i remember watching Fraser from VGA playing hearthstone when it first came out and him using that tame methodology. for real one of the first times i was exposed to how card value functioned and how to evaluate it.
Chillwind Yeti was very good when the game first came out, and before minion effects took over the game. The stats for mana was good, and there was almost no removal in the early days that could target it. When 90% of removal requires a minion with attack of 3 or less or 5 or more, a 4 attack minion was much more useful than it appears at first. It took like 3 years for Chillwind Yeti to no longer be the stat comparison for 4 or 5 drop minions.
Considering conversations such as "sippers or slurpers" spawning out of nowhere while talking about cards, I can only imagine what they'd come up with no topic at all.
Adding to the yeti argumets: it was a real pain in the arse to remove it from the board, because of the existing removals of that time, it's out of range from priests sw:p (destroy a minion with an attack of 3 or less) and sw:d(same but 5 or more), it survived druid's swipe (4 dmg), it survived mage's flamestrike (4dmg), and lot's other removals or cards that were used in the early game like warrior's fierywar axe.
There is also important reason: Druid needed a threat that he could innovate to, but 3-drops and 4 drops were quite bad. There were only senjin, dark iron dwarf and yeti, but senjin is only 3/5 and did needed a minion (that Druid hadn’t) to be good. As soon as shredder appeared yeti was gone
For sure! CGB even called out that maybe it just hit a break point for removal at that time, and he was kinda right on that point, whether or not that was the main reason it was played.
Most efficient damage was in the 2-4 range with 3 being the sweet spot putting Yeti into the perfect position to survive low cost and AoE removal while being cheap enough to play midgame and too cheap to feel good using hard removal on, add to that that the 4 attack was reasonably threatening and we have the reason why it was the best vanilla minion in the game. It hit all the sweet spots and ramp was just an even faster way to get it out.
Please Rarran, if you're going to bring up Millhouse or Loatheb to a Magic player you need to remember to mention the difference between what a spell is in Hearthstone and MTG. You could hear CGB getting it mixed up when he brought up the fact it'd be a bust if they had a yeti in hand.
I've never played Hearthstone (or watched any content of the game itself; just videos like this one) and I understood the card, so... I think it should've been implied by now? (Also, my gut instinct was that it would only be playable when the opponent is empty-handed... and even then they'd be drawing a card they could play.)
I think CGB has done enough of these collab videos with people that I think he should probably remember that spell meaning "any card" is basically just an MTG thing
I think it wasn't mentioned because ultimately it didn't' change the analysis, it's still terrible because of the reasons he mentioned, just doesnt' apply to creatures
I am going to assume you mean the Manastorm battlecry. I think you are right, but even still, he saw an actual spell that WAS in this meta which would heal 8 life and draw 3. That's a terrible trade for a 4/4.
@hipunpun He arrived at the right conclusion anyways, it's just that he thought Milhouse was really really really bad instead of just really really bad
Yeah I was like if this let minions be free, the only way it would be playable is cheating it out so no battlecry happens because every deck has minions and spells, even against like zoolock millhouse would be a blowout when they went hey drop my whole hand into doomguard if minions were free off Millhouse. Amusingly that would be on flavor since Millhouse in the lore summoned a demon or demons IIRC.
I love these Collabs. Would be really cool to see you two try a TCG that neither of you haven’t played before and then face off eachother in that game as noobs.
@@theod4660 it's a cool concept imo to have asymmetric gameplay in tcg, I don't think it was ever tried before. It's also impossible to balance tho, not that it matters since the game is half dead
I just find it so funny that this was at all playable. (On the other hand, if Black Lotus was Standard legal, Black Lotus into Sheoldred would be extremely strong...)
@@therealax6I mean even without sheoldred I don't think there's a singe point in mtg history where black lotus wouldn't be broken in standard. Literally 0 mana: gain 3 mana of any one color
@@GCWeber Oh, yeah, for sure. I can think of many decks that would just stomp with that kind of mana. (Any mono red burn deck, for instance.) I was specifically thinking in terms of getting a four-mana midrange piece out on turn 1.
I think the context Covert missed with the pint-sized is that minions can attack minions. So "mana dorks" aren't as good in hearthstone because they don't need removal necessarily, they just need either removal or a minion, and at 2 health basically any play the opponent does on turn 1 or 2 kills pint-sized before you get to use it.
Getting killed by a 2/3 that survives is a death sentence that can easily snowball the whole game. It's crazy to think about how the whole game balances on a knife's edge like that.
I vaguely remember pint-sized summoner being tried back then but it was a long time ago so I couldn't remember if it was good. I was theorycrafting hey maybe this into yeti was good, but I can't recall. When he said it was bad I was like ahhh shucks, but yeah 2/2 super easy to kill in classic when so many hero powers deal 1 and then there are minions that could just attack it and trade.
@@SuperGamerNinja74 That should be obvious to an MTG player. MTG has a lot of effects like "the first spell you cast each turn costs {1} less", and those effects (almost) never apply the turn you get them because they are themselves the first spell.
Yeah. There have been 'mana dorks' in HS that have been incredibly good. Mech Warper being the obvious example, but what kills Pint Size isn't its stats it's the fact it has First minion so it has to live a turn.
I think CGB forgets that in HS you can attack minions directly. This is why pint sized summoner was bad. If HS had magic combat it would have been great in classic
100%. In magic a card like that is fantastic. In HS it was awful. This was 100% his inexperience with HS combat. Similar to a lot of Rarrans mistakes based on magic combat.
I feel like what really makes rarrans videos like this work over other similar one is how much chemistry him and mesa falcon guy have. They bounce off eachother so incredibly well, and in addition they really give off the vibes of two friends showing eachother cards.
Hearing Covert talk about Chillwind Yeti and classes not being filled out and needing to look through the set to find something to fill out your deck made me so nostalgic for old Hearthstone. I think that was my favorite part about building a deck back then. Like, “my class has 14 really good cards for this deck, but I need 16 more… how should this go…” I know net decking was always a thing even back then, but I still had fun just trying to come up with my own deck ideas.
