Best cards

This is a silly article. While related to a real Hearthstone topic, it should not be taken too seriously.

Work in Progress! Please add any descriptions to the listed cards, and feel free to add more as long as they fit the rules.

In the game of Hearthstone, all cards strive for one goal - constructed viability. Less than a third of cards printed see play in top-tier decks, letting just a prestigious few earn their place in the meta. While many cards are memorable for how far short they fall, many others become infamous for just how hard they hit the mark. This page celebrates the very greatest cards to ever see play, from 4 mana 7/7s to game-warping legendaries to endless value generators.

Rules

• All entries must be complemented with a description. Even if a card's source of power seems to be obvious, remember that context is often crucial, and powercreep/buffs/nerfs are always a possibility, now that even wild isn't safe.
• To qualify for this list, a card must have been included as a key card in at least one tier 1 deck. The card must also have retained some viability in Wild (even if it no longer does) or earn its viability in Wild.
  • Notably powerful arena cards may be honorable mentions.
• The card has to be released for at least a full year. As of today (July 1, 2024), this would be cards from Festival of Legends. This prevents kneejerk reactions and gives the card time to prove itself in Wild.
• Nerfed cards that are no longer viable may be honorable mentions, as well as cards with decks that have been nerfed out of viability.

Neutral

• Leeroy Jenkins
  • Who would have thought a card based on an infamous in-joke would prove to be so effective? A 6-attack Charge is nothing to scoff at due to his sheer game-ending potential, and at his original 4 mana, Leeroy proceeded to work miracles in the hands of Rogues, smacking enemies in the face several times in a turn to drop them from well above half their health. After the nerf, Leeroy still found his way into many an aggro deck looking for a powerful finisher, and the nerf actually worked in his favor with the introduction of Baku the Mooneater and all the aggro decks it enabled. He ended up being shown the door to Hall of Fame even at his raised mana cost of 5... but at least he has chicken.

• Sylvanas Windrunner
  • One of the inaugural members of the Hall of Fame, and easily one of the most infamous cards in the Classic days. Sylvanas's Deathrattle makes it functionally impossible to take a favorable trade against her, since you'll likely use one card to take her out, get a minion stolen by Sylvanas, and then have to spend more resources getting rid of the card she stole. Players have to take bad trades just to stop her effect from going off. Her stats aren't amazing, but they're just big enough that she poses a credible threat. Even in Wild, Sylvanas still sees fairly widespread play, and not just for making N'Zoth, the Corruptor that much more troublesome to deal with.

• Loatheb
  • What's better than setting up a powerful board as an aggro player? How about setting up a powerful board that your opponent can't answer? Loatheb's ability single-handedly disables most board clears and cripples cheap removal, making it hard for your opponent to deal with your minions, and also works wonders against combo decks by locking them down for at least a turn. That's already decent, but he also comes with a decently-sized body, ensuring that Loatheb - and whatever other minions you put down - cannot be ignored, most likely also letting you do a number on the enemy next turn.

• Emperor Thaurissan
  • Probably the first time you heard the term "Soft taunt", Emperor Thaurissan is the dream card of any aspiring OTK, Highlander or control deck. The first turn he's on the board, he already pays for himself if you have at least 5 cards in hand. Then, you opponent has to decide whether to leave him up and get overwhelmed by massive threats next turn, or find a way to trade into his awkward statline. To top it all off, he's a neutral, allowing him to be played alongside Potion of Illusion, Molten Reflection, and any of Druid's ramp to provide huge value almost immediately.

• N'Zoth, the Corruptor
  • Have you ever wanted to play the best, biggest card of your big deathrattle deck, only to find you already played it? Have you ever wanted to build a taunt wall, only to discover that you aren't a Druid? Fret not, N'zoth is a one card wonder who can cause a whole lot of trouble as soon as he's played. While being a battlecry minion in a deathrattle deck might not sound great, he can easily be retrieved with Shadowstep, or duplicated with Shudderwock, and is so sticky that he probably survives multiple turns anyway. Twisting Nether? Nope, all the deathrattles go off. Flamestrike? Not enough damage. Defile? Good luck. Truly the god of the deep, even more than the actual god of the deep.

• Reno Jackson
  • A card so powerful, he spawned a whole archetype around him, Reno Jackson makes your deck less consistant, in exchange for fully healing your hero(even with health modifications!). intended as a full heal for decks that might go late (thus drawing their duplicates), people found that not having duplicates in the first place was worth the value provided by this single card, and with some classes, it's not hard to see why.

• Zephrys the Great
  • With Reno already healing you to full, how could we beat that? Well, how about... not losing tempo in the first place? Zephrys' 900ish lines of code almost always give you something you need to hold on until you draw your good cards. Need a board clear? Need some tempo? Removal? Lethal? Mana curve? Zephrys has it all. He was so strong on release that Rogues would play Highlander just for him, despite not getting any dedicated Highlanders.

• Patches the Pirate
  • Game-warping doesn't even begin to describe this card. It's to explain why a humble 1 mana 1/1 can be so powerful. He's obviously good with generic Pirate synergies - turning N'Zoth's First Mate into an Umberwing, easily setting up Bloodsail Cultist, blasting people with Ship's Cannon, but why then are Aggro Druids running Bloodsail Corsair and Southsea Captain, just to run Patches? Beginning the game with a 1 mana 1/1 in play is just incredible. It makes your token board that much more sticky, and the stickier you are the harder you can pressure an opponent. Also, his effect basically thinned your deck by 1, letting you play with a more consistent 29 card deck. Even losing Charge, cutting out that instant board control, barely hurt the card in the long run.

