What Hearthstone Used to Look Like

in every hearthstone expansion we see a brand new metagame because of the introduction of new cards that help shape the format into what it is but have you ever wondered what the first metagame looked like compared to the amount of cards we have now in the standard format the classic and basic era were much different because there was a set amount of cards in the game with no expansions to look forward to this means once a deck was found and was clearly very good that deck was going to be played until the curse of knax rama's adventure was introduced into the game or if the developers decided to change a card which did not happen often because there was a different philosophy back then which was basically they would rather have people counter the top deck rather than nerfing a card because they wanted to see if the game could balance itself and i think during basic and classic this is a pretty good philosophy because the game was designed to counter each other rather than the insurgents of new expansions adding new dynamics to the game but that also means the seven decks i'm going to talk about in this video were the top dogs for an extremely long period of time and some of them you might actually remember because they're still around till this day starting off with everyone's favorite deck is aggro hunter also known as face hunter also known as smork hunter this deck is popular because the amount of damage that hunter could do from hand as well as with their amazing hero power to deal two damage a turn to the enemy facehunter aims to defeat the opponent in the early game before you know obviously they can build some kind of defense and they would use this by using of course their hero power charge minions and a lot of bursts like from kill command and of course getting huffer from animal companion face hunter was also a little bit more mid-range than it seems to be now where nowadays face hunter is super aggressive hunters still have to fight for board in order for them to actually get lethal the next deck we're talking about is zoo warlock which is arguably the best deck we saw in classic hearthstone and the idea was to use a lot of cheap minions and buffs to basically overwhelm your opponents and making sure that you trade as efficiently as possible the one benefit of zoo warlock is that not only was it good for fighting for board it also had the life tap which means you could just keep on drawing and have consistent threats but most importantly it would help you find your actual win conditions which was doom guard and soul fire as you could probably imagine the early game was extremely critical for a deck like zoo warlock because you needed to have a board in order for you to actually fight for board if you were falling behind this deck virtually did nothing but that didn't happen too often because zoo warlock would run a ton of cheap minions zoo warlock also had the idea of running power overwhelming with cards like leroy jenkins to have even more bursts from hand this deck really had everything except for board removal speaking of board removal control warrior was a huge archetype back in classic due to the fact that warrior had a lot of ways to remove boards control warrior back in classic would basically just get a ton of armor and basically clear the opponent's board in the early in mid game until well they can't really kill them and the warrior could start playing a bunch of threats since warrior had a ton of armor game through cards like shield block and armorsmith and also had a win condition through grommash and cruel taskmaster there was a lot of ways for warrior to find a win condition against almost every single matchup warrior also had brawl which was the key card in most board-centric match-ups a one-man execute which was ginormous for tempo and of course shield slam which is still around till this day sometimes control warrior wouldn't even run a combo and they just win the game by fatiguing because they were the only class in the game that could overheal at the time due to their hero power gaining armor control warrior was a key archetype back then especially against the next deck we're gonna talk about freeze mage now freeze mage is a really interesting deck to look back on because combo decks have really came a long way since the early days of classic but freeze mage was one of the original combo deck the main idea of freeze mage is to use freeze effects obviously like frost nova and blizzard to delay the game enough in order for you to find your combo pieces which was often alex draza in combination with two fireballs and a frostbolt for 15 damage also there was archmage and tinnitus which would help against these slower matchups like control warrior to generate as many fireballs as possible with the help of sorcerer's apprentice one of the best combinations that you could do is frost nova with doomsayer which would freeze the board on the enemy side and then they would clear the board the following term and your opponent couldn't really be proactive because they're going to be playing right into a doomsayer drawing in classic was also a lot different as well there wasn't cards like cram session you have to use arcade intellect and acolyte of pain with often loot hoarder and blood mage thalnos just to cycle even more one of the reasons why this deck was so strong was because of ice block and the idea that there was no secret removal so you could just play this on turn three basically not have to worry about dying for a full turn when it was proc now this deck was obviously one of the hardest decks to play in classic but i think the harder deck here in the more convoluted combo deck was miracle rogue now it's funny when i look at miracle rogue because miracle rogue probably resembles what hearthstone was gonna be like later on because america rogue was a combo deck that had the ability to control the board and do an insane amount of damage from hand as well as create big boys out of nowhere the main idea of this deck was to use cards like backstab and preparations to make cards like questing adventure or edwin bigger and then you would conceal them in order for you to find even more damage the following turn to hopefully kill your opponent the other way of winning the game was to use a gadgets and auctioneer to draw through your deck as much as possible to find leroy with shadowstep and cold blood to kill your opponent that way there was also eviscerates you could use your dagger with deadly poisons this deck was extremely good and even if you put a really big taunt in the way the card sap would kind of just completely nullify that as your taunt would go bye-bye this deck was one of the best decks in the game and if you could play it at a master level you would win quite often another deck that was extremely popular in classic was hand lock this was the more control oriented version of warlock now this deck was called heylock for a very specific reason and that was because you wanted to fill your hand size as much as possible using life tabs in order for you to play cards like mountain giant as early as possible there was also twilight drake's and damaging yourself helped you get out the molten giants as well and that was basically the whole deck play big giants taunt them up and go for kills the other thing this deck would do is play leroy jenkins with a faceless manipulator and a power overwhelming to do 20 damage from hand which was absolutely disgusting sometimes in a extreme value-oriented metagame this deck would run cards like lord jaraxxus in order for them to have a better time against control warrior they would also use a lot of removal if needed against aggro decks now the one deck i have not mentioned already is mid-range druid which is one of the late up-and-comers when it came down to the classic era because people did not realize that you could use force in nature with savage war for a sudden 14 damage for hand for nine mana now this seems like it's not that good but in a game like classic where it takes a long time to just build up a combo potential for a two card combo this was really good and especially because druid had ramp with wild growth and nourish this effect was extremely scary and because druid also had a lot of great minions to choose from like h and allure or druid of the claw their ability to innovate out these minions was really really powerful and of course it would help them win games much easier also swipe was an extremely good card in almost every single matchup whether you needed more burn or you need to clear a big minion and everyone remembers getting swiped with azure drake that just felt so disgusting but that was the main decks that was used back in basic and classic now of course i'm missing some of the other decks like mid-range shaman which i'm sure is fine and if you have any other decks that you remember let me know with a comment down below but it's interesting looking back on the metagame of basic and classic because of course there was a lot of different archetypes like aggro control mid-range combo but everything felt like you had a really good chance in order to win a game and everything had a counter for it so everything stayed in check hearthstone classic was a really well done video game thank you so much for watching this video if you guys want to support me more i have a patreon now i would really appreciate if you can go check it out i hope you have a great day and thanks for watching

Channel: Rarran

Views: 90,682

Keywords: hearthstone, hearthstone gameplay, hs, hs gameplay, best hearthstone deck, hearthstone new, hs new, hearthstone expansion, hearthstone cards, Hearthstone cards you forgot existed, hs cards you forgot existed, hearthstone alterac valley, hearthstone alterac valley decks, hearthstone alterac valley best decks, hearthstone best legendary to craft, hearthstone best cards, hearthstone battlegrounds, Hearthstone Power Creep Has Gone Too Far, hearthstone power creep, zeddy hearthstone

Id: AfHTBW9E8uw

Length: 8min 19sec (499 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 06 2022