Bluetracker
Tracks Blizzard employees across various accounts.
Hero Cards are good for Hearthstone. I hope we see more in the next expansion.
What do I mean by hero cards? Whispers had the old gods, and now Mean Streets has the gang bosses. These are what I call 'hero cards' because they exemplify a core aspect of the set not only in terms of gameplay, but theme and flavor as well. I had a personal mission in WoG to collect them all, and even when Yogg was nerfed I didn't dust it because I wanted to look back and say that I had all four.
Let's look at the old gods first, and then we'll look at the gang bosses. Each old god enhanced a different style of gameplay and each one was a central lore figure in the expansion. C'Thun was battlecry based and worked with that mechanic. N'Zoth was deathrattle focused. Yogg was spell focused, and Y'Shaarj was about big minions. Each old god, more or less, defined a new style of play and became a staple in different decks that utilized that archetype. This is good for the game because they tied the expansion together and gave it a coherent vision.
The older sets didn't really have that. GvG had mechs, and TgT had inspire and joust, but there was nothing tying it together and the best cards were just absorbed rather than really being part of something new (mech mage and the like notwithstanding). This may be part of the reason people look at TgT as being the worst despite having many great cards. It felt more like a booster to what existed rather than a genuine expansion to the game.
Mean Streets brings the hero card concept back with the gang bosses. Each one exemplifies a core aspect of the lore of the expansion and ties together a core gameplay aspect that is being explored. Kazakus anchors the Reno archetype. Han'Cho anchors the buff archetype, and Aya anchors the new jade golem archetype. these are high profile cards that give the set a lot of flavor and act as staples within the set itself.
I really hope Blizzard continues with this line of design in the future and that we continue to see hero cards in new sets.
Daxxarri
I mean, it's not really. I was mostly kidding.
We're kind of adopting our own lexicon (as a community) as we go. I do think anchor card works well, because it opens up the idea that such cards might be minions in addition to spells, weapons, or something else that could be entirely new in the future. Mind you, this isn't a predictor of anything to come, just the reason why I like that term.
Daxxarri
I was already using the term "anchor card" before I saw this thread, though. Why are you changing things up on me, Naramo?