In Hearthstone’s Festival of Legends expansion, every class is themed around a different genre of music. But what’s a band without a lead singer? Or an orchestra without a conductor? That’s where the expansion’s cycle of legendary musicians comes in.
Each of the game’s classes got a leader for their bands in the form of a legendary minion, one with unique and powerful effects. But in this group of superstars, some shine brighter than others. Here are all 11 legendary musicians competing in the Festival, ranked.
11 DJ Manastorm
The idea behind DJ Manastorm is to reach ten mana, then one-shot your opponent with Pyroblasts and other burn spells. The thing is, actually doing that requires an extremely specific set of scenarios to happen. First, you need to survive until you reach ten mana, a difficult enough task on its own.
Then, you play DJ Manastorm while the cards you need for your combo are already in hand. After that, you need to survive for another turn, since you won’t have the mana to play more than one spell alongside DJ Manastorm. It’s just not a very realistic series of events.
10 Inzah
Inzah is a card that relies heavily on being drawn early. Cards like this can be extremely toxic (longtime players will remember when Prince Keleseth dominated the meta). The trouble is, even at his earliest, Inzah’s ability to reduce the cost of Overload cards isn’t enough to make Overload Shaman work.
Maybe Inzah is too high-costed for his effect to have an impact, or maybe the other Overload cards aren’t strong enough to take advantage of it, but despite many buffs to the archetype overall, it still hasn’t broken into the meta. That said, given how frustrating this sort of card can be to play against when it’s overpowered, that may be a good thing.
9 Cage Head
Cage Head's Deathrattle summons a big monster. Cards like that often struggle to impact the game, since big, slow stats sometimes fail to affect the game quickly enough. However, since the Blight Boar has both Charge and Taunt, it can have an immediate effect whether on offense or defense.
Cage Head has strong synergy with Deathrattle-related cards like Death Growl, which spreads a Deathrattle to other minions, or the Mosh Pit location, which gives a minion Reborn. Unfortunately, while he has seen some play in Unholy Death Knight lists, the archetype has generally opted for lower-cost, more streamlined variants, leaving Cage Head and the Deathrattle package on the sidelines.
8 MC Blingtron
MC Blingtron is an extremely unusual card. His effect is reminiscent of Voidtouched Attendant, a Priest one-drop that saw a lot of play in aggresssive decks while it was in Standard. The trouble is, MC Blingtron costs four more mana than the Attendant did, making him harder to play in pure aggro decks, and trickier to use as part of a combo.
Even though Rogue plays many cards for cheap, or even free, five mana is still a steep price for an aggro-minded deck to pay. MC Blingtron did receive a massive stat buff after his release, increasing from a 3/4 to a 5/5. It’s nice that he now has at least somewhat competitive stats for his cost, but that doesn’t really solve the aforementioned problem.
7 Rock Master Voone
Rock Master Voone is made for an extremely specific Warrior archetype — one that plays minions with many different types. Voone doesn’t make your cards stronger, though; he just gives you more of them. If there are powerful cards of many types available to Warrior that fit together in a deck, Voone will be strong. But if there aren’t, he’s going to be pretty much useless.
Festival of Legends came with a multi-type package of cards, but the deck wasn’t performing well, so Voone was reduced in cost from four to three. Unfortunately, his Battlecry is not the sort of effect that benefits too much from triggering a turn earlier. Still, it’s only in some extremely niche scenarios that making a card cheaper makes it worse, and this isn’t one of them.
6 Heartbreaker Hedanis
Heartbreaker Hedanis is a strange card. He uses the Overheal mechanic, which was introduced with Festival of Legends and retroactively added to some previously existing cards. In Hedanis' case, when he is healed past his maximum health, he deals five damage to a random enemy.
However, thanks to his self-damage effect, you can’t use his ability immediately unless you have healing set up already. Overall, Hedanis is certainly a strong card, providing board control and face damage, but not one that instantly wins the game (not without significant help, anyway). As a result, while he has seen experimentation in a variety of Priest archetypes, he hasn’t yet found a consistent home.
5 Rin, Orchestrator Of Doom
Rin, Orchestrator of Doom’s effect might be symmetrical, but it isn’t completely useless. Destroying your opponent’s cards can be great for disrupting combo decks, giving you four chances to get rid of a crucial combo piece (maybe more, if the draw effect mills them).
Unfortunately, Rin’s effect being a Deathrattle means your opponent has some control over when it triggers, and they can stop it entirely with a Silence effect. And of course, this sort of disruption effect is basically useless against an aggro deck or even many control lists. In those scenarios, Ring is just a five-mana 3/6 with Taunt, which isn’t worth including in decks. As such, Rin is relegated to the role of a powerful, but meta dependent, tech card.
4 Kangor, Dancing King
Kangor, Dancing King is an extremely annoying card. You need to build your deck in a specific way to really make it work, filling your deck with big minions that have useful keywords like Rush and Taunt, alongside early defensive spells.
This sort of deck does rely heavily on actually drawing Kangor early in the game, but when he hits the board on turn five, many decks can't compete with the continuous, Lifestealing value he provides. If you find yourself frequently running into Kangor on ladder, you’ll want to start including Silence effects in your deck just to deal with him.
3 Mister Mukla
A six-mana 10/10 with Rush is strong. And with the support Hunter has around him, Mister Mukla gets even better, as the class has several methods to cheat him out as well as cards that benefit from having high-stat Beasts in your deck. Mister Mukla does sort of comes with a downside, although how much of a problem it is depends heavily on your opponent.
Certain decks will make better use of the bananas he gives than others. Aggro decks often have leftover mana, and they will rarely say no to extra attack. Control and combo decks, on the other hand, not only have fewer minions to use the bananas on, but burning a card will also matter a lot more to them, turning the downside into a benefit.
2 Halveria Darkraven
Early in the expansion’s life cycle, Halveria Darkraven saw significant play in Outcast Demon Hunter. That deck was quickly nerfed, and its winrate has fallen slightly since, but Halveria is still strong in the right scenario. Demon Hunter has many cards that summon multiple Rush minions at the same time, creating great synergy with Halveria.
She’s capable of clearing large enemy boards out of nowhere, and if you already have Rush minions in play, they can go face and still buff each other and your other minions. Halveria is versatile, both a board clear and finisher in one card, which likely means she will see play in Demon Hunter decks for a long time.
1 Zok Fogsnout
Currently, Druid’s main win condition is using Anub’Rekhan to perform degenerate combos. The legendary gives you armor, then causes your next three minions cost armor instead of mana. One version of this combo involves Zok Fogsnout.
You play Anub’Rekhan, a couple armor-generating minions, and maybe some Hero attack buffs, then you slam down Zok Fogsnout to create a massive Taunt wall. There are decks that can deal with multiple 20+ health minions, but many effectively lose on the spot. The game is over, even if your opponent isn’t technically dead.