The nice part about early Hearthstone was, you only really started to run into a majority of netdecks at around rank 10 or higher and could have fun against homebrew decks up to that point. Last time I tried playing Hearthstone I made a new account and I shit you not, 4 out of my 5 first ranked matches at rank 40 were against people (probably bots) running the same aggro netdeck.
Early Hearthstone really hit that sweet spot because powerful synergy strategies like Handlock existed but also yeah you had to fill slots with garbage sometimes. Probably a lot of the reason decks found room for shenanigans like Blademaster + Circle was because they had those extra slots to play around with.
I haven't played hearthstone in ages so I don't know if it reflects modern hearthstone.. but what really made the game dull for me is when they started printing too many cards where it feels like they're hardcoded to work with specific other cards. Like, if you're building a "mech deck" it basically builds itself - there's almost no room for creativity because there are "the cards that are obviously overstatted, but require you to run X other cards" and "the cards you have to use if you want to use those overstatted cards". There's basically no way to build it differently - you had to run pretty much that exact deck or you have to scrap the entire deck to make something that has nothing in common with it.. and that kind of deckbuilding is really boring to me. Early hearthstone it felt like the synergy between cards was a bit more organic rather than hardcoded, in the sense that cards were used together because their effects actually compliment each other, not because the card is literally unuseable without the other card (for instance, something like argent squire + shattered sun cleric - the text on those cards don't have any direct relation to each other, but they just naturally synergize with each other because argent squire means you consistently have something in play to be buffed and also divine shield just works well with stat buffs in general), and when the game is designed that way there's a lot more room for experimentation.
i love the way you formatted this one, the card order felt very intentional and i like that you progressively let covert learn more and more context about the game while you told him more about what classes were played and how the meta worked. really love how this blends the gameshow aspect with storytelling so elegantly
@@penitente3337 Unlike a lot of mech-themed cards, Alarmobot was from classic. Completely unplayable, but people made meme decks with it in Beta. I specifically remember Totalbiscuit playing a deck like that.
Another reason why Yeti was good is because it pretty much shutdown the Priest removal as it avoided both Shadow Word: Pain and Shadow Word: Death. Moreover two 4 attack minions traded into an 8 health minion and realistically you were rarely facing anything tougher than that. A 4/5 was at the time a really good sweet-spot where it tended to trade 2 for 1.
Yeah the 4 power problem plagued priest for years with stuff like yeti, piloted shredder, and of course gadgetzan auctioneer in miracle rogue completely ruined them. The only answer they got to 4 power stuff was lightbomb, but then it rotated and it was all sad again.
Ah, pint sized summoner, I remember that during the second or third month that I started playing I was thinking “I need a card that I can play in all decks” and that was the one I crafted and added. It was indeed unplayable lol.
CGB remembers the era of Ernham Djinn, a 4 mana 4/5 with a drawback, being the dominant creature in Magic, I’m surprised the yeti confuses him so much.
Magic on average seems to have minions with lower raw stats for the cost, and then there is the HS reality of minions being able to bump into each other at will. Still, seeing the really old Magic cards it is weird that the idea of early expansions running things that are way below the current power level wasn't at the forefront of his mind.
@@fillosof66689 For most of Magic's history anyway. Nowadays non-green cards are moving towards vanilla hearthstone's standard of mana cost +1 attack or health while green speedran right past it and gets 4/4 for 3 by default now.
These time capsule looks at cards, similar to the videos you've done with CGB looking at early MTG sets are really fun. It's always fascinating to see people evaluating the game at different levels of power and meta. I really enjoyed this one.
It was also important that Yeti was 4 attack because it made him immune to priest removal and 5 health because a lot of removal by damage did 4 or less. There were a lot of other good 4 drops, like Sen'jin Shieldmasta and Violet Teacher which both were really good, but none of them had the stickiness of a Yeti.
Funny thing about Brawl is that there actually IS a Magic card that has the exact same effect: Last One Standing 1BR (3 mana) Choose a creature at random, then destroy the rest. It's from a set called Battlebond, which was a draft set focused around 2v2 matches.
@covertgoblue Other reasons for yeti being good: Priest (one of the best control classes at the time) had 2 main removals: 'Shadow word: Pain' and 'Shadow word: Death' One destroys a minion with 3 or less attack. The other destroys a minion with 5 or more attack. Yeti's 4 attack was immune from both. Also: Mage had a spell called 'Flamestrike', 7 mana: Deal 4 damage to all enemy minions. The yeti survives this too. It was just a well statted spot that avoided a lot of popular types of removal.
23:20 I would generally agree with Rarran's assessment of Kel'Thuzad, but there is one other consideration. In the same expansion, Shaman got access to the Reincarnate spell, a 2 mana spell that reads "destroy a minion then [summon a new copy of it]". So what this meant in practice was that for 10 Mana, you got 2 6/8 minions that read "resummon the other one if it's dead", and any other minions that die would get double-resummoned. Was it good? Not necessarily: like he said, it's a highly win-more card. If your opponent had minions on the board, they might be able to go face and kill you before infinitely summoning Kelthuzads would matter much. But it was an extremely powerful combo that saw a lot of play in the ladder, specifically because there weren't a ton of removal options that could deal with them.
This was really fun to watch! I love how it's not just a quiz, but a whole story telling experience. I kinda wish it had more of a payoff at the end, but it was still great. Thanks!
There WERE actually ways to cheat out a minion without its battlecry in classic. It's pretty understandable that it didn't come to mind, as it was complete garbage, but Alarm-o-bot was a 3 mana 0/3 that swapped with a random minion in your hand at the start of the turn. There was also Ancestor's Call (4 mana shaman spell that summoned a random minion from each player's hand), which was also pretty unplayable (and in either case, you'd definitely want something better than Millhouse anyway)
To CGB, Yeti is akin to Juzam Djinn. Hard to ignore, hard to remove, and if you played it turn 2 via a ritual it could simply take over the game or at least set you up for an easy early game. Not every deck played it, but I think every deck had to consider it on the other side of the board. It passed every test it needed to in order to be a tournament winning midgame creature.
