Hello everyone! Have you ever played a game of Hearthstone, felt good about the opening turns, and then randomly lost because of a turn 3 10/10? What about having your opponent dead for multiple turns only to be forced to wait turn after turn only to end up losing to 30 points of burn? Have you ever stared down a full board of two or three power minions on turn 3? Don’t worry because you are not alone! These types of games are particularly unfun, and with that in mind here are my top five (ish) cards that cannot rotate soon enough for me.
Honorable Mention: Raza the Chained
While not as big a problem by himself, recently Raza has become an integral part of the top tier combo-esque priest deck. When combined with Shadowreaper Anduin, it adds two damage worth of value to every card played and creates some absolutely impossible situations to get out of. The problem card is probably Anduin here but I don’t think either piece is overpowered by themselves. Raza is the older card here and the problem is “free,” so Raza gets the nod over Anduin.
Number 5: Primordial Glyph / Shadow Vision
Ok, ok, it’s kind of cheating to have two cards here but these two are very similar in application. Shadow Visions is the less efficient of the two, costing two mana to play the spell itself and not granting a cost reduction to the new copy but it’s also entirely controllable since it depends on the contents of your deck. Not actually a problem but the discover mechanic combined with the potential to be a 3rd and 4th copy of a spell makes some otherwise inconsistent decks more playable than they probably ought to be.
Glyph is the more random of the two but the cost reduction allows for some (potentially) nutty turns later on. Mage has a large range of spells but since it’s a discover effect you’ll usually be able to find something at least reasonably usable. The issue with Glyph is when the mage player finds an extremely high impact spell (more on this later).
Number 4: Patches the Pirate
Yarrrrr! I’ll be completely honest here and note that a big portion of the frustration from this card is drawing it yourself! The card is too powerful not to play in a deck with any number of pirates and has caused a lot of decks to simply add less efficient pirates into their aggro decks because of the added power level from Patches. He might look unassuming but he’s the most powerful card from Mean Streets of Gadgetzan as he is everything aggro decks want: free, minion, card advantage, efficiency. You know that a card is powerful when the weapon-less Druids, Warlocks, and Mages were willing to run pirates (a weapon-centric tribe) just to take advantage of the value Patches offers.
Number 3: Barnes
Oh how I despise this card. There was a large chunk of time when ladder was dominated by Barnes plus Y’Shaarj, Rage Unbound decks. Getting 14/15 of stats spread across three bodies by turn 4 (or earlier depending on Coin or other acceleration *cough* Innervate *cough*) usually meant game over, and the extremely random nature of Barnes made him extremely frustrating to play with or against. While he’s mostly dropped out of the current metagame the card’s power level plus its incredibly high variance and an almost complete inability to play around it makes for an extremely annoying, extremely random card.
Number 2: JADE. IDOL.
Yes, I know druid just got a pretty heavy nerfhammer in the last couple months but that hasn’t stopped Jade druid from being a tier 1 powerhouse. It remains one of the most banned decks in tournament play, it maintains a powerful ladder presence, and even with nerfs and meta cards being printed almost specifically to fight it it’s still almost impossible to beat in a long game. Other Jade cards are highly used but the somewhat unassuming Jade Idol is the one that creates all the problems and is a big piece of what makes fighting Jade druid such a problem.
Number 1: Our winner, and still champion: Ice Block
This card. I don’t know what to even say about this card. It virtually guarantees that you get another turn, lets you set up freely as long as it’s up, and lets you completely ignore your opponent’s gameplan, all for the low, low price of three mana at any turn along the way. This card has been the cornerstone of the vast majority of all mage combo decks and the meta cards against it have been so weak (and other secrets have been so relatively nonexistent) that playing a card to counter Ice Block on ladder has mostly been a recipe for less success. Usually the way to beat Ice Block is to aggro them out as fast as possible but if that doesn’t work your only hope is that they can’t figure out a way to kill you in the next few turns. Additional Ice Blocks being randomly generated by other cards (Babbling Book, Cabalist’s Tome, Shimmering Tempest, or Kabal Courier) can cause games to devolve even further. Another thing to note is that this is the only card on the list that is a Classic set card: it technically will never rotate unless it gets moved to the Hall of Fame (which has been strongly hinted at but not yet confirmed). As such, even the card’s rotation is causing minor frustrations! Add all of these factors together and we have my #1 card that cannot rotate out soon enough for me.
Think I missed anything? Any cards you’re looking forward to when the rotation happens? Leave a comment!
