Today we're seeing 5 cards that have been with us since the beginning of Hearthstone move away from Standard and into the Hall of Fame. Here are our thoughts on the rotation and decks we've used with them.
Oh, except for Mind Control Tech - that card can burn in a dumpster.
Mountain Giant
Out of all the inclusions in this year's Hall of Fame announcement, Mountain Giant is one that I saw coming for a long time running now. While it usually stands in the sidelines, once in a while it comes out to shine and is usually a gigantic thorn in a meta. Whenever Mountain Giant is playable, it is almost always being abused to cheat it out on turn 3 or 4. The two most recent cases that I can remember of Mountain Giant being a force to be reckoned with is during Rise of Shadows in Conjurer's Mage, where you'd flood your hand with either Book of Specters or with Mana Cyclone, get a giant on turn 4 or turn 5 then Conjurer's Calling it to create a massive board. The other case is with Evenlock, which could fairly consistently get a turn 3 or 4 giant which would beat down the opponent before they get the chance to clear it. While I would argue this is a fairer approach than what Conjurer's Mage used to do, it is still hardly a fun scenario on the receiving end.
This brings us to today, with Mountain Giant completely out of the meta once again. It feels a lot like the same treatment Coldlight Oracle received a while back. It was less the card being busted in the current meta and more just that it lends itself to unfair strategies too easily.
As mentioned earlier, Mountain Giant is pretty out of the meta at the moment, and so what better deck to feature the card in than one that has been out of the meta for its entire existence, Introducing, Hand Aggro Paladin, probably the most concerning combination of words I've ever heard as well as a decklist that made me sick the first time I looked at it. While I usually like to feature decks that I have created myself, as it is what I find the most enjoyable in card games, the list provided comes from JambreHS, and although the deck being created all the way back in Ul'dum, it still works shockingly well.
Spellbreaker
Ever since Ironbeak Owl got hit by a nerf-hammer, Spellbreaker was the go-to silence tool for many decks. With every new expansion, there seem to be more and more powerful effects that you just wish you could get rid of at the right time, so restricting the options with removing one of the only two unconditional neutral silence options does not feel very good.
Owl will probably return to its former glory replacing Spellbreaker in every deck that uses him as a tech right now rather than just filling that slot with a completely different card. In Standard anyway. I might be wrong though and maybe it will turn out that silence is just not worth 3 mana when the body attached to it is so weak.
Question is, what could be driving Blizzard to HoF Spellbreaker? Do they want to make room for wacky and powerful effects so players see them get activated more often? Maybe. Or it could be that they want to restrict the pushing power of fast decks since having a silence readily available means that a single Taunt does not mean much in terms of protection. That will not really change anyway, but every little bit helps, I guess? Or maybe it was a calculated decision with introduction of Kayn Sunfury? Who knows. Only time will tell if this was a right decision or not. If it turns out that a card like Spellbreaker is missing in Standard, they can always print a new one.
Speaking of fast decks, how about this Zoo-lackey-lock from Horus?
Acolyte of Pain
This Hall of Fame inclusion is based on some quite interesting motivations: rather than being an uninteractive combo enabler (Ice Block) or an awesome aggro tool (Doomguard and Leeroy Jenkins), Acolyte of Pain has been deemed to be a too good drawing engine card that all decks that need a fast cycle have included, despite their actual strategy. Borrowing Iksar’s words, “if you want to play a combo deck and you need to draw a bunch of cards, you’ll play a package of Acolyte of Pain, Novice Engineer and Loot Hoarder and every class shares it. For this reason, it’s hard to make new draw cards at a much higher power level of these ones, which are already fairly powerful. […] But not only that: this package is completely made of neutrals, which causes all the classes to play very similarly to each other. […] When you get to a critical mass where all you really need is this package of neutral cards for every class then it can make the game feel a little more stale.”
A perfect example of what Iksar tried to deliver is Galakrond Warrior, one of the best decks in Standard right now, belonging to a class in which card draw should be accessible but not particularly good. In this list (down below) Acolyte of Pain does overcome Warrior’s limitation at card cycling, since it synergizes so well with so many cards like Risky Skipper, Awaken! and Inner Rage, granting at least 2 draws and speeding up Galakrond, the Unbreakable's invoke process.
I was going to suggest you guys to play this deck, but since we all know Galakrond Warrior too well, let’s meme this up! Thijs has been playing some Legend [Hearthstone Card (Mecha’thun) Not Found] Warrior with the new Legendary Kael'thas Sunstrider as a finisher and, guess what, Acolyte of Pain covers a pitoval in emptying your deck.
Leeroy Jenkins
Leeroy Jenkins, long have you plagued the game with your charging; we recently did a whole article looking at the mechanic and wondering about its future! While Kayn Sunfury shows that Blizzard hasn't quite given up on Charge yet, Leeroy finally bit the Hall of Fame bullet he's been dancing around since the idea first made its way to Hearthstone.
