Comment on the mage legendary. I truly don’t remember it being good but apparently it was good in hero power mage back when Baku is in the format. I’m sorry if my recollection is wrong, but genuinely don’t remember it being played.
In regards to Hakkar: he was a raid boss that put a disease on people. Normally the debuff was removed, but if you got it on a Hunter pet you could sneak it out. It spread through the major cities and literally left a blanket of corpses on the ground. Also, we have come full circle: WoW's newest expansion has a Kobold dungeon, some of the trash is a worm-like creature that gets stronger when stuff dies near it, called COrridor Creeper. And the last boss is The Darkness, during the fight you need to keep your candles lit.
Ya i saw u review jan'alai and was like wtf, he wasnt meta defining was fairly strong reason to play odd mage, you forgot wildfire too, the 4 mana battlecry shoot your hero power at guys and lets not forget fucking baku,
Yeah I recalled jan'alai being decent, but it was a long while ago. Most of the set was awful though, like hi'reek the bat was so damn bad if you were trying to gain a board advantage off it because a boardclear from most classes ruined it. Like even if hi'reek started at 2/2 with no handbuffs or anything it would suck as a 14 power threat that is easily consecrated away or anything.
i've lowkey binged a bunch of these videos lately and there's been quite a few cards that were played in high tier decks, for at least a few months, that rarran just wasnt aware of and completely binned them.
Cimooo getting Bwonsamdi's pronunciation right and then Rarran incorrectly correcting it and using the incorrect pronunciation for the rest of the video is making my eye twitch
@@shahrooz3310they existed in standard together for the rhaskatan meta. Odd mage with Janlai was in standard and was tier 1/2. Baku and Genn didn’t rotated until the following year with rise of shadows.
@@SuperAmazingJared Yeah genn and baku rotated a year early - so odd mage running jainalai was only around for the Rhastakans rumble meta. baku rotated with rise of shadows
The Hakkar plague is an Iconic event in WoW history. Basically, Hakkar was a boss in a raid released relatively early into WoW. One of his abilities was placing a debuff on someone which dealt damage to them and also could spread to nearby players/pets. Players managed to "smuggle" the debuff out of the raid, I think by getting a hunters pet afflicted by it, despawning it, and then resummoning it outside the raid or smth, and then get it to areas densely populated by players. The debuff would then spread from player to player, creating a virtual pandemic. This is just from memory so I might be misremembering some details.
Yeah that is correct. They'd take the pet out again at the Ironforge Auction House/Main square and pretty much created and endless infestation and death feedback loop,
Yeah having read about it it's funny af because people studied that ingame event to see what a pandemic would look like if a big one occurred in the modern day, then covid-19 happened and it showed a lot of people doing the same thing to spread it around even though they KNEW it was a problem because blizz tried to reach out to the community to stop it. All I know is eventually they had to hard reboot the WoW servers and take out hakkon raid so people wouldn't go spreading it willy nilly.
@@dark_rit IIRC some people managed to smuggle the debuff through the hard reset by going into an instance, making it even more difficult for blizz to kill it.
The funny part is, it had a brief resurgence when Dragonflight launched. There was a new debuff that players could get from certain world activities. But while it was super contagious, it was less lethal, allowing commonly visited NPCs to act as hosts.
If you do this expansion with CGB in the future, you should gaslight him into thinking it was a pretty powerful expansion and watch him try to logic his way into why these cards are playable
I mean in yugioh I feel it’s true for a lot of players, I personally have one of my favorite cards Gem Knight Ruby… it’s basically Gral the shark but rather then eating from deck it’s eating something on field.
To correct Rarran on WoW history...Hakkar was a last boss in classic Zul´Gurub and Corrupted blood was dot which acted like soft enrage and was cleansed after kill. But it could spread on pets (espacially hunter pet) and when you dismiss him it stayed on the pet when summoned outside of instance. Moreover the dot spread via range, so players will (purposely) go to main town and spread the dot with no cure. The other problem was the dot wasnt doing much dmg so high level characters would spread it more plus it wasnt damaging NPCs xD. Its first simulated pandemic with reallife participants. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood_incident
The first couple of times and servers that Corrupted Blood spread on were accidental, but quickly we had trolls spreading it because they thought it was funny. It was enough to kill a high level player, just in about 30 seconds instead of nearly instant like with lower level players.
@@Rarranyeah odd mage with janlai was definitely a thing but then they rotated baku early and so it wasn’t around for very long. After baku rotated ‘hero power mage’ was not really a thing lol, maybee tier 3.
I distinctly remember there was a way to summon multiple rags. I think they either ran Zola or had some way to discover it consistantly. I might just be thinking of brann in wild though. I do distinctly remember that the deck would play it multiple times, which was why it was good.
yugioh analysis: step 1. read card. step 2. try to find a way that this card can first turn kill your opponent. Magic players will be more consistent at rating Hearthstone cards but Yugioh players will be the goats at finding bullshit combo strategies with any cards in any games
@@mooncalf_4534to add to this. You read the card, then dream of how it could be best used with little thought of what exists, if you believe your opponent would hate the outcome then you search if a card can complete the dream.
Crag'wa is actually my favorite legendary for exactly one interaction, and as most intellectuals remember, that interaction is Unstable Evolution. "Ech"- I mean "Repeatable this turn" is such a funny thing.
@@banmonsterg.8245 yeah, exactly that, krag'wa was the best shaman legendary ... for paladin players. especially because he just appeared SOOOO often for some reason he was legitimatly the legendary i got the most consistantly
I was literally just binging the older videos from this series because I can’t get enough and then this drops! Perfect timing! I’ll always come back for more!
