Have I Got Some Bombs For You!
Having a collection that allows you to build competitive Hearthstone decks is hard. Even if you spend money on the game, if your luck is poor, or you haven’t been min-maxing quests, you might find yourself two epics or one legendary short of any given deck. Luckily for you, though, the set rotation is coming with Ashes of Outland’s release! Not only does that mean you have three fewer sets to craft for Standard, you also may have some cards in the proverbial attic that you can trade for dust without affecting your future competitive prospects. Just think of me as Marie Kondo for your Hearthstone collection. The cards in this list probably don't spark joy.
Hey, Where’s Milhouse Manastorm?
This guide is going to focus exclusively on cards from sets that are rotating out of Standard after the Year of the Dragon comes to a close (The Witchwood, The Boomsday Project, and Rastakhan’s Rumble). Cards that are listed as safe to dust have seen virtually no play in the two years they’ve been in Standard, so they should be relatively safe to dust without worry that they’re suddenly going to be meta relevant in Wild. (Note: This isn’t a guarantee, and depends on how much you like to experiment; Blackhowl Gunspire is on this year’s list, but there is a very off-meta deck that can OTK with that card and Bouncing Blade in Wild.) Cards that are listed as having seen marginal play are just that; they were in decks that turned out to not be good enough to be meta relevant, or got swapped out for more powerful cards as decks got refined. They may see play again, but unless you’re a huge fan of that specific deck archetype, you can probably part with the card.
All that said, there are certainly cards that have not seen play in Classic and the more recent sets, but I’m not advocating you dust those yet. Cards go in and out of the meta depending on what’s printed. If I wrote a guide for these sets a year ago, Wardruid Loti and Halazzi, the Lynx might have been on it, because neither saw any significant play last year. Once Saviors of Uldum introduced quests, however, both of those became critical cards in Quest Druid and Quest Hunter, respectively, so you’d be sad if you’d dusted them. That doesn’t mean you should never dust any cards that are currently in the standard rotation, but they’re not as cut and dry as cards that have not seen any play for two years. While the duplicate protection changes coming in Year of the Phoenix do make dusting cards safer because you won’t open them again until you’ve opened all the other cards in the set, the downside is that, if those cards later see play, you’ll be forced to craft them with dust. The good news is that there are a lot of cards printed in Year of the Raven that weren’t played, so you may be able to build up a pretty good pile of dust without even looking at cards that are staying in Standard.
This guide also only lists epic and legendary cards because that’s where your best return from dusting comes from. Even if you think you’ll never play Wild, you may get nostalgic for some of the decks you’ve played after key cards rotate, and dusting all your wild cards will lock you out of that. You get 5 dust for a common and 20 dust for a rare, so you need to dust a lot of cards to get anywhere. I’m not your dad, but you’d be better off leaving most of those cards alone, because by the time you’ve dusted enough cards to make a difference, you won’t have many wild commons and rares left.
Note: This list is aimed at players who typically play Standard but who might want to play the decks they enjoy now in Wild in the future. There may be some cards on this list which have been included in decks that performed in Wild in the past, but those are either cards that can be replaced (as in highlander deck inclusions) or else they're found in decks that are very different than what Standard players may want to go back to. TL;DR: This list is not aimed at high-level Wild players; they don't need me to tell them which cards to dust anyway.
Enough talk, though; let’s find you some dust. We’re gonna be rich!
Legendary - Safe Dust
The Witchwood
Duskfallen Aviana:
Nobody:
Absolutely nobody:
Duskfallen Aviana: Hey, how about you give your opponent a free ten mana card, and then if I live and you live, you can have one? How does that sound?
Splintergraft: There’s slow, and then there’s Splintergraft. What this card is asking you to do is stick a minion that you want to copy, then spend 8 mana on a vanilla 8/8 to get a copy of it, then spend a whole separate turn to play a 10/10 copy of it. Even for Druid, that’s way too much mana to spend, and if you can do all that and not die, you probably already won the game anyway.
Emeriss: Emeriss is basically the definition of a win more card. Yes, it’s a powerful effect (as anyone who’s gotten it off Dragonqueen Alexstrasza can attest), but if you could spend an entire turn to play an 8/8 without immediately dying, you probably didn’t need that effect to win the game anyway.
Archmage Arugal: Given that Arugal was revealed alongside Book of Specters, it seemed natural that would be a strong early game combo. The problem is that Arugal is extremely easy to kill, and often in the early game you’re looking for tempo, not value; extra cards in hand don’t help when you need to sacrifice board to get them.
Toki, Time Tinker: Toki was decent filler when we had four set metas, but Wild doesn’t always mean powerful, and once she’s rotated to Wild exclusively, you can just put whatever legendary you wanted in your deck on purpose.
