I love card reveal season. It's a time for theory crafting, new set hype, and the changing of the Hearthstone meta yet again. This set in particular also marks the new standard rotation bringing on an even fresher feeling for the game. With this added hype, we often see an influx of players offering up their opinions on the newest pieces of our beloved (or in some cases tolerated addiction) game. These opinions are diverse and always interesting to see.
One very popular opinion shared by commentators from all walks of life from the very newest member to the grizzled veteran of the site has been an oddly negative one to the mechanic Rush. Rush as most of you probably know by now is a new(ish) take on the charge mechanic that allows you to attack minions only on the first turn a card is played. Many don't see the value of this mechanic at all and others find it to be kind of a boring thing to add to Hearthstone. I disagree with both of these ideas and wish to open up a discussion as well as share my own opinion of Rush.
First, I'd like to touch on the entertainment value that this card adds. What I believe most people focus on when they look at this mechanic is that it isn't a particularly creative one. This is something I agree with. The mechanic has been around since ungoro and has a lot of the same traits that charge has. I don't, however, believe that this has to hinder the mechanic. Discover has been brought back a number of times and continues to bring out different aspects of the mechanic. So far, this appears to be similar to what is happening with a lot of rush cards. While we likely will see a lot of the vanilla type rush cards like Scaleworm, cards like Darius Crowley and Hunting Mastif take the concept in interesting directions. Another fun and overlooked aspect is in how it will feel to play with and against rush cards. A lot of people look at the simplicity of the mechanic and assume gameplay will also be simple, but (at least at higher levels of play) there will be a lot of maneuvering to both setup and play around these cards. This kind of interaction is a ton of fun for myself and I assume others and makes up a large portion of why I enjoy Hearthstone. If you are playing against a warrior, do you trade in your 3 attack creature to play around Darius Crowley? Should you try to find an alternative play for turn3 when going against dragon priest? Should you tempo out your Scaleworm or wait for the best opportunity to make it powerful and find an alternative play? These kinds of things are really fun to try to figure out and adds to the complexity of the Hearthstone puzzle.
Now, fun is a very subjective thing. Not everyone enjoys any given thing, but one more definable (albeit difficult to test) aspect of rush is its power. Just as a heads up, this is a lot of speculation so if you disagree, I'd love to discuss why. Anyway, Rush to me feels like one of the more impressive tempo tools we've seen and yet it's cards are rated rather lowly by a lot of the community. This honestly confuses me. Rush as a mechanic allows for instant board impact and can even help gain significant tempo. These aspects alone make even the most vanilla rush cards (4 mana 5/4 anyone?) pretty strong and can be shown through a concept I like to call trade initiative. Trade initiative has been a big deal in Hearthstone since the beginning and continues to be important to this day. Trade initiative is your own ability to dictate the trades on board. When you have this initiative, you get to make the trades that best improve your board state and often get to deny your opponent's ability to stick minions on the board. This is a big reason why Swamp King Dred didn't work out. He gives the opponent the ability to dictate trades. Rush allows you to swing this trade initiative in your favor and make the best trades for your deck. In the instance of Darius Crowley, taking and maintaining this trade initiative can be even bigger as his effect abuses this initiative to beef himself up. Most classes use this initiative to push for damage on the face as well which is essentially in winning in a game.
If you made it through all of that, thank you so much for listening to what I have to say and feel free to agree or disagree with me down below.
I didn't really read through the whole thing lol, but I kinda agree that Rush is actually not bad. A lot of the time it seems like it's basically "Damage a minion and put a minion on the board". I know a couple of the rush guys will just die right away, but Crowley will work wonders in a midrange-control warrior. I don't play warrior at all so it doesn't affect me much, but I think people are rating rush too poorly.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Twitch name: Anatak15 NA Legend Season 48, 49, 52, 53, 54, 74
Whatever favor a control meta works for me. But i fear rush cards are not enough in the current power level of Hearthstone. And maybe thats why people are rating too poorly.
I think rush is the best thing they did for hearthstone so far. It offers more interaction with the oponent.
until now we lived in a world were to counter stuff you had to generate tempo swings over spells mostly. Game atm evolves around some broken minions you have to counter emidiately or lose the game.
