Sunken City has added enough reactive minions to the mix already, to the point where I think Knight Captains need to be nerfed.
You’re practically punished for playing 3 health-minions in Arena, and with ping classes and minions, it’s not hard to whittle down the health of stronger minions to 3 to take over the board.
A 6/6 on turn 6 is an issue. A 6/6 minion that can grow exponentially stronger if he continues making Honorable kills is even more troublesome.
Perhaps a fairer version would be that the battlecry effect would not set off an honorable kill. And as a trade-off it would be a 5/5, or 4/4.
It’s too much of a tempo swing on the board when a knight-captain makes a clean kill.
For your consideration, Blizzard.
This would make the battlecry inconsistent with Hollow Abomination, the 5 mana 2/8 Warlock minion that deals 1 damage to enemy minions with a battlecry and gains the attack of whatever it kills honorably.
They could just make a text change on the card itself.
For instance,
Battlecry: deal 3 damage.
While on the board, has Honourable Kill: gain +3/+3
It’s much harder to set up a high value Hollow Abomination kill. And besides, I never see it, but Knight-Captains are everywhere.
That would just make the card confusing in design. I would probably simply change the damage of the battlecry, probably to just 2 or something. That being said, just because the minion can become a 6/6 or even a 9/9 or 12/12 doesn’t mean it will, there are ways to play around it. And by today’s standards a turn 6 6/6 is not the kind of powerhouse you could expect in Hearthstone on release (We don’t talk about the Shaman turn 3 or 4 7/7…).
Honestly, I find the Knight-Captain to be fine. Sure, it’s bothersome when you see more than 2 but that’s Arena in general. I saw a guy play 4 natural Elwynn Boars once and summoned the rest because Priest. But I always had the chance to anticipate and play around that.
I just think that in conjunction with the new minions from this set, it makes Arena a lot harder and really, more combo-oriented and reactive than before.
I see this when going up against Mages a lot- holding their cards, pinging, stalling, and then unleashing everything from their hand, once you’re low on cards.