The Hearthstone Cards We're Going to Miss When Year of the Dragons Ends - Rastakhan's Rumble Edition

While it has never been apart of a strong deck, one of my favorite cards from the year of the raven is Gonk, the Raptor. While an OK minion on it's own (and one of the few ways druid can clear a board), he spirals out of control when multiple copies of him hit the field. Every time you hero kills something, you get an extra attack for every Gonk on the field, creating a very fun albeit bad OTK deck that is reliant on hitting the proper cost reductions and also not taking a ton of damage to ensure you don't kill yourself when comboing off (which is something that has happened to me more than I'd like to admit). Despite the faults of the card, there is something so satisfying about seeing your hero get a concussion beating up every minion on the enemy's side of the board, only to then whack the enemy five to six times to finish them off.

The following list is a variant of the normal druid quest, using that to cover the awkward mid-game turns before you are able to set up the OTK. The deck plays like a normal quest druid deck as well, control the board with Oasis Surgers, drawing your deck with Crystal Merchants and overall just making sure you do not fall too far behind when setting up the OTK. Given how well you draw, it is certainly possible to just roll over someone in typical quest druid fashion by creating a ton of large minions and have the opponent be unable to remove them.

Mass Hysteria is a card that I want to point out for a variety of reasons. We're all aware that Priest doesn’t have a good AoE in the evergreen set, and they absolutely need one. I believe Mass Hysteria is the perfect card to put there.

I really like this card. Despite the fact that it could slot easily into so many Priest decks and saw tons of play, the card never felt overpowered to me. It is based on randomness, but it uses the randomness in a good way. It found its way into the perfect place in terms of balance, it's useful, and it's flavorful. It will be a shame when this card rotates out because I believe the card has been nailed "just right" everywhere. I for one, would like to see this added to the evergreen set.

The card fits perfectly in most Priest decks, but I played Mass Hysteria in my Galakrond OTK Priest upon launch of Descent of Dragons. It wasn't a very good deck, so I don't recommend that you try it, but Mass Hysteria was a very useful and fun card in that deck.

Another card that has been a personal favorite is Spirit of the Frog. For those who do not know, Miracle, a deck where you draw a majority of it in one turn to combo kill the opponent, is my favorite archetype in Hearthstone. Unfortunately, the meta has not been in the right place for these types of decks to succeed, at least in the standard Gadgetzan Auctioneer way. Enter Spirit of the Frog, A card that lets you draw a large portion of your deck at the cost of a fun deckbuilding challenge. It's hard to describe the type of feeling you get after playing the Frog, then follow up by drawing 7-10 cards all while progressing the board.

Given how much of a strong value engine Spirit of the Frog is, it pairs super well with a more aggressive deck and due to how pushed some of the overload cards have become, I've been seeing a fair amount of success with this Overload Frog Shaman. The goal of the deck is fairly straight forward, get ahead on board and win through Bloodlust or Vessina. Cumulo-Maximus doubles up as either 5 face damage or removal. Spirit of the Frog does not always climb up the chain to get Bloodlust, but often drawing 4-6 cards is good enough, with cards such as Haunting Visions letting you restart the chain with the 3 mana reduction.

I almost feel bad for picking another one of the Spirit cards from Rastakhan's Rumble since we've clearly already got a couple of them on the board thanks to Echo, but I'll balance it out with the whole fun package. Initially I wasn't too sure if I even wanted to take part in our Rastakhan's Rumble portion of this series but after reviewing the cards again, my body got all warm and fuzzy when I hit Mage.

I don't really consider myself the typical Hearthstone player when everyone in the media seems to always be rushing for Legend and being all competitive. I do enjoy my meta decks but when I can mess around with some cool cards in fun, combolicious ways, I've hit my stride! When Daring Fire-Eater and Spirit of the Dragonhawk were announced, it was a match made in heaven.

Hero Power synergies, in my opinion, are one of those areas of Hearthstone that could use more love, so when these popped up I immediately wanted to combo them together. Even without the dream of Jan'alai, the Dragonhawk (which was golden crafted day 1 for record's sake), getting Fire-Eater and the Spirit to line up and deal some devastating board clear was too much fun! These are the wacky mechanics I like to see pop up in the game.

Rastakhan's Rumble entire Mage stack was actually a ton of fun since it focused heavily on the Hero Power interactions (what up Pyromaniac!) and we received some good stuff in the elemental package, furthering that archetype. Damn, Mage was awesome.

I'm going to do things a little bit differently when it comes to decks. Since the cards really aren't good to play anymore, I want to take you down memory lane and see some of the decks I enjoyed with the synergy, starting with Secret Odd Mage!

Taking things further along the line, when Rise of Shadows hit I fell in love with Khadgar, probably because he was almost always there for me in World of Warcraft Legion, and the Twinspell mechanic that brought us Summoning Hand Mage. This deck almost made me want to highlight Astromancer in our Boomsday cards we'll miss article. You can read an old guide if you click on the deck =)

Look at these two. A match made in ridiculously fun effect heaven.

Immortal Prelate wins my award for the most interesting card of the Year of the Raven. Its effect is such a simple but radical subversion of the established rules of the game, and it leads to all sorts of fun interactions. While regrettably susceptible to Silence and Hex-like effects, the pay-off when you throw down that massive bundle of stats with Divine Shield, Taunt and Lifesteal for the third turn in a row is glorious.

Da Undatakah can slot neatly into a Deathrattle based deck, but where he really shines is in a tag-team match. Selecting your Deathrattles carefully means you can create this unstoppable force of destruction or immovable wall of healing that recurs itself endlessly thanks to Immortal Prelate. An optimised list can even play into this fully as a combo mechanism, either to fatigue your opponent out or get them with Leper Gnome pings.

My favourite decklist with them right now is another patented jank-pile of nonsense. Making Mummies gives you an endless army of a minion wall, and why not throw Shirvallah in there, right? There's a lot of other fun pieces rotating with this deck - Countess Ashmore, Time Out!, Zilliax, Annoy-o-Module - but the real stars are these funky Deathrattle dudes.