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Thunderhorn: The new Kron?

#1

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Thunderhorn is one of the most popular cards with the release of the Unearthed Prophecy, embodying one of the community’s biggest desires: cards based around positioning. As a 4 mana 4/5 that threatens to wipe out the opponent’s board, there is a lot that Thunderhorn can do in a deck. At the current moment, it seems like Thunderhorn is at a level on par with pre-nerfed Inquisitor Kron when Denizens of Shim’zar was released. But is it doing too much? In this thread, I’ll look at some of the biggest strengths of Thunderhorn, what it can bring to decks in terms of its role and synergies, and lastly give my thoughts on changing the card.

Strengths

To start off, Thunderhorn is a 4 mana 4/5. Already, this makes it a solid 4 drop, as it does not die to a 2 drop + general attack (in most cases), and the 4 attack allows it to dodge removal like Plasma storm and (in most/some cases) natural selection. However, what really makes it a strong deck option is its ability; being able to deal damage to joint enemies (damaging all enemies standing next to each other with at least one next to the initial target of thunderhorn’s attack). This pseudo AoE ability can add a lot to decks that lack a strong option for AoE (such as the Vetruvian faction, which usually relies on Stars’ Fury or Sunset Paragon when they want to run AoE). This ability also makes it very good with positioning tools, such as Blink, Mist Dragon Seal, Juxtaposition, Hearth Sister, Mesmerize (I mean if you want to), Daemonic Lure and Nethermeld. It can also benefit certain positioning affects like Frenzy and Decimate. Lastly, it’s a 4 mana card, enabling you to ramp up into it on turn 2 as Player 1, or simply playing it turn 2 as Player 2.

Roles

  • Pseudo AoE
  • Strong, Neutral 4 drop
  • Solid stats
  • Lavaslasher Counter (if a Magmar decides to answer it with Lavaslasher, 2 units (including Lavaslasher) are guaranteed to take 4 damage, and even then Lavaslasher alone cannot deal with Thunderhorn in most cases)

Synergies

  • Transformation removal (Aspect of Shim’zar and Thumping Wave)
  • Positional abilities (Frenzy, Decimate, Holy Immolation- to an extent)
  • Position manipulation (Songhai, Nethermeld, Daemonic Lure, Hearthsister)
  • Diretide Frenzy (haven’t really seen this yet, but it has the potential to OTK an enemy with extremely bad positioning)

Changing Thunderhorn

In my personal opinion, I do not want to see Thunderhorn get nerfed. I think he does a lot to help bolster decks and certain matchups (looking at you, Swarm Lilithe and Magmar), and that it really expands on a lot of existing cards (like, it made Aspect of the Shim’zar playable over Aspect of the Ravager :eyes:). However, I can see how it could be doing a bit too much for its cost.

I’ve been mulling over some possible changes, but there isn’t a lot that I could see would work without completely destroying the card. Reducing the health or attack makes it a weaker option against Magmar, which is why I am against a strict stat nerf. Making it’s effect limited to either initiating attacks would definitely make it easier to trade into it, but make it so much easier to just use Lavaslasher on. Conversely, making it occur only when it counter attacks would make it a hard minion to trade into and a good counter to Lavaslasher, but in many cases make it a generic 4/5 on your turn. In my view, the latter change would not be terrible, but I feel that there is a much better option to address Thunderhorn.

My suggestion is to make Thunderhorn a 5 mana 5/5 (or 5/6). By making it 5 mana, it takes away it’s ability to be ramped using mana tiles on turn 2 as player 1 (without extra resources), and makes it so that you cannot play it normally on turn 2 as player 2. 5 mana cards are also a bit awkward in the sense that a lot of removal is available to factions at 5 mana (BoA, reader, etc.), making you lose a bit more value when it is removed. It will still have a strong effect, yet it would make some synergies cost 1 more (such as the Shimzar + Thunderhorn Vanar combo). Overall, I feel that this would be the most effective change to Thunderhorn if it is truly needed to be adjusted.

