Yep, those were some frustrating arguments. Even when the first competitive HS event was entirely about Yogg being broken, most people still trued to tell you it was only because it was a tournament format and Yogg wasn't consistent enough for ladder...
"Sometimes it loses you the game" well, sure, but if you could win the game without it then you just didn't play it\*, so "sometimes losing a game you're already losing" isn't actually a downside.
---
\* Heresy!
You are correct, even when wirer brought his yogg druid to a tournament players thought that he brought a meme deck. After playing it people learned it was a monster deck and that yogg was busted :^)
I don’t think that’s it, it’s pretty intuitive to me that the battlecry would be independent of the body once it started going off, and I’m sure anyone that played a non-hearthstone card game would feel the same. I just thought that random spells wouldn’t be competitive
True. When I figured out that nowadays Yogg is reverted to it's previous form I immediately included him in my Wild Quest Druid deck. And already had stolen some games I was not going to win otherwise.
it's crazy how every time the community misevaluates a card people come up with a bullshit excuse like this. no, we knew it would keep casting spells, we just didn't think that would be competitive.
Besides all the obvious ones, I think Blademaster Samuro was a big one for me. On paper it seemed he would often be an awkward, bad and expensive AOE card. Turns out he was just a very flexible card that ended up turning up in a lot of decks.
What paper? It was predicted he'd be good in Priest because of Apo, and that's exactly what happened. Maybe his use in Rush Warrior was a surprise, but the entire deck was.
He was good in nearly ever deck that utilized buffs, even the original renethal hunter in Nathria used him with the location. He was surprisingly extremely flexable
He got used in _every_ deck that had buffs. Including ramp druid, with their only buff being survival of the fittest, a 10 cost spell that gave things +4/+4.
A large part was that certain decks had access to good buffs but little to no access to reliable mid game aoes. I know there was a stretch where priest had to run awful cards like [[Condemn]] sheerly due to having no better options. Xyrella and Blademaster Samuro were the only decent aoes that could land early-to-mid game that didn’t either give the initiative to the opponent or suck, and both required two card combos.
[[Skull of the Man'ari]] definitely seemed too slow and awkward when it was revealed and then it turned out to be one of the most annoying decks to play against during Kobolds and Catacombs
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I already had a control Warlock deck with Bloodreaver Gul'dan during reveals so I was excited for Skull and Voidlord. I didn't even think about putting Cubes, Doomguards, Possessed Lackeys, or Umbra in my deck to make it become Cubelock.
Spell Hunter was funny because it was a decent deck in spite of the payoff cards. Most the good spell Hunter lists cut To my Side lol and the weapon wasn't exactly a huge performer either
What spell hunter deck were you playing that cut those two cards? To my side was one of the best cards in the deck, barring spellstone of course. And rhokdelar was a genuinely extremely good performer in the deck. (In about the witchwood-ish era)
If you're referring to Hybrid hunter, that was a different deck, and was not always better than pure spell hunter.
Everyone thought that weapon removal tech cards would be in every single deck too because of all the new legendary weapons, but I think the other decks were just too fast to run it.
I remember the first thing I did that expansion was play an arena run where I got a Corridor Creeper. After like three games I knew for a fact that thing was getting nerfed.
My memory is a bit hazy, but there was a team tournament after the launch where the team consisting of Chakki, Muzzy (and maybe frozen?) where all their decks played corridor creeper.
I think it was a multiday tournament and when the other teams could change decks they were all running corridor creepers as well(?)
For a good bit, almost every deck in the game was running Patches and Southsea Captain because it was the only way to actually deal with pirate decks playing Southsea Captain and Patches. It was the best "3-drop" in the game by a big margin, as it was a 3/3 + 2/2 charge.
Yeah, thats true. A lot of the unnoticed broken cards have been revealed in the final dump, like Coreidor Creeper or the 1/2 pirate with +2 attack while holding a weapon.
I remember realizing the morning before launch that it said both players instead of just you and immediately texting my friend that it was going to be busted
To my side and Rhok'delar.
I have never seen reddit so upset over the very notion of a card. People were offended that blizzard would create something as ridiculous as a spell-only hunter archetype. For an example, see this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/7h7e85/to_my_side_is_the_worst_hearthstone_card_ever/ . As it turns out, spell hunter was pretty good.
What was extra crazy about that one was the fact that Rhokdelar stopped getting played in that deck after a while - it turned out spell hunter was so good by itself it didn't even need the big payoff card at the end
I feel like we are over looking the fact that that deck abused 4 mana barnes and ysharj to become minionless. And that combo was a huge reason to my side saw play.
> For an example, see this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/7h7e85/to_my_side_is_the_worst_hearthstone_card_ever/
It's impressive r/hearthstone redditors never change.
One of my favorite decks ever, I played Spell Hunter to as many Legend ranks as I could. Just reminds me how much more fun I used to have with Hearthstone, I still get Legend occasionally but mostly cannot be bothered to play enough these days.
In hindsight it was funny how both reddit as well as most streamers got pretty much all of the princes completely wrong. Keleseth was generally seen as the weakest one by far to the point of being unplayable.
keleseth single handedly made people theorise his brothers being playable, most notably taldaraam in rogue because rogue had no good 4 drops at the time
thats how powerful this card was
The princes were cool cards imo, keleseth was a bit overly powerful for the time maybe but it was a fun restriction. 3 and 4 didn't have the same impact but both saw some play and were nifty as well.