Yeah, it definitely saw some play in jaina control mage. It wasn't amazing but it was played, and the hero power synergy cards were just decent removal due to the low power level of the set at the time. Also Shirvallah was a pretty good card in control/combo paladin decks, idk what rarran is smoking
I love hearing Rarran Hearthstone confidently correct his guests by sharing the wrong pronunciations of famous WoW characters! Bwon-saaahm-dee is the Loa of Death and Yogg-Suh-ron is the God of Death
Odd mage with Janalai was so good because it was the only counter to Midrange hunter towards the end of rotation in 2019. It won multiple Masters tours qualifiers in March of that year, and was a tier 1 deck on ladder... That card specifically would just end games because few decks had any way to deal with it, and the one's that did couldn't afford to take the 8 damage
The Hearthstone team took all the effort it would take to balance this expansion, and hurled it all into the trailer HERE IN STRANGLETHORN still bursts into my head unannounced to this day
that's just not right. They intentionally made the expansion weak because of the reaction to Witchwood. It's not a hidden secret. The devs have admitted to it at the time and it's constantly repeated. They saw the power creep, wanted to make a severely weak card pool to try and take that power down and it just didn't work.
@@cristianbernal8009 I know this is one month late, but to add to what you're correctly stating, it's also worth noting that hilariously enough, Witchwood was already intended to tone down the powercreep after the insane combo of Un'goro, KotFT and K&C. While Genn and Baku ended up being powerhouses, the rest of the set was notoriously fairly middling and underwhelming in terms of power level (the only really notable aspect being the Rush keyword being introduced), and much of K&C's decks remained the ones played until they were nerfed. This also applies to the expansion between those two, The Boomsday Project, though to a lesser extent - like TGT, it had a few very good cards (Zilliax being the most prominent example, as well as a number of Warrior cards, and pre-nerf Giggling Inventor too) surrounded by an ocean of mediocre or outright bad cards. All in all, Rastakhan is just the least exciting of a relatively unexciting year of HS.
Maybe I'm wrong because it's been a long time, but Jan'alai was good in Odd Mage, which (if I remember correctly) was a really strong deck. It may not have been a top-tier deck (I don't completely remember the meta at the time, I just remember for sure that Even and Odd Paladin were ridiculously strong), but it was definitely played.
not only was jan'alai playable, it was one of the strongest cards in one of the strongest decks at that time, odd mage, alongside brann on turn 10 to double summon rag which was itself a win condition and HEALING due to frost lich jaina aura giving all elementals lifesteal, it was a busted combo.
Come on now, that's a stretch. Like the deck was pretty briefly tier 1 before genn and baku got booted, but the version that played janalai and jaina was never good. The good version topped out at 5 and was much more aggro
@@loknaz97 Yeah compared to stuff like knights of the frozen throne it was horrendously bad. Grand tournament had some playable cards hell some of the cards in it were decent in arena. Inspire mechanic came a bit too early IMO because if you had hero power support in classes it wouldn't suck nearly as bad, but when it came out you had your hero power and the only way to change your hero power at the time was shadowform and justiciar, but neither reduced cost. Inspire cards if made now could be fire with stuff like shadowreaper Anduin and Raza.
@@dark_rit i still feel like inspire could have worked, the problem imho is that they inspire cards should have been cheap not expensive since it is a delayed effect, i feel like most inspire cards could have seen play if they costed 1 or 2 less
Hi'Reek is actually a tiny bit interesting because besides being an idea that just didn't land, it was also a MASSIVE nerf to evolve as a mechanic. I want to recall this as a point in time where Blizzard was kind of trying to introduce cards into the pool that would be especially terrible if you evolved into them, but I might be talking out of my ass on that part.
You should do one where they rate OTK combos. That would be interesting! Where you introduce one card at a time to see if they think it's viable or not
It has been played with the buffed ping from Baku very briefly when it was legal, but then mage conjurer's call released in the next expansion and made us forget very fast about that one
Regarding Bwonsambi, early builds of Combo Priest didn't run it and the deck was still tier 1. Bwonsambi was an innovation on the deck after it had been around for a bit and took off because it slightly improved the decks power across the board.
This guy is crazy. Honestly all of your Non-HS guests have been spectacular card evaluators and prognosticators. I think the next logical step is to have them review an upcoming set. I'm not sure how good of a video that'd make sense there's no, like, big reveal on how good the card is, it sounds more like a slop stream thing but put the idea on the back burner for a bit and see if it lights up.
I love how Cimooo gets Bwonsamdi's pronunciation correct the first time and then Rarran corrects him to be wrong... The W is after the B, Rarran! There is no W sound after the S!
okay yes, Gonk wasn't GOOD, but the Gonk OTK deck is still my favorite deck of all time, and it's really not even close. I still build it in wild all the time. The lethal math for that deck just gets so insane and there's just something hilarious about bashing your face into your opponent's whole board so you can bash your face into the opponent repeatedly for lethal.
I remember reading about the Hakkar plague; there was a bug where the Corrupted Blood debuff that made player’s pets carriers outside of Hakkar’s raid arena. So the debuff would carry over to the overworld and spread throughout the servers killing immunocompromised players (lower levels). Wont get into the full story but the servers had to be rolled back to a previous build fix everything. Also the CDC used the events as a simulation for real life pandemic scenarios.
Wasn't the death knight paladin hero still there during this set? I feel like I remember Time Out being used with that card, to give you time to build your win condition of having the 4 horsemen
Soul of the Duelist was the first of those sets Cimoo was referencing at the start, and I *think* that just made it out before the end of 2004. AST, the set before, was released the day after UK nationals in 2004, which was either May or June. Interestingly, it wasn't the release of the main sets that started more meta impact from sets. It was the promo packs and alternate releases designed to catch the western game up to the ocg in releases that had the bigger impact until The Phantom Chaos in, I think, 2007. All that said, Soul of the duelist was a turning point for the western game as until then 2 ocg sets were combined for each tcg set to catch up to the card pool. Soul of the duelist was the same size as an ocg set, so it was always going to be less impactful. Add to that the drop in power level and it felt like thevsets were worthless.
