G'day, friends, it's Blister Guy and for Thursday the 17th of October I'm still trying to figure out this out. How's the month going so fast? It's episode 1373 of Walk to Welcome Mobile House Time podcast. I'm pretty sure I named this episode Out of this World, Great Dark Beyond Reveals. I'm doing it again, Great Dark Beyond Reveals. And I don't even know how many of those women get to today because suddenly there's been a whole bunch of other news as well. Let's see, I forgot to change the batteries in my recording device so we could be a little dicey today. I've got two more evenings worth of work on the reveal and it may not be enough time. I know. I think I've edited all the visuals together. I've just got to do the music and the problem is the music doesn't work for me, like the music from the trailer doesn't work. But I had a shower thought this morning for something that I think does hopefully make it work. I talked to Mongeus about it on the way to school. She's like, "Oh my God, yeah, that's amazing." So if we can pull that off, it's great. We have very limited windows to actually be able to pull that off before the reveal goes live. So I'm just going to try and do everything we possibly can and then the day of the reveal of the morning we're going to try and record this little thing. You'll see. Hopefully. Well, maybe you won't. I'll let you know if we can't make it work. But if it works, it works. It'll be amazing. Anyway, a little bit stressful all that, obviously. What else? Oh my gosh. You know how I was, I was flubbing the Great Dark Beyond and the intro there and I was going to go see Great Dark Below again. The script I wrote for the reveal in the outro bit where, you know, check out playhuston.com for more and all this stuff, right? I accidentally spelt it Great Dark Below there. Mongeus says the line, multiple takes, says Great Dark Below, doesn't notice that it's not Great Dark Beyond. I don't notice that she's not saying Great Dark Beyond until I'm actually editing it all together. I'm like, wait, did she just, oh, I was like, well, let me check one of the other takes and get notice. Why would it, why would it be different? Why would she be making the same mistake I am? I made the mistake in the written script. She's reading what I've written, sure enough, it's the wrong answer. So we tried to record like a pick up line to go, like re-record the whole thing. The energy was off like, I hate to say this because once you know, you might hear it, but I've literally just had to drop her saying Great Dark Beyond on top of Great Dark Below and hoping that it works and nobody knows. Most people won't notice, but now you've been told you'll hear it, sorry, sorry. Like, that's the level of me kicking myself into pants that's going on with this reveal and it goes on with every reveal. So it's pretty normal. We're like, oh my God, when I'm done, I'll be happy, I'm sure. But frustrating. Anyway, look, before we get into the news, because there's news, we don't need news and a short reveal season, so what I think what I'm possibly going to do, if I get codes to give away, and it's an if, by the way, because I don't know if I've mentioned this, but you know how there were layoffs at Blizzard recently? My local contact was one of those, which saddens me greatly because she was amazing. And I don't want to give out a name. I don't want people to go track it down or anything like that, but like, she was incredible. Just like every other community manager I've had at Blizzard Day and Z, it has been incredible. And at this point, I don't know who else I'm supposed to be talking to. So I don't know who's going to be giving me codes. It might just be a ridiculous hat. He'll probably actually come through with codes for me, probably, but I can't say for sure, right? He might be tied by red tape on who's actually supposed to do that, and I don't know if I do. Give away some bundles there, as well as the usual and discord and stuff, which will hopefully make up for the fact that I'm just not getting to reveal the cards on the podcast as much because other stuff keeps happening, and I've got so much to talk about with the reveal and things. Loud motorway, as I'm crossing it clearly. So don't fret that we're behind on a reveal. I'm already thinking that maybe I'll just do a full, and that doesn't mean I'm going to talk about some of the cards on here. Obviously, and I'll talk at length about some cards, but that will also allow me to skim through it. And I think what I might do if I can do this, if I can stream it, I'll also get the recording device positioned off to the side recording it, so I have the audio of me doing the set review, and I can just throw an intro and an intro on that and slap that up as an extra long episode or something in the feed, and that, you know what, that might actually be cool, right? Anyway, I don't know. I don't know what everyone's into, like a full set review, and a full set review is kind of what's the word I'm looking for, indulgence, like especially if other people are also doing it, but who knows? We'll see how we go. Maybe I won't upload the whole thing, but you know, you probably can catch a vote on Twitch. Anyway, good to thank you, patron, where are we? Not that channel. This is a different discord entirely. My one here. I think, if I remember clearly, we are up to Gruntock, so yes, we are. Thank you to Gruntock and all the other patrons who make this work happen, make it work. I guess I make it happen, but I make it happen with the sport that everyone else. That's how we're pulling this together. That's how that works. See, I'm just all over the place, what a mess I am, but I'm pretty sure you love that, so that's