Most Overrated Cards from Rastakhan’s Rumble

Rastakhan’s Rumble was released roughly 3 months ago. To be completely honest, I wanted to do this comparison sooner, but two nerf patches kind of ruined my plans (when the meta has completely stabilized after the first one and I’ve started preparing to write it, Blizzard has announced the second patch). So while we’re a little late, it should still be as interesting as always.

I will take a closer look at the pre-expansion predictions and compare them to how strong the cards turned out to be in reality. Rating cards pre-release is really difficult. You can never guess how the meta will look like, not to mention that some of the cards might look insane on the paper, but turn out to be mediocre in the game or vice versa. It’s tough, but it’s part of the reveal season fun. And part of the expansion fun is looking past at those ratings and seeing how wrong we were. Yes, we, because I’m guilty of underrating some of those cards too.

In the second part, I will be looking at the most overrated cards from Rastakhan’s Rumble. An overrated card is a card that was rated much higher pre-expansion than its real power level turned out to be after the release. It’s not necessarily a card that was rated to be #1 or #2 in the expansion and turned out to be useless – that’s the extreme case. A card that was meant to be great (e.g. #5 out of 135) but turned out to be average, or a card that was meant to be good (e.g. #25 out of 135) but turned out to be unplayable were overrated.

Before I proceed, let me explain where I got the average ratings from. First of all, those are community ratings, not pro ratings – I feel like it’s the best way to show how an average player felt about the card (or, to be honest, above average player, since casual players most likely didn’t care enough to vote). The ratings I will be using come from two different sources – our site (I screenshotted all of the card ratings on the release day, I can upload those if anyone wants to see them) and HearthPwn pre-release ratings (Source). I will take the card’s position (e.g. #35 out of 135) from both sites, take the average, and look for the cards that stand out most (one way or the other). When talking about card’s current popularity, I use HSReplay.net statistics (Last 7 days, Legend-10).

Check out the Rastakhan’s Rumble Most Underrated Cards compilation too!

Shieldbreaker

Average rating – #40 out of 135

Let’s start with one of my biggest surprised during the reveal season – how well people responded to Shieldbreaker, even though it seemed like just a filler card to me. 2 mana 2/1 that Silences is basically a pre-nerf Ironbeak Owl, a card that was changed because it was too strong (as well as too common). But unlike Owl, Shieldbreaker can only Silence minions with Taunt. “But Stone, aren’t Taunts what Aggro decks want to Silence anyway?” you might ask. Sure, that’s true, but only in slow matchups. You want to get through them and deal as much damage as possible, and you don’t really care that you leave the body behind – it’s often understatted anyway and you’ve got what you wanted anyway (face damage). But this is not the case in faster matchups. Not only those often don’t play Taunts, but you usually want to clear them anyway, since you’re playing a board dominance game. The person with the better board control wins. Sometimes getting through a Taunt might help with destroying something that hides behind, but I would say that it’s not worth sacrificing the ability to use Silence on other cards.

Unlike Ironbeak Owl or Spellbreaker, Shieldbreaker can’t Silence what you actually want to Silence in faster matchups – buffs, Deathrattles etc. Hunter drops Scavenging Hyena and starts to get it going? Silence is great in that case, but you can’t do it with Shieldbreaker. Opponent Paladin plays Knife Juggler that would wreck your board if it survives? Can’t do anything about it with Shieldbreaker. Even Deathrattle Hunter who drops a Turn 3 Devilsaur Egg – Silencing it is massive, because otherwise he will most likely create a 5/5 from it next turn (which would contest your board). And again, Shieldbreaker can’t do anything.

Even the Aggro decks would pay 1 mana extra for that kind of flexibility. Or rather, 2 mana extra for that flexibility and a solid body. 2 mana 2/1 would have an edge over a 4 mana 4/3 in Aggro (especially if they had the same effect), but the added flexibility of Spellbreaker makes it simply a better choice. Maybe people who gave this card high scores expected an incredibly Taunt-heavy meta? Or maybe expected to see some hyper-Aggro decks that don’t care about any other Silence target than Taunt? It’s hard to say.

Immortal Prelate

Average rating – #22 out of 135

Prelate is one of the cards with massive late game potential, which take A LONG time to get going and also have some obvious counters. I’m really surprised that it was votes this high. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a terrible card, and it might even finds its niche in the future, but it’s just not going to win you that many games.

