Knights of the Frozen Throne card review: Vampiric Poison

Hearthstone’s Knights of the Frozen Throne expansion card reveal season is underway! We can expect to see multiple cards revealed on daily basis leading up to the expansion itself.

In this post, I take an in-depth look at Vampiric Poison.

Vampiric Poison

Vampiric Poison is a common Rogue class card from Knights of the Frozen Throne expansion. It is a two-mana spell that gives your weapon Lifesteal.

What, healing in Rogue? Sounds interesting.

Alas, healing through Lifesteal in the weapon is probably the weakest type of healing Rogue can get. Rogue would really prefer Lifesteal in a minion and then it could use Envenom Weapon to give its weapon Poisonous so that it could take out big minions and protect its board without losing the game to any burst damage because of lack of healing.

It is important to note that weapon keywords do not work with Blade Flurry. Blade Flurry only takes the damage from the weapon, but it is the spell that deals the damage, so neither Envenom Weapon nor Vampiric Poison have any synergy with Blade Flurry, quite the contrary – you lose a charge of the effect if you Blade Flurry your weapon.

Obviously, playing Vampiric Poison on your Hero Power dagger is not great. So, you need a bigger weapon. How to get one?

  • Deadly Poison (+2 healing per weapon charge)
  • Obsidian Shard (9 healing over three turns, 15 with Deadly Poison)
  • Assassin’s Blade (12 healing over four turns, 20 with Deadly Poison)
  • Burgling a weapon from the opponent’s class

That’s.. not too impressive, unless Rogue gets something more from Knights of the Frozen Throne. Obsidian Shard and Assassin’s Blade both kind of work – as long as the meta does not favor weapon removal, like it currently does.

It’s hard to see Deadly Poison making a comeback for this. Risking a weapon, Vampiric Poison, and Deadly Poison that could then all be removed by a single weapon-removal card is just such a huge chance to take.

So, we’re down to running weapons and Vampiric Poison. Obsidian Shard would fit in a Burgle Rogue deck that could then potentially also grab some weapons from other classes. It is too risky to rely on burgling alone: against any non-weapon class Vampiric Poison would be a dead card, and even against weapon classes you would not always find an answer – of course, you could also highroll with a Gorehowl, but that does not happen often enough to warrant serious consideration.

What kind of Rogue deck wants to heal?

Miracle Rogue might be interested, it has historically included Antique Healbot and Earthen Ring Farseer, and it would probably run a suitable Lifesteal minion. However, a weapon and a spell that have to go together, both in single copies most likely? With a spell that is wasted if not cast on the weapon, so you cannot really use it on your Hero Power dagger to draw with Gadgetzan Auctioneer? Miracle Rogue can sometimes draw through its entire deck to find the combo, but it still feels a little clunky, and not available fast enough to help against aggro.

What about something slow, perhaps with Jades and/or N’Zoth. Does it have room for multiple weapons? Most likely not, so again we have cards that deviate from the main plan of the deck and need to be comboed together.

This leaves some kind of Burgle Rogue. It’s a deck that does not mind running two copies of Obsidian Shard, so it has a better chance to find the combo, and whenever it is facing a weapon class, it has enough effects to reliably find more weapons if needed – and many aggressive decks are weapon classes, so there is a chance to find a weapon to get healing going early. When you rely heavily on Burgle effects, you are necessarily a little slow, as it takes times to put together a win condition from all the stolen cards. Some healing could help make the deck more viable. I think we have found the potential home for Vampiric Poison.

Whether the healing effect of Vampiric Poison is strong enough to see play is uncertain. However, Rogue does not have a lot of options, so it will surely see some experimentation to find if it is exactly the right tool to keep the Rogue alive long enough to win the game.