all good. I love that, too. Anyway, news, where to start. First of all, apparently balance changes are coming, so we'll get to that in a moment, right? Like, as if this wasn't enough, balance changes are coming. We've got the teaser images today. I'm not going to go too deep into those, like I often would, speculating what they're going to be, because I guess we're just going to know what they are tomorrow, probably, right? Like, so that's fine. Even the teasers alone give a lot to talk about this time. They're, oh, we've got a big congestion on this ridge, it's all right. Okay, so the second thing is there's been a blog post today from, I believe, Tyler Bielman, is it? It does say it's from Tyler Bielman, the game director. They're reverting their weekly quests, so remember when they made the weekly quests harder for a little bit more gain? And everyone was like, well, that's just ridiculous, it's so much harder. We don't, like, how are we supposed to, we can't do that? And so they're like, okay, well, they have the rewards seen for me, and I was like, well, I guess that's better. Well, apparently they're, like, as I'm not going to read the whole thing, apparently the data shows that, but even with the more difficult quests, people are struggling, some more casual players are struggling to get more done, and that's basically an exit point for some people. And they're not saying this, but that's what happens. Like, if you get to a point in a game where you're not meeting the requirements, the game sets for you, such as weekly quests, you start to go, this game's starting to feel like a chore. I can't keep up with this stuff. Is this even a game for me? And more casual players, check out. Now the thing is, with engaged spaces, like Discord, Reddit, Twitter, all that stuff, YouTube even, you will hear people saying, why did this change need to happen? You and I don't have a problem with this, it's like, no, of course, if we're so engaged that we're in these communities, yes, we were probably fine with how it was going. But Blizzard can see the numbers, if they're seeing a drop off because people who are less engaged than us are like, oh, I just can't be bothered, let's go do something else. Like, that's the problem. And it looks like I'm guessing they're seeing that data, because they're going back to the way weekly quests were before they changed them to bad, and then changed them again to better. And they're going to, like, tinker with stuff a bit more. They're also removing some 50 gold nodes from the rewards track and adding some packs, which I noticed feels like, hey, that's less gold, but a gold is worth 100 gold. I'm sorry, a pack is worth 100 gold, so if they're removing 50 gold to add 100 gold worth a pack, like, yes, it's less flexible than the actual gold itself, but it's also more, more raw value, so I think that's an upside. So it seems like a positive change, even if it doesn't necessarily feel like a positive change for engaged players like you and I. And I think that's probably a good thing, because you and I can't sustain this game forever, it's got to be a whole bunch more casual players as well, because casual players can become more engaged players like us, or not, right? It's fine, but you've got to have a big pool of players who are like that, because some of them will graduate to be more engaged and then spenders, like if we're being mercenary about this, that's what it's about, like, the more people can stay engaged, the longer some of them become spenders, and that's what keeps the game afloat. It can't just be in franchise players in no casuals. Anyway, all right, we'll get that out of the way. Let's talk about the balance changer unis, which one of these image has them all. Okay. No, that's not going to work. Here we go, I've got a text preview that says it, so first of all, we have, usually with balance changers, they have a panel for the standard changers, a panel for the battlegrounds changers, played some battlegrounds this week, by the way, had some fun, had a basically standard and wild, like, oof, right now, because I knew balance changers were coming in, like, I think I'd rather wait till these came in. So, I played some battlegrounds to help complete some of my weekly quests, I mean, I guess more credence that the weekly quests are a big hurdle, and enjoy playing some battlegrounds, which was nice. I'm not going to talk about battlegrounds changes, because I don't even know the cards by name half the time. I can't play it on my phone, because if I can't read the cards, I don't know what they are. So, I have to play it on my Surface Pro, which is really old now, by the way. I used to stream on that thing in a park, like, five years ago or more, so this thing's well overdue for a replacement. I need to start saving my pocket money anyway. There's battlegrounds panel, so balance changer there, fair enough, cool. I'll just roll with it, it's all good. Standard balance changers cool, and then also a panel for wild balance changers. It's like, oh, now this is not surprising, because we talked about last episode, there was a, you know, a pre-spell that was repeatable. And there's like, well, I think something needs to happen to Radeon Elementals, so sure enough, the balance changer thing for wilds is Radeon Elementals is getting nerfed. No surprises there. Ridiculous Hat has been making a lot of hints, saying, you know, I think really I need to make one child change that card, and not more than one, and no less than one. And it's like, well, that's an oblique hint that it's going to, it cannot longer be, no other spells can no longer be reduced to less than one. Makes sense that totally kills the idea of that thing being an