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Silly
This is a silly article.
While related to a real Hearthstone topic, it should not be taken too seriously.


This is a silly article. While related to a real Hearthstone topic, it should not be taken too seriously.

Cards are the epic weapons with which the heroes of Azeroth wage war upon their opponents, summoning fearsome beasts to assault their enemies and raining destruction upon the battlefield. But not all cards are crafted equal. While the right cards can lead the player to a triumphant victory, others do a less than impressive job, and at worst can actually lead to the player's defeat. This page celebrates the very worst cards in Hearthstone, from risky niche cards to outright death sentences for the player who uses them.

Worst Legendaries

  • LegacyMillhouse Manastorm
    • Infamous for being amazingly risky, Millhouse's stats are great, but not much use if your opponent happens to have a lot of powerful spells in their hand. Capable of getting the player killed as early as turn 1, this card is the indisputable winner of the award for "Quickest Way to Lose a Match".
  • Goblins vs GnomesFlame Leviathan
    • One of the first truly awful class legendaries to be added to the game, Flame Leviathan makes LegacyWar Golem look like a good card. This 1600-dust card offers a sub-par 7/7 for 7 mana, with the additional side-effect of dealing 2 damage to all characters when drawn. The effect could be useful for deterring zoo decks, but with no way to control the drawing of the card, and no mage damage-trigger synergies to speak of, Flame Leviathan is the Titanic of the Goblins vs Gnomes set.
  • Blackrock MountainMajordomo Executus
    • This minion's understatted but still powerful 9/7 body hides a dark secret: the imminent defeat of any player foolish enough to play it. Replacing even a full-Health hero with an almost-dead 8-Health Ragnaros, this card is unseen in any competitive play, but is a common means of tricking adventure bosses into killing themselves through suffering its terrible Deathrattle. It's telling that the best use for the card is forcing your opponent to play it instead. You can also go full meme with Journey to Un'GoroAwaken the Makers for a 40-Health Ragnaros, but you could just play Journey to Un'GoroFire Plume's Heart and not have to deal with the chance of throwing the game instead. Too soon, Executus. Too soon.
  • The Grand TournamentBolf Ramshield 
    • Truly, this card is amazingly horrible. This card could be a big target for destroy effects such as LegacyAssassinate, if it wasn't so terrible that it's hardly worth removing, and more easily killed by attacking face. It theoretically acts like a Taunt for damage dealing spells and card effects that can hit face, but in practice it's basically +9 Armor in minion form when minions can attack face unscratched. The only time it would be more useful than being 9+ Armor is delaying Whispers of the Old GodsC'Thun's Battlecry... until anything else kills it.
  • The Grand TournamentAcidmaw
    • This card is almost suicidal in nature. It could be said to go well with The Grand TournamentDreadscale, but our immediate reaction is: you need another legendary card to make this work? It could maybe work with a cheap AoE such as LegacyArcane Explosion, but it's a pity that hunter doesn't have those, with the exception of LegacyUnleash the Hounds (or LegacyExplosive Trap if the opponent is spectacularly dumb). Even then, it's useless against Stealth and Divine Shield. Now that is why the card is just bad, but what makes it deserve its place in this list is that your opponent can do the exact same thing back to you. If the enemy hero uses any form of AoE, all of your minions will die, and all they have to do is mop up Acidmaw's miserably-statted body... assuming it survived with its whopping 2 Health.
  • Whispers of the Old GodsThe Boogeymonster
    • Imagine LegacyGruul, a legendary that already sees little to no constructed play, but worse. While a Gruul you might've got from a The League of ExplorersGolden Monkey might save your butt in those really long Control Warrior mirror matches, Boogeymonster will most likely not. Gruul constantly gets stronger no matter what you do, while Boogeymonster needs to trade with something weaker to get stronger. Compare it to The WitchwoodDarius Crowley, at least the latter can attack immediately. Apart from being untargetable by LegacyBig Game Hunter the turn after it's played, unless you can give it Windfury and several small minions to eat over multiple turns, it's just plain worse. And just to rub salt on the wound, it's not even good in Battlegrounds. No, not even for Tirion Fordring.
  • Knights of the Frozen ThroneMoorabi
    • Maybe the most head-scratching inclusion in Knights of the Frozen Throne, this understatted, over-costed combo piece was supposed to be the heart of the so-called Freeze Shaman. Moorabi does nothing when you summon him aside from putting an incredibly poor body on the field. Rather, his effect requires you to pay more mana on more cards that are very slow, weak and awkward on their own. What's the reward for getting all this together? The same effect as The Grand TournamentConvert. Just Convert, with no other upsides.
