Don't let me kill your buzz

I'm starting to feel like a real preview party pooper. I haven't had a lot of nice things to say about most of the preview cards. So today I'm going to make it a point to say something nice about the preview card, whatever it is.

Blessing of Sacrifice
Cost:5
Instant Ability

Attach to target ally in your party.

Ongoing: If attached ally would be dealt damage, that much damage is dealt to your hero instead.

Alright. Time to say some nice things about today's card. This card is easily one of the 5 most powerful abilities in the game......err....Paladin abilities......ummm.....Blessings. This card is easily one of the 5 most powerful blessings in the game. Yay for saying nice things.

Unfortunately, we got yet another card that is complete and utter crap. If the cost weren't so high, it might be considerable for a slot in a Paladin deck. But at five, there's simply no chance that this will ever see play in a tournament quality deck. Let's take a look at when this could be useful.

First, you need an ally that is vital to keep around. Let's be generous and say it costs 5. So we have a 5 cost ally whose presence is vital to winning. If we managed to play that 5 cost ally, it would then need to survive until our next turn when we'll have our five resources handy to Bless it. This is the inherent flaw with this card. Rush and tempo decks will kill your guy before the next turn, so he will never get the Blessing anyway. Or Karkas Deathhowl him. Good times.

In the unlikely scenario that this vital ally does in fact survive the turn, you're probably already winning. But now instead of really pressing the advantage you seem to have, you need to leave five resources open in case they try to kill him next turn. You can then Bless him at the end of their turn, but since it doesn't seem like they're going to be able to kill it anytime soon anyway, that seems like a bit of a waste. A pre-emptive waste, but a waste none the less.

Or let's say you're playing against a control deck who let's the ally live for a turn so you can attach the blessing. It seems unlikely that a control deck, which plans on going into the late game, will have no answers for allies that can't be killed through damage. This brings us to a general theory from Magic which also applies here in WoW. Creature enchantments (now called Auras which I still don't like) or ongoing abilities attached to allies have to be incredibly powerful to see play. This is because of the card disadvantage they bring when the attached ally is destroyed. I just don't think this card is powerful enough to overcome the disadvantage that Vanquish brings.

The other problem is that this card is likely to stop possibly one attack/ability from killing an ally before they find another way to remove that ally. Blessing of Protection can do the same thing with two significantly better features. The lower cost on BoP makes it far less obvious and useful earlier than BoS (it's not a coincidence that this card can be abbreviated BS) and BoP can be used to preserve your own life in addition to the lives of your allies.

This card just isn't very good to me, and I would be shocked to see it in any tournament winning decks. Sorry for the downer on the previews, but if they would preview better cards I wouldn't have to do it.