• Fire Fly
  • Not the most exciting card on this list, to be sure, but in the 2 years it spent in Standard, very few decks could say "no" to a 1-mana 1/2 that adds another one to your hand. It's a great 1-drop and 2-drop in both Constructed and Arena, gives Rogue an easy combo activator, gives zoo decks some bodies to throw onto the board (and set off Knife Juggler and the likes), and it's pretty handy for completing a couple of quests as well. Oh, and they have Elemental synergy too for whatever that's worth. Not bad for just 40 Dust.

• Genn Greymane/Baku the Mooneater
  • Believe it or not, there once was a time where these two dominators of deckbuilding were scrutinized; after all, how good can an improved basic Hero Power be if it requires you to cut half your collection? Turns out, the answer is "very". Not every class benefits greatly from having one of these two (ironically including two of the classes with actual even/odd support), but for the ones that do, the stronger powers from Baku and cheaper ones from Genn can vastly improve their consistency; heck, Warlock and Paladin don't have any cards that require Even- or Odd-only decks to function, and they were among the best classes to use Genn with. Rogues with big knives, Warlocks drawing tons of cards, Shamans and Paladins throwing out a constant stream of tokens... It's no wonder that cards started being judged by their mana cost alone until these two were introduced to the Hall of Fame, bowing out of Standard a year early and leaving an indelible mark on the metagame.
• Crabrider

• Astalor Bloodsworn
  • Just like Pyros, except he gives you the higher forms right away and actually does something when played. Astalor is terrific value for midrange and control builds; his base form is tolerable on-curve and has a decent removal effect with his Manathirst fulfilled, his second form gives some decent armor, and his final form blows away the opponent's board and probably takes a chunk of their health, too. Being a Battlecry minion also opens up some crazy synergies and means he has no fear of Silence. Even having his Manathirst requirements nerfed to delay it by an extra turn and make his Flamebringer form less devastating didn't hurt him all that much in the long run since control decks usually have no problem waiting that extra turn to get value from him, and he's still being played left and right.

• Prince Renathal
  • A prince by name, the king of control deck good-stuff by nature. Renathal's effects make him a superb addition to non-aggro decks - the extra health buys you a turn or two against aggro decks and makes it harder for combo decks to OTK, and the extra deck space lets you cram in more tech cards and removal while delaying fatigue by another 10 cards, and unlike Archivist Elysiana, you get those cards for free and you can be sure they're all going to be good ones. The only real downside is that the extra cards reduce your consistency, but given that even Highlander decks play him, that's clearly not enough to outweigh the benefit of extra health and cards. Even when nerfed to only grant 5 extra health for his Standard tenure, Renathal was still very popular.

Honorable Mentions

• Bloodmage Thalnos
  • While very straightforward and never defined a deck, Thalnos is a very versatile early-game minion. He's a Kobold Geomancer and Loot Hoarder rolled into one, and while his stats are lower than both, it's rarely an issue as both of those minions aren't used for their stats. His low cost and multitude of uses has made him a frequent pick in a variety of decks.

• Ragnaros the Firelord
  • Big minions need more than big stats to make an impact in Hearthstone; they need to do something big when they come down. And in Ragnaros's case, that "something big" is 8 points of concentrated pain, basically making him a glorified Charge that doesn't take damage when he attacks. When he enters play, your opponent instantly loses either a minion or a chunk of their health, making him an extreme threat that demands an immediate answer in the form of either a valuable removal spell or suiciding minions into the 8/8 behemoth before he can do more damage. And unlike most Legendaries, Silencing Ragnaros does next to nothing since he'll still be doing 8 damage per turn... and now he can choose what to hit. Very few cards back in the day came close to the amount of destruction Ragnaros could dish out. While he's no longer the big minion of Hearthstone due to being banished to Hall of Fame, more competition popping up, and Wild being too fast for him to be an auto-include, Ragnaros was still the original exemplar of what an expensive minion should be.

• Undertaker
  • Originally the snowball card, Undertaker once gained a full +1/+1 each time a Deathrattle card was played. With a slew of cheap and efficient Deathrattles included in Curse of Naxxramas like Webspinner, Nerubian Egg, and Haunted Creeper, Undertaker swiftly took hold of the meta. Fast removal was rare back then, making it easy to stick Undertaker and let it grow out of control. When Goblins vs Gnomes did nothing to slow Undertaker's rampage (in fact adding fuel with Clockwork Gnome), Blizzard stepped in with a formerly once-in-a-blue-moon balance change and removed the card's health gain.

• Antique Healbot
  • Arguably the first good healing card in the entire game, Antique Healbot came just in the nick of time to stop Face Hunter's unrelenting assault. A sizable 8 health swing and a 3/3 body for tempo made it an ideal package for that meta. While it has fallen off in recent years as both face decks and control decks have become more powerful, it holds a place in many players fondest memories.

• Dr. Boom
  • A card so infamous, he made a one-note quest objective from World of Warcraft into the star of an entire expansion. He was famously ignored in set previews in favor of Troggzor the Earthinator due to his similarities to War Golem at first glance, but Dr. 7 proved to be anything but bad. He saw play in tempo decks, control decks, and even the occasional aggro deck. It's very simple - a "9/9" for 7 mana in great value, especially one that's resilient to hard removal and small removal meaning your opponent has to spend several cards to remove your one card. Even if they had a perfect answer, the Boom Bots' random explosions ensured they still weren't getting an even trade. Why is a card this infamous only an honorable mention? Simply put, he sees no play in Wild whatsoever, and likely wouldn't see much Standard play if he were still around. Decks these days have no use for an expensive, generically useful minion with no immediate impact.

• Yogg-Saron, Hope's End
  • This was intended to be a simple joke card. You build up spells then watch the fireworks. That's about what happened... but Blizzard didn't anticipate how often those fireworks worked. Most spells are purely beneficial. You can control when you drop him in order to find your outs. Players know that they can play Yogg when they're about to lose, and he might just save the day. As such, he became immensely popular. People were split about the card - the casual side loved the mayhem and unpredictable comebacks Yogg provided. The competitive side hated how he basically turned the game into a coinflip. After being banned from fan tournaments and garnering more and more complaints, Blizzard eventually caved and nerfed him to stop his spell-spree if he died or was otherwise incapacitated. However, fan request saw him unnerfed years later... where he sees no play in the uberfast Wild meta. Still, this card has created more highlight reels than any others, and definitely made a lasting impact on the game's design philosophy.

