Loving in my ramp druid deck. If they take out your Belcher on turn 8 the token helps on your Force Roar turn 9 pushing the damage up to 17. Might not seem like much but the extra 3 damage has won me a few games.
Superb post as always willie.Sludge Belcher is indeed one of the most solid cards in Naxx, along with Spectral Knight to be released tomorrow (not accounting Legends). Keep an eye out for Echoing Ooze too, since it will allow insane early-game combos.Do you also have the decks you used to defeat the Heroic bosses in the Arachnid Quarter?Cheers
My thoughts:Stoneskin Gargoyle *is* pretty terrible. A nifty ability for sure, but it's not good enough to lose 2 stats to. To make it work, would need to be played in a deck with a HP so it can take out a 3/2, giving it a chance to heal up. 1 power minions are just so often underwhelming, and this guy is no exception.Unstable Ghoul is a decent anti-aggro 2 drop, as it trades with x/2s, and even does a little residual damage on the way out - which is rarely unwelcome. No surprise it would do well in control warrior - being able to do 2 to everything with just this guy exploding and Whirlwind is pretty nice when facing early aggression.Sludge Belcher is pretty efficient, so you're pretty much spot on with that.Loatheb is great against spell heavy decks, but doesn't interact enough with minion heavy decks, or decks with enough of both. On the turn you play him, they'll just play their minions instead and not lose tempo. Overall he's very good, but he's a meta choice IMO, not an auto-include (if he were to become an auto-include people would go with minion heavy, which is why he's a meta choice).Webspinner is can be alright if you manage to do something useful with him - like deal a necessary point of damage to something (ie. Arcane Shot + Webspinner attack on a 4/3, or Hunter's Mark + Webspinner on anything), but the RNG element of his ability makes him wildly unreliable on that side of things. I imagine you'd only see him in decks where you could get away with not having Stonetusk Boar's charge, and really, that charge is very useful.Duplicate is actually not too bad. Deck construction *needs* to take it into mind, but in the few variants I've tried with it, you're pretty happy to get anything besides Mana Wyrm (and even that's fine if you have a spell or two to cast after playing them). You also need to keep it in mind when deciding to make trades or not - trading out less effective minions, like a Mad Bomber, when you could feasibly get in 3 extra damage because they're in a situation where they'd want to trade - like they have out their own 3/2, and you also have out a Water Elemental - puts you in a situation where, unless they Hex or Poly, your better minion will either survive, or you'll get 2 copies of it after they remove it. It's certainly not an auto-include, but some decks can be built to make decent use out of it. Will only get better when Mad Scientist comes out, and you have 4 cards to get it out for free (Kirin Tor Mage and Mad Scientist), and a further 2 cards to get it out at a reduced cost (Sorceror's Apprentice).
Dills I think you are (like lot of people) really overvaluing Loatheb. He is decent sure, but not an auto win card like you seem to make it out to be, his battle cry is extremely situational and, depending on what your opponent has in hand, might either really mess with him, or not do anything at all. And especially in arena he is not nearly as good as you rate him, arena decks are usually extremely minion heavy, so his ability is unlikely to matter anything, making him pretty much a crappier stranglethorn tiger in arena.
I'm running Stoneskin Gargoyle in my priest deck. I'm always looking for high health low attack minions to use with Divine Spirit and Inner Fire. Even without adding Blessing of Kings or Blessing of Might he can be hard to deal without a destroy or polymorph removal.As for Loetheb, I've only faced it once vs my Mage and it didn't hurt me too much because I had an Ice Lance which I could play to lock it down while I played minions instead. Still, I'm sure, if timed well, it could lock out my heavy board clears like Flamestrike and Blizzard which would definitely be a pain if I needed them at that point. I haven't been using Loetheb myself but I should probably give it a go and see if it helps.
Where is this weeks angry chicken? :(
In my opinion the new minions are super decent, spectral knight forces minion damage and he is a very tanky body, his 4 attack is also great for taking chunks out of peoples,Unstable ghoul is a very nice minion, completely $%^&s on early aggro and gives huge control, just watch out for your minisSludge belcher is a great anti aggro card. It takes a minimal of two actions to take care of a sludge belcher and can prevent a lot of damageLotheab is very anti meta right now with so many spell decks with Zeus, Ramp, Miracle and Freeze Mage. One that isn't good against is Aggro or ZooLots of god cards now.