Living the dream
The first time I played with the the Whispers of the old God's cards I was against a mage opponent while I was druid. We were playing with pre-made decks designed to show off the new mechanics and some of the new cards. They were both C'thun decks and I expected a lot of the gameplay to revolve around each deck's ability to simultaneously grow a huge C'thun while staying ahead on the board.
My very first game was exquisite taste of what type of shenanigans can happen when you have C'Thun in your deck. With the help of the coin, I played a Twilight Elder on turn 2, followed by another Twilight Elder on Turn 3. Somewhere between turns 4-7 I played at least one Beckoner of Evil and on Turn 8, I used innervate to play my C'Thun.
The Twilight Elders survived for a long time, making my C'Thun a monstrous 16/16 creature by the time I played it on turn 8. So on top of having a massive minion that threatened to end the game almost immediately if it was able to attack the face, I also did 16 points of damage randomly to my opponents entire board.
I can't remember for certain what happened, but you can imagine how easily this game was won. My opponents board was decimated and the cultist minions I played were in no way weak on their own. Last time I checked, X2 [card]Spider Tank[/card]s on turns 2 and 3 are powerful no matter what deck you are playing, and when those Spider Tanks help me win the game every time they stay on the board, they are even more powerful.
The C'Thun experience
C'Thun is a powerful card every time you play it. By the time turn 10 rolls around, you generally have at least played 1 or 2 Beckoner of Evil's or Twilight Elder's so at a minimum your C'Thun is usually a 10/10 minion. It's presence in your deck means that, no matter how the game is going, you always have an out. His battle cry helps you finish games, make comebacks, and destroys any sense of parity between you and your opponent.
For example, when Two C'Thun decks faced each other, it become very important to be the player to play your C'Thun first. This was true for many reason, but the biggest being that C'Thun's huge toughness stat is a perfect sponge for the enemy C'thun volley's. Often times the player who opted for creating the bigger C'Thun and holding onto him for later use ended up regretting it, as it gave their opponent more opportunities to draw removal or some method of soaking up damage from his Battlecry.
My initial fear was that C'Thun required to much attention and that any deck that wants to play it must sacrifice too much by including a mandatory amount of cultist minions, but this simply isn't the case. It is surprisingly easy to forget that C'Thun is even in your deck and play a standard control strategy of clearing enemy minions and playing your own respectable 2/3's and 3/4's to survive the early game.
I can't express how important it is that Twilight Elder and Beckoner of Evil are two minions who's stats allow them to make meaningful trades and contributions to the early game. Twilight Elder in particular is an all-star, as your opponent is often forced to make sub-optimal plays to remove it quickly before it gains infinite value from the inevitable C'Thun that you will eventually draw.
My take away
My turns felt powerful every time I played a Whispers of the Old God's card. Validated Doomsayer, in particular, is a card that seems pretty weak, but can sometimes outright win you the game. With the aid of the coin or Innervate, a turn 3 or 4 Validated Doomsayer is very hard to kill, and if your opponent stumbled in the first couple turns of the game, they have to face a 7/7 with no downside. It's no [card]Fel Reaver[/card] but with that card rotating out of standard it may be the next best thing. Corrupted Healbot might see play for a similar reason, but it feels really bad playing it against [card]Fireball[/card]. I think the obvious [card]Auchenai soulpriest[/card] synergy will prove to the best most powerful use for this card.
But those are just cards, C'Thun and the other Old Gods are more than that. They are alternate win conditions with power levels strong enough to reward those devoted to creating decks around them. Make no mistake, C'Thun's battlecry ability is good enough to play on it's own once it reaches 10+ levels, and the massive minion you get on top of is, often times, too much for your opponent to handle after just getting their entire board wiped.
Old Gods bring to Hearthstone one of the oldest TCG mechanics ever: find removal or die. Only time will tell what tools Blizzard will give us to defend against the these massive legendaries but it's safe to say that, if the unreleased cards resemble the power level of C'Thun (and it's game winning battlecry) we might be looking at an entirely new competitive environment once this set is released.
