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Hearthstone | Posted by | 6 years, 8 months ago
Standard

Does standard's small card pool do more harm than good?

I'm a wild main, but frequently watch various favorite streamers play in wild, watch tournaments, and hear about other people's experiences. While keeping cards around for *only* 2 years can be good to end the burnout of things like DKs, Tunnel Trogg, Defile, Reno, Aluneth and the like over the years it does make it so that the pool of cards is kept comparatively small, and in that small card pool random effects become less random with mechanics like discover or CCing a minion that barely has any minions in that mana slot.

For example, pretty much every standard player is familiar with the meme of warriors discovering their 7th Omega Devastator or 5th Dyn-o-Matic. Other players have listed mages' ability to very consistently spawn big taunts with almost every CC. Even going back further in the life of standard HS when Ice Block was not HoFed yet it was very common for mages to discover a 'random' 3rd or even 4th Ice Block because again the standard spell pool was so small.

So back to the title, do you feel standard's card pool size does it more harm than good? If you feel it does harm to the format how would you change it?

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  • I'm a wild main, but frequently watch various favorite streamers play in wild, watch tournaments, and hear about other people's experiences. While keeping cards around for *only* 2 years can be good to end the burnout of things like DKs, Tunnel Trogg, Defile, Reno, Aluneth and the like over the years it does make it so that the pool of cards is kept comparatively small, and in that small card pool random effects become less random with mechanics like discover or CCing a minion that barely has any minions in that mana slot.

    For example, pretty much every standard player is familiar with the meme of warriors discovering their 7th Omega Devastator or 5th Dyn-o-Matic. Other players have listed mages' ability to very consistently spawn big taunts with almost every CC. Even going back further in the life of standard HS when Ice Block was not HoFed yet it was very common for mages to discover a 'random' 3rd or even 4th Ice Block because again the standard spell pool was so small.

    So back to the title, do you feel standard's card pool size does it more harm than good? If you feel it does harm to the format how would you change it?

  • There's certainly a trade-off. I wouldn't say the smaller card pool is inherently a downside, nor would I be able to suggest something that would fix it.

    Wild's upsides are being able to make more consistent, powerful decks with the larger card pool along with mitigating how powerful some random effects are by the sheer variance of them. You'll always be able to play the majority of decks that you've played in the past here, though they may not be as powerful as they once were. On the downside, the format itself can be off-puttingly high-powered, has a daunting barrier-to-entry for new players and, while random effects can be less powerful, they are also inherently more random, which is not a good thing in many people's eyes.

    Standard, on the other hand, can basically flip these. The smaller rotating card pool means that it's easier for players to get into, and isn't as powerful a format as Wild. Random effects having less options makes them easier to play around - whether or not you are able to, of course, is another question. Rotation can also be seen as a positive, since it guarantees a refresh of the options available. Negatives include less consistent decks, due to both the swingy nature of some random effects and the lack of options sometimes, and how wildly some random effects can vary due to a lack of options.

    I don't think either format is inherently better - each format has cards that will impact it more than the other, and it's really just up to the individual what they prefer in a game. Do you want consistency and a wide variety of options at the expense of sheer madness occasionally? Pick Wild. Want something tamer that has (on average) more variance set to set? Pick Standard.