Hakkar plus the Warlock quest line would be interesting, imagine draw cycling corrupted blood and all the damage going to your opponent, might be a bit "imagination land" scenario but definitely interesting
9:16 this also sees play in a cool meme deck. Step 1: play a bad luck albatross to shuffle two 1/1/1 no-text minions into your opponents deck Step 2: repeat step 1, hope to not die Step 3: play archbishop benedictus to shuffle a copy of your opponent's deck into yours Step 4: play Lady Prestor to turn those 1/1/1 textless minions into random dragons that are 1/1/1 Step 5: play bwonsamdi to fill your hand with undercosted dragons Step 6: if not dead, play dragons rawr
I think they missed that Kragwa is for spells cast LAST turn. So you could dump your entire mana base and then get them back later. Not to mention how it scaled with unstable evolution
Hakkar was so cool. My favorite deck I ever played was a variant of togwaggle druid that ran hakkar as the wincon by doing the regular togwaggle thing. Then naturalizing some minions to make them draw 4 times.
Fun Fact: Hakar the soulflayer’s corrupted blood caused an apocalyptic event in world of warcraft. The debuff would kill your character but was suppose to be removed after the fight. A hunters pet didn’t get cleansed of the blood and when he hearthed back to town the corrupted blood started spreading and mass killing peoples characters in town. It’s a crazy story you should look into it. EDIT: Rarran told the story 5 seconds after I unpaused it 😂😂
The fun thing about Hakkar is it was just a random dungeon boss, but if you caught corrupted blood on a pet or summon then desummoned them, you could infect players outside the raid instance. this lead to an ingame epidemic where people had to be quarantined to get rid of the status effect, it's also been used as data for real life infectious disease studies. essentially this bug was WoW Covid.
Y'know, from Cimo's story, I feel like Time Out would be far better designed if it worked like the card from Yugioh that Cimo mentioned. Time Out really should have given both Heroes immune. It even fits the flavor better.
Maybe i'm wrong and it wasn't in that expansion but for janalai the dragonhawk i remember there was a mage card that made your hero power hit all the opponents minions plus his face. So i don't quite remember this card being awful. There is also a legendary that was build around this whole strategy.
I might be getting mandela'd but Jan'alei was really good iirc for odd mage. I think it fell off after Baku got hall of fames pretty quickly though. Also wasn't there a Tier2/3 Gonk deck that would copy him for an OTK?
This was actually the expansion i joined hearthstone in lmao so not only is Janalai mage my first deck i loved, it's also what i expected the normal game power level to be 💀
Wasn't revenge of the wild playable in Uldum? I think quest hunter played 0-2 copies of it in their deck. I remember I played around it a lot since if you didnt clear all the 1/1 rush/charge beasts they would trade into your minions then resummons them and then complete the quest.
I'm almost positive Janalai was played in pretty decent decks, and I'm a priest main and don't remember a Bwonsomdi combo deck AT ALL. Its possible I just never paid attention to that though since I never cared for combo Priest lists
Here I am, with majority "I got it wrong last time but that was played for sure!" And get so many wrong... I didn't play during this time, I quit at this time. So I only played the Rumble mode where I played all these cards XD. Always fun to watch these!
it was a deck but it wasn’t a super common one. If I recall it was the sort of deck that saw play at a high level but wasn’t great for climbing ladder.
2 Time Outs alone are already a 6 mana discount on Shirvala. Throw in a few more spells and it's easy to make it free. And Shirvala having specifically divine shield+rush+lifesteal means it can stabilize REALLY well against aggro decks. Also amazing is that your opponent will want to DO something on their turn, even if they can't hit you. There's not much they can do other than build up their board. But then you follow it up with a board clear. So Time Out just gave your board clear more value. I remember that control paladin being pretty damn good.
The longer we bully Rastakhan's Rumble the more I feel like there were actually interesting ideas there that just fell flat (especially Overkil). I wish we would have seen a future where they stayed away from so much powercreep and after rotation this set would have been a sleeper awaking in the Year of the Dragon
@@JoshSweetvale Ye I gues after all it might have been Genn and Baku again ... I feel like the early rotation would have been enough but I guess the game design has been scarred indefinitely by the lower income of the set
If I remember correctly, most of these cards are in some otk deck back in that day, Like for example, There were a way to make Gonk to be able to attacks like 6-7times in a turn or something
hey bro, i want to let you know that your videos always make my day, and are super high quality. Love your style thank you man :D i won't dump randomly but they do help alot :D
the best thing Hireek did for the game was it's impact on random 8 drop generation (or evolve/devolve etc.) like devolving an obsidian statue into hireek or getting a random hireek and evolving it into 7 9 drops. Oh and paladin had one other combo deck as far as I know, the deathknight 4 horsemen combo - not sure which expansion brought that one online but I remember that Time Out was played there
Hakkar was my favorite card from when I used to play HS. I tried to make it work with multiple classes, anything with good defensive or healing options. I think the best was Druid. I specifcally remember a match against a control Warrior. They had a ton of armor and would have won if it wasn't for Hakkar. I cast Naturalize, so they had to draw 2 cards and it ended up doing 40+ damage killing them.
My go to combo back in the rise of shadows was playing Jan'alai and Khadgar together for double the Rag It rarely worked but that didn't stop me from trying
10:25 This is why I watch you, Rarran 😄 I didn't play back then but the whole time I was just thinking this was decent at best, just felt like they payoff couldn't possibly be worth it, even for back then.
rarran I know you hate rastakhan rumble with a passion but you forgot The Witchwood first ever "BAN" cards baku the mooneater and genn greyman 9:48 who make odd mage before it stop play after the ban
Fun fact: When playing Jan’alai in wild, there was an assumption that playing this with Brann was intended. If you did do that upon release, the game would hard crash.
