Reviews
Hearthstone has plenty of crazy card effects, and none are crazier than the legendaries. They’re the hardest cards to get ahold of and you can only use one of each in a deck. They seem like the best cards in the game, but style does not equal substance and there are plenty of flashy cards that aren’t worth the price of admittance. To be clear, this isn’t about the worst legendary cards, per say, but the ones that look the most tempting and deliver the most disappointment. Millhouse Manastorm is bad, but you can see just how much of a risk he is at a glance. These are the cards that threaten to waste your hard-earned arcane dust and leave you sobbing with regret. They’re the cards that fall so flat that you can’t help but laugh at their expense. These are the most wonderfully worthless cards in Hearthstone.
10. Bolf Ramshield
The idea behind Bolf is to counteract aggressive decks, which have been a notorious problem in Hearthstone. However, flexibility is vital and he gets crushed by any other deck in the game. Simply by going for the face, your opponent can easily kill your 6-drop without having to sacrifice any minions of their own. Bolf isn’t even that good against aggro decks anyway because most of them will kill you before you even get to 6 mana. Just stick to Antique Healbot or Cult Apothecary when that comes out.
9. Elite Tauren Chieftain
Here’s a card so rare that it was exclusively awarded to attendees of Blizzcon 2013. You can still craft it in normal quality the hard way, but golden copies of the card only belong to those select die-hard fans. Something that prestigious has to be good, right? Well, it’s actually the opposite. To try and keep the game fair and balanced, any cards that are awarded for specific events are intentionally designed to be elaborate jokes that can never work at high levels of play. A 5/5 for 5 is a decent minion, but the Power Chord cards are where things become really unpredictable.
There are three different Power Chord spells that you can get off of ETC, and they’re even more randomness stacked upon randomness. There’s “I Am Murloc” that summons a random amount of 1/1 murlocs to your command, “Power of the Horde” can summon anything from a Frostwolf Grunt to Cairne Bloodhoof, and “Rogues Do It” as the most reliable one dealing 4 damage and drawing a card. While that’s not a terrible deal, your opponent also gets one of these spells and may end up with a better deal than you. Nothing sets you back on tempo worse than spending 4 mana on a measly 2/2 while your opponent gets one of the best spell damage cards in the game.
8. Gruul
Gruul is the biggest and toughest guy you can find on the desolate planet of Draenor. The towering ogres are puny servants to him, and his favorite hobby is taking members of Deathwing’s black dragonflight and impaling them through mountain peaks. Admittedly, Gruul’s card heavily evokes his boss fight in World of Warcraft where he starts huge and only grows larger and stronger the longer the battle goes on. Where things go wrong is when you remember that most decks run hard-removal cards like Big Game Hunter and Polymorph that will instantly shut someone like Gruul down, and those that don’t run removal are aggressive enough not to need it. One minion alone can never be strong enough to control a game of Hearthstone, no matter how big it is. Gruul may be bulky, but all that makes him is a bigger target.
7. Gelbin Mekkatorque
Here’s the other event exclusive card that you’re really not missing out on. Gelbin was awarded to anyone who made a cash purchase during the game’s beta period, and he summons one of his unique inventions when played. His Repair Bot heals a damaged character, the Emboldener 3000 buffs a minion, Poultryizer turns minions into 1/1 chickens, and Homing Chicken draws you three cards if it survives to the start of your next turn (where it automatically dies anyway). That all sounds great except for the fact that the inventions don’t differentiate between your minions and your opponent’s. As a result, they can easily end up helping your opponent much more than you. It is possible to set the board up so the invention works for you, but Emboldener and Poultryizer are polar opposites in terms of tactics and getting things to swing your way is reliant entirely on blind luck. Also, the inventions don’t have a single attack point between the lot of them, so your opponent can easily take it out even if it is working to your advantage. When the one that intentionally blows itself up is the most reliable of the bunch, it might be time to look elsewhere for your six-drops.
6. Illidan Stormrage
Illidan the Betrayer is one of the most recognizable characters in Warcraft lore, if not the most recognizable. He’s been the central figure of not one, but two entire expansions for World of Warcraft, with the main selling point of the upcoming Legion expansion being the ability to play as Illidan’s Demon Hunter class. Sadly, Hearthstone hasn’t been able to capture the night elf’s awesome powers as he is one of the weakest legendaries in the game.
There was a time where Illidan was useful as the original version of the card had a battlecry that discarded three cards from both players’ hands and drew them each three new ones. However, it turned out that removing cards from the enemy hand was too powerful an ability and Illidan had to be completely reworked. While summoning 2/1 minions with relative ease isn’t a decent enough ability, the big problem Illidan is that his health was reduced to a meager 5 that can easily be knocked through before he summons anything. The fact that Illidan also dies to our old friend Big Game Hunter also doesn’t do him any favors. Now his only use is as a guinea pig in Hearthstone Science’s experiments.
