hearthstone Nine Kobolds and Catacombs Cards Revealed, Including Two Rogue Secrets!

[Aleco 252]

Nine new Kobolds and Catacombs cards were revealed today on the spoiler kick-off stream, including two Rogue Secrets!

Spoiler season for Kobolds and Catacombs officially began today with the spoiler kick-off stream, featuring game designer Peter Whalen and commentator Brian Kibler. Nine new cards were revealed during the stream, highlighted by the first two Rogue Secrets to join the game:

• The latest class to gain the Secret card type, it will be very interesting to see if the full crop of Rogue Secrets in Kobolds and Catacombs will be strong enough to support a new archetype. The first two secrets, Cheat Death and Sudden Betrayal, certainly lend themselves to some exciting play patterns.

• Peter Whalen's favorite card of today's lot, the team wanted to create a card which hearkened to the feeling of being swarmed by tiny monsters in a dungeon. Regardless of whether or not this card is actually good, it's certainly awesome.

• The card I'm most excited to get my hands on appears powerful enough to make Dragon Priest an instant contender in the K&T metagame. Expect this card to receive strong ratings in upcoming set reviews.

• Expanding on the skill-testing "Choose One" mechanic, Branching Paths doubles down by allowing players to choose from three options twice. The same option can be chosen both times.

• Kathrena Winterwisp's text box reads as a one-way ticket to Valuetown. The only Hunter card with the powerful new Recruit mechanic, will Kathrena be enough to bring diversity to the one-dimensional Hunter class?

• The design team knew that a set about dungeon crawling had to have a card with the name "Level Up!". Getting this to stick on three on more Silver Hand Recruits could be devastating, but how easy will that be to set up in an actual game?

• The Legendary Shaman weapon comes in at a whopping 8 mana, implying that it packs a serious punch. It reads a little underwhelming for its high mana cost, but Shaman has quite a few spells that are untargeted and therefore purely beneficial. If The Runespear can consistently find Volcano or Lightning Storm it may be strong enough to see play in slower Shaman decks.

• Warrior's Spellstone can deliver a whopping 15/15 worth of stats for 7 mana, but only if you can play two weapons while holding it in your hand. Mithril Spellstone plays excellently with the new Recruit mechanic, implying that the true strength of this card may be its ability to play to the board without being a minion.

With spoiler season now in full swing, be sure to check back to Icy Veins for the full reveal schedule and stay up to date on the newest expansion in our Kobolds & Catacombs hub.

Card images courtesy of Hearthpwn.com

[Migol 425]

Gonna thumbs down "Level up" and Kathrena.    Too expensive/hard to pull off.

[Kuster 10]

I hate that they're doubling down on the secrets, unless they start treating them as part of the game and therefore giving us real ways to interact with them, not just 2 neutral and one class card that can remove them.

Feral giber is trash. I assume the copies won't retain buffs, that's how it usually works, right? If they did there could be some potential.

The priest dragon is very strong, but at least it damages your own board as well, so it might not enable the old very tempo based dragon priest we had before. 

Branching paths seems balanced, and appears to be rewarding if you know what you're doing. Remains to be seen if it's good enough.

I don't buy the hunter legendary. Every expansion they release control/value cards for hunter and it never goes beyond a pretty aggressive midrange deck. Unless they give hunter tons of tools, and the "whatever walls" epic released before is not one of them, it's never going to be able to run cards like that legendary efficiently.

Level up is a toss up, it might end up being good enough, but I don't think it will as far as top tier decks go.

The shaman weapon is a joke. 8 mana for maybe a board clear? Yeah, I don't think so. Go play tortolian primalist if you disagree. 

Lesser Mithrill Spellstone is interesting, but currently there aren't any warrior decks running enough weapons to justify it, nor are there reasons to play any other weapon than razorblade in standard... ok, gorehowl could still be a thing in a control deck, but you can't really run more than one. On top of that, with all the legendary weapons running around Oozes and harrisons are going to be on an all time high. Odds are you're going to be a sad panda. 

 

[Caldyrvan 377]

Well, hm ..idk. pff...

So far secrets have either been a joke or a cancer giving another class access to them won't be any good. I can already see it: Coin Kaleseth + Shadowstep, turn 2 play Kaleseth for free and this shitty Secret. Now they have 4 cards to return him ... great. (Edit: I was tired, ofc this won't work)

The dragon looks good even though it damages your own board. But unless K&C and the next expansion will give more to make dragon decks viable it may be totally pointless in a few months. Netherspite Historian, Dragonfire Potion and Drakonoid Operative as well Bookworm will rotate out of standard.

Branching Paths will require game experience to see what it gives.

Kathrena Winterwisp ... What Kuster said. But well there was already a hunter control card revealed, high cost too though. I still don't see hunter being there.

Level UP! ... lets wait and see I think it has potential ... maybe.

Runespear: First the murloc quest, then moorabi why all these shitty legends for shaman? Even Kalimos (which I like) is confined to an elemental deck mostly). I think we will have better things to do then to play a 8 mana 3/3 weapon that can bite us in our own ass :D

Mithril Spellstone: Maybe nice. Should be not that hard to play two weapons before turn 7.

