Blizzard has just nuked the most toxic Hearthstone card ever designed: "Yeah our bad ..."

The Great Dark Beyond is the theme of Hearthstone’s latest card expansion. It is about building and launching Starships that are becoming increasingly powerful. Blizzard hasn't seen enough of these sci-fi shenanigans, largely due to the fact that older cards and decks have been so powerful they've crowded out newer stuff. Team 5's new balance patch, live now, includes 15 nerfs, and 14 buffs, all aimed at moving the meta.

You can read all the details here, but the headline changes are Quasar, and Reno, Lone Ranger. Both cards have been nuked out of orbit for being the two most toxic cards printed. Let's begin with Quasar. It's a Rogue Spell that says: 'Shuffle the cards in your hand into your Deck.' Reduce the cost of cards in your Deck by (3). Quasar's deck archetype involved using excessive amounts of card drawing and burn spells in order to refill your hand, and cheese your opponent.

Was it really super powerful? Not really. Quasar's Rogue has a win rate of around 40% according to HSReplay.net, and the Vicious Syndicate Data Reaper Report ranks it as a Tier 4, which is the lowest. Quasar was a very frustrating deck to lose against, as you watched the opponent draw their entire card and cast a bazillion discounted spells. Absolutely. From the content creators I follow and the players I play with, everyone except the degenerate piloting the Quasar deck seemed to agree.

Blizzard's blog post explaining the nerf reads "Yeah our bad ..."." Every expansion, we like to create a few dreamy' cards which get players thinking of how far they can take the game. These cards aren’t meant to be competitively viable. The fun is in wondering 'what if'. Quasar fell into this category - it certainly got the dreamers going and hasn't proven to be an outlier in terms of competitive power. But the experiences when the card does work, are too sharp and end the game too early. Turning the dream into a nightmare for players to face."

The hammer fell. Quasar costs 8 Mana to cast now, up from 6. This kind of Mana boost is the same as deleting a card. A strategy that was suboptimal before will now be almost impossible. The game will be improved.

Reno, the Lone Ranger is also kicked to another solar system. It's a neutral Hero (ie, it replaces your existing hero power), that read previously: "Battlecry - If your deck began with no duplicates in it, empty the enemy board for a turn and limit it to one space." This effect was equivalent to a complete reset of your opponent's board. Reno removed Dormant minion cards and Location cards without triggering Deathrattle effects. Now, not only is the restriction that your opponents could only play one minion the following turn removed, but Locations and Dormant Minions will also remain in place.

Here's Blizzards's response: "Reno is a card that has caused controversy since its release. He's a necessarily strong payoff to singleton decks, which many players really enjoy, but playing against him can be really frustrating--especially his next turn board limitation. We've had to balance competing player interests and this change was not made lightly. However, we felt that Reno needed an update, so he would no longer be able to hit non-minions or Dormant minions. We wanted to give Starships more of a chance to fly, so we made this change.

Reno was already a hard counter to Starships because it restricted deck-building by excluding duplicates. At 10 Mana, however, it looks outrageously over-priced and the play should drop. Reno was a tough counter to Starships because you could spend several turns building yours, only to have it *poof* without any reward. Blizzard has done the right thing by balancing around both play experience and pure power.

Starships also benefit from the buffs that are being given. The Exodar is one of them, as it launches your Starship automatically and gives you three bonus effects. Its stats change from 6/10 to a 6/8, and its cost drops from 8 Mana to 7 Mana. This seems like a great deal. Blizzard said that the last change was "particularly spicy." "We wanted Starships to shine. But we'll watch this one closely after all the changes are live to ensure we didn't push it too far." Blizzard has never been in trouble for buffing cards. !

All nerfed cards are eligible for a full dust refund for two weeks starting today.