infinite combo, and probably even the combo deck itself. On that graphic, it also shows that there's, the Crimson clergy is in a green circle with a plus. Now, that's currently banned in wild. That's the 1/1/3 that we do see in standard an over-heal priest, that if you over-heal it, or no, I think it's just if you heal it, no, it's, if you over-heal it, I think you draw a card. That was too good in wilds, it was banned, and un-banning it. Maybe, maybe this is a mistake, I don't know, like, over-heal priest in standard is quite good, and some of the stuff that you get in wild might make that quite good in wild as well. I don't know, we should see. But what's interesting about this is the wild graphic only has those two in it, but the standard balance changes include several cards that are wild relevant right now. So let's see if we can find the list here, here we go, nope, I'm looking at the wrong word, this one, this is the one I want, okay, because there's sunlight definitely on the screen and making it hard to read things. I circled it in red, hello puppy, your name's Rocky, you're supposed to go that way, your mum's up there. Oh, I'm not worried about him, but I just think he can't come to work with me. Good boy, Rocky. Puppies seem to really like me. Anyway, and circled in red, this is from the alt text, so really, it's great that Hearthstone does this with their tweets. And circled in red with a down arrow, in other words, nope, yoggsaron unleashed, so yoggs getting nerfed somehow, wonder is wand, that's the thing from Marin, right? Puppeteer Dorian, treasure distributor, that's the little pirate. And party fiend, that's the wallock, one mana, one mana, one that makes two more ones, crescendo, tsunami, razzle-desler, and injured hauler. Now several of these cards are cards that have been buffed, so I wonder if we're just reverting them. The interesting thing is that puppet master Dorian and treasure distributor are huge players in wild at the moment. So that's not nothing, it's very meaningful to wild, which is, I mean, I probably would have tried to climb to legend before now if this wasn't coming. I'm like, wow, I'm more excited to try climbing to legend after that, we should see. Anyway, also, I'm kind of busy with the reel, it'd be irresponsible to play more Hearthstone than that. I mean, that doesn't mean I can't play Hearthstone, right? Because like, when I'm walking out from work, I can't really work on the reveal very much, but once I'm home in the evening, then that should be editing time. There's also a green thing, the golden cobalt from Marin looks like it's been buffed. So I'm guessing if they're nerfing the wand, they're buffing the cobalt to make it better, just to balance that out a little bit, the interesting thing to see, anyway, that's a lot of nerfs, we'll talk about them tomorrow once we know what they are, because not much point otherwise, but interesting that these nerfs while hitting standard are also hitting wild because treasure distributor and puppet master Dorian are both things in wild. Now Dorian, of course, is from that horrendous charge druid or toggwagel druid list that I played to legend last month. I still lose to that regularly in wild now, I don't think it's a problem, but it doesn't feel very good to lose to, it does its thing, it does its thing. Like if I'm sounds terrible, because I've been 11 times multiplier, it's a serious right, if I'm emptying the dishwasher in the morning and I'm playing a game of actual ladder wild at the time and I see what my opponent's playing and I turn around, you know, dry off some cut around, put it in the drawer, turn back to see what my turn is doing and see that I'm dead. I'm like, well, I knew what they did, they did the thing where they did the Oak and someone's out the puppet master Dorian and then what's it called? The thing, this, oh, a psych man, juicy psych man and drew the pieces and just killed me, like, yeah, I guess that happens. So you know, after this patch goes in, I'm guessing that will no longer be a thing and we'll all feel a little bit better about all of that. Anyway, I think that's all the news and stuff out of the way and I do want to talk about some reveals because otherwise I'm making a lie on myself with the title of the podcast. So again, no gameplay today. Gameplay will return. Don't worry. This is the thing I like doing most reveal seasons and I think in particular, once we have the whole expansion and the temptation would be to just talk about cards, we're going to have this pre-release tavern brawl thing and honestly, I'm just going to talk about that the whole time and that's going to be plenty of gameplay and talk about gameplay and talk about what I've opened and what I can play and what I can't play and that's going to be cool. I really like that. Anyway, we should talk about some reveal stuff. Now, I believe we have three classes worth of reveals that we haven't talked about now because we've got the mage ones today, wallock ones yesterday and hunter ones today before. Something that's really cool is that wallock has some Starship pieces. I didn't expect that. I would have assumed immediately that if demons are the bad guys, wallock are the good demons, lock it in. Starships must go for the good guys. Easy peasy. But apparently someone was like, "What if the bad guys had a Starship?" And Leo was like, "Cool. What would a bad guy spaceship look like?" And that makes so much sense to me. Of course. Of course, they have a spaceship. They're pursuing them and they're not doing it on bicycles. They're not doing it on skateboards. Of course, they've got their own Starship and now we get this like Borg, Simulant, Replicant kind of thing and it