(This is kind of a repost since the original editing was all fu***d up but I think I've managed to make it look... readable.)

So, the newest Blackrock cards have been revealed. Some of them are good, many of them are fun. But one of them... caught my eye, to say the least, and not in a good way. And, having had thoughts about the design for new cards for a while, I wanted to share my thoughts.

Basically, cards and, by extension, decks in Hearthstone can be divided into two distinct categories: value and tempo. Value cards are meant to increase your card advantage and deal with multiple threats or solve multiple problems at the same time. Decks which capitalize on value are called control decks because they do just that: they are reactive rather than proactive; they respond to the opponent's plays and attempt to maximize their card advantage. These decks prefer to play the long game as this means being able to play your expensive but high value cards and have more options to seal a safe win.

Tempo refers to the ability to put pressure on your opponent or to significantly increase your board presence. Tempo decks are usually very aggressive - 'aggro' -and rely on flooding the board and simply having too much stuff too fast for your opponent to deal with, sacrificing value and card advantage for speed. They benefit from the game being relatively short because they run out of steam quickly and do not want the other deck to draw appropriate answers and play high value cards.

Tempo and value cards have their weaknesses and strengths, and aggro and control decks both have their place in the world of Hearthstone. It's therefore understandable that Blizzard would make make new cards which are very strong for both types of decks.

However, this hasn't really been the case.

You see, when it comes to expansions Blizzard has a history of attempting to make value cards, but for some reason they seem to rarely want to take risks of making a really, really good and efficient value card. These cards all suffer from the same problems: they are too expensive, too situational, or have poor survivabilty when they are minions.

See? Cards like these have promising abilites which would be very interesting for the game as a whole, abilites which are one of a kind. But somehow Blizzard just doesn't want people to play with them. They simply fear that they would be overpowered, that control decks would be too efficient.

And I guess that would be a justification... if they were equally wary to release strong tempo cards in their new expansions. And by strong, I mean ridiculous. But, while control decks get their Hemets, tempo decks get these...

Undertaker is a one mana minion which, when put in the right deck, can consistently grow by +1/+1 or more each turn; and, by turn 3 the game is pretty much over if you don't have perfect answers. Goblin Blastmage is a ridiculous tempo play, has great offensive stats and removes your opponent's last line of defense. Having two Mechwarpers in a mech deck in your opening hand pretty much seals the game before the second turn passes.

So the current metagame is extremely aggresive, and control decks often times can only cross their fingers when queing against a mech mage or a hunter, and pray they don't get a ridiculous starting hand. There has been quiet hope that Blackrock changes things, that we will see actual value cards that are defensive and consistently amazing. Cards which, mind you, we know Blizzard can make:

We have these great cards, we love them, only we want more. Cards that are efficient, cards that provide options, cards that expand the way the game is played.

I'm sure that Blizzard has heard their community, that Blackrock will deliver on this front, let's just wait and see, wait! we have the first legendary of the expansion...

Okay, guys, maybe it's not that bad, maybe the next cards released will be like Rend's pet Dragons which can like be played for free when you polay Rend? so that's why you want to hold a dragon with him? anyway, they have still a few cards to show, there's still hope, at least they won't be doing anything stupid like giving cancer hunters more direct damage and draw amirite

I'm done

There was a update to the Undertaker a while ago now he only gets +1 to attack. But yea your point does still stand.

Wow it took Wizards of the Coast over a decade for people to feel like control was dead in MTG (its not but people love to claim that it is), Blizzard got there in like 2 years. I don't know if Hearthstone has a color pie or some kind of color balance like MTG does, but I would hope that there is a way to focus some hate cards on the dominant aggro strategies of the moment.

@boxxybae: That's correct, and I remember that. My point is about what Blizzard thinks about a card at the moment they are releasing it. They are not afraid to release a powerful aggressive card and later nerf it if it gets out of hand, but they almost never release overpowered control cards that are then too good and need to be nerfed.