  • Knights of the Frozen ThronePrince Valanar
    • While his littlest brother had a field day tearing up the meta and their middle sibling found a home in combo decks, Valanar was left in the dust. A 4/4 with Taunt and Lifesteal isn't bad per se, but given that many of the best class cards in the game cost 4 mana, giving them up is just too big a price to pay unless you get a much better payoff. A few classes like Rogue and Hunter did make room for this guy, but it wasn't long before they ditched him in favor of 4-drops worth playing. The existence of Ashes of OutlandAshtongue Battlelord, a Common with the same stat total and abilities, shows exactly how low Valanar is on the power scale.
  • Kobolds & CatacombsTemporus
    • Temporus has a pretty powerful effect, but to not make the card totally broken, he's got an equally big downside. Before you can wail on your opponent with some two-turn kill combo you've set up, you just have to survive your opponent taking two turns in a row. Surely for a defensive class like Priest, that shouldn't be too hard, right? You'd be surprised. Thanks to Temporus' terrible stats, he's kind of like giving your opponent three turns in a row. If you somehow manage to survive three turns of helplessness, odds are you were going to win that game anyway. In all other cases, Temporus is just an automatic loss.
  • The WitchwoodDuskfallen Aviana
    • Also known as "Dustfallen Aviana", this legendary minion is supposedly designed to get out one of your expensive cards much earlier, but it has one major problem: it works for both players. Not only that, you don't get to take advantage of it until your next turn while you opponent is free to play something big right after you end your turn. Oh, and if they kill Aviana on that same turn you don't get to use her effect at all. Best case scenario, you're playing against an aggro deck that's run out of cards and they can't really take advantage of it, but what's more like to happen is that they get to play something big and kill Aviana while you waste 5 mana. This Millhouse-tier card has surely fallen far from the original The Grand TournamentAviana. She was born too early to make memes happen with Maiev, too.
  • The Boomsday ProjectHarbinger Celestia
    • What if you took LegacyMirror Entity and removed the Secret part of it? That's what Harbinger Celestia is. To answer the question, it becomes incredibly easy to play around and her solid base stats goes to waste. Virtually useless outside of Knights of the Frozen ThroneTreachery shenanigans, this card is high on everyone's "dust on sight" list.
  • Rastakhan's RumbleHir'eek, the Bat
    • Hir'eek is a great example of what happens when you have an archetype-defining card with almost nothing to support it. The main method of buffing Hir'eek is supposed to be using Rastakhan's RumbleSpirit of the Bat and trade off your early-game minions to buff it. But history has shown that every hand buff that buffs one random card has never been good and average at best, this being no exception. Your only alternatives are The Boomsday ProjectSoul Infusion, which is better off on something you could play early game like The Boomsday ProjectDoubling Imp, or other crappy or slow Neutral hand buff cards. He's terrible to get randomly because he'll die to the tiniest of AoE removal when unbuffed, and even when buffed by the time you can play him your opponent will probably have a LegacyBrawl or Rastakhan's RumbleMass Hysteria ready to play.
  • Saviors of UldumRaid the Sky Temple
    • This is probably the easiest Quest to complete. In fact, you don't even need to warp your deck to play 10 spells as Mage. What's the issue? The "reward" Saviors of UldumAscendant Scroll is awful. In most cases, it's a downgrade over LegacyFireblast that grants high-variance value at a snail's pace. While it could theoretically help Mage outvalue control decks, Mage doesn't need help generating more value, especially random spells. Even then, it's so slow it couldn't possibly outvalue The Boomsday ProjectDr. Boom, Mad Genius or Saviors of UldumEmperor Wraps anyway. If you're not convinced it's bad yet, keep in mind statistics have shown that Raid the Sky Temple has a higher mulliganed winrate than it does a played winrate. You're literally better off pretending you have a 29 card deck than you are starting this quest.
  • Ashes of OutlandAl'ar
    • This card combines a lopsided statline with a laughably weak resurrection effect. If your opponent can't deal with 6 health divided in threes on turn 5, they have bigger issues than whatever threat this poses. There may be some combo somewhere involving copying or procc'ing Al'ar's Deathrattle to fill your board with "immortal" 7/3s, but is it really worth all that effort for a card that's super slow even when it's online?