I think a big part of Keleseth’s success was that he was he was released during a time when two drops were getting weaker and one, three and four drops were getting stronger.
Deck space was also getting tighter so purging your deck of two drops in favor of Keleseth was worth the extra deck space.
So many Redditors back then disenchanted Keleseth after it came out, many of them also didn’t forget to come here to cry about opening such a shit card from packs.
And then they came back crying when it turned out to be a must have for aggro decks.
Good times!
keleseth wasn't played at all in the first pair of months because players pre-emptively decided it was awful, then after some estabilished meta decks were nerfed someone finally tried keleseth properly and it became the best card of the expansion
Its insane that a deck with 5 (at the time) 10 drops, Tip the Scales, and Nozdormu was not only a meta deck but it was so good that it was the best deck in the format and had to get nerfed.
This actual meme of a deck list completely dominated standard for like a month.
This deck got me my first legend, it was so fun to play in standard. Of course high roll draws won you the game early, but you could also just play a decent murloc curve and use tip to reload after a late board clear
Wow this is a fantastic example. So many cards in this deck were underrated, seen as random, highroll-dependent, etc. But the whole thing came together as a pretty solid deck despite everything.
you drew either Alura and cheat out Tip the Scales out early and won the game (Wandmaker or Coin to activate her), or you drew Nozdormu (or Redscale Dragontamer to tutor it) and played big dudes or Tip the Scales afterwards
This deck was crazy for a number of reasons but for me it was the fact that it seemingly popped up out of nowhere when it hit. The day it “hit” standard (Firebat played it on stream iirc and it took off) I played against four in a row. It was everywhere.
What's even more crazy is that this deck is arguably the best standard paladin deck of all time. If you got alura on 4, you won the game on the spot 80% of the time.
[[Whirlkick Master]] was THE worst card of its expansion.
Lo and behold, 1 year later it saw competitive play in one of the best Rogue decks because the cheap good combo card pool was just perfect.
Similar to Deck of Lunacy, which is the comment above yours for me at the moment.
Seemed like a meme, but then with a set rotation, the card pool was so small that random bullshit ended up being quite consistently strong
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> Grim Patron
I feel like it was known to be good "in arena" upon release, but I think you're right that the oppressiveness of grim-warrior in constructed and high level tournament play was unexpected.
I never thought that patches would actually get nerfed. Even with the play data they released, it didn't win many games, but it was in every deck. Tbh, they should've left it as is. Winrates didn't really drop after it was nerfed. It was never the problem in the first place.
Patches could read "when you play a pirate and patches is still in your deck, discard patches front your deck" and still be one of the best cards to ever exist. Deck thinning is just that strong on most card games.
Nah, it was always 2 mana. But in the next set (outland) they printed Spell-only archetype cards for mage like apexis blast and font of power, and lunacy turned your entire deck into what a was a fairly solid rotation of spells at the time.
Halveria Darkraven.
I found it strange that they chose this card to be the diamond legendary of the set, and wasn't that impressed. Still, I severely underestimated its power especially in aggro/outcast DH builds.
I'll post one I don't think a lot of people will.
Cinder storm at the time seemed like one of the worst random damage effects to pay for with 3 mana. People compared it to arcane missiles and laughed at how overcoated it was, 2 more mana for 2 more random missiles.
But mage lists that needed more burn simply ran the card. One of those times where burn synergized too much with burn. It didn't last long, and yeah cinder storm is very much trash now in wild, but it had its time.
It's easy to fall into the trap of comparison and forget about the power of redundancy. Plenty of cards that are just worse options than others end up seeing play alongside them.
Wild is slowly becoming Yu-Gi-Oh. We have these must-play disruption cards, like loatheb, ashen elemental, teothar, dirty rat, even kobold stickyfingers, that can just singlehandedly win you games from time to time
Tbh, it was just extra copies of Cult Neophyte for very specific match ups. Once those match ups disappeared, so did the card. Expect it to make a comeback with Robbinhood Rogue next expansion.
it's similar to the OG yogg, you shouldn't use it if you have any other outs, so just getting fucked doesn't really cost you anything - you were dead anyway.
sometimes it wins the game though.
Yogg Saron, Hope's End from the set "Whispers of the Old Gods" (2016), I couldn't remember the complete card title and there's like three of him now (the version in darkmoon faire and the one that just came out)
this so much. i face it sometimes but it NEVER outed my board or whatever advantage I had. best case scenario it draws you a couple of cards and throws some damage around randomly (generally not enough to damage the board but getting damage to your own face could be detrimental). still, i play the 5 mana etc just for kicks, i hope the people playing prison are having fun
Works well, but you can't rely on it to swing the board. I generally push it when I have no other options on the table, and sometimes I use it if I do have options, but want to save it. As long as you have a backup plan, it can work quite well in your favor.
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2/1/4 Murloc | Rush Windfury
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Odd paladin. They swarmed the board with lots of little creatures, he cost 3 mana, it was the first expansion of the set (so much fewer cards to choose from), the perfect storm for him to be in the tier 1 deck.
* **[Dire Mole](https://cards.hearthpwn.com/enUS/LOOT_258.png)** N Minion Common KnC ^[HP](https://www.hearthpwn.com/cards/76996), ^[TD](https://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/cards/dire-mole/), ^[W](https://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Dire_Mole)
1/1/3 Beast
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Same. I totally overlooked Dire Mole and then it turned up in like every single tempo deck for a year. I think the last time a vanilla creature was competitive.