looks awesome and I'm like, "Oh God, this makes so much sense. Leo is so good at this. So good." I mean, maybe somewhere else prompted to. But he followed through. It's good stuff. So I like that wallock has Starship stuff. The car that I'm most excited about from all the reels is one of the hunter legendaries. Let's see if I can bring it up, not that graphic. Do I even have it? Yes I do here. Hunter legendary and look, it's like this card is made for me. Anyone who knows me from my Magic the Gathering days, in fact, several episodes back, made a couple of weeks back, I talked about how a card I liked Magic the Gathering was really obnoxious. Sensei is divining top. How much I love that. Anyway, this card is not obnoxious like that, but still, because Hearthstone doesn't have, you have to wait for your opponent to do something other than their turn. So anything they're doing during their turn, that's on them. This card, Exarch Nael, I mean, there's like 3000 around, I'm not sure if I can get this right. N-A-I-E-L-L-E. Nael, who knows? Three-minute, three-four, Draenei. Nah, cool. Three-minute, three-four. Stats totally fine. You're happy to get a spider tank. Battlecry, replace your hero power with tracking, and it's gotten brackets. Discover a card from your dick. Oh my gosh, like, I know that it is criminal to replace the hunter hero power. Too damaged for the face, shift kiss. What can be better than that? Tracking. Tracking could be better than that. Oh my gosh. Now look, one of the things Hunter has going for it is that when it comes down to it, if you're not beating Hunter, they could be pressing that hero power and that's going to add up and that could beat you, unless you're like a priest or a warrior and you can heal it. But we're talking 2013 Hearthstone here, like, their aims never come down to that anymore, right? So the fact that Hunter Hero Power does effectively add some lethality, well, I don't think that's a real thing anymore. I mean, it is. It's extra damage and it adds up. Again, where Hunter is going to get to Hero Power three times, that seems a little bit out. Like, it's going to be once or twice and it will matter, but like, anyway, the kind of Hunter Dick that does that is not generally the kind of Hunter Dick I enjoy. I've played them. If they have secrets energy, sometimes I quite enjoy that, but it's like, eh, but Hunter Dick's that do cool things, that's more my jam. And this is Hunter Dick that's saying, okay, let's forget that Hero Power, let's do a cool thing. And it's doing the coolest thing. Tracking's amazing. It's just a one-man spell to discover a card from your deck, put it in your hand. It used to be that the other two cards were removed and that was a good skill-testing card because casual players didn't like playing it. Good players knew that it was still good. You just pretend that the missing cards are on the bottom of the deck. It created an interesting dynamic where, oh, can I afford to lose this key piece? So do I need to take that now? They just straight up made it better for casual players and new players, which is just to discover a card. You're not losing anything? The trick between you and you now, it's not as tension-laden excitement that the original tracking was, but it is better for you. And then they made a decent tracking called fracking in Warlock, which is the same thing. And that's why, okay, that's funny. So it still exists. But anyway, tracking, really cool thing. Tracking costs one mana, by the way. I'm pretty sure this Hero Power is going to be one mana. Having a Hunter Hero Power that's one mana, discover a card from your deck, I am all about that. Oh my goodness me. I don't know what I'm doing with this. I don't know where the rest of my cards are. I just know that I'm going to really enjoy playing Exact Nightly and making my Hero Power tracking. I haven't really even looked at the rest of the Hunter cards very closely. Just that one, I was like, if my face was emoji, it'd be the one with the hearts over the eyes. Now I often use the emoji, which is the hearts around the face, to show that I'm happy and I love the situation or I love the people I'm around and things like that, because I am on a do, right? But the one with the hearts and the eyes, that shows the, that's like the anime enamored with what's happening. Aren't I emoji about Exact Nightly? Not so much about the pronunciation, but I guess we'll find out later how to say that. I mean, should I look at any other, like, Hunter cards, I mean, maybe. I mean, there's a, there's a, what's this thing called? A Rengari Scout, which is a one mana, one, two, Dronai, fine stats. After you discover a card, get a copy of it. That's incredibly powerful. Now, if we are getting the Exarch on turn three, which is a little unlikely, it's turn four before you're discovering something, like, you play this thing on turn one. If it survives that long, I think, magical Christmas land, and I'm like, but the thing that's awesome about this is you could play out on turn one, if you want something on turn one, to contest. I was going to say opposing party fiends, but that's got a red circle around it for balance changes tomorrow. Who knows what's happening with that? To, to be opposite whatever our small aggressive things that your opponent's coming out with. You can totally drop the Rengari Scout then, but also any other turn in the future, you can just drop this for one mana alongside whatever you're trying to discover, and discovering something and getting a copy of it is very powerful. It's very strong. I get it, sometimes when you're discovering, you see three things, you're like, I guess I'm picking the best of the worst here. Like, these are not