Honorable mentions

  • Illidan Stormrage/LegacyXavius
    • For such an important and popular character he is for the Warcraft series, Illidan has long been considered a laughingstock of a Legendary in Hearthstone. While by no means a terrible card, his stat distribution is poor, he costs a lot, and his card effect is difficult to take advantage of for an unimpressive payoff. The resulting combination makes for an awkward card that doesn't fit in any kind of deck strategy. Even his niche as a neutral Demon is irrelevant as no Demon-based decks found a use for him, not even for Warlocks. He wasn't prepared to become a cornerstone of mediocrity for classic Legendaries, and after years of humiliation, he passed that mantle to Xavius when he was promoted to hero class status. (In a somewhat important note, Xavius got a "buff" in that the 2/1s he summons are demons!)
  • LegacyNozdormu
    • Having the honorary title of "Worst Card to Pull from the Welcome Bundle", Nozdormu has mediocre stats for his cost and an effect that shortens the timer. How effective that actually is is unpredictable. In most cases, he does nothing. Sometimes he could actually screw up combos with long animations or people who aren't paying attention and/or like to rope, but whatever the case, mild panic ensues whenever Nozdormu enters the battlefield, no matter whose side he's on.
  • LegacyLorewalker Cho
    • This particular Legendary minion... useless in nature, but an interesting tech against Secrets. Also the minion most likely to exceed 2 billion Health, not to mention far too fun when both players have one.
  • NaxxramasMaexxna
    • This card had a chance of getting in but it was just a bit too powerful when played in the right hands to be truly useless.
  • The Grand TournamentJusticar Trueheart
    • While for the most part a solid card, Justicar gets a mention for her atrocious LegacyTotemic Call upgrade, LegacyTotemic Slam. Every other class gets a direct statistical improvement over their hero power. Shaman gets to choose which totem they summon. Whoop dee doo. Not worth 2 mana, not worth 0 mana, and definitely not worth 6 mana.
  • Journey to Un'GoroLakkari Sacrifice
    • How can a quest reward that gives infinite value be bad? By having the requirements be absolutely inconsistent to meet. Playing this Quest means you resigned yourself to struggling against the discard mechanic and RNG itself. Didn't draw One Night in KarazhanMalchezaar's Imp? You're gonna spend a lot of turns tapping out your life. Discarded your other LegacyDoomguard instead of a One Night in KarazhanSilverware Golem or Journey to Un'GoroClutchmother Zavas? Your quest is gonna take longer to complete. Discarded your alternate win conditions? Your odds of winning just went down. Hoping Knights of the Frozen ThroneHowlfiend will speed up your quest? Pray you opponent doesn't have something that will make you discard uncontrollably and make you discard your Nether Portal. You burn through so many valuable resources discarding so much and if you don't get any good discards your hand is just dead on the water. What this meant was that to complete the quest in a timely fashion to make the reward worth it, you needed the exact proper draw order and the best discard RNG.
    5 expansions later, Blizzard finally created controllable discards and cards that actually give value off of discarding, which made the Quest somewhat playable (although you're still better off playing regular aggro Discardlock).
  • Kobolds & CatacombsThe Darkness
    • Sure, its gigantic stats look enticing, but getting the opponent to draw three candles takes a lot of time and/or luck, and you can't run it in a mill deck because burning even just one candle will make it completely useless. Even after it stops going dormant, any single piece of hard removal will destroy it. Still, a 20/20 is a 20/20, it's somewhat useful in really long fatigue matches, it can be used as a janky tech card against highlander/singleton decks (before Descent of DragonsBad Luck Albatross was a thing), and if you can manage to activate its Battlecry more than once it becomes way easier to summon. It's also compatible with other meme cards like Rastakhan's RumbleGral, the Shark, if you're into that sort of thing.
  • The WitchwoodSplintergraft
    • This card is just too slow. Not only you have to stick a minion you want to copy to the board, but then you need to drop an 8 mana 8/8 AND spend extra 10 mana on playing that minion again. She's just okay in other borderline meme combos like Journey to Un'GoroJungle Giants decks or with The Boomsday ProjectMulchmuncher, where it's just a less good Descent of DragonsSathrovarr.
  • The WitchwoodEmeriss
    • Emeriss is prime example of a good card stuck in the wrong class. She costs 10 mana, gives no tempo, and is a Hunter legendary, a class that is about as known for its control playstyle as Priest is to aggro. On times when you do play her and not die right away, her stat buff is pretty significant... if you have minions for it. Fortunately, there's one card that solves both giving Hunter control tools and minion generation: Knights of the Frozen ThroneDeathstalker Rexxar. Also, she's a godly card to get out of Descent of DragonsDragonqueen Alexstrasza.
  • The WitchwoodBlackhowl Gunspire
    • This legendary embodies the definition of "meme card". It's virtually useless on its own, its effect is not very amazing just looking at it, and neither defines a high-tier deck or fit in already existing ones. Yet for all its flaws, if a player is willing to go all-in on this card and sacrifice their time, win ratio, and possibly rank to create the perfect storm where it's blasting everything to smithereens with cannons blazing, the result is oh-so satisfying. It's also legitimately threatening to leave it up in a Tempo/Enrage Warrior deck, and you do not want see them do something crazy with it.
  • The Boomsday ProjectZerek, Master Cloner
    • Not hopelessly terrible, but really underpowered for what he's worth. He's much more high-maintenance compared to other similar minions like LegacyCairne Bloodhoof or even Rise of ShadowsRecurring Villain for a slightly better payoff, the cards that he can work off range from okay to too expensive, but the worst part is that his better synergistic cards, tragically, are better off being used on something else earlier practically. Although far outclassed by other minions who could fill a similar role as him, unlike Hir'eek, he actually got a few cards that could support him.
  • The Boomsday ProjectDr. Morrigan
    • Dr. Morrigan is in theory "infinite value" card that works best in decks only running big minions, but is too weak on her own to be any good. Her stats are bad, her job of swapping herself out with a bigger minion was better done with Kobolds & CatacombsPossessed Lackey, or even Mean Streets of GadgetzanMadam Goya, she can't even be used in generic LegacyKnife Juggler OTK combos with Journey to Un'GoroSpiritsinger Umbra, and while in theory you could create an "unkillable" 5/5 with a second copy of her there were no practical ways to pull that combo off and it becomes useless when you draw all copies of her. With all that said, after getting some synergy support with Rise of ShadowsPlot Twist and getting buffed to being horribly understatted at 8 mana to understatted at 6 mana, Dr. Morrigan successfully went from one of the worst legendaries in the game to a crappy legendary that only really works in one equally underpowered deck.
  • The Boomsday ProjectWhizbang the Wonderful
    • Even though Whizbang's deck-building skills aren't exactly up to par, he's just too sweet for new players to call truly bad. Plus, he can even work as a random button (if you don't mind a lot of losses in between). The same goes for his brother-from-another-mother Rise of ShadowsZayle, Shadow Cloak, to a lesser extent. It's just a shame that he continues to run with Standard decks after rotating to Wild...
  • Rastakhan's RumbleGriftah
    • His statline is pretty on par, especially for something with card generation. The problem is that you don't get to pick which card you want to give or take, so you either have to play it safe and pick two cards that are relatively comparable in usefulness or bet on 50/50 odds and hope you get the good card of your pick. You could say he's not that different from cards that give both players something random, but the difference is that knowing you gave the opponent something good just hurts more. Fortunately, 50% of the time he'll give you the card you want 100% of the time.
  • Rastakhan's RumbleHakkar, the Soulflayer
    • Terrible statline, double-edged effect; everything about Hakkar says "won't see play in competitive decks". Despite his flaws, there have been multiple decks designed to abuse his Corrupted Blood, like purging them out of you with The WitchwoodPrince Liam or Rise of ShadowsArch-Villain Rafaam or Naturalizing him then giving your blood-infested deck with Kobolds & CatacombsKing Togwaggle. Even so, if he spawned randomly and neither players have a way to counter it, it's an exciting spectacle for viewers to see who bleeds out first.