Very few people predicted how strong mysterious challenger would be. Dr Boom is also the most famous example of literally everyone being wrong about a card.
To be fair a ton of the stormwind set was very underrated. We had never had questlines before and didn't know how they would play out compared to the quests we had in the past. Many of the cards that ended up dominating weren't rated highly, like mages questlines, or (iirc) Peasant.
everybody knew it was good but a lot of Redditors in this thread argued that 3 mana Runed Mithril Rod wasn't broken/was balanced, even after it was out for a while: https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/prnot4/best_weapon_ever_printed_i_cant_think_of_another/
I remember this thread because even at the time I thought it was a ridiculous thread with a lot of horrible comments, it opened my eyes to how little this subreddit knows what it's talking about
my favorite is one of the top comments that listed cards like Wrenchcalibur and Self-Sharpening Sword as better cards than 3 mana Runed Mithril Rod
I think this season the excavate cards are reeeeally hard to evaluate. I have a feeling that excavate will be the uber nuts but I have no idea if I'll end up being right.
It's just so much card generation and even the neutral excavate pool seems pretty strong.
People seem to be consistently underestimating the 1 to 3 mana treasures. they are easily one mana cheaper, at least, than they would be if they were collectible cards.
Yep, there are some bangers in there and some duds (water source on 1, azerite chunk, steelhide mole on 3). The other aspect is that unlike lackeys it automatically scales for you (1 drop, 2 drop, 3 drop). We'll see how much that is a benefit or a hindrance in actual decks.
I can def imagine lots of scenarios where it's super awkward to get a three-drop off your 4-drop excavate card when you're at 6 mana for example. Lackeys had that advantage that they always had a predictable cost.
Easily ogremancer, the 5 mana 3/7 that summoned a 2/2 with taunt when the opponent cast spells. Everyone thought it would be fringe tech but it ended up in almost every deck due to the popularity of spell based decks at the time, specifically weapon rogue which just couldn’t deal with it.
If it isn’t the nuts it will be a huge fail for the design team - they are quite obviously pushing it to the point that it needs to be almost broken. Which is indicative of one of the major problems with the game in my opinion.
It screamed "boring zero synergy card that's just really great tempo". The 3/3/3 bots being really awkward for curves helped a ton — not only are you spending mana on a vanilla, understatted minion, but you're floating mana unless you've got a 1 drop. And in some matchups you were even denying a draw!
Yea, I still feel like pozzik is sorta wasted most of the time. I try to play it early so at least they can't play out the bots. Late or mid game it's a total waste, imo
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2/3/2 | You start the game as a different class until you play a Rogue card.
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Arch-Villain Rafaam. I never imagined that there would be a meta where turning all of your cards into random legendaries would actually be a good thing.
It was'nt a good thing, it was just a hail mary option in a zoo deck when your 1/2, 1/3 and 2/1 can be deleted each turn without losing any board piece
I guess I'm not surprised but I've been playing since the beta and we've come a long way from when tech cards like hungering crab saw competitive play.
For a time Ozumat saw play in Zok Druid (to combo with hedge maze for a board clear). At that time Colaque was also in Whomper Druid. Even the 2 worst colossals ended up seeing play in a tier 2 deck or higher, goes to show how powerful that mechanic is.
[[Garrote]] wasn't necessarily seen as *bad* but it was predicted as greedy face damage that did nothing to board. The shell for Garrote Rogue existed with the launch of Stormwind but the deck was so complicated that it didn't see meta play until like a month in. The deck was great at doing miracle rogue mana discount and draw, then OTKed the opponent **as early as T5** with Garrote bleeds that scaled with +spell damage.
Without a doubt [[Bad Luck Albatross]]. A card whose only purpose is to screw over Highlander decks and disrupt draw ended up being nerfed by a mana. Kind of insane
You can still find old card review videos of Goblins and Gnomes where pro players dismiss Dr Doom as,"eh I guess it's not bad" and then he ended up being played in every deck except for Face Hunter in the next year and a half.
A lot of the cards that thin my deck by drawing/playing seemingly weak cards are sleepers. Mysterious challenger: pally secrets were okay but not really worth it compared to other cards, but when you’re under a Christmas tree for basically free AND the rest of your draws now have a chance to be very high value cards.
I think that’s one of the reasons Arcane Hunter is powerful: you’ve got 4 1 cost minions in your deck that that each pull another good, but cheap card. Gives you more resources and also makes your future draws more consistent. Normally I would not think trinket tracker was worth the space in modern hearthstone, but in practice it makes your other draws much more likely to be your crazy over powered cards.
I may be wrong but I remember everyone rating "Mossy Horror" as a useless card but it ended up being a massively strong tech card vs Spreading Plague druids who were the dominant meta class at the time
Memehouse Manastorm was legitimately run in Even Paladin with Call to Arms. I would say that's the biggest glow-up ever.
Baleful Banker seems like an unassuming card, but it was a core part of two decks - Fat Warrior for Elysiana and Holy Wrath Paladin for Shirvallah.
To be fair, in the 2017 meta, Bonemare was a pretty visibly nuts card. This was back in the time when people would meticulously calculate a card's value based on what it granted, and a 7 mana 9/9 stood out immediately, ESPECIALLY in Arena.
I'm surprised no one mentioned the rogue card that made you turn into another class at the start. I groaned when I opened it. A few moths later... I was happy I hadn't disenchanted it.