• Vicious Fledgling
  • While generally ignored in constructed play, this little minion is an absolute terror in Arena. While in constructed, players will have defensive measures to not give it a chance to attack, that's not as likely in Arena. Once it gets to hit face once, all it needs is to roll Lightning Speed as its Adapt option to start snowballing out of control. If it does get Windfury, it can attack a second time for another Adapt, preferably something defensive, but particularly Shrouding Mist for Stealth so it can repeat the same thing next turn. Even on its first turn alive, it's taken off 20% of the opponent's health, and things are only gonna get worse the longer it stays on the board as it stacks up more stats from Adapting. The fact it gets to decide the outcome of the game by turn 3 eventually resulted in its outright ban from Arena.

• Corridor Creeper
  • In the dungeon, it goes deeper; in set reviews, it was a sleeper; when minions die, it gets cheaper; but now, it's 3 Attack weaker. Upon the release of Kobolds and Catacombs, almost everyone underrated this card's cost reduction, but as it turns out, minions die early and often enough that this card very easily hits the board for extremely cheap (keep in mind that it counts minions from both sides), which is a massive tempo swing given its initial 5/5 body. As such, Corridor Creeper became an undisputed staple for almost every deck until it was nerfed to 2/5, killing the tempo advantage it gives. It still saw play due to being an incredible target for Evolve effects and Odd Paladin churning out enough tokens that they could easily play it for 0 regardless.

• Giggling Inventor
  • Two Divine Shielded Taunts, three bodies, endless utility. Giggling Inventor had something to offer for nearly every single deck type: two sticky tokens to receive board-wide buffs in Aggro, two sticky Taunts to stop aggro in Control, two Mechs to staple Magnetic buffs onto... name any deck that saw play at the time and it probably ran two of these. And, of course, it shared its Standard year with Baku the Mooneater, meaning Paladins and especially Rogues latched onto it and didn't let go. Giggling Inventor was so good that, not only was it nerfed by two whole mana, Blizzard was too scared to revert the nerf all the way (leaving it at 6, up from its original 5).

• Kael'thas Sunstrider
  • In a game where mana is one of the key gameplay limitations, being able to get huge spells for no cost at all is predictably game-shattering. If you can string together two cheap or free spells, you can play a huge one for completely free, which is exactly what Druid did. With all of their free spells, some of which even gave you more mana (shout-outs to Innervate and Lightning Bloom, which just so happened to be in Standard in the same year), Druids could easily unleash several spells that usually take a whole turn's worth of mana to cast. This forced not one but two emergency nerfs to keep Kael in check. After being rotated to Wild, Blizzard deemed Kael safe to revert. Needless to say, he wasn't, and Kael has the distinction of being nerfed once in Standard and once again in Wild. He sees no play in his nerfed state but stands as a testament to two of Hearthstone's axioms: there is no bigger difference than the difference between 0 mana and 1, and if you give Druids anything they can perform insane combos with, they will do it.
• Raid Boss Onyxia and Neptulon the Tidehunter

• Mechwarper
  • If it hasn't been made clear already, cards that cheat mana are really, really good, so here's a minion that does it for one of the most heavily supported tribes in the game as early as turn 2. Any time you see a Mech deck running around in either its Standard years or in Wild, you'll probably find this little guy, and if you can get multiple of them on board, the result is usually a massive flood of Mech minions that can overrun most enemies as well as the occasional disgusting combo (if you ever wondered why Echo had to be nerfed to cost a minimum of 1 mana, look no further). Mechwarper was eventually outright banned from Wild because Mechs just kept getting better, and had to be nerfed up from 2 mana to 4 before being allowed back.
• Sire Denathrius
  • Out of all the cards that essentially say "Battlecry: Destroy the enemy hero", Denathrius might be the most powerful and infamous of them all. The only requirement for ramping up his damage is to let your minions die while he's in hand (i.e. playing the game normally), and you get a massive finisher you can drop to demolish the enemy's entire health pool in one fell swoop, and let's not even get into Kael'thas Sinstrider and Brann Bronzebeard. Before being nerfed, there was almost no reason to not play him.

Death Knight

• Chillfallen Baron
  • Death Knight's Arcane Intellect, but with a 2/2 body attached which, in turn, gives you an extra Corpse to work with. Not exciting or deck-defining, but Chillfallen Baron is a must-have for almost any Death Knight build for the efficiency and lack of Rune requirements.

Demon Hunter

• Mana Burn
  • Demon Hunter was notoriously seven shades of overpowered upon the release of Ashes of Outland, though it's hard to pinpoint which exactly of their cards were the best because... well, almost all of them were incredible. Out of all of the class's toys on launch, Mana Burn has retained the most viability (partly due to being one of the few to not be nerfed) due to how badly it can wreck an opponent's curve, and its cheap cost makes it very easy to slot into an early turn for aggro and tempo decks to stop the opponent from answering your board. Because Wild is a format where you want your opponent to make as few plays as possible, Mana Burn is still an integral part of the aggro Demon Hunter package there.
• Il'gynoth
  • On its own, Il'gynoth is simply a minion with above-average stats. However, the existence of Lifesteal spells and Mo'arg Artificer instead spawned one of the most powerful burn decks in the game in tandem with its effect. With enough Spell Damage pumping up a Felscream Blast, any enemy unfortunate enough to have multiple minions on board would often be hit for over 30 burn damage straight to the face, with the deck's ceiling reaching into the hundreds on a good hand. The sheer one-turn-kill potential of this card was so devastating that even at 6 mana, it was still played.