Worst minions

Bad Stats

  • LegacyMagma Rager
    • Spawning a whole line of intentionally bad lookalikes, this card needs no introduction. Its 5-Attack calls like a siren to the unwary, leading many inexperienced players to wreck their decks upon the stony rocks of the Rager's single point of Health. Theoretically highly effective with Windfury or Divine Shield (or a chance to BUFF), many hardy players have valiantly set out to find a deck where Magma Rager actually works... but none have ever returned.
  • LegacySilverback Patriarch
    • While not quite as notorious as Magma Rager for its awfulness, Silverback Patriarch is considered almost as bad, but for the opposite reason; instead of abysmal Health, it's got abysmal Attack. Even if it does have Taunt, it's awful Attack value means only the puniest of minions won't survive trading against it, it doesn't offer any utility to compensate for its awful stats, and the Beast tag does little to improve its viability. What does make Silverback Patriarch's case unusual is that game has introduced literally more than a dozen other minions that are flat-out superior to it throughout many expansion. What truly nails it in the coffin, though, is that even from the very beginning of Hearthstone, LegacyIronfur Grizzly was a superior counterpart.
  • LegacyWarsong Commander
    • Poor Warsong Commander, how the mighty have fallen. Once one of the single most feared cards in the game, it is currently nowhere close to its former glory. In its original state when it gave any minion Charge, this card was absurdly broken. Then it got brought down a notch to only give Charge to minions with 3 of less Attack. For a while, everyone thought this card was just okay... until Blackrock MountainGrim Patron came to town. Warsong Commander would go on to lead an army of Grim Patrons to charge forward, empowered by a LegacyWhirlwind of fury and rage, while their old friend, LegacyFrothing Berserker, seething from all the minion damage, finished the job by obliterating the enemy face, all in a single turn. It seemed Warsong Commander was all but unstoppable, until Blizzard directly intervened by transforming it into a worse LegacyRaid Leader, annihilating its viability for eternity. Now Warsong Commander sits in the deepest reaches of every player's Card Collection in limbo, never to be put in any remotely serious deck yet unable to be disenchanted.
  • LegacyStarving Buzzard
    • Another Basic card that was absolutely devastated by nerfs, but not as recognized because it happened very early and hasn't broken the meta as hard as Warsong Commander. This minion has an absolutely pathetic stats of 3/2 at 5 mana, killing any amount of viability it could have. While you can theoretically draw a ton of cards when comboed with LegacyUnleash the Hounds or some cheap beasts loaded up in your hand, timing for such a scenario is too impractical and comes in too slow to be viable. Over many years since its release Hunters have gained much better ways to draw or generate cards without absolutely destroying their tempo, so there is pretty much no reason to use this card to keep a higher card count. In an alternate universe, this card would've been a 2-mana 2/1 that singlehandedly carried card draw for Hunters, so maybe it was for the best.
  • NaxxramasStoneskin Gargoyle
    • One of the original bad cards, coming from Hearthstone's very first new set. While the regeneration effect is neat, a 1/4 body for 3 with no innate defenses is unworkably terrible. The idea of the card is to pump it up with cards like LegacyMark of Nature and LegacyBlessing of Kings, but it's simply too slow and inflexible. It's good at doing the Heigan dance (and, conveniently, is obtained from the boss right before Heigan), but after that there's no good reason to keep it around.
  • Whispers of the Old GodsGrotesque Dragonhawk
    • Say hello to basically the only reason LegacyWindfury Harpy and LegacyThrallmar Farseer avoided this list. This is a 7 mana minion that - if it lives - can go face for 1 more damage than a LegacyCore Hound. It won't ever go face though, since your opponent can just kill it and have anything with more than 5 health, IE, almost every 7+ mana minion, survive. You pay 6 whole mana for a +4/+4 buff over his younger brother. If you want to meme it up with a big Windfury, just use Journey to Un'GoroStormwatcher or Saviors of UldumSiamat. Those at least might actually survive a turn.
  • Mean Streets of GadgetzanWorgen Greaser
    • This card earned the nickname "pack filler" for a good reason. It has the worst stats you could realistically put on a 4 drop, with no abilities to help it out. Even the equally awful Goblins vs GnomesSalty Dog is at least a Pirate. This thing was thrashed so hard, he indirectly prompted an apology from the dev team and a promise to print neutral cards with more interesting effects going forward.
  • Mean Streets of GadgetzanBackstreet Leper
    • Players often overlook this distant cousin of Magma Rager. It has the same obscene 3 Mana cost, the same awful 1 Health, but it instead of 5 Attack, it has 3 Attack with a Deathrattle that guarantees 2 face damage. It's slightly less bad than Magma Rager against Mages or Paladins, but nonetheless this pack filler is not worth using at all. The was only marginally useful once, in a Tavern Brawl no less, along with its sick brother and a chunk of meat. Even then, this card's since been overshadowed by a rat in pretty much every way.
  • Rastakhan's RumbleArena Treasure Chest
    • You know those egg cards? Those useless minions that are otherwise great with Deathrattle activators? This is not one of those cards. Sure there are other similar minions that are also useless on their own and don't create a minion, but those cards cost 1 Mana. This thing costs 4 mana. LegacyArcane Intellect costs 1 less and you get your cards immediately, and even the most aggressive of Hunter decks don't need to create this level of tempo loss to draw cards. Overall, this card is so abysmally statted for an effect so inefficient that it doesn't belong in anywhere but this list. Not even in Arena, ironically.