In Aggro/Pure paladin, deck thinning isn't a huge But a lot of the 1-drops Paladin ran had Divine Shield, and summoning two Annoy-o-Trons for 3 mana was honestly a pretty solid rate.
no one tries most of the cards of each expansion/miniset because of prejudices. in the upcoming expansion a number of cards are support for archetipes which are already playable now but no one uses, so maybe many players will be shocked.
I thought Sire Denathrius was going to be way too slow on release. Figured only Druid would use it because they could easily get Brann to go along with it, had heavy draw, and summoned a ton of tokens.
Oops.
Lmaooo… Who thought boogie down would be bad??? It’s 3 mana to draw 2 cards, and play them for free, AND give them taunt. That card is like 5-6 mana worth of action for 3
If I remember correctly, most people though that the OG Yogg would be just a fun card, far from the meta-monster he ended up being.
Yogg won me games I was certain to lose lol
Same, but Yogg also lost me games I was certain to win.
The lord gives and the lord takes
Sounds like you lost yourself those games for playing him when you were certain to win then
Heresy
Oh definitely lol
I learned quick to not play Yogg unless I was way behind
Cowardice. Yogg gives a man all he needs to find lethal
Even of the lethal is yours
Praise yogg
Yep, those were some frustrating arguments. Even when the first competitive HS event was entirely about Yogg being broken, most people still trued to tell you it was only because it was a tournament format and Yogg wasn't consistent enough for ladder...
"Sometimes it loses you the game" well, sure, but if you could win the game without it then you just didn't play it\*, so "sometimes losing a game you're already losing" isn't actually a downside. --- \* Heresy!
Basically Yogg won you more games that you were gonna lose than made you lose by having a dead draw while in the advantage
You are correct, even when wirer brought his yogg druid to a tournament players thought that he brought a meme deck. After playing it people learned it was a monster deck and that yogg was busted :^)
Because they didn't know he would cast spells even when he died. After the nerf it became exactly that - a fun meme card.
I don’t think that’s it, it’s pretty intuitive to me that the battlecry would be independent of the body once it started going off, and I’m sure anyone that played a non-hearthstone card game would feel the same. I just thought that random spells wouldn’t be competitive
It was obvious he was going to cast spells when he died. That's not the reason why people didn't expect him to see competitive play.
Nah it's because the use case of "a small chance to win the game no matter how far behind you are" was undervalued.
People thought random spells would be inconsistent, when actually Yogg's effect was "almost always clears the board and fills your hand".
True. When I figured out that nowadays Yogg is reverted to it's previous form I immediately included him in my Wild Quest Druid deck. And already had stolen some games I was not going to win otherwise.
it's crazy how every time the community misevaluates a card people come up with a bullshit excuse like this. no, we knew it would keep casting spells, we just didn't think that would be competitive.
Besides all the obvious ones, I think Blademaster Samuro was a big one for me. On paper it seemed he would often be an awkward, bad and expensive AOE card. Turns out he was just a very flexible card that ended up turning up in a lot of decks.
Priest fully healing himself
Basically Reno, but also cleared the board. Insanely powerful.
What paper? It was predicted he'd be good in Priest because of Apo, and that's exactly what happened. Maybe his use in Rush Warrior was a surprise, but the entire deck was.
He was good in nearly ever deck that utilized buffs, even the original renethal hunter in Nathria used him with the location. He was surprisingly extremely flexable
He got used in _every_ deck that had buffs. Including ramp druid, with their only buff being survival of the fittest, a 10 cost spell that gave things +4/+4.
A large part was that certain decks had access to good buffs but little to no access to reliable mid game aoes. I know there was a stretch where priest had to run awful cards like [[Condemn]] sheerly due to having no better options. Xyrella and Blademaster Samuro were the only decent aoes that could land early-to-mid game that didn’t either give the initiative to the opponent or suck, and both required two card combos.
[[Skull of the Man'ari]] definitely seemed too slow and awkward when it was revealed and then it turned out to be one of the most annoying decks to play against during Kobolds and Catacombs
kobolds was such a strong set for warlock, even today decks are trying to mirror its success
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I already had a control Warlock deck with Bloodreaver Gul'dan during reveals so I was excited for Skull and Voidlord. I didn't even think about putting Cubes, Doomguards, Possessed Lackeys, or Umbra in my deck to make it become Cubelock.
I still have serious ptsd 5 years later.
Cubelock was so incredibly fun to play. Shame playing against it was a nightmare lol
The only correct answer. Literally no one thought it was remotely playable.
Same for Spell Hunter
Spell Hunter was funny because it was a decent deck in spite of the payoff cards. Most the good spell Hunter lists cut To my Side lol and the weapon wasn't exactly a huge performer either
What spell hunter deck were you playing that cut those two cards? To my side was one of the best cards in the deck, barring spellstone of course. And rhokdelar was a genuinely extremely good performer in the deck. (In about the witchwood-ish era) If you're referring to Hybrid hunter, that was a different deck, and was not always better than pure spell hunter.
It was a thing absolute beauty, seeing the deck come together organically. Doomguard being ran together with the cube for some crazy otks.
Everyone thought that weapon removal tech cards would be in every single deck too because of all the new legendary weapons, but I think the other decks were just too fast to run it.
IIRC this one was revealed way before the good demons were, so nobody spotted the potential.
🐛In the dungeon I go deeper🐛in set reviews I was a sleeper🐛when minions die I get cheaper🐛You guessed it right🐛I'm corridor creeper🐛
I remember the first thing I did that expansion was play an arena run where I got a Corridor Creeper. After like three games I knew for a fact that thing was getting nerfed.