Honorable Mentions

• Skull of Gul'dan
  • The one card you did not want to see an opposing Demon Hunter play on curve. On release, this card cost 5 mana, meaning that with its Outcast effect, this card effectively cost negative 1 mana to draw 3 cards because it cheated more mana than it cost to play. It remained an excellent draw tool for Demon Hunters for quite a while until they got cheaper and stronger options.

Druid

• Aviana
  • Well, maybe not when she was first released, but a few expansions later, when she became BFFs with Kun the Forgotten King, the duo became an unstoppable force. Aviana alone could only bring out one or two big minions with her, and Kun by himself is just a free 7/7 late game, but with their power combined, they can bring out an entire army of expensive minions. While you can use them to play a bunch of huge minions in one turn, a better use for them are in combo decks. One Malygos and a cheap spell is pretty strong, but how about two? Or four? It's not just Malygos you can make combos with; you can also give them an empty deck they can't take back with King Togwaggle, make the stars align with Star Aligner for massive damage, or Pounce them to death with Gonk, the Raptor. Aviana and Kun made Druid the best combo deck class in the game, and they are still a force to be reckoned with in Wild.

• Jade Idol
  • The Jade Lotus's most infamous toy, responsible for making control decks scared to show their faces during its heyday. Jade Idol is the perfect anti-control card: not only does it infinitely stave off fatigue, but it also gives an endless supply of increasingly larger beatsticks; your opponent will eventually run out of removal before you run out of Jade Golems, and if even one survives long enough to attack, it will deal massive damage. The Gadgetzan meta quickly shifted gears towards aggro at least in part because slow decks stood no chance against Jade Druid, and it took a tailor-made counter card two sets later to bring the Jade infestation under control. And the deck still refused to die entirely.

• Hadronox
  • Like Aviana, Hadronox was barely a blip on the radar upon his release. The effect sounded threatening on paper, but a slower N'zoth wasn't what Druid was looking for... at least, until the Year of the Raven rolled around and gave Hadronox more synergies than you can shake a stick at. In addition to becoming summonable from the deck, it also became reusable thanks to Carnivorous Cube and Witching Hour, allowing Druids to build wall after wall of Taunt minions until their opponent gave in. Suddenly, Hadronox and Taunt Druid went from a meme to a premier meta threat, and another potent tool in Druids' arsenals, to the point where Tinkmaster Overspark was legitimately being used as a tech card just to dilute Witching Hour's revival pool by classes that weren't Mage, Shaman, or Warrior, and players still have not given up on him in Wild.

• Spreading Plague
  • Record-holder for fastest-nerfed card all the way up until Descent of Dragons, Spreading Plague remains one of the premier anti-aggro cards for Druid. Two 1/5 Taunts for 6 is tolerable, three is good, four or more is amazing. Against an opponent unfortunate or unwary enough to go wide, this easily gives you a health buffer on par with Reno Jackson, and you can do it twice. And since it creates bulky tokens, even the more aggressive builds can make good use of it, by buffing the beetles and smacking things around with them. Powerful and flexible, Spreading Plague contributed greatly to Druid's dominance in the years of the Mammoth and Raven. While not as prevalent in Wild as it was in Standard, it's still a card worth watching out for.

• Ultimate Infestation
  • Ultimate Infestation is, as far a a singular card goes, the granddaddy of value. It deals 5 damage, gives 5 Armor, summons a 5/5 Ghoul, and most importantly, draw 5 cards. Even if you need to spend your entire turn just to cast it, what puts this card over the top is not just how many card it draws, but also the additional effects on top of it. Other big card draw like Sprint and Nourish are expensive and only draw cards, which generates a significant tempo loss. Ultimate Infestation gives you a 5-mana minion, a decent removal, plus a bit of health to your hero to what would normally be valued as a 9-mana card, which means you get all these extras for just 1 mana. Giving Druids huge card draw effect on top of their already good card draw is what helped push Combo decks to the top. And that's not even mentioning what degenerate combos you can pull with Kael'thas Sunstrider.

Honorable Mentions

• Wild Growth/Nourish
  • Both of these cards were okay in the olden days at 2 mana and 5 mana respectively, where Druids actually had to sacrifice tempo in order to ramp up. But with the Kraken and Mammoth sets giving Druids almost nothing but good cards, they could just as easily gain a bunch of mana and then turn around and flood the board and/or combo the opponent to death, while the opponent was stuck with 3 mana less trying to fend them off. The ramp cards were thus nerfed for the greater good to curb the rampant power creep of Druid cards, though the game has since become fast enough for Nourish to go back to 5.

• Force of Nature
  • Prior to this card's rework, it was a 6 mana spell, but the Treants had Charge and died at the end of the turn. It was probably intended for board control, and could be used like that in dire situations, but let's face it - if it has charge, we all know the place. Pre-nerf, this was Druid's sole gameplan. Get your opponent to 14, then Force of Nature + Savage Roar for the kill. While it's still an okay card today, it's hardly the, erm, force it used to be.

Hunter

• Hunter's Mark

• Deathstalker Rexxar
  • Hero cards have mostly been very powerful, and Deathstalker Rexxar has been on top of that list. They sacrifice the ability to go face to create a Zombeast, two Beast minions stitched together into one package. The resulting minion is usually costly, but the make up for it with the added bulk from both minions, and their real power comes in combining effects together. For example, combine Dispatch Kodo and Bloodworm for 6 damage with healing, or Vicious Fledgling and Stonetusk Boar for instant Adapt. Zombeasts only got better as more Beast minions were added and get even crazier with Wild minions on the table. Cave Hydra and Vilebrood Skitterer? Vicious Scalehide and Knuckles? Dreadscale and anything Poisonous? There are hundreds of possibilities. Even without crazy Zombeast combos, the amount of value the Hero Power generates lets Hunters keep up with even heavy control decks. It's even got a pretty good Battlecry to boot, all for 6 mana.

