Spreadsheet: Other
Category: Burn (B-Tier)
Internal Category Tier: A-Tier
Tier 4
This is a Flame Strike that trades 1 damage for the 1-cost Fireball effect as an Or. Reasonable for clearing out non-demon tokens and other 3-health champions or finishing off the opponent. If I had to draft between this and Fireball, I’d take the Fireball because 0-cost removal is great as is 0-cost 3 damage on top of a 1-cost burn event to extend your reach. If you’re drafting an aggressive deck, this seems solid, reasonable in a midrange deck, underwhelming in a control deck, unless you think your opponent is going tokens.
For constructed, this actually would be a pretty decent choice for aggro Wild if you are afraid of aggro-combo human tokens. Human tokens are a terrible matchup for Wild generally speaking, so including another 1-cost card that can save you from an early assault is valuable, and unlike Hurricane etc., it can still go face for 7 instead. Is this better than Whirlwind for specifically that roll though? No, I’d say they are pretty equivalent, and Whirlwind has greater applications. However, against other aggro Wild decks, not taking 7 damage yourself might make this worth it. This card just doesn’t fit my preferred playstyle.
Apologies for missing my Tuesday/Thursday posts, but I have a solid chunk queued up after this one.
I thought this would be ranked higher!
It’s possible it should be ranked higher, but I’m not a huge fan of spending a gold on either of those effects. So, I don’t currently rate it higher than a tech card. If non-demon tokens become a lot more prevalent in the meta, this could be a better card than Fires of Rebellion in that role though; however, it would still have to compete with Draka’s Fire and Whirlwind. Tokens are quite solid in Dark Draft currently, so maybe it deserves a spot in Tech Tier.
If I consistently lose to it, I will definitely need to up its rankings.