instincts say inconsistently at best, as the majority of decks tend to only play three spells in a single turn if they have The Coin. Combo decks can play multiple spells in a turn, but by the time you could attack with the rat is it too little too late?

The upside on this card is massive, but the downside is a 2 Mana do-nothing. Perhaps there will be another Hunter card in this set which requires a Secret to be in play to be effective (such as Medivh's Valet)? Otherwise, my instincts say that this card is a bit too risky to slap in the average secret Hunter deck. What do you think? Let us know in the comments, and be sure to check out our Witchwood Hub for more spoilers from the upcoming expansion.

[Dejo93 1,023]

No wonder our Huntress went into wild. She'd be an insane combo with this

2 mana 6/6/

[Oxygen 446]

The payoff is obviously good, but this is exceptionally easy to play around. The game's called Curvestone for a reason; most decks play one or two cards per turn, with higher cost cards generally being more effective. Almost no reason to ever trigger this unless you can handle it. Off the bat, it seems bad, but upcoming cards may support this card.

[Synesthesy 114]

I call it to be good, very good. Aggro decks with low curve play lots of 1 or 2 drops in late game, while control decks often play one minion and one or two removal. This while being a teach against combo deck not otk. I say it is very good and it will se play.

 

 

 

[VaraTreledees 138]

I think this card is actually pretty good.  Even if it never triggers it forces your opponent to play awkwardly and slowly around it.  How often does a warlock want to lacky coin darkpact or a priest minion, pws, divine spirit?.   This card will be a lot worse if the meta is really mid rangey, since they almost always play 1 card a turn or 2 at most, but as a one of, I think this has value.

[Caldyrvan 377]

I am not impressed it may turn out to be too unreliable but yea, aggro decks tend to play many cards per turn. rogues anyway, combo plays often consist 3 cards. As Vara said, one might be ok in a deck, but we will see :)

[Hanz39 53]

The card is unplayable won't see any play it's really easy to avoid the effect by playing max 2 cards each turn if you think someone put this thing in his deck

[Bozonik 94]

Probably unplayable, but quite cool. If it becomes meta it’s just too easy to play around. Might be chucked in as a one-of for the surprise factor occasionally if it doesn’t see much play though.

[Guest]

Able to play around it - how exactly?
By not playing 3 cards, playing no combos, doing not what your hand + manacrystals enable you to do?

Well, how exactly is the secret then NOT worth it?
Mission accomplished I'd say.

If the enemy can't use his cards as best as possible, that is a great advantage for you.
What is better then restricting the enemy for 2 mana?
Warlocks, Priests, Rogues, Aggrodecks - there are lots of situations / decks a player wants to play more then 2 cards.

Great card IMO, it will be included in every Hunter deck that runs secrets. I'd even rate it good enough to be used in decks that use not many secrets (or even none).

[Caldyrvan 377]

I really like the discussions on Icy Veins when the opinions differ so much. I'm already curious who will be right :)

[Aleco 252]

6 minutes ago, Caldyrvan said:

I really like the discussions on Icy Veins when the opinions differ so much. I'm already curious who will be right :)

Me too! Very happy to see such differing opinions, and impressed that we can all disagree without getting toxic :)

[Caldyrvan 377]

3 minutes ago, Aleco said:

Me too! Very happy to see such differing opinions, and impressed that we can all disagree without getting toxic :)

Well, that's why I come here for information, news, discussions etc. and I visit the official blizz forum just to check for major issues and to get entertained by all the trolls there ;)

Edited April 2, 2018 by Caldyrvan

[FanOfValeera 253]

2 hours ago, Oxygen said:

The payoff is obviously good, but this is exceptionally easy to play around. The game's called Curvestone for a reason; most decks play one or two cards per turn, with higher cost cards generally being more effective. Almost no reason to ever trigger this unless you can handle it. Off the bat, it seems bad, but upcoming cards may support this card.

The thing about hunter secrets is, there is almost always more than one on the board, even up to 3 or 4. So, playing around single secret is easy, trying to guess what it (or they) might be is the tough part. 

Plus, what Wedge says is important. If you play spell hunter, you wanna get to late game where you have a good value generator (or two if you count the weapon too. Hunter secrets have to be good at slowing down the game, and this secret prevents your opponent from using his full turn and making tempo plays most likely. And 6/6 body (will probably activate Kill Command too) is good. And it activates spellstone. Think of a scenario where you play SS when this is on board. How should your opponent react to it, w/o playing too many cards?

I think this secret will see play in spell hunter, maybe even two copies. One for sure I believe.

[Bozonik 94]

34 minutes ago, WedgeAntilles said:

Able to play around it - how exactly?
By not playing 3 cards, playing no combos, doing not what your hand + manacrystals enable you to do?

Well, how exactly is the secret then NOT worth it?
Mission accomplished I'd say.

