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[JohnCYQ]

That sounds weak to be honest. Unless it also destroys the secrets that try to activate.

Not sure how secrets will activate if the minion prevents that in the first place.

Flare is better than that (the 2/2 body is irrelevant mostly) and sees little to no play. Tech cards must come with a nice body or have a really swingy effect to see play. Even cards like Harrison Jones are obscure with all the secret paladins around.

Flare is also only available to hunters.

The point of the card is to either drop it before their MC turn so that you force them to play other crap first in order to clear it, or to drop it afterwards to block the secrets so that you can trade etc without having to deal with any of them or to push for lethal.

I did not realise that preventing the pally from dropping MC (since the battle cry would do nothing while the minion is on board) or acting as a persistent "secret silence" doesn't count as swingy. A neutral secret tech with flare's effect will very likely be very shitty ala 5 mana 2/2 destroy all opponent's secrets.

 

[poppedcollar69]

Golden entomb is the new best card art

 

[CraigerGamer]

Not sure how secrets will activate if the minion prevents that in the first place.


Flare is also only available to hunters.

The point of the card is to either drop it before their MC turn so that you force them to play other crap first in order to clear it, or to drop it afterwards to block the secrets so that you can trade etc without having to deal with any of them or to push for lethal.

I did not realise that preventing the pally from dropping MC (since the battle cry would do nothing while the minion is on board) or acting as a persistent "secret silence" doesn't count as swingy. A neutral secret tech with flare's effect will very likely be very shitty ala 5 mana 2/2 destroy all opponent's secrets.

How about a card that makes the Secret public? When you hover over the question mark the card played is revealed.

 

[Professor Lich]

Make a neutral that gains +2/+2 whenever an opponent's secret is triggered. A 5 mana 4/5 or something.

Better yet, have it deal 2 damage to your opponent's board on their secret trigger.

 

[Tacitus_]

How about a card that makes the Secret public? When you hover over the question mark the card played is revealed.

Would be very meh.

 

[Dahbomb]

Man all these Secret counters you guys have suggested suck.

A card that reveals all secrets in play? That's not going to help you against the Christmas tree.

A card that disables secret activations attached to a weak body? Secret Paladin will just walk over your weak ass tempo play and so will every other class.

7/8 card that destroys all secrets? Same effect as Flare only Flare is cheaper. The game is going to be decided before this card even comes into play. Oh and it will die to BGH.


People don't seem to get that even if you remove all Secrets in play, you haven't actually dealt with the board. Reason why Flare doesn't work as well is because you use 2 mana to deal with the Secrets which leaves only 4 mana to deal with the 6/6 body.

There's no good solution to this problem outside of actually nerfing MC. You can make a god level Kezan Mystic card that steals all of the opponent's secrets but guess what.... there's nothing stopping the Secret Paladin from using that card too!

 

[Professor Lich]

The thing is for me, I actually like the idea of Mysterious Challenger. It's a pretty sweet idea. It's just that everything else that surrounds it is a pain in the ass to deal with.

To me it feels like a card where you yell, "THE DREAM," once in a while except it happens every game.

 

[CraigerGamer]

Man all these Secret counters you guys have suggested suck.

A card that reveals all secrets in play? That's not going to help you against the Christmas tree.

A card that disables secret activations attached to a weak body? Secret Paladin will just walk over your weak ass tempo play and so will every other class.

7/8 card that destroys all secrets? Same effect as Flare only Flare is cheaper. The game is going to be decided before this card even comes into play. Oh and it will die to BGH.


People don't seem to get that even if you remove all Secrets in play, you haven't actually dealt with the board. Reason why Flare doesn't work as well is because you use 2 mana to deal with the Secrets which leaves only 4 mana to deal with the 6/6 body.

There's no good solution to this problem outside of actually nerfing MC. You can make a god level Kezan Mystic card that steals all of the opponent's secrets but guess what.... there's nothing stopping the Secret Paladin from using that card too!

The revealing secrets idea wasn't suggested with SecretPal in mind. More for the Mage/Hunter secret spammer.

 

[ViviOggi]

The thing is for me, I actually like the idea of Mysterious Challenger. It's a pretty sweet idea. It's just that everything else that surrounds it is a pain in the ass to deal with.

To me it feels like a card where you yell, "THE DREAM," once in a while except it happens every game.

I think it's shit design in context. No other cards but Scientist and MC pull cards out of your deck and play them for free, and as we all know it's an extreme measure to salvage their failed secret mechanic while completely undermining the actual point of secrets.

Like, if it was a core mechanic of HS avilable to all classes it wouldn't bother me at all, like discover (in theory, in practice you only play a handful of high-tempo discover cards because Blizz designed themselves into a corner but that's a different issue). Look at YGO where they shuffle their decks 20 times per minute, the designers just embraced the craziness and it works because it's a core part of the game.