Against Aggro, it’s nearly useless. The shuffle part is close to being irrelevant. Even more, if you don’t shuffle it with a buff, it’s a downside – you don’t want to be drawing a 2 mana 1/3 again. Against Midrange, it’s still probably too slow. Then, there are Control decks. That’s where the card really shines – it offers an infinite win condition and a way to completely prevent fatigue. It’s basically a wet dream vs Odd Warrior and such. Let’s say that you put Blessing of Kings and Spikeridged Steed on it – now it’s a 7/13 minion with Taunt that leaves a 2/6 Taunt on Deathrattle. And it never dies. Great. Unless your opponent drops Ironbeak Owl or any kind of transform effect and ruins your day. Sure, there’s no telling that your opponent plays those in the first place, but if you play a card that’s bad in every faster matchup, you’d expect it to perform flawlessly in slower matchups. But this one doesn’t. It’s still pretty clunky, slow and counterable.

Of course, in the best case scenario you drop it, buff it, then your opponent kills it, then you play Call to Arms and get it again, then your opponent kills it again, then you draw it again and play it etc. This might not kill them, but waste so much of their resources. But this kind of best case scenario happens incredibly rarely. I’ve been trying to make this card work earlier in the expansion, but it just didn’t. The only deck it has seen play in recently is Hakkar Paladin, and let’s be honest, it’s a pretty bad off-meta deck.

Immortal Prelate MIGHT see some play in the future, but it would need a lot more support. Especially since the best Paladin’s buff – Spikeridged Steed – rotates out.

Dragon Roar

Average rating – #17 out of 135

Out of the cards I’ve listed here, this might be the biggest surprise for me. Dragon Roar was voted one of the better cards in the entire expansion and I can’t get my head around it. You see, if this card read “Draw 2 Dragon cards from your deck”, then I would kind of understand it. Cheap card draw is great, but it usually comes with a sort of downside, like restricting the card drawn to a certain type (Forge of Souls), certain stats (Crystology) or the draw spell itself having Overload (Ancestral Knowledge). But despite those restrictions, the cards still drew from your deck. And your deck is, ideally, comprised of 30 good cards. Which means that you always draw something solid, and you also thin your deck (which is an upside in most of matchups – only grindy Control mirrors don’t want to do it).

Adding random cards to your hand is a different kind of beast. While you still get a cheap card advantage, the advantage is only theoretical if the cards you get are bad. Because is doesn’t matter that you have 2 more cards than your opponent if 2 of your cards are just bad. And that’s the problem with Dragon Roar. While the fact that it draws Dragons (one of the strongest, if not THE strongest tribe on average) makes up for that a little, it’s still not enough. You can still get cards that you simply don’t want to. It’s true that you might high roll vs Aggro and get Duskbreaker (yes, you can get cards from another class), but you can also get two expensive Legendaries that will be dead cards for the entire game. On the other hand, vs Control you might get Ysera or Alexstrasza, but you might also get Faerie Dragon or Marsh Drake.

Another reason why the card is pretty bad is that you can’t predict the outcome. If this drew from your deck and you had only 5 different Dragons in there, you would more or less know what you can expect. Here you don’t, you can’t plan ahead and using it to get exactly the card you need is a risky and desperate play.

You could argue that adding cards instead of drawing helps in the slowest matchups, since it adds more resources to your deck overall, and that’s true. However, if you play a more Tempo-oriented version of Dragon Warrior, you don’t really care about that (because you never go to fatigue). And if you play a Control version, not only Control mirrors that care about fatigue are pretty rare, but you can also play Omega Assembly, which works as well (because even if you play a Control Dragon Warrior, you would still play Dr. Boom, Mad Genius and most likely Dyn-o-matic too, because it’s so good).

In general, cards that add random cards to your hand are bad, unless they have something extra going on for them. In this case, drawing 2 for 2 is not good enough – it’s just 1 mana cheaper than the regular draw (the standard for drawing 2 cards is 3 mana) while being much less consistent. Dragon Warrior was pretty hyped before the expansion, but a deck focused solely around Dragons didn’t work in the end (even though a Dragon package is common in Odd Warrior), and Dragon Roar is actually one of the lowest win rate cards from the expansion.

High Priestess Jeklik, Shriek, Reckless Diretroll

Average rating – #12, 13 and 31 out of 135

I’ve grouped those three cards together, because I feel like there would be too much overlap when discussing them separately. The entire “Discard Warlock” package was rater highly. The highest rated Discard Warlock card was actually Soulwarden, but I didn’t include it, because that one has at least proven its worth (it was still a bit overrated, but not as much as the other three). You see, quite a long time ago, around the One Night in Karazhan expansion, Discard Warlock was actually a great deck, but Discards were played in Zoo shell. Then, in Journey to Un’Goro, Lakkari Sacrifice was printed, and players have tried to play a completely different kind of Discard Warlock – a bit slower deck that focuses on finishing the quest as quickly as possible. Over the next few expansions, Blizzard printed a lot of cards that baited people (I’ll be honest – including me) into thinking that the archetype might be viable after all. Howlfiend, Cataclysm, The Soularium… but it just never worked.

