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.

The Lowly Squire is a card that really lives up to his name, the card itself isn’t good enough to find its way into competitive decks, and probably wouldn’t be good enough even if the inspire synergies were a big deal. But before we start to break the card down, we need to make something clear, this card being bad isn’t necessarily bad design. Yeah, it might contradict that opening statement of me wanting all cards to be at least viable somewhere, but I’m not exactly the target audience for Hearthstone. There is a place for “bad” cards in the game, mainly to teach new players why certain things don’t work, and to guide them towards what makes a card good.

But since this is Mending Mondays after all, we are going to try to make the Squire a bit less lowly, and a bit more competitive, join me as we break down this less-than-inspiring minion and we turn him into a threat to be reckoned with.

Why is it so bad?

To put it simple, the Lowly Squire is too damn slow. Using your Hero Power often is something that is likely going to put you behind on board, and a simple +1 attack is not going to do enough to stop that from happening.

Even in the late game when you might have the mana to spare, this just isn’t threatening enough to make a difference.

Lets take a look at a few scenarios involving the lowly squire, lets say you are a mage and play him on turn 1. Your opponent responds with his own 1-mana card that happens to have 1 health. You can now ping his dude down, and you have a 2/2 on board that he has to answer with his 2 mana turn (3 mana if he decides to use the coin). This is the best case scenario, but what happens next? Well, lets say he plays a 2/3. You have the option of pinging again to make your guy 3 attack and trading, but that would just concede the board initiative to your opponent, you could play your three drop, but then the 2/3 gets a free trade against the lowly squire. Your best option is probably use some sort of small minion removal on his 2 drop, so you can keep your guy alive, but the 2/2 on board isn’t going to be that big of an advantage as the turns pass.

It’s even worse if you are playing second, try to run a few scenarios in your head. What happens if you play the squire against some common low drops, play the sequences out in your mind and you’ll eventually understand why this guy doesn’t see play. He is just too fragile to be spending that much mana to make it grow so little in attack.

The reason a card like Mana Wyrm is so powerful, is the fact that you can keep the board in check as you make it grow. If you look at it, the Old Undertaker used a similar concept, you were loading your board up as he grew, so you didn’t have to “waste” mana and cards just to get the attack bonus. In fact, lets look at the Undertaker nerf, almost a full year back, JR wrote an article where he suggested the Undertaker to be nerfed to almost exactly to what he is today, only that he had pegged the nerfed taker at 1/3 base stats instead.

I also voiced my opinion in the subject, I ran the numbers, compared Undertaker with other cards, and pointed out that JR’s version would still be a super strong card. Blizzard seemed to agree, and we got to our current version. The nerfed Undertaker doesn’t really see play, and you can see how even when he’s just a shade of his former glory, he is still vastly superior than the live version of the Lowly Squire.

Summary of Badness:

• Doesn’t grow enough
• Too costly to make it grow
• Too fragile to be investing resources on him

Finding this Card’s Heart

This is easy, this is a very basic way to introduce the inspire mechanic. A super simple card, a 1-drop that gets attack when you inspire. All we need to change are a few stat points here and there, maybe the amount of attack and/or the duration of its effect.

Possible Improvements

One line would be to make him more resilient, the 1/3 body that JR suggested for the Undertaker nerf would fit the squire rather nicely. Allowing him to survive more than one hit, would actually allow you to get value out of using your Hero Power early and would open up synergies with cards like the Frost Giant. Another option would be to make him burstier, since he’s probably dying anyway, you could make his inspire ability to give him more attack, but only for the turn.  How about just turning his inspire ability up to eleven and straight up boost the damage increase? These are all possible options, lets see what we can make out of them.

The Results

One of the biggest problems with lowly squire is that it doesn’t really fit the role of a one drop, I mean Aggro Decks use 1-drops to get an early advantage, and Aggro decks don’t really want to be using that Hero Power early. They need to get more minions on the board to add pressure, and quickly dispose of their rivals. Control Decks want 1-drops that can stop the early aggression, they want minions that they can get value out of, maybe try and get a 2 for 1 or something like that. Think of Zombie Chow, or even the BRM 1-drop Priest Dragon. This version of the lowly squire serves as a decent control option, allowing you to take out those pesky 2/1 minions for free, and then combining with a Hero Power to deal possibly 3 damage would make for a hell of a start.

Ok guys, Don’t get Undertaker PTSD, I know this looks exactly like the old Undertaker, but as we talked earlier, using Hero Power requires just way too much mana, and even if you can make this grow very big early, you are using your entire turn on it, you aren’t playing things like Loot Hoarder, Haunted Creeper, Harvest Golem, and other pesky Deathrattle minions that are enough of a nuisance on their own.

if you are going to use a lot of mana to buff up the Lowly Squire, you better get a high return out of him. I don’t think this version lines up too well against the early game, but it is a card that can at least warrant your opponent’s attention during the later stages of the game. Especially if you are finding ways to get real value out of your Hero Power. Compare this guy with Micro Machine, I’m pretty confident that the power level of this version is pretty much in line.

Just play a few different scenarios in your head with these new versions and let me know how it goes, which one is your favorite? Which one would you like to use on which deck? Use the comment section below to share your thoughts on the Lowly Squire and maybe even share your idea of a buff!