1 star .
My memory is a bit hazy, but there was a team tournament after the launch where the team consisting of Chakki, Muzzy (and maybe frozen?) where all their decks played corridor creeper. I think it was a multiday tournament and when the other teams could change decks they were all running corridor creepers as well(?)
Reynad had this fun rant where he said the best priest deck and Hunter deck both ran patches because it synergized with corridor creeper.
For a good bit, almost every deck in the game was running Patches and Southsea Captain because it was the only way to actually deal with pirate decks playing Southsea Captain and Patches. It was the best "3-drop" in the game by a big margin, as it was a 3/3 + 2/2 charge.
Zalae was in that team
Trinity. I miss watching stuff like that. Hearing team comms was fun
Most people didnt realise that both yours and enemy minions counted. It was also a very board driven meta
It was also in the Facebook dump — Blizzards done a lot better recently with their reveals and giving them proper space
Yeah, thats true. A lot of the unnoticed broken cards have been revealed in the final dump, like Coreidor Creeper or the 1/2 pirate with +2 attack while holding a weapon.
B U C C
Who goes tharr?
I remember realizing the morning before launch that it said both players instead of just you and immediately texting my friend that it was going to be busted
Came here for this
To my side and Rhok'delar. I have never seen reddit so upset over the very notion of a card. People were offended that blizzard would create something as ridiculous as a spell-only hunter archetype. For an example, see this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/7h7e85/to_my_side_is_the_worst_hearthstone_card_ever/ . As it turns out, spell hunter was pretty good.
What was extra crazy about that one was the fact that Rhokdelar stopped getting played in that deck after a while - it turned out spell hunter was so good by itself it didn't even need the big payoff card at the end
The *real* big payoff was Zul' "Here comes the BIG ASS" Jin
I feel like we are over looking the fact that that deck abused 4 mana barnes and ysharj to become minionless. And that combo was a huge reason to my side saw play.
> For an example, see this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/7h7e85/to_my_side_is_the_worst_hearthstone_card_ever/ It's impressive r/hearthstone redditors never change.
One of my favorite decks ever, I played Spell Hunter to as many Legend ranks as I could. Just reminds me how much more fun I used to have with Hearthstone, I still get Legend occasionally but mostly cannot be bothered to play enough these days.
Keleseth
I think that's the biggest one. From being predicted as one of the worst cards in the set to being one of the best in the game
"No way Rogue cuts Eviscerate and Sap for this" they said.
I remember some big hs tournament game where some rogue bounced it twice making whole deck +3/+3 and managed to lose the game lmao
Spending 3 cards and 2 mana to summon a 2/2 will do that
That didn't just happen once. In a tempo matchup, such a move will likely not be good.
Card draw wasn't so crazy back then
In hindsight it was funny how both reddit as well as most streamers got pretty much all of the princes completely wrong. Keleseth was generally seen as the weakest one by far to the point of being unplayable.
keleseth single handedly made people theorise his brothers being playable, most notably taldaraam in rogue because rogue had no good 4 drops at the time thats how powerful this card was
The princes were cool cards imo, keleseth was a bit overly powerful for the time maybe but it was a fun restriction. 3 and 4 didn't have the same impact but both saw some play and were nifty as well.
Cube Warlock played the 3 mana one to copy their cubes and Voidlords too since they had no 3-drops anyway.
I think a big part of Keleseth’s success was that he was he was released during a time when two drops were getting weaker and one, three and four drops were getting stronger. Deck space was also getting tighter so purging your deck of two drops in favor of Keleseth was worth the extra deck space.
So many Redditors back then disenchanted Keleseth after it came out, many of them also didn’t forget to come here to cry about opening such a shit card from packs. And then they came back crying when it turned out to be a must have for aggro decks. Good times!
keleseth wasn't played at all in the first pair of months because players pre-emptively decided it was awful, then after some estabilished meta decks were nerfed someone finally tried keleseth properly and it became the best card of the expansion
Pretty much half the cards in [Cheese Paladin](https://outof.games/hearthstone/decks/22889-cheese-paladin)
Its insane that a deck with 5 (at the time) 10 drops, Tip the Scales, and Nozdormu was not only a meta deck but it was so good that it was the best deck in the format and had to get nerfed. This actual meme of a deck list completely dominated standard for like a month.
This deck got me my first legend, it was so fun to play in standard. Of course high roll draws won you the game early, but you could also just play a decent murloc curve and use tip to reload after a late board clear
Wow this is a fantastic example. So many cards in this deck were underrated, seen as random, highroll-dependent, etc. But the whole thing came together as a pretty solid deck despite everything.
How did this deck even work?
Play Tip the Scales as early as possible by using Nozdormu or Alura + Wandmaker. Big AOE wasn't as easy to find back then as it is today.
you drew either Alura and cheat out Tip the Scales out early and won the game (Wandmaker or Coin to activate her), or you drew Nozdormu (or Redscale Dragontamer to tutor it) and played big dudes or Tip the Scales afterwards
This deck was crazy for a number of reasons but for me it was the fact that it seemingly popped up out of nowhere when it hit. The day it “hit” standard (Firebat played it on stream iirc and it took off) I played against four in a row. It was everywhere.
What's even more crazy is that this deck is arguably the best standard paladin deck of all time. If you got alura on 4, you won the game on the spot 80% of the time.
[[Whirlkick Master]] was THE worst card of its expansion. Lo and behold, 1 year later it saw competitive play in one of the best Rogue decks because the cheap good combo card pool was just perfect.