• Dinotamer Brann

Honorable Mentions

• Animal Companion

• Savannah Highmane
  • Back in the day, Savannah Highmane was the Hunter's "Ol' Reliable". For just 2 Health less than a Boulderfist Ogre, it gets a Deathrattle that summons 2 2/2 Hyenas, making the Highmane a pretty stubborn minion to remove. It should be noted that back then having a Beast tag actually mattered (River Crocolisk was actually used for its Beast tag long ago), so the fact it packs in a lot of value in stats and being a Beast that summoned more Beasts made Savannah Highmane top of the class, and even today it's used occasionally. This simple Rare card from the Classic set was long considered better than most Hunter Legendaries, which have had a long history of being niche at best, and at worst too impractical, too underpowered, too expensive, or downright horrible to use in most decks.

Mage

• Open the Waygate
  • The Standard rotation doesn't exist just to make you pay for more packs keep the meta from going stale, it's also there to allow new cards and archetypes to exist without breaking old cards with broken, unpredictable synergies. This card is a great example of that. Getting an extra turn is extremely powerful, but setting up the perfect follow-up wasn't always easy, and neither was completing the quest. It was mainly used in Exodia Mage decks for setting up infinite Antonidas Fireballs, which take a while to assemble, and even getting 0-mana Giants up before you play Time Warp needed time to setup. As soon as it rotated out of Standard though, the Year of the Dragon expansions added several cards that completely broke it. Not only did Mana Cyclone, Magic Trick, and Twinspell cards made completing the quest super fast, Archmage Vargoth lets you take two extra turns. Eventually the deck had no need for slow OTK combos and settled for 0-mana Arcane Giant and Mana Giant bashing in the opponent's face. Quest Mage continues to terrorize the Wild meta on a far higher level than it ever did in its Standard years.

• Ice Block
  • Mages in Hearthstone have always been feared for their access to incredible Burst damage, threatening lethal from hand from numerous different sources; all they need to do is put the pieces together before they die. For just 3 mana, Ice Block guarantees that you get an extra turn to assemble those pieces; you can spend the turn after that spending 3 mana for another Block and 7 mana hurled at the opponent. From a gameplay perspective, Ice Block was often criticized for removing any agency or technical skill from the opponent, but this only got out of hand when Blizzard decided that Mages could generate extra copies, often stalling the game for 4 consecutive turns before delivering yet another randomly-generated Pyroblast to the face.

Honorable Mentions

• Ice Lance
  • In theory, a flexible control tool, being able to either freeze an enemy or hit it for a chunk of damage if following up another freeze effect. In practice, the fact that it's a 1-mana spell that can hit anything for 4 damage made it a near-permanent member of the "Face is the Place" club to follow up a Frostbolt or two. Even discarding a card is considered an acceptable tradeoff for dealing this much burst damage at this low a cost, and given Mage's options for reducing mana costs, that cost might as well not be there at all. Naturally, Ice Lance wound up being an essential part of every Freeze Mage's arsenal until it got booted into Hall of Fame.
• Sorcerer's Apprentice
  • It should go without saying that cost reduction has always been, and will always be, one of the best effects in the game, so it's not hard to see why Sorcerer's Apprentice was a staple for tempo and combo decks alike. Whether you're trying to pressure the opponent as hard as possible with cheap spells (possibly to feed a Mana Wyrm) or setting up a one-turn-kill with infinite Fireballs, having each one cost less means you can throw out more of them per turn, which effectively also made this card into one of Mage's best Taunts. Unfortunately this was too good to last, and nowadays she's completely unplayable after being nerfed from 2 mana to 4.

Paladin

• Mysterious Challenger
  • Who is he? It's none of our business - all we know is that he's pretty good. A single Paladin Secret isn't amazing and can often be easily played around, but when you're drawing and playing 5 of them at the same time for free after dumping a 6/6 onto the board, suddenly your opponent is hard-pressed to fight back because trying to kill the Challenger will probably only make things worse, not to mention that the Paladin just got a bunch of dead draws out of the way. Attack into him? Now he's a 9/8 and didn't take a scratch. Hit him with a spell? He's back with 1 health. Play a minion to hopefully contest him next turn? He's now a 7/7 and your minion is now at 1 health. There's a reason why Eater of Secrets had to swoop in and save the day.

• Sunkeeper Tarim
  • The statline might not look like much, but Tarim's ability more than compensates by essentially being a combination of Shrink Ray and Savage Roar. Being able to make Silver Hand Recruits trade against The Lich King is already good, but it's also a great way to instantly put up to 12 extra damage on your board for surprise lethals. Even at the very worst, he neuters at least one big minion and forces it to crash into Tarim or at least mitigates a lot of potential damage. And because he came in the same set as Stonehill Defender, it's a good bet that the Paladin has more than one.
• Call to Arms
  • Quite possibly one of the best board-flooding cards in the game, Call to Arms does it all: it puts a bunch of stats on the board, thins your deck by 3 cards, and because it only summons minions that cost 2 or less, you get to draw better cards later on, making it a very formidable turn 4. What really pushed this over the top was Even Paladin, whose deckbuilding constraints guaranteed that you got only 2-drops. After utterly dominating the Witchwood meta for a while, Call to Arms was nerfed to 5-mana to bring Paladin down to size, which neutered the card for a bit before being reverted, making it playable in Wild once more. It's such a good effect that even a weaker version that pulled only 1-drops still saw a lot of play.

Honorable Mentions

• Righteous Protector
  • Argent Squire is already a good 1-drop; slap Taunt onto it, and it becomes amazing. Righteous Protector serves as both a solid tempo play when drawn early and a disposable Taunt to protect yourself and other minions when drawn late. It doesn't do anything special, but it doesn't really have to; a cheap Taunt with Divine Shield is already good enough that the only Paladin decks that didn't use it ran Genn Greymane.