As someone who actually played HS a lot in that expansion, there are decks that utilize each of these cards (except for the bat I guess) and are doing really good. The problem is that most of those decks are combo decks & probably only works well at that time. For the bat, it is probably the worst out of all of these, but really good if you actually ends up buffing it pass 5/5 or something. There aren't many spells that can clear a 5/5+ board at that time. So it can kill yr opponent in the next turn. But it just really hard to pull that off
Time out is still excellent in wild and has saved my many a time, love that card. One of the few semblances of stability in an incredibly unstable format
The period on Yugioh that Cimo is talking about is mid-2004 (from Ancient Sanctuary) to mid 2007 (through Tactical Evolution). Although, tbh, all the 2007 sets are fine, it's just that they are on the tail end of a really bad streak of sets. Plenty of cards from this period would see extensive play years later (especially the first waves of strategies that would get solid support later), but in terms of effect at the time, you'd get 1-4 properly *good* cards a set for about 3 years. To be clear, again, there are cards that *later* became good. And I have deep fondness some of these sets. But if I'm not being highly subjective.
The second time I made Legend was with a control Warrior deck that used Hakkar. I climbed to Legend over the diseased bodies of Death Knight Mages with that deck.
umm ackshually.. *raises glasses* baleful banker was in Witchwood. I remember this because Blizzard stupidly showcased the shudder-wok infinite combo with the banker in their 'pre-expansion' deck showcase they used to do before they did the 'theory-crafting' streams they do now. (the shudderwok infinite OTK deck was actually what Blizz intended you to do with it. Not use it for a wacky 'fun' value deck.) The shirvalla OTK deck did in fact exist during the set that it originally released in.
Comment on the mage legendary.
I truly don’t remember it being good but apparently it was good in hero power mage back when Baku is in the format. I’m sorry if my recollection is wrong, but genuinely don’t remember it being played.
It’s just Rarran’s dementia acting up again
its ok rarran remembering all this shit is hard we appreciate u
this also made me realize this expansion was 6 fucking years ago dear god
In regards to Hakkar: he was a raid boss that put a disease on people. Normally the debuff was removed, but if you got it on a Hunter pet you could sneak it out. It spread through the major cities and literally left a blanket of corpses on the ground.
Also, we have come full circle: WoW's newest expansion has a Kobold dungeon, some of the trash is a worm-like creature that gets stronger when stuff dies near it, called COrridor Creeper. And the last boss is The Darkness, during the fight you need to keep your candles lit.
Ya i saw u review jan'alai and was like wtf, he wasnt meta defining was fairly strong reason to play odd mage, you forgot wildfire too, the 4 mana battlecry shoot your hero power at guys and lets not forget fucking baku,
Yeah I recalled jan'alai being decent, but it was a long while ago. Most of the set was awful though, like hi'reek the bat was so damn bad if you were trying to gain a board advantage off it because a boardclear from most classes ruined it. Like even if hi'reek started at 2/2 with no handbuffs or anything it would suck as a 14 power threat that is easily consecrated away or anything.
I TOLD YOU JAN’ALAI WAS GOOD!!!!!!
i've lowkey binged a bunch of these videos lately and there's been quite a few cards that were played in high tier decks, for at least a few months, that rarran just wasnt aware of and completely binned them.
I feel its hard to say if a card from the past is good or bad, for me I struggle to get data from the past.
I know right
it totally was playable in both formats wtf
Don't worry Cimooooooo, we all know you're smart!
Cimooo getting Bwonsamdi's pronunciation right and then Rarran incorrectly correcting it and using the incorrect pronunciation for the rest of the video is making my eye twitch
Classic Rarran
Bwonsamdi's name actually does not come from Baron Samedi, a spirit of the dead from Haitian voodoo, but from Bonswamdi, a spirit of dyslexia
@@sonarchy5158 Who's Bonswamdi? Do you mean Bob Salami?
@@PowerfulSkeletonWe agreed not to talk about Bobby Salami.
I clearly remember Jan’alai being played in odd mage and odd mage being a good deck.
That was wild though and normally these vids only reference standard
@@shahrooz3310they existed in standard together for the rhaskatan meta. Odd mage with Janlai was in standard and was tier 1/2. Baku and Genn didn’t rotated until the following year with rise of shadows.
yeah I agree, I remember it being used a LOT in odd mage
@@Evilfetus15 They rotated it early, right? or was year of the raven a rotation set earlier than normal?
@@SuperAmazingJared Yeah genn and baku rotated a year early - so odd mage running jainalai was only around for the Rhastakans rumble meta. baku rotated with rise of shadows
The Hakkar plague is an Iconic event in WoW history.
Basically, Hakkar was a boss in a raid released relatively early into WoW. One of his abilities was placing a debuff on someone which dealt damage to them and also could spread to nearby players/pets.
Players managed to "smuggle" the debuff out of the raid, I think by getting a hunters pet afflicted by it, despawning it, and then resummoning it outside the raid or smth, and then get it to areas densely populated by players. The debuff would then spread from player to player, creating a virtual pandemic.
This is just from memory so I might be misremembering some details.
Yeah that is correct. They'd take the pet out again at the Ironforge Auction House/Main square and pretty much created and endless infestation and death feedback loop,
Yeah having read about it it's funny af because people studied that ingame event to see what a pandemic would look like if a big one occurred in the modern day, then covid-19 happened and it showed a lot of people doing the same thing to spread it around even though they KNEW it was a problem because blizz tried to reach out to the community to stop it. All I know is eventually they had to hard reboot the WoW servers and take out hakkon raid so people wouldn't go spreading it willy nilly.