I see what you mean though, MC should be like what many people predicted where you fill your deck with a bunch of shitty cards for a big payoff and get rekt where you draw badly, but Paladin has gotten too many curve gods for that to ever be the case.

 

[Professor Lich]

I think it's shit design in context. No other cards but Scientist and MC pull cards out of your deck and play them for free, and as we all know it's an extreme measure to salvage their failed secret mechanic while completely undermining the actual point of secrets.

Yeah, I can agree with that too. No other cards really allow you to play cards for free without working for it. Kirin'Tor Mage is similar but you have to have a secret in hand. Getting a secret for free is dumb, especially when things like this happen;

Fire Elemental battlecry kills Mad Scientist > Pulls Mirror Enity > Fire Elemental gets copied

That's something that feels really broken. I don't remember the Blizzard concensus on that interaction though.

I see what you mean though, MC should be like what many people predicted where you fill your deck with a bunch of shitty cards for a big payoff and get rekt where you draw badly, but Paladin has gotten too many curve gods for that to ever be the case.

Yeah, that's what I was going for, that'd the type of deck I like to play. Hopefully we'll get to a Pont where all classes can be as strong as Paladin but who knows what annoying cards will pop out to have that happen.

 

[Pooya]

Rank 5 NA and EU achieved. Another season done in 8 days. Now this season I was way faster because I realized something about meta which probably was obvious but I never considered it... Time of day that is.

If it's morning or mid day on a week day on the region you're playing, you're probably going to see more face decks naturally. People are outside, at work or else playing on mobile etc. You don't play fatigue priest then, you play something quick, right? Of course lunatics from other regions can appear and there are always no life shut ins that play at that time but that doesn't matter. So you don't play decks like midrange druid, rogue or secret paladin even here cause you're going to lose to face shaman, tempo mage, hunter and similar, it's the best auto pilot deck to play on mobile etc but I got rekt really badly with it yesterday and lost everything I climbed with the night before. So I play patron instead. Unlike the old patron, the new one is perfectly playable on touch screen, so no that doesn't mean you're a no life shut in!

Afternoon, evening? Of course things change with people back from work or school, then I tend to see more mid range or even control decks. So just play secret paladin or midrange druid. Patron could still be ok because of druids but with warlocks and priests you don't want to play that now. Face decks are not as effective either because of Reno.

Maybe it's non sense but I went ahead with that thought and win streaks started rolling.

 

[bunbun777]

Just make a nuetral 6/6 that copies all enemy secrets.

Or even better, pulls out enemy secrets and plays them for you lol.

Or...secret eater, gets a 1/1 buff for every secret it eats (destroys)

 

[gutshot]

Just make a nuetral 6/6 that copies all enemy secrets.

Or even better, pulls out enemy secrets and plays them for you lol.

"Actually, it is my business."

 

[Professor Lich]

"Actually, it is my business."

Rex Higgins, Secret Detective.

 

[Super Nothing]

I think it's shit design in context. No other cards but Scientist and MC pull cards out of your deck and play them for free, and as we all know it's an extreme measure to salvage their failed secret mechanic while completely undermining the actual point of secrets.

Pretty much. Mysterious Challenger is 6 mana, but you get about 20 mana of value out of him if he plays the full tree. How did I come up with 20 mana? First, he's a 6/6, that's essentially vanilla 6 cost minion. Boulderfist Ogre is better, but it still passes the test of health + attack = cost * 2. But then he draws 5 cards. The formula for card draw cost in the past has been # cards drawn * 2 - 1. Arcane Intellect: 2 cards, 3 mana. 2 * 2 - 1 = 3. Nourish: 3 cards, 5 mana. 3 * 2 - 1 = 5. Sprint: 4 cards, 7 mana. 4 * 2 - 1 = 7. There are some exceptions to this rule, but most don't stray too far. But Mysterious Challenger totally fucking ignores it. 5 cards, 6 mana. 5 * 2 - 1 = 9. The card draw aspect alone of MC is undercosted by 3 mana and that's without the body. So, we're up to 15 mana value for MC, but then he plays the god damn secrets for free, another 5 mana worth of value. So we have a 6 mana body, 9 mana worth of card draw, and 5 mana in cost reduction = 20 total mana for the cost of 6.

 

[CraigerGamer]

Pretty much. Mysterious Challenger is 6 mana, but you get about 20 mana of value out of him if he plays the full tree. How did I come up with 20 mana? First, he's a 6/6, that's essentially vanilla 6 cost minion. Boulderfist Ogre is better, but it still passes the test of health + attack = cost * 2. But then he draws 5 cards. The formula for card draw cost in the past has been # cards drawn * 2 - 1. Arcane Intellect: 2 cards, 3 mana. 2 * 2 - 1 = 3. Nourish: 3 cards, 5 mana. 3 * 2 - 1 = 5. Sprint: 4 cards, 7 mana. 4 * 2 - 1 = 7. There are some exceptions to this rule, but most don't stray too far. But Mysterious Challenger totally fucking ignores it. 5 cards, 6 mana. 5 * 2 - 1 = 9. The card draw aspect alone of MC is undercosted by 3 mana and that's without the body. So, we're up to 15 mana value for MC, but then he plays the god damn secrets for free, another 5 mana worth of value. So we have a 6 mana body, 9 mana worth of card draw, and 5 mana in cost reduction = 20 total mana for the cost of 6.