For example the old vanila 1 turn manawyrm(best example)...i play my 2/3 he frostbolts it goes face, i play my 3/3 he frost bolts it again goes face, i play my yeti he fireballs it goes face...
While im playing cards with better stats, the enemy just removes them.
Rush actually changes things, so i can trade my minion imidiately into his and give the situation perfectly back to him. It realy forces a more board trading style and playing around cards.
My only fear is that this mechanic gets broken by some super OP combos like Guldan, but my hope is that they print a card that gives rush minion the "Big Sand worm Effekt" when this kills a minion it can attack again.
So you could rush off complete boards and you realy are forced to not overcommit and use your recources wisely.
The dumbass community thinks “no high roll auto include cheat minions... must be trash!” I for one am happy to see this mechanic. It will likely be huge in there coming expansions if not right away.
Rush is a necessary mechanic at this point in Heathstone's existence. It will succeed unless those minions are too overpowered or too underpowered. This doesn't seem to be the case so far. This one is hard for Blizzard to screw up. They will end up supporting this mechanic in every expansion from now on because it gives them better control in balancing the game. It will be the most successful mechanic since discover.
people are definitely underrating rush. it will provide removal for classes or archetypes that lack it, and it provides tempo while doing so. overall power levels will be dropping immensely after rotation, and most existing archetypes will be gutted, to boot.
Interesting thoughts, have to say I am massively looking forward to experimenting with the mechanic. And echo for that matter.
Nothing yet has jumped out as obviously broken, which I think is what people are looking for, but until we have the full set and know the impact that the meta has on the rotation it's so hard to make judgements.
My hope is that the overall power level comes down slightly in the new meta, opening up more space for deck variety (like rush decks, echo decks...). Doubt that will actually happen though!
Rush is long overdue. I had wished they made charge (and/or weapons) not attack face for years, but I guess printing a new keyword is the best alternative. I just hope the powerlevel of the game drops a little to let keywords like this shine. It doesn't matter what Rush minions you have if you're against a board of Voidlords or a Big Priest with a Barnabus on turn 6.
I think a lot of people, at least Standard players, forget how many powerful cards will rotate. Rush will be very powerful and good for the game in my opinion.
I think you can argue the power of rush very succinctly by comparing a good rush minion to Firelands Portal or Vilespine Slayer. You kill one of their minions, and you get some minion on board - it's a huge tempo swing. Admittedly, it's not as clean as those other removal cards - the minions you end up with aren't at full health, but it's close enough considering the results of the aforementioned removals are generally understated for the cost.
Rush is stronger than most people think. The reason it is so low rated at the moment is the actual cards people see. If the rush minion does not survive the combat, it is just overcosted removal that doesn't get around taunts. You dealt 5 damage with 4-5 mana. If both the rush minion and its target survive, it is just like those Battlecry damage minions. Few of them see play.
However in both cases, you free up your real removal. The Rush minion acts as extra removal. When you hit the sweet spot and get a kill and a surviving rush minion, you are feeling great. At this point in time though, turn 4-6 is a tricky place and most of the rush minions sit in that area.
I think the mechanic is fine, but I doubt the cards with it we have seen so far are strong enough. To be viable in constructed, I think the cards need at least Yeti-stats (Manacost/manacost+ 1 health) or to be situationally even better. Icehowl is not very scary, is he? The mechanic is WAAAY weaker than charge. Rush+poisonous and divine shield is nice, ofc, but I doubt we willl see that.
i think it's also important to remember that rush is being implemented during a huge downward shift in overall set power. most OP archetypes are being gutted. basically all current priest archetypes, secret mage, and murloc pally will vanish. jades are gone, nzoth, medivh, etc. it's pretty hard to picture what decks will look like without a lot of the end game and early game power cards we're accustomed to, lots of clears and removal rotating, etc.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
I love card reveal season. It's a time for theory crafting, new set hype, and the changing of the Hearthstone meta yet again. This set in particular also marks the new standard rotation bringing on an even fresher feeling for the game. With this added hype, we often see an influx of players offering up their opinions on the newest pieces of our beloved (or in some cases tolerated addiction) game. These opinions are diverse and always interesting to see.
