This Druid rare minion and Neutral Legendary push the Spare Parts mechanic to a new level: are they relevant?
Another day, another Arena que, another Zoolock opponent on ladder, and another set of Gnomes vs Goblins card reveals. Today we meet the neutral legendary Toshley, and the rare Druid minion, Mech-Bear-Cat. One is an angry gnome that takes shooting bugs to a new level of awesome and the other is a surprising large (larger than that house at least) mechanized beast that, per lore, would repulse most druids. These cards get huge flavor wins in my eyes (especially the Starship Troopers nod) but how will they fair in a competitive environment?
Toshley is an interesing card. Compared to [card]Cairne Bloodhoof[/card] and [card]Sylvanas Windrunner[/card], it wins on stats alone, and is much less vulnerable to silence effects. One because it has a Battlecry which means you will always get a Spare Part, and two because it's Deathrattle is so weak, you are almost glad if an opponent uses a silence on it. Cairne and Sylvanas have more powerful abilities, but two Spare Parts might be enough to make this card playable. Not because Spare Parts are powerful, but two 1 mana spells sometime come in handy.
If your deck isn't optimized to make use of Spare Parts then it is a weaker [card]BoulderFist Ogre[/card]. The effects just are powerful enough to guarantee real upside. However, if your deck includes Gadgetzan Auctioneer or Violet Teacher, the two extra "spells" Toshley inevitably provides can be a huge source of value. Rogue decks in particular can make use of Spare Parts to active Combo cards, and to some extent cards like [card]Archmage Antonidas[/card] or even [card]Mana Addict[/card] can become more powerful with extra spells lying around.
Soo when it comes down to it, Toshley isn't as vulnerable to silence as more legendary 6 drops, however it is not inherently as powerful. This is a solid pick in Arena, but it's not a legendary bomb that gets you excited. It is an [Card]Archmage[/card] with a less predictable upside in a deck that isn't designed to make use of Spare Parts.
Interesting to note: this is the first druid minion that cost 6 mana. And for 6 mana, what you get is a decisively better version of [card]Boulderfist Ogre[/card], which for a class with ramp abilities that often win games by playing large vanilla creatures early on, might be very powerful. The static ability begs to be comboed with, however Druid is not Warrior and does not naturally have the ability to deal 1 damage to it's minions. As previously mentioned, Spare Part cards are most powerful because they are considered seperate spells, so if a druid deck is able to fit some measure of spell casting synergy into their deck (Like Token Druid) then the value of this card increases.
Giving this minion taunt is a tempting proposition and the dream is getting 6 spare parts for free, however it is more likely to get around 2 spare parts on average, which is probably not good enough to run an otherwise vanilla creature in your deck. You can't count this card out completely though, as it's mech subtype allows some portion of synergy if the "mech deck" becomes powerful enough in GvG.
Toshley and Mech-Bear-Cat are surprisingly similar, and to truly evaluate their effectiveness, the full roster of GvG cards must be considered. Only time will make that happen, so check back for more card evaluations in the future!
