My Silverback Patriarch and Other Animals: Hearthstone’s Functionally Useless Cards

Bad cards have a role to play in card games: they function as learning tools for newcomers and interesting quagmires whenever random effects throw them up. Some of them also unexpectedly get a chance to shine when odd synergies are printed in subsequent sets. Nevertheless, there are quite a few spells and minions in Hearthstone that might as well not even exist as they are strictly inferior to other neutral options in the game, highlighting some of the wrinkles in the game’s card design philosophy.

Out of my Jungle!

It’s never a nice feeling to open a pack full of useless junk, nothing more than 40 dust towards that shiny new legendary you’re trying to craft for the latest exciting deck: it’s a core part of every CCG’s business model and a sad necessity to feature some “useless” or “bad” cards. In fact, it’s inevitable from a design perspective: no matter how strong the card are individually, there’s always going to be a hierarchy between them. Imagine picking the top 100 cards in the history of Hearthstone: as strong as even the last few entrants on that list are in a vacuum, they would be woefully outclassed in a game mode where only those 100 are available to play with. Similarly, there’s always going to be a “worse” minion or spell that has no use in a given constructed environment. It’s the nature of the beast.

Mark Rosewater’s classic 2002 article When Cards Go Bad explains this phenomenon in further detail in the context of Magic: The Gathering. “Bad” cards are sometimes there as teaching tools or simply flashy stuff that’s not meant to see play at the highest level. Perhaps they are something that require further supporting tools down the line to truly shine or provide an opportunity to discover that one truly astonishing combo that no one else considered before.

While that all makes sense, it’s a lot more difficult to explain certain choices with regards to Hearthstone. Simply put: bad cards are always going to be present in a card game, sure but it would sure be nice if they were at least interesting!

Creepy Concepts

No discussion about card quality would be complete without clearing up an important misconception about power creep. The popular notion is that printing a strictly superior card to an already existing one is a definite case of it, though it really isn’t so: printing a textless 6 mana 1/1 before going on to creating a 6 mana 2/2 doesn’t impact the metagame in any capacity. (The same could be said about the many different joke-y Rager cards.) Power creep only occurs when the strength required for a card to see play increases – for instance, Piloted Shredder meant a new and much higher cap on what you wanted from a neutral 4-drop. This is why “upgrades” can be just fine, and every new card that crushes Silverback Patriarch – like Tar Creeper, Phantom Militia, Belligerent Gnome and many others – in the same slot is acceptable from a gameplay perspective. This also doesn’t factor in the naturally increased power level of class cards or the fact that rotating sets can also get away with slightly higher strength.

So you could say Hearthstone’s doing a pretty decent job regarding the topline issues with “bad” cards – however, many of them are stupendously lame and practically pointless. In fact, Rosewater’s sequel to the aforementioned article ten years down the line explicitly stats that “every card is loved by someone”. I struggle to imagine the personality of the individual who has romantic feelings for Gnash, especially considering its relation to Claw.

There are quite a few other cards in the game that don’t fulfill a niche or a particular power fantasy. Why would you ever use Embrace Darkness? How about Flame Leviathan or Light's Sorrow? Cobra Shot? The Beast Within? Arguably, Lotus Assassin’s ability also doesn’t come into play often enough to warrant a separate card at all.

Back in 2015, we’ve had an interesting video back-and-forth between Kripp and Ben Brode about the subject, and while the streamer’s original assertion that bad cards don’t need to exist seems like quite a stretch, the general point that Hearthstone doesn’t take advantage of its digital nature regarding card adjustments seemed like an argument that held up much better over time. (Looking at the wider digital CCG/TCG landscape, you could argue one of the reasons behind Artifact’s tanking was the developers’ initial insistence on not making changes to the cards at any point!)

Again, as we’ve discussed before, bad cards are a necessity – however, the ability to adjust them “on the fly” would make it very easy to spice up stale metagames even without creating powerful new cards just by creating new toys to experiment with. Remember Volcanosaur? It was never Constructed-worthy but people spent a decent amount of time trying to make it work simply because it was new.

Who’s up for an Adventure?

Mind you, the one thing that’s been made clear about Hearthstone’s card design in recent years is that the main gameplay argument about the end of adventures: clearly, not many sets managed to rival the impact of The Curse of Naxxramas or The League of Explorers. The business benefits of printing more cards that are simultaneously tougher to acquire with gold makes are clear – however, it would be tough to argue that the gameplay experience had become richer with all the extra cards.

Once again, this comes back to the question of how boring the game’s “bad” cards are: most of the “extra” ones printed in the card sets fails to make an impact or even enable interesting or janky build-around combos. Want to talk about wasted design space? Drakkari Trickster, Unpowered Mauler, Cloakscale Chemist, Brainstormer: not only are these cards useless, but there’s no reason for them to exist simply because they take up space from other potential interesting bad cards. The refrain of this entire discussion is a usual one, at least in the context of Hearthstone: a nagging feeling that it’s a pretty good game, but it could be so much better with better card design.