One very popular opinion shared by commentators from all walks of life from the very newest member to the grizzled veteran of the site has been an oddly negative one to the mechanic Rush. Rush as most of you probably know by now is a new(ish) take on the charge mechanic that allows you to attack minions only on the first turn a card is played. Many don't see the value of this mechanic at all and others find it to be kind of a boring thing to add to Hearthstone. I disagree with both of these ideas and wish to open up a discussion as well as share my own opinion of Rush.
First, I'd like to touch on the entertainment value that this card adds. What I believe most people focus on when they look at this mechanic is that it isn't a particularly creative one. This is something I agree with. The mechanic has been around since ungoro and has a lot of the same traits that charge has. I don't, however, believe that this has to hinder the mechanic. Discover has been brought back a number of times and continues to bring out different aspects of the mechanic. So far, this appears to be similar to what is happening with a lot of rush cards. While we likely will see a lot of the vanilla type rush cards like Scaleworm, cards like Darius Crowley and Hunting Mastif take the concept in interesting directions. Another fun and overlooked aspect is in how it will feel to play with and against rush cards. A lot of people look at the simplicity of the mechanic and assume gameplay will also be simple, but (at least at higher levels of play) there will be a lot of maneuvering to both setup and play around these cards. This kind of interaction is a ton of fun for myself and I assume others and makes up a large portion of why I enjoy Hearthstone. If you are playing against a warrior, do you trade in your 3 attack creature to play around Darius Crowley? Should you try to find an alternative play for turn3 when going against dragon priest? Should you tempo out your Scaleworm or wait for the best opportunity to make it powerful and find an alternative play? These kinds of things are really fun to try to figure out and adds to the complexity of the Hearthstone puzzle.
Now, fun is a very subjective thing. Not everyone enjoys any given thing, but one more definable (albeit difficult to test) aspect of rush is its power. Just as a heads up, this is a lot of speculation so if you disagree, I'd love to discuss why. Anyway, Rush to me feels like one of the more impressive tempo tools we've seen and yet it's cards are rated rather lowly by a lot of the community. This honestly confuses me. Rush as a mechanic allows for instant board impact and can even help gain significant tempo. These aspects alone make even the most vanilla rush cards (4 mana 5/4 anyone?) pretty strong and can be shown through a concept I like to call trade initiative. Trade initiative has been a big deal in Hearthstone since the beginning and continues to be important to this day. Trade initiative is your own ability to dictate the trades on board. When you have this initiative, you get to make the trades that best improve your board state and often get to deny your opponent's ability to stick minions on the board. This is a big reason why Swamp King Dred didn't work out. He gives the opponent the ability to dictate trades. Rush allows you to swing this trade initiative in your favor and make the best trades for your deck. In the instance of Darius Crowley, taking and maintaining this trade initiative can be even bigger as his effect abuses this initiative to beef himself up. Most classes use this initiative to push for damage on the face as well which is essentially in winning in a game.
If you made it through all of that, thank you so much for listening to what I have to say and feel free to agree or disagree with me down below.
I didn't really read through the whole thing lol, but I kinda agree that Rush is actually not bad. A lot of the time it seems like it's basically "Damage a minion and put a minion on the board". I know a couple of the rush guys will just die right away, but Crowley will work wonders in a midrange-control warrior. I don't play warrior at all so it doesn't affect me much, but I think people are rating rush too poorly.
Twitch name: Anatak15
NA Legend Season 48, 49, 52, 53, 54, 74
This is exactly what I was thinking. People don't seem to appreciate dictating trades favorably.
Whatever favor a control meta works for me. But i fear rush cards are not enough in the current power level of Hearthstone. And maybe thats why people are rating too poorly.
I think rush is the best thing they did for hearthstone so far. It offers more interaction with the oponent.
until now we lived in a world were to counter stuff you had to generate tempo swings over spells mostly. Game atm evolves around some broken minions you have to counter emidiately or lose the game.
For example the old vanila 1 turn manawyrm(best example)...i play my 2/3 he frostbolts it goes face, i play my 3/3 he frost bolts it again goes face, i play my yeti he fireballs it goes face...
While im playing cards with better stats, the enemy just removes them.
Rush actually changes things, so i can trade my minion imidiately into his and give the situation perfectly back to him. It realy forces a more board trading style and playing around cards.