If you take a look at Hearthstone patch notes you'll see that they nerf pretty much only aggressive cards (save for Auctioneer). Which means that they, at some point, were comfortable with putting an obviously powerful aggressive card - like Leeroy, Undertaker - because they might nerf it one day. Which is not the case with control cards - they just make them mediocre from the get go.

The "costs 1 less for each minion that died this turn" mechanic is a buff to the board control playstyle when you think about it. It punishes your opponent for allowing you to make the trades.

Very interesting read.

I occasionally think about getting back into Hearthstone, and then quickly realize I don't have the patience to learn the ins and outs like ones that were touched on in this post. Interesting to hear about in spurts for sure, but I think I really missed the boat on this game. I played a few hands recently with some of the decks I made during the beta - I got stomped and felt no desire to re-tool the decks.

Not to throw a bunch of shade on the designers who work on Hearthstone, but yeah, sometimes I question whether they're in way over their heads, given how this was a small project that kind of exploded out of nowhere when there has otherwise never been a digital CCG that had this kind of zeitgeist around it.

Like, in some ways, they've designed themselves into a corner on a lot of stuff. Some of the "ease of play" stuff like each player only being able to do stuff on their turn really limits the plays. For the game to have any reactive mechanics at all, it forces them to design Secrets for some classes, but that results in the 1-mana Secrets of Paladin being almost across-the-board unplayable if not for Avenge being pretty good; 1-mana cards just don't have much value for control decks, and tempo decks are better off just playing more minions instead of playing secrets.

And since everybody has to only take actions on their own turn, I feel like that forced the game into letting the attacker choose what minion attacks what, instead of MtG's system where defending player decides which attacking creatures get blocked by which defending creatures. I think that really limits the design of minions; all of the card tier lists are going to rate a 3/4 or a 4/5 or a 5/10 much higher than a 7/4, because by the nature of the game it's too easy to trade a lower value creature into something like a 7/4 or 8/5 or whatever. It also eliminates any possibility for utility creatures that stick around on the board and provide some non-combat benefit; Dalaran Mage would be interesting if defender decided whether to engage it in combat or not, but because attack decides, it's too easy to pick it off with a Chillwind Yeti or something and the Dalaran Mage player accomplished nothing. I think it similarly messes up cards like Mana Wraith, since a 2/2 is insanely easy to kill with just about any early game minion or removal spell; I have no idea why that card isn't a 1/3 or a 1/4.

Plus Hearthstone has the problems that other CCGs face, in that nobody wants to play buff spells because it's too easy to lose card advantage by spending a card just on upgrading one of your minions. Players are gonna use Occam's Razor and find that a lot of the time, it's easier to just keep playing minions and removal spells than risk a buff spell on a minion that might die next turn anyways.

Also, as much as I play Hearthstone because it's pretty low stress and easy to play a game or two here and there, I'm still fundamentally disappointed with how similar each class plays. Yes, they have their unique mechanics, but I'm still disappointed with the philosophy Blizzard has of giving every class access to direct damage, only they're slightly differing styles of direct damage. It's a far cry from MtG's 5 colours having wildly different methods of threat removal. And in general I'm disappointed with how few cards in Hearthstone just fundamentally change the state of the board. Even if they don't see much play, I wish they'd design a few more cards that have weird global effects, like this:

i could see rend being an extremely useful late game counter to many of the high cost legenaries that are hard to predict and deal with. things like Kel' Thezud, Dr. boom, and Ysera are super tough cards to clear if you've already exhausted a lot of your spells. could be especially helpful for a mage deck if you're holding any of the other current useful dragon cards like faerie dragons, twilight/azure drakes, onyxia, ysera, etc.

All i'm gonna say is that the mechs are far and away the best bang for buck cards in the game right now..

I just recently started playing it and it is good but it doesn't have anything on Magic the Gathering when it comes to art on the cards.

@hypnotoadbrwowrowrow said:

That's mostly on the back of Mechwarper probably needing a nerf, then Spider Tank is reasonably strong but fine as-is, and Tinkertown Technician is a 3 mana 4/4 that isn't worth a Silence and also gives you a card. Cogmaster is super good if you play it turn 1, less so otherwise. And then if you're playing Mage, Goblin Blastmage is silly and also needs a nerf. And then Piloted Shredder is solid even outside of a Mech deck because it's a better Harvest Golem most of the time. Like, fuck most of the other Mech cards, those are the reasons that Mech is so good right now (though Shielded Minibot and Annoy-o-tron certainly have their place).