Add in Divine Favor at 3 mana...that's a whole lotta card draw on the cheap.

 

[Dahbomb]

Pretty much. Mysterious Challenger is 6 mana, but you get about 20 mana of value out of him if he plays the full tree. How did I come up with 20 mana? First, he's a 6/6, that's essentially vanilla 6 cost minion. Boulderfist Ogre is better, but it still passes the test of health + attack = cost * 2. But then he draws 5 cards. The formula for card draw cost in the past has been # cards drawn * 2 - 1. Arcane Intellect: 2 cards, 3 mana. 2 * 2 - 1 = 3. Nourish: 3 cards, 5 mana. 3 * 2 - 1 = 5. Sprint: 4 cards, 7 mana. 4 * 2 - 1 = 7. There are some exceptions to this rule, but most don't stray too far. But Mysterious Challenger totally fucking ignores it. 5 cards, 6 mana. 5 * 2 - 1 = 9. The card draw aspect alone of MC is undercosted by 3 mana and that's without the body. So, we're up to 15 mana value for MC, but then he plays the god damn secrets for free, another 5 mana worth of value. So we have a 6 mana body, 9 mana worth of card draw, and 5 mana in cost reduction = 20 total mana for the cost of 6.

Sounds about right.

 

[Sande]

Not sure how secrets will activate if the minion prevents that in the first place.

It was a change I suggested. The card is pretty much useless otherwise.

That's actually a method of countering secrets that I like, that you need to actually activate them. More interactive and interesting than just "destroy enemy secrets". You can also attach it to a stronger body since it's not as strong. Your idea of suppressing the secrets also works but the minion that comes with it needs to be good. And probably harder to remove than a 2 drop.

Or... just make the challenger 4/4 or less already ffs.

 

[Princess Carl]

Pretty much. Mysterious Challenger is 6 mana, but you get about 20 mana of value out of him if he plays the full tree. How did I come up with 20 mana? First, he's a 6/6, that's essentially vanilla 6 cost minion. Boulderfist Ogre is better, but it still passes the test of health + attack = cost * 2. But then he draws 5 cards. The formula for card draw cost in the past has been # cards drawn * 2 - 1. Arcane Intellect: 2 cards, 3 mana. 2 * 2 - 1 = 3. Nourish: 3 cards, 5 mana. 3 * 2 - 1 = 5. Sprint: 4 cards, 7 mana. 4 * 2 - 1 = 7. There are some exceptions to this rule, but most don't stray too far. But Mysterious Challenger totally fucking ignores it. 5 cards, 6 mana. 5 * 2 - 1 = 9. The card draw aspect alone of MC is undercosted by 3 mana and that's without the body. So, we're up to 15 mana value for MC, but then he plays the god damn secrets for free, another 5 mana worth of value. So we have a 6 mana body, 9 mana worth of card draw, and 5 mana in cost reduction = 20 total mana for the cost of 6.

great post.

"Actually, it is my business."

I neeeeed this.

 

[Dahbomb]

Here's how you counter Mysterious Challenger:

Mysterious Champion : 6 mana 6/6 Deal 5 damage to the opponent for every Secret played by your opponent this game.

"Yes, it IS my business!"

 

[Szadek]

Here's how you counter Mysterious Challenger:

Mysterious Champion : 6 mana 6/6 Deal 5 damage to the opponent for every Secret played by your opponent this game.

"Yes, it IS my business!"

... but it's also a paladin card.

 

[CraigerGamer]

It was a change I suggested. The card is pretty much useless otherwise.

That's actually a method of countering secrets that I like, that you need to actually activate them. More interactive and interesting than just "destroy enemy secrets". You can also attach it to a stronger body since it's not as strong. Your idea of suppressing the secrets also works but the minion that comes with it needs to be good. And probably harder to remove than a 2 drop.

Or... just make the challenger 4/4 or less already ffs.

Ooooh. How about a secret that prevents your opponents secret from becoming effective. Unless they also have that secret which would negate your secret, and if they played another secret after that, they get that secret off no problem.

The secret mechanic is the very worst part of Hearthstone.

 

[Professor Lich]

Guys, we already have a card that counters Mysterious Challenger!

 

[ViviOggi]

Think about how outrageously powerful secrets would have to be to make them worth actually playing in this tempo circlejerk outside of unique archetypes like Freeze Mage. Basically on the level of Entity and Freezing versus control decks. Imagine what it would take for a Mech/Tempo Mage to not feel bad dropping a secret on 3.