what I want. Getting two copies of not what you want there is not terrific. Sometimes when you're discovering something, and I'm thinking about when I've been playing egg hunter, right? Egg hunter, that's exactly the kind of thing where I want to be doing. Exarch, replace my hero power with tracking. Like, yes, please, like, that's the kind of thing where sometimes you discover something and you're like, well, I can't afford to be sending any extra mana on anything else. But one mana on the Rengari Scout, like, it's so easy to slip in around things. Like, just that whole fact that sometimes on turn three, you're playing bird watching. Drop this first. Bird watching. The fact that bird watching buffs one of the things you get, now you've got two copies of it. I'm excited about this. Especially with egg hunter being, like, I played a bunch of egg hunter a month ago, or longer even, and there were flex slots in the deck. Like, do I actually want this one drop, or a different one drop, and I've tried a bunch of different things, and a bunch of different things work. This just seems nice. I want to try this. Maybe it's too greedy. I don't know, but, like, I really like this. I really like that this fits in. Anyway, we're going to move away from it, because there's a bunch more discovery as soon as you stuff there, and it's, like, if I talk about them all, we're not going to talk about any mage cards or any warlock cards. And that's, I mean, you might be like, whoa, this is wrong. My name's Sadisi. I want to talk about the hunter cards. I get it, Sadisi. You love hunter. You know what, sometimes I love hunter too, especially with X-Act, no, really. I was trying not to say that, but I'm just doing it anyway. Anyway, warlock. And I got to talk about this one for a couple of reasons. Now, this is not spoilers for my reveal, but, or even spoilers is something what I'm doing for my reveal. What I asked for from Hat also was some images of a great dark beyond spell with no card text, and a great dark beyond minion with no card text. Now, the minion with no card text was easy. He gave me pebble, which is like a token from somewhere in the neutral cards. It's very adorable. It is just a minion, one one, with no card text. Great. That's the text box with no card text on it, because, yeah, I think you can forget what I'm doing here is that I'm going to present the card on screen with no card text, and then I'm going to add the card text, right? And I wanted that for a spell, and I wanted that for a minion. For the spell, he sent me health stone, but with no card text. And it was a really cool image, a really cool green image with the health stone on it. A health stone is the thing that a wallock summons, wallock creates soul shards. If they're using particular abilities in World of Warcraft, I should clarify, in World of Warcraft when they use particular abilities that happen to be the killing blow on an enemy, it generates a soul shard. You can have like five soul shards. Actually, it maybe doesn't even work this way anymore, but it used to when I used to play. I think you could spend soul shards to do things, and one of the things you could do was summon health stones, and a health stone was something you could have on you that you could use that would heal you, just temporarily, to say. That's the thing. I use it now in here with me. It's like a health potion, but you create them out of people's souls, and they call it health stones. And you can share them with other players, potions, you know, well, what's the difference? Potions are the things you have to craft with the alchemy, right? So a wallock can create potions. That's kind of cool. I mean, they can also use the soul shards to soul stone, someone I think it is. And if you give one person, you can only give one person at a time a soul stone. If they die, they can use the soul stone to resurrect. Anyway. Health stone as a health stone card gave me a copy of that with no card text, but it did say it was a zero amount of spell with tradable. It's cool. I wondered if he'd made it for me, just custom wise, because apparently he can do that and did do that. But in this case, he just took the card text off a bit of zero mana, a fell spell, tradable, restore all damage your hero has taken this turn. Now you can't play this on other people's turns, right? But obviously wallock is the kind of person who does damage themselves a lot. Having a zero amount of fell spell that potentially heals you for a lot could be kind of exciting, could be kind of useful. Like pain wallock, I don't know whether it wants to have this, but it's tradable. Like the very least, it's not wasted in your hand. And at the very least at some point, you just like, I guess party fiend, party fiend, something like spirit bomb, I took eight damage this turn, I hear a little like, well, that could make a difference. But the risk is that you take too much damage yourself and your opponent can burn you out. Like this, this card is cool. This card is neat. I don't know what the application is, but it's neat. Anyway, another great wallock spell to talk about is a minion, kara. Now, K apostrophe ARA, I know how to say kara, that's a name. It's quite common name in Australia, but this is K apostrophe ARA and given Kyurei or whatever it was, who knows how this is supposed to be pronounced, but kara the dark star is clearly the opposite of that, 3-3, spell burst, steel 2 health from a random enemy, shadow spells do not move the spell burst. So it is the opposite of Kyurei, or whatever it is. This is quite strong. Now, like Kyurei is summoning three drops, which is also strong. This is making itself bigger. And also, it's a random enemy. It's not a random