Why am I being punished for playing minions?
Long, long ago, there was a pair of hunter cards that plagued the game: Starving Buzzard and Unleash the Hounds.
UtH (3 mana) would summon a 1/1 charge beast for every enemy minion. Starving Buzzard (2 mana) would draw a card whenever you summoned a beast. You can see where this is going. Eventually Buzzard got absolutely demolished after getting its cost increased to 5 mana, and it was never relevant again.
These days we have Shockspitter Hunter generating 1-3 extra Shockspitters thanks to Devouring Swarm, punishing you for playing for the board and punishing you for making tempo plays.
If you dare play even a mid-game minion against Demon Hunter, you’re slapped with 1 or 2 Sinful Brands, a S’theno, and several token generation cards that were all miraculously reduced in cost, often to 0 mana.
In less explicit cases, playing bodies can allow Druid to infuse their Devourers with Scales of Onyxia. Or can allow mages to generate skeletons or soup up the Dawngrasp hero power.
Guys, it’s not “just” Death Knight’s control capabilities that have driven the game off the board. Playing minions can mean you just lose the game faster.