Guys, we already have a card that counters Mysterious Challenger!

"Finally a 2-drop... oh COME ON that's the fourth one"

 

[Sande]

Ooooh. How about a secret that prevents your opponents secret from becoming effective. Unless they also have that secret which would negate your secret, and if they played another secret after that, they get that secret off no problem.

The secret mechanic is the very worst part of Hearthstone.

Not really. Playing around secrets is one of the better aspects of the game imo. Secrets get a lot of undeserved hate thanks to mysterious challenger and mad scientist. Those are the cards with bad design.

Having said that, explosive trap and freezing trap can burn in hell.

 

[irfaanator]

if you could actually control when secrets activate then that'd be good in my book. In a world w/o scientist and MC

 

[Haly]

Just make hand disruption.

Some appropriately named NPC
Legendary
4
Battlecry: Replace both players' hands with random cards of the same cost.
2/6

 

[Ladekabel]

Holy shit! I have the worst luck this month. I'm not even sure if I'll make it to Rank 10 this month. Dead draws all the time, shit in the mulligan and my opponent can always play threats on curve. I only won the few games because my opponent was either a beginner, a noob or had even worse luck than me. At least I was lucky once and beat a Handlock with Priest.

On secrets: What I want to see Blizzard do is, that Avenge and Competitive Spirit activate even if there are no minions on the board.

 

[The Mango Sentinel]

Just had my first lol wtf moment that was actually in my favor and not the opponents.

I'm playing Tempo Mage and he's playing some mixture of mech mage with random other minions and spells. It's like turn 12 or something and he plays a Sorcerer's apprentice that I mirror image. I already had 2 Sorcerer's Apprentice on the board and now I have 3. For whatever reason he chose not to kill any of them and just hit my face. Maybe he counted wrong but he ended up being one damage from lethal and he still had 29 health. On my turn I pull Antonidas and I also have an Unstable Portal in my hand. Unstable Portal grants me another Sorcerer's Apprentice. Holy shit I started laughing so hard.


Wish I would've been playing on my computer so I could have screenshot it.

 

[Szadek]

Nothing feels better than to drop Reno when you have 1 hp.
I'm so fucking rich!

 

[peakish]

Fuck me, what a frustrating evening of bad draws and terrible play from me. Dropped two ranks, from 18 to 20. Quit the game feeling like a god damned idiot, which probably is true.

Some fun moments though, like an opponent playing two mana wyrms plus a spell during their first two turns which together with a card that deals damage when spells are cast (turn three) basically ended the game quicker than anything I've seen so far. I laughed.

 

[Dahbomb]

Think about how outrageously powerful secrets would have to be to make them worth actually playing in this tempo circlejerk outside of unique archetypes like Freeze Mage. Basically on the level of Entity and Freezing versus control decks. Imagine what it would take for a Mech/Tempo Mage to not feel bad dropping a secret on 3.


"Finally a 2-drop... oh COME ON that's the fourth one"

Even Freeze Mage would rather just get Mad Scientist to play the secrets for them.

Secrets are technically better than their cost if they were spells. Like a 2 mana Freeze Trap you can use as a spell or Explosive Trap as a spell would be broken. So it's really hard to balance these secrets especially now that we have summon mechanics for secrets.

 

[bord]

Pretty much. Mysterious Challenger is 6 mana, but you get about 20 mana of value out of him if he plays the full tree. How did I come up with 20 mana? First, he's a 6/6, that's essentially vanilla 6 cost minion. Boulderfist Ogre is better, but it still passes the test of health + attack = cost * 2. But then he draws 5 cards. The formula for card draw cost in the past has been # cards drawn * 2 - 1. Arcane Intellect: 2 cards, 3 mana. 2 * 2 - 1 = 3. Nourish: 3 cards, 5 mana. 3 * 2 - 1 = 5. Sprint: 4 cards, 7 mana. 4 * 2 - 1 = 7. There are some exceptions to this rule, but most don't stray too far. But Mysterious Challenger totally fucking ignores it. 5 cards, 6 mana. 5 * 2 - 1 = 9. The card draw aspect alone of MC is undercosted by 3 mana and that's without the body. So, we're up to 15 mana value for MC, but then he plays the god damn secrets for free, another 5 mana worth of value. So we have a 6 mana body, 9 mana worth of card draw, and 5 mana in cost reduction = 20 total mana for the cost of 6.

I don't think that's the right way to look at it.
Imagine this: Paladin spell - 9 mana - Draw 5 secrets
Would this card see play? No way, it's way too expensive for what it does. There's no way the draw component is worth 9 mana on its own. Sometimes MC doesn't even draw anything.

In any case, card draw isn't worth that much. Nourish rarely gets played and Sprint can be discounted with Prep. Using Azure Drake, Ancient of Lore and Gnomish inventor as a benchmark, "draw a card" is worth 1-1.5 mana. Then keep in mind that secrets are not cards you would normally play. Let's not forget secrets didn't even make the cut in the old Aggro Paladin. So "draw a Paladin secret" is worth less than "draw a card."