Bad Gimmick

  • LegacyAngry Chicken
    • The original "worst minion", Angry Chicken was actually intentionally added by the developers to teach players to recognize bad cards. In its defense, the Angry Chicken's Enrage has the potential to be fearsome in the hands of a LegacyHoundmaster, Whispers of the Old GodsMark of Y'Shaarj, stitched to a Knights of the Frozen ThroneZombeast, or even Journey to Un'GoroCrystal Core, but for the most part simply serves to fool inexperienced players. Giving its name to the lowest possible rank in Ranked play (as well as a popular podcast), this chicken has every right to be angry, but in fact appears to simply be as flabbergasted by its own existential impotence as the rest of us.
  • Goblins vs GnomesGnomish Experimenter
    • What is it with Hearthstone and bad chicken cards? There's no reason to play this over LegacyGnomish Inventor, LegacyNovice Engineer, The WitchwoodWitchwood Piper, or the myriad of better card draw engines. Unless of course you really like discarding minions from your deck and drawing a worse Knights of the Frozen ThroneSnowflipper Penguin. S'pose it might work if you were hyper-drawing for a spell-only combo, but why risk chickenizing your other draw cards?
  • The Grand TournamentVoid Crusher
    • A minion that came with a LegacyDeadly Shot effect? That would probably be played. It having terrible stats for the cost? A little less good, but worth thinking about in Warlock. Paying 8 mana for the effect? Much worse, but at least it's repeatable for only 2 mana if you can stick the minion. Having to sacrifice a friendly minion each time you use the ability? Now it's considerably less useful. The effect can potentially kill itself, making it a literal Deadly Shot for 8 mana? ...maybe you can give this one a pass.
  • Knights of the Frozen ThroneWicked Skeleton
    • Known as the worst Evolved 3-drop in the game, it takes a lot to make this card's stats go into halfway respectable territory. Sure, you could trade two minions into enemy minions and have them all destroy each other and you'd get a slightly better LegacyChillwind Yeti that still gets murdered by Silence, or you could not commit tempo suicide and just play Chillwind Yeti in the first place. You could use it to follow up a massive board clear or a LegacyDoomsayer, but then again, most control decks would much rather not waste a deck slot on a card that's a dead draw in most other situations, because you're not always going to get a huge board to clear. Even if you could summon a bunch of tiny minions to kamikaze into an enemy with LegacyUnleash the Hounds or Saviors of UldumSwarm of Locusts to power it up, it's just too easy to counter and comes in too late to be worth it.
  • Kobolds & CatacombsFurbolg Mossbinder
    • This is one of those times where we have to stop and ask why a card was printed. This is a 5 mana 1/1, that can, at best, give a token +5/+5 and prevent it from attacking that turn. If you have a token in play already. Just play Mean Streets of GadgetzanBig-Time Racketeer or Rastakhan's RumbleFormer Champ instead. Or play Knights of the Frozen ThroneBonemare or Descent of DragonsFaceless Corruptor and swing with the buffed minion right away. Or maybe even a The Boomsday ProjectWargear, depending. Basically, just don't play this. It's almost like Blizzard made this card just to troll Shaman.
  • Rastakhan's RumbleGurubashi Chicken
    • They said it was impossible to improve on Angry Chicken (in badness), but Gurubashi Chicken manages to do that just. Nearly identical to its cousin down to its terrible stats except it gains a bunch of Attack on Overkill instead. Consider the following: to activate Angry Chicken's effect, you need to play it, buff its Health, then damage it in some way. But for Gurubashi Chicken, not only do you have to play it and buff it, but you also have to kill something with it. Outside of nearly impossible cases where it somehow gets Windfury and the opponent is dumb enough to give it stuff to kill and last several turns, Gurubashi Chicken is a straight up downgrade. Even with the addition of Saviors of UldumBEEEES!!!, Rastakhan's RumbleLinecracker is an infinitely better meme. At least it's a Common.
  • Rastakhan's RumbleGurubashi Offering
    • If you go first and drop this on turn 1, it's a better Journey to Un'GoroIron Hide. Anytime else, it's a worse LegacyShieldbearer. It won't survive a turn in situations where 8 armor makes a difference, classes that use armor have better options, and let's not even get started on Descent of DragonsPlatebreaker. The meme value with The WitchwoodGlinda Crowskin is there, but she really prefers the company of Mechs, and Druids do it better. Also, Iron Hide and Shieldbearer are both Commons that see basically no play, so why is this thing Epic again?
  • Rastakhan's RumbleIce Cream Peddler
    • Not as awful as some of its contemporaries, but that's not saying much. This card has below-average stats and an effect so incredibly specific, you should buy a lotto ticket if it accidentally triggers. If it worked off any frozen minion, it might be an okay ability. The fact that it has to be a friendly minion though means you have to run into a rare Freeze effect from your opponent while this is in your hand... or freeze your own stuff, and we all know how good those synergies are. And if it does trigger, basically all you get is a LegacyHealing Touch. By the way, this is indeed the third Rastakhan's Rumble card in a row. It isn't the last on this page, either.
  • Saviors of UldumDesert Obelisk
    • What would normally be a funny meme card is somehow outmemed in the very same set. Saviors of UldumMogu Cultist has a similar condition (although slightly more restrictive, its low mana cost makes it more feasible) and a reward that surpasses Desert Obelisk by a million years. Would you rather cheat around 15 mana to deal 5 damage to 3 random targets, or finagle 7 mana to summon a 20/20 and deal 20 damage to everything? You can't even make an availability case, since they're both Epics.
  • Scholomance AcademyBlood Herald
    • In some ways, this is a Take 2 on Wicked Skeleton. Unfortunately, it's about as bad. Now you can at least build it over time instead of needing one lucky turn, but it only grows at half the rate and you need to sacrifice your own minions. Blood Herald has the same problems as Bolvar and Mean Streets of GadgetzanBlubber Baron, but even more lopsided: you need it in your opening hand to buff it and is a completely worthless top deck, and the token-based deck that could fuel this effect can't afford to keep a dead 5-drop. Then it runs into the eternal problem where it can just get hard removed, since it has no protection whatsoever - which is especially bad because if you're using Blood Herald, it's probably the only major threat in your deck.

