by JR Cook - 9 years ago     show comments

While a lot of people scream for nerfs when cards feel overpowered, I don’t see many people calling for buffs to long forgotten cards. In my mind, every non-joke card should at least be a decent fit in a viable deck. Also, the meta would grow a lot more interesting if a wider array of cards suddenly started seeing play. So without further ado… Welcome back to Mending Mondays, a weekly feature where I, Dannie “IAmDiR23” Ray will take a look at some of the worst cards in the Hearthstone and evaluate why they are deemed to be horrible, and what could be done to fix them.

Last week our Identity Enigma puzzle asked you to think green, and here at Mending Mondays we feel like we also need to step up to the plate. Can we Recycle this Druid card into something useful? Let’s take a look!

Why is it so bad?

To completely understand Recycle, we need to know what it does for us. Recycle takes a target enemy minion away from the battlefield. Much like the Rogue’s Sap, you take it away without destroying it, which means it won’t proc that annoying Deathrattle effect. Just like Sap, the opponent has a second chance to play his minion. But while the victim of a Sap can be immediately played back into the battlefield, a minion that has been targeted with Recycle needs to be drawn again.

It is this slight difference between the two abilities worth the whooping four extra mana cost? If we try to pinpoint down the difference, we find out that it amounts to basically a card worth of card advantage.  I mean if Recycle allowed your opponent to draw a card after he lost his minion, then it would be pretty similar to Sap. Is denying your opponent a card worth 4 mana? Players don’t  seem to think so, as Recycle doesn’t really see play. Meanwhile, Sap remains a Rogue staple.

Look at the worth of instantly drawing a card, compare Wisp with Novice Engineer, Ogre Magi with Azure Drake, Chillwind Yeti and Dancing Swords, or Gnomish Inventor and Spider Tank. Usually adding 1 point worth of card draw is worth about 1.5 mana. This pretty much means that at 3 mana, Recycle would be considered a SICK card, at 4 mana it would likely still be a good card. But the sad reality is that it costs 6.

Lets look at it from other angle, compare it with other forms of non-kill removal such as Hex and Polymorph. You could look at Recycle as a Polymorph that doesn’t leave a 1/1 behind, but instead puts the card back into the deck. Again, we are looking at 4 mana as our benchmark.

But this takes us to our next point, a card that only serves as removal is incredibly reactive, and its only as good as its target. One of the best things about Sap is that it might allow you to get a huge tempo advantage. Imagine you cast Sap on something like a Savannah Highmane, you just spent 2 mana to undo the effect of a 6-mana card. This tempo gain is completely lost as you increase the mana cost of the card, and even if you get an extra effect in the form of card advantage, the number of desirable targets for your spell diminish and your card becomes less versatile.

But what happens when you face aggressive decks that top out at 4-drops? Your 6-mana recycle is going to feel like a wasted card. You can compare it to the Warlock’s Siphon Soul, but that only goes in decks that are packing a lot of AOE removal in form of Hellfire and Shadowflame. Plus, the 3 gained life from Siphon Soul is a positive effect, while the fact that you won’t trigger Deathrattles merely offsets that you’re shuffling the minion into your opponent’s deck instead of permanently getting rid of it.

Summary of Badness:

• Costs WAY too much mana.
• Weak against aggro.

Finding this Card’s Heart

An obvious buff to this card would be to turn it into Sap or Execute. But that’s not what we are interested on, we want to stay true to the heart of the card and thus we need ask ourselves what is what really defines this card.

Just looking at the name of the card and its effect, we know that the shuffling effect fits perfectly. We want to try and keep that, so lets see what we can do about its cost and some possible additional effects. Could we interpret recycle as something other than shuffling the minion back into a deck? Perhaps, and it’s time to find out.

Possible Improvements

The obvious buff is to cut the mana cost. A 4-mana removal single target would certainly be a more appealing tool for Druid, but is this the only thing we can do? When you recycle, you really want to make something old into something new. Perhaps cutting the cost further and allowing your opponent to draw a card instead would make it a strong tempo option.  Or maybe drawing the card yourself would allow this to remain competitive at higher mana costs. What about shuffling the minion into your own deck instead? They do say that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

The Results

This is the Vanilla version, you could consider it a stronger Polymorph or maybe just a version with a different drawback. Druid is lacking in single target removal and this might be what Druid needs to build itself differently. Then again, the meta might just be too aggro for 4-mana removal cards to really shine in it.

This is the “we are committed to keep Recycle as a 6-mana card”. This plays in the recycling theme as you not only do away with your opponent’s old minion, but get to draw something of it. More importantly, the minion is shuffled into YOUR deck. This means that you get card advantage, but don’t really dig deeper into your deck. A card like this could find its way into a Druid list that controls the match all the way into fatigue. You’ll notice that compared to the original version of Recycle, you are both drawing a card and getting to shuffle the minion into your deck instead. That’s how bad the original Recycle feels.

Mind Control meets new Bane of Doom. The put a (random) minion from your deck into the battlefield, mimics the effect on Deathlord. This time the Recycling comes in the form of destroying an existing minion to make a completely new one. Destroy the minion rather than shuffle it, mainly because of text box economy. Nailing down a cost for this card proved very difficult, and I’m not quite sure if the 8-mana cost is anywhere near correct. The effect seen here is similar to the Priest’s Mind Control, where your opponent loses a minion and you gain one. But unlike the Priest 10-drop, you cannot choose which minion you get. While this might seem like a negative, it could also end up being a plus; imagine that your opponent has only mid-sized threats on the board, then maybe you’d rather gamble for one of your own threats. The big problem with this version of the card is that it doesn’t really fit with a lot of what’s out there for Druid. Both Ancients of Lore and War would lose on their “Choose One” effects, and so would Cenarius, Druid of the Claw, and Keeper of the Grove. Dr. Boom’s Battlecry is also completely negated. A card like this would have to see play in a different type of Control Druid that relies on different minions, and while that might seem like a good thing to spice the meta, my first reaction is that this version of Recycle is nowhere near good enough to make that type of deck competitive.

Oh well, at least it has positive synergy with Hungry Dragon…

I really like the concept on this last version. In fact, I’m surprised that with all the randomness in GvG this wasn’t a real thing. But still the cost is what’s bugging me, what would be an appropriate cost for it? I’d love to get your input so if are inclined to share your ideas, please leave a comment below.

Do you think some of the versions above are still too weak? Maybe absurdly overpowered? Messing with cards without the ability to test them is actually pretty challenging, but I try to do my best.

Be sure to check out past editions of Mending Mondays, and if you have any suggestions, be sure to leave them on the comments or hit me up on Twitter @DannieRay23.