enemy minion. Like if there are no minions on the other side, this thing's stealing two health from the enemy hero. And we know what stealing health from an enemy hero does. The maximum health of that hero is now reduced permanently, right? It's gone. Unless they find a way to increase it. They're like, that's full. And so people are immediately going, whoa, how many shadow spells can we spend in turn? That is, of course, the question. I mean, Spirit Bomb is one, and there's one mana. Anything for one mana, or even zero mana is a shadow spell. It's pretty exciting with this. But also, like sometimes you just play this on turn eight, play some shadow spells, now you've got a 3-7 or a 3-9, and that could take some effort for someone to remove, especially if you have ways to play more shadow spells in the next turn, because they try and halfway kill it and say, well, it's going to heal itself a bunch more. What a spell. This guy is the limit with the ceiling on this, about what you can do, obviously. And this guy is not really what's important. The floor is what's important, and the floor is that you play this as a 3-3-3 and pass turn and hope it's still the next turn. And that's not terrific, but the thing is if you start to turn with it and play, still pretty good, right? Now the question becomes, what kind of shadow spells are we, have we got? There is one that is clearly intended for this, which, you know, I have some likeness before, because it is called a production ray, and my name is Ray, hey, right? I've always had an affinity of cards, I'd say Ray in them. Ever since there was a magic card called Ray's Dead, you remember that? I think there's the hustling card as well, but Ray's isn't even my name, but people loved playing that magic card against me and go, you don't know, because Ray's dead. It's not even a spell right, mate, but right, anyway, a production ray. Also funny, because I used to love the X-Files a lot as well, and like alien abduction. Anyway, a production ray is a 2-minute shadow spell, take note for Kiara, get a random demon, reduce this cost by 2, repeatable this turn. So all right, ability not exciting. A random demon, I'll be able to pay 2 on this, so reducing its cost by 2 is like a demon, right? You play this on turn 2, because maybe you were going to life tap, you weren't going to do anything else more productive. This is getting used to card. It's given you a demon, and if it's a 5-minute demon, you can now play this on turn 3 for 3-minute, that's probably going good, 10-minute wise, it's quite solid actually. Now you get a 3-minute demon, it's now 1-minute, okay, you're playing a 1-minute demon on turn 3, it doesn't sound very good. Well, a 3-minute demon from 1-minute, will you life tap as well, maybe? I don't know. But like also in the late game, you know what, I'm just going to play this 4 times, bunch of demons in my hand, reduce the cost by 2, if you're not under a little pressure, you can just generate so much value with this, it's going to be cool. Now there are lots of ways that you can bring back demons, like I believe there's a demon legendary, it should actually be on this graphic, let's find it, Archimonde is Archimonde here, come on down, Archimonde. Here it is, Archimonde, 7-7-7 demon, legendary for Warlock, battle cry, summon every demon you played this game, it didn't start in your deck. This clearly works with Kil'jaeden, the neutral we talked about at the very end of yesterday's episode, the one that replaces your deck with a portal that gives you demons that get bigger and bigger, so like, alright, so this demon synergy is there. And so the abduction ring works well with that as well, but you know, just the fact that it's a 2-minute spell that's repeatable, comes down with K'ara, K'ara you like, generate some demons and steal health from your enemies. Now remember the enemies could be the hero but it could also be the minions, they've got some minions in play, it's quite possible K'ara just takes half of them out in the process, like, it's kind of strong. Anyway, I don't want to get too carried away with more Warlock cards, outside of the fact that the Starship pieces, like, one of them is spell burst, deal damage to two random minions, enemy minions, and the other one, like, has lifesteal, if you can jam those two Starship pieces into your Warlock Starship, and then you launch it and then play a spell, it's going to deal like, a bunch of damage to things and heal you, ugh. Anyway, moving on, let's talk about a couple of mage things, I noticed the hunter cards, where are we here, mage things. There's a lot of elementals in mage, and this is why I want to talk about this, because elementals historically in mage have been dreadfully boring. Some people like this kind of gameplay, where it's very linear, where an elemental decks is, if you played an elemental last turn, do a cool thing. Look, I like doing cool things, don't get me wrong, but I don't like the idea that I have to play an elemental every turn, because that's just boring and linear. What elemental have I got this turn? Let's play it! Oh, along with, do I need to save an extra elemental in my hand? Maybe I do! Okay, boring, and when it works it works, but I'm just not enthralled by playing like that. I like other stuff, and it's fine, because some people do like playing like that, and it's good that that exists for them. But to date, elemental mage, not been my favourite thing. I have been enjoying playing mage in a while, and standard a bit, of late, because they've been doing some interesting weird things, so when I see a bunch of elementals in mage, now I'm like, "Ugh, alright," but it does seem like they may be trying to do some interesting