Like any collectible card game, Hearthstone has continued to add new cards and new expansions for well over a decade now, introducing the world to a variety of wild and wacky combos that continue to shake up the meta every single time. But despite the flashy new additions to the game, many of the strongest cards of all time can be found all the way back at the start, proving too powerful to remain in standard play.
Through nerfs and rotations into wild, these cards have been cast aside and pushed into the chaos outside of standard. However, that doesn't mean that their power isn't still felt. Pre-nerf, many of these cards broke the game for months. Even after being taken down a peg, they still proved to have some serious power and competitive viability.
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8 Death Knight Heroes
Transforming Every Class Into An Unstoppable Force
- Effect: Battlecry - Gain Stealth until your next turn + 5 Armor
- Hero Power: During your turn, add a 'Shadow Reflection' to your hand. (Each time you play a card, transform this into a copy of it.)
Knights of the Frozen Throne was the first expansion to add hero cards to the game, transformations that came with a powerful effect as well as an upgraded hero power for the player to show off. All the cards had their use case, and it was hard to find a deck that didn't slot one into it. It was hard to compete with the incredible swing turns from cards like Bloodreaver Gul'dan or Shadowreaper Anduin.
Later hero cards were added that proved to up the level in a significant way. However, the original Death Knights proved to be some of the most polarizing cards to pull out, regardless of whether the player was in a winning position or attempting a comeback.
7 Innervate
Curving Like Nothing Else
- Effect: Gain 1 Mana Crystal this turn only.
Innervate is a card that has existed since the start of the game. This simple Druid spell originally granted players two additional mana on their turn for no cost at all. When combined with the coin, a second Innervate, or just a super valuable card, things could get out of control quickly.
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Druids have always been known for their ramping potential with staple cards like Wild Growth, but nothing could come close to the early game potential of Innervate. Even basic turns that just put a big minion on the board could drastically alter the outcome of the game, with zero cost to the player.
6 Leeroy Jenkins
The Classic Finisher
- Effect: Charge. Battlecry - Summon two 1/1 Whelps for your opponent.
Leeroy is as loud as he is annoying. Charging onto the board right when everything looks safe, his existence in the game has led to countless undeserved lethals across every class in the game. In his prime, he was most commonly seen in aggro Hunter or Rogue decks.
Among all the cards in the game, he is arguably the most iconic, screaming out his signature voiceline and cementing a piece of internet pop culture in the gaming world forever. He has since been nerfed and moved to wild, but players can never feel comfortable with the potential of Leeroy waiting around the corner.
5 Shudderwock
Immense Power In A Single Turn
- Effect: Battlecry - Repeat all other Battlecries from cards you played this game (targets chosen randomly).
Shudderwock is tied with Yogg-Saron as one of the most absurd cards to ever grace the game. Shamans have always had chaotic playstyles, what with overload that the class has. But Shudderwock took things to a whole new level, allowing players to tailor their whole deck around a single card that would almost always win them the game if they managed to play it.
What elevates it above Yogg is that the effects aren't random, only the targets, which means players can construct a whole deck around summoning units, healing their hero, and generally causing as much mayhem as possible. The beauty was that players could then replay the card, reactivating the effects once more and leading to more than a few crashes and timeouts as a result.
4 The Demon Seed
Near Guaranteed Wins Every Time
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Quest 1: Take 12 damage on your turns.
- Reward: Lifesteal. Deal 3 damage to the enemy hero.
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Quest 2: Take 12 damage on your turns.
- Reward: Lifesteal.
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Quest 3: Take 12 damage on your turns.
- Reward: Blightborn Tamsin.
- Tamsin Battlecry: For the rest of the game, damage that you take on your turn damages your opponent instead.
The Demon Seed has a lot to grasp, but has a pretty basic concept overall. As it's a Questline, players only really need to worry about meeting small conditions. In this case, those conditions are things the player would be doing anyway, only this time it comes with a huge payoff that turns Warlock into a near-unbeatable beast.
Originally, the Questline only asked for 10 damage for each stage, which meant that players didn't even need to heal much to activate the effect. The end goal is a massive swing that turns many of the Warlock's most risky cards into powerhouses that come out with huge stats, effects that normally damage the enemy hero, and an overall absurd power level that left many players wondering how it ever made it to live.
3 Patches The Pirate
The Best Opener There Is
- Effect: After you play a Pirate, summon this minion from your deck.
Patches is one of the most broken minions that Hearthstone has ever seen. A 1/1 for one mana sounds pretty bad on paper, except when considering the context surrounding it. Initially, Patches had charge, which meant that the player could play a pirate, and instantly summon this little annoyance and start swinging as early as turn one.
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Many combinations were found, all of which succeeded in their own way, whether it was weapon Warrior, Zoolock, or aggro Rogue. Whatever the case, the ability to develop such a wide and aggressive board for so little effort turned the game into a slug-fest that only stopped when the pesky pirate was sent off to Wild to wreak even more havoc.
2 The Caverns Below
Massive Value For Doing So Little
- Quest: Play four minions with the same name.
- Reward: Crystal Core.
- Crystal Core: For the rest of the game, your minions are 5/5.
The Caverns Below on release was easily the strongest of the quests in the game, closely followed by Open the Waygate. Rogues already had plenty of power when it came to playing lots of low-cost cards at once, so having a benefit for bouncing units repeatedly turned the class into a scourge that knew no contemporary.
The power level came from the fact that it wasn't a hand or a deck buff, just a game-wide boost to every unit played. And considering that the deck would normally have consisted of many low-cost minions anyway, playing whole boards of 4/4s by turn six wasn't just common, but basically guaranteed.
1 Undertaker
If It Stays Alive, It's Lethal Within A Few Turns
- Effect: Whenever you summon a minion with Deathrattle, gain +1/+1.
No matter how many new cards are added, and no matter how incredible the new sets are, no card has yet to top the power of Undertaker. This simple one-cost seemingly has very little going for it, but this common card quickly became one of the most absurd additions to the game, destroying most players' games by as early as turn three.
The reason Undertake was so overpowered was that if the enemy player didn't have a way of dealing with it right away, it would quickly snowball into an unkillable monster. Even if they managed to take it down, the rest of the deck was full of hyper-aggressive cards that would keep the pressure up. By the end of its run in standard, many players were left traumatized by the absurd power of such a basic card, and it remains the pinnacle of imbalance over a decade later.
Hearthstone
- Released
- March 11, 2014
