Two weeks ago, the Blizzard Hearthstone team released the final expansion of the 2017 calendar year, Kobolds and Catacombs, which featured a brand new single player experience and 135 collectible cards that were immediately put into play after months of theorycrafting.

Professional player and content creator, Paul “Zalae” Nementh decided to share his initial impressions of the expansion by speaking with InvenGlobal.

“These cards are crazy, there are so many things I want to try and so much I need to learn,” said Zalae.

Zalae was one of the first players to participate in a professional tournament with the new set of cards as he, along with Keaton “Chakki” GIll and Muzahidul “Muzzy” Islam, formed Team Love U Lots in the Trinity Series Season 2 competition and took down seven other teams to take home a $75,000 first place prize on December 10.

With the expansion released a week prior, deck building with unproven cards as a high level required a great deal of practice beforehand.

“We tested as many potentially strong cards against each other as time permitted,” said Zalae. “Mostly, we noticed Corridor Creeper was insanely strong. We tried to put two in every deck (ended up with 17 and a Raza) and planned our bans around it.”

Corridor Creeper, a 7 mana 5/5 that becomes cheaper to play based on the number of minions that die while he is in-hand, could be “cheated” out for zero, one or two mana quite easily if kept in the opening hand against minion based decks.

“All it takes is two trades and creeper is a 3 mana 5/5. That's big,” said Zalae. “One more trade and a piece of spot-removal and you have a 0 mana 5/5. It happens as early as turn three in some matchups. That's crazy. Patches [the Pirate] makes Creeper better, but the card is just naturally extremely strong.”

Recruit Mechanic

Blizzard decided to add a new mechanic to the game in Kobolds and Catacombs, “Recruit” which pulls a minion from your deck to the battlefield. In the early stages of the expansion, it hasn’t seem much play on the Ladder but Zalae is keeping his eye out for additional help in future sets.

“It's pretty common for Blizzard to introduce a new mechanic that isn't super powerful. That said, I have seen a Recruit Demon deck that seems powerful so far, said Zalae. “Even if Recruit doesn't do great in this meta, it might after the set rotation or with future cards being printed to support it.”

In the past, Blizzard has been selective when adding support for past expansion-specific mechanics such as Adapt and Inspire but time will tell if that is the case with Recruit.

Growing Concerns

This expansion, however, Zalae has both a good and bad feeling towards how Blizzard may be trending in terms of design direction going forward.

“I hate how many good cards they gave to classes that were already good and how few to classes that were already struggling,” said Zalae. “One of the good things though is how many cool powerful build-around cards they made, I especially appreciate when they do that for weaker classes and archetypes.”

The already dominant classes of Priest, Rogue, and Druid did gain additional support to strengthen their core decks but, as meta’s evolve, counter-play develops and, from there, an oppressive or diverse ladder experience takes shape.

“I don't think Blizzard did a good job on class balance lately. Most of the best new cards were given to the classes that were already strong. It's sad. Still, there's a lot of new stuff going on and much for me to learn. I do enjoy that,” said Zalae.

Dungeon Run

Outside of the new collectible cards, the much-hyped Dungeon Run single player content was added to the game and, although Zalae acknowledges the content may not be for him, it’s a valuable addition for replayability.

“I [did a co-op] Warrior class Dungeon Run with Chakki. It was kind of interesting but not really my thing. I don't think it's meant for players like me,” said Zalae. “Glad they did it though, it's a really cool piece of free content for so many people to join.”

With the ladder in full blown experimentation mode; now is the time to enjoy crafting wacky decks, see what you have the most fun playing and abuse some broken cards before they may be nerfed in the future.