hearthstone Raven Familiar Reveal: Kobolds & Catacombs

[Zadina 848]

Mage gets its first revealed Kobolds & Catacombs minion. And guess what? Joust is back!

This card release was unexpected, since it wasn't on the schedule, but it is welcome nonetheless! The Hearthstone Brazil Instagram account revealed this minion:

Image by Hearthpwn.

It is interesting to see the Joust mechanic return after such a long time. I'd place this card in average tier. It is worse than Arcanologist, since it has one less health and it's also not guaranteed that it will draw you a spell. Even compared to Novice Engineer and Loot Hoarder, Raven Familiar might be a better body but the other two cards are run in decks that really need the guaranteed card draw. The poor Raven can be a liability in a control oriented Mage deck.

This card is slightly better for Arena mode. Then again, spells aren't that common in that mode and there's also a reduced offer rate for spells like Fireball and Flamestrike.

Lastly, the Beast synergy is noteworthy. I don't think we'll be seeing Beast Mage any time soon. So Raven Familiar is a weak 2-mana drop that can be generated and offered to Hunters - although this is mostly going to affect Wild mode.

Feel free to visit our Kobolds & Catacombs hub for all details and revealed cards of the upcoming expansion.

[Caldyrvan 376]

And again another card that is kind of random and unreliable. No more words, the K&C cards make me tired -.-

Edited November 22, 2017 by Caldyrvan

[SMOrcMan 72]

Maybe decent in some meme deck that uses some high cost spell? Not sure it'll see play otherwise.

[Synesthesy 80]

35 minutes ago, SMOrcMan said:

Maybe decent in some meme deck that uses some high cost spell? Not sure it'll see play otherwise.

I think it can be meta reliant. It's good in a deck that use only few, expensive spell; and it shines against low curve decks that use only cheap ones.

Here, the problem is that cheap mage's spell are good... So in a combo deck it will probably better to just play novice engineer...

[VaraTreledees 136]

Seems mediocre.  Mainly because arcanologist exists.  I don't think mage has enough room for both in most decks.  But I would never count out 2 Mana draw minions.

[Kuster 10]

So... joust all over again? That went well the first time around. 

To be fair this format of joust is precisely the only one that saw play in the form of that hunter card that did the same thing for minions.

But it really bothers me that we have cards that do exactly the same thing and are worded differently. Injured Kvaldir and injured blademaster, this raven and the hunter elk, the original betrayal talking about "minions next to" the one you target, every other card that uses "adjacent minions" and now the sudden betrayal with "neighbours". Really, how hard can it be to keep it consistent with the wording? It's fine for Skycap'n Kragg to have "charrrrrrge" written on it, we get it, it's a joke. But when you're trying to explain a mechanic on a card using different words every time you WILL confuse your players. Idk, maybe I'm just too used to the uniformity in text structure we have in magic, but hearthstone really annoys me with that.

[Caldyrvan 376]

I think we are all smart enough to know what the cards are doing even with other words

But I agree it would be better to use the same text. I guess by wording it differently they try to make it sound like something new they made :D

Edited November 23, 2017 by Caldyrvan