So far I'm far away from being impressed and I already see things that will hurt the games health which is already damaged and needs to be fixed. Maybe they are running out of good ideas and just create something that may be cool but don't really care except for selling packs.

Edited November 21, 2017 by Caldyrvan

[Strongpoint 74]

I don't buy the hunter legendary. Every expansion they release control/value cards for hunter and it never goes beyond a pretty aggressive midrange deck. Unless they give hunter tons of tools, and the "whatever walls" epic released before is not one of them, it's never going to be able to run cards like that legendary efficiently.

I disagree completely.

Hunter legendary looks very powerful in midrange hunter. The worst case scenario is 6\6 + 1\1(beast) + 1\1(beast) and thin your deck for two cards for 8 mana to dig for reach/big boys. And this worst case scenario isn't that bad

But there are ways to build hunter with no\very few cheap beasts. Note that this new legendary works with Prince Keleseth Barnes N'Zoth, the Corruptor

 

[Hanz39 53]

 

4 hours ago, Caldyrvan said:

So far secrets have either been a joke or a cancer giving another class access to them won't be any good. I can already see it: Coin Kaleseth + Shadowstep, turn 2 play Kaleseth for free and this shitty Secret. Now they have 4 cards to return him ... great.

You can't play the secret with keleseth it costs 2

[VaraTreledees 138]

My thoughts so far.

 

Barring some insane rogue secret synergy, neither secret looks that great.  Betrayal doesn't see play, sudden betrayal is pretty much strictly worse, so we can conclude it also won't see play.  Cheat death is a bit more interesting, but I doubt it will see play.  It is pretty comparable to get away kodo which sees zero play in a class that is much better equipped to go for a value game plan.  So even though the value is there, I think the tempo loss is a bit too much.  That being said, I wouldn't completely count it out in miracle.  It has a certain amount of appeal as a Singleton since most of miracles minions are high value and you can do some pretty degenerate things with a 2 Mana cost discount in miracle, auctioneer and maly come to mind instantly.  It, however, will not see play in tempo since it deactivates prince K and tempo rogue is pretty much superior to miracle in every way.  Not sure if there is a single match in which miracle fairs significantly better then tempo, and is far far worse vs aggro, especially tempo rogue.  Which means unless miracle rogue gets some really good stuff, it won't see play at all.

 

The gibbler is trash, adorable and interesting trash, but still trash.  Firefly is almost always strictly and significantly better.  If it had the best tag, I could see it as an inclusion in token druid, but alas, it does not.

 

Duskbreaker is insane.  If dragon priest is good, this card will be in it.  The only exception would be in an aggroless meta, which will never happen.  A hellfire with legs that doesn't kill you is too good to pass up.

 

Branching paths will pretty much never be worth it, in terms of Mana efficiency.  Which leads me to believe it won't see play, however, card draw is particularly powerful in druid, and there is a lot to be said about the flexibility of this card, plus it should have very good synergy with the druids insane spellstone, so I put it in the could supprise us collum.  It has enough going for it.

 

Kathrena is insanely powerful, even more so then everyone's favorite panda waifu.  Even pulling an average of 2 2-drops it is a 4 Mana 6/6.  If the format is slow enough this will see play.

 

Level up is hot trash.  Significantly worse then quartermaster or even the light forged stegadon.  Best case scenario, play it on turn 10 with the card that summons 5 silver hand recruits.  That is 10 Mana and 2 cards for 15/15 worth of taunt, which is worse then Nzoth most of the time.

 

Runespear is probably garbage.  Barring a bunch of awesome shaman spells, I don't see much use for it.  Besides, weapon removal is a thing if this turns out to actually be good.  It takes 2 swings to maybe be better the a tortolan primalist, that is pretty bad.

 

Mithril spell stone might be good if warriors get another good weapon, but as it stands, it doesn't offer much, too slow and too hard to pull off for too little reward, again, unless some good warrior weapons get printed.  It gets bonus points for forge of souls synergy.

[ThunderChanter 2]

Has anyone heard anything about how Branching Paths will work with Fandral? I'd assume it gives you all three, but Fandral specifies your "Choose One cards". I mean, on 8 mana playing Fandral and then getting to buff your minions, draw, and armor gain, and then do it twice since you get to choose twice, seems like one hell of a turn. 

[Kuster 10]

3 hours ago, Strongpoint said:

 

I disagree completely.

Hunter legendary looks very powerful in midrange hunter. The worst case scenario is 6\6 + 1\1(beast) + 1\1(beast) and thin your deck for two cards for 8 mana to dig for reach/big boys. And this worst case scenario isn't that bad

But there are ways to build hunter with no\very few cheap beasts. Note that this new legendary works with Prince Keleseth Barnes N'Zoth, the Corruptor

 

It could be powerful if you managed to craft a deck that would guarantee decent pulls from the recruit mechanic. Your worst case scenario is in fact pretty damn bad, just terrible tempo, you can't afford to spend 8 mana for a 6/6 and a 1/1. But I grant you the benefit of assuming a deck that would avoid 1/1's by not using one drop beasts. 