Mysterious Challenger requires you to weaken your deck to take advantage of it, so of course there has to be some kind of payoff.

Determining the value of a card isn't just about valuing individual components of it and adding it all together. That's why Varian Wrynn and Rhonin haven't been as impactful as people expected. I think a better approach is "how much mana does my opponent need to spend to answer this card?"

Imagine a 5 mana minion that you theorise is worth 5.5 mana. If your opponents are able to remove it for 4 mana on a regular basis, you would cut that card because you're paying 5 mana for effectively 4 mana's worth of value, even though it's worth 5.5 mana on paper.

I think MC is overpowered too, but 20 mana is a bit of a stretch. If MC gave you 20 mana worth of value, you would win close to 100% of games where it comes into play and we know that this isn't the case. In my experience, MC takes about 9-10 mana worth of stuff to answer, and that's how I value it.

 

[Dahbomb]

If there is one other minion on board when MC comes down on turn 6 then I am sure that the chance to win the game is 90%+.

The secrets interact really well with two minions on board. With one minion on board the Avenge always triggers on MC and you can BGH it. If it triggers on the other minion then you pretty much win the game because by the time you have dealt with all the crap you are way behind in the game.


It's not 20 mana worth of value but it's way too much for a 6 drop even if you need a specific deck built around it. If it takes 10 mana to answer that then your game has a fucking problem.

 

[Papercuts]

I think the card draw thing can kinda apply to the 6 cost hunter card Ball of Spiders. "Draws" and plays three 1/1 webspinners which all cost 1 mana, those all become another beast to play. It has an incredibly small impact on the board due to the effect of what would happen from the webspinners being strong as it's high in vlue, but MC just ignores that and has a damn near parity level body with the strongest statwise 6 drop in the game. Class cards can be more powerful than neutral ones, but I still have no idea how him being a 6/6 happened.

 

[BananasWithGuns]

It's been brought up before but MC is even more ridiculous when you look at stuff like The Mistcaller and Wilfred Fizzlebang, both of which are legendaries that came in the same damn set. Blizzard's love for secrets really makes them turn a blind eye.

 

[Szadek]

MC is just way too much value.
For 6 mana you get a 6/6 and you get to block 1 attacks,plus it gives the player 6/4 of additonal statson the board in from of buffs and by bringing back the 2/1.
That's pretty fucking insane.

 

[Dahbomb]

Sad part is that they can chop off 4 stats from MC and it would still be OP.

 

[bord]

If there is one other minion on board when MC comes down on turn 6 then I am sure that the chance to win the game is 90%+.

The secrets interact really well with two minions on board. With one minion on board the Avenge always triggers on MC and you can BGH it. If it triggers on the other minion then you pretty much win the game because by the time you have dealt with all the crap you are way behind in the game.


It's not 20 mana worth of value but it's way too much for a 6 drop even if you need a specific deck built around it. If it takes 10 mana to answer that then your game has a fucking problem.

I agree that it's overpowered and I agree with nerfing the card. I was just arguing that a 20 mana valuation is really not accurate at all. I don't think MC needs a drastic overhaul. I think a nerf that reduces the card's strength by 2 mana is all that needs to be done. I wouldn't go much further than that.

You're building your deck around the card. You're intentionally weakening your deck for it. The card has to be better than 6 mana for it to be worthwhile.

And to address another point, the 6/6 body of MC is not worth 6 mana. It's barely worth more than 5 mana. You guys compare it to Boulderfist, but Boulderfist is unplayable -- you would never consider it in any competitive deck. Pit Fighter is a 5 mana 5/6 and also doesn't see any competitive play.

The vanilla rule [stats = (2 x mana) + 1] just doesn't work in constructed.

 

[GwyndolinCinder]

How can you try to value mysterious challenge with mana.
This card thins your deck of shit cards, plays 5 secrets for free, gives you sticky board presence, whilst playing a 6/6 minon.
I don't think being worth x mana matters at all when a card does all this for you anyway.

 

[Dahbomb]

The rule is still a rule and one that should be followed unless you want even more minion power creep in the game. And besides past 6 and above, card stats matter less than their effects.

MC is 2 stats below the 6 mana slot because it's a class card. But it could've been a 6/8 and not see play because stats don't matter at that high of a curve, it's about the effect.

MC would see play even if it was a 4/4. It would be even better at 3/4 because then Avenge wouldn't put it in BGH range.

 

[bord]

The rule is still a rule and one that should be followed unless you want even more minion power creep in the game. And besides past 6 and above, card stats matter less than their effects.

MC is 2 stats below the 6 mana slot because it's a class card. But it could've been a 6/8 and not see play because stats don't matter at that high of a curve, it's about the effect.

MC would see play even if it was a 4/4. It would be even better at 3/4 because then Avenge wouldn't put it in BGH range.

