For me this card clearly falls under the “What were they thinking?” category.
(along with Reno Jackson, another card that should never have been made)
Can we, at least, require this silly card to start in your opening hand, in order to gain the 40 starting Life?
+10 really is huge. To put it another way - an improvement of 33% (10 of 30, or 1/3).
I’d estimate, if player skill is equal, and deck composition is equal, a 40-Life player probably wins 80-90% over a 30-Life player.
The only real drawback I see, is that if your deck requires a certain combo to be effective, then an extra 10 cards basically kills it. But if the deck is -so- reliant on a combo that you might as well concede if you don’t draw it - the deck ain’t worth playing in the first place.
Essentially, a player is -forced- to play P.R. in order to be competitive against others who do. No card should be -that- game-changing. Reno Jackson is ridiculous, but at least you have to actually Draw him to have the obnoxiously powerful effect.
Now I’m sure there are players who so appreciate the assured improved Win % this card affords, that they will doggedly defend it. But I ask them to consider how much cards like this harm the integrity of the game.
I don’t bother playing competitively anymore, because P.R. makes it not worth it.
I purely play for fun now. Yes, Hearthstone is still fun, but only about -half- as fun now.
Tell me you are an aggro player without telling me you are an aggro player. I have never lost a game just because my opponent had Renethal in their deck. On the other hand, I won a few games just because my opponent couldn’t assemble their combo fast enough, possibly because he had 10 extra cards in deck.
Based on that, I’d say we need to buff Renethal instead. I might even start playing him then.
I really don’t have issues w/ 40 hp 40 card decks. You ever play duels Saviors of Uldum? You’re put in some really crazy situations. Sometimes, it requires you to make a deck that can handle 30 and 40 card decks.
I have yet to find a reason to use Renathal. Increasing your hand size is a handicap since you’re still stuck at 1-2 max of any card. Adding 10 cards at the expense of consistency is not a strategy I’m racing to enact in my playstyle, especially when 1 of those cards being added is only there to trigger the Start of Game ability. Now you’ve spent 10% of the additional cards just to increase the deck size. Prince+9 cards decrease your chances of finding key pieces you need at the time you need them.
Rarely have I had a hard time defeating a Renathal deck.
Only real argument for nerfing prince is that the average game time is extended to be way too long now. I think that’s the real problem that should be addressed. Removing the +10 health would help with this (keep the other effect just for the people that like 40 card decks). It’s a long time to wait for prince to be rotated out while having to put up with 30+ minute games. No sense climbing legend ladder unless you actually have a huge investment of time to do it (i.e., you’re a streamer that’s getting paid to do it or have no job/life responsibilities). People also don’t realize that all these combo/control decks would be forced to be less greedy, and things like Sire become way less of a problem.
Playing an aggro deck in wild it takes me 4 to 5 turns to take a Renathal deck back to 30 hp. If I’m lucky its 3 to 4 turns on a perfect hand. 4 to 5 turns is the difference between winning or losing 9 times out of 10. Its stupid. Giving control decks which already carry a ton of board clears an extra 10 hp is a dumb design. Advantage control, unless you play some crazy overtuned aggro deck like pirate rogue.
I’ve tried out some of the PR decks and just don’t like them.
Some seem to be having moderate success.
Personally, I think they should dump Prince Renathal and just make 40/40 the standard. Let everyone build 40 card decks and start at 40 health. I’ve wanted them to increase deck sizes for years now. Let us multi-class already. They do it in Duels.
While they’re at it, they should also add a Highlander format.
And some way to disable animations so we’re not having our turn timers eaten up by pointless graphics.
Game length was definitely a factor in the original design for this game.
10 mana mechanics could still be played. It used to be, the aggro player had to set up awkward board states to get in as much damage as possible to hit with end of game cards with reach, before the control player hit certain points and run away with the game. The control player on the other hand needed to figure out which damage to take and when to expend board clearing resources. Those board clears used to be limited as well. Control players needed to balance early game with late game to get to their end game cards. Additionally, it forced worse cards into control decks that needed creativity to be played to their full effects in control vs control. That’s how this game gets its balance.
Do you think sire or theotar would be a problem at all if the game was still holding to those principles? Oh you have a 10 mana card that wins you the game? Too bad you won’t get to turn 10 or have enough minions die to survive tempo/aggro decks to survive when you play it! Oh nice! You just stole a 1 mana card with theotar and gave back another low cost card or an important card in your combo deck! Aggro might not even play theotar because it loses in mirror matches for being too slow.
I look at aggro today, and I’m just disappointed at what aggro needs to do to actually win. It has to have refill after refill of game ending boards now. It’s a sign that the game is in a bad state. Can forget about tempo or midrange decks too, if it’s not hyper aggressive, combo, control or endless value it loses. If your class can’t deal with someone instantly summoning a full board of 4/4+ minions (which shouldn’t be happening, but now needs to because of what’s available to combo/control), guess you just lose.
Prince does not cause these issues though. It does exacerbate them, so nerfing prince would be a band-aid if anything. If the real issues were fixed, and redundancy was not a thing, prince would probably be fine because then it really would be put 3/4 in your deck, make your deck worse.
I might even start playing him then.
