End of an Era: Hearthstone Standard Play

Hearthstone recently announced a new game mode.

It's the Standard Mode, and it will shake the game quite a bit. Standard Mode is nothing new for card games like Magic: The Gathering, Pokemon, and all the rest of the real-life trading card games, and what it implies is that basically in the spirit of creative freedom and not letting the game stagnate -- a concern expressed multiple times by the design team -- they're going to render the older sets and expansions unplayable, and in Standard Mode only cards from the last two years' worth of sets can be played.

Well, except for the Basic and Classic sets, which will continue to be playable no matter what. Also except for the fact that the older, non-Standard-legal cards can still be played in 'Wild' mode. Also you can still craft them because this is a digital game.

But they are going to come down hard, and when this 'Year of the Kraken', or Standard Year 1 starts, the older expansions, which are Curse of Naxxramas and Goblins VS Gnomes, will be removed from purchase. So, uh, good luck any of you new players who are trying to build up decks for Wild Mode from scratch.

There will be some major changes, all of which will be detailed in that Blizzard post, but mainly this:

• Standard Mode will rotate out older sets at the beginning of each year, and only the last two years' worth of content (plus Basic + Classic) are allowed to be played.
• Wild Mode will essentially be the same as Hearthstone as it is now, with every card in the game available.
• Older expansions and booster packs can no longer be purchased but can be crafted.
• Discover and Random effects in Standard mode will only cause cards from the pool available in Standard mode.
• Deck slots are bumped to 18.
• Arena, most Tavern Brawls and Solo Adventures use the Wild system.
• There will be some changes to the Basic and Classic cards, possibly Druid because that class really doesn't get much from expansions. 

It's definitely the right choice, even if not everyone is going to be happy about it. Introducing new expansions like League of Explorers or Grand Tournament have so far been more about 'oh, cool card, but Dr. Boom/Piloted Shredder is better!' or 'cool, but it doesn't fit in Face Hunter/Mech Mage/Patron Warrior'. This shakes things up and makes a lot of the new card more relevant instead of just sitting in our collection and gathering dust. And this allows the developers to introduce new cards without nerfing older ones to unusability like Undertaker and Warsong Commander. 

So it's going to be the end of the era. Curse of Naxxramas is a crucial lynchpin to many a deck's backbone, and so does Goblins vs. Gnomes. A lot of the staple cards, including the extremely popular Dr. Boom, Piloted Shredder, Loatheb, Haunted Creeper and Sludge Belcher, which are all nearly ubiquitous in most decks out there, are no longer playable. Other popular neutral cards include Annoy-o-tron, Nerubian Egg, Zombie Chow, Spider Tank, Antique Healbot, Kel'thuzad, Shade of Naxxramas  and Mechanical Yeti, all really solid and sticky minions. Piloted Shredder and Dr. Boom are possibly the two that will really shake the metagame, though, because most of the time these two cards are what the 4-drops and 7-drops will compete against. Loatheb is a unique anti-spell card that's been really useful and very solid, the Healbot is one of the most reliable healers out there, Sludge Belcher and Haunted Creeper are very solid 5-drops and 2-drops respectively that stick on the board, Spider Tank is the solid vanilla 3-drop, Zombie Chow really helps set the tempo if you get it in your early game... Toshley and the Troggs are some underrated cards which I really liked and sometimes used... ah, so many lost. 

Let me talk a bit about the main changes to specific decks and classes:

