Forgotten Torch was a Major Mechanic in League of Explorers
Ben Brode was on a stroll last night on reddit and brought to our attention an interesting fact from the League of Explorers development process about shuffling cards into your deck.
- Shuffling cards into decks was a major mechanic before Discover became the focus.
- A Priest card with the mechanic was 2 Mana for "Draw a Card and Shuffle an Awesome Book into your deck".
- Awesome Book drew 3 cards for 2 Mana.
- The only cards that survived were Forgotten Torch, Elise Starseeker, Entomb, and Ancient Shade.
Quote from Ben BrodeFunny story about Forgotten Torch - it was actually one of the major mechanics of League of Explorers until we focused in more on Discover.
That, and it was really the best design of the cycle. I think we had a Priest card that was (2) Mysterious Book - Draw a card, shuffle an Awesome Book into your deck.
(2) Awesome Book - Draw 3 cards.
There were a couple other shuffle-ins, too. Only Torch, Elise, Entomb, and Ancient Shade survived.
Arena is a sick joke?
Biggest problems meta has right now: The Caverns Below, Vicious Fledgling and the lack of neutral heal / cheap AOEs since the meta is still so Aggro and Tempo-ish. IMHO.
Yeah I'm confused about these problems as well. Aside from Quest Rogue winning some games (not really a consistent deck just a deck that concludes to a win or a loss very quickly, similarly to aggro) I don't see these supposed problems affecting the meta atm. It isn't the best meta, but it is far, far from any of the worst metas we have already been given.
Quest Rogue and Primordial Glyph would be "problems", or at least stuff the community has made heavily apparent they are not happy with. In the past Blizzard at least makes some acknowledgement.
The best cards? Hardly. Plenty of decks have very viable, at times even "OP" cards that are common or rare quality. What do you think most of Egg/Token Druid is made of? Commons and rares, with Living Mana & Patches being the only exceptions. The deck generally wins due to the merit of common quality weenie swarmers and a common Savage Roar finisher. Not saying Living Mana doesn't ever help a lot during certain matchups, but the deck can still easily win without it.
Pirate Warrior is also almost exclusively built around commons and rares. Even without Patches the deck would still curbstomp most other decks (evidenced by Pirate Warrior winning even when they draw into Patches, thus eliminating the benefit from normally being able to play the minion straight from the deck during match-ups where the warrior does not want to draw the card).
Now look at the legendaries of Un'Goro. Yes, there are a handful that are very competitive, but there are about as many or more that were either overhypped and consequently underperformed (*coughhunterquestcough*) or just are plain bad outside of meme decks (such as Tyrantus).
Cards aren't good or bad just because the color on the card is golden or white.
Back in the day Arcane Missiles was the same random roulette, and even saw renewed rng popularity during Flamewalker Tempo Mage days.
Mindgames, while not a popular card, was still a very rng-based card in Vanilla.
Thoughtsteal, while having slightly more 'skill' when used than a more random card still decided some games out of sheer rng if the priest spent 3 mana to 'steal' big threats, board clears, or some tempo plays that they normally shouldn't have had access to.
Shaman Lightnight Storm high and low rolls (2-3 damage) was also slightly rng based because the possible damage done to your board was fluid and somewhat of a dice roll.
Ben's posts on old expansions are like a stripper in comparison of making old expansions purchasable if you want to play Wild:
You can watch, but you cannot touch.
In other words, Ben, please, give me the ability to buy old stuff, like Naxx and GVG, and stop teasing me.
I don't understand why they removed the adventures all together, instead of making them free after they rotated out.
I know. Sorry, that was the joke but I may have used wrong words/ phrases to express myself (English is not my native language).
I crafted a few GVG and NAXX cards (started right after the release of WoTOG and I enjoy Wild because of all its nonsense), but the legendaries I like and want are too expensive (at least, I crafted Dr. Balanced).
Enough with the old expansions, Ben Brode. Give us the new expansion already
What about Excavated Evil ?
Did that count as a shuffle in.
That was the opponent's deck. Iron Juggernaut did that in GvG. He's talking about populating your own deck as a core mechanic.
Yes, but it shuffled into your opponent's deck :\
That was in a different expansion. In TGT we had Gang Up too.
That Book thing would have been awsome also for Priest flavour.
Too bad at least that card didn't survive.
Also, the shuffle mechanic is really cool imo. Just underdeveloped atm.