Some of the new spells in Blackrock seem interesting, but boy, I'm pretty lukewarm on most of the minions, especially compared to Naxxramas and GvG.

The thing about using quick shot in face hunter is that if you put it in those decks... all it does is replace some other card which did a bunch of face damage. Sure, it can go through taunts, but if your opponent was going to die to 3 damage they'll also probably die to your hero power in a couple of turns. I think the card is good, but it's not going to make cancer hunter THAT much more cancerous. I think it's a really solid card in control hunter, however.

@fishmicmuffin: That card is more for creatures to establish boardcontrol. Also since tempo decks burn through their hand quite fast, it gives them an extra card as well. Which is great, because if your openings salvo doesn't cripple the other player and you run out of cards, you're probably going to lose.

@bisonhero: Thanks, that was a pretty good summary of why these cards actually aren't that good for someone who doesn't play Hearthstone. Comparatively in MTG a lot of these cards would have a place assuming their mana cost was right - in limited at least.

@bollard said:

Yeah, in MtG some of these cards would be fine. But when attacker chooses all combat (barring the Taunt ability which means you can't attack any non-Taunt creatures if a Taunt creature is "in the way" i.e. you have to kill Taunt creatures first), it basically means any creature that has more attack power than health is borderline unplayable because it may never live to attack and will just easily be killed by a lower mana creature or low mana removal spell, unless you thoroughly have board control and have exhausted most of their creatures and removal spells.

It just warps the entire design of creatures, and when you see fans design cards, they're all like 3/3 or 3/4 or 5/6 or whatever, because the community recognizes that it's just a waste of your time going around and playing a 7/5 or 8/4 or 9/5. There is a creature card in Hearthstone that when it enters play, you can choose whether it is a 5/10 or a 10/5, and the only conceivable reason you would ever pick 10/5 is if your opponent's board and hand were both empty; otherwise the 5/10 is always more advantageous to your position. It's like the designers barely know what they're doing when they keep designing these expensive 8/4 creatures that fly in the face of how the combat works.

To elaborate on a card I mentioned, this is Mana Wraith:

I think it would see play in MtG in control decks, but in Hearthstone it's pointless, because it's much harder to keep it out of combat, and a 2/2 is going to die to just about anything. At least in MtG your opponent would have to spend a removal spell on it, but in Hearthstone it's guaranteed to die very quickly. It NEVER gets played.

@bisonhero: Yeah, it's funny how scared they are of introducing more complexity into the game. An obvious solution to that problem would be to add something equivalent to MTG's enchantments and then have their own destruction/hate cards to counter them. But of course, Blizzard—who's too scared to even talk about adding a new keyword into the game—probably thinks that would be too complex and the majority of us pea-brained players wouldn't be able to handle it.

@bisonhero: Yeah that sucks. All of this combined with the increased randomness in Hearthstone makes me not a massive fan.

@hansolol said:

I do wonder what the playerbase of Hearthstone is like, especially those still playing a year in. I remember Patrick and Alex talking about the game on the morning show, both being kind of blown away by how much they liked it, so who am I to argue with Blizzard keeping the game quite simple. Patrick did his usual XCOM/Fire Emblem/Hearthstone thing, where he took the shallowest step possible into a genre and then went "I 100% GET THE APPEAL OF THIS GENRE NOW", then promptly stopped playing that genre beyond the one very beginner friendly game he dabbled with. Alex has kept playing, though I believe it was more or less his first CCG as well. They both seemed kind of dazzled by how approachable it was, but at the same time, Patrick fell off of it pretty quick, and surely the number of new players Hearthstone gets each month must be diminishing, as they honestly have the digital CCG market cornered and anyone remotely capable of liking a game where you buy fake digital cards must already be playing it by now.