Reducing MC to 4/4 is actually what I'm suggesting when I say reduce its strength by 2 mana, 1 mana being roughly 2 stat points.

I don't want MC to get the Warsong Commander/Starving Buzzard treatment. I'd just like to see it brought back a bit closer to the pack.

 

[Super Nothing]

I don't think that's the right way to look at it.
Imagine this: Paladin spell - 9 mana - Draw 5 secrets
Would this card see play? No way, it's way too expensive for what it does. There's no way the draw component is worth 9 mana on its own. Sometimes MC doesn't even draw anything.

No, it probably wouldn't see play, but mostly because you lose too much tempo. It is true that the value of card draw shouldn't increase in a straight line, but I was demonstrating that Blizzard actually did value it that way in the basic set. The outliers are Divine Favor (a known bullshit card), Battle Rage (too situational, only ever used in Patron decks), and Power Word: Shield. But blowing all of your mana drawing a crap load of cards that you can't play until next turn is a bad idea. That's why Arcane Intellect is significantly better in the late game than Nourish. It's also why the value of Mysterious Challenger's card draw doesn't drop as much as Nourish or Sprint without Prep. You get all of the cards, a 6/6, and you play the cards immediately. The synergy helps the card draw hold its value.

In any case, card draw isn't worth that much. Nourish rarely gets played and Sprint can be discounted with Prep. Using Azure Drake, Ancient of Lore and Gnomish inventor as a benchmark, "draw a card" is worth 1-1.5 mana. Then keep in mind that secrets are not cards you would normally play. Let's not forget secrets didn't even make the cut in the old Aggro Paladin. So "draw a Paladin secret" is worth less than "draw a card."

Nourish doesn't get played because card draw generally comes with a tempo loss, a problem that MC doesn't have. The tempo loss is what generally devalues mass card draw, not the act of drawing so many cards itself.

Mysterious Challenger requires you to weaken your deck to take advantage of it, so of course there has to be some kind of payoff.

The deck is plenty strong with Minibot, Muster, Shredder, MC (even without the battlecry), and Boom. And the secrets might be weak individual cards, but they have value in synergy with Secret Keeper and Avenge/Competitive Spirit + Muster. They can also mess with the other player's turn. Sometimes you don't want to play your on curve minion so that it doesn't get hit with Repentance, so you make a weaker play. Sometimes you have to make suboptimal trades because you think they have Noble Sacrifice, even if they don't actually have it. Which minion do you kill first if you have two 3/2s and the Secret Paladin has an unshielded Minibot, a Recruit, and an unknown secret? If the secret is Redemption, you kill the 1/1 first, if it's Avenge, you kill the Minibot first. But if you guess wrong, you get fucked.

Determining the value of a card isn't just about valuing individual components of it and adding it all together. That's why Varian Wrynn and Rhonin haven't been as impactful as people expected. I think a better approach is "how much mana does my opponent need to spend to answer this card?"

Varian is way less consistent than MC. He can waste your battlecries, show up late in the game when you're about to start a fatigue war, or just lose you the game because you spent all of your mana on one big body and missed out on Tank Up. He also costs the maximum amount of mana meaning that he's a dead card if you draw him early and you might not survive long enough to ever play him. Rhonin is weak because he gives you three 1 mana spells that are weak in the late game. This is significantly worse than three card draws. There's also the difference between deathrattle and battlecry. You get a chance to react to Rhonin, MC does his damage just by hitting the board. If it weren't for the synergy with Antonidas, Rhonin wouldn't get played at all. Even with that synergy, Rhonin isn't very common.

Imagine a 5 mana minion that you theorise is worth 5.5 mana. If your opponents are able to remove it for 4 mana on a regular basis, you would cut that card because you're paying 5 mana for effectively 4 mana's worth of value, even though it's worth 5.5 mana on paper.

A card that does something when it's played can be worth more than what it costs to remove. That's why Azure Drake will always get played even though it trades poorly with Shredder.

I think MC is overpowered too, but 20 mana is a bit of a stretch. If MC gave you 20 mana worth of value, you would win close to 100% of games where it comes into play and we know that this isn't the case. In my experience, MC takes about 9-10 mana worth of stuff to answer, and that's how I value it.

Removals generally are cheaper than what they are used to remove. You can board wipe just about anything with Wild Pyro + Equality, that doesn't mean that no card can have a value higher than 4 mana. Flare + Deadly Shot destroys MC for only 5 mana, but they still don't provide as much value or consistency as MC over the course of many games played.