The reason Chillwind Yeti was playable (Innervate) was basically the same reason that Juzam Djinn was playable (Dark Ritual) which makes his reaction even funnier to me.
Silence wasn't just to get rid of strong enemy deathrattles. You also had certain cheap minions with horrible effects which suddenly became super mana efficient if you slapped a Silence on top of them. It's basically a different flavor of the Injured Blademaster combo.
These videos are so fun! I don’t play this game anymore, I lost the love for it. But watching someone try to evaluate cards I actually played with is so much fun, all the old memes are coming back
Chillwind Yeti was a literal actual Erhnam Djinn. Don't see why @covertgoblue was so flabberghasted by a big thick beatstick being so good early on in a CCG's competitive state.
This was a fun game to play along with as someone who played from beta to a little after the release of Demon Hunter Also, Pint-Sized Summoner was such a good trap for an MTG player, it would be a strong creature in a game where you can opt out of blocking 👏
That effect is _playable_ in MTG, but not _strong_ - not even from the very beginning. MTG has always had that effect at 1 mana in green (see cards like Llanowar Elves or Birds of Paradise, both of which were in the very first set).
@@therealax6the key difference between those and an effect like the summoner is that, while a mana dork puts you ahead, it only does so by one each turn. With something like this, the value ceiling is way higher (see: that one cost reducing goblin in Storm lists, medallions in commander games).
Rarran missed the other reason Yeti was so powerful, and that's because Priest existed. Priest in classic hearthstone had no way to remove 4 attack minions until they hit Mind Control, and MC was 8 mana. The premium removals in classic priest were Shadow Word Pain (3 or less attack) and Shadow Word Death (5 or more attack).The best a Tempo Priest could do was run Auchenai Soulpriest to turn Circle of Healing into a 4 damage bomb for the board, which wouldn't kill the yeti and would allow the Yeti to trade into the soulpriest for a 2 for 1. Mage had to spend one of their two valuable Fireballs (ALSO 4 mana), or Polymorphs (again, 4 mana) to remove a vanilla card that ultimately acted as a 2 for 1 beatstick. Removal wasn't good in Classic, and the Yeti was sticky. It's why Boulderfist Ogre was used too. Ogre would dodge Big Game Hunter (6/7, hunter killed 7 or more attack) and its solid statline allowed it to trade 2 for 1 in most situations if you played it on curve. If Yeti was a 4/4, it wouldn't have been nearly as bad. But its statline demanded that it traded 1 for 1 on valuable and very limited removal or higher cost cards, OR it'd trade 2 for 1 with anything at its cost or lower.
The thing they didn't mention with Silence was that it could be used to remove Taunt - the single way to control who your enemies could attack on their turn.
this is definitely one of my favorite series (next to the expansion series) as i've been a long time MTG fan/player, as well as, played classic hearthstone for the first 3 years or so. it's always a treat to look back at these classic/old expansions in hindsight.
I love to look back at the old cards before Hearthstone went crazy and every class gained infinite card draw and instant win conditions. It's nice to see how simple the game was and yet how small decisions could influence the game. Rarran you did it with some of the cards, but I would like it if you explained the context a bit more regarding stuff like Fire Elemental or Yeti and why they were actually very good cards for a long time. Even if they wouldn't see any play nowadays.
The reason the Magic players keep being surprised at random low-health dorks not being playable is because in Magic, your creatures can't be attacked directly so small shitters with good utility are goated. Their owners control whether they fight or not. In hearthstone, they can be attacked. I think this information needs to be more readily prevalent.
By now this is one of my favourite series of videos. A bit unfair to have someone evaluate cards without context when even card reviews with more context can be so much off the mark, but that doesn't matter. The reasoning and logic behind the card evaluation is pretty sound even if it ends up being wrong for a specific meta and I feel like I pretty much made the same 'mistakes' coming from magic into the hearthstone beta: pint-sized summoner looks so much better than it actually is.
I totally forgot about Innervate and Yeti lol. I thought you're going to explain that Yeti was basically unkillable because there is no early removal that can kill it at the time of classic.
I'm not particularly proud but I still have Druid as my most played class by far from the times I played Force of Nature + Savage Roar. I love your videos together especially as someone who comes from MtG.
I find it crazy that legit only ONE pro player discovered the power of Force of Nature + Savage Roar combo in early Hearthstone, and even they didn't realize quite how powerful it was... Druid was the first class I played and I immediately saw those cards and recognized the synergy. Not saying I'm smart, I'm just saying it seems incredibly obvious... At the time I assumed they were literally designed to work together as a powerful late-game nuke.
You can't start with Chillwind Yeti before discussing the Druid class and the infamous turn 1/2(with and without the coin) Innervate into Chillwind Yeti meta. It's just mean to start like that for someone who literally knows nothing about Hearthstone's history. It's like the most vanilla card possible but alongside Innervate became absolutely insane.
At 39:45 Rarran says you can't forego the battlecry of Millhouse - which is untrue. Alarm-o-bot would allow you to do that. The 3 mana 0/3 that swapped itself with a random minion in your hand at the start of your turn. Though admittedly you'd probably try to build that with bigger minions than a 4/4.
What's cool about this is not only the different perspectives from players of other card games. But also explanation on how and why the cards were good or not good despite how "good" they may look at first. I think it would be cool if this was done for expansions as well. Inviting players from other card games to review new cards being released, and then a follow up on right/wrong they were.
31:50 the equivalent of this in hearthstone is playing a minion and then Brawl, praying you win the 50/50 haha. Its kind of wild how thats a legitimate thing people did and still do all the time.
