I think it's fair to say we have had Winter Wanderlands long enough in the meta to properly asses it's power level. We just finished our second weekend ranked with the cards readily available so the numbers are definitely in. While the individual card rankings are overall pretty decent, nothing stands out as being a near auto include, tier one staple like Blade and Martyr were (and mostly still are) or overtly broken like Coronet. Rather, we have a large number of the cards available sitting somewhere in the 45-55% range where they belong, and a few clearly underpowered cards in need of a buff.

Additionally, most of the cards have not made much of a splash at the top ranks. People were being encouraged to play them because of the Candy Chain event which may be boosting their numbers to some extent, but overall looking at the top lists and top archetypes, we are not seeing much splash. Aggro War is running Woodcutter Imp as expected and it is doing well, but aggro war is not nearly as dominant as control war which uses nothing from this new set. A sprinkle of other cards also show up but none seem critical to the lists running them. The game feels mostly the same with just a few more options peppered in.

What this set does have though are some clear losers when it comes to powerlevel, so I would like to propose the buffs I would like to see to the under performers, as well as 1 potential nerf should a card we all hate prove to be a bit to much.

Orfeo in Wanderlands

Last 15 day winrate: 37%
Total Inclusion rate 1% (230 Matches)

That this card only saw 230 matches in 15 days should tell you all you need to know about it. It looks like junk and based on it's winrate, plays like it as well. The biggest issue with this card truly is that really it can only be good if you are ahead in the game already. It is at best a wash when you are at parity with your opponent, and truly terrible when you are loosing because it is a topdeck that you do not want that gets you even more topdecks that you do not want.

I think this card needs at least 2 changes to even be considered playable. First and foremost raise it's power and health to 2. There are so many creatures in this game that your opponent can and will use that just completely nullify this play as a 1/1. This is a legend from a limited set, it should be more powerful than something that just incidentally dies to whatever protected creature your opponent may have packed. 2 power at least get's it past armor 1, and every so often makes it so your opponent cannot just cast 1 power creatures.

Second of all, I need a reason to want to shuffle this back into my deck. It honestly feels like a penalty more than a benefit since the card is so bad. It has no roar and is already poised to give you negative value if you play it. My thought here is it should have Roar: Shuffle a Candy Link into your opponents deck, just like the relic. This does a few things including building a more comprehensive theme for deceptions cards in this set, but also gives me some disruption that makes it worth while shuffling this back into my deck.   

Candy Chain
Last 15 day winrate: 38%
Total Inclusion rate 3.6% (801 Matches)

Speaking of candy links, this card has also proven to be a neato idea that in practice is just too weak. It precludes you from using other relics, including cobra scepter which is exactly the thing you want to use it with. It also requires you to cast 5 spells to get full value out of it, and frankly that is a lot to ask most decks outside of Magic. The links themselves are not enough or a reward to make me want to play this either, considering you may never see them resolve anyway or worse, they could dump your opponents Martyr into the yard.

This card is a little harder for me to justify ever using frankly. I think if the Orfeo change I mentioned above were ever implemented so that Candy Chains can be a coherent theme instead of a one off thing it could help in some sort of mill strategy (of which the fixed Orfeo would be pretty solid in). Ultimately the only way I see this being good is if it cost 1 instead of 3, just to give you the chance to actually capture value from it by casting it turn one before the board is built up. I almost feel like some tertiary ability should be added to it, like whenever your opponent hits a candy link gain a life or something.  

Reinkeeper Selena
Last 15 day winrate: 45.8%
Total Inclusion rate 1.5% (345 Matches)

Selena is bad because she requires a lot of work to get going and you do not have that sort of time. Thematically I like the card a lot and since it is a legendary I think it probably should punch above it's weight more so than it does right now. The fundamental flaw is just how vulnerable a 3/3 is come turn 6/7 so you may never get real value from her.

The first change I would make would be adding Backline to this. Now that I say though though I am actually shocked she does not already have it since Selena's other incarnation had it and it makes sense for both of them frankly. She can be a value engine that creates her own bodyguards or a mid game lite board sweeper. Lower than average stats can be made up for with versatility.

