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Hearthstone definitely seems to be accelerating towards open beta and eventual release, but the ratio of "I'm sad/mad because I dont have a key" content to actual content is still too (damn) high. In that light, I'll be doing a little analysis on various cards. Fair warning: I don't have a beta key. Feel free to correct me if I'm offbase.
The first two cards are Doomsayer and Alarm-o-Bot. These two are very similar in concept - a card with no attack, a decent amount of health, and a triggered effect at the start of your next turn. Doomsayer clears the board and Alarm-o-Bot switches itself with a minion from your hand. These are very powerful effects, but my overall impression is that these cards are both actually quite weak.
TL,DR: putting a strong ability on a no attack minion, even if it's cheap, is very weak. It's easy and it costs your opponent very little to kill them, which nullifies the effect. It's awkward to protect them, and the effects are awkward to take advantage of.
Quick background, the three primary deck archetypes of (just about) any card game are aggro, control, and combo.
+ Show Spoiler +Aggro: playing many low-cost high-attack minions in an effort to end the game early Control: delaying with defensive cards until high-cost, game-changing cards can secure the win Combo: abusing the interactions of two or more cards in a synergistic way As a Hearthstone example, a murloc deck could be considered aggro, a Mage deck with many Flamestrikes and Blizzards control, and a Rogue deck with Gadgetzan Auctioneer, Questing Adventurer, and many low cost combo cards a....combo deck.
Between these two cards, Doomsayer is obviously designed as a "control" card, and Alarm-o-Bot as "combo"; you can easily imagine how you are supposed to use them - play Doomsayer to wipe out all of your opponent's offensive minions, and play the Alarm-o-Bot to get a ludicrously early Ysera, Ragnaros, or other extremely strong minion. Part of their strength is a very cheap mana cost - the 3 mana Alarm-o-Bot can pull out a creature three times its cost or more, and the 2 mana Doomsayer duplicates the effect of the 8 mana Twisting Nether.
The problem with these cards comes when you actually try to play them. If your opponent ignores the Doomsayer or Alarm-o-Bot they are quite powerful, but both cards are worthless if they die before their effect triggers. In Hearthstone your opponent may simply directly target your Doomsayer or Alarm-o-Bot with his own minions....while still retaining the option to deal with them using spells like Assassinate.
There are 14 1 or 2-mana minions that can either kill or silence Alarm-o-Bot on their own, any many others that can kill him with a little combo - combinations of 1 and 2 mana minions, 2 attack minions with a 1 damage hero power, or minions with a cheap damaging spell like Slam.
Not only is it possible to deal with Doomsayer and Alarm-o-Bot, but it's very cheap to do so. The biggest drawback of these two minions is that they have no attack. All powerful and cheap cards have a weakness, but this one is more debilitating than most.
As an example, Venture Co. Mercenary is a cheap minion with high attack and health. His weakness is that he makes your other minions more expensive. While either Venture Co. Merc or Doomsayer/Alarm-o-Bot can be Assassinated (1-for-1 trade), your opponent's creatures will most likely die if they attack the Venture Co. Merc. On the other hand, your opponent's creatures are still just as healthy after attacking Doomsayer or Alarm-o-Bot (unless your opponent needed a Power Overwhelming or something to kill it!)
Ok, so it's easy to kill Alarm-o-Bot, but Doomsayer comes out sooner and with much more health. In his case, the weakness is in the effect itself. Clearing the entire board is powerful, but you yourself need to play around it. If you play him early, you'll only get 1 or 2 of your opponents minions (if he doesn't just die). If you play him late when your opponent has many creatures, your opponent will just use those creatures to kill him. What if you have a taunter to protect him? Well, (if your opponent doesn't just kill the taunter first) the ungrateful Doomsayer will kill it, negating some of your card advantage.
Incidentally, Alarm-o-Bot has a similar negative interaction with taunting protectors - using taunts to protect your Alarm-o-Bots necessitates putting cheap taunters in your deck....and you run the risk of having the well-meaning bot swap himself with some chump Sen'jin Shieldmasta rather than Ragnaros.
Finally, you could protect either of these cards with something like Conceal (gives it stealth) or Hand of Protection (gives it divine shield). Either option can work, but requires actually drawing that specific card along with your Doomsayer/Alarm-o-Bot, and cuts into the natural card advantage of the effect.
