“Small-Time Recruits” is one of the best designed cards that Blizzard has announced recently, and here’s why

We’ve all heard it before – “Hearthstone has too much RNG”. This is an argument that has existed since Hearthstone was in Beta back in 2014, and if anything, has only grown in popularity since then. A while ago, I wrote about “the Barnes effect”, and how cards like Barnes were poorly designed in the sense that they can have a massive swing impact on the game, in an incredibly unreliable sense. It could just summon a useless 1/1 from your deck, or it could summon a 1/1 with Divine Shield, Taunt, and Deathrattle: Equip a 5/3 weapon. The problem with this is the fact that you, the player, has absolutely no way to dictate what happens.

Despite the fact that everyone calls out Hearthstone on having too many RNG factors, instead of saying that, I would like to propose that, rather, it’s not necessarily too much RNG, but not enough consistency. Small-Time Recruits is a perfect example of a consistent card. Not necessarily consistently good, but consistent in the sense that it is a form of card draw, and you will know almost exactly what will come out of it. In a game with RNG as a key factor, cards that can be consistent will always be good in some aspect. Another good example of a consistent card is The Curator. It has decent stats for the cost, and again, guarantees not only that you will draw cards, but what cards those will end up being as well.

Overall, if we have just a few more cards like Small-Time Recruits and The Curator, we could take huge steps towards a much less Curvestone style of gameplay.