Preview Day

Well it's Friday and you know what that means, Dark Portal previews. Today's previews are the new heroes everyone wanted to see, the Alliance Shaman and the Horde Paladin. I'm not going to spend a lot of time covering the cards themselves as they are rather unexciting being heroes. But I do want to talk about the new options available to each faction before we know what else is available in the set.

The first hero is the Horde Paladin Aleyah Dawnborn. Her flip ability might seem strong at first, but I just don't think it's going to be that good. The best use would be the combo with Panax the Unstable. The problem here is it costs 4 to use the ability which means to deal 3 with Panax you have to have 7 resources available. It seems like there are just significantly better things a Paladin can be doing that late in a game than setting up this very gimmicky combo. If you're playing Panax anyway, it's a nice possibility to heal a bunch of damage, but it's not a reason to put Panax into the deck. It seems like a lot of fun, but I just don't think it will be tactically feasible.

The more important thing about Aleyah is her class and faction. Giving the Paladin access to Horde allies and quests is going to be a huge boon to the Solo Paladin strategy. The biggest weaknesses in the strategy now are rush decks and Moira Darkheart recursion. Gaining access to Horde allies will allow the Paladin pretty good answers to both problems. I have never had as many problems as many other people seem to have had with rush decks playing a Graccus solo deck but adding Guardian Steelhorn will do a lot to stop the early rush long enough for Aleyah to get set up for the mid game. The real problem right now for me with trying to play solo is Moira Darkheart. Right now, the only way to stop Moira from being basically infinitely recurrable with Medoc Spiritwarden in Ophelia Barrows. On a completely different note, I think that the fact that Ophelia is the only graveyard removal in the game right now is the main reason she's such a powerful ally since she is the only thing keeping Medoc Spiritwarden from running around completely unchecked. Getting Ophelia into a Paladin deck allows the Paladin player to move Moira + Medoc from almost certain defeat to more of an inconvenience. And don't underestimate how strong getting Counterattack will be for the Paladin.

The other hero today is the Alliance Shaman, Phadalus the Enlightened. His flip ability is really nothing to write home about unless there are some really special totems in the new set. The only totem seeing widespread play is Searing Totem. Most of the time you want it early game and while getting it back later is nice, I don't think you would ever target is with Chasing A-Me if it were legal. This seems like a play that would probably be reserved for those times when you really have nothing else to do.

The more important thing in regards to the Shaman is how can it make use of the Alliance allies and quests that are now available. I have thought for a long time that the Alliance generally plays better beatdown than the Horde. An Alliance Shaman will get access to all those really good allies like Teep and Latro while also gaining the Shaman's high health and ability to use heavy weapons. The Alliance already had those with for Warrior and Paladin, but the Shaman abilities are very good for beating down (or controlling for that matter). Frost Shock and Lightning Bolt are both very efficient burn spells and Searing Totem seems a little scary when it is used as an aggressive weapon tacking on extra points of damage instead of a controlling one picking off allies. The difference is when it is a control weapon it's generally one of the biggest threats to the opponent so they try to remove it first. But when it's a supplementary source of damage, removing it falls to the backburner while you try to remove those allies that are more actively beating you down. I think there is a lot of potential for an Alliance beatdown deck from the Shaman. I don't think that the Shaman being available to the Alliance will mean as much as the Paladin being available to the Horde however.

Well, I'm getting more excited about this set as it gets closer. The Sneak Peek is now just a little over a month away so get ready for some new Warcraft.