So fucking bump up the complexity a little bit. The game is still top-to-bottom just braindead simple combat math in 90% of situations. There are still very limited synergies between cards, or very few crazy effects that can combo off into anything interesting besides "hey I made a Charge creature with pretty high attack power" or "hey so I made sure to draw 3 cards off of Acolyte of Pain".

Even aside from adding new keywords to the game, there are stunningly obvious cards they aren't making. I think a card that "refreshes" your Hero power (letting you use it again after it has already been used once that turn) could be interesting; maybe make it a Battlecry or Deathrattle on a 2 mana 3/2 or something. Similarly, make a card that disables your opponent's Hero power for just the next turn, Loatheb style. And just flesh out the "theme" of the classes better, the way MtG does. Make one of the classes have spells that can destroy or disable opponent Mana crystals. Make one of the classes the one that has spells that cause the opponent to discard cards. Like, Jesus, just design fucking ANYTHING that isn't more generic burn spells that you randomly distribute to various classes. They aren't even cribbing all of the incredibly basic mechanics from Magic.

@bisonhero: I'll admit, they have made a game that strikes something of a balance between the casual and hardcore. Their goal was to make a popular game and they've succeeded. I'm sure that if all of my balance/design suggestions were implemented that the game would ultimately be less successful overall.(it would be a better game though!!)

Honestly, the thing that has kept me hooked for over a year is the competitive scene and all the tournaments. It would be so great if they increased the complexity and there were more exciting, memorable moments involving well thought-out plays and strategy as opposed to games decided by RNG.

@bisonhero: I feel you. There just are no cards which fundamentally change the current match and put both player's priorities upside down.

One of the dungeon bosses for Blackrock has a passive ability that makes all of the cards cost 1 and both players capped at 1 mana. I want to see shit like this. I want to see a minion which says 'no, we are not playing how we used to, this is MY world now' that does not die to a ping from a hero power or a frostbolt.

I want to see a card which says 'instead of dealing damage, minions heal their heroes this turn'.

I want to see a card which says 'only one minion can attack each turn'.

I want to see a card which says 'characters can't attack unless they control 5 or more minions'.

I want to see a card which says 'players can only play one spell and one minion each turn'.

I want to see a card which says 'at the beginning of each player's turn, that player receives life equal to their cards in hand'.

Basically crazy shit which makes you play a different version of Hearthstone.

@imsh_pl: All good ideas. Though the danger with 'at the beginning of each player's turn, that player receives life equal to their cards in hand' is that it gets played in Warlock and nowhere else. Frankly, I think any mechanic revolving around 'cards in hand' is totally sunk because of how ridiculous Warlock hero power is. I feel like it's no coincidence that there haven't really been any new cards like Mountain Giant or Twilight Drake in any of the new expansions, because Handlock is still irritating to play against with the ammo it currently has, and it doesn't need more. Again, they've kind of designed themselves into a corner on that one because Warlock hero power is SO flexible and advantageous to so many different deck types and card mechanics.

If anything, they're almost trying to design cards that counter Handlock, with Clockwork Giant and Goblin Sapper, except I've rarely seen those get used at all, because they're kinda terrible against any deck other than Handlock. I guess they'd be useful in Mill Druid, except Mill Druid doesn't usually have the space for them and would rather just play defensively until their opponent runs out of cards. At least Kezan Mystic or Flare are kinda helpful if your opponent isn't playing a deck with Secrets, but Clockwork Giant and Goblin Sapper are legit pretty awful unless your opponent is specifically playing Handlock.

I think cards like Jeeves are an interesting start to what we'd like to see (in terms of being an interesting global effect that both players have to consider), but also its stats are fucking awful for 3 mana and I kinda just play it for the lulz in a Paladin Mech deck where I also run two copies of Divine Favor.

@bisonhero: I don't think it would be used exclusively in handlock. Having 7+ cards is standard for freeze/fatigue mages, warriors, some rogue and paladin decks. And being healed for 7 vs being healed for 9 isn't really that big of a deal considering that minion would probably not survive more than 2 turns.