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Thunderhorn... (Salt thread P much)
#2

I can’t make a long post explaining my point (Mobile), but Thunderhorn doesn’t lay a finger on Kron. It’s an alternative to sunsteel / dioltas in factions that can manipulate enemy unit positioning. It’s not very good but playable in others. Playing around it is often trivial, though the aspect of Shimzar interaction is worrying.

I really hate to say it because it’s easy to come off as rude, but this card really is a noob trap of a sort. In the sense that when you realize you can avoid the effect and half of the factions can’t do anything, it’s just a stat stick. The other half, you can actually still play around a giant chain but usually it gets decent value (however, the same can be said of an unanswered Dioltas / Sunsteel.)

Reminds me of when Bond Argeon was really popular and people complained about Dioltas. Thunderhorn is a strong card, but it’s nowhere near needing a change. Can we bark up Lavaslasher or Trinity Oath’s tree if we’re nerfing something?

6 Likes
#3

I think they should consider some type of nerf to thunderstorm. The card is arguably the best 4 drop in the game and can provide to big of a tempo swing. I’ve won a bunch of games with the aspect of shimzar combo and I can’t help but to feel like an asshole when I do it. I like the OP’s suggestion and I’d even consider just dropping the attack to 3.

On a side note yes, trinit oath and ESPECIALLY lavaslasher need a nerf being able to play a 4/9 on turn 2 P1 is RIDICULOUS especially in a faction that can ramp big minions like it’s nothing.

#4

droping attack to 3 is not a good plan, inner focus will make this even scarier.

5 Likes
#5

Thunderhorn is certainly a strong card, but it does not need a nerf. You can prevent your opponent from getting value from it by smart positioning and it is not that sticky to remove.

It’s an important card for the game, because it gives AoE to factions which don’t have it. The interaction with Aspect of Shimzar is just as bad as the one the card has with Taygete. I think we can live with it.

#6

This card single-handledly became a reason why battle pets will never ever see play anymore. Way too much risk to play battle pets outside p1t1 nowadays, even with Pax or Ooz.

I think there needs to be a major rework so at least the commonly seen battle pets see play again as this kind of pummel the pets down from the ladder. I do like the mana cost raise on this case considering most pets don’t get to be played on the later stage.

7 Likes
#7

Thunderhorn is a powerful card on par with Dioltas and Sunsteel Defender, but he is not too OP to require a nerf. If he was an auto include in every deck I would understand nerfing him, but since he isn’t I don’t think he needs to be changed.

#8

I will check later, but I think I run it in 4 out of my 5 decks. There are cases where Sunsteel or Dioltas are better, or the 4 mana slot is too crowded for him.

It would be cool to know how much he is played by the rest of the community.

#9

Of the 5 decks that I run and think are viable, the only one to use thunderhorn is keeper vaath. I think the power level of thunderhorn is fine, it is definately above average, but not broken.

1 Like
#10

I think I have about 11 decks and only 1 use him.

Edit: 13

#11

Out of the 8 decks I have at the moment, I have Thunderhorn in 2 of them but only because I don’t have the cards I would want to use instead (both cases being legendaries). So I would run 0 if I had every card available to me.

#12

I tried him in vet and it’s not really worth it imo

The only combo i see as a bit “over the norm” is aspect of shmzarHORN!

But nothing more…

#13

Thunderhorn is decent, but totally overrated. In half of the factions he is just an inferior Hailstone Golem because it’s so trivial to play around him when his user has no way to alter your minions positioning.

The only factions that can take advantage of him to a good degree are Vanar with Aspect of Shimzar Abyssian with Demonic lure and to a lesser degree Songhai with Juxtaposition.
I don’t see him much in Abyssian decks (maybe like twice as far as i can remember), probably not because he is bad, but because he doesn’t really fit into the current archetypes that are popular.
Same for Songhai, some Midrange Kaleos builds run it but not all and Reva won’t touch it normally.
That leaves Vanar as the most common abuser.
I guess other factions could take advantage of it in theory by running stuff like Magnetize and/or Repulsor beast but quite frankly, he isn’t worth doing that.