All this isn't to say that there aren't some ways to make these two cards more cost-effective, despite their overall weakness. You can use Power Word: Shield on either of them to beef them up a bit without losing card advantage. Alarm-o-Bot can be "protected" by using damaging spells to kill off your opponent's creatures, without needing to put more cheap creatures in your deck; and Doomsayer might be useful in a control deck fighting aggro decks - play him early for either a board wipe or a psuedo-taunt - if he dies, at least you've avoided taking hero damage for a turn, maybe just enough to get the mana for that crucial Explosive Shot.
All-in-all, I wouldn't recommend either card for serious Arena or Constructed, though both could easily find a place in a fun, casual control or combo deck.
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so i think we are all wondering...
what happens if you play them both at once
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Sort of a long-winded way of saying what basically everyone who actually tries to be good at the game already knows: most minions with 0 power basically suck (there are some decent shaman totems that break this rule, but that is because they have very strong abilities for their cost). These guys are somewhat similar to that 0/4 for 1 guy with taunt. At first blush they seem like they might be ok, but then you realize they just die without trading for anything, and you basically wasted your mana.
I actually think the doomsayer has a little more potential than the alarm-o-bot. The biggest issue with the doomsayer is if he is advantageous for you (i.e. can blow up your opponent's board, while yours is weak), your opponent probably has an easy way to kill him. However, if you can protect him with something cheap for one turn (a cheap taunt like the stoneclaw totem, or maybe that 2/2 taunter), you might actually trade up pretty well. However, he is just too situational to be counted on, so isn't really worth playing regularly.
Maybe he will have some cool combos in the future.
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I posted this yesterday and I'll repost it here about the use of alarm-o-bot
On October 08 2013 11:34 Inkblood wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2013 08:48 sob3k wrote:
Why is Alarm-o-bot bad? Is it too low health or too expensive? It seems solid situationally... Alarm-o-Bot is like “Play a card to play another random card, assuming it lives. Or play a card to do absolutely nothing if a creature kills it or it’s silenced.” It doesn’t trigger Battlecries, so you don’t want it grabbing most Battlecry cards (and there are quite a few of them, most of which are really good.) It’s a card that by itself gets nothing done, and can be taken out by most 2 and 3 drops. The only good outcome is it warps a big creature out of your hand. But that’s so bloody situational. I would rather just have a solid 3 drop over Alarm-o-Bot. And even barring that, there’s probably situations where you want a certain card to stay in your hand, because it will have greater value later, or there’s something currently on the board that will kill it for free. And once again, there’s the Battlecry anti-value. Like, you can gamble, and the card can create wonderful situations with legendaries or something, but generally you can simply play stronger and more consistent cards. At it’s core it strikes me as simply unreliable and monstrously situational. Even if you get lucky and have, let's say, Alarm-o-Bot and Ysera in your hand, if you have any other minions that Alarm-o-Bot can copy it might not work, or it might get killed by a 2 or 3 drop removal, creature, or weapon, or it might get silenced by Silence, Ironbeak Owl, or Earth Shock. (Or other silences if it’s later in the game. And in general it's probably not going to be as useful later in the game. Because you can just straight up play tough creatures now.) One way it could be useful is in warlock decks, where you can avoid their detrimental demon Battlecries as well as warp out high cost creatures. I don’t know if it’s good there, but it’s probably where Alarm-o-Bot is at its best. (Though then you might Alarm-o-Bot Lord Jaraxxus and cry at the 3/15 creature you've just slammed onto the board.) To address your other questions. Increasing it’s health would make it better, but I personally would still consider it really bad. The mana cost doesn’t matter imo, making it cheaper would just make it bizarre. In summary its upside is to make big cards cheaper via randomness and luck, and avoiding demon Battlecries. But it has too many downsides. Hopefully this post was helpful/coherent, and not flat out wrong. Obviously it's my opinion of the card, but I think it's fairly accurate. Have a nice day 
That all makes sense to me.
But maybe instead of treating alarm as an early 3 drop and trying to pull out a fat creature ahead of your mana curve.....
which doesn't work well because:
1. You have a bunch of creatures so your chances of getting a spendy one you want to play is shitty low. Unreliable.
2. It dies easily to 2-3 drops and basic removal if it can't be protected (which you can't early).
Maybe you could treat it as a late game acceleration card. You say its devalued then because you can just play a beefy minion, but with it you can get two out in one turn, or one free and expensive other spells. There are a lot of advantages to using it lategame.
