We're only a few days away from Scholomance Academy launching on August 6. With that in mind, I thought it'd be interesting to take a look at cards that were tremendously hyped up during release, but for some reason or another, didn't perform quite as well as people initially thought they'd be.
For the most part, I won't be going too far into why they were misjudged as being better than they actually were. Now there are many cards during every reveal season that are hyped up as being good but end up not performing as well as expected, but I'll be pointing out what I consider to be the most noteworthy examples in the game's history.
To many long-time players, Troggzor the Earthinator is the most classic example of a card that was hyped up into oblivion, but ended up not seeing much play and eventually fell into relative obscurity, with people only really remembering it because of the initial hype.
Stopping your opponent's spells and getting growing minions surely has to be good, right? Well, it wasn't that hard for people to clear it with only 1 spell if they really needed to use one at all. The Strong Bad reference will surely give this card brownie points to some though.
Anduin's father. Significant lore character. Okay card.
During the reveal season for The Grand Tournament, Varian Wrynn was hyped up as being one of the strongest cards ever made. It basically made number 1 on the list of nearly every person ever.
In practice however, he ended up flopping, leaving him without much play. Cheating out Grommash Hellscream or Sylvanas Windrunner is definitely amazing, but it's inconsistent and back then, harder to build your deck around. It was only in Whispers of the Old Gods did he finally start seeing some competitive play in Tempo Warrior.
I originally had Hallazeal the Ascended at this spot, as he was an extremely cool card that many people (myself included) thought would be really good, but from personal experience, I can tell you that I definitely had some problems getting him to work.
But in the end, I decided to go with Cho'gall. Cho'gall was basically hyped as being "the next Dr. Boom". His Battlecry would be really strong with Siphon Soul and ... no other Warlock spell at the time. This was basically his problem. He only had one good target, and it was one that not everyone would run. So he quickly fell out of favor. Team 5 effectively indirectly took note of his shortcomings when they made Bloodbloom in Journey to Un'Goro which was a much better card.
The card that single-handedly made Lifecoach quit Hearthstone in favor of Gwent, as soon as the card was revealed. Not even released yet at that point.
The Marsh Queen was quickly hyped up to be the best Quest in Journey to Un'Goro. It didn't really work though. Perhaps because having to play and draw so many 1-drops is bad when you want to draw bigger cards (and in a class which struggles with card draw), or the Reward simply wasn't that powerful? I can't say for sure.
Chameleos is another card that's really cool, and I feel bad about putting it in this article. But let's be real. We can all admit we were wrong on this one.
Chameleos has since been used as an example that people tend to overvalue information of your opponent's hand/deck. This isn't to say that isn't good. It is good, but it's nowhere near as good as people believe it to be. In theory, Chameleos is effectively a Mind Vision that just sits in your hand until you get the perfect card and your opponent doesn't even know that you're holding it. This however requires you to hold it in your hand for multiple turns hoping in vain that you get the card you want which may or may not even be in your opponent's hand.
As much as I love Chameleos for how cool of a card he is, he just simply isn't good enough in a competitive format.
Finally, our first non-Legendary card of the article. Upon being revealed, Revenge of the Wild was considered an amazing Hunter card in a sea of mostly amazing Hunter cards. It actually received the highest community voting score out of every card in the entire expansion.
Needless to say, it didn't really plan out the way we had envisioned. It requires a specific board state of a lot of killable Beasts that are powerful enough that you want to bring them back to life.
Ah, who could forget about Madame Lazul? She appeared in the trailer for Whispers of the Old Gods, and she was the one who banded the League of EVIL together. She also appeared as a card (and a hero) in Rise of Shadows. Just, not as good as we all thought it would be.
Madame Lazul is in a similar boat with Chameleos. We (myself included admittedly) overvalued information of the opponent's hand and thought this card was going to be great. It's even faster than Chameleos since you just play it and see 3 cards in your opponent's hand. She's not that bad, but she's definitely nowhere near as good as the consensus believed she would be.
Next time we see a new card that gives you information on your opponent's hand, be careful not to overjudge how good that effect is.
Feast of Souls is a card that is very interesting to think about why it's here. It was commonly believed that it would be immensely broken. After all, with Coordinated Strike or Command the Illidari, you could draw several cards and deal lots of "pinging" damage. This however proved to be too impractical as other card draw options ended up being better and more consistent. In retrospect, perhaps it would've been extremely hard to accurately judge an entire new class being added to the game?