I guess an argument could be made that he deters people from playing battlepets but honestly, is that a big deal? How many battlepets were used before UP? 2, Pax and Ooz, that’s it. And i still see the latter being played, i also still use him in my decks, same for pax. Sure you have to be careful about your positioning when using them but that’s easily done.

The comparison with Kron just falls totally flat as far as i am concerned. Kron was literally the best 5 drop in the game in every deck, hell he even kicked Ironcliff out of Lyonar and made Songhai players use him at a time where Midrange Songhai was considered more of a meme than an actual archetype. Thunderhorn is pretty much never seen in Lyonar or Magmar and rarely in Vet. Even out of the 3 factions that can abuse him, 2 don’t run him most of the time.

Regarding the question in how many decks i run him, i can’t really tell out of my head, i have like 50 decks at the moment and if i had to guess probably 8 or so have Thunderhorn.

So yeah, no nerf please, totally not necessary and would most likely kill another innocent card and in this case, also a very interesting one.

3 Likes
#14

Thunderhorn is actually really good in keeper vaath, and magmar also have thumping wave, so add magmar to the list.

I tried thunderhorn in burn abyss to combo with Komodo hunter, but later replaced it for more aggressive options.

#15

Magmar also has Taygete and that Girl didn’t see any play since her nerf despite the potentially devastating combo with Twave. And Thunderhorn is in the same boat as far as i am concerned. Magmar has just too much other stuff they wanna run in their 4 mana slot so it’s nearly impossible to justify Thunderhorn. A potential 8 Mana combo with Twave that will hit like 3 targets on average doesn’t really help with that. Don’t know why anyone would want to use him in Keeper Vaath over Sunsteel, Dioltas and Elucidator.

#16

elucidator tends to be suicide and dioltas messes with natural, so I went with sunsteel and thunderhorn

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#17

I am an advocate of reworking Thunderhorn. This card single-handedly invalidates Swarm, battle pets, and Lyonar’s in-faction ability of Zeal with its existence. It’s similar to old Blistering Skorn, which I don’t think was too strong as a 3-mana 3/4, but it was preventing other archetypes from being valid, just like Thunderhorn does today.

Is it ridiculously powerful? I don’t think so, but it makes games a lot more awkward when you have to play around this minion. Heck, against Vanar, you can’t have joined things on board at ANY point once your opponent reaches 6 mana unless you want to risk being punished. Playing around Thunderhorn is way different from playing around Blast or Frenzy.

I think this minion needs the Kron treatment. I like the idea of a 4/2 or maybe a 4/3 stat line. No Inner Focus synergy, and it can still capitalize on Wraithlings, as well as certain Battle Pets. But then it would need to make use of its ability to be good instead of just being a good stat stick at its worst. An ability like that should come at some risk to the user.

1 Like
#18

I disagree that it invalidates those. But it does check them. I also think the Kron nerf was overkill tho. I would rather have seen him go to 4/5 or lose provoke.

Awkward to play around doesn’t require a nerf. That’s just a good card. I also don’t think it needs risk. Tbh, aside from being neutral, I think it’s only marginally better than wasteland wraith.

2 Likes
#19

I Have a very strong dislike for this card although it isn’t the card’s fault so much as it is the number 1 faction that abuses it. All in all the card is still too good for a 4 drop based on stats and ability. I’ll echo other posters with my confusion on why a card which clearly negates the play of battle pets was ever designed in the first place.

The problem with this card as I see it is simply that Vanar abuses the HELL out of it. They already had ridiculously good removal as it was and now they have more because you get punished in excess for building a board in the first 3 turns. All so they can use some combination of thunderhorn, hearth sister, and Aspect of Shimzar to clear your board while leaving up a threat.

Like I said, I hate the card so my criticism is certainly salt tainted, but I would at a minimum change the stat line to 4/4 for a 4 drop with a game changing ability.

2 Likes
#20

That’s a 3 card, 8 mana combo that takes 2 turns to set up. If they pull it off, they deserve to clear your board.

3 Likes