"Overstatted"

  • LegacyArcane Golem
    • You know LegacyWild Growth? A card that was so prominent in most Druid decks that it had to be nerfed? What if you could give that to your opponent for free for the benefit of 1 stat over a vanilla 3/4? Granted, this card was rather overpowered prior to its nerf, thanks in big part to LegacyPower Overwhelming, but nowadays? Do yourself a favor and skip this minion.
  • The Grand TournamentMogor's Champion
    • This card has the same number of stats as LegacyBoulderfist Ogre... with abysmal distribution... and a RUINOUS downside. The Grand Tournament has a rather infamous legacy, especially among its neutral cards, but this one takes the cake. As it happens, you really don't want your 8 damage to redirect on your opponent's LegacySilver Hand Recruit. It's hard to believe this card saw print in the same world as Goblins vs GnomesFel Reaver.
  • Knights of the Frozen ThroneHowlfiend
    • Discarding never was a particularly popular Warlock mechanic. Letting your opponent control how many cards you lose, even less so. A 4-mana body on a 3-mana minion is good, but not if it comes at the cost of losing your entire hand; at least LegacyFelstalker (RIP Succubus) and LegacyDoomguard throw away a fixed number of cards. Even Journey to Un'GoroLakkari Sacrifice decks think twice about running this thing because your opponent can easily use it to snipe the Journey to Un'GoroNether Portal. It should really say a lot about this card that one of the best things you can do with it is to let your opponent have the thing so you can wipe their board and hand... in a slow, gimmicky three-card combo that takes up deck space better used for things like LegacyTwisting Nether, of which two pieces are nearly useless on their own, and that it's the one card you want your opponent to get from Kobolds & CatacombsWandering Monster.
  • Kobolds & CatacombsKobold Barbarian
    • This is actually a worse Goblins vs GnomesOgre Brute in every way. With the Ogre, you have a 50/50 that it'll hit the correct target, and >50% it'll hit anything else. Those are decent odds for a big Arena bruiser. This guy on the other hand does whatever the hell he wants. There is no advantage to using this card instead. And it's a class card. A class rare. Why.
  • Rastakhan's RumbleBooty Bay Bookie
    • Yet another minion where its slightly higher stats is totally negated by its drawback, this card has only a slightly better downside than Arcane Golem. Kobolds & CatacombsHoarding Dragon and Rise of ShadowsSoldier of Fortune are at least usable in Arena since they don't instantly give the opponent mana, and a single Coin is not nearly enough to make it remotely useful in mill decks.
  • Saviors of UldumSunstruck Henchman
    • "All right, team, we need ideas for new obligatory bad Neutral cards for our set. What do we got?" "What about another GvG-style ogre? The last one was too not unusable." "We have Kobolds & CatacombsKobold Barbarian, and that thing goes bad 100% of the time. How much lower can we go from there?" "How about a minion that just straight up skips their turn half the time?" "Brilliant, put this in our next expansion, stat."

