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
I personally like [Hearthstone Card (Madam lazul) Not Found] in Wild a lot. I use her in my Highlander deck when I see my opponent do something that I need to get prepped to defend. But just liking her doesn't add value to the card, only finding it's use.
This is something that a number of these other cards couldn't really use. Chameleos, I tried to make use of it. The only thing that I really found of any use for it was being able to see what cards my opponent was holding onto each turn, provided they didn't play the card it copied. But knowing that your opponent didn't have that Lightning Bolt or Twisting Nether in their hand was beneficial, but REALLY hard to justify a card slot for it.
The other cards, mostly The Marsh Queen for me at least, were real let downs. The only real hope that I can see to salvage any of these would be Troggzor the Earthinator with all the mage decks running around in wild. However those decks are running so much board hate that it still sucks.
The EXACT thing that is happening with Ace Hunter Kreen, I see a lot of hype and honestly can't see the fuss with it, token and small minions want to go face, not trade and leave your opponents opportunity to top deck removal.
In Aggro vs Aggro tokens DO NOT want to go face, they want to power trade, which is where Kreen shines.
Kreen does nothing against Control, but having an edge against Aggro is already a lot.
Love the article, I started playing in explorer's and got more into the community by whispers so it's fun to see how previous cards opinions were and to remember the overhyped ones after whispers.
I don't remember making a fuzz over a specific card, but I do remember to expect some cards to be better than they end up being, like Lady in White although this kid of cards is mostly affected around the other cards that can be played along it.
I got the Marsh Queen as my free quest and my buddy said it was going to be a good card.
it required so much work, oh my god.
i remember falling for the Varian hype hook line and sinker. Day 1 craft
Then i took it ont he ladder and he just plopped his 10 mana butt in your hand being useless while Secret Paladin murdered you on curve or, even more miserably, you were playing the control mirror and you couldnt drop him at all because he'd put you 3 cards closer to fatigue
It was a learning experience tho. Since then the only day 1 craft i've made was Zephrys
Loved the article!
In my scale Sneed's Old Shredder and The Last Kaleidosaur have a special place. I remember back in GvG I wasn't a collector (as I am now) and dusted 4 bad legendaries to craft Sneed... Nice waste of dust.
This is why I think Star Student Stelina is one of the worst legendaries this expansion. People are already "hating" it, but I hardly see it slotting into any decks. Compared to Madame Lazul, it's more expensive and conditional. And while Priest, as a control and value class, likes card generation and reading the opponent, Demon Hunter is all about tempo, tempo and tempo. This has 0 tempo. Not to mention that more expensive DH decks that may like an effect like this, like Big Demon, have a very hard time activating Outcast. And without that, it's worthless. Another case of hand info overvaluation.
Excatly, while i think the effect to remove a card from your opponent is good, the decks that want this effect (aggressive decks) don't want to play a 4 mana 4/3
Except Stelina can deny that board clear your opponent was waiting to play.
Not reliably so, especially against Control decks with a large hand (but you do have Glide to fix that), but definitely Star Student Stelina has nearly nothing to do with [Hearthstone Card (madam lazul) Not Found] in terms of why one should play the card.
The correct term of comparison of Stelina is Loatheb.
No, Loatheb is on another level completely.
I think the few games Stelina will win removing the only options from your opponents are way less than the games she make you lose by the drop in tempo.
Cards on the board are worth much more than cards that aren't in play
Yeah, Loatheb is possibly more powerful, but my point was that Loatheb is the correct comparison. Much more than Lazul, despite the nearly identical spying effects.
I agree on this point, Lazul and Stelina don't have much in common, while her disruptive potential is much more similar to Loatheb.
I was only focusing on the power of the card in both the responses to your post and OP's post, my bad
On the remark of why lifecoach quit hearthstone, I think he made a video summing it up. I watched it like 2 years back;
- He didn't like the rng direction of hearthstone, which he felt was catering to casuals than pros
- He didn't like that its not about pure skill. He did some sort of weird 10 hr day for a month (might be 2 weeks, correct me if im wrong) playing with superjj (how many people remember this guy?) and found his winrate to be at most 60% no matter what he did (no elaboration on that)
- He wanted a game that challenges his mind. And he thought hearthstone wasn't that
I do recall him hyping The Marsh Queen to high heaven before reality hit him square in the jaw. It wasn't that the reward was bad, it was simply hunter sucking at what marsh queen needed it to do; play control. Hunter couldn't heal, so most of the time they just die by turn 5, cause all they did was play 1 drops and there wasn't any way to get board back.
If only Toxmonger was 2 mana 1/2 right?
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.
Is Gwent even a game anymore?
Gwent is slowly dying but yes, not completely dead yet. https://steamcharts.com/app/1284410#All
Yep. Gwent is still active. It's certainly not a threat to Hearthstone as it once might've been when it was fresh, but it still has an active community and still receives updates and new cards.
Thanks for the quick answer. I wasn't sure if it was still played, updated, etc.
Great topic and well presented. Keep it up.
Most (all?) of the cards on this list have a high "fun" value but are not as good at competitive play. I tend to play these type of cards when I need a break from climbing and hit a "shelf". These types of decks are really fun when they work and to play, they just don't tend to win that often.
I am glad that these types of cards are in the game, and do like that Team 5 makes them.
Nice article! There could be other additions to your list though, as there were several overhyped cards in the game's history.
Off the top of my head, I remember people seriously hyping up Lady in White (myself included) during the Witchwood reveals. Casting Inner Fire on your entire deck seemed strong, but with no means to tutor the Lady, well, it ended up never seeing play in constructed. And building your deck with only high-health minions wasn't really a good idea.