I miss old Hearthstone where skill usually took the win. Now it's play a card that generates a card that generate other cards and eventually you generate yourself a win.
one really good thing about chillwind yeti was the fact that he had 4 attack. Which made it really hard for priests to deal with him as there weren't that many cards back then and almost all of them had shadow word pain and shadow word death
the real humour about chillwind yeti is that now every time i see it, i remember reynad going "and now chillwind yeti is going to make sweet, passionate love with his face for like 10 turns :)"
Lmfaoooo you just reminded me of me brawling, enemy kelthuzad lives and I just fucking lose. Also remembered losing to a Millhouse manastorm on 2. I forget what class it was but I remember at the time it only had a control list playable. I tossed away my spells because didn’t feel I needed to out tempo them. They played millhouse, I had no spells and I just fucking lost lmfaoooo
This is very fun. I never played HS but played Magic so I could see where Convert Blue was coming from. I think this format would be very fun with Gwent as well
The thing I always liked about Yeti is that you can play it vs priest and sit there smugly knowing that you have too much attack for Shadow Word: Pain and not enough attack for Shadow Word: Death.
You really should've clarified that minions are not spells. Because that is a pretty major point. He literally said, a yeti to drop for free, which means he definitely thought that minions were spells. What's extra funny is that after this video, I went to an even older one, where he in fact did also rate Millhouse Manastorm. And also back then thought it was all cards. And apparently, although it's not on video, he did clarify that. lol I'm surprised he didn't manage to pronounce treant. That's a staple monster in fantasy settings.
Rarran, you should definitely include Naturalize to the list, because it's the best removal Druids ever had and it did bot see any sort of play until like 2016 or so.
In addition to Druid ramp the 4/5 Yeti statline was just kinda perfect. All the other minions were generally 3/3s or 4/4s until later in the game so Yeti had a really good chance to trade 2-for-1. It also survived nearly all of the most popular removal in the game (Flamestrike, Lightning Bolt, both Shadow Words, etc).
To add to the Yeti discussion, often in limited MTG 5-toughness can be a key statline for creatures that rely on their power + toughness, especially if there are a bevy of 2-power creatures in the format because they can't double-block it and/or if the efficient red removal is limited to 4 damage and lower.
The Paladin class - my class - was built around one legendary card: Tirion Fordring. He had divine shield, taunt and deathrattle. Silence completely neuters all of that.
Man i really miss the handlock meta. Was fun playing and playing against. Dropping jaraxxus and hoping they couldn't out tempo you to the finish was so exciting.
I love how you immediately got somebody who wasn't around HS at all to compare everything to yeti. Brillaint, just like he was there.
"In the Chillwind Yeti Meta this is pretty good"
He isn't aware of how true this was.
i remember watching Fraser from VGA playing hearthstone when it first came out and him using that tame methodology.
for real one of the first times i was exposed to how card value functioned and how to evaluate it.
Chillwind Yeti was very good when the game first came out, and before minion effects took over the game. The stats for mana was good, and there was almost no removal in the early days that could target it. When 90% of removal requires a minion with attack of 3 or less or 5 or more, a 4 attack minion was much more useful than it appears at first.
It took like 3 years for Chillwind Yeti to no longer be the stat comparison for 4 or 5 drop minions.
Rarran and mesa falcon guy at it again.
Kriparian and falcon guy*
Ran Ranch and Mesa Falcon guy*
Mesa Falcon versus Yeti Herald
I love mesa falcon guy
Qaq@@loknaz97
At this point, im pretty sure you could add Covert and rarran to paint drying and it would be entertaining.
Considering conversations such as "sippers or slurpers" spawning out of nowhere while talking about cards, I can only imagine what they'd come up with no topic at all.
Hearthstone Player Rates Matte And Gloss Paints
Adding to the yeti argumets: it was a real pain in the arse to remove it from the board, because of the existing removals of that time, it's out of range from priests sw:p (destroy a minion with an attack of 3 or less) and sw:d(same but 5 or more), it survived druid's swipe (4 dmg), it survived mage's flamestrike (4dmg), and lot's other removals or cards that were used in the early game like warrior's fierywar axe.
it's basically unkillable
There is also important reason:
Druid needed a threat that he could innovate to, but 3-drops and 4 drops were quite bad. There were only senjin, dark iron dwarf and yeti, but senjin is only 3/5 and did needed a minion (that Druid hadn’t) to be good. As soon as shredder appeared yeti was gone
For sure! CGB even called out that maybe it just hit a break point for removal at that time, and he was kinda right on that point, whether or not that was the main reason it was played.
hydrogen bomb: 4 mana 4/5
coughing baby: 4 mana 5/4
Most efficient damage was in the 2-4 range with 3 being the sweet spot putting Yeti into the perfect position to survive low cost and AoE removal while being cheap enough to play midgame and too cheap to feel good using hard removal on, add to that that the 4 attack was reasonably threatening and we have the reason why it was the best vanilla minion in the game. It hit all the sweet spots and ramp was just an even faster way to get it out.
Please Rarran, if you're going to bring up Millhouse or Loatheb to a Magic player you need to remember to mention the difference between what a spell is in Hearthstone and MTG. You could hear CGB getting it mixed up when he brought up the fact it'd be a bust if they had a yeti in hand.
yeah that was driving me nuts
I've never played Hearthstone (or watched any content of the game itself; just videos like this one) and I understood the card, so... I think it should've been implied by now?
(Also, my gut instinct was that it would only be playable when the opponent is empty-handed... and even then they'd be drawing a card they could play.)
I think CGB has done enough of these collab videos with people that I think he should probably remember that spell meaning "any card" is basically just an MTG thing
@@TheMansterTruck but he doesn't, so let's tell him lol
I think it wasn't mentioned because ultimately it didn't' change the analysis, it's still terrible because of the reasons he mentioned, just doesnt' apply to creatures
Also it seems like CGB reverted back to "creatures are spells' when he was evaluating millhouse, don't forget to remind him when he does that.
Any Magic player who doesn’t play HS would do that, unfortunnely ahhaha
We read spells and we think “any nonland card”
@@DudaWeizenmann I have roughly equal time in both games, so it's a natural distinction for me. It's part of why I love these collabs so much.
Luckily Millhouse is mega garbo game-throwing tier whether he affects minions or not.