If the enemy can't use his cards as best as possible, that is a great advantage for you.
What is better then restricting the enemy for 2 mana?
Warlocks, Priests, Rogues, Aggrodecks - there are lots of situations / decks a player wants to play more then 2 cards.

Well, earliest and probably most commonly arising situation it potentially blocks is playing two cards with the coin. But not being able to tempo out like that hurts less given that your opponent has just spent two mana doing nothing.

Combo decks probably don’t care too much about it, generally the combo just wins.

Aggro decks are probably more worried about explosive trap than a 6/6 appearing after they play a flood-the-board turn.

Midrange decks generally don’t need to play three cards in a turn, at least not early enough for it to matter.

Control decks will be able to wait until they can deal with it.

My feeling is it’ll just be two-mana do-nothing far too often for it to be viable, or just end up being triggered too late to be relevant. Could be wrong though.

[Hanz39 53]

Control decks have cards with cost like 6 and hero power cost 2 so they will never trigger it

Midrange can play 2 4 mana cards and a hero power

Aggro just hit face and don't care at all of your 6/6 with no taunt... paladin even makes your thing a 3/3 with Tarim before destroying your face

[enviousmtg 21]

2 hours ago, VaraTreledees said:

I think this card is actually pretty good.  Even if it never triggers it forces your opponent to play awkwardly and slowly around it.  How often does a warlock want to lacky coin darkpact or a priest minion, pws, divine spirit?.   This card will be a lot worse if the meta is really mid rangey, since they almost always play 1 card a turn or 2 at most, but as a one of, I think this has value.

Well, if they go lackey coin pact then they have a voidlord, which walls your 6/6 forever. And if a priest is playing all those cards, then they're probably also playing Inner Fire and just killing you. 

Seems fine against rogue, maybe. If they have to take 6 damage to make their Vancleef that's cool, if they end with a board of just Auctioneer then the 6/6 does something as well. 

What would be really nice is if we got another slow secret so that people have to play around this without you actually needing to put it in your deck. 

[Bozonik 94]

1 hour ago, enviousmtg said:

Seems fine against rogue, maybe. If they have to take 6 damage to make their Vancleef that's cool, if they end with a board of just Auctioneer then the 6/6 does something as well. 

In a miracle deck rogue just saps the 6/6. In tempo rogue they vilespine it.

[Hanz39 53]

Secrets to be good have to annoying for your opponent, this is comparable to Sacred Trial a secret that had no play because the condition to met was extremely easy to avoid like this one. Even Dart Trap is better than this because is more likely that enemy use the hero power than the enemy flooding a turn with cards when he sees you have a secret waiting there.

Also is worth noting that the summoned thing is a plain 6/6 with no ability it has no stealth like Cat Trick to make harder the removal or anything useful like Wandering Monster that soak face damage.

If the secret you play doesn't get activated not only you wasted 2 mana to play it but you also wasted a card in your hand in a class with unexistant card draw leading in severe disvantage condition of no cards and no board

[enviousmtg 21]

1 hour ago, Bozonik said:

In a miracle deck rogue just saps the 6/6. In tempo rogue they vilespine it.

I mean, only if they have those things available after casting their 3rd spell, which might not happen, and then you at least get to get in for six. My point of comparison was to Warlock (where they wall it forever) and Priest (where you just die). 

[VaraTreledees 138]

2 hours ago, enviousmtg said:

Well, if they go lackey coin pact then they have a voidlord, which walls your 6/6 forever. And if a priest is playing all those cards, then they're probably also playing Inner Fire and just killing you. 

Seems fine against rogue, maybe. If they have to take 6 damage to make their Vancleef that's cool, if they end with a board of just Auctioneer then the 6/6 does something as well. 

What would be really nice is if we got another slow secret so that people have to play around this without you actually needing to put it in your deck. 

Well.  Sure they have a voidlord to wall it, but you have a 2 mana 6/6, which is a whole lot better then what ever else you would spend that mana on, and against aggro decks inner fire priest just buffs the health of minions all the time for trading.

[Qubba 0]

Guys,guys...think Echo for a moment !

[Taan 46]

2 hours ago, Qubba said:

Guys,guys...think Echo for a moment !

Yeah, it counters Echo. But on the other hand we haven't seen particulary good Echo-cards so far...and all of them are quite costy.

So I don't know. Maybe we should start counting how often a deck plays three cards a turn...

I would play Cat Trick over this one. But since Cat Trick is gone...maybe its a somewhat usefull replacement. Or maybe you wasted a good piece of cheese for nothing.

[Caldyrvan 377]

I think it's def. not a replacement for cat trick but all the hunter secrets (standard) are not really that great and easily played around, Wandering Monster is the best of them when the rotation hit, I guess.

[Guest]

Maybe we should pin a thread in which the new cards and what people think about them are logged. (bad / great)

Then we can see after a few weeks who was right and who was wrong. Could be interesting IMO.