Chameleos: When this was first revealed, a lot was made of the value of this card being in the information it revealed about your opponent’s hand. The problem is that the information isn’t useful if you can’t act on it, and the cost of that information is one less card in your hand that can react. Yes, you do get access to play that card, but being forced into playing it on the turn it swaps ends up making this card awkward to use, especially for decks that require multi turn planning. Like, you know, Control Priest.
Lady in White: In general, legendaries that buff your deck end up being a crap shoot - if you draw them early, they’re great, but if you draw them late, they’re useless. In Lady in White’s case, the buff ends up being inconsequential most of the time, and that’s even when you can play it on curve.
Blackhowl Gunspire: I wanted this to work so badly. I tried copying it, putting in all the whirlwind effects, but a 7 mana 3/8 that just sits there just is too clunky, and your opponent can just ignore it and go face. (Though in wild, there’s still the mythical Gunspire-Carnivorous Cube-Bouncing Blade OTK deck that you can play. You might even win a game with it every couple of hours!)
Countess Ashmore: “This is Curator 2.0!” Except that not having taunt on an expensive minion like this is a big negative, and it turns out there are fewer rush, Deathrattle and lifesteal minions that can be slotted into any deck than we’re murlocs, dragons and beasts. In fact, most of those keywords ended up on Zilliax, and if you draw him early, you can’t count(ess) on Ashmore to give you value from the battlecry.
The Boomsday Project
Flark’s Boom-zooka: The only way to get this to work reliably is to have a deck full of deathrattle minions. Even when we had a deck that ran Devilsaur Eggs, this wasn’t effective.
Zerek, Master Cloner: The only deck that plays enough spells that target minions is Combo Priest, and ideally you’d very much like for your opponent to be dead by the time you can play Zerek. (Big fan of his cloning gallery, though.)
Myra Rotspring: Turns out, there are a lot of bad Deathrattle effects that aren’t worth paying 5 mana for.
Harbinger Celestia: Most people don’t like paying 4 mana for an eventual 1/1.
Dr. Morrigan: Recruit effects with no restrictions require building a deck such that every potential pull is good, and the Morrigan effect isn’t good enough to build a deck around. Worth noting that they reduced the cost of this card by 2 mana and it still saw no play.
Rastakhan’s Rumble
Gonk, the Raptor: Gonk had his brief moment in the sun while Druid’s classic cards were still broken, when you could copy it and build up extra attacks and then kill your opponent with a flurry of punches. Since those days, though, Gonk is a much more fair card, and the effect just isn’t good enough to include in most decks.
Hex Lord Malacrass: Malacrass is S-L-O-W. You’re paying 8 to add 3 or 4 cards to your hand, and the kinds of cards you’re likely to keep in your mulligan are often not cards that will be impactful later on when you can play Malacrass without dying. And if you can play an 8 mana 5/5 without dying, did you really need those cards anyway?
Princess Talanji: Playing this card generally means you’ve put too many “take cards from your opponent” cards in your deck. Even as a payoff for collecting minions from Galakrond’s hero power, it’s generally not worth spending the card slot; even when generated by Galakrond, the effect never feels strong enough.
Gral, the Shark: Gral is just too slow and too low value, even in decks that run Spirit of the Shark, which will generally just run Novice Engineer to draw cards.
High Priestess Jeklik: Remember Lakkari Sacrifice? Me neither.
Hi’reek, the Bat: The decks that are buffing minions in Warlock are generally Zoo decks. Those decks want their minions to cost 7 mana less than Hi’reek costs.
Griftah: There are times when you read the text of a weird legendary, wonder why you’d ever want to do that, and then you’ll find out the hard way why you’d want to do that. And then there’s Griftah.
Legendary - Marginal Play
The Witchwood
Prince Liam: Prince Liam saw some play in Secret Paladin to make use of the secrets that were stuck in your deck. It’s probably not powerful enough for Wild, but it can be a fun card that makes for unpredictable situations.
Face Collector: The problem with Face Collector is that it’s secretly a 6 drop or a 9 drop, and you’re left with a couple of 2/2s on board for your trouble. Couple that with how variant random legendaries are, and Face Collector often isn’t worth spending a full turn to play outside of a four set meta.
Rastakhan’s Rumble
War Master Voone: Voone has recently seen some use as a card in dragon focused Highlander Warrior lists. It’s usually the first card cut, but Wild also enables different builds of Dragon Warrior once you include the Blackrock Mountain cards. That could make for a Voone revival, given the right mix of dragons.
Akali, the Rhino: Before all the Tempo Warrior decks revolved around Galakrond, Akali was the big finisher, often pulling a giant Militia Commander or Restless Mummy. It’s fallen off recently because of the reliance on both Scion of Ruin and Devoted Maniac, which you want to be pulled by Town Crier; the last thing you want in that deck is to play Town Crier on 1 and have to wait seven turns to play the card you just drew.