• Muster for Battle

• Tirion Fordring
  • Paladin's original show-stopper and a solid addition to Paladin decks even today. While a big, beefy, sticky Taunt that gives you a weapon to either kill three minions or take half the enemy hero's health isn't as impressive as it used to be (largely due to Paladin getting a lot of other good cards), he's still a very real threat and sneaks his way into many decks with a spare slot for a late-game minion, and the relative scarcity of Silences has only made life better for our righteous friend.

Priest

• Psychic Scream
  • Psychic Scream is an important AoE card in most priest decks. It is equally good against both control and aggro decks. It doesn't matter that you delay your opponent's fatigue - you're not going to kill your opponent with a mill anyway, right? (except for the King Togwaggle + Murozond the Infinite combo) Depending on the game situation, Psychic Scream is able to do several tasks simultaneously: prevents the deathrattles' activation, prevents a filling of graveyard unlike most other AoEs, and spoils the enemy's draw.

• Shadowreaper Anduin
  • Without Raza the Chained or with Raza The Nerfed Shadowreaper Anduin would be a quite balanced death knight with a strong battlecry and not very tempo hero power. However, when is costs 0 mana, it turns into a machine gun (with the support of Spawn of Shadows), whose countless shots are often fatal even for Odd Warrior. Approximately 80% of the modern Reno Priests decks consist of cards for 1-3 mana, which allows you to deal huge damage with the hero power, and a quick finding of Shadowreaper Anduin is provided by Lorekeeper Polkelt.

Honorable Mentions

• Northshire Cleric
  • A seemingly unassuming 1-drop that once saw play in almost every Priest deck, Northshire Cleric often provided draw power far above her mana cost. The card doesn't necessarily say "Draw a card for each minion in play," but it very well could, and if your opponent played an early minion that couldn't kill the Cleric in one hit, you could turn your Hero Power into Life Tap. Everything that healed your own board, which Priest is pretty good at doing, would refill your hand while Northshire was on board. At its very worst it was a 1-mana 1/3, which is still a decently solid statline. She would only be left behind due to being placed in Hall of Fame, and the Wild format exponentially speeding up to make Priests favor tutoring and removal (or the better version before it got banned) rather than a situational 1-drop.

• Radiant Elemental
  • Priest's own Sorcerer's Apprentice, but compared to Mage, Priests can do much grosser things with cheaper spells. Priests have truckloads of good, cheap spells for drawing and tutoring cards (including Power Word: Shield, which not only draws for free but also buffs the Elemental to make it harder to remove), and getting a Radiant Elemental on board suddenly means you get access to almost anything you might want - which, you guessed it, meant combos for days. Get two of them on board somehow, and suddenly mana is no longer a concept you have to deal with. It also helps that most of Priest's best combo spells just so happen to cost 2 or less for devastating payoffs, making Radiant Elemental a staple in Wild. The main reason it only gets an honorable mention is that in its Standard tenure, it was merely a strong card and not an OTK machine (most of the time), and when it came back in the Hydra Core set, the devs were very careful about giving cheap spells to Priest.

• Mass Hysteria
  • Do you want to make the enemy minions suicide? Or see a real Brawl? Mass Hysteria gives this opportunity rarely leaving anybody alive, since minions with a small attack and high HP are quite rare in most of games. Randomness and dependence on the opponent's board make Mass Hysteria not quite a stable board clear, but this is more than compensated for by its good manacost and much more difficult for the opponent to play around it, unlike most other damaging AoE.

Rogue

• Edwin VanCleef
  • Edwin is a card that just works. Sure, it might be tempting and fun to stack up a bunch of cheap spells to make him into a gargantuan pile of stats on the board (and with Conceal involved it could be downright deadly), but his biggest advantage is being able to round out any turn where you played some stuff and had 3 mana to spare by giving your opponent another problem to worry about. Just playing 2 cards before him nets you a discounted 6/6, which is already pretty good, and he only gets better from there. Up until he went to Hall of Fame and later Legacy, Edwin was a constant companion for Rogues everywhere.

• EVIL Miscreant
  • A 3-mana 1/5 would be pretty laughable if it weren't for the fact that Lackeys are pretty good, especially for the class that likes having cheap cards to activate Combo effects. Getting out EVIL Miscreant with its Combo active isn't a hard task for Rogues at all, and for their effort they get a very good amount of early-game tempo and a great amount of value no matter when it's played. And if you get a Witchy Lackey, the Miscreant's sub-optimal statline is suddenly no longer an issue. Even getting bumped down to 1/4 didn't hurt its play rate much.
• Preparation
  • It sets up Combos (of both kinds) and cheats mana like nobody's business (as long as you don't accidentally waste it), allowing Rogues to work miracles and catch opponents with all sorts of nasty tricks for cheap, making it terrific for tempo as well because you then have more mana to spend on everything else. Many Rogue spells ended up overcosted because this card was there to bump the cost back down, and even after being nerfed, very few Rogues leave home without being adequately prepared. At the very least it'll prove Illidan wrong.
• Shadowstep
  • Shadowstep is a card that never goes out of style, as by nature it benefits from the game's power creep. The ability to reuse your minions' Battlecries or swing multiple times with a Charge minion is an effect that's made it a Rogue favorite since Classic, and as minion effects get stronger, so do the combos enabled by this card, particularly when you can just play the minion for much cheaper the second time.
• Secret Passage
  • There's no need to make this more complicated: this is just a 1-mana Sprint. This amount of card draw for 1 mana is enough to make The Soularium blush, losing your current hand didn't matter too much because you get the cards back anyway (and you weren't planning on using them in the first place), and anything you generated with the new four cards would stay when you swapped back. And of course, if you were playing aggro and emptied your hand there was no downside.