Worst spells

  • LegacySavagery
    • Hailed as the other worst vanilla spell in the game (see Totemic Might below), Savagery has never found good use in its entire lifespan. In most cases it deals 1 damage after using your Hero Power for 2 Mana, and it needs to be comboed with other awkward attack buffs in order for it do anything more. Even when it got archetype support in Rastakhan's Rumble, the one time where it could be useful, it was still too weak to be played. Savagery is such a forgettable card that even in discussions regarding worst cards most players don't even remember that it exists to bring it up.
  • Charge
    • Although nobody ever liked facing a charging LegacyMolten Giant or an extremely enraged LegacyRaging Worgen before it got nerfed, its current form has extremely limited usage. Turns out paying 1 mana to hit a minion with another minion you've played is hardly efficient, especially if you're Warrior and have so many better options, not to mention weapons. Even on something that might have synergy with it like The Grand TournamentMagnataur Alpha didn't make the card any better. You're far better off playing something with Rush if you want the same feeling. Or its not-very-good but almost strictly superior successor, The Boomsday ProjectRocket Boots.
  • The Grand TournamentDemonfuse
    • Simple rule of Hearthstone: mana is everything. Following the Mana curve is the most basic strategy. Cards that cheat themselves or other cards out are some of the most broken in the game. There's a good reason player 2 has so many extra bonuses. Of course, you could throw all that over to your opponent for a measly +1/+1 extra stat over LegacyDemonfire. It's up to you.
  • The Grand TournamentAstral Communion
    • Back in the day, Astral Communion was a fun meme card that allowed for some crazy highrolls. It was never good, but too cool to place on this list. Unfortunately, the card has not fared well in the face of power creep. These days, it's not that uncommon for Druids to accelerate to ten mana without sacrificing their whole hand. Once they get there, instead of dropping big threats they can focus on comboing the opponent down, meaning the discard effect has only gotten more devastating as time has gone on. Astral Communion's whole shtick has been replaced by running cards like The Boomsday ProjectBiology Project, Ashes of OutlandOvergrowth, and even Descent of DragonsBreath of Dreams, making it completely obsolete.
  • Whispers of the Old GodsShatter
    • People actually had hopes for this card since it's basically LegacyExecute with a different activation condition, and Mages are pretty good at freezing things. As it turns out, it's not quite that good, since Mage isn't exactly starved for single target removal that doesn't require another card to set up, LegacyDoomsayer is still a better follow-up to Frost Nova since it kills the entire board rather than just one minion, decks that like to Freeze things tend to have higher priorities than kicking one specific minion while it's down, and most decks wouldn't waste a slot on a card that's basically dead when you're top-decking. To add insult to injury, The Witchwood crept this card by crossing it with LegacyIce Lance and it still sucked.
  • Rastakhan's RumbleSurrender to Madness
    • If you thought Knights of the Frozen ThronePrince Keleseth LegacyShadowstep Prince Keleseth was an insane turn, imagine doing all that with one card! ...Unfortunately, Surrender to Madness has a slight downside to it, which may put you a little behind on tempo. That's a pretty bad downside on what's supposed to be a tempo bonus. Granted, some zoo decks may want to try the card out, but the card happens to be in Priest, the least zoo-y class in the entire game. Even after The Boomsday ProjectExtra Arms was buffed and Zoo Priest was experimented with, this card proved too slow and awful to even be attempted there.
  • Rise of ShadowsDr. Boom's Scheme
    • Even with unlimited scaling this card is just grossly inefficient. It costs a whopping 4 Mana, and the amount of Armor it gives goes up by a measly 1 each turn, so low that not even the most patient of Control Warriors can last long enough for the payoff to be worth it. For comparison, it takes 11 turns dead in your hand for it to be comparable to Mean Streets of GadgetzanGreater Healing Potion and Kobolds & CatacombsBranching Paths, and it provides zero additional effects or flexibility, and that's if you start with it in your hand. Given that peculiar artwork, one has to wonder if it was hit with an emergency rework late in development.

Honorable mentions

  • LegacyTotemic Might
    • For years, Totemic Might was hailed as one of the worst cards in the entire Classic set. In vanilla Hearthstone, totems were LegacyBloodlust fodders at best and totem synergies were nonexistent, and the best possible application for the spell was to buff a LegacyMana Tide Totem to help it survive a little longer when played on curve. It was somewhat used after The Grand Tournament added some Totem synergy cards and the dreaded The Grand TournamentTotem Golem, but even that was deemed too inefficient to take up a card slot in a deck. Years later, it finally started to see some use in Even Shaman, which coincidentally had many good even-cost synergy cards to abuse its 1-mana Hero Power. Finally, it was used in Ashes of Outland, where a small health buff made a difference in having it survive to the next turn to abuse Ashes of OutlandTotemic Reflection. While still terrible outside of that specific deck, it's nevertheless a valuable card in them.
  • LegacySacrificial Pact
    • Sac Pact was considered bad for years - despite the strong effect (destroying ANY demon originally), the lack of good targets and the sheer inconsistency of the card vs. non-Warlocks made it complete trash. Plus, it was just a bit too weak to use in decks that just wanted life gain. The card gathered dust for years until Descent of DragonsGalakrond, the Wretched was printed, which gave Control Warlocks more than enough demons to sacrifice. What really took the card over the edge though was when Demon Hunters took over the meta. Suddenly, a card that was too weak to include in any deck became the best anti-meta card ever, especially with non-Warlocks having the means to generate it reliably. It was good enough that it eventually got nerfed to only hit friendly Demons, relegating it to obscurity yet again but still marking it as a success story.
  • The Grand TournamentBolster
    • The hallmark meme card for years. Back when Bolster came out it required a deck full of bad Taunt cards to be remotely consistent, which in turn meant the deck itself was hilariously inconsistent. Despite its awful status on release, years of expansions and tons of better Taunt minions and other Taunt support cards have made Taunt Warrior a viable archetype in Wild.
  • One Night in KarazhanPurify
    • Semi-officially crowned the worst spell in Hearthstone by its preemptive exclusion from the Arena, reception to this card was so bad, its arrival led to an avalanche of other cards being excluded from the Arena as well. While it offered the potential for some fun synergies, unfavourable comparisons to the 0-mana Silence made this an auto-disenchant for many players. Yet, for all the backlash this card received initially, it became one of the few success stories in this list, when Silence Priest become an actually viable deck.
  • Kobolds & CatacombsTo My Side!
    • A card that has caused almost as much confusion and revile as Purify, on its reveal, no one could understand why an outrageously expensive LegacyAnimal Companion that requires an absurd requirement for not having any minions in your deck to be average for its cost to even be printed in the first place. But the full picture shows that it's meant to be used with the Hunter Legendary weapon, and not long after players realized a deck that can still summon enough minions through spells and get huge card advantage out of it is... not terrible, to say the least.
  • Rastakhan's RumbleVoid Contract
    • This card is a symmetrical effect and tempo suicide. There's no reason to ever play this aside from the memes. That said, it's pretty awesome to snipe that The Boomsday ProjectDr. Boom, Mad Genius or The Boomsday ProjectMecha'thun before your opponent has a chance to draw it, or to burn all those Bombs out in one fell swoop... at the same time, you might end up giving your opponent their combo pieces and burn the useless 1 drops out of the way for them. Too cool to call horrible, too horrible to call playable, Void Contract instead ends up perfectly balanced (as all things should be).