@@dark_rit IIRC some people managed to smuggle the debuff through the hard reset by going into an instance, making it even more difficult for blizz to kill it.
IRC, the CDC contacted Blizzard after that incident to see if they could get data from it for their own simulations.
The funny part is, it had a brief resurgence when Dragonflight launched. There was a new debuff that players could get from certain world activities. But while it was super contagious, it was less lethal, allowing commonly visited NPCs to act as hosts.
At this point I just instantly click if I see any combination of these three together.
I don't play yugioh or hearthstone and I'm subbed to all 3 of them for that reason lol.
Same.
Same
Three?
Same, Rarran, CGB, Cimo...don't care about the combination just hook it directly to my veins.
I cannot see Hir'eek without a chorus of infinite Jekliks echoing in my head: "Hir'eek, grant me wings!"
If you do this expansion with CGB in the future, you should gaslight him into thinking it was a pretty powerful expansion and watch him try to logic his way into why these cards are playable
That would be funny, because you know he would do it. “Ok so you told me this was one of the stronger sets??!”
"This is one of the sets that really shook the game, with very few duds here and there"
It’s Yeti crisis all over again
33:28 "Favorite cards can still be bad."
(Covert Blue suddenly sneezes)
I mean in yugioh I feel it’s true for a lot of players, I personally have one of my favorite cards Gem Knight Ruby… it’s basically Gral the shark but rather then eating from deck it’s eating something on field.
Who's Covert Blue? I only know of Mesa Falcon Guy.
To correct Rarran on WoW history...Hakkar was a last boss in classic Zul´Gurub and Corrupted blood was dot which acted like soft enrage and was cleansed after kill. But it could spread on pets (espacially hunter pet) and when you dismiss him it stayed on the pet when summoned outside of instance. Moreover the dot spread via range, so players will (purposely) go to main town and spread the dot with no cure. The other problem was the dot wasnt doing much dmg so high level characters would spread it more plus it wasnt damaging NPCs xD. Its first simulated pandemic with reallife participants. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood_incident
The first couple of times and servers that Corrupted Blood spread on were accidental, but quickly we had trolls spreading it because they thought it was funny. It was enough to kill a high level player, just in about 30 seconds instead of nearly instant like with lower level players.
Jan’alai was absolutely not bad lol. It was the star of a tier 3/2 deck in hero power mage
Oh interesting, I honestly don’t remember hero power mage being good until forged in the barrens era. If my recollection is wrong, I apologize.
@@Rarranyeah odd mage with janlai was definitely a thing but then they rotated baku early and so it wasn’t around for very long. After baku rotated ‘hero power mage’ was not really a thing lol, maybee tier 3.
@@Rarran yeah it most def was a thing with odd mage, I played a LOT of this during that time
I distinctly remember there was a way to summon multiple rags. I think they either ran Zola or had some way to discover it consistantly. I might just be thinking of brann in wild though. I do distinctly remember that the deck would play it multiple times, which was why it was good.
@@Rarranit’s definitely better than Halazzi
cimo's intuition is wild. he identifies so many combos he's never seen before.
yugioh analysis: step 1. read card. step 2. try to find a way that this card can first turn kill your opponent.
Magic players will be more consistent at rating Hearthstone cards but Yugioh players will be the goats at finding bullshit combo strategies with any cards in any games
@@mooncalf_4534 I mean, have you read our yugioh cards?
Edit: Idk if this comes up, but I think you can get Akali of the Akali.
He even correctly guessed Janalai was good, which even lifelong HS player Rarran was wrong about.
I think my comment just disappeared into the void
@@mooncalf_4534to add to this. You read the card, then dream of how it could be best used with little thought of what exists, if you believe your opponent would hate the outcome then you search if a card can complete the dream.
Crag'wa is actually my favorite legendary for exactly one interaction, and as most intellectuals remember, that interaction is Unstable Evolution. "Ech"- I mean "Repeatable this turn" is such a funny thing.
My favorite Krag'wa interaction was pulling him off of a Countess invitation to get 3 more Invitations
I wish the Countess was still in Standard. Shivarra and Romath were also great highrolls.
@@banmonsterg.8245 yeah, exactly that, krag'wa was the best shaman legendary ... for paladin players. especially because he just appeared SOOOO often for some reason he was legitimatly the legendary i got the most consistantly
They actually changed Unstable Evolution to have Echo now.
This series of TCG videos have been a genius idea. I learned more about MTG and Yu-Gi-Oh than I ever thought I would lol
I was literally just binging the older videos from this series because I can’t get enough and then this drops! Perfect timing! I’ll always come back for more!
Wasn't Jan'alai ok before Odd and Even rotated out? I remember odd mage being played that expansion
Me too I remember playing a hero power deck and it being ok
Yeah, it definitely saw some play in jaina control mage. It wasn't amazing but it was played, and the hero power synergy cards were just decent removal due to the low power level of the set at the time.
Also Shirvallah was a pretty good card in control/combo paladin decks, idk what rarran is smoking
It was okay, played it
I love hearing Rarran Hearthstone confidently correct his guests by sharing the wrong pronunciations of famous WoW characters! Bwon-saaahm-dee is the Loa of Death and Yogg-Suh-ron is the God of Death
Odd mage with Janalai was so good because it was the only counter to Midrange hunter towards the end of rotation in 2019. It won multiple Masters tours qualifiers in March of that year, and was a tier 1 deck on ladder... That card specifically would just end games because few decks had any way to deal with it, and the one's that did couldn't afford to take the 8 damage
I don't remember mage at all. Maybe it was tier 2-3 deck but no way it was close to tier 1. You are overreacting 😅
The Hearthstone team took all the effort it would take to balance this expansion, and hurled it all into the trailer
HERE IN STRANGLETHORN still bursts into my head unannounced to this day
By Earth, by Air, Rain and Fiyah!