@@TheZedman5000 Yeah, you don't really need to be super keyed in to know that giving your opponent free anything is an insanely bad drawback.
Covert definitely forgot that spells were not minions
True, rerran needs to remind him of that next time
Yeah, I think that's a big part of his Millhouse analysis
I am going to assume you mean the Manastorm battlecry. I think you are right, but even still, he saw an actual spell that WAS in this meta which would heal 8 life and draw 3. That's a terrible trade for a 4/4.
@hipunpun He arrived at the right conclusion anyways, it's just that he thought Milhouse was really really really bad instead of just really really bad
Yeah I was like if this let minions be free, the only way it would be playable is cheating it out so no battlecry happens because every deck has minions and spells, even against like zoolock millhouse would be a blowout when they went hey drop my whole hand into doomguard if minions were free off Millhouse. Amusingly that would be on flavor since Millhouse in the lore summoned a demon or demons IIRC.
I love these Collabs. Would be really cool to see you two try a TCG that neither of you haven’t played before and then face off eachother in that game as noobs.
That sounds like a ton of fun!
I suggest: Plants vs zombies: heroes
Eternal would also be a good shout. Since its kind of like a cross between HS and Magic but more simplified to make it specific to an online CCG.
@@lucjanl1262PvZH suffer from one of them needing to play zombie if the other play plants
@@theod4660 it's a cool concept imo to have asymmetric gameplay in tcg, I don't think it was ever tried before. It's also impossible to balance tho, not that it matters since the game is half dead
I just realised that Innervate into Chillwind Yeti is exactly Black Lotus into Juzam Djinn. Great collab as always, love you guys!
I just find it so funny that this was at all playable. (On the other hand, if Black Lotus was Standard legal, Black Lotus into Sheoldred would be extremely strong...)
It's a little closer to dark ritual into Juzam Djinn, but very much the same idea!
@@therealax6I mean even without sheoldred I don't think there's a singe point in mtg history where black lotus wouldn't be broken in standard. Literally 0 mana: gain 3 mana of any one color
@@GCWeber Oh, yeah, for sure. I can think of many decks that would just stomp with that kind of mana. (Any mono red burn deck, for instance.) I was specifically thinking in terms of getting a four-mana midrange piece out on turn 1.
@@therealax6 ah yeah valid lol
I think the context Covert missed with the pint-sized is that minions can attack minions. So "mana dorks" aren't as good in hearthstone because they don't need removal necessarily, they just need either removal or a minion, and at 2 health basically any play the opponent does on turn 1 or 2 kills pint-sized before you get to use it.
Getting killed by a 2/3 that survives is a death sentence that can easily snowball the whole game. It's crazy to think about how the whole game balances on a knife's edge like that.
I vaguely remember pint-sized summoner being tried back then but it was a long time ago so I couldn't remember if it was good. I was theorycrafting hey maybe this into yeti was good, but I can't recall. When he said it was bad I was like ahhh shucks, but yeah 2/2 super easy to kill in classic when so many hero powers deal 1 and then there are minions that could just attack it and trade.
Also, rarran didn't clarify that pint size summoner counts itself as the first minion, so it has to live a turn
@@SuperGamerNinja74 That should be obvious to an MTG player. MTG has a lot of effects like "the first spell you cast each turn costs {1} less", and those effects (almost) never apply the turn you get them because they are themselves the first spell.
Yeah. There have been 'mana dorks' in HS that have been incredibly good. Mech Warper being the obvious example, but what kills Pint Size isn't its stats it's the fact it has First minion so it has to live a turn.
I think CGB forgets that in HS you can attack minions directly. This is why pint sized summoner was bad. If HS had magic combat it would have been great in classic
100%. In magic a card like that is fantastic. In HS it was awful. This was 100% his inexperience with HS combat. Similar to a lot of Rarrans mistakes based on magic combat.
I feel like what really makes rarrans videos like this work over other similar one is how much chemistry him and mesa falcon guy have. They bounce off eachother so incredibly well, and in addition they really give off the vibes of two friends showing eachother cards.
"it would take the perfect mix of bad removal"
impressively accurate
Hearing Covert talk about Chillwind Yeti and classes not being filled out and needing to look through the set to find something to fill out your deck made me so nostalgic for old Hearthstone.
I think that was my favorite part about building a deck back then. Like, “my class has 14 really good cards for this deck, but I need 16 more… how should this go…”
I know net decking was always a thing even back then, but I still had fun just trying to come up with my own deck ideas.
The nice part about early Hearthstone was, you only really started to run into a majority of netdecks at around rank 10 or higher and could have fun against homebrew decks up to that point. Last time I tried playing Hearthstone I made a new account and I shit you not, 4 out of my 5 first ranked matches at rank 40 were against people (probably bots) running the same aggro netdeck.
Early Hearthstone really hit that sweet spot because powerful synergy strategies like Handlock existed but also yeah you had to fill slots with garbage sometimes. Probably a lot of the reason decks found room for shenanigans like Blademaster + Circle was because they had those extra slots to play around with.
Nowadays, as a f2p, I feel like "I need to have 30 premium cards, how should this go..." 😢
I haven't played hearthstone in ages so I don't know if it reflects modern hearthstone.. but what really made the game dull for me is when they started printing too many cards where it feels like they're hardcoded to work with specific other cards. Like, if you're building a "mech deck" it basically builds itself - there's almost no room for creativity because there are "the cards that are obviously overstatted, but require you to run X other cards" and "the cards you have to use if you want to use those overstatted cards". There's basically no way to build it differently - you had to run pretty much that exact deck or you have to scrap the entire deck to make something that has nothing in common with it.. and that kind of deckbuilding is really boring to me.