Worst weapons

  • The Grand TournamentPoisoned Blade
    • Marked unplayable since its release, at the 4 mana mark the weapon is just too slow. It was supposed to synergize with Inspire cards, but the ability to gain +1 Attack per Hero Power over a painfully slow period of time proved to be awful. Scholomance AcademySelf-Sharpening Sword laughs at its grave.
  • The League of ExplorersCursed Blade
    • Terrific and game-changing... in your opponent's favour. This terrible card means that if you want to use it for trading, you take twice as much damage. That would already be bad, but then it continues to work on your opponent's turn, giving them a LegacyProphet Velen and a mass LegacyBlessed Champion and most certainly killing you. Then there's the fact that it lasts 3 turns unless you ditch it for something better. It's an effect so bad not even the tankiest of Control Warriors can handle it. All in all, one piece of advice: Disenchant it.
  • Whispers of the Old GodsTentacles for Arms
    • Warrior's own Poisoned Blade! While oozing with flavor, paying five mana to keep reequipping such a terrible weapon is never worth it. LegacyArcanite Reaper or The Boomsday ProjectSupercollider may not be infinite, but at least they're worth the price.
  • Mean Streets of GadgetzanPiranha Launcher
    • Unbelievably slow and not terribly synergistic. Summoning four 1/1s for 5 mana isn't even good, much less so when it comes over four turns and is built into a weapon with a useless statline. If you want this card done right, take a look at Saviors of UldumDesert Spear and never look back.
  • Knights of the Frozen ThroneIce Breaker
    • Because One Night in KarazhanSpirit Claws was just a little too efficient. Sure, getting 3 Shatters that damage your hero in a class that's infinitely worse at Freezing things than Mage sounds pretty good... err, wait no, it doesn't.
  • Kobolds & CatacombsThe Runespear
    • The biggest loser of the Kobolds & Catacombs Legendary weapons, for a hideously high price of 8 mana for a 3/3 weapon, this weapon gives you a random Shaman spell of limited choosing with each swing. On paper it seems like the weapon could pay for itself if you get some good spells, but planning for them is impossible. A lot of Shaman's biggest spells like The Boomsday ProjectThe Storm Bringer barely do anything if the board isn't in the right state, anything slightly weaker than a Journey to Un'GoroVolcano range from modest card draw to other terrible spells, and any targeting spell is unreliable, so if you Windfury or LegacyHex the wrong minion then you're screwed. Outside of a few highlights, the Runespear hits way too many duds for it to really work.

Official worst card

Statistically, the worst card in the game is not the one that is used the least, but the one that sees the lowest win rate for decks that include it. Just prior to the release of Goblins vs Gnomes LegacyMagma Rager was officially confirmed as the worst card in the game, with players including the card in their deck winning only 29% of matches.[1] However, according to Ben Brode in September 2016 the card has since been superseded by an even worse, unnamed card.[2] Brode states that the card was released "maybe a couple of years ago", suggesting a card from Goblins vs Gnomes (or Blackrock Mountain, at a stretch), but says that the card is "so fun" that he doesn't want to announce it as the worst card, because he doesn't want people to stop playing it, later stating that he "really [believes] people love playing the card and would be sad to realize how bad it is."[2][3] Brode also confirmed that the card was not any of those presented on a list of widely considered "worst cards", including Blackrock MountainMajordomo Executus and Goblins vs GnomesFlame Leviathan.[4] However, he states that which card is currently the worst does fluctuate over time.[3]

According to HSReplay, the current worst card of February 2020 is Rastakhan's RumbleIce Cream Peddler with 22.2% win rate.[5] The previously monstrous Magma Rager now sees a semi comftorable 35.1% winrate

References

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