Hearthstone: Mammoth Sized Changes Incoming

The year of the Mammoth is underway and our boys at Blizzard have some big changes incoming.

RIP in Peace Older Expansions

It’s heartbreaking, but a few sets of our favorite cards are going away. Listed are a few of more notable mentions.

From Blackrock Mountain:

• Grim Patron – pretty much already dead due to the Warsong Commander nerf.
• Emperor Thaurissan – I am so going to miss big discounts and the deck archetypes that come from it.
• Imp Gang Boss – relatively powerful card for Warlocks.
• Demonwrath – one less board clear for Warlock.
• Quick Shot – an okay flexible Hunter card.
• Twilight Whelp – Dragon Priest just got worse.
• Flamewaker – on behalf of everyone screw this card.
• Blackwing Corruptor – Dragon Priest just got a lot worse.

The Grand Tournament:

• Flame Juggler – powerful auto-include for many classes.
• Argent Horserider – relatively niche but still a big loss.
• Refreshment Vendor – bit of an anti-aggro play.
• Twilight Guardian – Dragon Priest is wailing in pain after being shot in the kneecaps by this point.
• Justicar Trueheart – control warrior was pretty big at one point but not so much these days.
• Living Roots – auto-include spell in most Druid decks.
• Bear Trap – common card in Trap Hunter.
• Flame Lance/Arcane Blast – not especially powerful on their own but quite good in Reno Mage.
• Murloc Knight/Mysterious Challenger – remember when the meta had these two cards at the forefront? Haha good times, not really.
• Flash Heal/Wyrmrest Agent – Dragon Priest officially dead.
• Beneath the Grounds – Kind of sad this card is rotating out so quickly after being discovered to be a great counter to ‘Reno’ decks.
• Totem Golem – good, I’m glad this op hunk of junk is gone, when’s that 4 mana 7/7 leaving?

League of Explorers:

• Huge toad – common card in many decks.
• Sir Finley Mrrgglton – good in Pirate Warrior.
• Brann Bronzebeard – no more double battlecries :(.
• Reno Jackson – probably the single biggest card rotating out, the ripple effect will be ginormous, is Reno dead? Is aggro going to obliterate the meta?
• Raven Idol – common auto-include in many Druid decks.
• Forgotten Torch – strong mage damage spell.
• Anyfin Can Happen – it’s funny how this card and Reno were apart of the same set and had similar effects on the meta, but ACH is going away with hardly a whisper and Reno Jackson is causing an uproar.
• Entomb/Excavated evil – Priest went to the afterlife and never looked back.
• Tomb Pillager/Unearthed Raptor – couple of powerful Rogue cards.

Classic??

That’s a ton of hugely impactful cards leaving the meta, but that’s not all, Team 5 is also removing/reclassifying a few classic cards to the apt ‘Hall of Fame.’ Effectively, these next 6 cards will be removed from standard play.

• Azure Drake – Very few 5 drops have ever competed with Azure Drake, the versatility leads to many instances of auto-include status.
• Sylvanas Windrunner – Too much to play around, too often included in non-death rattle decks.
• Ragnaros the Firelord – Similar to Azure Drake, RtF is crowds their respective mana cost space with overwhelming value.
• Power Overwhelming – Allows for too efficient of high value trades.
• Ice Lance – Freeze Mage needs to go.
• Conceal – Doesn’t allow for counterplay.

So pretty much everyone, me included, was pretty upset that they were going to rotate out these standard cards, especially the legendaries many worked hard to craft, however, when the update rolls out, if you have these cards in your collection, you will get full dust value (not counting cards that go over the deck limit, i.e. you’ll get full value for 1 Ragnaros but not 2).

Looking to the Future

Instead of adventures, we can look forward to 3 seperate 130-card expansions over the course of the year. While there will still be some storytelling and single player missions, most cards will be obtained through packs.

At a later date Heroic Tavern Brawl will feature the Wild set this time around; up the the release of the Year of the Mammoth make sure to log-in daily to extra rewards; and to wrap things up we’ve got a new Rogue Hero, Maiev Shadowsong, on the way, simply win 10 games after the expansion is released to get it!

That’s a ton of changes coming through, but have no doubt, the upcoming year is going to be an exciting one – assuming we can survive against them scurvy pirates. Grumble grumble.

Link to the full post.