Fast forward to Rastakhan’s Rumble. It’s the last expansion in which Quest version of Discard Warlock might be a thing, and Blizzard has made a big push. Four different Discard-related cards in a single expansion, and they seemed actually strong. Jeklik which copies herself after getting discarded, targeted discards in a form of Shriek and Diretroll, a way to redraw the cards you’ve discarded through Soulwarden – those are the things people have been asking for ever since the Quest got released. So it’s natural that the hopes were high… but I guess that in the end, they were too high. The first few days of Rastakhan’s Rumble were quite promising for Discard Warlock (a few pro players climbed to high Legend with it), but it was only due to a poor, volatile, early expansion meta. Once it stabilized, everyone has quickly realized that Discard Warlock just isn’t the best deck choice. In fact, it isn’t even a remotely good choice (unless you like losing significantly more games than winning).

And it’s not like those cards are bad, no. They’re some of the best “Control” Discards cards that we’ve seen in a while. It’s just that a) Control deck still doesn’t want to run that many Discards, especially when it has similarly good options that don’t discard (e.g. Shriek -> Defile) and b) Quest and the new Discard cards just aren’t good in Aggro, since they’re too slow. The old Discard Warlock worked well, because it could gain A LOT of tempo through Discards and quite often without paying the actual Discard cost (e.g. when having Malchezaar's Imp on the board) or even gaining even more tempo for free (Silverware Golem). Quest just doesn’t fit in.

And so, nearly the entire Discard package turned out to be bad, simply because Quest is not enough of an incentive + it’s pretty awkward to run that many discards in general. The only card out of the bunch that has seen some solid play is Soulwarden. 6 mana 6/6 that draws 3 cards is just insane, and players have built special Midrange/Control decks running Soulfire and Doomguard just to take advantage of it.

Spirit of the Dead

Average rating – #9 out of 135

And we’ve got to the top 10. Spirit of the Dead was ranked as the ninth best card of the expansion… which I actually find really weird. Let’s all remember that this is a Priest card. Priest is a rather minion-light class in the first place. And if it has some, they are usually a part of the combo or something and Anduin wants to keep them alive at any cost. It rarely happens that you play a minion, then your opponent plays something, then you go ahead and trade into it next turn 1 for 1. It’s just not a Priest way to handle things.

You might think that it’s an anti-AoE measure – if you have a bigger board (e.g. after Greater Diamond Spellstone or Zerek's Cloning Gallery), then you drop it and when your opponent AoEs, it triggers a few times. But no, it doesn’t work like that. If it dies at the same time as other minions, then it doesn’t trigger. So at best it’s an anti-single target removal measure when you have something like Prophet Velen on the board. And even then… it doesn’t actually prevent your opponent from removing it. It just means that at one point down the line you will get a 1 mana version of Prophet Velen. Which is great, but only in slowest matchups, because without a way to draw it immediately, you don’t even have a guarantee that you will actually get it before the game is over.

Of course, there is a sweet combo with Bwonsamdi, the Dead, but it doesn’t really work, because Spirit of the Dead is just bad. For the most of the game, it’s a dead card, and even if you get it to trigger, you have no guarantee that it will do anything before the game is over (other than costing you a card). Sure, the card is not completely useless, and it has its moments (especially when combo’d with Bwonsamdi), but #9 of the expansion? Definitely not.

Spirit of the Rhino

Average rating – #6 out of 135

Another overrated Spirit card. To be fair, I think that Rhino is much better than Dead, but calling it #6 of the expansion is still too much. You see, Rush Warrior was pretty hyped before Rastakhan’s Rumble, almost as much as Discard Warlock or Dragon Warrior were. Akali, the Rhino was seen as a good, but not overpowered cards, but a lot of players went nuts over this Spirit. Having a way to give your Rush minions immune means that you can actually trade them into stuff and make them survive

And well, it’s great in theory. In a world in which you have a lot of viable Rush minions and everyone is played minion-based strategies, it would be great. But in our world, it just doesn’t work that well. First of all, we still need enough individually good Rush minions, because you won’t always have Spirit of the Rhino. Then, you need to account for the fact that you need to spend one extra mana on this before playing your Rush minion, which is already sometimes understatted. For example, playing Rabid Worgen with this on Turn 4 basically turns it into a Flanking Strike. Which is a good card, but a SINGLE card. Here you need to use two. Of course, there’s a chance that Spirit card survives for a few turns and you get more advantage of it, but the point is that the immediate gain isn’t even THAT huge. You also need to account for all of those matchups that are light on minions. When you play vs combo decks, or even a bunch of Control decks, they rarely put any meaningful midrange threats and engage in minion combat. They will just remove your stuff and play theirs in the late game, once you run out of things to do.