It's been my ringtone since it released
that's just not right. They intentionally made the expansion weak because of the reaction to Witchwood. It's not a hidden secret. The devs have admitted to it at the time and it's constantly repeated. They saw the power creep, wanted to make a severely weak card pool to try and take that power down and it just didn't work.
@@cristianbernal8009 I know this is one month late, but to add to what you're correctly stating, it's also worth noting that hilariously enough, Witchwood was already intended to tone down the powercreep after the insane combo of Un'goro, KotFT and K&C. While Genn and Baku ended up being powerhouses, the rest of the set was notoriously fairly middling and underwhelming in terms of power level (the only really notable aspect being the Rush keyword being introduced), and much of K&C's decks remained the ones played until they were nerfed.
This also applies to the expansion between those two, The Boomsday Project, though to a lesser extent - like TGT, it had a few very good cards (Zilliax being the most prominent example, as well as a number of Warrior cards, and pre-nerf Giggling Inventor too) surrounded by an ocean of mediocre or outright bad cards. All in all, Rastakhan is just the least exciting of a relatively unexciting year of HS.
baleful banker was witchwood, not rise of shadows. holy wrath with shirvalah was playable on rastakhan release
These card game crossovers are always enjoyable. Rastakhan's Rumble had such a banger theme only to be an uneventful expansion.
Maybe I'm wrong because it's been a long time, but Jan'alai was good in Odd Mage, which (if I remember correctly) was a really strong deck. It may not have been a top-tier deck (I don't completely remember the meta at the time, I just remember for sure that Even and Odd Paladin were ridiculously strong), but it was definitely played.
Rarran... this is the 7th time this week you've shown "The Worst Hearthstone Expansion" in class
I can't stop smiling every time rarran says 'disneyland' instead of the usual 'magical christmas land'
not only was jan'alai playable, it was one of the strongest cards in one of the strongest decks at that time, odd mage, alongside brann on turn 10 to double summon rag which was itself a win condition and HEALING due to frost lich jaina aura giving all elementals lifesteal, it was a busted combo.
Yeah rarran is memeing at this point.
Come on now, that's a stretch. Like the deck was pretty briefly tier 1 before genn and baku got booted, but the version that played janalai and jaina was never good. The good version topped out at 5 and was much more aggro
@@nickthejackyea but if Rarran is considering Halazzi to be “good” then Janalai certainly is.
The only way you're calling Rumble the worst expansion for Hearthstone is if you just trauma-blocked The Bland Tournament.
Can't blame him.
i mean TGT at least had good cards even if it was a little boring. but rumble just had nothing for the meta
Grand tournament was early hearthstone, rumble was a nerf in power level after we had already been spoiled with powerful expansions.
@@loknaz97 Yeah compared to stuff like knights of the frozen throne it was horrendously bad. Grand tournament had some playable cards hell some of the cards in it were decent in arena. Inspire mechanic came a bit too early IMO because if you had hero power support in classes it wouldn't suck nearly as bad, but when it came out you had your hero power and the only way to change your hero power at the time was shadowform and justiciar, but neither reduced cost. Inspire cards if made now could be fire with stuff like shadowreaper Anduin and Raza.
@@dark_rit i still feel like inspire could have worked, the problem imho is that they inspire cards should have been cheap not expensive since it is a delayed effect, i feel like most inspire cards could have seen play if they costed 1 or 2 less
Hi'Reek is actually a tiny bit interesting because besides being an idea that just didn't land, it was also a MASSIVE nerf to evolve as a mechanic. I want to recall this as a point in time where Blizzard was kind of trying to introduce cards into the pool that would be especially terrible if you evolved into them, but I might be talking out of my ass on that part.
Not Rarran reading Bwonsamdi as Bonswamdi 😂
You should do one where they rate OTK combos. That would be interesting! Where you introduce one card at a time to see if they think it's viable or not
@33:25 "Favorite cards can still be bad."
A Mesa Falcon cries in the distance.
the Shirvallah wrath deck idea is even funnier now that we have Endless Expanse to OTK even through 60 armor.
Hearing Jan'alai get shit on hurts. That card wasn't half bad in its hayday. (Queue 500 other comments pointing out the exact same thing lol).
Is my memory that bad? I remember janalai being played
It was played when Genn and Baku were legal and it was a strong card. Those were rotated only after 1 year. After that it didn't see much play.
It has been played with the buffed ping from Baku very briefly when it was legal, but then mage conjurer's call released in the next expansion and made us forget very fast about that one
It’s not bad, Rarran is just stupid
It remember Gral being played a lot too
The designers thought Hakkar would take a while to spread but within a day 99% of the playerbase that were on during that period got 'infected'
Regarding Bwonsambi, early builds of Combo Priest didn't run it and the deck was still tier 1. Bwonsambi was an innovation on the deck after it had been around for a bit and took off because it slightly improved the decks power across the board.
Bwonsambi was a good aggro card that all I remember
22:36 the biggest downside of trying to combo Gral with the Darkness is that you have to run the darkness
As someone whose favorite card remains Recurring Villain, love that comment about favorite cards being bad.
I love how we can tell how recently this was filmed because there is a bloomburrow package sitting on the couch behind Rarran!
we have the trifecta of tcg youtubers all doing collabs. This shit is great.
This guy is crazy. Honestly all of your Non-HS guests have been spectacular card evaluators and prognosticators. I think the next logical step is to have them review an upcoming set. I'm not sure how good of a video that'd make sense there's no, like, big reveal on how good the card is, it sounds more like a slop stream thing but put the idea on the back burner for a bit and see if it lights up.
I love how Cimooo gets Bwonsamdi's pronunciation correct the first time and then Rarran corrects him to be wrong... The W is after the B, Rarran! There is no W sound after the S!