stuff with them. And that, alright, has piqued my curiosity, whether it's good enough to play, who knows, whether it's actually enjoyable enough for me to want to play, who knows, but it's still cool that they've got this shell of an elemental mage which is boring, according to me. But now it actually has some interesting wrinkles now that could actually make it a little bit eyebrow raise interesting. So let's talk about some of those. Most importantly, I think the legendary, we've already talked about a couple of mage cards, I really like the Draenei last episode. But Sarun, which is a 6 mana, 6 mana, sorry, 6 mana, 7, 6 elemental, stats are fine for the cost. Battlecry, give all elementals in you deck, fire damage, fire spell damage plus one. So you want to have a lot of elementals, that was already true, to make elementals work. This is not one that requires other elementals to be in play when you play it, but for it to be good, obviously you want a bunch of other elementals in your deck. Maybe the big one here is, I can't remember the name, but the 4 mana 3/2 from a couple of sets ago, where when you play it, the battlecry is summoned an extra copy of itself for every elemental you play the turn for this. Ideally, you want to play this after playing like 4 or 5 turns of elementals, you usually board through to 3/2s and you're like, eh, I remember what it was revealed like, I mean, I guess, I guess that's a lot of things for my opponent to deal with, but if they deal with it, I feel pretty silly, but then I've been on the receiving end of it, you've got yes, I don't beat like 5/3/2s for 4 mana, okay, 5/3/2s for 4 mana that each have +1/5 spell damage, ooh, that's a combo, right, you play Sarun, and then you play this thing, and you've been playing an elemental every turn because boring, but also because it may be cool, and then you get to play this thing and suddenly you have a board full of minions that are giving you +1/5 spell damage each, and like, if Sarun goes 6, and this other thing goes 4, we're talking maybe turn 7, turn 7 you spent 4 mana, getting +6 spell damage maybe, and then let's have a look, okay, give all your enemies wasn't your deck, fire spell damage, so it's not that you can be, but once you have in hand I'm giving the bonus, but it's fine, you still play at the top of the deck, what did it happen, ooh, what, how exciting is +6 spell damage for 4 mana, like, it's got to be fire spells, so the downside here of course is that to make this work you need to have fire spells, and you don't really want fire spells because you want elementals, the more elementals you have, the more +5 spell damage you have, the less elementals you have, the more you can use the +5 spell damage, so there's this tension there, I'm not exactly sure what the answer is, but there are other cards in the set that will give you a bunch of stuff that might work with this, for example, pocket dimension, this is a reference to pocket trainer or champion, which is cool, 4 mana arcane spell, discover a spell, repeat until you see one for the second time, apparently this is generally just discover 3 or 4 spells, maybe it's more in wild, but it will also stop when your hand is full, you don't get caught in a loop, just because there's so many different spells you can see, like, that's just one thing you can put in your deck that could generate a bunch of spells that can work, blasteroid is a common 3 mana 3/4, again stats are fine, elemental, of course, we want that, battle dry shuffle of 5 random fire spells into your deck, they cost 2 less, so here we have an elemental, so we want elementals in that deck, and it's giving us fire spells, which we want because we're trying to give us stuff +5, a bunch of +5 spell damage, the downside here is that you want to be continuing to play an elemental every turn, and every time you put fire spells into your deck that didn't start there, or for every fire spell, or other spell, you put in your deck, that's a turn where maybe you draw and go, oh, I can't play an elemental this turn, I kind of have to be careful here, so there is going to be an interesting tension where you are like, okay, I'm going to play one elemental this turn, and I could play a second but I'm going to hold it because I want to be able to play one next turn, in case I draw a non-elemental card, like, excuse me, there's a lot here that's worth thinking about, I mean, flame guys are stonks just going to weigh up, that's the one mana 2 damage spell that gives you a one mana, one 2 elemental, like, that works really well, so I don't know, there's clearly something, excuse me, I feel like a swallowed bug, there's a train coming, I'm not quite ready to get on it because it'll be a bit rushed if I do, but there's clearly something interesting going on with the elemental here now, like, we're trying to do something more interesting than the general linear elementals, I'm not convinced that it's good enough, like, I think it kind of maybe dilutes what elemental mage does, as tightly possible the elemental mage is still just better doing what it was originally, but I mean, like, blastaroid, 3 mana 3/4 is totally fine, that's good stats, like, if you're curving elementals and you play a elemental spider tank on turn 3, you're quite happy about that, the downside is the fact that at some points now you draw a fire spell, and admittedly that fire spell is reduced by 2 mana, but like, that's not an elemental, and if you weren't still holding an elemental, you just broke your elemental chain, and if you happen to draw two of those fire spells in a row and you weren't holding two elementals at the time, you just broken the chain, so we need a lot more ways to draw cards