Hearthstone Keywords Part 1 : Battlecry

In this series of articles I want to really delve into the strengths and weakness’s of all the Hearthstone Keyword abilities.  I want to talk about which cards make the best use of these abilities and which cards fail, the similarities of the cards that share the same keywords and what could be done to improve or weaken these abilities.

So with that said, let’s jump right into our first article about Battlecry.

Battlecry is an ability where a particular effect activates when the card with the Battlecry is played directly from the hand. Mostly limited to minions, some weapons also have Battlecries.

So what are the advantages to playing creatures or weapons with battlecry?

1. You are essentially casting out a creature and a spell simultaneously
2. It is instant and cannot be countered in anyway.
3. Alot of battlecries have no spell variants (i.e. – weapon destruction)
4. Battlecry is a 2 for 1 – which creates tempo in your favor.

Disadvantages?

1. You generally get a weaker minion as a trade off to casting a spell for free.
2. Some battlecries are situational and cannot always be triggered.
3. If put directly into play from your deck they will not trigger.

 

Overall how powerful are battlecry effects?  Short answer; very.  Long answer is that the reason some battlecries are so overpowered is because they are attached to legendary minions such as Loatheb, Alexstrazsa, Harrison Jones and Reno Jackson to name a few.  The fact that you can only have one Reno in your deck enables Blizzard to make his battlecry so powerful (also his battlecry being so situational requires some unique deckbuilding in itself).  As of now there are no such thing as Legendary spells in the game of Hearthstone so these minions are the closest thing we have to that.

Think about any decklist in the game and I can assure you that there is at least one battlecry minion in it.  Every deck on the ladder or in casual is going to be running battlecry minions.  So is it a successful Keyword Ability?  Obviously, in fact maybe a bit too successful.

The problem is that there is no way to play around battlecry other than running Nerub’ar Weblord or hoping your Deathlords deathrattle yanks out a powerful battlecry minion.  But even in these instances Nerub’ar is a horrible 2 drop which also penalizes your battlecry minions and the Deathlord scenario is not anything you can control.  So the reality is that as of now there really is NO counterplay to battlecry and that is why it remains as one of the strongest of the Hearthstone Keyword abilities.

With the addition of Brann Bronzebeard an already powerful Keyword Ability is even stronger still.  With that said I do hope in the future that Blizzard adds some sort of counterplay to battlecry, seeing as how every other Keyword Ability has counterplay it would make sense and could only deepen the gameplay.

~ 16bitSocrates