It's a deliberate obfuscation of 'Baron Samedi' - the Caribbean alias of Satan.
okay yes, Gonk wasn't GOOD, but the Gonk OTK deck is still my favorite deck of all time, and it's really not even close. I still build it in wild all the time. The lethal math for that deck just gets so insane and there's just something hilarious about bashing your face into your opponent's whole board so you can bash your face into the opponent repeatedly for lethal.
I remember reading about the Hakkar plague; there was a bug where the Corrupted Blood debuff that made player’s pets carriers outside of Hakkar’s raid arena. So the debuff would carry over to the overworld and spread throughout the servers killing immunocompromised players (lower levels). Wont get into the full story but the servers had to be rolled back to a previous build fix everything. Also the CDC used the events as a simulation for real life pandemic scenarios.
2:00 Yeah Old GX cards were...weird. Like they over blanaced them because they were afraid of making them OP, even the "big bad" cards.
5:50 cimoooo hitting that high note 🎶
Wasn't the death knight paladin hero still there during this set? I feel like I remember Time Out being used with that card, to give you time to build your win condition of having the 4 horsemen
Soul of the Duelist was the first of those sets Cimoo was referencing at the start, and I *think* that just made it out before the end of 2004. AST, the set before, was released the day after UK nationals in 2004, which was either May or June.
Interestingly, it wasn't the release of the main sets that started more meta impact from sets. It was the promo packs and alternate releases designed to catch the western game up to the ocg in releases that had the bigger impact until The Phantom Chaos in, I think, 2007.
All that said, Soul of the duelist was a turning point for the western game as until then 2 ocg sets were combined for each tcg set to catch up to the card pool. Soul of the duelist was the same size as an ocg set, so it was always going to be less impactful. Add to that the drop in power level and it felt like thevsets were worthless.
Hakkar plus the Warlock quest line would be interesting, imagine draw cycling corrupted blood and all the damage going to your opponent, might be a bit "imagination land" scenario but definitely interesting
The song of the Gurubashi set slapped though 😂😂
"Hakkar released a disease" is the understatement of the century. Bodies as far as the game would load I tell you
9:16 this also sees play in a cool meme deck.
Step 1: play a bad luck albatross to shuffle two 1/1/1 no-text minions into your opponents deck
Step 2: repeat step 1, hope to not die
Step 3: play archbishop benedictus to shuffle a copy of your opponent's deck into yours
Step 4: play Lady Prestor to turn those 1/1/1 textless minions into random dragons that are 1/1/1
Step 5: play bwonsamdi to fill your hand with undercosted dragons
Step 6: if not dead, play dragons rawr
Spirit of the frog and Spirit of the Shark: are we a joke to you?
I think they missed that Kragwa is for spells cast LAST turn. So you could dump your entire mana base and then get them back later. Not to mention how it scaled with unstable evolution
Hakkar was so cool. My favorite deck I ever played was a variant of togwaggle druid that ran hakkar as the wincon by doing the regular togwaggle thing. Then naturalizing some minions to make them draw 4 times.
Fun Fact: Hakar the soulflayer’s corrupted blood caused an apocalyptic event in world of warcraft. The debuff would kill your character but was suppose to be removed after the fight. A hunters pet didn’t get cleansed of the blood and when he hearthed back to town the corrupted blood started spreading and mass killing peoples characters in town. It’s a crazy story you should look into it.
EDIT: Rarran told the story 5 seconds after I unpaused it 😂😂
The absolute best of Rastakhan was that theme song, so good
BY EARTH, BY AIR, RAIN AND FIRE!
The fun thing about Hakkar is it was just a random dungeon boss, but if you caught corrupted blood on a pet or summon then desummoned them, you could infect players outside the raid instance. this lead to an ingame epidemic where people had to be quarantined to get rid of the status effect, it's also been used as data for real life infectious disease studies. essentially this bug was WoW Covid.
Jan'alai was played though?
Yes
Wasn’t there some kind of combo Druid with Hakkar? Wasn’t this when you could replace or swap decks to otk them.
Y'know, from Cimo's story, I feel like Time Out would be far better designed if it worked like the card from Yugioh that Cimo mentioned. Time Out really should have given both Heroes immune. It even fits the flavor better.
Maybe i'm wrong and it wasn't in that expansion but for janalai the dragonhawk i remember there was a mage card that made your hero power hit all the opponents minions plus his face. So i don't quite remember this card being awful. There is also a legendary that was build around this whole strategy.
I might be getting mandela'd but Jan'alei was really good iirc for odd mage. I think it fell off after Baku got hall of fames pretty quickly though.
Also wasn't there a Tier2/3 Gonk deck that would copy him for an OTK?
This was actually the expansion i joined hearthstone in lmao so not only is Janalai mage my first deck i loved, it's also what i expected the normal game power level to be 💀
Wasn't revenge of the wild playable in Uldum? I think quest hunter played 0-2 copies of it in their deck. I remember I played around it a lot since if you didnt clear all the 1/1 rush/charge beasts they would trade into your minions then resummons them and then complete the quest.
23:10 wait what's Pot of Greed again?
I'm almost positive Janalai was played in pretty decent decks, and I'm a priest main and don't remember a Bwonsomdi combo deck AT ALL. Its possible I just never paid attention to that though since I never cared for combo Priest lists
You wouldn't remember it because of the legendary, you'd remember it as the priest deck that made a 0/32, and then used inner fire, killing you.
due to the coping of gonk he was technically playable as an otk
granted he wasn't good but still playable
I was gonna say, I distinctly remember hearing about a Gonk OTK deck. Seemed awful, but people played it.
Tier 3
@@eroslampitella2629 i said playable not good
"living in disneyland" has become part of my day to day vocabulary...