• Mech decks are basically dead. The loss of Mechwarper, Piloted Shredder, Spider Tank and Annoy-o-tron in particular, but other solid cards like Cogmaster, Tinkertown Technician, Mechanical Yeti, Enhance-o-Mechano, Fel Reaver, Force Tank MAX, Piloted Sky Golem and Antique Healbot do take out nearly the entirety of the backbone of Mech decks, and that's before considering good class-specific ones like Whirling Zap-o-matic, Snowchugger, Goblin Blastmage and Shielded Minibot. 
• Hobgoblin is gone, and with it all the Hobgoblin decks. I don't really see much of those, but, y'know, there were a couple that cropped up here and there.
• Pirate decks of all classes suffer a lot due to the loss of Ship's Cannon, one of the most solid support cards for pirates.
• Hunter: Hunters lose a very valuable card in Glaivezooka, one of the most powerful early-game aggression tools. The loss of the neutral Mad Scientist will also severely undermine the usage of traps in Face Hunter decks, where it had been ubiquitous before. Also somewhat relevant is the loss of Webspinner, which, while not as essential as the previous two, has seen a fair amount of usage in midrange hunter. Haunted Creeper is also a very common early-game minion in most hunter decks.
• Mage: Mage basically lost one of their stronger archetypes, the Mech Mage decks, with the loss of all those mechs but especially the class-specific Snowchugger and Goblin Blastmage. Mages also lose the extremely wonderful Unstable Portal, and the solid spells Flamecannon and Duplicate, all of which see a decent amount of usage as reliably powerful early-game spells. The lack of Mad Scientist will probably also tone down the amount of secrets in mage decks.
• Shaman: Shamans don't really lose a lot, honestly. Whirling Zap-o-matic was a great minion, but with mech decks unplayable, that's not a big loss. Crackle is another good card that Shaman lost, but it's not at all that big of a loss compared to the others.
• Rogue: Rogues don't suffer all that much either, but it does lose an entire archetype in losing Tinker's Sharpsword Oil, making Oil Rogue a thing of the past. Another decent thing that Rogues lost is the Goblin Auto-Barber, a wholly solid minion that doesn't need to be placed in a mech deck. Also slightly less relevant is the Unearthed Raptor has less Deathrattle buddies to play with since a lot of the solid ones came from Naxx.
• Priest: Priest loses a fair amount, including one of its most powerful buffing spells, Velen's Chosen, and the quintessential Priest 3-drop, Dark Cultist. Priest also loses the excellent and fun board clears, Lightbomb, and some neutral high-health minions that are commonly seen in Priest decks like Deathlord. Priest also loses Shrinkmeister, which is one of the more common two-drops used by priests, and Vol'jin, which, while not that gamebreaking, is one of the best and most fun legendaries to use. Less relevant is Museum Curator having waaaay less good Deathrattles to play around with.
• Warlock: Warlocks suffer a whole lot too, losing the great minion Voidcaller, and its good friend the legendary Mal'Ganis. The extremely annoying but useful spells Imp-losion and the solid Darkbomb are gone as well, and it's going to be odd having to face Warlock decks without Imp-losion up their sleeves.
• Paladin: Paladins lose two extremely important cards in Shielded Minibot and Muster for Battle, two of the most important and powerful cards to ensure a Paladin's early-game board control, and I for one will be really, really sad to see these two cards that have served me well kind of relegated to the side. Paladins also lose the Quartermaster and Avenge. Avenge will definitely affect the extremely popular Secret Paladin decks, since it's the one that is the most useful among the blobs that the Mysterious Challenger summons. 
• Warrior: Sealing the nail in the survivors of the Warsong nerf, Grim Patron decks lose Unstable Ghoul and Death's Bite, two of Warrior's ways to incite Whirlwinds onto the board and trigger their Patrons and Frothing Berserkers. Death's Bite in particular is one of the most powerful Warrior weapons and it's a shame to see it go. In addition to those, the extremely popular Warrior card Shieldmaiden -- an extremely annoying and solid card -- also gets axed.
• Druid: Druid loses Druid of the Fang. But that's okay, because Druid has a lot of solid cards in its base and classic sets, and losing snakey just stops beast druid decks which never really took off anyway.

So what will the new expansion bring to compensate for this? Well, I certainly hope we get some really solid 2-drops... I don't think there's quite enough good ones to deal with things like Haunted Creeper, Snowchugger and Shielded Minibot being axed. 4-drops are decent. A lot of the classes take it hard, like Warrior, Paladin, Mage and Hunter, while some survive more or less unscathed. Druid is the one that's least affected, but then there's the upcoming changes to the base set, so who knows? We also lose a lot of utility cards like healing (though TGT did introduce a lot of new options) and anti-secret (Kezan Mystic, as little as I see her out these days) and anti-spell (Loatheb) cards. Hopefully whatever upcoming expansion will be fresh and introduces a lot of cards to make us actually, y'know, have fun and not just watch Dr. Boom hee hee ho heh heh for the one millionth time again.

Yes, it'll be sad to see a lot of old friends like my good spider and fungus giant and drooling abomination and whirling goblin robot shredders take a backseat for newer cards, but without the implementation of this Standard Mode, well, decks will stagnate and that will be bad for the game in the long run. This was approached in the best way possible, I think, retaining the integrity of these cards and the old play mode but still introducing this system to force players to think out of the box.