As a result, Spirit of the Rhino is an okay card, as it works quite well in some matchups, especially Midrange. And it’s the highest win rate card among Spirits (which were a huge letdown to be honest), but not even the most popular one – with a 0.3% representation on the ladder, it’s merely a tech choice in an already off-meta Rush Warrior deck.

Revenge of the Wild

Average rating – #5 out of 135

Once again, I need to clear something up first. Revenge of the Wild is NOT a bad card. It’s okay. Some would even say it’s good. It sees some play in Midrange Hunter (as a tech card, usually 1-of, played roughly in 30% of all Midrange Hunter builds) and it works pretty well in there. The entire deck is built around Beasts, and it can get a lot of value and tempo at times. However, between the fact that it hasn’t seen almost any play up until the 2nd nerf patch, and that it’s merely a solid card, as opposed to fifth best card in the expansion, I feel like calling it overrated is justified.

Revenge of the Wild is one of those cards with massive potential that have one big disadvantage – they’re dead most of the time. In order to use it, you need to have a solid board with Beasts, sacrifice it through trades and play Revenge. Alternatively, play a bunch of Rush/Charge minions (e.g. Springpaw, Unleash the Hounds), trade those and use it. The latter is generally worse, but still good – summoning four or five 1/1’s with Rush or Charge for 2 mana is amazing. But here’s the thing – for the most of the game, the card is useless. Early in the game, you rarely have enough board presence to make it useful and not enough mana to combo it with UTH. Only in the mid game it starts being useful, but even then you usually have better plays every turn. And that’s why it’s not very common and usually played as one-of – it has an amazing pay-off in the late game, but it’s pretty bad throughout the early and (less so) mid game, when the Midrange Hunter deck wants to put as much pressure as possible.

This type of card works much better in a slower deck, which can afford to have it in his hand for multiple turns and then unleash its power later. But a proactive deck doesn’t want to hold too many reactive cards, especially ones that are so conditional. As a result, what was “supposed” to be one of the best cards from the expansion turned out to be merely an okay card.

Da Undatakah

Average rating – #4 out of 135

I’ll be honest, I’ve also overrated the card significantly. I thought that it’s going to be one of the best Legendaries from Rastakhan’s Rumble. I mean, Deathrattle Hunter was already one of the most popular decks and I thought that it would fit in. Even more, I thought that it might take Deathrattle Rogue (which was mostly an off-meta deck at the time) to the higher tier. Or maybe be a part of some interesting combo. The last one turned to be true, even if just for a moment (Undatakah Druid was big early in the expansion, but it quickly disappeared from the meta), but as it turned out, neither of the Deathrattle decks wanted to play it. Perhaps it was too slow, maybe too conditional (three of your Deathrattle minions had to die already before you could really maximize its value), maybe not necessary, vulnerable to Silence. Whatever it is, it’s clear that it turned out to be much worse in reality than it was in theory.

I think that one of the biggest problems with Undatakah compared to arguably one of the strongest Legendaries ever released – N'Zoth, The Corruptor – is the fact that it has no immediate value. It’s an 8/5 minion for 8 mana, incredibly slow. All of the tempo/value it can provide comes from its Deathrattle, which can be Silenced, transformed, or ignored for a while while looking for an answer. Another issue is that it’s much easier for Undatakah to do nothing. Even if a certain Deathrattle is useless, N’Zoth at least resummoned the body. Undatakah just gains Deathrattles. Two good examples would be Carnivorous Cube and Spider Bomb. Cube has a Deathrattle, but it doesn’t do anything without its Battlecry, meaning that it’s an “empty” one – Undatakah gaining it would mean nothing. Spider Bomb, on the other hand, is great only in specific cases. It’s good if your opponent has a single big minion and you use your 2/2 to deal with it. But in this case, you have it on your 8/5 – you can trade into a big minion anyway, and if your opponent has a bunch of small minions, it’s pretty bad too (the situations in which Spider Bomb’s Deathrattle on Undatakah would be very relevant aren’t very common).

All in all, I think that Undatakah has a lot of potential, and that it might see some play next year (or in the future, in the Wild, maybe even as a part of some combo), but it was clearly overrated given the context of this expansion. Shame on everyone who thought that it’s going to be gamebreaking (including me)…