5. Icehowl
A 10/10 with charge? Amazing! A 10/10 with charge that can’t go face? Useless! The idea with Icehowl is to control the board, but area-of-effect and hard-removal spells already do his job substantially better. You can silence him in order to attack your opponent’s face, but that also removes the charge effect. You can save the silence for the next turn, but Icehowl will most likely be dead to BGH at that point (noticing a theme, here?). Icehowl is all bark and no frostbite (I’m sorry I’m not sorry).
4. Nozdormu
If you’re going to pay any more than 7 mana for a single card, it needs to have a stellar effect attached to it to be worth the investment. Nozdormu can have an incredible impact, but only if you cheat. There’s an infamous glitch with him that can steal time off of your opponent’s turn with lengthy animations. Blizzard has tried fixing the bug several times, but it still exists in some form even to this day. It might be best to just retire the leader of the bronze dragon flight, because he’s practically useless when he is working properly. 9 mana for an 8/8 minion is not a good deal on its own, so you have to catch your opponent offguard and force them into making bad plays for him to be worth it. Of course, that’s assuming he doesn’t get hit by hard removal immediately and your opponent doesn’t have to worry about the time limit at all.
3. Deathwing
Deathwing is one of the most destructive beings in all of Warcraft lore. The ruler of the black dragon flight has strength to outmatch even the mighty Gruul and single-handedly heralded in the cataclysm known as The Shattering. He has the strongest base-line stats in the game and everything dies just from him entering the battlefield. How can this possibly be a bad card?
I now present you with a short list of cards that directly counter Deathwing: Assassinate, Polymorph, Hex, Siphon Soul, Humility, Shadow Word: Death, Entomb, Freezing Trap, Bouncing Blade, Tirion Fordring, Sabotage, Mind Control, Sylvanas Windrunner, Hunter’s Mark, Vol’jin, Rend Blackhand, Execute, Shield Slam, Crush, Naturalize, Mulch, Recycle, Sap, Repentance, Deadly Shot, Mirror Entity, Vaporize, Equality, Aldor Peacekeeper, Keeper of Uldaman, Emperor Cobra, Pit Snake, Patient Assassin, Doomsayer, Vanish, Corruption, Twisting Nether, Obsidian Destroyer, Hogger, Acidmaw, Eadric the Pure, Lightbomb, Kidnapper, Dark Bargain, Tinkmaster Overspark, another Deathwing, DOOM!, and, of course, Big Game Hunter.
2. Mimiron’s Head
When Goblins Vs. Gnomes was announced, this was the card that everyone had their eyes on. Everyone, myself included, expected Mimiron’s Head to be Hearthstone‘s equivalent to Exodia the Forbidden One. It was the card that, under the right conditions, would outright win the game for you. The mega-windfury effect of V-07-TR-ON represents 16 damage on its own, and applying any buff (which is easy to do as your mana is completely free after summoning the mighty mech) is almost guaranteed lethal even if your opponent is at full health. The only stipulation is that you have to be running a mech deck, those are bound to be playable with all the attention GvG gave to them, right?
Well, mech decks certainly dominated the meta after GvG and have even remained a strong option several expansions later, but Mimiron’s Head never fit into the picture. Mech decks ended up being at their best when they were played aggressively, and a 5 4/5 was just too slow to compare with the other cards you could run. Even if you did form V-07-TR-ON, you’d probably have more damage on the board with your ordinary minions. Turns out a simple Mech Warper is more reliable than one of the most fearsome machines in Azeroth.
1. Majordomo Executus
And here we have what may be the single worst card in all of Hearthstone. Other cards may put you at a disadvantage, but this is the only one that outright loses the game for you every time you play it. Going down to a measly 8 health is a death sentence in almost every scenario. Taking a huge risk like that might be worth it if becoming Ragnaros packed a good punch, but dealing 8 damage to a random enemy is a surprisingly weak hero power. Often times, you’ll prefer having a 1-damage hero power that you can direct than a bigger blast that goes wherever it wants. Well, at least you can use cards like Ice Block and Steamwheedle Sniper to work with it… Oh, wait, he can’t even do that. Turning into Ragnaros drops the immunity you gain from Ice Block, and Steamwheedle doesn’t interact with Ragnaros at all. Majordomo is the epitome of pay-to-lose.
That wraps up this list of the best of the worst that Hearthstone has to offer. What other cards stand out in your mind? I can certainly think of a few that just missed the cut, and one of their names rhymes with “Kek my beer, I’m a slug”.
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