 

[ZealousD]

Pretty much. Mysterious Challenger is 6 mana, but you get about 20 mana of value out of him if he plays the full tree. How did I come up with 20 mana? First, he's a 6/6, that's essentially vanilla 6 cost minion. Boulderfist Ogre is better, but it still passes the test of health + attack = cost * 2. But then he draws 5 cards. The formula for card draw cost in the past has been # cards drawn * 2 - 1. Arcane Intellect: 2 cards, 3 mana. 2 * 2 - 1 = 3. Nourish: 3 cards, 5 mana. 3 * 2 - 1 = 5. Sprint: 4 cards, 7 mana. 4 * 2 - 1 = 7. There are some exceptions to this rule, but most don't stray too far. But Mysterious Challenger totally fucking ignores it. 5 cards, 6 mana. 5 * 2 - 1 = 9. The card draw aspect alone of MC is undercosted by 3 mana and that's without the body. So, we're up to 15 mana value for MC, but then he plays the god damn secrets for free, another 5 mana worth of value. So we have a 6 mana body, 9 mana worth of card draw, and 5 mana in cost reduction = 20 total mana for the cost of 6.

This is a terrible way to evaluate cards. Is Sludge Belcher a 5 mana Tazdingo that draws a Goldshire Footman, and then plays it for free? Would anybody play Sludge Belcher if it costed 7-8 mana? Is Dr. Boom a War Golem that draws two boom bots and plays them for free? Is Dr. Boom a 12 mana card? Not no but heck no. And before you say "oh these effects are different because they don't draw cards" you're right, they're actually better than that because you aren't forced to include those extra effects as cards in your deck. They're generated for free.

You have to understand that effects like Arcane Intellect or Sprint and the act of putting specific cards into play are costed very differently because they do very different things and accomplish different goals. There is an instrinsic value in holding a card in your hand, and the draw factors in MC dont do this. So the mana cost of "drawing" the secrets itself is actually quite small, if negligible.

The correct way to evaluate Mysterious Challenger is to add up the mana cost of all its effects, based on their relative power, We know that Avenge and Repentance are both 1 mana cards but Avenge is at least twice of good as a card as Repentance. So we take that into account. And then maybe knock off a bit of cost as a "penalty" of being forced into placing cards in your deck.

So 6/6 body. This is effectively 5.5 mana worth of value, putting it between Pit Fighter and Boulderfist Ogre. Avenge and Noble Sacrifice are both solid 1 mana cards. This is why people always put 2x of both into their Secret Pally decks. Redemption and Competitive Spirit are both okay cards on their own but definitely weaker, so I'd cost them around 0.75 mana each. And Repentance is a pretty bad card which I'd evaluate at 0.5 mana or maybe even less.

Sooo.... 5.5 + 1 + 1 + 0.75 + 0.75 + 0.5 = 9.5 mana

Next we might want to consider our "deck building" penalty. Now If you still think I'm crazy for considering this, think about how much more powerful Secret Paladin would be if you didn't have to include the secrets and you could just slide him right into Midrange Paladin.

So this one is a little harder to quantify, but consider that we really hate to include Redemption, Competitive Spirit, and Repentance in our decks. I think most people have resorted to only include one-of on each at this point. And then consider that if we play a second one our value is cut pretty significantly, especially if we drew our secrets earlier in the game (which we probably did, let's be honest)

I'm going to put the penalty at about 1.5 mana, since that's pretty close to the value we shaved off of Redemption, Competitive Spirit, and Repentance, plus a little extra for taking into consideration how much weaker our second MC will be.

Puts us at about an 8 mana card. Isn't that a bit closer to what people perceive his actual power to be? Isn't that why making his stats 4/4 a pretty common suggestion since it takes about 2 mana worth of stats off of him? Not some 20 mana nonsense?

I mean 8 mana is still abso-fucking-lutely ridiculous. That means he's got a 2 mana worth of OP in him, which is huge. That's a 4 mana boulderfist ogre. That's a 6 mana Ragnaros. It still puts him ahead of Dr. Boom, who has about 1-to-1.5 mana of OP in him. Card is broke, but he isn't 20 mana broke.

 

[Alrus]

Fire Elemental battlecry kills Mad Scientist > Pulls Mirror Enity > Fire Elemental gets copied

That's something that feels really broken. I don't remember the Blizzard concensus on that interaction though.

That's intended afaik, battlecries resolve before the minion is actually considered "in play". That's why playing a Boom against Mirror Entity will copy a boom bot and not the Dr.

Animations don't reflect that so it looks broken though.

 

[bord]

No, it probably wouldn't see play, but mostly because you lose too much tempo. It is true that the value of card draw shouldn't increase in a straight line, but I was demonstrating that Blizzard actually did value it that way in the basic set. The outliers are Divine Favor (a known bullshit card), Battle Rage (too situational, only ever used in Patron decks), and Power Word: Shield. But blowing all of your mana drawing a crap load of cards that you can't play until next turn is a bad idea. That's why Arcane Intellect is significantly better in the late game than Nourish. It's also why the value of Mysterious Challenger's card draw doesn't drop as much as Nourish or Sprint without Prep. You get all of the cards, a 6/6, and you play the cards immediately. The synergy helps the card draw hold its value.