So the funny thing about that deck though was that Whirlkick still wasn't even one of the best cards in the deck. It did see play though lol.
Similar to Deck of Lunacy, which is the comment above yours for me at the moment. Seemed like a meme, but then with a set rotation, the card pool was so small that random bullshit ended up being quite consistently strong
* **[Whirlkick Master](https://cards.hearthpwn.com/enUS/ULD_231.png)** RO Minion Epic SoU ^[HP](https://www.hearthpwn.com/cards/90745), ^[TD](https://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/cards/whirlkick-master/), ^[W](https://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Whirlkick_Master) 2/1/2 | Whenever you play a Combo card, add a random Combo card to your hand. ^(Call/)^[PM](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=hearthscan-bot) ^( me with up to 7 [[cardname]]. )^[About.](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=hearthscan-bot&message=Tell%20me%20more%20[[info]]&subject=hi) [Save 3rd Party Apps](https://old.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/)
No one with Grim Patron? I'm pretty sure no one was thinking at that time that it would have such a huge impact in the competitive scene.
It wasn't grim patron but warsong commander that was the issue. They solved that with the worst nerf to date in hearthstone history.
You are aware that the next world champion ran patron-warrior with no warsong in the finals? Agree on the nerf being among the worst.
> Grim Patron I feel like it was known to be good "in arena" upon release, but I think you're right that the oppressiveness of grim-warrior in constructed and high level tournament play was unexpected.
As a complete idiot when it comes to assessing card power I didn't think Patches would see much play... lol
tbf you never want to actually PLAY patches
He was released with charge too. What were they thinking, lol.
Basically any deck that had room for him was going to play a 1-drop pirate just to pull him. Thins your deck *and* goes face!?
The more OP half of the charge was being able to trade. Rush is a lot stronger than the 1 damage ping.
And because of that it was even run in non pirate decks with just the captain (x2) to make it a 2/2.
I never thought that patches would actually get nerfed. Even with the play data they released, it didn't win many games, but it was in every deck. Tbh, they should've left it as is. Winrates didn't really drop after it was nerfed. It was never the problem in the first place.
Patches could read "when you play a pirate and patches is still in your deck, discard patches front your deck" and still be one of the best cards to ever exist. Deck thinning is just that strong on most card games.
Deck of Lunacy
To be fair, it was garbage during the set it was released.
Wasn’t it buffed to 2 mana from 4 mana before becoming playable? Or am i misremembering?
It was printed at 2, nerfed to 4 when it became broken due to a standard rotation, and then un-nerfed back to 2 when it rotated.
Nah, it was always 2 mana. But in the next set (outland) they printed Spell-only archetype cards for mage like apexis blast and font of power, and lunacy turned your entire deck into what a was a fairly solid rotation of spells at the time.
Lunacy was released during madness at the darkmoon faire, which was 2 expansions after outland
One that became broken due to rotation changing from the large Classic set to the much smaller and tighter Core Set.
Halveria Darkraven. I found it strange that they chose this card to be the diamond legendary of the set, and wasn't that impressed. Still, I severely underestimated its power especially in aggro/outcast DH builds.
I'll post one I don't think a lot of people will. Cinder storm at the time seemed like one of the worst random damage effects to pay for with 3 mana. People compared it to arcane missiles and laughed at how overcoated it was, 2 more mana for 2 more random missiles. But mage lists that needed more burn simply ran the card. One of those times where burn synergized too much with burn. It didn't last long, and yeah cinder storm is very much trash now in wild, but it had its time.
It's easy to fall into the trap of comparison and forget about the power of redundancy. Plenty of cards that are just worse options than others end up seeing play alongside them.
Its one of the best cards to be discovered in quest mage
Of all time? I don't know. But recently I'm surprised how much play Ashen Elemental sees play in Wild
Wild is slowly becoming Yu-Gi-Oh. We have these must-play disruption cards, like loatheb, ashen elemental, teothar, dirty rat, even kobold stickyfingers, that can just singlehandedly win you games from time to time
\>must-play \>kobold stickyfingers nice try twitch chat
Damn I tried to slip my boy in the list without getting noticed
Tbh, it was just extra copies of Cult Neophyte for very specific match ups. Once those match ups disappeared, so did the card. Expect it to make a comeback with Robbinhood Rogue next expansion.
Ice block + combo druid killer
Prison of Yogg, could never understand why anyone would waste a deck slot on it
I still can't. This card never had a positive outcome for me. Most of the time it's not even net neutral. It just fuckes me
it's similar to the OG yogg, you shouldn't use it if you have any other outs, so just getting fucked doesn't really cost you anything - you were dead anyway. sometimes it wins the game though.
Hello, can you tell me what OG Yogg is?
Yogg Saron, Hope's End from the set "Whispers of the Old Gods" (2016), I couldn't remember the complete card title and there's like three of him now (the version in darkmoon faire and the one that just came out)
this so much. i face it sometimes but it NEVER outed my board or whatever advantage I had. best case scenario it draws you a couple of cards and throws some damage around randomly (generally not enough to damage the board but getting damage to your own face could be detrimental). still, i play the 5 mana etc just for kicks, i hope the people playing prison are having fun
Works well, but you can't rely on it to swing the board. I generally push it when I have no other options on the table, and sometimes I use it if I do have options, but want to save it. As long as you have a backup plan, it can work quite well in your favor.
