In just a few hours, Hearthstone’s card pool will be 135 cards bigger.
Among that card pool will be nine legendary weapon cards. Kobolds and Catacombs is the first set to include collectible legendary weapons, with each class getting one.
Of course for some classes, they aren’t really weapons. Priest, Warlock, and Mage are not the fighting types, so they have some items to equip with no attack and powerful effects. Druid’s is really more of a stick, too.
Ranking cards before an expansion is always a pretty futile exercise—but a fun one nevertheless. So here are the nine weapons, ranked by their potential effectiveness.
9) Dragon Soul (Priest)
Dragon Soul is very cheap given its effect, but the problem is just how much investment it takes to make the effect go off. Outside of Power Word: Shield and Shadow Word: Pain, cheap Priest spells are pretty uncommon. Maybe there is a deck that plays this and Lyra for some kind of crazy wombo combo, but that seems unlikely to make a big meta impact.
8) Rhok’delar (Hunter)
The Hunter legendary weapon pushes the archetype that is clearly the focus of Hunter’s cards in Kobolds and Catacombs—Spell Hunter. Yogg n’ Load was a Hunter deck for a hot minute a while back, but other than that Hunter has always been an exclusively aggressive deck. Maybe Spell Hunter could be a deck, but it has one big problem—Hunter spells are kinda garbage. There are a lot of useless spells that you wouldn’t wish upon your worst enemy. Filling your hand with them doesn’t sound like a great benefit.
7) Twig of the World Tree (Druid)
Did I say Druid’s legendary weapon was a stick? Well, it’s technically a twig. And it has a pretty powerful effect. But that five durability is a problem. This card could be broken as hell. Maybe there’s a deck where you play this, and you play Medivh, and then you get ten more mana from it. Other than that, Druid doesn’t have a ton of ways to destroy this weapon and activate the Deathrattle early.
6) The Runespear (Shaman)
The Runespear has come in for a lot of criticism since its release—but maybe it isn’t as bad as is being made out. First of all this isn’t Yogg on a stick, it’s Discover. That means it gives class bias, and you will only discover Shaman spells.
There’s a lot of Maelstrom Portals, and Lightning Storms, and other useful options. There’s a really good chance you hit some kind of board control, or something like Evolve or Devolve. Maybe there’s a deck where this can be managed well enough to make it useful.
5) Woecleaver (Warrior)
Recruit is the new mechanic being added to the game in Kobolds and Catacombs. It summons a minion from your deck onto the battlefield without you having to pay the mana cost, similar to Y’Shaarj. Given the existence of a simple “Recruit a minion” spell in the set, we know that that effect is valued at six mana.
That means Woecleaver has insane value. It costs less than three mana per Recruit swing—a reduction of more than half. Yeah, it’s slow. But if a Control Warrior deck can emerge once more as a meta powerhouse this could be the kind of crazy tempo swing that decks like that need.
4) Skull of the Man’ari (Warlock)
Control Warlock has been on the cusp of breaking out since the release of Bloodreaver Gul’dan, the Warlock Death Knight, in Knights of the Frozen Throne. Skull of the Man’ari could be a big part of pushing it over the edge. Voidwalker was a very powerful card when it existed, and even when you pulled Jaraxxus onto the board you didn’t mind that much. This definitely could end up being too slow, and is very vulnerable in a meta where weapon destruction is common. But this is a deck to try in the opening days of the new meta.
3) Kingsbane (Rogue)
If Skull of the Man’ari is really vulnerable to weapon destruction, two of our top three are definitely resilient against that. Kingsbane is the smallest weapon of the legendary set—but potentially it won’t stay that way for long. Every Deadly Poison, every Envenom, those all stay on this weapon even once it expires. Eventually you could be drawing a massive one mana weapon, and that could be very scary indeed. Weapon Rogue was another deck that Knights of the Frozen Throne didn’t quite push over the threshold, and the cards in this set might be enough.
2) Aluneth (Mage)
Mage loves card draw. It’s just a fact. That’s why Arcane Intellect is such a staple of the class. Aluneth might be expensive, but it basically works out to you drawing four cards a turn unless your opponent can destroy it. It works at the end of the turn too, which means at worst you pay six mana to draw three cards. It will require some setup, but it has the potential to really drive a control-focused Mage deck.
1) Val’anyr (Paladin)
The Paladin legendary weapon, Val’anyr, makes the top of the list because of one thing—value. Okay, sure, let’s get it out the way: Silence destroys this. Obviously. But is playing tons of silence and weapon destruction really going to dominate the meta? We’re not so sure.
Presuming that isn’t the case, Val’anyr can just get a ton of work done. The fact that it is resummoned with that Deathrattle effect, without you having to spend any mana again, is huge. The stat buff is only gravy on top of that, but it’s a nice attack focused buff. A lot of people are talking about Recruit Paladin being a big winner from this expansion, and this weapon could definitely top out that deck and help it with mid-to-late-game value.