Secondly, 3/3 proves just too weak for the mana cost, especially in nature. I thought about giving her ward as a means to protect herself, keeping in line with other versions of her, but that felt like it could make a middling card go from meh to groan tester really fast. You could lower the casting cost but at 5 mana this can come online much earlier and the 2/2 blitzers can turn from good to dominating very quickly. Rather I would like to see her remain a midrange card but with some extra numbers attached to her to just give her a little more staying power. 4/4 would be good. 3/5 would be better.  

The Reinnapper
Last 15 day winrate: 45.1%
Total Inclusion rate 0.2% (315 Matches)

Card is a very poor mans version of Blade of Whiteplain and is rather vulnerable at 3 toughness. His only real utility right now is removing frontliners without triggering afterlife, which honestly is a mixed blessing if your opponent is running Pyramid Wardens since you won't get the benefit from nuking them. No tribe means no tribal bonuses as well which to me is all downside.

In theory I like what this guy does, I just do not think he does it well. If GU is intent on keeping this at 4 cost I think he needs a real stat boost to see play, since the abilities are already pretty ok. I would say 4/5 is the least you could make him to keep me interested as making this 3 cost would probably be too good for that cost without reevaluation. I would also 100% slap the neither tribe on him because come on, look at him.  

Guiding Light
Last 15 day winrate: 44.8%
Total Inclusion rate 3.8% (716 Matches)

I still like this card and think it is very close to being good. Chosen one is a really complex mechanic and this requires some skill to play with, more so than I originally had considered. There are skimpily times where this card cannot be played since you do not want to change who the Chosen one is if they are in play, which does decrease from it's raw power.

I think the 1 mana side of things is just fine, but Empower 3 is too much. At the cost of 4 it feels like a bad Canonize. Overall I think it would be better as Empower 2 with a +2+2 bonus, though honestly you could probably leave it at +3+3 balance wise without too much issue. Simple number tweaks will make this card right and the creature you get should be good considering the set up it takes.

Thawed Heart
Last 15 day winrate: 53.2%
Total Inclusion rate 12.1% (2455 Matches)

This card is somewhere around the second or third best card in the set (nothing will likely unseat woodcutter imp) but I still contend it is the most toxic design in the game. The decks that it is good against it's far too good (Anubians, Martyr, Casino, most aggro) and the things it should be good against it is only sometimes ok (Can't stop Pyrrhic Knowledge OTKS most of the time since they come from hand). It makes for VERY high variance games that can sometimes can just be summarized as "Did you draw it?" and the number of matches it is dead in are both too high and not high enough. It is not good design in my eyes to have a card that is sometimes utterly useless against most of the field but yet somehow compelling enough to still use because the matches it is good against it is a blowout regardless of your decks strategy.

I also think that this card stifles card design going forward. Graveyard strategies are going to be dead if this card sees any real amount of play, and that just happens to be deaths thing most of the time. I personally think for the good of the game we should reel this thing back and at least impose some limit on it so it is not always either a dud or an orbital nuke. For what it's worth, Gleamweaver was already a card that was exceedingly strong against graveyard things and not a bad include in a light deck, this just feels like it will always be the go to for any grave hate. I would propose putting a cap on how many cards it can exile. Maybe make it any 5 cards? That way if someone really went ham with anubians they may still have something in the yard to play with, and you cap the life total so the card is not a 100% reset the game switch, but it is still powerful enough to feel like it did what it needed to do. It's not like Casino death is going to care that you removed it's brimstones from the yard anyway so no big loss there.

THE WRAP UP

So in summary, I think the set is actually very well balanced if not a little safe. Probably can chock that up as a lesson learned from the dev team thinking 4/4 Blade of Whiteplain was just fine. I like the distribution system even though I think the pack price is way high (5-7 feels much better to me if we could ever do that), and I think the support for the release has been great. A few tweaks to hopefully powerup a few of the higher profile cards and I think this could honestly be the model for many releases going forward, smaller sets with smaller timeframes more frequently, with a large anchor set to codify the themes we want to have per season.

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