The end of the Year of the Phoenix is around the corner, and with it, Rise of Shadows, Saviors of Uldum and Descent of Dragons will leave the Standard format to join Wild. Therefore, it is time to look back and see what we're going to leave behind in the next few days.
For this exact purpose, we present you a series of articles in which the staff of Out Of Cards will share with everyone the cards we'll miss and the ones we'll be glad to not face anymore.
This time, we're taking a look at Rise of Shadows and what we're definitely not going to miss the most from that set - enjoy!
Aesan - Conjurer's Calling
There is a sense of relief with Conjurer going away, especially as it's moving back to its dreaded 3 mana cost. Whenever that card was freely usable, the Twinspell mechanic made it feel busted. If you could cheat out a huge minion early or cheaply enough and then high roll on your transforming, that had the ability to seal games right there. And to some extent just like with Evolve Shaman, the lucky or unlucky rolls were what often determined the outcomes.
At least there was one funny element to it: back then when everyone piloted Mage and tried to use it on 2 mana minions as their only way to survive in hopeless situations through a lucky Doomsayer. Of course more than 95% of the time these attempts were bound to fail.
Avalon - Wrenchcalibur
I'm sure I am not the only one who hated Bomb Warrior with passion through all its existence in Standard. While I'm glad they experimented with a totally new concept (there were only a few cards with the same effect before, like Iron Juggernaut, but never with enough synergy to build a deck around them), the archetype was so obnoxious and unfun to play against - face damage and explosive draws at the same time, with no alternative other than racing them down, which isn't very practical when your opponent's deck is filled with removals.
Moreover, it was a hard counter to many different strategies: Highlander decks, Pure Paladin, draw heavy archetypes (either aggro or combo) - all of this while not teching specific cards like Bad Luck Albatross, but following their own gameplay. Just a hard no for me.
BloodMefist - Ray of Frost
I despise the Freeze mechanic in Hearthstone. I think there is a time and place where it can work well, such as in controlled and conditional amounts, but Ray of Frost enabled way more stalling than I enjoy. In the past ~2 years this card has been the source of great grief and frustration whenever I played against Mage. Sorcerer's Apprentice makes it free, Magic Trick finds it easily, and anything that randomly generates it lets the opponent stall the board for cheap. I cannot wait until Ray of Frost, Frost Nova, and Blizzard will all rotate.
Demonxz95 - Mass Resurrection
To be fair, my hatred of Mass Resurrection is not really the card's fault on its own. Instead, it's what the card represents as a whole: resurrection gameplay that isn't particularly fun or interesting to deal with. As soon as a wall of Taunts is risen up, the game is basically just either "clear the board or bust" or "burn through the Taunts or bust". And it's not fun. I don't think this is necessarily the fault of the resurrection mechanic itself, but rather how possible it is to exploit it. This is arguably the root cause of those problems, so I think we'll all be glad to not deal with it anymore (for now).
FrostyFeet - Mana Cyclone
I can't believe no one else mentioned it yet. I'm somewhat against random creation that can't really be played around due to either the variety of potential created cards or the sheer amount of the cards created and Mana Cyclone ticks both boxes. Watching your opponent's hand transforming from low-value small spell spam into a 6-card value mystery was definitely not something that I relished, so at least I can now enjoy Standard without it - the card will still return to haunt me in the already-annoying Quest Mages in Wild though.
OldManSanns - Archivist Elysiana and Zayle, Shadow Cloak
One of the major themes about Hearthstone (and CCGs in general) is that running out of cards is bad. Perhaps you have a last-minute trump play circa Mecha'thun or Chef Nomi, but part of the reason cards like Gnomeferatu exist is to reinforce the significance of avoiding fatigue. Well, Archivist Elysiana threw all that out the window. This could perhaps be forgiven if the cards she generated had some greater purpose like with Togwaggle's Scheme or Baleful Banker, but the cards Elysiana adds to your deck are essentially random crap that makes you play as if you're in Arena. She really only serves one function: preventing a player from losing to fatigue. At the height of her popularity, there were Control Warrior decks that featured nothing but her, a handful of value-generation cards like Dr. Boom, Mad Genius, and 20+ control cards - their primary win condition was to literally drag out the game until their opponent died to fatigue. It never felt good to win because of her and it felt awful to lose because of her: Standard will be better off without her next month.
Unlike other cards in this list, this inclusion has nothing to do with this card's effect on the meta. The major reason I bought The Dalaran Heist adventure was for the free copy of Zayle, Shadow Cloak. I already loved playing Whizbang the Wonderful, and Zayle essentially promised a similar experience with a smaller library of decks and new cards. Sounds strictly better, right? And for a few months, it was -- until Saviors of Uldum came out and Zayle's decklists remained unchanged. Zayle quickly became obsolete as new cards were added to standard but its decklists remained unchanged. There was a single update in Year of the Drago, but that was really just to account for rotation and even at the time, the "new" decks were all fairly underwhelming. And to make matters worse: Zayle is protected against disenchanting, so you can't even try to recoup some of your investment. This is literally a card that no one will miss as it fades to obscurity.
sule - Convincing Infiltrator
GrEeTiNgS, FeLlOw HuMaN...
I was never a fan of this unit - there were too many ways for Priest to abuse its Deathrattle or resurrect it that playing non-Control lists against decks like Res Priest felt very swingy and based on the question "Did you kill them before they could draw the pieces?" It was never an overwhelmingly powerful card, but the times that my opponents got it to work were painful enough for me to breathe a sigh of relief that I won't be seeing this "fellow human" for at least a while.
