hearthstone Geosculptor Yip & Skull of the Man'ari Reveals: Kobolds & Catacombs

[Zadina 831]

The Warrior Legendary minion and the Warlock Legendary weapon have been revealed so far today.

The former card was unveiled by DDaHyoNi.

The effect adds another random element in Warrior and the card is slightly overcosted for these stats. Still, Geosculptor Yip could find its place in Control Warrior, a deck which has many ways to generate armor. However, Control Warrior has some better options for 8 mana, like The Lich King or Rotface.

Speaking of Rotface, claims could be made that Geosculptor Yip is both better or worse than the other 8-mana Warrior legendary. On the one hand, Yip has 2 more health and his condition is easier to be met. On the other hand, Rotface generates Legendary minions, which are fewer in number, so you more or less know what to expect from its outcome. Still, the design of Geosculptor Yip is interesting and it can certainly put your opponent in a tough spot: spend resources to remove the minion or go face to remove any amount of Armor?

The second legendary card of the day was revealed by Atlas on a YouTube video (in Spanish).

Given that this is the Demonology artifact weapon in World of Warcraft, it makes sense that the effect of this card is all about summoning hoards of demons! It's really hard to judge Skull of the Man'ari without seeing it in action, if you factor in the RNG of the card too.

It can certainly make it viable to run in your deck demons with unwanted effects, like Pit Lord and Succubus, or just super expensive demons, like the newly revealed Voidlord. However, what hurts this card is that the effect triggers at the start of the turn. If it was at the end, you could plan ahead which demon is going to be dropped, but now your turn will be dictated by whatever was summoned in the beginning of it. This also makes it vulnerable to weapon removal, while it's also better not to play this card on turn 5 but save it for a later point in the game.

What do you think about these two Legendary cards? Feel free to share your comments below, while you can also pay a visit in our Kobolds & Catacombs hub.

Card images belong to Hearthpwn.

[Caldyrvan 374]

Yip: Rotface never saw play for good reasons. It will be the same with this, I guess. If it would at least summon warrior minions. But completely random makes it pretty bad. Ofc if you have decent armor and that thing out for several turns it may provide a lot of value. But if your opponent is not able to either remove your armor or this dude, you have already won :D

That Skull thing: Doesn't look really tempting. I mean, besides being the only weapon a warlock will have it is most likely that it will be destroyed, what do you want to summon with that?

• Felguard avoids the drawback and provides nice defense, but who whats that thing on turn 6+?
• Lakkari Felhound might be nice even in later turns but I doubt that weapons makes this worth a slot in your deck.
• Pit Lord good stats without the drawback but you have to rely on drawing your mighty weapon.
• Doomguard in this case the summoning at the start of your turn is indeed better and you don't have to discard two cards but if you already have it in your hand you might want to play it on turn 5 instead of the weapon and all decks who use Doomguard usually have no problem with the drawback.
• The new Void Lord would be great to summon, but I'm not sure this will make it viable.

Additionally you give up some control, not every demon might be useful to be summoned randomly and/or you wanted to save it for certain situations. Another point is you can't plan for board clear anymore because many of the warlock board clear options damage/kill your own board as well.

Right now it looks like this: There will games where you don't draw it even though you could make use of it. There will games where you draw it but you won't /can't make use of it. And every 50 games you get lucky to coin it out on turn 4 summon a Doomguard for free and play another Doomguard or whatever for 5 mana that rocks. -.-

/Edit: I just realized how pessimistic my posts about all, or most, of the new cards are. But am I wrong? (more a rhetorical question, I guess).

Edited November 28, 2017 by Caldyrvan
Added "/Edit: ..."

[Migol 87]

Is literally every card in this expansion about RNG?   Great Googley Moogely.

[SMOrcMan 72]

So do the priest mage and warlock weapons lose durability when their effects go off? Or do they just infinitely chill?

 

Also did you guys realize on warlock you can use a legendary minion (deathwing) complete a legendary quest for a legendary (death knight) hero all the while having a legendary weapon equipped?

[Hanz39 44]

Warlock weapon is useless Krul is much better

Warrior legendary is a bit better than Rotface since 8 HP is much better than 6 and is easier to activate aka hero power but still its effect isn't reliable so you can even summon a Doomsayer...

[VaraTreledees 131]

At first glance, I really didn't like geosculpter yip, I was like, huh this looks a lot like rotface, who saw zero serious play.  Then I thought about it, and I have changed my mind.  I think yip is actually really really strong in control mirrors.  Especially against kazamakus priest.  By turn 8 warriors generally have 8+ armor vs other control decks and random 8, 9 and 10 drops are far better then random legendaries.  Kazamakus priest also has almost no way of dealing with this card efficiently (baring drawing the nuts this card puts on so much preasure it probably wins you an otherwise almost unwinnable match), druids also have very few answers to this, warlocks are forced to have nether, control mages have very few ways to deal with this efficiently at all, 8 health is a lot to deal with + a random 10 drop.  Like, I would not underestimate this little kobold, if the meta has a heavy control element, he will be very very strong.

 

The weapon looks. . . kind of bad?  Spending 5 mana to do nothing really sucks.  Plus a lot of the good demons have battle cries you want to trigger or are rather small.  Could see play with the new voidlord.  This card is hard to evaluate I feel without actually seeing it in play.  Control warlock has gotten a lot of really strong tools this expansion, and it seems to be in a position to do really well, so who knows.

[Zadina 831]

37 minutes ago, SMOrcMan said:

So do the priest mage and warlock weapons lose durability when their effects go off? Or do they just infinitely chill?

These 3 weapons don't lose durability.

[HugeHoss 0]

I'm NOT saying that Yip is awesome or anything, but I do have to disagree about it being less reliable than Rotface in terms of RNG rolling a minion for you.

Wouldn't you say that "All minions of cost X" is a more similar grouping than "All Legendary Minions"?

Maybe I'm wrong IDK.

"Bring it on, Yip!"