Honestly, I'm just recovering from yesterday's ridiculous Hearthstone news. In any other year, players would have had weeks to chew on the announcement of the next expansion, a complete reworking of the Priest class, the removal of duplicate cards from packs, and a new set of Hall of Fame cards. But of course, Team 5 had an even bigger bomb to deal with. The game finally introduced a tenth class, the Demon Hunter, and after a day of playing with multiple decks, you can read my impressions here.

But it's not over yet. There are still tons of cards from the "Ashes of Outland" expansion:

Shadow Council is a Warlock spell that looks pretty painful. For only one mana, it can transform all the cards in your hand into random daemons, giving them all +2/+2. So you immediately think, "How good are these random but buffed daemons?", quickly followed by "What kind of deck would want this effect?". As you guys are well aware, there are plenty of bad daemons out there, but as "Prince Keleseth" taught us, many cards look much better with bigger stats. So when you play Council of Shadows, chances are good that you will have garbage in your hand, but it will be meaty garbage.

So the second question becomes more interesting: what kind of deck wants random cow-like trash? My guess is that it's a minion-centric deck that wants a backup plan in case it gets dragged into the late game; Zoo seems like a potential place to be, since it doesn't use many important spells that you care about losing, and the Shadow Man and Solarium combo can have some interesting effects It feels like a good idea. Also, the combo of "Council of Shadows" and "Solarium" could have some interesting effects. [But don't take my word for it, senior game designer Chadd Nervig tells us why we should seriously consider "Shadow Council":

"Shadow Council is a great way to get rid of the "Dark Abandonment" and Golden Monkey," and draws inspiration from cards from the past such as "The Golden Monkey. One of its hidden strengths lies in its deck's heavy use of situational and "technical" cards. One problem with those kinds of cards is that they can be quite poor if their use cases do not arise. With Shadow Council, you can turn them into really good daemons!"

Now, "really good daemons" may be a bit optimistic, but I can tell you that when "Yog-Saron's Puzzle Box" decides to cast it, it's going to play a delightful prank. "Ashes of Outland" will be released on April 7, but but the day before that we will be releasing a brutally efficient guide on decks against "Demon Hunter". Be warned.