I remember playing Jan'Alai and seeing it in the meta also, was so confused when rarran said it was bad
Here I am, with majority "I got it wrong last time but that was played for sure!" And get so many wrong... I didn't play during this time, I quit at this time. So I only played the Rumble mode where I played all these cards XD. Always fun to watch these!
Weirdly enough, this was my favorite year. I loved year of the raven and Rastakhan's rumble was my favorite season/meta.
Rarran and Cimo go to Disneyland haha
10:20 Cimo was right, and he didn't even play the expansion.
I 100% expected my favorite card from the set spirit of the frog letting u draw and draw :)
I don't remember bwonsamdi seeing play like at ALL.
What deck was rarran talking about?
it was a deck but it wasn’t a super common one. If I recall it was the sort of deck that saw play at a high level but wasn’t great for climbing ladder.
2 Time Outs alone are already a 6 mana discount on Shirvala. Throw in a few more spells and it's easy to make it free. And Shirvala having specifically divine shield+rush+lifesteal means it can stabilize REALLY well against aggro decks.
Also amazing is that your opponent will want to DO something on their turn, even if they can't hit you. There's not much they can do other than build up their board. But then you follow it up with a board clear. So Time Out just gave your board clear more value.
I remember that control paladin being pretty damn good.
The longer we bully Rastakhan's Rumble the more I feel like there were actually interesting ideas there that just fell flat (especially Overkil). I wish we would have seen a future where they stayed away from so much powercreep and after rotation this set would have been a sleeper awaking in the Year of the Dragon
Money says no.
And money is the will of the players.
@@JoshSweetvale Ye I gues after all it might have been Genn and Baku again ... I feel like the early rotation would have been enough but I guess the game design has been scarred indefinitely by the lower income of the set
lmao at Rarran trying to sell Hireek - he tried so hard to keep it together lol
Yeah hireek is bad in no world did it ever excite me.
If I remember correctly, most of these cards are in some otk deck back in that day, Like for example, There were a way to make Gonk to be able to attacks like 6-7times in a turn or something
hey bro, i want to let you know that your videos always make my day, and are super high quality. Love your style thank you man :D i won't dump randomly but they do help alot :D
the best thing Hireek did for the game was it's impact on random 8 drop generation (or evolve/devolve etc.) like devolving an obsidian statue into hireek or getting a random hireek and evolving it into 7 9 drops. Oh and paladin had one other combo deck as far as I know, the deathknight 4 horsemen combo - not sure which expansion brought that one online but I remember that Time Out was played there
Didn’t baleful banker come out in the Witchwood?
Rarran: Rastakhan's Rumble is the worst expansion.
The Grand Tournament: Am I a joke to you?
Exactlyyyyy
Did you skip over Frozen Throne and Kobolds? Or will a video with someone evaluating those pop up later?
One of the funnsiet things I think I personally have ever done in hearthstone is hit the mass silence against someone's 15/15 hi'reek board.
Hakkar was my favorite card from when I used to play HS. I tried to make it work with multiple classes, anything with good defensive or healing options. I think the best was Druid. I specifcally remember a match against a control Warrior. They had a ton of armor and would have won if it wasn't for Hakkar. I cast Naturalize, so they had to draw 2 cards and it ended up doing 40+ damage killing them.
My go to combo back in the rise of shadows was playing Jan'alai and Khadgar together for double the Rag
It rarely worked but that didn't stop me from trying
Never stop this series
10:25 This is why I watch you, Rarran 😄
I didn't play back then but the whole time I was just thinking this was decent at best, just felt like they payoff couldn't possibly be worth it, even for back then.
Yeah I left just before this, too.
Still haven't come back.
rarran I know you hate rastakhan rumble with a passion but you forgot The Witchwood first ever "BAN" cards baku the mooneater and genn greyman 9:48 who make odd mage before it stop play after the ban
I love the idea of calling this set "Disney Land's Rumble"
Fun fact: When playing Jan’alai in wild, there was an assumption that playing this with Brann was intended.
If you did do that upon release, the game would hard crash.
Fun fact: I survived the holy wrath attack; opponent got it off twice on two turns for 25 damage and 20 damage and I was still alive.
As someone who actually played HS a lot in that expansion, there are decks that utilize each of these cards (except for the bat I guess) and are doing really good. The problem is that most of those decks are combo decks & probably only works well at that time.
For the bat, it is probably the worst out of all of these, but really good if you actually ends up buffing it pass 5/5 or something. There aren't many spells that can clear a 5/5+ board at that time. So it can kill yr opponent in the next turn. But it just really hard to pull that off
janalai the dragonhawktuah
Time out is still excellent in wild and has saved my many a time, love that card. One of the few semblances of stability in an incredibly unstable format
The period on Yugioh that Cimo is talking about is mid-2004 (from Ancient Sanctuary) to mid 2007 (through Tactical Evolution). Although, tbh, all the 2007 sets are fine, it's just that they are on the tail end of a really bad streak of sets. Plenty of cards from this period would see extensive play years later (especially the first waves of strategies that would get solid support later), but in terms of effect at the time, you'd get 1-4 properly *good* cards a set for about 3 years.
To be clear, again, there are cards that *later* became good. And I have deep fondness some of these sets. But if I'm not being highly subjective.
The second time I made Legend was with a control Warrior deck that used Hakkar. I climbed to Legend over the diseased bodies of Death Knight Mages with that deck.
umm ackshually.. *raises glasses* baleful banker was in Witchwood. I remember this because Blizzard stupidly showcased the shudder-wok infinite combo with the banker in their 'pre-expansion' deck showcase they used to do before they did the 'theory-crafting' streams they do now. (the shudderwok infinite OTK deck was actually what Blizz intended you to do with it. Not use it for a wacky 'fun' value deck.) The shirvalla OTK deck did in fact exist during the set that it originally released in.