Early hearthstone it felt like the synergy between cards was a bit more organic rather than hardcoded, in the sense that cards were used together because their effects actually compliment each other, not because the card is literally unuseable without the other card (for instance, something like argent squire + shattered sun cleric - the text on those cards don't have any direct relation to each other, but they just naturally synergize with each other because argent squire means you consistently have something in play to be buffed and also divine shield just works well with stat buffs in general), and when the game is designed that way there's a lot more room for experimentation.
even Naxx really juiced the options though
So, Zoo warlock terminology basically came from a similiar agressive MTG deck called Zoo, just a fun fact for the crossover . 👀
4/5 actually was kind of a meaningful statline in terms of dodging removal. Survives Shadow Word Pain, Shadow Word Death, Eviscerate, and Flamestrike.
"Now everything gets compared to the yeti" He's done it, he's thinking like a hearthstone player now.
Like a wise Rarran once said: "Yeti, the natural predator of priest." Good times ;)
i love the way you formatted this one, the card order felt very intentional and i like that you progressively let covert learn more and more context about the game while you told him more about what classes were played and how the meta worked. really love how this blends the gameshow aspect with storytelling so elegantly
“There was no way to put Millhouse directly onto the battlefield in classic”
Alarm-o-bot erasure
Isn't Alarm-o-bot from Gnomes vs Goblins? This was up to Naxxramas.
@@penitente3337 Unlike a lot of mech-themed cards, Alarmobot was from classic. Completely unplayable, but people made meme decks with it in Beta. I specifically remember Totalbiscuit playing a deck like that.
It’s funny you mention Alarm-o-Bot into Millhouse because I lost to that exact combo once back in the day.
@@EntakarA RIP TB
Another reason why Yeti was good is because it pretty much shutdown the Priest removal as it avoided both Shadow Word: Pain and Shadow Word: Death. Moreover two 4 attack minions traded into an 8 health minion and realistically you were rarely facing anything tougher than that. A 4/5 was at the time a really good sweet-spot where it tended to trade 2 for 1.
Yeah the 4 power problem plagued priest for years with stuff like yeti, piloted shredder, and of course gadgetzan auctioneer in miracle rogue completely ruined them. The only answer they got to 4 power stuff was lightbomb, but then it rotated and it was all sad again.
@@dark_rit Wasn't there Entomb when Lightbomb rotated?
Entomb was playable but it was a bad rate to take down a yeti
Ah, pint sized summoner, I remember that during the second or third month that I started playing I was thinking “I need a card that I can play in all decks” and that was the one I crafted and added.
It was indeed unplayable lol.
Yep it was no knife juggler. Knife juggler was so broken back then, it would just ruin people out of zoolock and company.
CGB remembers the era of Ernham Djinn, a 4 mana 4/5 with a drawback, being the dominant creature in Magic, I’m surprised the yeti confuses him so much.
Magic on average seems to have minions with lower raw stats for the cost, and then there is the HS reality of minions being able to bump into each other at will.
Still, seeing the really old Magic cards it is weird that the idea of early expansions running things that are way below the current power level wasn't at the forefront of his mind.
@@fillosof66689 For most of Magic's history anyway. Nowadays non-green cards are moving towards vanilla hearthstone's standard of mana cost +1 attack or health while green speedran right past it and gets 4/4 for 3 by default now.
These time capsule looks at cards, similar to the videos you've done with CGB looking at early MTG sets are really fun. It's always fascinating to see people evaluating the game at different levels of power and meta. I really enjoyed this one.
It was also important that Yeti was 4 attack because it made him immune to priest removal and 5 health because a lot of removal by damage did 4 or less. There were a lot of other good 4 drops, like Sen'jin Shieldmasta and Violet Teacher which both were really good, but none of them had the stickiness of a Yeti.
Funny thing about Brawl is that there actually IS a Magic card that has the exact same effect:
Last One Standing 1BR (3 mana)
Choose a creature at random, then destroy the rest.
It's from a set called Battlebond, which was a draft set focused around 2v2 matches.
When you're doing this and a card says spells you need to say to CGB or any Magic player "Remember, spell means sorcery"
@covertgoblue Other reasons for yeti being good: Priest (one of the best control classes at the time) had 2 main removals: 'Shadow word: Pain' and 'Shadow word: Death' One destroys a minion with 3 or less attack. The other destroys a minion with 5 or more attack. Yeti's 4 attack was immune from both.
Also: Mage had a spell called 'Flamestrike', 7 mana: Deal 4 damage to all enemy minions. The yeti survives this too.
It was just a well statted spot that avoided a lot of popular types of removal.
Mesa falcon guy and Ram Ranch, my favorite collab !
4:50 I'm filled with colossal dread wondering what mesa falcon guy is talking about here.
6/6 with trample ? and for only 6 mana?
@@eroslampitella2629 Sounds like it has good stats for the cost.
Now that's a powerful creature that will surely threaten your opponent's life total
This series has become my favourite to watch recently :D Please keep it up with the guessing videos Rarran ^^ . Also love this collab with CGB
23:20 I would generally agree with Rarran's assessment of Kel'Thuzad, but there is one other consideration. In the same expansion, Shaman got access to the Reincarnate spell, a 2 mana spell that reads "destroy a minion then [summon a new copy of it]". So what this meant in practice was that for 10 Mana, you got 2 6/8 minions that read "resummon the other one if it's dead", and any other minions that die would get double-resummoned.
Was it good? Not necessarily: like he said, it's a highly win-more card. If your opponent had minions on the board, they might be able to go face and kill you before infinitely summoning Kelthuzads would matter much. But it was an extremely powerful combo that saw a lot of play in the ladder, specifically because there weren't a ton of removal options that could deal with them.
Rarran my sunshine, my reason to breathe. Thank you for the new upload.
Really cool to see CGB re-assess his analysis as more cards were revealed
The olde dreadsteed knife juggler combo would blow his mind.
39:40 "In classic Hearthstone, there is no way of doing that." Alarm-o-Bot is over here crying, Rarran.
I thought alarmoboy was from GvG
@@Astroweaselsyou thought wrong
You didn’t told cgb that pint-size summoner was broken and got nerfed, it used to reduce the cost of the minion by 2 before the nerf.
This was really fun to watch! I love how it's not just a quiz, but a whole story telling experience. I kinda wish it had more of a payoff at the end, but it was still great. Thanks!
