Let me start by saying that the disenchanting argument brings out some serious polarity in the Hearthstone community. Reddit's /r/hearthstone is known for having a major "just don't do it" stance when it comes to disenchanting cards. Their position is pretty solid in an environment where everyone has money to consistently throw at Hearthstone. That's not reality, though.
For those of you out there who play Hearthstone on a budget, or even as a completely free-to-play player, disenchanting cards is a viable and reasonable solution, especially if you're only interested in the Standard format, which includes cards from the Basic and Classic sets, as well as the last two years of released Adventures and expansions. That means anything before then is practically useless to you.
Nevertheless, some of those cards could be useful in Tavern Brawl and in other areas. I don't think it's a reasonable approach to just disenchant all Wild cards, even as a Standard-only player, but you should definitely open your collection and look over the least useful cards on the highest end of dust cost.
That's what I'm going to do for you in this article. After Journey to Un'Goro's release, we entered the Year of the Mammoth and a new Standard set rotation. If you only play Standard, here are nine cards you can safely dust. Please be advised that this list is relative only to the card sets that are leaving Standard in the year of the Mammoth: Blackrock Mountain, The Grand Tournament, and The League of Explorers.
The Skeleton Knight
Dust for disenchanting: 400 (1600 for Golden)
This card is unspeakably bad. I'll just be blunt about it. The stat distribution is horrible. Paying 6 mana for a 7/4 is not what you want to be doing, but the real kicker is that the card does nothing when played and the card's text is useless at times. The Hearthstone meta is way too fast for this, especially in Wild. Cards need to have an effect when they're played if you're sacrificing a body like this.
Joust is looked at as the overall worst card ability in the game, and this card revolves around it entirely. No one's going to care even if you get "infinite value" by playing this thing three times in a game because you're paying 6 mana for a card that can die to a 3-mana spell. Just dust this card. You won't regret it.
Recruiter
Dust for disenchanting: 100 (400 for Golden)
Take a quick look at Recruiter. It's a pretty vanilla 5-Drop. Would you play this card at 4 mana? No. You wouldn't. And that's for two reasons:
- As an Inspire card, it's effectively costing 6 mana
- The card quality is so far below today's common 4-Drops, like Kor'kron Elite, Houndmaster, Gentle Megasaur, etc, that's it's kind of useless.
That brings up the question of, "But will it be of usable quality in the future?" Can you really picture a meta so slow and sluggish that you're able to drop this and Hero Power on turn 7, putting you in a position where playing a 2/2 is even considerable on the next turn? Why do you need a 2/2 after turn 7? Recruiter is just a slow card that's not worth its weight in dust.
Cursed Blade
Dust for disenchanting: 20 (100 for Golden)
I'll admit, when Cursed Blade first came out I looked at this card and thought that it may have potential in a control-style Warrior deck. Maybe I should have considered that those types of decks are already so weak against aggressive decks that there's no way that they can risk taking double the damage early.
The issue with Cursed Blade is that all of the aggressive 1-Drops have 1 health and all of the aggressive 2-Drops either have 3 attack or 3 health. You're either not going to kill it in one swing or you're taking 6 damage to the face if you do.
It's a win/win for the opponent. Board control means nothing for aggressive decks that deal direct damage or have Charge minions. Hunters are just going to press their Hero Power to whittle you down if you slam into their minions with this equipped.
Cursed Blade is just a disaster and its existence in the Standard was nothing more than a hindrance to cards like Malkorok. It's one of those "meme cards," and you should be thrilled to disenchant it.
Arch-Thief Rafaam
Dust for disenchanting: 400 (1600 for Golden)
Arch-Thief Rafaam is a much worse version of cards like Kazakus and Kalimos, Primal Lord. It was never a part of the Standard meta when it was available, and that leads me to believe that it'll never be anything in Wild either.
The card is a slow body as its cost and does nothing on the turn it's played. The card it generates is a 10-mana spell that is easily countered by much cheaper cards. Paying 10 mana to flood the board with 3/3 Mummy Zombies is countered by a 4-mana Hellfire. Paying 10 mana to +10/10 a minion is countered by all sorts of hard removal. Both pieces of this card are unplayable.
Sea Reaver
Dust for disenchanting: 100 (400 for Golden)
If no one even considered playing this card back when multiple iterations of Patron Warrior were the strongest decks in the game, there's no time and place for Sea Reaver now. It's an even worse Flame Leviathan, and no one played that card either.
Seriously, Boulderfist Ogre is better. This card is too random and the card text requires a very specific deck archetype for it to be beneficial. It's time to let this one go.
Poisoned Blade
Dust for disenchanting: 100 (400 for Golden)
I'm not sure what Blizzard was thinking when they tossed this card into The Grand Tournament, but I hope it's not a thought process that they experience ever again. The main thing that sets this card apart from Cursed Blade is that you can actually kill yourself with Cursed Blade, whereas playing this card will just prompt your opponent to kill you.
Equipping this weapon on turn 6 means, with a Hero Power, you get a 2/3 weapon for 6 mana. Sounds great, right? But wait, you can turn it into a 3/3 for a total of 8 mana if you Hero Power again on turn 8!
This card requires such an impossible combination of Inspire effects and Hero Power discounts that by the time you figure it out and finally get it to work once, we'll be in the next Hearthstone year. This is one of the worst weapons in the game.
Reliquary Seeker
Dust for disenchanting: 20 (100 for Golden)
Reliquary Seeker is the first card on this list that may have you scratching your head a little, because anyone who played against a Zoolock deck a few months ago probably saw it.
Reliquary Seeker is a special kind of card. It's a class-specific 1-Drop that can't afford to be played on turn 1. The likelihood of you drawing this card in any specific game is higher than usual, because as a Warlock you have access to that Hero Power. With Reliquary Seeker, you don't want to see this card in any situation other than when you can use it.
This is one of the best cards to get off of Dark Peddler, yet one of the worst cards to have in your deck. Its design is very interesting and it's great that it exists in the card pool. But that's only because it's obtainable through the Discover mechanic. Even with the potential of being a 1-mana 5/5, you can't afford to have this in your deck and be a barrier between you and other cards that are naturally good.
Dark Bargain
Dust for disenchanting: 100 (400 for Golden)
This card's a bit of a mess. The discard mechanic is as powerful right now as its ever been, but it's tuned specifically toward a fast and aggressive style of deck. Dark Bargain is neither fast nor aggressive.
If you're playing a discard-reliant variant of Zoolock, you're playing stuff like Doomguard, Darkshire Librarian, Silverware Golem, etc. The purpose of that style of deck is to get ahead in tempo and negate your discards by drawing more cards or putting "discarded" cards onto the board. Dark Bargain assumes you're already behind in tempo, so it's a complete contradiction to the archetype.
This card doesn't have any place in Wild, it's gone from Standard, but it's a pretty reasonable Arena card!
Ancient Shade
Dust for disenchanting: 20 (100 for Golden)
Ancient Shade is a Salty Dog without a tribe for 1 less mana and a 7-blowback drawback. That's not good at all. If this card never saw any play in any of the aggressive Standard decks, then where will it?
A 5/4 at 4 mana isn't even playable unless it has some impressive card text. A 6/4 might be. A 7/4 that deals 7 damage to you? Just disenchant it. This isn't going to be something you look back on, trust me.
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If you're hurting for dust or playing on a budget, these are my top cards to get rid of coming into Year of the Mammoth. Remember, it's you that controls your Hearthstone experience! If you won't use a card and want to disenchant it, do it and enjoy the game.
Published: Apr 29, 2017 01:39 pm