And that would be it for this article. Stay tuned because next time, we'll be taking a look at the opposite end of the spectrum and talk about cards that were predicted to not be very good, but turned out being a lot better than we initially thought.
Comments
Well, I still use Varian Wrynn in wild and he still wins some games by himself but I know that people expects more from him and I had expected more too because its RNG element of sometimes he draws only spells decreases the consistency element. I still think People used Varian Wrynn in a wrong archetype for using him to cheat big minions. He is better in an Aggro deck with Leeroy Jenkins and Kor'kron Elites and Grommash Hellscream and maybe with Inner Rage(since it is the only 0 mana spell in warrior) as a finisher, rather than using it for cheating big minions like how Dr. Boom is used in Zoo decks. Yeah, in that time, Warrior doesn't have so much aggro stuff but right now, it is still good if you ask me. And yeah, you would probably say "Aggro is dead if you didn't win until 10 mana", You might be right as well but my own experience with this card doesn't say the same tbh.
For cheating bigger minions, Dimensional Ripper and The Boom Reaver had already outclassed Varian Wrynn, btw. It doesn't even give minions rush, so it is better to use him for finishing the game rather than trying to make a tempo swing.
Also, It is worth for its theme music ! That's wonderful;
I wish, This was one of the background theme for Hearthstone. That poor card deserves more love to be played. You know, you don't play this game only for wins, do you ? Sometimes, I only play with this card just for hearing this theme in the game.
Please Blizzard, Make him a battleground Hero and add this theme to somewhere in BG. :D
The one that I remember most is [Hearthstone Card (Lakkari Sacrifice) Not Found]. It was hyped by a lot of streamers on youtube. It was supposed to be the best. I even spent dust to craft it. What a waste of dust.
I like this thread, it's really obvious to think about all cards that the community have been wrong about being too weak (*cough cough* Prince Keleseth, Zilliax, The Caverns Below, Skull of the Man'ari, Corridor Creeper, the list goes on) but overhyped cards are typically forgotten.
My predictions for overhyped cards this expansion are Glide and Star Student Stelina. Glide may be strong, but I highly doubt it's as insane of a control killer as people say. It's definitely going to punish ultra greedy plays and combo decks, but otherwise, it's not that detrimental. The card is awful against aggro since you give them refill, and they'll have 5 cards on their turn while you have 4. Considering slower decks that like hoarding their hand like Galakrond Priest, I think that with knowledge of this card existing, they will have to switch their gameplan and start being more frivolous with their resources. Obviously this isn't always the case, but on the flip side, think about how often you'd get the dream where you shuffle their entire hand full of board clears and removal into their deck and they draw 4 unplayable cards. It's a possibility, but the only time it's going to happen consistently is if you can easily dump your hand and play Glide on turn 4, while your opponent can't play any cards. Considering DH's current level of card draw and refill, this will only be played for its disruption effect, which I don't think is as valuable as people say.
In the case of Star Student Stelina, it's a more expensive Madame Lazul that's also conditional. This card has no tempo, and it's only valuable when you opponent has a few significant cards in their hand. If you're against a Spell Druid with 9 cards in hand, how often are you going to hit Kael'thas Sunstrider or Exotic Mountseller? And besides, if you do hit them, your opponent will just Glowfly Swarm you next turn because you spent 4 mana on a 4/3 which you could have spent on any other card that does something significant. Even in cases where getting rid of your opponent's card is good, those decks don't want to play a 4 mana 4/3. This card's fantasy of negating your opponent's big removal spell the next turn is like a much, much worse Loatheb; it's less consistent and has worse tempo. From what I've seen in the pre-release streams, both cards were clunky to play and clogged the hand more often than not.
Then again, these cards could be absolutely insane and warp the meta beyond space and time, but we'll have to see.
I think you bring up a good point about Glide. Against control they will probably end up with a worse hand, but against aggro this card is just suicide. You are spending 4 mana, which is kind of a lot, and your opponent gets value out of it before you do. There are plenty of cards in the game, and also some cards in MTG I could think of, that give both players the same benefit. Almost all of them are pretty bad because your opponent gets to use the resources before you.
I like how - in most instance- dead wrong we all are in our predictions ^^
I don’t remember Revenge of the Wild ever being overhyped, it always seemed like it sucked to me.
One interesting card I think people forgot was Dragonmaw Poacher. People were expecting DoD to be absolutely full of dragons and people hyped this card to insane levels... turns out it just sat as a dead card in your hand 9/10 times. Except in arena,fuck that.