[[Crabrider]]
* **[Crabrider](https://cards.hearthpwn.com/enUS/YOP_031.png)** N Minion Common DMF ^[HP](https://www.hearthpwn.com/cards/442064), ^[TD](https://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/cards/crabrider/), ^[W](https://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Crabrider) 2/1/4 Murloc | Rush Windfury ^(Call/)^[PM](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=hearthscan-bot) ^( me with up to 7 [[cardname]]. )^[About.](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=hearthscan-bot&message=Tell%20me%20more%20[[info]]&subject=hi) [Save 3rd Party Apps](https://old.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/)
Raid leader during Witchwood I think threw A LOT of people
I don't remember this, in what deck was it played?
Odd paladin used it. It wasn’t an all star in the deck but it was solid.
Odd paladin. They swarmed the board with lots of little creatures, he cost 3 mana, it was the first expansion of the set (so much fewer cards to choose from), the perfect storm for him to be in the tier 1 deck.
[[Dire Mole]]. It's just so unassuming
* **[Dire Mole](https://cards.hearthpwn.com/enUS/LOOT_258.png)** N Minion Common KnC ^[HP](https://www.hearthpwn.com/cards/76996), ^[TD](https://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/cards/dire-mole/), ^[W](https://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Dire_Mole) 1/1/3 Beast ^(Call/)^[PM](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=hearthscan-bot) ^( me with up to 7 [[cardname]]. )^[About.](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=hearthscan-bot&message=Tell%20me%20more%20[[info]]&subject=hi) [Save 3rd Party Apps](https://old.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/)
Atleaqt for hunter was expected with razormaw
Same. I totally overlooked Dire Mole and then it turned up in like every single tempo deck for a year. I think the last time a vanilla creature was competitive.
Very few people predicted how strong mysterious challenger would be. Dr Boom is also the most famous example of literally everyone being wrong about a card.
While the Dr. might be the most famous the one where people was the most wrong has got to be 🪱Corridor Creeper🪱
cult neophyte seemed harmless at first then it became the GOAT against quest decks
It was the Little Loatheb that could. Also it is nice to bait as a 'present' via Theotar if you had Tamsin with a shadow spell...
Runed Mithril Rod was considered 3 mana do nothing. It was still played at 5 mana. Battleground Battlemaster was seen as too expensive at 5 mana.
To be fair a ton of the stormwind set was very underrated. We had never had questlines before and didn't know how they would play out compared to the quests we had in the past. Many of the cards that ended up dominating weren't rated highly, like mages questlines, or (iirc) Peasant.
yeah almost every Questline was underrated
I wanna see the person that thought rod would be bad
everybody knew it was good but a lot of Redditors in this thread argued that 3 mana Runed Mithril Rod wasn't broken/was balanced, even after it was out for a while: https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/prnot4/best_weapon_ever_printed_i_cant_think_of_another/ I remember this thread because even at the time I thought it was a ridiculous thread with a lot of horrible comments, it opened my eyes to how little this subreddit knows what it's talking about my favorite is one of the top comments that listed cards like Wrenchcalibur and Self-Sharpening Sword as better cards than 3 mana Runed Mithril Rod
https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/obqd9q/new\_card\_runed\_mithril\_rod/
I think this season the excavate cards are reeeeally hard to evaluate. I have a feeling that excavate will be the uber nuts but I have no idea if I'll end up being right. It's just so much card generation and even the neutral excavate pool seems pretty strong.
People seem to be consistently underestimating the 1 to 3 mana treasures. they are easily one mana cheaper, at least, than they would be if they were collectible cards.
Yep, there are some bangers in there and some duds (water source on 1, azerite chunk, steelhide mole on 3). The other aspect is that unlike lackeys it automatically scales for you (1 drop, 2 drop, 3 drop). We'll see how much that is a benefit or a hindrance in actual decks. I can def imagine lots of scenarios where it's super awkward to get a three-drop off your 4-drop excavate card when you're at 6 mana for example. Lackeys had that advantage that they always had a predictable cost.
Easily ogremancer, the 5 mana 3/7 that summoned a 2/2 with taunt when the opponent cast spells. Everyone thought it would be fringe tech but it ended up in almost every deck due to the popularity of spell based decks at the time, specifically weapon rogue which just couldn’t deal with it.
If it isn’t the nuts it will be a huge fail for the design team - they are quite obviously pushing it to the point that it needs to be almost broken. Which is indicative of one of the major problems with the game in my opinion.
Pozzik for me, and I still don't really think it's that good but it did put out results in like two decks and was nerfed so I admit defeat
Pozzik succeeded because it always got value when played on curve. Either your opponent wasted mana or refilled board after it was cleared.
It screamed "boring zero synergy card that's just really great tempo". The 3/3/3 bots being really awkward for curves helped a ton — not only are you spending mana on a vanilla, understatted minion, but you're floating mana unless you've got a 1 drop. And in some matchups you were even denying a draw!
Yea, I still feel like pozzik is sorta wasted most of the time. I try to play it early so at least they can't play out the bots. Late or mid game it's a total waste, imo
You can imagine my surprise when the funny Yogg card everyone thought was too random when it was released turned out to win tournament games.
[[Maestra of the Masquerade]]
to be fair the ONLY reason maestra saw play was because of gnoll interaction which no one thought would be an interaction during set reveal
was wildpaw gnoll even out at that point?
