by OtakuMZ - 6 years ago     show comments

It is this time of the season again where we speculate about the impact of the cards from the new set: The Boomsday Project. As always, this is the most exciting time for deck builders, theorycrafters and all of you who are eager to see something new. The new keywords for this set is Magnetic. It is Mech specific as the set heavily revolves around this tribe.

As with all the latest expansions, Nicholas and I will bring you our opinion that you can hopefully decide which cards you may want to craft in the first days. Beware of dusting trash rated cards early though as we may – and will – fail to guess some cards correctly even though we have quite a good record with this series. We both also do not agree all the times, those disagreements can be found below in the controversies section.

To see a full list with all tokens and stuff, please head to our complete The Boomsday Project Spoiler List.

You know the drill, right? If not, find our rating system at the bottom of the article. So without further ado, lets head into our rankings.

Boomsday Project Power Rankings

(Last update: August, 21th)

☆☆☆☆☆: EXCELLENT / STAPLE

☆☆☆☆:  GOOD / COMPETITIVELY VIABLE

☆☆☆: DECENT / NICHE PICK

☆☆: POOR / TOO SITUATIONAL

☆: UNPLAYABLE

A/B: ARCHETYPE DEFINING / BUILD-AROUND

C/T: COUNTER / TECH  CHOICE

Controversies

In general, this set is one of the hardest to evaluate since we do this series. It has so many potentially powerful effects that might – or might not break the game due to the extremly comboey nature of thr set. Therefore we hadmany disagreement which could be settled for good and we will point out only the ones we could not agree whatsoever.

The Boomship: Decktech rates this card very high as it could be a potential game winning swing summoning 3 big minions on the board. The problem is that you need all of those from hand and not the deck which is OtakuMZ’s main point of criticism.

Power Word: Replicate: This one could be a neat combo card for the already strong looking Deathrattle Priest or a Resurrect Priest in Otaku’s opinion. Decktech dislikes the fact that the card has the requirement of having an impactful minion on board, which will likely end up being too slow.

Shrink Ray: OtakuMZ sees a very powerful removal spell in a class that is lackingthose type of effects This one could be rendering a late game threat utterly worthless or enable aggressive Paladins to bypass a big Taunt minion. On the other hand, Decktech sees the card as an overly-expensive Equality or a less impactful Tarim, and he does not see why the card would be played over those cards (except in the case of Odd Paladin, which can’t play those cards, in which case he thinks the card is just too slow and defensive).

Annex I: About Power Rankings: My Take on Card Reviews Explained

We might evaluate cards differently to what you think because the evaluations reflect our opinions based on my knowledge of the game. If you disagree we are happy to hear your point in the comments below, @hsdecktech or @OtakuMZ1978. We will try to respond to all inquiries and will take it into consideration to change ranks of the cards in question.

All evaluations will be made with Standard play mode and competitive play in mind. This is no ranking for neither Arena nor Wild, please remember this when reading. I will sort cards categories (see at bottom of the article). They will be sorted by mana cost from low to high. There is a changelog directly below the actual ranking above the category explanations at the bottom of this page.

Annex II: Ranking Categories

☆☆☆☆☆ (5 stars) Excellent: Cards that are top-notch or potentially overpowered. Most decks would like to run them, e.g. Dr. Boom.

☆☆☆☆ (4 stars) Good: Superior cards that will very likely be seen play frequently, e.g. Annoy-o-Tron.

☆☆☆ (3 stars) Decent: Cards that normally do not make the cut for competitive play but are overall well-designed and might fit into specific decks. These cards can be powerful in Arena though or really viable for newer players but you would not likely see them in tournaments.  Also, vanilla cards such as Chillwind Yeti fall into this category.

☆☆ (2 stars) Poor: Underwhelming and/or over-costed cards. These cards have inferior stats and/or underwhelming effects and will not see competitive play, e.g. Voodoo Doctor. Also grouped in this category are cards, that seem to be good at first glance. Yet, their effects are too situational so that most of the time, you will not be able to pull them off (e.g. Ghaz’rilla). The latter can arguably be fun and even powerful IF their effects go off. In any case, these cards I like to call “what-if cards” are so unreliable that they render themselves unusable in competitive play. Feel free to raise these cards to a “build-around” card or just have fun with!

☆ (1 star) Unplayable: Straight out bad stats, poor card design or simply useless cards that are even too bad for casual play? Do you have them in your deck? Delete Hearthstone! 😉 These cards you would not and should never put in your deck unless for fun or I missed something and the cards are sorted wrong, e.g. Magma Rager. If so, please leave me a comment! Okay, one exception here: you want to troll your opponent so that he thinks you are the worst Hearthstone player alive! 😆

A/B: Archetype Defining / Build-Around*: Cards that are only viable if you build your deck around them, e.g. Grim Patron.

C/T: Counter / Tech Choice*: Cards that mostly have underwhelming stats but are highly useful to counter specific Cards or to Play against a very uniform meta, e.g. Eater of Secrets

Controversies: These are generally cards for which the guys have rankings that differ by 2 or more stars; the card’s overall rating will usually be a split between the guys’ ratings. This is also the place where we might note when one rater has a different take on an entire archetype or class of cards than the other.

* The cards that appear under A/B and C/T will also be represented under 1 to 5 Stars ratings according to their suspected power level when included or played in the right deck.