And maybe you could just change it to 'at start of turn each players heals for 6 if they have at least 7 cards'. Or some variation.

Also: I wouldn't mind having a card that is really good for control. Because I feel like the point is that an average Hearthstone game should be longer. The longer the game, the more turns pass; the more turns pass, the more decisions players have to make; the more decisions player have to make, the more often the skilled player will win, because he will make fewer mistakes. This is the reason why new players play aggro hunters in Hearthstone or fast cheese builds in StarCraft.

It's like, I'm not really that mad for losing to Dr. Balanced, because he's a late game card, I kinda know that he's coming and can play around: leave my BGH or Aldor for turn 7, or just set up a very aggressive board so they can't afford to play him.

I'm more frustrated when I lose to double mechwarper, or leper gnome->coin huffer->misha. Because when I lose these games it isn't because I didn't prepare enough; it's because my opponent just had the 'I win hand', and there was literally nothing I could have done.

Take Mal'Ganis. He's ridiculously strong for a demon deck, and can be an insta win. But he can be played around; you can anticipate him, leave your silence or BGH in hand. So he's not overpower compared to turn 3 coin blastmage.

Out of curiosity: you have a lot of hate for handlock :) what deck are you playing that he's giving you so much trouble?

@imsh_pl said:

This is going back kind of a while, but Mind Control used to cost 8 mana, which was pretty fucking silly. Also, most of the Mage Freeze spells used to be 1 mana cheaper than they currently are, until enough people complained about how completely not fun Freeze is as a mechanic. Cone of Cold, Frost Nova, and Blizzard all used to be 1 mana cheaper, and boy, Mage was even more complete bullshit in Arena back then.

My problem isn't that Blizzard accidentally makes OP cards that benefit certain deck types over others, my issue is just that they keep releasing obviously OP cards that the community can tell from day one are ridiculous, then it takes Blizzard like 6 months to consider adjusting them. It was literally 6 months before they adjusted Undertaker. Miracle Rogue had to be everywhere for months in Ranked before they finally nerfed Leeroy. Starving Buzzard was a little strong at 2 mana for a 2/1, but A) Unleash the Hounds going from 2 mana to 3 mana was a good start, but B) increasing Starving Buzzard's cost by 3 (!!!) mana was completely absurd. All that did was push people away from the card and playstyle entirely, even though it was kinda worth saving, unlike the silly 20 damage combos you could pull off with Miracle Rogue.

The Legendaries are still just all over the place. It's braindead obvious to any new players which ones they should craft with dust, since they keep losing to the same like 5 Legendaries over and over. Ragnaros' abilitiy should probably be at start of turn, or some other minor adjustment. Dr. Boom is still ridiculous value and even if you immediately can kill Boom himself, the bots have such absurd value built into them that the card is just way too strong. And then there are like 15 or 20 Legendaries that are so bad they just need minor buffs or complete ability reworks so that they're even remotely worth a slot in your deck at all.

There are balance issues all over the place, and Blizzard is incredibly slow to react to any of it.

@imsh_pl said:

I still play a lot of aggro or kinda midrange decks because I lack a lot of the epics and legendaries I would need to make most control decks. I've put zero money into the game, and even though I've been playing on and off since like December 2013, I haven't grinded out all that much dust. There are only so many Twilight Drakes/Sludge Belchers/Taunted Giants I can Silence/Equality/Hex my way through before I run out of spells. Also the deck can just play Hellfire or Shadowflame really whenever it wants and wreck my whole board.

@bisonhero: Yeah, the game has definitely become a lot pay to win. I had been playing since the open beta and I finally cracked in december-january and bought Naxx and 60 GvG packs. I can't really imagine how difficult it would be to now start from scratch and have even a chance in constructed. Although I can say without hesitation that I don't think I've wasted my money since I'm playing the game a ton, so if you've managed to stick around since 2013 and until post naxx and post GvG and STILL not ragequit because of how good the new cards are I would recommend at least purchasing Naxx.

Great post, OP. While I don't agree, it's still nice to read an educated/thoughtful argument.

