The Hearthstone team recently announced a plethora of events coming to shake up Hearthstone. The details are scarce on a lot of them, but these things include the return of dual-class Arena runs, new character portraits, and more which we’ll cover as they release.
The most intriguing though, at least to me, is the announcement that 23 cards from Wild will be returning to the Standard format for a limited time for one of these events. Not to worry; everybody gets a (non-craftable, non-disenchantable) copy to play with, so there’s no need to shell out your hard-earned Dust for any of them.
Two of the slots are locked in, Ragnaros the Firelord and N’Zoth, the Corruptor. These are already exciting enough (Ragnaros is just a great card for most decks, and N’Zoth could get crazy with the Deathrattle Paladin, Hunter, and Rogue packages), but there are 21 more slots to fill.
Ten Hearthstone Cards We Want From Wild in Standard
Here are the ten cards I think would be great to make the cut. These are in no particular order and are chosen with the understanding that this is a temporary event (though one I hope they make a regular thing; I’ve long suggested Blizzard should keep a rotating list of Wild cards in Standard to spice up certain metas).
Old Murk-Eye
This one is here because I want to see the world burn for however long this event goes on. The Tip the Scales Murloc Paladin deck has been tooling around for a while, but its win rate has started to fall off some (it’s still the best Paladin deck out there, but people have figured out how to play around it).
Giving the deck the ability to charge between 9 and 15 face damage while filling the board might push it over the edge into complete bonkers town, which would be fun for the short time it’s around. This is a great chance to definitively demonstrate to players exactly why some cards get Hall of Famed for the sake of future cards.
Ship’s Cannon
Hailing from Goblins and Gnomes, this humble Common card may seem an odd choice, but I’ve been trying to make a Quest Pirate Rogue deck work since the release of Saviors of Uldum, and it just lacks a little bit of punch to push it over the edge. I think Ship’s Cannon ties together a deck like that perfectly, especially as a burst combo with Captain Hooktusk (I could even see a pseudo-OTK with a 1 mana Hooktusk via Gepetto Joybuzz followed by a Cannon Barrage).
Skycap’n Kragg
Basically for the same reasons as the above. Pirate Rogue is one of those weird “orphaned” archetypes that Blizzard printed in the last few sets that just don’t come together at all. It needs a bit of love, and what better love than our favorite parrot riding swashbuckler?
Blood Warriors
I’ve been enjoying the ‘Pain Warrior’ archetype I laid out in my Oddball Decks article a while back, but it lacks a little something. The meta version of the archetype has significantly shifted toward a more aggressive package with less of the “injure your own minions” cards, which is neat but lacks the same thematics.
Blood Warriors is a good spell to fix that a little bit, mainly if you can get yourself an extra copy of Bloodsworn Mercenary out of the deal.
Silverware Golem
Another orphaned archetype is Discard Warlock. It has a fair bit of support right now but lacks a big power card that lets them make big swing turns. Silverware Golem might not singlehandedly make the deck work, but it’s a massive help to the deck archetype’s functioning.
If nothing else, it will be interesting to see the experimentation with it.
Kazakus
If Highlander/Singleton decks are going to be a ‘thing,’ why not go the whole hog? You might say Kazakus overlaps too much with Zephrys, but I say that’s what’s good about him.
Highlander decks are all over the place for Mage, Hunter, and Paladin (less so Druid) since they have class Legendaries that support that deck type, but the other classes end up with much less reason to take on that restriction. Adding in Kazakus opens it up for those decks to also have their own two Legendaries that respect their difficult deckbuilding restriction. I played a Highlander Deathrattle Quest Rogue (yeah, I know, that’s a lot of different things in one deck) for a while, and Kazakus might have made it come together way better than it already did (it was surprisingly okay).
Call to Arms
Call to Arms was the centerpiece of my favorite deck of all time. I had a lovely Immortal Prelate deck with some nice buffs and cheating out some great, cheap minions to provide constant threats. Nothing game-breaking, but I had a solid win rate with it.
Unfortunately, that deck existed for like three months before the rotation hit. A lot of other key cards rotated out too, mind you; Spikeridged Steed, Lynessa Sunsorrow, Righteous Protector but those are ‘just’ good cards. Nice to have, but replaceable.
The whole deck falls apart without Call to Arms, though, which is a crying shame. I haven’t been excited for a Paladin deck since then.
Lava Shock
Overload Shaman is a really good deck right now, but it’s fallen out of favor compared to Quest Shaman and Murloc Shaman. Lava Shock is a decent spell to give it a slight kick-up without busting things too hard. Or maybe it’ll be useless; it’s a bit hard to tell with how aggressive that deck is.
Azure Drake
Yeah, it was overpowered, run in every deck, so on and so forth, but I want one of these Spell Damage decks to take off for a bit. Arcane Watcher and Spellbook Binder are just sitting there, waiting to be used, but nothing makes them work as the centerpieces of a burn deck or anything.
Azure Drake is strong enough on its own to be used and form the centerpiece of a Spell Damage based card draw engine, which is great.
Medivh’s Valet
A final sort of orphaned archetype is Secret Mage. Lots of support lacks a bit of oomph tying it together. Valet might bring a spark back into the archetype just like it did back in the day, and could make an exciting sort of burn deck, using Battlecries instead of (or in addition to) spells to go fast and control the board.
I would be happy if any or all of these made it into the event, and I’m excited to see what the actual 23 cards will be; there’s a lot of hard choices in there for the Hearthstone team to make on what will bring excitement during the event without completely up-ending the game’s balance.