Zentimo: Zentimo had his moment in the sun before Galakrond Shaman was nerfed for the second time, when players realized that Zentimo plus Invocation of Frost would give you three of the four invokes in one shot. Once Invocation got nerfed to 2 mana, making it much more awkward to cycle with Spirit of the Frog, Zentimo slunk back to the swamp, never to be heard from again.
Krag’wa, The Frog: Krag’wa has served to be even more niche than Zentimo, used in some niche builds of pre-nerf Galakrond Shaman to replenish a hand full of cheap spells. It’s also been used in some Control Shaman lists along with Witch’s Brew, because it would generate a fresh non-echo copy of each of the echo copies played. Wild has better ways for Shaman to heal that don’t rely on the need for a two card combo (Remember Healing Rain? Those were days, right?) so Krag’wa’s probably not going to see much play when it goes back to the Wild.
Epic - Safe Dust
The Witchwood
Toxmonger: Hunter has had a number of decks that want to spam 1-cost minions since Toxmonger was printed, Quest Hunter being the most effective among them. Those decks usually don’t need to waste a deck slot on this card to keep board; the fact that the minions have rush is usually enough.
Wanted!: Even after Counterfeit Coin rotated, as much as rogues love the coin, Wanted wasn’t, well, wanted by any deck that could have made use of it.
Totem Cruncher: The only deck that’s relied on totem synergy since Totem Cruncher was printed was Even Shaman, and that had much better ways to make use of the totems without sacrificing them.
Bogshaper: 7 mana is a lot, and even though we’ve had Spirit Of the Frog decks that load up on cheap spells that could want this card, the effect comes so late that it usually doesn’t get enough value to justify the card slot. It's likely to just die before it draws a single minion.
Ratcatcher: Warlock has other sacrifice a minion effects with bigger payoffs than Ratcatcher, like Grim Rally and Evil Genius. More recently, Faceless Corruptor is effectively a good version of Ratcatcher given the stats you expect to get on the resulting body.
Deathweb Spider: Witchwood had this weird set of cardsthat rewarded you for self damaging, and none of them saw any play. Even though you can trigger the effect with your hero power, that makes this card a 7 mana 4/6 lifesteal, which is way too slow for Zoo and way too inconsequential for Control or Handlock.
Deadly Arsenal: In general, cards that can lose 100% of their value as a result of draw RNG need to have broken effects to see play. This is not a broken effect.
Muck Hunter: There are better rush cards that don’t give your opponents minions to work with.
Worgen Abomination: This effect seems interesting, but the fact that it affects your minions as well means that it ends up hurting you as much as your opponent, since you can’t always control how long it sticks to the board. Even if that wasn't the case, this is 7 mana to slightly damage minions that are already damaged, and I'm struggling to stay awake while typing that sentence.
Splitting Festerroot: Festerroot is often annoying to deal with when it’s generated by some sort of random or transform effect, but never annoying enough to justify paying 8 mana and a card slot for honestly.
The Boomsday Project
Goblin Prank: If Play Dead hadn’t been a card when Recruit Hunter was a thing, maybe Goblin Prank could have found some use, but once Play Dead left, so did most of the powerful deathrattles that Hunter was able to abuse.
Unexpected Results: This card actually got reduced to 3 mana and still didn’t see any inclusions in decks. The kinds of mages that play spell damage usually aren’t super interested in winning via board pressure and vice versa, so Unexpected Results never really had any sort of a home.
Power Word: Replicate: In most cases, PW: Replicate is a vanilla 5 mana 5/5, which is fine for Arena, but not a card that gets included in constructed decks.
Ectomancy: If you can stick enough demons to the board worth copying with enough mana to cast Ectomancy, you probably didn’t need the copies to win.
EMP Operative: The mechs you’re trying to kill usually come in bunches, not single targets, so by the time you can drop EMP Operative, it’s usually too little, too late. And even if you do kill the mech, it probably leaves Microbots behind, so those can just get magnetized onto and start immediately again.
Holomancer: Thirty seconds after Holomancer hits the board: “The end is coming!” “I knew it!”
Loose Specimen: There are better and less expensive ways to damage your own minions if that’s what you want to do.
Rastakhan’s Rumble
Treespeaker: Treespeaker is a pretty good example of a win more card. In general, it only works if you’ve managed to stick a board of treants for a turn, but if you’ve had enough treants live for this to matter, you can probably just win with buffs. Also, the transform effect makes it so the Treespeaker-buffed minions can’t attack the turn you play the Treespeaker, which means you’re effectively waiting two turns for the payoff, which is an eternity in Token Druid.
