This post uses the ideas in He-Man's post on control and race, and so it might be helpful to read that post first. The type of draw engine you might prefer depends if you are running a "race" or "control" type strategy. Also check out He-Man's post on card draw, as it offers a complementary analysis to this one.
There are many types of cards that enable you to increase the number of cards you can draw per turn, what's termed draw engine. Also important to this discussion is card advantage, or the number of more cards that you get relative to your opponent. Incorporating some kind of additional draw engine is useful in virtually any deck for a simple reason- you need to sacrifice cards to get resources. Your natural draw is one card per turn, but if you sacrifice and play one card every turn, you use two cards per turn. This means by turn 7, you are out of cards in your hand, an unfortunate situation to have in any card game except uno. Many card draw mechanisms are specific to classes, meaning that you may actually want to choose what class to play based on which class's card draw mechanism best suites your playstyle.
In this thread, I plan to lay out the benefits and detriments to all of the card draw mechanisms in the game, card by card. I won't get into hero-ability draw mechanisms, as those will change in 1.28 anyways.
Main draw mechanisms-
Bazaar - This card can be played by any deck, so the question here is less of when to play this card as what decks to play it in. The benefits of bazaar are discussed in depth in another thread, but can be summarized here. Bazaar give you the most potential card draw for the least cost. The problem is that it also benefits your opponent. The situation this should be played is then when a) your opponent has a smaller deck you are running a "control" style deck, and you want them to run out of cards faster, or b) you are running a "race" to the bottom type deck, and you think the card draw will help you do more damage to your opponent than it will help them do to you.
The caution with bazaar is that your opponent gets the first extra draw off of bazaar, so it can give them a card advantage. You can counteract this advantage, though- if you go first, and your opponent did not play a card on their first turn, you can play a bazaar on turn 2. Since your opponent already has 6 cards in their hand, they still only draw one card up to their maximum of 7, and lose the card advantage. Another way to counter the card advantage is to couple a bazaar with a retreat to bring your opponents hand up to 6 cards, thus denying them a draw.
Bazaar is also a particularly useful counter to most other draw engines out there like blood frenzy or research. Take blood frenzy for example. Without a bazaar in play, your opponent draws 2 cards every turn to your 1 or twice as many as you. With a bazaar in play, they draw 3 to your 2 cards, only a 50% draw advantage. Thus bazaar can serve to make other draw engines relatively less effective.
A drawback of bazaar is that it counts as an item, so can be destroyed. This isn't too much of a concern, I have found, since most players are willing to keep in play an item that benefits them. Be forewarned, though, if a players destroys bazaar on their turn, they have ended up with a 1-card advantage over you.
Bad Santa - Like bazaar, anyone can use it, and it benefits both you and your opponent. Therefore a lot of the logic behind bazaar applies to bad santa, but bad santa has a few advantages. You should really only play a bad santa when someone has at least a partially full hand (4+ cards) and you can a mostly empty hand (3- cards). In this situation, bad santa actually gives you a card advantage, since you gain more cards than your opponent. Bad santa's unpredictability means that your opponent can't plan for it's use, as they can with a bazaar, making it more useful to you than them. The disadvantage is that it doesn't give you as many cards as bazaar does, so if you really need a continual source of cards, a bazaar might be a better option.
As an additional plus, bad santa is a an ability, so cannot be destroyed like bazaar can be. In this sense, it is a more consistent draw engine than bazaar.
Note- if an opponent has 4 cards in their hand, then a bad santa gives them all three cards, making it seem as if you had not gained a card advantage. But now your opponent has 7 cards in their hand, which means they miss their next turn's draw, thus effectively giving you a 1 card advantage.
Research - This is a mage specific card. This card is a quite expensive card draw, it takes 2 resources to play it, and another 2 every time you want a card. In this sense it essentially does the same thing as bazaar, but instead of giving a card to your opponent, you pay two resources a turn. To its advantage, you only have to pay the cost when you need it to use the draw engine (compare this to blood frenzy). This card is really only useful in a "control" style mage deck. These are slower decks, where you can afford to be spending resources on card draw rather than spells or allies. In a "race" style mage deck, go with bazaar, so you don't have to waste the resources on card draw.
Blood Frenzy - A warrior card, and for good reason: it synergizes well with Enrage. Like research, this card does what bazaar does, but you pay one life per turn to prevent your opponent from drawing a card. This is typically considered an excellent draw engine, because as a warrior you often have allies or armor in play, meaning things to distract your opponent with and shield you from damage. If you are winning board control, between your allies and weapons you should be able to destroy your opponent long before blood frenzy takes you down. But blood frenzy does mean that you are inherently playing a "race" type deck- barring all other concerns, blood frenzy will cause you to lose, although it is a slow loss. "Control" type decks with a lot of item destruction, board wipes, and delays (rain delays, freeze, snow sapphire) can use blood frenzy to your opponent's advantage, as all of these sorts of cards delay or extend the length of the game, neutralizing your increased card draw for a few turns and forcing you to soak some blood frenzy damage.
As a bonus, blood frenzy attaches to your hero as opposed to other draw mechanisms which function as items that can be much more easily destroyed. Unless you are facing a Jericho, you are pretty much ensured to keep your blood frenzy active for the whole game.
Wizent's staff - Personally one of my favorite draw engines, this is a priest specific item. Wizent staff functions like bazaar giving you a card per turn, but the cost for preventing your opponent's draw is a shadow energy. As priest's (currently) don't have great use for their shadow energy, this is probably the cheapest option in the game to get continual card draw. It comes with a slew of drawbacks, though- it costs more than any other draw engine to get in play, and as a weapon it can be destroyed by an item destruction card or simply by being attacked four times. This means its use is rather limited to situations where you can have some semblance of board control, cause the last thing you want to happen is to pay four resources and one SE to get one card draw if it gets eliminated the turn it comes into play. This also makes it less effective against hunters with rapid fires, as you'll only get two turns of draw from it if the hunter attacks your hero repeatedly. On the plus side, you can always the staff as a weapon, to wear out an opponent's weapon or armor, or to land a finishing blow on a minion.
To effectively use wizent staff's as a draw mechanism in priest decks, you need several copies of wizent staff in your deck, since you can count on one staff to last all game, or you need to bulster the staff with bad santa's or bazaars. This means as a priest you will be dedicating significantly more of your deck to card draw than if you played another class.
Belladona A shadow ally card, that functions as a nice draw mechanism, especially when coupled with Gravebone's resurrection. This is a high cost ally clocking in at four resources, at at only two life she's likely to die the turn she comes out, but that doesn't make her useless. Far from it. At four attack, gravebella has do be killed the turn she comes out, or she does some beefy damage. Therefore, at a cost of 4 resources, you get a new card and you create a distraction that the opponent has to deal with, rather than say attacking your hero. When played on a full board, bella almost acts like a delay card, giving you a new card and delaying the opponent's action for a turn (assuming bella dies). One you realize its ok to let bella die, this becomes a pretty nice card. If you're running a mage deck, you can even couple it with a portal for some damage+a delay+ card draw.
As a sudo delay card, I'd say bella works more as a "control" deck type card, but coupled with a portal it can be used in a "race" type deck.
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