1. You probably have much fewer creatures in your hand, maybe just big ones. It becomes predictable.
2. You have more of an idea of what your opponent has for removal.
3. You can have taunters out to protect it directly.
4. You drop a Core Hound or an Stormwind Champion or a Giant or Frostwolf Warlord or Venture Co etc and the bot. Now your opponent has to choose to target their removal on the revealed serious threat and potentially face betting shat on next turn by free Ysera and whatever else you can play, and targeting the bot and leaving the first threat to beat on them + you could just be bluffing.
It seems like it could be much more reliably strong in this use. Dunno, I'd try it out if I had a key.
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Northern Ireland22203 Posts
I don't even get the point of doomsayer. How do you play around it when it's killing all your creatures too
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On October 09 2013 07:45 sob3k wrote:I posted this yesterday and I'll repost it here about the use of alarm-o-bot Show nested quote +On October 08 2013 11:34 Inkblood wrote:On October 08 2013 08:48 sob3k wrote:
Why is Alarm-o-bot bad? Is it too low health or too expensive? It seems solid situationally... Alarm-o-Bot is like “Play a card to play another random card, assuming it lives. Or play a card to do absolutely nothing if a creature kills it or it’s silenced.” It doesn’t trigger Battlecries, so you don’t want it grabbing most Battlecry cards (and there are quite a few of them, most of which are really good.) It’s a card that by itself gets nothing done, and can be taken out by most 2 and 3 drops. The only good outcome is it warps a big creature out of your hand. But that’s so bloody situational. I would rather just have a solid 3 drop over Alarm-o-Bot. And even barring that, there’s probably situations where you want a certain card to stay in your hand, because it will have greater value later, or there’s something currently on the board that will kill it for free. And once again, there’s the Battlecry anti-value. Like, you can gamble, and the card can create wonderful situations with legendaries or something, but generally you can simply play stronger and more consistent cards. At it’s core it strikes me as simply unreliable and monstrously situational. Even if you get lucky and have, let's say, Alarm-o-Bot and Ysera in your hand, if you have any other minions that Alarm-o-Bot can copy it might not work, or it might get killed by a 2 or 3 drop removal, creature, or weapon, or it might get silenced by Silence, Ironbeak Owl, or Earth Shock. (Or other silences if it’s later in the game. And in general it's probably not going to be as useful later in the game. Because you can just straight up play tough creatures now.) One way it could be useful is in warlock decks, where you can avoid their detrimental demon Battlecries as well as warp out high cost creatures. I don’t know if it’s good there, but it’s probably where Alarm-o-Bot is at its best. (Though then you might Alarm-o-Bot Lord Jaraxxus and cry at the 3/15 creature you've just slammed onto the board.) To address your other questions. Increasing it’s health would make it better, but I personally would still consider it really bad. The mana cost doesn’t matter imo, making it cheaper would just make it bizarre. In summary its upside is to make big cards cheaper via randomness and luck, and avoiding demon Battlecries. But it has too many downsides. Hopefully this post was helpful/coherent, and not flat out wrong. Obviously it's my opinion of the card, but I think it's fairly accurate. Have a nice day That all makes sense to me. But maybe instead of treating alarm as an early 3 drop and trying to pull out a fat creature ahead of your mana curve..... which doesn't work well because: 1. You have a bunch of creatures so your chances of getting a spendy one you want to play is shitty low. Unreliable. 2. It dies easily to 2-3 drops and basic removal if it can't be protected (which you can't early). Maybe you could treat it as a late game acceleration card. You say its devalued then because you can just play a beefy minion, but with it you can get two out in one turn, or one free and expensive other spells. There are a lot of advantages to using it lategame. 1. You probably have much fewer creatures in your hand, maybe just big ones. It becomes predictable. 2. You have more of an idea of what your opponent has for removal. 3. You can have taunters out to protect it directly. 4. You drop a Core Hound or an Stormwind Champion or a Giant or Frostwolf Warlord or Venture Co etc and the bot. Now your opponent has to choose to target their removal on the revealed serious threat and potentially face betting shat on next turn by free Ysera and whatever else you can play, and targeting the bot and leaving the first threat to beat on them + you could just be bluffing. It seems like it could be much more reliably strong in this use. Dunno, I'd try it out if I had a key.
I guess the issue with that usage is that by mid/late game, wouldn't you rather have one solid creature now and one killer creature a little later, instead of just one killer creature now? It's more reliable for sure, but less powerful. If you're using him as a pseudo-taunt, just play an actual taunt that can also damage his stuff.
It can work for sure, and I bet it's awesome when it does, I just think you need to build the whole deck around it and even then it's tricky.
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EPT