I actually think it's ok that they take a while to mull over the decision to change a card. I used to play League of Legends a little bit and the monthly patch schedule is ridiculous. "Buff this guy. Oh god he's too strong! Unforeseen consequences! The community is in shambles! Quick! Nerf it! Nerf it!" It feels too reactionary. Like, if anyone complains they immediately fold under the pressure and change their game.

It seems Blizzard's philosophy is: "if it's way too strong we'll nerf it but if it's weak then leave it alone. We'll make another card that will come along and take its place and that means more cards for the players to buy."

@hansolol: I get the hesitance to rush but these times are often ridiculous, and it's not like they are meticulously thinking about patching. It's basically 'people cry overpowered? wait for it... wait for it... wait for it... bam!, nerf it out of playability'. Miracle Rogue dominates ladder? Nerf Leeroy out of the combo. Aggro hunter dominates ladder? Nerf Buzzard out of play. Deathrattle hunter dominates ladder? Nerf him out of usability. It's lazy, not thought out and, at the end of the day, it always comes too late. So now I'm expecting them to Make Dr. Boom 9 mana in may, and that will be their solution for the outcry of the community.

Y'know, i actually really enjoy the variety of mechanics to each class. Example being shaman's using the overload mechanic, druids gaining mana advantage, warlocks damaging selves for quick play, mages freezing.

BRM also introduces Blackwing Technician and Emperor Thaurissan, both of which are insane control cards. The game was already slowing down a tad too much after the Naxx adventure (due to the introduction of Sludge Belcher, Zombie Chow and Haunted Creeper) so they sped it up a bit in GvG. Although they did still include cards like Antique Healbot and Annoy-o-Tron which has become staple cards in many control decks. Not to mention the class cards paladin got in GvG.

In the end I wouldn't say they are really favoring one style over the other, the problem is more that they often fail at making cards actually do what they're supposed to do.

I see your point and I do sympathise (prior to the Undertaker nerf, I damn near quit) but it bears mentioning that at the end of the March season a bunch of pro Hearthstone players ranked the popular deck archetypes and almost all of the top 10 were control/midrange. But I do agree that the card designers at Blizzard occasionally get things drastically wrong. When Hemet was announced, there wasn't a single person who thought that he might be good. Same with Rend. If your entire fanbase can tell immediately that a card will never see play, then surely the developers could too. What's the point of creating cards like that? The cynical side of me thinks that they make clear dogshit cards to pad out packs, so you have to buy more.

@imsh_pl said:

Yeah, no, I regularly do the daily quests, and I just barely saved up enough gold that I bought all of Naxx within a month of it coming out. And I bought a decent amount of GvG, though honestly once I got most of the commons I stopped caring and went back to buying Classic packs. Once you have Mechwarper and Piloted Shredder and Tinkertown Technician and Spider Tank, you're pretty much good. I feel like Mage GvG cards are the only ones that even made a huge impact on the meta, aside from one or two isolated cards like Shield Maiden.

But yeah, my point is that because I haven't dumped any money in, the total amount of packs (and therefore dust) I've amassed isn't enough that I've really ever had much dust. I burned some of my early dust on a couple rares and epics (I had opened like at least 50 or 60 packs and still had zero copies of Lightning Storm which just makes Shaman unplayable garbage, so eventually I just crafted two copies of it, for example). And now I'm almost up to 1600 to craft a legendary. I think my account must've earned somewhere between 2000-3000 total dust by this point? Anyway, I'll continue my gold grind to buy each section of Blackrock, but I'm still not super interested in giving the game money.

The UI people on Hearthstone are fucking geniuses, but at times the actual game designers are real amateur hour, and even though it's a fun time waster, I just don't feel like it's a F2P game that deserves my money.

@shortbreadtom said:

I suspect the people at Blizzard also know that Rend is bad.

I used to read the official website for Magic The Gathering, and some of the articles were written by the designers of the game. One of the lead designers at the time wrote an article about why they make intentionally bad rares. The philosophy for him was that A) who knows, maybe that bad card will be awesome in a weird combo deck a year or two down the road that nobody could've predicted, and B) making these bad cards staves off power creep.

