By: BeerNaps

In the wake of the infamous Warsong Commander nerf, a new game design element has emerged as a topic of conversation. Senior Game Designer Ben Brode, in one of his Designer Insights videos, revealed that the reason Blizzard chose to nerf Warsong Commander rather than Grim Patron, Frothing Berserker, or Battle Rage was because of the way that Warsong Commander limited the design space of the game. The open-endedness of Warsong’s old card text which stated, “Whenever you summon a minion with 3 Attack or less, give it Charge,” created a situation where Blizzard had to consider this card whenever releasing a card that the warrior had access to. Brode mentioned that Dreadsteed was originally going to be a Naxxramus neutral, but couldn’t be released because of its infinite synergy with Warsong. Warsong Commander greatly limited the possibilities of neutral and warrior cards to be released and in doing so put a restriction on the potential breadth of the game.

Now, in the first week of the newly released League of Explorers adventure, the game is once again threatened. Reno Jackson has emerged as the anti-aggro savior, and in doing so has managed to turn the ladder meta on its head. Reno is a 6 mana 4/6 with a battlecry that states, “if your deck contains no more than 1 of any card, fully heal your hero.” This powerful heal has already saved countless players from a Face Hunter or Aggro-Pally beatdown and offers a rare hard-counter to aggressive decks. However, this instant gratification Blizzard has given us comes at a severe long term cost in terms of design space and the future of Hearthstone.

While this shiny new legendary appears to be the death of aggro as we know it, it might, in fact, be the death of Hearthstone. Here’s why.

Firstly, Reno Jackson impacts the design space of the game in a way that few other cards have. It is such a powerful anti-aggro card that any other taunt, heal, or other game-prolonging card that Blizzard prints will have to be balanced for a Reno Jackson deck. For years players have asked for more early taunts and heals in order to counter aggro. Now imagine a Reno deck with more early taunts and heals. It is one thing to have a counter for aggressive decks, it is another to remove them from the game completely.

In the same way that cheap charge cards had to be balanced around not making Face Hunter more efficient, Reno forces Blizzard to not make control decks too safe. An Oil-Rogue would love a cheap heal in order to stay in the game and a Midrange-Shaman would love a more efficient early board clear to help deal with pesky Muster for Battles. But Reno hurts our chances of getting either of these because it could put a Highlander Shaman or Rogue deck over the top.

Midranged decks take just as big of a hit as aggressive decks thanks to Reno. The goal of most midrange decks is to control the board early, get some damage to the enemy in the mid-game, and then burst your opponent down around turn 8 or 9 often with a finisher. Oil-Rogue does it with Tinker’s Sharpsword Oil, Shaman does it with Doomhammer or Al-Akir and Rockbiters, and Druid does it with force of nature/savage roar. Many of these decks have to play aggressively in the mid-game and reward players for setting up for lethal in the next two turns. Reno single-handedly destroys this plan by basically resetting the game on turn 6. All the damage that Oil-Rogue fought for board control early to deal is now negated.

Now, you might be inclined to ask: if everyone is playing Reno, isn’t it still balanced? Nope because…

Reno Jackson does not favor all classes equally. In order to activate Reno’s effect you have to no longer have any two copies of cards in your deck. There are two ways to achieve this effect consistently. You can simply only run one copy of each card such as in the currently popular Reno-Lock deck. This deck takes a current archetype and simply runs one-ofs and includes options which almost made the cut before. The second way to

activate Reno’s effect is to actually draw most or all of your cards before activating it. This only happens consistently in fatigue decks, and so far has been the most powerful usage of Reno. In the past, fatigue decks have been kept in place by midrange combo decks, but as we have seen, Reno counters those decks pretty well. With nothing to keep fatigue decks in check, Hearthstone becomes a game of which fatigue deck is the best. While Freeze Mage can be made into a powerful fatigue style deck, and priest can also survive well into the late game, Warrior is by far the most dominant. With the recent addition of Justicar Trueheart, Fatigue Warrior is stronger than ever. The other the 8 classes will be left in the dust. Hearthstone could then turn into whose Reno Jackson Fatigue Warrior list is the best, or, much more likely, who draws most favorably.

But Reno Jackson has only been out a few days, how can we tell that it is as strong as it seems?

We can’t, but that doesn’t matter. Even if Reno decks somehow turn out to be a fluke, the card inherently gets better with every new card added to the game. While now some of these decks seem sub-optimal, with a larger card pool they become optimized much quicker than standard lists. Reno decks stand to gain more from the addition of new expansions and adventures than any other decks. This is because of the nature of the card itself. It rewards players for playing more unique cards. In 2015 we saw 208 new cards added to the game in the form of two adventures, Blackrock Mountain and The League of Explorers, and the expansion, The Grand Tournament. If Blizzard continues at this pace, it is not hard to see how strong Reno will get.

So is it hopeless? Are we all going to have to quit or favorite game?

Nope. Lucky for us Team 5, the Hearthstone design team is full of people actively trying to keep this game alive and healthy. They have plenty of experience dealing with oppressive cards and decks during Hearthstone’s lifetime. On top of that, Hearthstone, of course, is a digital game. Any game-threatening situation can be dealt with with a quick nerf, which in Reno Jackson’s lifetime, is inevitable.

TL:DR

Just weeks after Blizzard fixed their previous design space problem, they seem to have dug themselves into an even bigger hole. The only difference being that this hole threatens the game itself if it goes unpatched. We may have thought that Face Hunter, Secret Paladin, or Patron Warrior had no counter before, but none of those even compare the dominant and counter-less Reno deck (Fatigue Warrior) that will emerge and only grow stronger with time. At least with aggressive decks the games ended quickly, lending itself well to the mobile market of employees sitting on the toilet. Those five-minutes of beat down will turn into a 25 minute war of attrition. At that point you might as well just play Heroes of the Storm.