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10 of the biggest Hearthstone cards leaving standard with Rise of Shadows
Out with the old, in with the new. Hearthstone's latest expansion, Rise of Shadows, kicks-off the Year of the Dragon and some cards are going away as a result. We run through the ones we'll miss.
Hearthstone's latest expansion, Rise of Shadows, is the first of 2019, and with it comes 135 brand-new cards, new card types, and a new keyword, Twinspell. With the new expansion, Blizzard are kicking-off Year of the Dragon, but with a new year now in play, that means the sets from the Year of the Raven – that’s Journey to Un'Goro, Knights of the Frozen Throne, and Kobolds & Catacombs – will be leaving the standard rotation.
As a result, we've compiled a list of the most influential cards from the Year of the Raven that have now gone, and that we'll miss dearly.
Which of these had the most impact?
© Blizzard
1. The Caverns Below
Introduced in Journey to Un'goro, quest cards have been game changers. While every quest could technically contend for this spot, the Rogue quest, The Caverns Below has had the greatest and longest-lasting impact on the game out of all of them. In fact, it proved to disrupt and define the meta so drastically that it was met with cries for nerfs when the sun was still rising on the Un'goro expansion.
Rogue simply had myriad ways to bounce cheap minions back-and-forth between the board and their hand to quickly meet the quest's condition. In an ideal circumstance, Rogues would use Preparation to play an already finished quest on turn three, and then pump out armies of cheap 5/5 minions.
Quest Rogue had its counters, but was the fulcrum on which the early Un'goro meta pivoted. Between July of 2017 and May, 2018, the card received two different nerfs and transformed the quest from its starting point where, after playing four minions with the same name all of your minions became 5/5s for the rest of the game, to requiring five minions with the same name be played and rewarding 4/4s. We'll miss this game changer.
2. Prince Keleseth
The controversial Prince Keleseth, while inconsistent, could add enough gasoline to zoo and tempo decks to turn a formidable fire into an inferno. Drawing him by turn two would provide a game long buff to every minion in your deck, while drawing him later in your deck would make him nearly worthless. Despite the steep deck-building requirement and volatility, Keleseth proved powerful enough to be an extremely influential card ever since its introduction in Knights of the Frozen Throne.
3. Vicious Fledgling
Dubbed 'flappy bird' by the community, Vicious Fledgling had enormous snowball potential, due to the nature of modifiers on the Adapt keyword – very few of which would be considered duds on this card. In particular, it could really pick up steam with the Windfury modifier, which would allow it to attack twice per turn, and thus Adapt twice each turn. The Fledgling also necessitated a plan, which, most likely, included some early removal spells lest it get out of hand. Much like its given namesake, we're glad to see the back of it.
4. Saronite Chain Gang
Saronite Chain Gang is not a flashy card, but clocking in at 4/6 worth of stats across two minions with Taunt, it provided value and on a neutral creature to boot. Its status as a 4-mana card also worked wonders at slowing the game down for control decks. It synergised heavily with the likes of Prince Keleseth to boot, as well as cards like Fungalmancer, and even proved pivotal in last year's Shudderwock Shaman decks.
5. Carnivorous Cube
The infamous Carnivorous Cube consumes and kills a friendly minion of your choice upon play and, when it dies, produces two copies of the minion you sacrificed. Combined with the ability to pop the Cube on the same turn you played it, it created not just crushing combos, but whole archetypes.
Cubelock ruled the meta thanks to the ability to play (or summon from the hand or deck) a 5/7 Doomguard with Charge, attack, devour it, and then kill the Cube immediately to create two more Doomguards that could then attack right away. There were other ways Cubelocks could manipulate the gelatinous carnivore, but this was the combo that allowed it to reign supreme.
How about these?
© Blizzard
6. Spreading Plague
Six-mana cards from the Year of the Raven are replete with powerful options. Grumble, Sunkeeper Tarim, Deathstalker Rexxar, and Skulking Geist are all going away, and they've all had profound impacts on the meta. Spreading Plague, however, has played a pivotal role in keeping Druids relevant by slowing aggression down to a crawl and allowing their greediest decks to safely prosper. Luckily, you'll only face this card in the Wild now.
7. Spiteful Summoner
Like the Carnivorous Cube, Spiteful Summoner single-handedly created an entire archetype, with Mages, Priests, and Druids taking great advantage of the Summoner's ability to summon high-cost minions based on their most expensive spells. In fact, the tempo swing of being able to drop a 4/4 on turn six (turn seven post-nerf), which would then summon an 8-or-10-mana card, turned Spiteful Priest into almost as big of a menace as the previous reigning champion of the meta, Machine Gun Priest.
8. Shadowreaper Anduin
Shadowreaper Anduin not only cleared the board of strong minions, but also changed the priest hero power into a 2-damage ping that refreshes itself every time you played a card. Combined with Raza The Unchained making said hero power cost zero mana, the Machine Gun Priest was born and Anduin's reign of terror began. Raza has since been nerfed and rotated out of standard play, but Anduin had, and continues to have, a lasting impact on the meta. With it gone, Priest archetypes will take dramatic new turns.
9. Voidlord
The most influential 9-drop spot comes down to either Frost Lich Jaina or the Voidlord, and we are erring on the side of the latter. Jaina was a huge boon to slow, control-based mage decks, but it essentially just allowed existing archetypes, like frost mages, to do what they already did, just in a slightly more complex and efficient way.
Voidlord, on the other hand, was one of the linchpins in the infamous Cubelock deck, and in any control warlock deck. Not only is it a hulking wall of stats that spawns a secondary line of defense on death, but it was never even truly played as a heavy 9-mana card, because Warlocks have the tools to bring it out much earlier in the game at no cost.
10. Bloodreaver Gul'dan
Yet another reason why the Warlock class has been a powerhouse for nearly a full year is their extremely dominant death knight, Bloodreaver Gul'dan. When played, Gul'dan immediately refills the board with your dead demons. That means your blockade of Voidlords, and the charge-ready Doomguards. If you Cubed both Doomguards in a deck, for instance, and then later resurrect them with Gul'dan, you resurrect up to six, which means 30-damage worth of charge minions will hit the board as soon you play this 10-mana card. Not only are the tempo swings caused by Gul'dan enormous, but the high-damage hero power is nothing to sneeze at either.