Comments
I'm surprised nobody mentioned Catrina Muerte but the people that dislike the other two cards (Mass Resurrection and Convincing Infiltrator) are probably happy that she's gone. I certainly won't miss her. I agree with most cards here. I'm gonna miss some of them but we need a fresh start. There are a few other cards that i was expecting to see here like Heistbaron Togwaggle (or rather Wondrous Wand and its insane mana cheating) and Omega Devastator (disappeared completely after rotation just like Archivist Elysiana but it was despised before that).
I don't get the hate towards Wrenchcalibur, because similar card exist like Bad Luck Albatross.
To me, Bomb deck has it's up and down, but most case is the uncertain draw on bomb itself.
Plus it allows me to counter hyper aggro Rogue who burns it's deck like crazy, where in some cases depleted it's deck at turn 7-8.
But I did agree on the part where Convincing Infiltrator needs to go.
The big difference between bombs and the albatross is that bombs punish you for drawing cards while the albatross incentivises it. With bombs, it's very often the case you cannot win just because the bombs will kill you before you draw enough cards to win with yourself, so it's just demoralising if you are playing a class that cannot heal much.
I'm not completely against the bomb archetype, as I enjoyed playing a janky version back in Boomsday when there wasn't actually any synergy for it, but Wrenchcalibur meant it crossed the threshold from silly to frustrating.
I'm also among the few who strangely enjoyed the nervous anticipation of Bomb Warrior, even though I understand it's a divisive playstyle.
Convincing Infiltrator plus Grave Rune annoyed the hell out of me, and I'm glad they're both going. Too bad Zayle will still be in my collection, undustable like Marin the Fox.
*looks at Mage's new freezing effects*
Sorry, Bloodmefist!
But Mage cards are fun! I will miss all of them.
About others, yep. Good riddance to both Uninteractive Warrior and Resurrect Priest (which is just purest cancer imaginable).
All good choices. I'd add Magic Trick and Chef Nomi. Magic Trick is self-explanatory, especially when it was generated off something else or used to buff Mozaki. I am decidedly sour on Neeru Fireblade and the entire concept of mill (not even limited to self-mill) Warlock, and I found Nomi horribly unfun to play with when it worked (probably not since Seance rotated). Drawing your entire deck simply isn't that difficult if that's your goal, and refilling the board 3 or 4 times was an enormous payoff. I never minded Archivist Elysiana, but I get the criticism and generally agree. The game breaks down when fatigue isn't a factor, or similarly, when drawing through your deck isn't punished. By that definition combo Demon Hunter and Stealth/Weapon Rogue are also problematic. If draw or generation has no cost, the game becomes unfun. Cards like Nomi incentivized a bad way to play.
I agree with Mass Resurrection. Not the cards fault but rather the tools we are given to counter such plays. Blizzard prints "tech" cards like Zul'Drak Ritualist or Flight Master. These cards mess with their resurrect pool. Sounds great on paper however summoning minions for your opponent against aggressive decks is just a death sentence. Unlike say Acidic Swamp Ooze that just becomes a generic 3/2 against non-weapon classes, it doesn't kill you faster. So then those cards are just sitting unused because it's not worth it. Devolve and Hex work too but those can be dangerous in large quantities. I'm sure we'll find better solutions in the future but while Mass Resurrection was in standard we just didn't have a good one. Trust me I tried with Terrorguard Escapee. Sometimes it worked and others it was just "you have a 29 card deck".
Also my other pet peeve Zayle, Shadow Cloak. He and Whizbang the Wonderful should have been Heroes not cards. There should just always exist a "choose this hero for a random deck" option. People want it and it's a great way to start. While I love the mini game of deck building I know others who just want to click and play much like battlegrounds. I think that play mode, at the very least in casual, should have that option always. It's a great way to show new people what a class or current deck feels like. This is especially true before your new/returning players pick what deck they get for free. Let them try it out.
Love the list! I know you're not able to hit every annoying card in a list like this, but I'm just curious how high Aranasi Broodmother and Magic Carpet rank for others here? I've always hated how it feels to play against these two, even if you know you can deal with them (and even though Carpet hasn't been good for a while).
I think that Carpet was largely forgotten for the past year, as you say, since Zoo moved towards other directions. Probably why it's not as fresh on people's minds.
I don't think Broodmother was ever particularly problematic, but I could see how it could be considered a nuisance if you experienced a larger amount of Plot Twist Warlocks.
No Evil Miscreant? Don't know why Archavist and Zayle were mentioned. Archavist hasn't been in the meta for over a year since it was nerfed.
Sounds like you didn't try to watch Grandmasters during Rise of Shadows, back then Specialist was the format (1 class, three decks, two of which can only differ 5 cards from the primary list). You had plenty of Archivist Elysiana Dr. Boom, Mad Genius mirrors that went on for 45 minutes per game, which were usually purely decided by Archivist Elysiana and Dr. Boom, Mad Genius RNG. And then you could have up to 5 games per series. This single card made the entire Hearthstone Esports format unwachtable.
I'd argue the Specialist format itself was the main problem. Elysiana compounded it, but while having long control mirrors once in a while is fine, the problem was having basically the same game repeat up to 5 times. With or without Elysiana, that takes way too long.
Now that's a throwback I didn't expect to find. Oh, the painful memories of repetitive matches.
OldManSanns actually mentioned why in his commentary - she threw the whole fatigue game out of the window.
Yeah I seen their reasoning I just think there were better candidates to choose. I understand its all personal opinion though.
Yeah, precisely: this is an opinion article, which means the cards were picked purely based on people's feelings. There aren't right answers, as well as there aren't any wrong answers.
For example, there's a certain minion from Descent of Dragons that one member of the team chose as a card he won't miss, while another one chose the exact same one saying he'll miss it. I think see how different people have different tastes in the game is quite neat if you ask me.
You just made my day a little better!
So what I'm reading is... "Yay.... Mage gets shafted!" the only thing on that list I'm glad to see go is Wrenchcalibur