Leeroy Jenkins suffered from the problem of being too ubiquitous an option for any deck looking to deal some damage. Before his nerf, he was for all intents and purposes a Fireball on a stick; the Whelps he summoned only really came into play if you somehow weren't killing your opponent that turn. Even pushed back to (5) there hasn't really been an aggressive deck out there that doesn't want a Leeroy.
A lot of Blizzard's choices with the Hall of Fame this time around show that they want to move power out of the neutral cards and into class cards. When a card like Leeroy exists, metas can often feel staler than they truly are, because any mildly aggressive deck will be running this one card; this problem is exacerbated by the fact that he's so frequently a finisher, so the last thing you'll see each game is often the same card.
Is Leeroy too strong a card? Not particularly, no, even in obnoxious Rogue decks which Shadowstep him. He straddles the line though; strong enough to feature in a few too many decks, but not so strong that you can really nerf him without killing him. In order to give Standard that breathing room to meaningfully change between metas, Leeroy had to charge into the Hall of Fame.
Speaking of Shadowstepping Leeroy, you know what's more annoying than that? When the Leeroy is buffed first, so you take even more damage! History Buff works fantastically with all the Lackey generation of Galakrond Rogue and makes Leeroy a real powerhouse to drop and close out a game.
What are your thoughts on the cards rotating out? Tell us about them in the comments below!
Comments
I got a grand total of 8475 dust from this. Hoping to craft one or two decks that are enjoyable and pack some fun legendaries.
I'm ashamed to admit that until seeing this blown up art of Leeroy, I thought he just wore really weird orange glasses. Of course, his face would be skin colored... why did I never question this?
Great article!
The game without reach is just slow minion vs minion crap. I do hope we'll still have potent burst combo for aggro decks, otherwise I will really miss Leeroy.
They will literally introduce a Charge minion that makes all your attacks bypass taunts. In a class voted to kill you as fast as possible.
Will it have Leeroy's versatility though? As you said it's just for one class and in one archetype, maybe two. Leeroy was in all aggro and tempo decks of most classes. This card alone was not only making the game faster but also was allowing some archetype to simply exists. It was a meta defining card and that's why it got removed in the end.
We will need more than just one demon hunter card to make aggro and tempo decks viable.
Last, Kayn Sunfury is not really a burst card if you don't have the board, it will never be comparable to leeroy->shadowstep->leeroy-> eviscerate ;)
Honestly, Leeroy leaving makes a huge difference for so many decks.
Quest Hunter is pretty much dead now (Springpaw, Zilliax and Snip Snap already hurt, but losing the guaranteed 10-mana 14 damage REALLY makes the deck so much less powerful)
Galakrond Warrior also uses a lot reach (and draw because of Acolyte)
Rogue basically will have to find other ways to burst. Leeroy was always a staple finisher for the class, but now they're basically left with only Eviscerate, which is one of the main reasons why I think Stealth Rogue will be big.
Even Embiggen Druid will feel it because they don't have another way of closing out the game so if they ever lose the board it's gg.
I honestly feel like the HoF rotation will have way more of an impact on the meta than the actual set rotation
Man what's my Zoolock going to use for burst now? Soulfire?
God, remember when it cost 0. Jesus.
At one point, I know Pizza was running a Zoolock without Leeroy Jenkins that focused on board control with Sea Giant. Might be worth another look now, although some pieces are rotating, like The Soularium.
In first months of the HS I was able to slowly climb to rank 15 with my secret hunter. Then I started to face meta decks and will always remember first matches against handlock, who destroyed me every time. Ever since I have loved handlock and tried to make it work, and now it's sad to see the other important deck (and meta) defining giant to go to Hall of Fame :(
But, atleast I can get those 3200 dust from the golden ones.
Today? Is it too late to craft the golden versions to get refund? I hope so, is there somewhere posted the timeline of when things like this are happening (rotation, expansion, etc)?
Hall of Fame happens at 10am Pacific. (So in ten minutes.)
It's too close to the mark for me for comfort, so I've decided to just take the dust I'm going to get at this point and not risk messing it up by crafting goldens.
I will play quest shaman for the last couple of hours with MCT to honor him that he finally can rot in wild
Finally MCT and Leeroy are gone... Can't say i'll miss them.
I'm happy I kept a golden MCT a few month ago.. I was really hoping he's going to the hall of fame. And here we go, 800 dust (if I'm not mistaken).
I'm usually not a big fan of one-sided hate speech, but for MCT, there is no middle ground: Fuck that guy
Hearthstone is going to be a very different game without hearing "LEEEEEROOOOOOY JENNNNKIIIIINS" right before you concede.
Also, Fuck Mind Control Tech. So happy to see that card leaving.
Priest update is also happening today right? Card buffs and also hall of fame some cards.
Yes: here you can find the whole schedule.