I’ve just played a dozen or so games of Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft with the “Mean Streets of Gadgetzan” expansion cards shuffled in the mix. Blizzard’s BlizzCon 2016 press room had one-on-one matches featuring paladin vs. priest brawls. As priest is my favorite way to play and I generally suck with paladin, I played all the games using the priestly Anduin Wrynn. As expected, I enjoyed the new cards introduced by “Mean Streets of Gadgetzan,” but one stood out — Kazakus.
Kazakus is one of the new legendary cards featured in “Mean Streets of Gadgetzan.” It has a potentially powerful battlecry power: If your deck has no duplicates, create a custom spell. The spell you’re able to craft can cost one, five, or ten mana. It also has two selectable functions.
Some of the selectable powers of the Kazakus-generated spell that I saw during my matches included summon an 8/8 demon, deal 8 damage, add 10 armor, and resummon three dead demons. What I love about Kazakus is it’s versatility. It can be used to bail you out of a tough situation or banked as a card you build towards. It can be used to double down on an obvious strategy or throw a curveball at your opponent. Best of all, it’s predictable too. Powerful legendaries like Yogg-Saron are too dependent on the RNG (random number generator); Yogg-Saron can be completely awesome or utterly ineffective, depending on luck. I like that Kazakus is exponentially more stable and love that its spell can be crafted into whatever you need at the time.
Really though, Kazakus seems like the perfect card for mediocre Hearthstone players like me (I normally top out at rank 15). I’m missing a lot of important cards, my skills aren’t great, and I occasionally make stupid mistakes. Kazakus can help compensate for my modest collection and cover up my errors. I can’t wait to add this card to my deck!
For more details on the expansion and to see more new Hearthstone cards, check out my “Mean Streets of Gadgetzan” preview.