Not sure where you're disagreeing with me here.
Blizzard used a certain formula in the past to value card draw and we both agree that the method is flawed. You shouldn't be using them as a baseline for the value of drawing secrets.

Nourish doesn't get played because card draw generally comes with a tempo loss, a problem that MC doesn't have. The tempo loss is what generally devalues mass card draw, not the act of drawing so many cards itself.

Again we both agree that nourish is not worth the 5 mana that you spend on it.

The deck is plenty strong with Minibot, Muster, Shredder, MC (even without the battlecry), and Boom. And the secrets might be weak individual cards, but they have value in synergy with Secret Keeper and Avenge/Competitive Spirit + Muster. They can also mess with the other player's turn. Sometimes you don't want to play your on curve minion so that it doesn't get hit with Repentance, so you make a weaker play. Sometimes you have to make suboptimal trades because you think they have Noble Sacrifice, even if they don't actually have it. Which minion do you kill first if you have two 3/2s and the Secret Paladin has an unshielded Minibot, a Recruit, and an unknown secret? If the secret is Redemption, you kill the 1/1 first, if it's Avenge, you kill the Minibot first. But if you guess wrong, you get fucked.

Paladin secrets were not played at all until MC and a Secret Paladin deck will usually run at least 6 secrets, sometimes more. That is weakening your deck.
Yes the deck can win games without MC, I never claimed otherwise. But the reason that the deck is as strong as it is is MC.

Varian is way less consistent than MC. He can waste your battlecries, show up late in the game when you're about to start a fatigue war, or just lose you the game because you spent all of your mana on one big body and missed out on Tank Up. He also costs the maximum amount of mana meaning that he's a dead card if you draw him early and you might not survive long enough to ever play him. Rhonin is weak because he gives you three 1 mana spells that are weak in the late game. This is significantly worse than three card draws. There's also the difference between deathrattle and battlecry. You get a chance to react to Rhonin, MC does his damage just by hitting the board. If it weren't for the synergy with Antonidas, Rhonin wouldn't get played at all. Even with that synergy, Rhonin isn't very common.

You were valuing MC by taking individual parts of the card and adding them all together. I refuted that be giving a couple of examples. In practice, Varian is not as good as he is on paper for all the reasons you stated, the same with Rhonin.
I agree that that MC is overpowered, that's why even though it's not as powerful as your 20 mana valuation, it's still overpowered.

A card that does something when it's played can be worth more than what it costs to remove. That's why Azure Drake will always get played even though it trades poorly with Shredder.

I should have been more clear.
All I was trying to say was that cards aren't always as strong they may seem

Removals generally are cheaper than what they are used to remove. You can board wipe just about anything with Wild Pyro + Equality, that doesn't mean that no card can have a value higher than 4 mana. Flare + Deadly Shot destroys MC for only 5 mana, but they still don't provide as much value or consistency as MC over the course of many games played.

My fault for not being more clear.
I should have explained how I got to my 9-10 mana evaluation but ZealousD came up with a similar answer so I won't bother.

Also "that doesn't mean that no card can have a value higher than 4 mana." Um... when did I say that? Hell I even said I evaluated it at 9-10 mana. Plenty of cards trade down with the right answer; that's not how I evaluate cards.

EDIT:
This discussion isn't really about MC anymore, just the way we evaluate cards. It looks like we all agree that MC is overpowered. I just wanted to say that 20 mana was going too far.

 

[Xanathus]

I can't believe how people still haven't figured out that they need to remove Fel Reaver from the board for aggro Druid. They're still trying to mill the deck and even to the point where they're wasting their own resources to do it. Won like 3-4 games in a row because of it.

 

[Professor Lich]

That's intended afaik, battlecries resolve before the minion is actually considered "in play". That's why playing a Boom against Mirror Entity will copy a boom bot and not the Dr.

Animations don't reflect that so it looks broken though.

Yeah, it does make 'sense' thinking about order of operations;

Battlecry > Scientist Dies > Dealthrattle / Secret Played > Battlecry minion hits board > Secret Triggered

I'm just not a fan of it. You already got to play a card for free, why should it already get to trigger? But there are bigger issues right now anyway.

 

[ZealousD]

I'm just not a fan of it. You already got to play a card for free, why should it already get to trigger?

Because Mad Scientist is also bullshit.

 

[Ridli]

I can't believe how people still haven't figured out that they need to remove Fel Reaver from the board for aggro Druid. They're still trying to mill the deck and even to the point where they're wasting their own resources to do it. Won like 3-4 games in a row because of it.

Yup. The best thing is when you see a priest try and do something cute. They drop 4 cards they never would have played next turn and laugh to themselves for making you burn half your deck, but your fel reaver survives and you just keep milling their face and they die in 2 turns. The better play is just give reaver the SW. Making an aggro deck waste 5 mana to do 0 damage is a bigger deal than getting rid of 12 cards they probably never would have played anyways.