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Hearthstone: Baku and Genn Are Being Sent to Wild a Year Early and I Couldn't Be Happier
If you’re sick of playing against Odd Paladin, Even Paladin, Odd Rogue, Aggro Odd Mage, Odd Warrior or any of the other Odd/Even variants in Hearthstone right now, then do I have good news for you. The cards that create those archetypes – Baku the Mooneater and Genn Greymane – are being sent to Wild (via the Hall of Fame) a FULL YEAR EARLY.
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Yes, the next Standard rotation won’t just see three sets leave the format (Journey to Un’Goro, Knights of the Frozen Throne and Kobolds & Catacombs), it will also see two of the most contentious cards from The Witchwood - the first Hearthstone expansion of 2018 – leave.
It's been a wild ride, and now it's going to be a Wild ride.
The decision to simply remove Baku and Genn from the Standard format – as opposed to looking at changes to how the cards (or, more likely, the ensuing hero powers) work – is unprecedented. Up until this point the cards that have been sent to the Hall of Fame have typically been cards from the Classic set that were overly prevalent/powerful (Sylvanas, Rag), offered too much utility (Azure Drake), limited design space/were unhealthy for the game (Conceal) or were preventing a class from evolving significantly (Ice Block). This is the first time we’ve seen new cards leave Standard early, and it’s a reflection of how inelegant other solutions are, as well as what an outsized role they’ve played in the game over the last (almost) 12 months.
To be honest, I’ve mostly enjoyed having Baku and Genn in Hearthstone for the past year. They’ve helped usher in an era of greater deck variety – and more possibilities – than ever before, but the idea of another full year was certainly a draining prospect. Odd Paladin in particular just isn’t much fun to play against, and is still a top tier deck even after the nerf to Level Up! Hitting the hero power button to spawn two 1/1s just represents so much value over the course of a game, not to mention so much capacity to build and rebuild wide boards. The strategy revolves so much around the hero power that it makes for uninteresting gameplay, and just won’t change enough with the new year, even with so many cards leaving.
It’s also worth pointing out that a lot of the infinite resource generation that’s currently in the game – i.e. Deathstalker Rexxar and Frost Lich Jaina – is leaving with rotation, and is a design direction that the team has consciously moved away from, so it only makes sense for Baku and Genn to go at the same time. A fresh start, as it were.
This decision is also another example of the more proactive stance Team 5 is taking right now. It wasn’t that long ago that nerfs would only happen midway through a set’s life, but changes were made within a couple of weeks of Rastakhan’s Rumble coming out in December 2018, then a second round of nerfs hit in early February. The most invested players love seeing change as it shakes up the meta game and gives them a chance to figure out the new meta first.
Baku and Genn aren’t the only cards that are going to the Hall of Fame when the next set releases. All the Odd/Even support cards are going too – Gloom Stag, Black Cat, Glitter Moth and Murkspark Eel.
Collateral damage.
More significantly, three absolutely iconic Classic cards are also making the transition – Doomguard, Naturalize and Divine Favor. Speaking to Lead Game Designer Mike Donais about it, he explained that the latter two cards are leaving primarily because they’re at odds with the identities they want Druid and Paladin to have. Naturalize, for instance, represents single target hard removal, and that’s not something Druid should have access to. Doomguard falls into a different camp, being very core to the Warlock class identity, but the burst from the card has been strong for a long time, so it's one of those evergreen Classic cards they want to move away from. Plus, he pointed out that they can always maintain things like the discard element of a Warlock’s identity through new cards.
Bittersweet additions.
It all adds up to a game that is going to change radically come rotation. We’re losing some of the most powerful and meta warping cards ever printed – Quests, Death Knights, Legendary Weapons – and resetting the game to a lower baseline power level after three quite restrained expansions in 2018.
In fact, the most powerful cards printed in 2018 were Genn and Baku, so with them unexpectedly leaving, this really is going to be a proper reset. What the first set of the year will bring, only time will tell, but a lot of the cards from last year that didn’t get a chance to shine because they were overshadowed, are likely to come into their own all of a sudden.
I don't have a huge beef with Genn and Baku, but I do think it's great to see Team 5 take this approach and really lay the groundwork for an invigorated Hearthstone in 2019.
Cam Shea is Editor in Chief for IGN's Australian content team and tries to spend as much time as possible in Japan. He's on Twitter.