Did You Know Hungry Crab and Pirates were Overpowered in Alpha? 22 Card Changes from Alpha
The crew over at HearthSim and HSReplay.net took a look back into the past and discovered some old designs of our favourite cards that come from the Alpha days of Hearthstone. These were discovered thanks to the game not yet being localized into different languages and the placeholder values for the non-English strings not being updated.
Unfortunately, we can't know for certain about the other parts of cards were different due to things like Mana Cost and Attack Value not being localized, but it sure is an interesting look into the past!
Card Renames
- Healing Stream Totem turned into Healing Totem
- Chaos Energy was the name for Demonfire
- Leokk? Nah, that used to be called Spirit.
- Dual Warblades & Warblade of Azzinoth decided they would rather be the Dual Warglaives & Warglaive of Azzinoth
- Shard of Azzinoth became Flame of Azzinoth
Card Replacements
- Unbound Elemental was previously Grounding Totem.
- Your other minions can’t be targeted by enemy spells or Hero Powers..
- Naturalize was previously Demoralizing Roar.
- Enemy minions get -3 Attack this turn..
Card Text Changes
A dollar sign before a number in the client indicates that the number will increase with Spell Damage.
Class Cards
- Arcane Explosion - Deal $1 Damage to all enemies. (Even the hero got hit)
- Flamestrike - Deal $4 damage to all enemies. (Even the hero got hit)
- Swipe - Deal $3 damage to an enemy and $1 damage to all other enemies. (One less damage to the target)
- Ancestral Healing - Restore a minion to full Health. (No Taunt!)
- Charge - Give your minions Charge this turn. (OP)
- Mortal Strike - Deal $4 damage. If your hero has 12 or less Health, deal $8 damage instead. (Up from 6)
- Gorehowl - Attacking a minion doesn’t cost Durability. (No Attack removal)
- Starfall - Choose One - Deal $4 damage to an enemy; or $2 damage to all of them. (It's been buffed to 5)
- Hungry Crab - Battlecry: Destroy all Murlocs and gain +2/+2 for each Murloc eaten.
- Thoughtsteal - Draw 2 cards from your opponent's deck. (No copying here, straight thiefin')
- Prophet Velen - Battlecry: Draw a card for each undamaged character. (Damn healers)
- Spellbender - Secret: When a minion is targeted by an enemy spell, Summon a 1/1 and target it instead.
Neutral
- Deathwing - Destroy all other minions. (No discarding of your hand)
- Bloodsail Corsair - Battlecry: Gain Health equal to the Durability of your weapon.
- Captain Greenskin - Give ALL other Pirates +2/+2.
- Build 3140 has Greenskin as "Whenever you attack with your hero, draw a card.".
- Captain's Parrot - Whenever you play a Pirate, draw a card. (WHAT)
- Emperor Cobra - Has +Attack equal to the number of Mana Crystals you have. (RIP Poisonous)
- Harrison Jones - Battlecry: Steal an enemy weapon. (That's cool!)
- Lorewalker Cho - If you end your turn without playing a card, draw a card.
- Millhouse Manastorm - Battlecry: Put a ‘Mega-Blast’ card into your hand.
- MEGA-BLAST!!! - Deal 5 damage to all enemies.
- Southsea Captain - Battlecry: Return a hero’s weapon to his hand. (Weapon recycling.. niceee)
- Southsea Deckhand - Battlecry: Your equipped weapon gets +1 Durability.
Imagine playing old Hungry Crab after opponent's Call in the Finishers, or after their Finja, the Flying Star killed one of your minions (and summoned two more murlocs). The outrage!
wow, flamestrike did $4 while swipe did $3 of damage? hearthstone really is pay to win!
I don't get your point, those cards were free everyone had both those cards. So you needed to pay exactly $0
Edit: nvm it's a joke about the $ sign
Mill house would be broken, every class would have an OP board clear. Cho would be interesting
I see.. so cards used to deal damage in dollars back then they probably decided paying 10 dollars per mage game is too expensive.
I miss old Charge for OTK warrior. Fun and not a braindead deck.
Swipe only dealt three dollars of damage? Yeah I see why it got buffed
Cool info.Hope some time that they will make more changes more frequently in the future to keep the game fresh.
Cash damage PogChamp
So many fun and playable cards
Thoughtsteal was nice
No
Do you mean to tell me back in Alpha one would not disenchant [card]Millhouse Manastorm[/card]? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Seems like Deathwing was preeeeeetty good!
Back in Alpha, when Milhouse Manastorm was actually viable.. :(
Warrior was so freaking OP and poor Druid had no good AoE!
I want to have that Death wing in all of my decks though!
they had, Savagery dealt damage to every enemy character equal to your hero's attack Bite+Savagery was basically a flamestrike that could hit face for 8 damage
Only below rank 15.
So you think that the deck with best winrate (check hsreplay.net), only works below rank 15 ?
No, I think PW is viable at high ranks too. I only said, that PW is only op, when you are a low rank player. PW is still strong, it is still T1, but no way op. There are enough tech cards against PW which can be used by enough decks with little to no downside. There is no reason to qq about PW with this cards available to every class.