Honorable Mentions

• Kingsbane
  • Rogue's mediocre weapon buffs just got dangerous. Not only does this let you craft a comically huge and infinitely reusable weapon over the course of a game capable of cutting through control decks like butter, but adding a touch of Leeching Poison to the mix made the Rogue borderline immortal. With Valeera the Hollow, you could even generate a second copy to infinitely stave off fatigue. It only stopped being a win condition after Leeching Poison received a nerf to last only one turn (which killed its utility with Kingsbane and pretty much nothing else, not that it was used much on other weapons in the first place).

• The Caverns Below
  • Originally predicted to be an underpowered or meme card, the Rogue's Quest turned out to be a lot more stronger than imagined. Draw your Shadowstep, Gadgetzan Ferryman, and whatnot, play one of your cheap minions and call it back right away, then play a Crystal Core. Filling you board with 1-mana 5/5s is one thing, but having 1-mana 5/5s with Charge that you can bounce back to hit face again was something else. Its only real weakness was against aggro that could kill it before the deck could complete the quest, but against everything else the army of 5/5s can eventually overwhelm most decks. Even if it wasn't the best deck in the game, the results were polarizing enough that the card received not one, but two nerfs in its lifetime in Standard, yet even that didn't completely kill its usage in Standard or even Wild in its earliest days there.

• Tinker's Sharpsword Oil
  • The damage-to-cost ratio at first seems on par with Fireball when combo'd, but Rogues have a lot of tricks up their sleeve to make it a lot more than that. Not only was this effectively 1-mana with Preparation in its heyday, but Rogues also had pre-nerf Blade Flurry to double the damage from the weapon buff, and naturally all of it would go straight to the opponent's face, making Sharpsword Oil a terrifying finisher. It's nowhere near as absurd as it used to be due to a mix of power creep and Blade Flurry no longer hitting face, though.

Shaman

• Devolve
  • What if you took Hex, made it hit the entire enemy board, and reduced its cost by half? You'd basically get this. Devolve was the Shaman answer to boards of small minions, often transforming them into useless vanillas with 1 or 2 health and attack while brushing away enchantments and Deathrattles, free to be cleaned up at your leisure. Even against larger minions, which had a lower tendency to be completely neutralized, it still functions as a Mass Dispel that more often than not reduced stats, and against decks that like to resurrect things, it also dilutes their resurrect pool. Shamans in both its two years of Standard, and nowadays in Wild, rarely leave home without two of these for cleaning up problematic boards and minions.

• Flamewreathed Faceless
  • Also known as "the 4 mana 7/7" because the statline says it all. A Flamewreathed Faceless played on curve is almost guaranteed to burn a hard removal or trade two-for-one, possibly also racking up a chunk of face damage along the way. Its only real downside is 2 mana worth of Overload, but that's hardly a problem most of the time, and some cards (like the equally infamous Tunnel Trogg) actually appreciate it. While it was eventually brought down to size by the Mammoth rotation, and is far more scarce in Wild with the reduced need of a generic pile of stats, the infamously overstatted monstrosity still lingers in Hearthstone's public consciousness.

• Shudderwock
  • It's got jaws that bite, claws that catch, and a Battlecry that wins the match. Playing against Shaman in the days of The Witchwood was a race against time: if they played all their key Battlecries, then all they needed to do was drop Shudderwock. Over, and over, and over, blowing up your minions with impunity and shredding your health. This made Shudderwock Shaman easily one of the most formidable combo decks in history: not only does it have tons of board control and survivability, but it also doesn't need to play all its combo pieces at once, making it much harder to disrupt. When the deck was chosen for a nerf, it was Saronite Chain Gang that took the fall, while Shudderwock continued biting and clawing its way through the rest of its tenure in Standard with all of Shaman's other Battlecry-related toys. In Wild, Shudderwock remains Shaman's primary win condition to this day, particularly when taking into account the more absurd Battlecries available there.
• Galakrond, the Tempest
  • This card and its support - Invocation of Frost, Corrupt Elementalist, and Dragon's Pack - were a serious force to be reckoned with. Coming in a Standard year where Shaman already had good cards and Battlecry synergies up the wazoo, the Galakrond Shaman package did the unthinkable and had all their cards save for Galakrond himself nerfed in record time because the tempo from Shaman's Invoke was just too much to deal with. A fully Invoked Galakrond on top of that would almost certainly nail the coffin against most opponents, and that's before considering that the Shaman probably has Shudderwock waiting in the wings as well. Full-power Galakrond Shaman in Standard had no bad matchups except itself and even Dean Ayala had to step in and admit that Galakrond Shaman might've been a little too busted. It wasn't even terrible in Wild for a bit after the nerfs were reverted.

Honorable Mentions

• Tunnel Trogg
  • Flamewreathed Faceless's partner in crime, and the one card you did not want to see a Shaman drop on turn 1. If left unchecked, Tunnel Trogg can easily feed off the Shaman's Overload cards and punch your face in... but mulligans that dealt with the Trogg often lacked an answer to the impending 4-mana 7/7. Runaway Troggs resulted in many a Year of the Kraken game being ended by Shamans around turn 4.

• Maelstrom Portal
  • For the longest time, Shamans were pretty bad against Zoo since they were severely lacking in cheap area-of-effect spells (at least, ones that didn't come with hideous amounts of Overload). Enter Maelstrom Portal: the Arcane Explosion effect alone was pretty decent at slowing early aggression, and a free token on top of that was just icing, giving the Shaman something to trade with next turn. Needless to say, this card greatly helped solidify Shaman's position in the Karazhan meta.

• Spirit Claws
  • Once upon a time, this weapon cost a mere 1-mana... for a card that could easily do 9 damage across three swings. All it took was a tap of the hero power, and the Shaman suddenly had a weapon that could easily take out the enemy's first three minions (or tear a chunk out of the opponent's face). Sure, you need to get lucky if you're not playing Bloodmage Thalnos... but 25% of the time, it worked every time, and that was enough for it to be intimidating, not to mention the threat of big damage later on when paired with Azure Drake. While the nerf to 2 mana rendered it a shadow of what it once was, this was all too necessary to keep it in check.