There WERE actually ways to cheat out a minion without its battlecry in classic. It's pretty understandable that it didn't come to mind, as it was complete garbage, but Alarm-o-bot was a 3 mana 0/3 that swapped with a random minion in your hand at the start of the turn. There was also Ancestor's Call (4 mana shaman spell that summoned a random minion from each player's hand), which was also pretty unplayable (and in either case, you'd definitely want something better than Millhouse anyway)
42:46
I nominate this for the most spot-on analysis of all time if you decide to make that video.
Covert looks at Doomguard and just builds Zoo Warlock on the spot
Simply saying the words "Coin, Innervate, Shredder" will runs shivers down people's spines even today
To CGB, Yeti is akin to Juzam Djinn.
Hard to ignore, hard to remove, and if you played it turn 2 via a ritual it could simply take over the game or at least set you up for an easy early game. Not every deck played it, but I think every deck had to consider it on the other side of the board. It passed every test it needed to in order to be a tournament winning midgame creature.
I was operating on a heart transplant, but then I saw a Rarran and Covertgoblue collab, had to drop everything and watch it not gonna lie
The reason Chillwind Yeti was playable (Innervate) was basically the same reason that Juzam Djinn was playable (Dark Ritual) which makes his reaction even funnier to me.
Silence wasn't just to get rid of strong enemy deathrattles. You also had certain cheap minions with horrible effects which suddenly became super mana efficient if you slapped a Silence on top of them. It's basically a different flavor of the Injured Blademaster combo.
These videos are so fun! I don’t play this game anymore, I lost the love for it. But watching someone try to evaluate cards I actually played with is so much fun, all the old memes are coming back
Chillwind Yeti was a literal actual Erhnam Djinn. Don't see why @covertgoblue was so flabberghasted by a big thick beatstick being so good early on in a CCG's competitive state.
You guys are an absurdly good duo. So glad you keep both continue to work together!
He definitely didn't realise for Pint-Sized Summoner that you can attack creatures in hearthstone.
This was a fun game to play along with as someone who played from beta to a little after the release of Demon Hunter
Also, Pint-Sized Summoner was such a good trap for an MTG player, it would be a strong creature in a game where you can opt out of blocking 👏
That effect is _playable_ in MTG, but not _strong_ - not even from the very beginning. MTG has always had that effect at 1 mana in green (see cards like Llanowar Elves or Birds of Paradise, both of which were in the very first set).
@@therealax6the key difference between those and an effect like the summoner is that, while a mana dork puts you ahead, it only does so by one each turn. With something like this, the value ceiling is way higher (see: that one cost reducing goblin in Storm lists, medallions in commander games).
I've never played Hearthstone, probably never will, and I LOVED this! The report between you 2 is AMAZING! PLEASE keep going w/ the colabs!
Yeti lived in stat sweet spot. Attack was 4 which Priest hated and its 5 health kept it alive from most removal.
Rarran missed the other reason Yeti was so powerful, and that's because Priest existed. Priest in classic hearthstone had no way to remove 4 attack minions until they hit Mind Control, and MC was 8 mana. The premium removals in classic priest were Shadow Word Pain (3 or less attack) and Shadow Word Death (5 or more attack).The best a Tempo Priest could do was run Auchenai Soulpriest to turn Circle of Healing into a 4 damage bomb for the board, which wouldn't kill the yeti and would allow the Yeti to trade into the soulpriest for a 2 for 1.
Mage had to spend one of their two valuable Fireballs (ALSO 4 mana), or Polymorphs (again, 4 mana) to remove a vanilla card that ultimately acted as a 2 for 1 beatstick. Removal wasn't good in Classic, and the Yeti was sticky. It's why Boulderfist Ogre was used too. Ogre would dodge Big Game Hunter (6/7, hunter killed 7 or more attack) and its solid statline allowed it to trade 2 for 1 in most situations if you played it on curve.
If Yeti was a 4/4, it wouldn't have been nearly as bad. But its statline demanded that it traded 1 for 1 on valuable and very limited removal or higher cost cards, OR it'd trade 2 for 1 with anything at its cost or lower.
Starting with Yeti was a brilliant move, you absolutely broke his brain for the entire video lmao.
The thing they didn't mention with Silence was that it could be used to remove Taunt - the single way to control who your enemies could attack on their turn.
this is definitely one of my favorite series (next to the expansion series) as i've been a long time MTG fan/player, as well as, played classic hearthstone for the first 3 years or so. it's always a treat to look back at these classic/old expansions in hindsight.
Can't believe you did not so Boulderfist Ogre. Great stats for the cost. They also stopped printing the charge keyword for a really good reason.
Until then didn'tn't print the charge word
Talking about why yeti is good and not showing how it addressed removal at the time feels criminal
I love to look back at the old cards before Hearthstone went crazy and every class gained infinite card draw and instant win conditions. It's nice to see how simple the game was and yet how small decisions could influence the game. Rarran you did it with some of the cards, but I would like it if you explained the context a bit more regarding stuff like Fire Elemental or Yeti and why they were actually very good cards for a long time. Even if they wouldn't see any play nowadays.
Lay on Hands was originally a unique Paladin healing ability from Dungeons & Dragons, starting around 1st or 2nd Edition.
The reason the Magic players keep being surprised at random low-health dorks not being playable is because in Magic, your creatures can't be attacked directly so small shitters with good utility are goated. Their owners control whether they fight or not. In hearthstone, they can be attacked. I think this information needs to be more readily prevalent.
Loved seeing the guest become progressively mored based and Chillwind Yeti pilled.
This was one of the greatest collabs and videos Ive watched in recent times. Funny, entertaining, & informative. Nice.
By now this is one of my favourite series of videos. A bit unfair to have someone evaluate cards without context when even card reviews with more context can be so much off the mark, but that doesn't matter. The reasoning and logic behind the card evaluation is pretty sound even if it ends up being wrong for a specific meta and I feel like I pretty much made the same 'mistakes' coming from magic into the hearthstone beta: pint-sized summoner looks so much better than it actually is.
