Batstone sees more card bans!

Batstone sees more card bans!

The community bans were announced a couple days ago – but now, each player participating in the event gets their own card ban! Let’s take a look at the choices.

• Doomhammer– Thijs’s Ban
• Fandral Staghelm– Kolento’s Ban
• Darkshire Councilman– StrifeCro’s Ban
• Ragnaros the Firelord– Ostkaka’s Ban
• Ice Block– Chakki’s Ban
• Doomguard– TidesOfTime’s Ban
• Innervate– SuperJJ’s Ban
• Preparation– Ness’s Ban

Now these are some Meta-shaking bans! Let’s look at the impact on each class.

Starting with the most obvious, Druid took some serious hits. No Innervate or Fandral? This spells bad news for Druid, and it is unlikely they will see any play during the tournament.

Shaman might not have received the most impactful bans, but its what everybody’s talking about, so lets get this one over with – Doomhammer. This is rough in the sense that a huge win condition has been removed for Shaman. Not only could this serve as excellent board clear, but can also simply win the game at the same time. Could we see some sort of late game Shaman, maybe like Bog Creeper Shaman?

Warlock – Zoo is in a weird spot now. Simple, straight up Zoo decks are often overshadowed by new cards and archetypes, and Discard Zoo is certainly one of those factors. Interestingly, Discardlock beats Zoo any day with RNG on their side, or at least a good hand management. However, if things go south, the consistency of classic Zoo will trump Discard. The removal of Doomguard hurts Zoo style decks big time, as that was one of their prime win conditions for both classic Zoo and Discard.  I would expect Reno or Dragon Warlocks in the tournament – Zoo is simply not as good as it used to be.

Mage – wow. I was not at all expecting Ice Block to be booted. All it really does is make Freeze Mage non-viable – which is interesting. The simple removal of one card can really mess up a deck type. We’ll see how it does, but Tempo is likely to prove why they’re top tier. Speaking of which – how would you like a Tempo Mage top tier article next?

Now, Rogue. Rogue is weird. Preparation was an interesting ban, and Ness obviously put a lot of thought into this one. It basically gave your Edwin Vancleef +4/+4, as it as well as a discounted spell gives it +2/+2 each anyways. Rogue is in a difficult spot anyways, and I would be surprised if we saw it here.

That’s all the effected classes – so what do you think? Does this shake up the Meta enough? Let us know, and tune into Batstone!