Warlock

• Defile
  • The thinking man's Twisting Nether. As long as you can do quick mental math, this card clears many troublesome boards for a mere 2 mana, even sweeping away tokens summoned by Deathrattles in the process, and is excellent at cleaning up token floods for half the price of Hellfire. One of the most powerful and efficient board clears since its release, Defile is still a must-have for aspiring Control builds.

• Voidcaller
  • Back in the day, Voidcaller posed a tricky question to most opponents: do you leave it up to simply trade and hit face unopposed, or take the risk of removing it and having to deal with something bigger and meaner? Given the game's slower pace and focus on efficient minion trading, choosing wrong would often lead to Voidcaller running away with the game by spitting out something like a fearsome Doomguard. Even when played with no Demons in hand, the mere threat of the effect would make Voidcaller tough for most players to take trades against unless it was neutralized by Spellbreaker beforehand. It's since shifted from a strong tempo card to another part of Warlock's arsenal to bring out big Demons on the cheap.

• Doomguard
  • Charge minions with a decent mana cost and Attack power are pretty good. Doomguard is one of the best; discarding 2 cards means little if he's being used as a finisher, and might even be good for some Warlock decks as long as you don't throw away anything important. But then, Warlock got lots of cards that cheat out your Demons without triggering Battlecries, removing Doomguard's downside and allowing this terrifying minion to wreak havoc for free. Its removal from Standard opened the gates for more Demon-cheating cards to be printed without having to worry about them being converted to free face damage, and quite necessarily so because even in Wild, a couple of these being thrown out by Bloodreaver Gul'dan is never pretty.

• Voidlord
  • If Doomguard is Warlock's unstoppable force, Voidlord is their immovable object. This card is one of the biggest, fattest Taunts in the game with effectively 18 health split between four bodies, forcing opponents to commit heavy-duty removal or take some costly trades to break through the wall of Taunting Demons. All of this would be fine at 9 mana... except it almost never actually cost 9 mana to put on the board thanks to all the ways Warlock had to cheat out big Demons in the set, meaning this thing usually came down on turn 6. Oh, and it was in the same set as Carnivorous Cube and Dark Pact, letting Warlocks put enough Taunts on the board to make aggro and midrange players wonder why they even bothered showing up. There's a reason Warlock took so many nerfs in Mammoth and Raven.

• Bloodreaver Gul'dan
  • It's a N'Zoth, the Corruptor for Demons, and as we've seen, Warlock has some pretty good Demons to revive. Whether he brings back a wall of Voidlords or a pack of Doomguards ready to maul the opponent's face, Bloodreaver Gul'dan was and is pretty terrific as an end-game power play for Control builds, while also replacing Life Tap with a Hero Power that carries you through the late game, letting you drain the life from your opponent's face and board while they struggle to deal with your massive Demon army. And yes, Warlock did get this many busted cards in the Year of the Mammoth.

Honorable Mentions

• Gnomeferatu
  • It's got a decently-statted body for a 2-drop, but what really makes this card stand out is its ability to simply destroy the opponent's key cards and combo pieces before they can even draw them. While the effect isn't consistent enough to make her truly amazing, the chance of making opponents concede on the spot when they see their N'zoth, Shudderwock, or hero card burned away means she tends to generate quite a few highlights, not to mention the havoc she wrought on the Spellbook Duel Brawl.

• Lord Godfrey
• The Demon Seed
  • The biggest reason to fear Warlocks in Wild, The Demon Seed joins Enter the Waygate and The Caverns Below as one of the nastiest Quest(line)s in the game. Because "power at a price" is Warlock's main motif, they have a lot of ways to damage themselves and complete the questline (which initially required a measly 6 damage per stage, which was very easy to achieve), and once Blightborn Tamsin hits the board, the opponent could be looking forward to having their health shredded in two or three turns at most. Even running out the Warlock's cards wasn't safe, because fatigue damage also counts as damage taken on your turn for Tamsin's effect. The Demon Seed thus became the second card to be banned from Wild format entirely. It returned after being nerfed alongside Stealer of Souls and in its current form sees no success because the damage you have to take is simply too extreme.

Warrior

• Warsong Commander
  • She's been with players through the entirety of the game and has quite a colorful history to show for it. Back in the day, Warsong Commander stood as a testament to just how badly Blizzard underrated the Charge keyword. While her initial incarnation was quickly brought down to size and only give Charge to minions with 3 or less Attack (believe it or not, a minion that gave Charge to everything you played actually saw the light of day in the beta), that quickly proved to be enough to enable the infamous Patron Warrior, whose key cards both had 3 or less Attack. Suddenly, Warriors were indiscriminately killing enemies from 30 health from an empty board after a single tick of Emperor Thaurissan. Finally driving home just how powerful Charge can be on the wrong minions, Warsong Commander was subsequently obliterated by the nerfbat to the infamous, overly-specific buffer for Charge minions that every player would have dusted if they could. But then she got back off the ground and was returned to her former glory to remind the Wild format exactly why she was the terror of the meta.

• N'Zoth's First Mate
  • Long dreaded for being a harbinger of death by Pirate aggro, this card is essentially a 1-mana Muster for Battle when combined with his partner-in-crime Patches. Putting two bodies on board and equipping a weapon to immediately swing at the opponent's face and enable Pirate synergies made this a dream opener for Pirate decks, generating an early tempo lead that most decks simply couldn't answer without weapons-grade board clear and letting Pirate Warriors snowball their way to a quick and brutal victory.

• Death's Bite

Honorable Mentions

• Dead Man's Hand

• Supercollider