So for a 4-mana creature, the gold standard right now is probably kinda Chillwind Yeti? Like, mathematically, you want 9 stat points, or like 8 stat points with some kind of ability? But obviously not every 4 mana minion sticks to that. Some are worse, and whatever, that's OK, they're probably still OK in Arena. If the designers start thinking "Every 4-mana minion has to be at least as good as Chillwind Yeti, or no one will play it or care about it", then they'd make most 4-mana minions like Chillwind Yeti, and given enough time, maybe 5-10% of 4-mana minions might accidentally be slightly better than Chillwind Yeti. Once players notice this, they'll start saying "Why would I play this Chillwind Yeti when [these new 4-mana minions] are better?" Now the designers have a new reference point for what you should get for a 4-mana minion. This can spiral out of control if it keeps going.

So basically to give players perspective, they try to design cards along a pretty wide spectrum of how much "value" you get for each mana cost, so that players don't get a ton of Chillwind Yeti equivalents, and demand that everything has to be as good as that or better. I don't know that I fully agree with the philosophy, but it's how some designers think.

Nonetheless, the problem is they give the balanced stats to the stupidly strong cards (Ragnaros, Dr. Balanced, Sylvanas, etc.), but give the garbage stats to cards that also have super situational abilities. If anything, Hemet should be a 5-mana 5/4 or 4/5 with his ability, and Ragnaros should be a 8-mana 9/6 or something. At least then Rag would be remotely within kill range of regular burn spells, or attacks from minions. And then Hemet would work more like Harrison Jones, in that he'd still be mildly useful against a deck that has no beasts. And Rend should be like a 7/7 or a 7/6. I have no idea why he only has 12 stat points as-is, given how completely silly and situational his ability is.

@bisonhero: Man, if a CCG is in a position where it needs more card like Silent Arbiter, something has gone horribly wrong. That thing is so miserable to play against in EDH. It did win me a game of Conspiracy once, though...and I wasn't even the one that was controlling it!

I don't really play Hearthstone, so forgive me for coming at this from a somewhat ignorant position, but I play a lot of MTG and one big philosophical difference between the two is that Wizards' R&D has to allocate a lot of resources to rigorously play-testing new cards to ensure that they are balanced - and they still get it wrong occasionally, and then go on to acknowledge that cards like Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Dismember, and Pack Rat were mistakes. Not only that, but they have to test cards across multiple formats; Treasure Cruise was designed for Standard, where it sees plenty of play but isn't a dominant card, whereas they had to ban it in Modern and Legacy because it was essentially a new Ancestral Recall, one of the most OP and expensive cards ever printed.

Heartstone doesn't have that. I'm sure Wizards would love to be able to "patch" Magic when they realise that certain cards are way overpowered. But at the same time, Wizards has to hold themselves to a certain level of responsibility precisely because they don't have a safety net that isn't just straight-up banning cards, which they don't like doing. Blizzard, on the other hand, can release cards safe in the knowledge that if their vast player base clearly deems a card to be overpowered, they can change it, and that means that they don't have to hold themselves to quite the same standard. And once they change something major, all of a sudden you've completely changed the meta-game as a result, and it's back to square one.

I think that's why whenever a new Hearthstone expansion is released, I always see articles criticising Blizzard for printing busted cards, but only rarely do I see Magic players flipping out about cards that are perceived to be overpowered (and most of the time, they end up doing absolutely nothing).

In Magic there is the meta game where Aggro decks beat Control decks; Control decks beat Combo Decks; Combo Decks beat Aggro Decks.

@bisonhero:

I would say Rag is fine. 8 mana for 8 random damage isn’t amazing. Plus hes always a target right away. Dr. Boom yea somthing needs to be done about him. And I wouldnt say all legendaries are bad. Its just they don't fit into decks as easily. For instance Toshley would fit great into a mech mage deck for later in the match when Antonidas comes out, but what are you going to cut to add him? The limitation to deck size is perfectly fine but you see all these legendaries that on there own are fine but dont see any play since they cant be fit into a deck.