With March of the Lich King, Death Knight’s Core set and Path of Arthas’ set coming to Hearthstone, Team 5 has a lot of behind-the-scenes ready to be shared with the community. This time about the new Scourge Rager. This little fella is part of a very specific family of minions that is about mostly Elementals with high Attack value but absolutely terrible defense (with Am'gam Rager being the only exception, meme on the meme, if you will).

Right after being revealed, a Reddit user pointed out Scourge Rager's staggering similarity with a fan-made card on the Custom Hearthstone subreddit, to which Hearthstone Game Designers Cora "Songbird" Georgiou and Leo Robles replied by stating that, in the end, two people ended up having the same idea without knowing about each other's post.

In fact, Leo Robles, the initial designer or Scourge Rager, posted his own custom Rager, which was published in Leo's "365 days of Hearthstone" card cycle.

Quote From Songbird and Leo Robles

Someone made this exact customhearthstone card. it's in the top 20 of all time in the sub

Not the exact same, but here it is!

SONGBIRD: The designer who made that card on Custom Hearthstone works on the Initial Design team now. He copied from himself.

We'll let this one slide then.

SONGBIRD: It's also not the first time he's done this! Can't come up with any new ideas smh my head. /s

LEO ROBLES: FWIW - The one Ziiiiik [the Reddit user who linked a card] linked was not technically mine. The one I posted was a bit older than that one, I even commented on the later one haha. The person that made that one just had the same idea as I did without having seen my post :P

Moreover, Leo posted a very sweet Twitter thread with all sorts of insights regarding how this idea of a "dying" Rager came to life (Spoiler: Scourge Rager was nerfed during development from 5/5 to 5/4 - definitely too stronk!).

Quote From Leo Robles

There's a LOOOT of new stuff coming soon to Hearthstone. Death Knights, Signature cards, Undead, etc - all of it is CRAZY exciting! That said, one small thing that I'm personally super excited about is this single card: Scourge Rager. I've got a lot to say about this dude!

This card means a lot to me. Before I got hired I did a "365 Days of Hearthstone" challenge where I made a card every day of 2019 and posted it on r/customhearthstone. One of those cards, which was my most popular + personal favorite, was "Tomb Rager".

Oddly enough, this card wasn't even made for the challenge! Instead, it was just a dumb joke I made to a friend while Saviors of Uldum cards were still being revealed. They and I have a habit of making stupid meme cards with each other, with this one being no exception lol.

I actually used Tomb Rager as the first card I implemented to learn the internal tools once I got hired (this was before MotLK so it just got deleted). Once MotLK rolled around, and we agreed that we wanted Reborn to return as an evergreen keyword, I IMMEDIATELY re-made the card.

It kinda just sat there in our spreadsheet for a while, and I fully expected it to get deleted in place of some other design. But nope! It stuck around! I distinctly remember @Celestalon seeing it for the first time and being like "WHO DID THIS" lmao.

It might sound silly, but this card symbolizes a lot of my "Hearthstone journey" to me. It started as a silly joke with a friend when I just casually played, was a standout card in my 365 Days challenge, and is now in the game for real! It's kinda crazy to think about 🤯

Fun fact: I even managed to get my hands on the original painting that @AlexStoneArt did (which, he knocked out of the park btw)! It sits above my desk at home :)

Which Rager is your favorite? Have you ever played a full on Rager deck? Tell us in the comments below!