You guys have such good chemistry together, I hope you keep making collabs for a long time.
despite getting alot of these wrong cgb does a great job making hypothesises. really likeable guy :) especially liked the doomguard analysis
I've seen this from the other POV, with Rattan guessing about MTG cards. It's cool to see the MTG guy guess about Hearthstone cards.
I totally forgot about Innervate and Yeti lol. I thought you're going to explain that Yeti was basically unkillable because there is no early removal that can kill it at the time of classic.
These and the Yugioh videos are some of the best content you've ever made, Rarran. More please.
Love these videos! Thank you so much Rarran :) Super impressive how Covert unpacked everything!
Nice collaboration with my favourite Hearthstone Battlegrounds content creator CGB
I'm not particularly proud but I still have Druid as my most played class by far from the times I played Force of Nature + Savage Roar.
I love your videos together especially as someone who comes from MtG.
I find it crazy that legit only ONE pro player discovered the power of Force of Nature + Savage Roar combo in early Hearthstone, and even they didn't realize quite how powerful it was... Druid was the first class I played and I immediately saw those cards and recognized the synergy. Not saying I'm smart, I'm just saying it seems incredibly obvious... At the time I assumed they were literally designed to work together as a powerful late-game nuke.
You can't start with Chillwind Yeti before discussing the Druid class and the infamous turn 1/2(with and without the coin) Innervate into Chillwind Yeti meta. It's just mean to start like that for someone who literally knows nothing about Hearthstone's history. It's like the most vanilla card possible but alongside Innervate became absolutely insane.
oh man, what a little window in to nostalgia, god I used to love HS back then, it was so unique and fresh, I miss it dearly
At 39:45 Rarran says you can't forego the battlecry of Millhouse - which is untrue. Alarm-o-bot would allow you to do that. The 3 mana 0/3 that swapped itself with a random minion in your hand at the start of your turn. Though admittedly you'd probably try to build that with bigger minions than a 4/4.
What's cool about this is not only the different perspectives from players of other card games.
But also explanation on how and why the cards were good or not good despite how "good" they may look at first.
I think it would be cool if this was done for expansions as well. Inviting players from other card games to review new cards being released, and then a follow up on right/wrong they were.
31:50 the equivalent of this in hearthstone is playing a minion and then Brawl, praying you win the 50/50 haha. Its kind of wild how thats a legitimate thing people did and still do all the time.
Dirty Rat into Brawl is a favorite of mine lmao
I miss old Hearthstone where skill usually took the win. Now it's play a card that generates a card that generate other cards and eventually you generate yourself a win.
one really good thing about chillwind yeti was the fact that he had 4 attack. Which made it really hard for priests to deal with him as there weren't that many cards back then and almost all of them had shadow word pain and shadow word death
the real humour about chillwind yeti is that now every time i see it, i remember reynad going "and now chillwind yeti is going to make sweet, passionate love with his face for like 10 turns :)"
34:28 is one of the most hilarious deductions
If you look deep enough into the yeti, the yeti looks back
"Card draw in Classic was at an abysmal rate"
You gotta show Auctioneer and Buzzard one of these days
Love the format. It's cool to look back at those cards through the eyes of mtg player.
Lmfaoooo you just reminded me of me brawling, enemy kelthuzad lives and I just fucking lose.
Also remembered losing to a Millhouse manastorm on 2. I forget what class it was but I remember at the time it only had a control list playable. I tossed away my spells because didn’t feel I needed to out tempo them. They played millhouse, I had no spells and I just fucking lost lmfaoooo
This is very fun. I never played HS but played Magic so I could see where Convert Blue was coming from. I think this format would be very fun with Gwent as well
The thing I always liked about Yeti is that you can play it vs priest and sit there smugly knowing that you have too much attack for Shadow Word: Pain and not enough attack for Shadow Word: Death.
omg his reaction to millhouse was SO GOOD! i love these videos with CGB hahaha
Once again best duo on RUclips
You really should've clarified that minions are not spells. Because that is a pretty major point.
He literally said, a yeti to drop for free, which means he definitely thought that minions were spells.
What's extra funny is that after this video, I went to an even older one, where he in fact did also rate Millhouse Manastorm. And also back then thought it was all cards.
And apparently, although it's not on video, he did clarify that. lol
I'm surprised he didn't manage to pronounce treant. That's a staple monster in fantasy settings.
Rarran, you should definitely include Naturalize to the list, because it's the best removal Druids ever had and it did bot see any sort of play until like 2016 or so.
In addition to Druid ramp the 4/5 Yeti statline was just kinda perfect. All the other minions were generally 3/3s or 4/4s until later in the game so Yeti had a really good chance to trade 2-for-1. It also survived nearly all of the most popular removal in the game (Flamestrike, Lightning Bolt, both Shadow Words, etc).
Hey, isn't this the guy from Star Wars? I definitely saw him flying the Mesa Falcon.
To add to the Yeti discussion, often in limited MTG 5-toughness can be a key statline for creatures that rely on their power + toughness, especially if there are a bevy of 2-power creatures in the format because they can't double-block it and/or if the efficient red removal is limited to 4 damage and lower.
I love these videos so much, both of you are incredible content creators. Thanks for making these!
2:10 a lot of HS cards didn't need flavor text. For fans of WoW, just seeing a Chillwind Yeti and going 'oh yeah I remember those' was good enough
My mans just casually describes zoo warlock by just looking at Doomguard lol CGB is crazy
Zoo is actually a magic archetype ( it’s where the name zoo comes from) so it makes sense.
As an MTG player, Silence looks to me as a great way to not have to deal with a deathrattle.
The Paladin class - my class - was built around one legendary card: Tirion Fordring.
He had divine shield, taunt and deathrattle.
Silence completely neuters all of that.
Man i really miss the handlock meta. Was fun playing and playing against. Dropping jaraxxus and hoping they couldn't out tempo you to the finish was so exciting.