(WARNING! Long text wall containing detailed reasons and suggestions, TL;DR at the bottom!)

I’m absolutely positive this post has been made several dozen times, but I wanted to bring up an additional point. Yes I do agree with a system that introduces universally loved cards from expansions with an expiration date to the classic set. However, I do not agree with just adding in every single card that we enjoyed for various reasons.

I think that the cards we were given to replace Hall of Fame are disappointing and practically invisible. If you’re going to add cards back in, it would be nice if you actually added cards. These replacements, which if you didn’t know were Pilfer, Tome of Intellect, Icicle, and Call of the Void, aren’t replacing anything if they absolutely never see play. It’s as if there was never a replacement at all. So what if, we replaced them with actual cards printed during expansions?

Think about this, Pilfer was the replacement for Conceal, so clearly Blizzard wanted to replace the Stealth archetype with the Thief archetype. If that’s their plan, why not keep a card like Blink Fox in standard instead of Pilfer? The fox isn’t a great card, but it’s not unplayable either. It’s got a lot of charm, works well if played in the right deck, and it’s adorable! Or maybe Undercity Huckster? For all the reasons said before only replace adorable with funnel cakes. If you think about it, there isn’t a single card in the classic OR basic sets that add cards form opposing classes, which has become a Rogue staple ever since Burgle. Adding a permanent good-ish card to that list preserves the identity without making anything stale. I didn’t choose Swashburgler for this because that card is really good, and classic cards that are too good never get replaced by anything better. So Swashburgler should stay away, same goes with replacing Tome of Intellect with Babbling Book. Sorry, dude, you’re to good to make me want to cast a spell... permanently.

One last thing, Neutrals and Legendaries! Where is our compensation for those? We’ve lost five Neutrals from the persistent set (not counting event cards), and two of those are legendaries! Not just any legendaries too, humongous names in Warcraft lore that were just snuffed out like candles... then one came back like a flamethrower napalm but still! What if we replaced some of these cards with expansion cards too? Again, not too strong. Molten Giant could be replaced by Frost Giant, which could make Priests feel like their doing something on turn 2! Azure Drake with Bone Drake or Book Wyrm... and give us some legendaries that didn’t get to shine in their day to add to our permanent collection. Some cards like Toshley or Arfus could replace Sylvanas, both cards that weren’t great, so they could always find a home in the ‘not great but okay’ collection. There’s opportunity to fill in the neutral gap with cards we’ve all seemed to think were bad, but nice.

(The TL;DR) When cards from the hall of fame rotate out, they should be replaced with something actually playable so it’s not like they disappeared. A proposed solution is to replace cards with other cards from fading expansions, such as instead of having the unplayable Pilfer, you have the adorable Blink Fox, cards like that that aren’t too amazing to see play permanently, but good enough to make an effort. Also, the neutrals should get replaced as well, including replacing the Neutral Legendaries that went away with expansion Legendaries that didn’t quite get to shine in their day, but could be alright in the classic set.

You got some thoughts on this? Yes, I know it was long and was done before, but I had some thoughts on what I thought could change. Maybe you have thoughts too? (Hopefully positive ones) Which cards do you think would be good replacements to the current Hall of Fame ones? Thanks, bye.