The Beast Within: Hunter got so many ways to buff beasts that the buff on The Beast Within is pretty irrelevant, and the extra attack generally isn’t good enough. Midrange Beast Hunter with Dire Frenzy and Master’s Call was one of the best decks in the game for a while, and every minion in it was a beast, and this still wasn’t good enough to see play in that deck.
Splitting Image: This secret was fine off of random effects like Arcane Keysmith, but Mage doesn’t often run enough minions worth protecting badly enough to use a card slot on Splitting Image.
A New Challenger: Here’s a thought: You could just run a good minion that you want in your deck.
Auchenai Phantasm: The problem with Phantasm is that it’s a minion, so while it theoretically could enable things like Circle of Healing clears, it also messes up your resurrect pool. In Wild, you already have Embrace the Shadow, which has the same effect but can also be pulled from Shadow Visions and doesn’t affect your resurrect pool. And Priest now has enough early board clears that you probably don’t need either.
Surrender to Madness: But why isn’t this good when Embiggen is great? Embiggen only makes your cards cost 1 more, it only increases the minions in your deck and doesn’t affect your entire mana pool, and it’s in a class that can ramp mana. Surrender to Madness was a weird card when it was first released and it never got better.
Cannon Barrage: If Rogue is playing a card that costs more than 5 mana, it had better be drawing you four cards, preferably with a 5/2 weapon.
Gurubashi Hypemon: See above.
Void Contract: No. Just no. Whatever best case scenario you can think of that involves cutting both decks in half just doesn’t happen enough to justify playing this card, ever. The only thing you'll contract from this card is a loss of rank.
Gurubashi Offering: If you really need 8 armor, there are better ways to do it that don’t involve putting a 0/2 minion in your deck.
Drakkari Trickster: There are better ways to hate on combo decks than this.
Untamed Beastmaster: The only decks that run enough beasts to get value from Untamed Beastmaster don’t want non-beasts in the deck, so that Master’s Call draws 3.
Ice Cream Peddler: This is either an extremely narrow tech card or a payoff for some weird self freeze deck that we haven’t seen, aside from an infinite armor deck that was so complicated that only DisguisedToast could pilot it. I do want a murloc ice cream bar, though.
Mosh’Ogg Announcer: Pretty much every class has access to some overstatted minion that does more than this does.
Snapjaw Shellfighter: There are some niche scenarios where you might want to protect an adjacent minion, but more often than not, you just don’t need an effect like this badly enough to use up a slot in your deck on it.
Linecracker: Theoretically, you could turn this into a one turn kill if you got it to stick, but that’s generally been Combo Priest’s territory, and that deck can do that way more easily and faster than Linecracker comes out. Plus, you generally want your combo to not get defeated by a taunt.
Epic - Marginal Play
The Witchwood
Stampeding Roar: This was used to cheat out Hadronox and kill it in Taunt Druid before the opponent could silence it. As soon as the Classic Druid nerfs hit, that deck was never heard from again.
Spectral Cutlass: In Wild, if you want a never ending weapon, you can just play Kingsbane.
The Boomsday Project
Omega Mind: In Wild, you don’t need to wait for turn 10 to lifesteal from spells; you can just play Hallazeal the Ascended whenever you have four mana.
Beryllium Nullifier: Nullifier is a good card when you get it on board, but you’re offered it often enough from Omega Assembly and Dr Boom, Mad Genius that you don’t actually need to own copies of the card to play it.
Reckless Experimenter: If you want to make Mecha’thun Priest work, you need this card. If you don’t, it doesn’t really do much for you.
Omega Agent: There was a short period where Midrange Warlocks were running Omega Agent as a late play, mainly because being able to play three 4/5s and Shadowflame one of them was a pretty powerful play at the time. That seems too small for Wild, but it could see some utility again.
Star Aligner: Star Aligner was the menace of Wild for a while before they nerfed Aviana to 10 mana. If it happened once, it could happen again.
Rastakhan’s Rumble
Blast Wave: Blast Wave sometimes slotted in as a last removal in some highlander lists, but you have Volcanic Potion in Wild which does the same thing, but two turns earlier.
Immortal Prelate: Some control style Paladins have used Immortal Prelate in combination with Da Undatakah to create a late game win condition with recurring 8/5s. Most games in Wild don’t go long enough to get to that point, though.
Smolderthorn Lancer: Smolderthorn Lancer was a reasonable removal tool in warriors that run dragons, but it’s fallen out of favor even in dragon highlander lists for tools like Omega Devastator and Plague of Wrath.
Sul’thraze: It turns out that you really don’t want to be running your face into minions in an aggressive deck. Once we figured that out, Sul’thraze came out and Arcanite Reaper went in.
Thanks For Reading!
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