I admit that I might have been a bit rash in my judgement, but I still think that it would be quite the challenge to figure out a hunter deck that doesn't use all the beasts that are auto-includes at this point in order to assure good recruit effects. Would you still run Crackling Razormaw when you're not running one drop beasts? Could you still afford to play houndmaster? Is a legendary card, being a 1-of, enough of a reason to cut those cards? 

On top of all that, it has been proven over and over that hunters CAN'T play control. Unlike warrior that has a "control focused" hero power but has the tools to go aggro, hunter has an aggro hero power and does not have tools to go control. So if you're going to argue that a midrange deck could incorporate her, fine, that's arguable, but if you trow N'Zoth into the mix, that's no longer realistic, given our current card pool. It could very well be that hunters get some spells that allow for a solid control shell, but at this poiint I don't think they ever will.

[Strongpoint 74]

Secret hunter is the most obvious way to do it. If there are a new good secret synergy card, we may see this archetyp in a sweet spot. 

Accepting the risk of a low roll is another route.

Non-beast early game (pirates, elementals, Prince Keleseth) can be viable in some metas, too

 

[PaasHaaS 81]

Duskbreaker is going to be so busted until the next rotation.

Other than that, Level Up and Branching Paths look pretty solid too, Level Up will be disgusting in wild though.

[Frogspoison 63]

10 hours ago, Kuster said:

I hate that they're doubling down on the secrets, unless they start treating them as part of the game and therefore giving us real ways to interact with them, not just 2 neutral and one class card that can remove them.

Feral giber is trash. I assume the copies won't retain buffs, that's how it usually works, right? If they did there could be some potential.

The priest dragon is very strong, but at least it damages your own board as well, so it might not enable the old very tempo based dragon priest we had before. 

Branching paths seems balanced, and appears to be rewarding if you know what you're doing. Remains to be seen if it's good enough.

I don't buy the hunter legendary. Every expansion they release control/value cards for hunter and it never goes beyond a pretty aggressive midrange deck. Unless they give hunter tons of tools, and the "whatever walls" epic released before is not one of them, it's never going to be able to run cards like that legendary efficiently.

Level up is a toss up, it might end up being good enough, but I don't think it will as far as top tier decks go.

The shaman weapon is a joke. 8 mana for maybe a board clear? Yeah, I don't think so. Go play tortolian primalist if you disagree. 

Lesser Mithrill Spellstone is interesting, but currently there aren't any warrior decks running enough weapons to justify it, nor are there reasons to play any other weapon than razorblade in standard... ok, gorehowl could still be a thing in a control deck, but you can't really run more than one. On top of that, with all the legendary weapons running around Oozes and harrisons are going to be on an all time high. Odds are you're going to be a sad panda. 

 

Its 8 mana for maybe 3 board clears. Or 3 random hexes. Or evolves, devolves, heals, card draw, minion buffs, ect.

 

Tortollan is 8 mana for a weak body and 1 random spell. As long as the weapon isn't ate, it gets value (But then, ooze is going to be extremely popular in Kobolds.

[Strongpoint 74]

3 random spells for 5 mana is quite a bargain.  It is slooooow. It is vulnerable to weapon removals. But it gives value.

Bloodlust Volcano Spirit Echo Lightning Storm Feral Spirit and quite few other spells give predictable results

[VaraTreledees 138]

2 hours ago, Strongpoint said:

3 random spells for 5 mana is quite a bargain.  It is slooooow. It is vulnerable to weapon removals. But it gives value.

Bloodlust Volcano Spirit Echo Lightning Storm Feral Spirit and quite few other spells give predictable results

Except you still eat the overload.  Which sucks.  And that is 8 Mana, unless you are counting the 3/3 as 3 Mana.  Which is fair, I suppose, but not really a good comparison, since that first spell needs to do something spectacular, or you spent your entire turn doing jack.

[Caldyrvan 377]

8 hours ago, Hanz39 said:

 

You can't play the secret with keleseth it costs 2

Omg :D I have to say I was tired when writing this but it's still embarassing. I edited in my post, Thank you for telling me :)

Still I doubt rogue secrets will do any good.

and Runespear There are currently 29 (can you discover a quest? then 30 ^^)shaman spells in standard. There are maybe 6 spells which are not subject to the random targets effect and might do something good at that stage of the game. The rest ist either not really helping, too risky with random targets or just hard garbage. Additionally other discovers let you choose something and keep it for a moment you really need it with Runespear your might get a good spell but being cast at the same moment can be not that great you might want that spell in your deck instead. And I think even if you are lucky with the discovers you need to land all 3 swings to make it a good investment, at least two to make it worthwhile. I'm sure it will see play when K&C goes live then we will see what it gives ;)

[Caldyrvan 377]

20 minutes ago, Zadina said:

The mystery is resolved and all my guesses were useless: Level Up! is actually Epic.

Just in case someone missed it. :)

Edited December 3, 2017 by Caldyrvan