Prince Malchezaar has ended up being oddly Meta

Upon Malchezaar’s release, many decks on ladder could be found trying our new Eredar lord friend, shuffling those 5 random legendary cards into your deck. Be these decks Warrior, Priest, Warlock or even Mage, anything attempting to reach the late game has been running this card.

Upon its announcement, the hype surrounding it died quickly. 5 random legendary cards that followed all basic deckbuilding rules aside from the 30 card limit seemed rather underwhelming – most cards that you want in your deck, you would simply include. So, not particularly good, right?

What we didn’t account for was the simple fact that this card alone increases your deck cap to 35 cards. This means that, if played properly, you can potentially go five more turns without taking any fatigue damage. In a control vs. control mirror match, the simple fact of having 5 more cards in your deck than your opponent can carry you into the late game and serve as a win condition on its own. Even against something as armor heavy as a Control Warrior, taking 5 less damage per turn than your opponent, potentially even less, basically neutralizes his Hero Power by the time you start taking damage, which can win you the game in itself.

Now that we’ve covered its strengths, the weaknesses of this card is also blatantly obvious. While not against a similarly control-style deck, this card waters down your deck, if you will. When you really need to draw that Shield Slam and you pull a Nat Pagle instead, it can easily lose you the game against midrange or aggro decks. The unfortunate reality of this Meta is in the fact that, unless some of the greediest late game control decks are pitted against one another, games will never reach the fatigue stages.

In the end, my point is rather simple – against similarly control style decks, Prince Malchezaar is incredibly useful, and if your opponent does not have one while you do, you are already at a huge advantage. However, against midrange, aggro, or anywhere in between, having this card is a huge defecit and can easily end up losing you the game.

TL;DR – Prince Malchezaar is OK.