to make this work, interestingly, there's another elemental, 3 mana 3/1 rare, blazing accretion, destroy the top three cards of your deck, any fire spells and elementals are drawn instead, that's pretty cool, I mean, I don't know if we ever want to destroy cards at the top of the deck, but clearly a 3 mana 3/1 that draws you three cards, it's very, very, very powerful, and what this card is saying is that you can't play this very effectively in any deck that isn't just a fire spell fire elemental deck, right, but it's clearly made for this deck, so maybe this is the kind of thing that works, maybe there's something we can do here where, you know, I haven't actually got very many elements left, hopefully playing things like blazing accretion is going to be helping keep that chain alive while also making sure you have stuff that you can use with it, I don't know, there might be something here, I'm very, very consistently been on the idea like, look, I get it, elemental mage is not my thing, I cannot for the life of me imagine what they can do that would make it my thing, and I'm looking at these cards and going, oh, this might be it, actually, this might actually be the thing that makes me like elemental mage, and also it might not, like we're not, we're not home slam dunk, home run slam dunking here, not like, exactly now you little hunter, like slapping my hero powers at tracking, oh so old, so sold, like if there's a deck that includes this, I might be a hunter main for the next three months, I, the amount that that card excites me, I cannot overstate, but the amount that the mage elementals have got my attention, now, no no, what is it, is that Leonardo DiCaprio thing from Django Unchained, you had my curiosity, now you have my attention, well they, they didn't have my curiosity before, but now they have my curiosity, whether it pans out, that's when they get my attention, so we're somewhere between that yet, we're not quite at the year of my attention yet, but we're close, we're close and that's, that's interesting, alright while we wait for the extreme I just realized, well my battery hasn't been on totally flat yet, so we managed to get a whole recording in and we're at 34 minutes, so that's miraculous, but gosh I, I'm gonna do it now before I forget, because my god, I will be busy tonight and I will forget if I'm not careful, we need to change battery tonight, this one here, we changed it to PM, what's today, Thursday, Thursday, I mean best radio again, sitting around on my phone, key battery, no, just battery, that's because otherwise I'll think of the wrong thing, it's got to be specific to remind it, otherwise I will forget my batteries, actually I've got another reminder, here's his batteries, that was probably to charge them, which I did do, charge the remaining batteries, but I gotta swap these ones out, so okay, here we go, now I've got two reminders tonight, just in case, because I don't want to run out of battery to try and record tomorrow, anyway, I think it is time for me to sign off, because I don't know, I feel like the, whatever I've swallowed that was irritating my throat has passed at least, but look, that's unpleasant, 'cause I like, do I need to get water out of my bag and drink it, I don't actually have very much water, I carry an empty water bottle to work, 'cause they have filtered water on tap at work, so I fill it up when I get there, it's like, it's a cool half stone water bottle that I have, it's this big brown metal water bottle, with a half stone logo on the side, I've got multiple half stone drink bottles actually, like shout out to the half stone team for sending me this cool swag, but this one's big, so if I carry it to work full of water, it's heavy, and that just seems like a bad idea, as far as my lower back goes, I'm not getting any younger, right, and I can fill it with fresh water when I get there, that seems good. Also, you know, why use up the filtered water I have at home, when I can use it to filter water at work, right, like, you know, what's the, what's the old name, uh, Bosch makes a dollar I make a dime, that's why I poop on company time, that kind of thing, but we're talking about filtered water instead of pooping, because I don't know that we need to talk about pooping, although who, maybe we might like it, good, the three year old, if she ever gets on the podcast, literally all she talks about now is pee pee and poo poo, 'cause she's three, it's hilarious. Although, while the train's not here yet, this is the new wrinkle, she's figured out the F word, this is the thing that happens, right, sometimes people swear, and clearly she's gotten a reaction when she said it, and people are like, we don't say that, please, we don't say that, so I feel like in the last week I have heard Gert, and there's a train coming, I've heard Gert say the F word more times than I've heard Mongo say it, and Mongo's just said it intentionally, and, you know, been gently chided for it, like, I've got funny stories about when she swore in front of me the first time, accidentally, and I was like, you didn't mean to say that, did you, she's like, no, it's hilarious, you know, look, here's the train, let's get on this, follow me on Twitch, Twitter, and YouTube @blisterguy, especially because, you know, that's where you'll see the reveal when it goes live, Saturday, my time, Friday ever enough, Friday's NA server time, 10pm, I think it is, anyway, and come hang on at discord.me/blisterguy and follow the podcast, walk to workHS on Twitter, it's always a pleasure to have you, who joined me for my walk to work, good luck, everyone, and everything you do because you're on absolute bloody legends, and I love you all. [Music] [Music]