While everyone remembers Chameleos and Lady in White, the card I remember being overhyped was Countess Ashmore. It's The Curator, but it looks at keywords instead of tribes, so it's a lot easier to build around!...
The problem is, Countess Ashmore was too slow, both in the sense of drawing cards that you've probably already drawn because of how limited Rush and Lifesteal that were good in constructed, but also in the sense that it's a 6/6 body that can be easily ignored by aggro. Even when Zilliax was released shortly after, Ashmore was only seen in pre-built decklists.
the problem with Countess Ashmore, if we compare it with The Curator is not having a keyword on itself. They might make vice-versa tho, like How The Curator pulls tribes and having a keyword, Countess Ashmore should have drew keywords and should have a keyword like "Dragon" and it would have nice flavor for The Curator. :)
Frizz Kindleroost.
I remember people whining about how this is the most broken card of the set. I even crafted this one on Day 1 of DoD.
Also, who can forget the 4 mana sprint that tutors?
‘Dr. Boom? Meh, it’s no Troggzor!’ - Chakki (current member of a HS Design Team), 2014
Idk about Cho'gall, I personally don't remember many people hyping him up. It was the first time we'd seen a health-instead-of-mana effect and that got people talking, but I don't remember people being super excited about him since he still cost a lot himself. Also surprised to not see Lakkari Sacrifice here. I remember people were losing their minds over the infinite value and board presence it could provide for the 'low cost' of discarding 6 cards. Specifically that was where TrumpSC got his famous '5-star' rating super wrong and tried desperately to make discard Warlock almost every expansion until it rotated.
to be fair, Discolock worked out eventually in RR.
MOst of the Quests were overhyped because we didn't realize how much of a downside skipping turn 1 with one less card in your mulligan would be.
Lakkari Sacrifice was also the first time Discard became a legit archetype, so people didn't realize how inconsistent it was.
As a payoff card it was pretty damn strong, but it was very difficult to get there without getting overwhelmed since you couldn't rely on not discarding your answers and comeback tools.
I actually forgot about Lakkari Sacrifice (shows how much that card flopped), but in any case, The Marsh Queen takes up the Journey to Un'Goro spot on the list anyway.
This was a cool read. I feel like Frizz Kindleroost could be one this list too
The big thing about The Marsh Queen is that she could have been a very neat yet balanced card if Team 5 had been bothered to tweak her at all--e.g.,
As-was, she is essentially a mediocre value generator for a deck that by design will have the lowest value in the game to activate the quest. It was a cool concept which they fumbled in execution and then just abandoned to be unplayable.
Well, at the end of they day it was just terrible design anyways because they never printed the support it needed (a 1-mana minion with Echo)
We all know by this point that playing a Quest on turn 1 is a huge downside, so no tempo based quest deck ever succeeded. This is especially damning when your deck is made up of mostly 1-cost minions which drop in efficiency for every turn beyond the first.
Additionally, since your main deck is mostly garbage to complete the deck, if you don't start chaining Raptors after playing Carnassa you effectively lose
I tried hard to make Quest Hunter work and the closest I got was in RR as a mostly spell-based deck trying to tutor Halazzi...and even then the deck was mainly carried by Zul'jin.
If you empty your hand to play Carnassa on 5 and don't topdeck a Raptor Chain on 6 you just lose straight away, it's that bad.
This might be outside your definition of tempo, but I considered odd quest warrior to be both tempo-based and disgustingly successful. Fire Plume's Heart had everything Marsh Queen didn't: the flexibility to build a competent deck and to incorporate other non-quest packages (odd & control in this case); single cards which could progress multiple ticks (militia, direhill, and stonehill defender); immediate impact on the board when completed (sulferas), and then the payout also has immediate impact every time you use it (new HP). It's only "limitation" was that the meta was dominated by other even more disgusting decks (odd big spell mage; prince k zoolock, deathstalker Rexxar, etc), so it wasn't as prominent as it would be in the current meta.
the thing about Fire Plume is that the deck never intended on using turn 1 so it worked out that way. In a weird stroke of luck there just weren't any good 1-drops for Warrior for almost its entire runtime.
Also, if anything, it was a defensive "tempo" deck, where it is far more forgiveable to play from behind early.
Same thing applies to Lakkari Sacrifice, which also ended up being playable (although wildly inconsistent because Discard do be that way) once it got more control support (such as Cataclysm and Jeklik)
How about an article for cards people slept on next? I remember people dissing The Caverns Below when it was revealed, and it ended up being the most nerfed card ever.