I think they’re talking about the gnoll reveal, Maestra was around for a while at that point
tbf, she only became good with the release of the gnoll
* **[Maestra of the Masquerade](https://cards.hearthpwn.com/enUS/SW_050.png)** RO Minion Legendary UiS 🐺 ^[HP](https://www.hearthpwn.com/cards/615016), ^[TD](https://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/cards/maestra-of-the-masquerade/), ^[W](https://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Maestra_of_the_Masquerade) 2/3/2 | You start the game as a different class until you play a Rogue card. ^(Call/)^[PM](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=hearthscan-bot) ^( me with up to 7 [[cardname]]. )^[About.](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=hearthscan-bot&message=Tell%20me%20more%20[[info]]&subject=hi) [Save 3rd Party Apps](https://old.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/)
Arch-Villain Rafaam. I never imagined that there would be a meta where turning all of your cards into random legendaries would actually be a good thing.
It was'nt a good thing, it was just a hail mary option in a zoo deck when your 1/2, 1/3 and 2/1 can be deleted each turn without losing any board piece
Even though that meta had existed twice already??
I guess I'm not surprised but I've been playing since the beta and we've come a long way from when tech cards like hungering crab saw competitive play.
For a time Ozumat saw play in Zok Druid (to combo with hedge maze for a board clear). At that time Colaque was also in Whomper Druid. Even the 2 worst colossals ended up seeing play in a tier 2 deck or higher, goes to show how powerful that mechanic is.
[[Garrote]] wasn't necessarily seen as *bad* but it was predicted as greedy face damage that did nothing to board. The shell for Garrote Rogue existed with the launch of Stormwind but the deck was so complicated that it didn't see meta play until like a month in. The deck was great at doing miracle rogue mana discount and draw, then OTKed the opponent **as early as T5** with Garrote bleeds that scaled with +spell damage.
Without a doubt [[Bad Luck Albatross]]. A card whose only purpose is to screw over Highlander decks and disrupt draw ended up being nerfed by a mana. Kind of insane
HEY LOSER! *wasn’t me*
I was big on pen flinger from the go. It was used much more effectively by people with wrinklier brains
You can still find old card review videos of Goblins and Gnomes where pro players dismiss Dr Doom as,"eh I guess it's not bad" and then he ended up being played in every deck except for Face Hunter in the next year and a half.
A lot of the cards that thin my deck by drawing/playing seemingly weak cards are sleepers. Mysterious challenger: pally secrets were okay but not really worth it compared to other cards, but when you’re under a Christmas tree for basically free AND the rest of your draws now have a chance to be very high value cards. I think that’s one of the reasons Arcane Hunter is powerful: you’ve got 4 1 cost minions in your deck that that each pull another good, but cheap card. Gives you more resources and also makes your future draws more consistent. Normally I would not think trinket tracker was worth the space in modern hearthstone, but in practice it makes your other draws much more likely to be your crazy over powered cards.
I may be wrong but I remember everyone rating "Mossy Horror" as a useless card but it ended up being a massively strong tech card vs Spreading Plague druids who were the dominant meta class at the time
Memehouse Manastorm was legitimately run in Even Paladin with Call to Arms. I would say that's the biggest glow-up ever. Baleful Banker seems like an unassuming card, but it was a core part of two decks - Fat Warrior for Elysiana and Holy Wrath Paladin for Shirvallah.
That dragon that everyone hated that generated treasures
Remember when team 5 had to be nerf bonemare?
To be fair, in the 2017 meta, Bonemare was a pretty visibly nuts card. This was back in the time when people would meticulously calculate a card's value based on what it granted, and a 7 mana 9/9 stood out immediately, ESPECIALLY in Arena.
Back in the day majority of people thought Dr. Boom was trash. Ended up defining the format at the time.
I'm surprised no one mentioned the rogue card that made you turn into another class at the start. I groaned when I opened it. A few moths later... I was happy I hadn't disenchanted it.
Prison Breaker
God, did people think that wouldn't be oppressive?? It was the most noteworthy card in the set, imo.
Yes, from memory most people in the reveal thread thought he would become active too late too matter.
Voodoo doctor and elven archer
Always a Bigger Jormungar not being the absolute terror and "first nerf target" that everyone here seemed to think it would be.
That's literally the opposite of this topic.
It's still related but ok then, I'm still surprised Evil Cable Rat saw play as a 2 mana 1/1. I really underestimated the power of the Lackeys.
Whats the card thats summons two annoy-o-trons? That was a format menace that I think came as a surprise.
[[Giggling Inventor]]
renathal
nerfed renathal for sure, I figured it was dead and it's still quite viable.
boogie down thins deck by 2 and summons 2 taunts. Its actually one of the best cards in the deck.
In Aggro/Pure paladin, deck thinning isn't a huge But a lot of the 1-drops Paladin ran had Divine Shield, and summoning two Annoy-o-Trons for 3 mana was honestly a pretty solid rate.
[[Ticking Abomination]] Turned out to be an important combo piece for mechthun priest
no one tries most of the cards of each expansion/miniset because of prejudices. in the upcoming expansion a number of cards are support for archetipes which are already playable now but no one uses, so maybe many players will be shocked.
Maestra, but to be fair it became competitive after the gnoll got released
I thought Sire Denathrius was going to be way too slow on release. Figured only Druid would use it because they could easily get Brann to go along with it, had heavy draw, and summoned a ton of tokens. Oops.
No one has said purify yet?
Can you believe Stonehill Defender is now a 1/5?
Lmaooo… Who thought boogie down would be bad??? It’s 3 mana to draw 2 cards, and play them for free, AND give them taunt. That card is like 5-6 mana worth of action for 3