My only fear is that this mechanic gets broken by some super OP combos like Guldan, but my hope is that they print a card that gives rush minion the "Big Sand worm Effekt" when this kills a minion it can attack again.
So you could rush off complete boards and you realy are forced to not overcommit and use your recources wisely.
The dumbass community thinks “no high roll auto include cheat minions... must be trash!” I for one am happy to see this mechanic. It will likely be huge in there coming expansions if not right away.
Rush is a necessary mechanic at this point in Heathstone's existence. It will succeed unless those minions are too overpowered or too underpowered. This doesn't seem to be the case so far. This one is hard for Blizzard to screw up. They will end up supporting this mechanic in every expansion from now on because it gives them better control in balancing the game. It will be the most successful mechanic since discover.
people are definitely underrating rush. it will provide removal for classes or archetypes that lack it, and it provides tempo while doing so. overall power levels will be dropping immensely after rotation, and most existing archetypes will be gutted, to boot.
Interesting thoughts, have to say I am massively looking forward to experimenting with the mechanic. And echo for that matter.
Nothing yet has jumped out as obviously broken, which I think is what people are looking for, but until we have the full set and know the impact that the meta has on the rotation it's so hard to make judgements.
My hope is that the overall power level comes down slightly in the new meta, opening up more space for deck variety (like rush decks, echo decks...). Doubt that will actually happen though!
Rush is long overdue. I had wished they made charge (and/or weapons) not attack face for years, but I guess printing a new keyword is the best alternative. I just hope the powerlevel of the game drops a little to let keywords like this shine. It doesn't matter what Rush minions you have if you're against a board of Voidlords or a Big Priest with a Barnabus on turn 6.
Rush cards will be in its core basically Firelands Portals of various power level ... so yeah, they will have a pretty significant impact.
- Click Here To Join Us On Discord! -
Rush is far from bad but I think the cards are rated badly because of all the broken shit we're used to see nowadays in Hearthstone.
Hopefully the rotation combined with a weaker set will finally tone down the game a notch and make standard enjoyable again.
I think a lot of people, at least Standard players, forget how many powerful cards will rotate. Rush will be very powerful and good for the game in my opinion.
The Rush mechanic will make permanent waves in the meta. People in both hemispheres will be playing Rush decks until at least 2112.
I think you can argue the power of rush very succinctly by comparing a good rush minion to Firelands Portal or Vilespine Slayer. You kill one of their minions, and you get some minion on board - it's a huge tempo swing. Admittedly, it's not as clean as those other removal cards - the minions you end up with aren't at full health, but it's close enough considering the results of the aforementioned removals are generally understated for the cost.
I like it a lot. Think it requires skill to use properly.
Rush is stronger than most people think. The reason it is so low rated at the moment is the actual cards people see. If the rush minion does not survive the combat, it is just overcosted removal that doesn't get around taunts. You dealt 5 damage with 4-5 mana. If both the rush minion and its target survive, it is just like those Battlecry damage minions. Few of them see play.
However in both cases, you free up your real removal. The Rush minion acts as extra removal. When you hit the sweet spot and get a kill and a surviving rush minion, you are feeling great. At this point in time though, turn 4-6 is a tricky place and most of the rush minions sit in that area.
Imo Rush is a very strong and interesting keyword, it's auctally probably my second favorite keyword
Don't mind me just passing by
I think the mechanic is fine, but I doubt the cards with it we have seen so far are strong enough. To be viable in constructed, I think the cards need at least Yeti-stats (Manacost/manacost+ 1 health) or to be situationally even better. Icehowl is not very scary, is he? The mechanic is WAAAY weaker than charge. Rush+poisonous and divine shield is nice, ofc, but I doubt we willl see that.
Editor of the Heartpwn Legendary Crafting Guide:
https://www.hearthpwn.com/forums/hearthstone-general/card-discussion/205920-legendary-tier-list-crafting-guide
i think it's also important to remember that rush is being implemented during a huge downward shift in overall set power. most OP archetypes are being gutted. basically all current priest archetypes, secret mage, and murloc pally will vanish. jades are gone, nzoth, medivh, etc. it's pretty hard to picture what decks will look like without a lot of the end game and early game power cards we're accustomed to, lots of clears and removal rotating, etc.